While it is still an important
part of the programme of reform from the point of view of many
reformers, it has recently been over-shadowed by other issues. It does
not provoke either as much interest as it did or as much opposition.
Municipal reform has, of course, almost as many centers of agitation as
there are centers of corruption--that is, large municipalities in the
United States. It began as a series of local non-partisan movements for
the enforcement of the laws, the dispossession of the "rascals," and the
businesslike, efficient administration of municipal affairs; but the
reformers discovered in many cases that municipal corruption could not
be eradicated without the reform of state politics, and without some
drastic purging of the local public service corporations. They have
consequently in many cases enlarged the area of their agitation; but in
so doing they have become divided among themselves, and their agitation
has usually lost its non-partisan character. Finally the agitation
against the trusts has developed a confused hodge-podge of harmless and
deadly, overlapping and mutually exclusive, remedies, which are the
cause of endless disagreements.
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