The mayor’s office is hardly second to the presidency in the variety of its perplexities. A man of the best intentions will fail to satisfy a whole community. There is in every city a group of reformers who believe that a mayor should be able to effect the moral regeneration of the human race in one term of office. The first-rate man is aware of this, and the knowledge diminishes his anxiety to seek the place. A common indictment against the capable man who volunteers for municipal service is that his ignorance of political methods would make him “impractical” if he were elected. This sentiment is expressed frequently--often by large taxpayers. The insinuation is that a man of character and ideals would be unable to deal with the powers that prey by indirection. This is quite true: the fit man, the first-rate man, who would undertake the office untrammelled by political obligations, would not know the “good fellows” who must be dealt with in a spirit of leniency. This delicate duty is more safely intrusted to one who brings a certain sympathy to bear upon the task. Whatever may be the merits of party government in its national application, there is no sound argument for its continuance in municipal affairs. Its effect is to discourage utterly, in most communities, any effort the first-rate man may be absurd enough to make to win enough of the franchises of his fellow citizens to land him in the mayoralty. On one occasion a Republican United States senator, speaking for his party’s candidate for the mayoralty at the last rally of a campaign in my own city, declared that his party must win, as defeat would have a discouraging effect on Republicans elsewhere. A few years ago both parties chose, in the Indianapolis primaries, mayoralty candidates of conspicuous unfitness. The Republican candidate was an auctioneer, whose ready tongue and drolleries on the stump made him the central figure in a highly picturesque campaign. He was elected and the affairs of a city of a quarter of a million people were cheerfully turned over to him. Ignorant of the very terminology in which municipal affairs are discussed, he avoided embarrassment by remaining away from his office as much as possible. In the last year of his administration--if so dignified a term may be applied to his incumbency--he resigned, to avoid the responsibility of dealing with disorders consequent upon a serious strike, and took refuge on the vaudeville stage. He was no more unfit on the day he resigned than on the day of his nomination or election--a fact of which the electorate had ample knowledge. He was chosen merely because he was a vote-getter. Republicans voted for him to preserve their regularity.[A]