12. Does the city own and operate its waterworks plant, or is the water supply furnished by a private company? Does the city own and operate any of its other public utilities, such as the electric light or gas plant? If not, what are the terms of the franchises under which they are operated by private companies? Do these companies pay the city anything for the privilege of using the streets? 13. What are the duties of the public utilities commissions in New York and Wisconsin? Do you think the policy of regulation preferable to municipal ownership and operation? 14. How is the cost of street and sidewalk paving met in your city,--by special assessment on the property benefited, or by appropriation out of the city treasury? 15. What is the method of garbage disposal in your city? 16. Describe the organization and activities of the health authority in your city. What does it do to secure a supply of clean and pure milk? 17. Are there any improvement leagues or civic organizations working for the uplift and good government of your city? What are their methods, and what are some of the specific services they have rendered? 18. What are the principal sources of revenue in your village or city? What is the rate of taxation on the taxable property? CHAPTER III THE STATE GOVERNMENTS =Place of the States in Our Federal System.=--Proceeding upward from the county, township, and city, we come to the state, the authority to which the local governments described in the preceding chapters are all subject. The consideration of state government properly precedes the study of national government, not only because the states existed before the national government did, and in a sense furnished the models upon which it was constructed, but because their governments regulate the larger proportion of our public affairs and hence concern more vitally the interests of the mass of people than does the national government. The states collectively make up our great republic, but they are not mere administrative districts of the union created for convenience in carrying on the affairs of national government. They do not, for example, bear the same relation to the union that a county does to the state, or a township to the county. A county is nothing more than a district carved out of the state for administrative convenience, and provided with such an organization and given such powers of local government as the state may choose to give it. The states, on the other hand, are not creations of the national government; their place as constituent members of the union is determined by the Federal Constitution, framed by the people of the United States, and their rights and obligations are fixed by the same authority. Each state, however, determines its own form of government and decides for itself what activities it will undertake.