Time will evidently remove the latter
obstacle, and probably the former also. It is very significant that in
Missouri, which began so lately as 1879 to erect township governments
under a local option law similar to that of Illinois, the process
has already extended over about one sixth part of the state; and in
Nebraska, where the same process began in 1883, it has covered nearly
one third of the organized counties of the state.
[Sidenote: County option and township option.]
The principle of local option as to government has been carried still
farther in Minnesota and Dakota. The method just described may be
called county option; the question is decided by a majority vote of
the people of the county. But in Minnesota in 1878 it was enacted that
as soon as any one of the little square townships in that state should
contain as many as twenty-five legal voters, it might petition the
board of county commissioners and obtain a township organization, even
though, the adjacent townships in the same county should remain under
county government only. Five years later the same provision was
adopted by Dakota, and under it township government is steadily
spreading.
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