The city is a place where extremes meet. Great wealth and abject poverty exist in the cities side by side; in the rural districts there is a closer approach to a common level. The same is true if we compare city and country from the standpoint of education, earning-power, obedience to law, respect for government, or any other social feature. The city runs to extremes; it contains both the highest erudition and the most utter ignorance; it has earners of enormous incomes and plenty of people who can earn no incomes at all; it has reactionaries in one quarter and anarchists in another—a strange social mosaic when you study it and very much in contrast with the general uniformity of the rural area. [Sidenote: 5. A place of leadership.] Nevertheless, along nearly all lines of activity the cities lead the nation. To say that half the people live in cities does not tell the whole story. The influence which this half exerts is greater than its numerical strength implies. The cities are the headquarters of those who direct the great industries, the transportation systems, and the banking interests of the country. The newspapers of the great cities influence the moulding of public opinion the country over. The political power of the cities, their influence upon every phase of public policy is very great. Hence the character and the spirit of the cities will go far to determine the national characteristics of the future. [Sidenote: The city charter.] =The City and the State.=—The inhabitants of a city are a corporate body with certain legal rights and privileges. These rights are granted to them by the state in their city charter.[69] The charter is a document having the force of law; it enumerates the powers of the city, tells what form of government the inhabitants shall have, and determines the duties of the various city officials. In the larger cities it is a very long document covering a hundred printed pages or more. [Sidenote: 1. The general charter plan.] How are these charters framed and under what arrangements are they granted to cities? Three or four different plans are in vogue. In some states the legislature has passed a general law relating to cities, and their charters are all alike in accordance with the provisions of this law. The difficulty with this plan is that cities differ greatly in size and in the nature of their problems. The charter that suits one may not fit another. A seaport city, for example, needs a harbor commission with power to license pilots and regulate the anchoring-places of ships; but it is absurd to require, for the sake of uniformity, that inland cities shall also have harbor boards. To render this general charter system more flexible, therefore, some states have adopted the expedient of dividing cities, according to their size, into three or four classes and giving a uniform charter to all cities in the same class.[70] [Sidenote: 2. The special charter plan.]