But the county, for all that, appears to be incapable of standing on its own feet in tax matters. Even under the most favorable circumstances there remains an important duty for a state commission to supervise the work of the county assessor or board of assessors to the end that the letter of the law may be obeyed with the utmost uniformity throughout the state. Such a commission must see that the county does injustice to neither individuals nor the state through inequal assessment and that the tax sales are in accordance with the law. The county, in short, has a useful place in the general scheme of tax administration, but it must be a _supervised_ unit. CIVIL SERVICE In the administration of the civil service law the county also does well to lean upon the state. The same considerations that apply in accounting and tax matters apply with equal force in the selection of the employees. Most of the counties are too small to serve as units in which to install facilities for conducting examinations and publishing useful records. The superior powers of the state commission over the localities in these respects are emphatically not a destructive check upon the county’s officers. They do not detract from local responsibility. They simply enable them to apply to their work the most effective means available. In New York the state civil service commission regulates the service in eighteen counties. In New Jersey the adoption of the civil service law involving state control rests with the people of each county. Hudson, Essex, Mercer, Passaic and Union counties have taken advantage of the law. Administration apart from fiscal supervision in other departments, such as charities, prisons and public health, has advanced much more slowly than reform in the fields which have been mentioned. But every indication for the future is toward greater control through accounting and supervision. The county acts locally in the enforcement of state obligations. The real trouble comes when one undertakes, arbitrarily, to place any given county activity in the local or state category. The catching of a thief, for example, is a very essential part of the state’s most fundamental duty to protect property, but the locality where the crime is committed is very keenly interested in having the machinery of the county set to work to punish the deed. The locality pays the sheriff his salary or his fees, but the state, in protecting the property of its citizens, is probably justified in guarding against extravagant or dishonest use by the people of the county even of their own money.