If universality and magnitude of cost count for anything, yes. Nearly all the inhabitants of the United States live in a county and nearly every voter takes part in the affairs of one. There are over three thousand such units. In their corporate capacity they had in 1913 a net indebtedness of $371,528,268 (per capita, $4.33), which was a growth from $196,564,619 in 1902 (per capita, $2.80). In that year they spent for general government, $385,181,760, which is something like one third the cost of the federal government for the same period. Of this amount, $102,334,964 was for general management. Through these county governments the American people spent for highway purposes, $55,514,891; for the protection of life and property, $15,213,229; for the conservation of health, $2,815,466; for education, $57,682,193; for libraries, $364,712; for recreation, $419,556 (mostly in the single state of New Jersey); for public service enterprises, $189,122; for interest charges, $17,417,593; upon structures of a more or less permanent nature, $89,839,726. The figures, though of course not to be taken too seriously, are in some cases as impressive for their paucity as in others for their magnitude, for throughout a large part of the United States the county is the sole agency of local government. Counties pretty much throughout the nation are the corner-stone of the system of partisan government and organization. Counties, for this variety of reasons, therefore, would seem to be a fit subject for scrutiny as to their relation to some of the vital issues of American life. [1] _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, May, 1913, contains a number of important monographs on the subject. CHAPTER II JUST WHAT IS A COUNTY? Before our forefathers had “brought forth upon this continent a new nation,” there was no universal standard relationship in the colonies between the local and the general colonial or state governments. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the towns had begun as separate units; then they federated and gradually developed an organic unity; that is, the localities produced the general government. In the South, on the other hand, the local governments had more the semblance of creatures of the general government designed to meet the expansion of the earliest settlements into wide and therefore less wieldy units for administration.