The party that for years held itself in disdainful aloofness, was so defiant of co-operation, in the national parliament, is ductile, neighborly, and eager to help in the municipal and communal councils. It has a communal program of practical details, and no small part of the splendid progress in municipal administration in Germany is due to the Social Democrats. Everywhere you hear praise from officials and from political rivals for the careful work of the Social Democratic members of municipal bodies. Owing to the unfavorable election laws, the Social Democrats do not elect a large number of members to local councils. In no important city do they preponderate. If universal manhood suffrage were enacted, they would control the majority of the local legislative bodies. As it is, they are an active minority, and guard jealously the interests of the working classes. Munich may be taken as the type of city in which the Social Democrats are active.[50] In 1907 there were 130,000 qualified electors for the Reichstag election in Munich, in 1905 there were only 31,252 qualified electors for the municipal elections. This shows the restrictive influence of property qualifications for local elections. In a city council of 60 members, the Social Democrats elected only 9. And of 20 elected members of the chamber of magistrates they elected only 3. This minority is an active committee of scrutiny. It carefully and minutely scrutinizes all the acts of the municipal authorities, especially pertaining to labor, to contracts for public work, and to the conditions of city employees. They vote consistently in favor of the enlargement of municipal powers; e.g., the extension of parks, of street-car lines, the building of larger markets. For a number of years the Social Democrats of Munich have urged the utilizing of the water power of the Isar, which rushes through the city. And the municipality is now utilizing some of this power. The Social Democrats also favor every facility for the extension of the art and culture for which Munich is justly celebrated. They take no narrow, provincial views of such questions, and set an example that might with profit be followed by parties who claim for themselves the prerogative of culture. They are constantly working for better public educational facilities, and are especially hostile to the encroachments of the Church upon the domain of public education. They are in favor of increased public expenditures; opposed to all indirect taxes, especially those that tend to raise the price of food. Their special grievance is the property qualification required for voting. They say that a law which allows only one-fifteenth of the citizens (30,000 out of over 500,000) a right to vote is "shameful," and they are bending every effort to change the law.