The report of the Bureau of Efficiency recommends the consolidation of the existing governing agencies into a single government headed by an executive of the city-manager type. Instead of a political mayor elected by popular vote the office would be filled by the city council for an indefinite tenure. The incumbent would be the executive officer of the council and he might be given a seat in that body without a vote. The council would be free to go outside the city if necessary in its search for a competent mayor under this council-manager plan. One has but to read the Chicago newspapers to be satisfied that some such change as here indicated is essential to the wise and economical government of the city. Battles between the mayor and the council, upheavals in one city department or another occur constantly with a serious loss of municipal dignity. With deep humility I confess my incompetence for the task of describing the present mayor of Chicago, Mr. William Hale Thompson, whose antics since he assumed office have given Chicago a vast amount of painful publicity. As a public official his manifold infelicities (I hope the term is sufficiently delicate) have at least served to strengthen the arguments in favor of the recall as a means of getting rid of an unfit office-holder.[D] Last year a general shaking up of the police department had hardly faded from the head-lines before the city’s school system, a frequent storm-centre, caught the limelight. The schools are managed by a board of trustees appointed by the mayor. On a day last spring (1917) the board met and discharged the superintendent of schools (though retaining him temporarily), and, if we may believe the news columns of the Chicago _Tribune_, “Chicago’s mayor was roped, thrown, and tied so rapidly that the crowd gasped, laughed, and broke into a cheer almost in one moment.” I mention this episode, which was followed in a few weeks by the reinstatement of the superintendent with an increase of salary, as justifying the demand for a form of government that will perform its functions decently and in order and without constant disturbances of the public service that result only in the encouragement of incompetence.