It becomes exceedingly difficult for the taxpayer to understand just
what his money goes for, or how far the city expenses might reasonably
be reduced; and it becomes correspondingly easy for municipal
corruption to start and acquire a considerable headway before it can
be detected and checked.
[Sidenote: In some respects it is more of a mystery that state and
national government.]
In some respects city government is harder to watch intelligently
than the government of the state or of the nation. For these wider
governments are to some extent limited to work of general supervision.
As compared with the city, they are more concerned with the
establishment and enforcement of certain general principles, and less
with the administration of endlessly complicated details. I do not
mean to be understood as saying that there is not plenty of intricate
detail about state and national governments. I am only comparing one
thing with another, and it seems to me that one chief difficulty with
city government is the bewildering vastness and multifariousness of
the details with which it is concerned. The modern city has come to be
a huge corporation for carrying on a huge business with many branches,
most of which call for special aptitude and training.
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