In a study of the town meeting system of today, in "Harper's Monthly," June, 1891, Henry Loomis Nelson brought out many convincing facts as to its superiority over government by a town board. Where the cost for public lighting in a New England town had been but $2,000, in a New York town of the same size it had amounted to $11,000. The cities of Worcester, Mass., and Syracuse, New York, each of about 80,000 inhabitants, were compared, with the New England city in every respect by far the more economically governed. Towns in New England are uniformly superior to others in other parts of the country with regard to the extent of sewers and paved streets. The aggregate of town debts in New England is vastly less than the aggregate for a similar population in the Middle States. The state constitutions of New England commonly relate to fundamental principles, since each district may protect itself by the town meeting; but outside New England, to assert the rights of localities, state constitutions usually perforce embody particulars. In their fire and police departments, and public school and water supply systems, New England towns lead the rest of the country. "The influence," says Mr. Nelson, "of the town meeting government upon the physical character of the country, upon the highways and bridges, and upon the appearance of the villages, is familiar to all who have traveled through New England. The excellent roads, the stanch bridges, the trim tree-shaded streets, the universal signs of thrift and of the people's pride in the outward aspects of their villages, are too well known to be dwelt upon." In every New England community many of the men are qualified by experience to take charge of a public meeting and conduct its proceedings with some regard to the forms observed in parliamentary bodies. But elsewhere in the Union few of the citizens have any knowledge of such forms and observances. "In New England there is not a voter who may not, and very few voters who do not, actively participate in the work of government. In the other parts of the country hardly any one takes part in public affairs except the office-holder." John Fiske, in "Civil Government in the United States," (1890), says that "the general tendency toward the spread of township government in the more recently settled parts of the United States is unmistakable." The first western state to adopt the town meeting system was Michigan; but it now prevails in four-fifths of the counties of Illinois; in one-sixth of Missouri, where it was begun in 1879; and in one-third of the counties of Nebraska, which adopted it in 1883; while it has gone much further in Minnesota and Dakota, in which states it has been law since 1878 and 1883, respectively.