Public schools in America are all the more useful because they are superintended by town and city officials, elected in great part by men who know them personally. This is also the case with the boards of health, and the managers of poorhouses, cemeteries, public libraries, and parks. Among other subjects of local self-government are the roads, bridges, streets, and sewers. Our large cities are notoriously misgoverned, but it will be easier to raise the character of the officials than to contract their powers. Much is to be hoped from civil service reform, proportional representation, and nonpartisan elections. Town affairs are usually so carefully looked after by people not in office as to be managed for the public welfare. Both in towns and cities the tendency is to enlarge rather than contract the functions of the government. A proposal that any city should let tenements or sell coal more cheaply than is done by individuals, would seem to be for the advantage of everybody except a few payers of heavy taxes. The majority of voters would care little about increase of taxation, in comparison with the prospect of more demand for labour and greater activity in business. It is easy to make extravagance popular where the majority rules. Our State constitutions would probably make it impossible for coal to be sold or tenements let by cities and towns; but these latter often carry on gas-works, water-works, electric roads, and other highly beneficial industries. This may be necessary to check the rapacity of corporations; but otherwise there is too much danger of extravagance, discouragement of individual enterprise, and delay in improving the processes monopolised by the municipality. Some evils would be lessened by a transfer of the control of lighthouses and life-saving stations from the national Government to that of the nearest cities, or else of single States.