If, for instance, a municipal government by commission is planted in a territory where several other municipal governments are also operating, each with a long list of elective officers, very little has been accomplished toward that centralization of governmental power in a few commissioners which tends to eliminate extra-legal government. Each of the municipal governments operating in the same territory will divide the entire local governmental power among them. The decentralization of governmental power will still exist in exaggerated form and the political ignorance of the voter must still be such that he will need to be advised and directed how to vote, and the professional adviser and director to the politically ignorant voter will still continue to satisfy that need. Once the professional adviser and director to the politically ignorant voter is retained in the district where the commission form of government operates, he will begin to exercise an influence in the nomination and selection of the commissioners. Extra-legal government as conducted by him may even capture a majority of the commissioners and use the great governmental power vested in them in a scandalous manner. The present situation in Chicago well illustrates this danger. There the municipal government is very highly centralized. The voter casts his ballot only for a mayor every four years, a city clerk and the city treasurer every two years and two aldermen from each of the 35 wards--one alderman being selected from each ward every year. The other administrative officers not under civil service are appointed by the mayor with the consent of the council. If Chicago were the only local government in the territory which it occupies it would be a fair type of responsible city government wielding a highly centralized governmental power. Machine politics would thrive only in the districts where the majority of the voters were illiterate and where corrupt and illegal voting was practiced on a considerable scale. But operating in the same territory with the city of Chicago is the Sanitary District with 9 trustees, and Cook County with 73 elective officers. It is the long ballot for Cook County which causes the densest political ignorance on the part of the voter and makes the existence of the professional adviser and director of the politically ignorant voter necessary and therefore the existence of extra-legal government certain and permanent. Such an extra-legal government, when once established, naturally exerts a great influence even in city elections. If the two principal party vote-directing machines agree to divide the city and county governments between them and each helps the other to appoint those who are to fill the legal offices in that government which it is agreed each shall control, the power of extra-legal government in the city will be very great indeed. In the same way, if a commission form of government