Fourth: That the Constitution should require that all laws relating to the government of counties should be general both in terms and in effect, except that special or local laws relating to such government may be passed, but shall take effect only on approval of the county affected. The California amendment has been put to use in the four counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Tehama, and Butte, all of which have their special “home-rule” charters. Its early use is contemplated in Alameda, Napa and Santa Barbara counties. Since 1911 the scope of the amendment has been broadened so as to permit of considerable latitude in the consolidation of city and county governments. Such is the counter-movement to centralized state control. In no wise are the two in the least inconsistent, for the latter tendency is to limit the subjects in which the county acts in the capacity of a local state agent while the former concerns itself simply with _methods_ of performing service under local popular control. The home-rule movement, if it may so be indicated, is practical evidence that people are regarding counties as something more than mere geographical expressions. Counties are _thinking_ units. They are capable of framing local policies. Therefore they would extend their opportunities to think and to express themselves. This idea seems to be at the bottom of the local option policy of the organized anti-liquor forces throughout a great portion of the country. Shrewd tactics, of course, has a good deal to do with it, for county and other forms of local option are but the thin side of a wedge to state-wide and even nation-wide prohibition. But for the present at least, organizations like the Anti-Saloon League realize that counties are very handy and convenient units of public sentiment and have been instrumental in securing county option laws in many states, including Idaho, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Texas. Incidentally, the county option plan makes the public policy district in liquor matters coincide with districts for enforcement, thus minimizing the danger of nullification. CHAPTER XVI CONSOLIDATION The battle cry of local freedom comes up loudest from urban centers. The simple reason is that the counties were devised originally for communities in a state of nature--a few people, widely scattered, all but oblivious to the existence or need of government. City communities on the other hand are highly complex, individualized, differentiated units. Accordingly, their governmental garments must be custom-made. City governments indeed were instituted partly to escape the strait-jacket inflexibility of the counties. Gradually, as we have seen, they elbowed the county governments into a dark corner, to the infinite debasement of the sheriff, the coroner, the poor master and the tax collector and other typical accessories of the county.