A plan of government for our larger cities frequently adopted is this: Single aldermen are elected from each wieldy district in the municipality. All the aldermen thus selected form a city council which exercises the legislative power. The mayor is elected at large. He presides over the city council and, with the heads of his executive departments who hold at his pleasure, wields the entire executive power. The new Cleveland charter gives the department heads seats in the council with the right to address that body. There is here a proximity of the executive and legislative power, rather than a real union of it. Whatever union there may be is largely on the side of giving the executive a position in the deliberations of the legislative body. The council has no function in the actual exercise of the executive power. The entire executive power is really concentrated in a single individual elected at large and holding office for two and often four years. This feature is in sharp contrast to the vesting of the executive power in the representatives of wieldy districts or “quotas,” who control and direct the exercise of that power by a single executive who holds at their pleasure. The one plan that should not be attempted in our larger cities is that of providing for the union of the executive and legislative functions in a few commissioners elected at large, thereby violating the essential principle of electing representatives from wieldy geographical districts or by wieldy “quotas.” FOOTNOTES: [14] See Richard S. Childs, “The Theory of the New Controlled-Executive Plan,” _National Municipal Review_, II, 76 (January, 1913); C. G. Hoag, “The Representative Plan of Government,” _The American City_, April, 1913. CHAPTER XIV THE PRINCIPLES OF THE COMMISSION FORM OF GOVERNMENT APPLIED TO THE STATE The principles at the basis of the commission form of government for cities may equally well be applied to a state government. Our first care must be to eliminate the division of power which comes from having two legislative chambers, each equally representing the electorate. The legislative power as it comes from the electorate at large must be lodged in a single legislative chamber. In the second place we must provide for the election of members to this single chamber from “quotas” or districts which are as wieldy as possible. One member should be elected by each “quota” or from each district.[15] The requirement that districts or “quotas” which elect members be wieldy is so important that it must determine the minimum number of members in the single legislative chamber. If it be determined that a district or “quota” with 4,000 male voters would be suitably wieldy, then each district would contain a population of about 25,000, and for a state like Illinois there would be 200 districts.