amount of bonds required. The council has nothing to do with the matter. The board also makes its own contracts, after the work has been authorized by the council and the appropriation made, and the council is estopped from confirming or disapproving them. The board has power to alter the terms of the contract to change the extent or character of the work, and the council has nothing to do with the matter, so far as appears by the language of the Code. The mayor cuts no figure in the work of the board of public service.

The board of public safety is composed of two or four members, as the city council may determine. The term of its members is four years, half the board being renewed every two years. The mayor appoints, but unless within thirty days the appointments are confirmed by two-thirds of all the elected members of the council the appointments lapse and the Governor of the State appoints.

This provision constitutes the State interference already referred to, and was injected by the Republican politicians to overcome the effect of Democratic victories in many of the cities. The theory was that it would require a tidal wave to give the Democrats the mayor and two-thirds of the council in any city. A more vicious denial of the principle of home rule it would be difficult to conceive. The power is given to one-third of a council plus one to throw the appointment of the board into the hands of the Governor. The latter is given still further power to interfere in local matters in that he is given power to remove a mayor on charges. Under some circumstances (such, for instance, as those outlined in the National Municipal League's Municipal Program) such a power is desirable, even essential; but the Ohio Code provisions are simply in furtherance of a scheme to give the Governor at Columbus a practical control over the municipalities of the State.

The board of public safety is given control of the police and fire departments, which are placed on the merit basis, but the system is no better than that in force in Cincinnati, at the time of the passage of the Code, which was little more than what is known as the pass system. In no other part of the municipal government is the merit system even recognized.

The board of health is to be composed of five members appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council. There is no two-thirds approval required in this case. This board serves without compensation. All the present employees retain their positions. There is a bi-partisan board of tax commissioners, the members of which are also to be sinking fund commissioners. They are to be appointed by the mayor, the term being four years, one member to be appointed each year. They are to serve without pay.

The Code has been very generally criticized, both within and without the State. The Chicago Tribune (Republican) declared it to be "a plucky attempt at reaction, that might almost be called insolent." The Cleveland Plaindealer, a most cautious and sagacious critic, declared it to be detestable and quoted with approval the comment of an independent Republican reviewer that it was "condemned by every intelligent student of municipal government." Municipal Engineering declared that “Many of the cities in Ohio have long been under the domination of the less responsible and efficient politicians, under charters similar to the one now adopted, and it is greatly to be regretted that these politicians have been able to force upon all the cities of the State their system of political domination to the exclusion of the opportunity for business administrations."

The Code had been passed but a few days when numerous errors were discovered; but it is expected and promised that these will be corrected at the next regular session.

A somewhat more hopeful spirit has lately been manifested concerning the municipal outlook in Ohio. In the first place, because the Code has failed of its original intent to drive Tom Johnson out of politics, and second, because it is believed that a more sober second thought will result in amendments looking toward the elimination of some of the more reactionary features.

The Cleveland situation affords an opportunity for "grim humor," as Harry A. Garfield put it, in that the carefully laid plans of Republican politicians have gone sadly astray and simply resulted in intrenching Mayor Johnson still more strongly in power. As already noted, he and all his candidates were elected, "without even so much as an opportunity for the Governor to

appoint the Board of Public Safety," as the council is almost solidly on the side of Mayor Johnson.

A suit was immediately begun in Cincinnati after the adoption of the Code to test its constitutionality.1 Two points were urged against the Code. The first was that the Code had been passed in an irregular manner in that the Legislature voted on the report of the conference committee and not on the bill itself. The other was the claim that the law is special legislation by reason of the flexibility of the form of government provided, and the scope of the powers of council, it being contended that this would render the Code not uniform in its application. The lower Court overruled both points and affirmed the constitutionality of the Code, the decision being affirmed by the Supreme Court on appeal.2

This is the story in brief outline of municipal government in Ohio from the date of the adoption of the present constitution to the present time. It is certainly an extraordinary one, worthy of the thoughtful consideration of every student and administrator of municipal affairs, as well as every legislator called upon to deal with municipal questions. It needs no special comment, as it speaks for itself, and it is presented here with the hope that it may serve as a fruitful and warning lesson to those who may hereafter be called upon to deal with similar questions in other States.

Philadelphia.

CLINTON ROGERS WOODRUFF.

1 F. M. Zunsteim on behalf of the City of Cincinnati vs. Michael Mullen, et al. 2 The Superior Court at Cincinnati, on April 28, 1903, declared unconstitutional two provisions of the new Municipal Code. One of these is the “curative act" intended to sustain the fifty-year street railway franchise in Cincinnati ; the other is the one-year statute of limitations for suits to test public franchises and contracts. Both are declared invalid. The section of the Code called the "curative act" is as follows:

"All unexpired grants of rights or franchises heretofore made by any municipality in accordance with the provisions of any statute or act of the general assembly existing at the time when they were made, and which have been accepted, and where money has been expended in good faith on account thereof, are hereby re-granted for such unexpired portion of the respective periods of the original grants in accordance with the terms and conditions of the same; any law or part of law to the contrary notwithstanding."

TH

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF RUSSIA.

I.

'HE Russian Government by its statement made August 6, 1902, to the New York Stock Exchange for the purpose of getting its bonds listed there, admitted a bonded indebtedness equivalent to $3,233,000,000, an increase, according to the semi-official Russian Journal of Financial Statistics, of $683,000,000 since 1887; or according to the Official Intelligence of the London Stock Exchange of $764,000,000 since 1889. This is sufficiently serious in itself as having been incurred in time of peace except for the trifling Chinese war, but besides this, other statistics show that the government has guaranteed interest or dividends on railroad securities to a par value of about $675,000,000, and the mortgage bonds of various government land credit institutions to the extent of about $335,000,000 more; institutions much like the Lombard Investment Co., which failed so disastrously in 1893. These make a total of about $4,243,000,000, for which the government is responsible. To be sure only a part of the burden for these guaranteed securities falls on the government, but the railroads have profited quite largely by the guarantee (the estimate for 1903 is nearly $9,000,000), and in the last two years there have been immense defaults by original mortgagors to the land bank companies, making these in turn unable to meet their obligations. Apparently the government has had to make these good. Within a year vast amounts of land belonging to the nobility, especially. in the provinces of Simbirsk and Saratoff and along the lower Volga in general, have been foreclosed on by the Bank of the Nobility, but it has generally been impossible to sell it for more than a small fraction of the face of the mortgages, as was the case in this country when the Lombard Investment Co. and other similar concerns went down and great amounts of farm land were forced on the market; and now the peasants in Simbirsk are threatening to seize the uncultivated lands of the nobility.

The statement to the Stock Exchange purported to give the Russian debt as of January 1, 1900, with the apparent inference that it had not increased in the meantime. From January 1, 1900 to January 1, 1903, by the operation of their sinking fund system, about $41,000,000 was paid off, but this was far more than offset by two new loans contracted between January 1, 1900 and August 6, 1902, of which nothing was said in the statement, namely one for $81,600,000 issued in 1901 ostensibly to take up old loans at higher rates of interest; and the other of March 9, 1902 of $96,500,000 placed in Berlin. Of this about $51,000,000 was to be loaned to railroad companies and $37,000,000 was to go as indemnities to "private persons and to institutions for the losses sustained by them in consequence of the disturbance in China." As these disturbances were almost wholly in Chinese territory, this seems a neat way of covering up the cost of the invasion of Manchuria and perhaps of writing off the loss on some 700 miles of the railroad to Vladivostock, which has been made practically useless by construction of the line to Dalny and Port Arthur, as well as that of some 1,500 miles more, partly finished, between Srytensk and Khabarovsk, which will probably be left as it is for the same reason. It is remarkable that the imperial budget for 1902 shows no provision in the account for Extraordinary Expenditure (to which the proceeds of the Berlin loan were credited) for any loans to railroad companies for construction of railways, and that the provision for this for 1903 is less than $5,000,000.

The Russian Budget speaks of the indemnity as merely realizing in advance the amount to be paid to Russia by China, without mentioning that in 1895 Russia endorsed the Chinese bonds for this purpose to the extent of $77,000,000. This contingent liability likewise fails to appear on the statement to the New York Stock Exchange as does a similar endorsement on a Persian loan of about $12,000,000, which Russia is likely to have to make good some day. Also the statement does not include the debt of Finland, about $21,000,000, though Russia has become responsible for this also. Moreover, in March of this year the Russian Government offered abroad a new issue of over $51,000,000, and is offering another of about $59,000,000 in July.