People Need No Checks (1911)
...If he can the nation as well as the state will credit him with being smoothest political article ever put on the public job market.
PEOPLE NEED NO CHECKS
THERE WILL BE plenty of time after the people of Pueblo vote favor of the charter to decide whether the city shall adopt the pure commission form of government, or the mixed commission and council form proposed by J. Knox Burton. The Chieftain intends to devote its main energies for the present to the task of persuading the people to vote for the charter government, confident that after that step has been taken they will decide that the commission system is the best and most effective form of municipal government.
In answer to Mr. Burton's letter, printed in yesterday's Chieftain, it is perhaps sufficient to say that, apparently, his fear of the pure commission system arises from his belief that the people will soon neglect the city's business, will make no use of the popular government features of the carter, - the initiative and referendum and recall, - and that then the five commissioners will exercise despotic powers.
Boiled down, then, Mr. Burton is afraid the people, after all, aren't to be altogether trusted with their own government, and he would interpose the legislative council to look after it for them, and set as a check on the commissioners.
The Chieftain has no such fear. It believes the more the people are permitted to participate in their government, the more they will be inclined to do so, and the better posted they will become. Mr. Burton points out the fact that the commission system, though it has worked well wherever it has been tried, has in no city been in existence for any great length of time.
Granted. But the council system has been in existence for very many years, and in almost every city of any else has proved itself a fruitful cause of poor and extravagant government, if not of actual corruption.
The pure commission system allows the people to make their will more directly and more quickly felt than any other governmental system yet devised. That's why The Chieftain, believing implicity in the ability of the people to govern themselves, - is pure democracy, favors the commission system of government.
xxx
One of the most lively cities in the middle west today is Des Moines, Iowa. It is one of the pioneers is the commission system of government. In another column The Chieftain reprints from the Joplin News-Herald figures showing the immense benefit Des Moines has received from the adoption of the same system. What has been done for Des Moines may be done for Pueblo, also.
~RM M'Clintock, Pueblo Chieftain, 1911
PEOPLE NEED NO CHECKS
THERE WILL BE plenty of time after the people of Pueblo vote favor of the charter to decide whether the city shall adopt the pure commission form of government, or the mixed commission and council form proposed by J. Knox Burton. The Chieftain intends to devote its main energies for the present to the task of persuading the people to vote for the charter government, confident that after that step has been taken they will decide that the commission system is the best and most effective form of municipal government.
In answer to Mr. Burton's letter, printed in yesterday's Chieftain, it is perhaps sufficient to say that, apparently, his fear of the pure commission system arises from his belief that the people will soon neglect the city's business, will make no use of the popular government features of the carter, - the initiative and referendum and recall, - and that then the five commissioners will exercise despotic powers.
Boiled down, then, Mr. Burton is afraid the people, after all, aren't to be altogether trusted with their own government, and he would interpose the legislative council to look after it for them, and set as a check on the commissioners.
The Chieftain has no such fear. It believes the more the people are permitted to participate in their government, the more they will be inclined to do so, and the better posted they will become. Mr. Burton points out the fact that the commission system, though it has worked well wherever it has been tried, has in no city been in existence for any great length of time.
Granted. But the council system has been in existence for very many years, and in almost every city of any else has proved itself a fruitful cause of poor and extravagant government, if not of actual corruption.
The pure commission system allows the people to make their will more directly and more quickly felt than any other governmental system yet devised. That's why The Chieftain, believing implicity in the ability of the people to govern themselves, - is pure democracy, favors the commission system of government.
xxx
One of the most lively cities in the middle west today is Des Moines, Iowa. It is one of the pioneers is the commission system of government. In another column The Chieftain reprints from the Joplin News-Herald figures showing the immense benefit Des Moines has received from the adoption of the same system. What has been done for Des Moines may be done for Pueblo, also.
~RM M'Clintock, Pueblo Chieftain, 1911
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