The present charter of the city is supposed to provide a large measure of home rule, yet the salary of almost every officer and employee, from the mayor to the doormen of the police stations, is fixed by act of the State Legislature. The former cities of New York and Brooklyn had been so long regulated and governed from Albany that the commissioners who drafted the charter evidently overlooked the fact that a municipality might be trusted to regulate the pay of its own employees. To-day the pay of the school-teachers, policemen, firemen, heads of departments, and chiefs of bureaus is fixed at Albany, where the representatives of the city are in the minority. When the charter was prepared the commissioners agreed that taxation and salaries must be equalized. The members differed in their views on many questions, but they evidently agreed that the way to equalize salaries was to increase the lowest to equal the highest. In extending the benefits of a great corporate government to the many suburban communities included in the consolidation a uniformed policeman, or five or ten of them, at fourteen hundred dollars a year took the place of a town marshal or constable at three hundred dollars a year, and high-priced trained firemen were substituted for unpaid volunteers. This method of equalizing salaries was extended to every section of the city and to every branch of the government. No attempt, apparently, was made to devise some system that would adjust salaries in various localities to local conditions and cost of living. The sentiment in favor of a great city was not disposed to quibble when the cost of maintaining the visible form of municipal government was increased fivefold in much of the outlying territory. Aside from the extension of high-priced municipal service throughout the great area of the consolidated city, many useless offices were created and many salaries fixed at excessive figures. Authority was too much divided. The borough system is expensive, and so far useless. The entire charter is a series of compromises, and every compromise on a salary was at the maximum rate. This method of arranging the expenses of the greater city increased the cost of government beyond the highest estimates of those who had advocated consolidation. The initial cost was further increased by reason of the fact that no precautions were taken to prevent the various municipalities to be united from increasing their bonded and contract indebtedness during the last year of their separate existence. The result of that oversight was that every municipality, the former city of New York included, issued bonds and entered upon contracts with somewhat reckless disregard of the future. In this way a heavy burden of unnecessary expense was added to the legitimate account charged against the consolidated city.