these transactions, however, is too insignificant to affect any deductions drawn from the figures here presented.

The total payments for general and special service expenses, for interest, and for outlays have steadily increased from 1902 to 1907, while payments for expenses of invested funds and of public service enterprises, and those on account of debt, have fluctuated. Receipts from each class of revenues have steadily increased during the six years, with the exception of a slight decrease in receipts from interest between 1903 and 1904, while receipts on account of debt have fluctuated greatly. The extraordinarily large receipts on account of debt in 1904 and 1907 are due principally to debt incurred in those years by New York city.

Table V shows the payments for expenses and interest and outlays and the receipts from revenues for each year from 1902 to 1907, together with the percentages of increase over 1902. The fluctuations in payments. and receipts on account of debt are so great that no attempt is made to present percentages for these figures.

TABLE V.-Summary of payments for revenue expenditures and of receipts from revenues, 1902 to 1907, with per cent of increase over

An increase over 1902 is shown for each year from 1903 to 1907 in every item shown in the table, while in each case the largest annual increase is that from 1906 to 1907. During the period covered by the table, the rates of increase in expenses and interest and in revenues have been practically equal, so that the ratio of one to the other is the same at the end of the period as at the beginning. The percentage of increase in outlays is two and one-half times as great as that for revenues, showing that a rapidly increasing amount of municipal improvements and extensions must be met from loans. As shown in Table V, the excess of revenues over expenses and interest in 1902 was sufficient to pay for 67 per cent of all outlays, while in 1907 such excess would pay for only 49 per cent of the outlays.

TABLE 5.

Payments for general expenses and special service expenses. In Table 5 are presented statistics showing the payments for (1) general expenses, i. e., those expenses incurred by cities in the exercise of their general governmental functions, which, as a rule, are performed for all citizens alike, without any attempt to measure relative amounts of benefit conferred upon individuals or to fix compensation therefor, and (2) special service expenses, i. e., those expenses incurred in connection with services performed or provided for individuals by any city department or office other than a public service enterprise. Since the benefits conferred by such services, together with the costs. thereof, can be apportioned among those for whom the work is done, special service expenses are to be classed, theoretically, as commercial expenses-that is, in the same class with the expenses of invested funds and of public service enterprises; but the payments for such expenses, which form less than 5 per cent of the total included in Table 5, can not in practice be reported separately from payments for general expenses.

Since general expenses are by far the most important single class of costs of municipal government, comprising about 50 per cent of the total (as shown in Table 33), they are given in Table 5 in sufficient detail to show the relative expense of the several departments and branches of work in each city, and to provide for comparisons of the expense for a given object in one city with the corresponding expense in other cities. The Bureau of the Census has been striving to perfect its classification of municipal expenses, but it realizes the imperfections which still exist in its statistics. The adoption by many cities of the census classification has done much to standardize the reports on expenses, but until all cities adopt a functional arrangement of accounts it will be impossible to make a perfect analysis and distribution of the costs of government.

The cash disbursements for services and supplies for municipal service enterprises were included in Division VIII of Table 5 for 1906, but are given separately in Table 6 for 1907. The cost of the service furnished-based whenever possible on the value of services rendered and of materials and supplies consumed, together with allowances for interest on the value of the plant and for depreciation-is, however, tabulated under the appropriate head of Table 5. Thus, the actual payments for operating a municipal street lighting plant are included in Table 6, while the cost of the service is tabulated under "street lighting" in Table 5.

Classification by division of city government paying. In the columns headed "school districts" and "other divisions of the government of the city" are entered payments for expenses of local governments which are independent of the city corporation but which exercise some function ordinarily exercised by the city government itself. The latter column also includes for 7 cities of Group I a portion of the county payments, these payments being included in order to put the 15 largest cities on a more nearly comparable basis (see text on Table 2). The "other divisions of the government of the city" are as follows: Chicago, Ill., park and sanitary districts and county government; Philadelphia, Pa., poor districts; Pittsburg, Pa., Cleveland, Ohio, Buffalo, N. Y., Detroit, Mich., Cincinnati, Ohio, Milwaukee, Wis., and Denver, Colo., county governments; Portland, Oreg., Port of Portland, Peoria and Springfield, Ill., pleasure, driveway, and park districts; Tacoma, Wash., park board; and Portland, Me., bridge district.

Of the payments by independent school districts, a small amount-less than 1 per cent was paid for other than educational purposes and hence is tabulated under appropriate heads of Divisions I to V of the classification by departments, offices, and accounts. The expenses shown for the Port of Portland in Table 5 represent only the general administrative expense which corresponds to the expense of the "general government" of an ordinary city corporation; the expenses for the operation of its dredges and dry docks are tabulated in Table 7 as expenses of a public service enterprise.

This classification of payments for expenses by division of government paying has been presented for three years. During this period the percentage of total expenses paid by independent school districts has increased from 9.2 per cent in 1905 and 9.6 per cent in 1906 to 11.1 per cent in 1907. The number of cities reporting independent school districts was 65 in 1905, 67 in 1906, and 69 in 1907. The percentages paid by other divisions of the government for the three years can not be accurately ascertained since the 1905 figures erroneously include, as stated in the report for 1906, many accounts and funds belonging to the city. corporation, and, further, the 1907 figures include county payments not reported for the former years.

Classification by payee.-Under the head of payments to the public classified by "character" are shown as the costs of government the amounts paid in the final settlement of expenses, while the amounts paid on duplicate bills and other erroneous claims are shown as payments in error. Under the head of payments to public classified by "object" are shown as salaries and wages the amounts paid to persons in the direct employ of the city whether employed and paid by the year, month, or day. Payments for work done by contract are included with payments for supplies

| and all other purposes under the title "miscellaneous objects." The percentage of all payments to the public for general expenses formed by payments for salaries and wages changed but little during the four years 1904 to 1907, being 68.4 per cent in 1904, 68.8 per cent in 1905 and 1906, and 68.5 per cent in 1907. Classification by departments, offices, and accounts.— Payments for general and special service expenses are shown for 1907 under the same classification of departments, offices, and accounts as was used for 1906. The only change from 1906 in the method of reporting is the omission from Division VIII of payments for municipal service enterprises which, as stated above, are reported for 1907 in Table 6.

Of the payments for charities and corrections, the amount shown in the column headed "all other" under "insane in institutions" includes the following payments to other civil divisions and to private asso

In the classification by "departments, offices, and accounts," the aggregate for each of the eight main groups of departments is considered fairly accurate, but the figures for some of the individual objects of expenditure are imperfect; for example, under "highways" the expenses of maintaining and repairing street pavements, curbing, or sidewalks in some instances can not be separately reported at the present time and are included with some other highway expenses. Other items causing especial difficulties in classification are the city engineer's office, street cleaning, and snow removal. Street cleaning is performed in some cities by an independent department

but in most cities by the health or street department, in which case a separate statement of the expense of street cleaning is difficult to make. So far as the objects of expenditure here mentioned are concerned, it must not be inferred that blanks in Table 5 necessarily indicate no expenses for these purposes.

The per capita averages and the per cent distribution of payments for general and special service expenses are given for groups of departments and for several of the most important departments in Tables 34 and 35. A discussion of these subjects is therefore presented in connection with those tables.

With the rapid extension of municipal functions and undertakings, changes must necessarily be made in any scheme which classifies city departments and offices according to function. Of new forms of municipal activity which have recently grown to large proportions and which have no appropriate place provided in the census classification, mention may be made of the protection and care of trees. In some cities forestry departments have been organized to care for trees in city parks and streets and in private grounds, giving especial attention to the destruction of injurious insects and other tree pests. The cost of work on trees in private grounds is frequently charged against the property owners, sometimes in the form of special assessments and sometimes as bills for serv

ices. Payments for forestry departments are reported, for lack of a more appropriate place, under "miscellaneous protection of life and property," together with other payments for care of trees which are not charged to the park department or some other regular department. Payments for drinking fountains and city clocks, which are reported by many cities, do not come under any specific head of Table 5, and are, therefore, tabulated in Division VIII, "miscellaneous." These facilities are maintained for the comfort and convenience of all the citizens, and if the payments therefor were sufficiently large, a separate division would be required for reporting them. In this class belong also required for reporting them. payments for public comfort stations, which are being constructed and maintained by an increasing number of cities. The cost of these, for the present, is reported under "miscellaneous sanitation." The census classification of these items-and of hospitals, as pointed out in the text on Table 5 for 1906-is tentative and will be modified as their functions become well established or their cost becomes of sufficient importance to justify separate divisions.

In Savannah, Augusta, and Macon, Ga., Mobile, Ala., and Jacksonville, Fla., the schools are under county control, and the expenses of schools for the cities can not be accurately shown. However, the amounts expended by the county in maintaining schools for the cities have been estimated as follows:

more complete statistics in reference to the cost of operation, the Census Bureau has prepared separate tables showing the transactions of such enterprises.

No exact statement of the cost of furnishing street lights or of any other service performed by municipal enterprises can be made until more cities make allowances for depreciation in the value of their plants. Table 6 has been prepared with the hope that a separate statement for these enterprises will assist in emphasizing the need for more complete and reliable city records. The Census Bureau realizes that there are doubtless many undertakings in addition to those shown in Table 6 which would be included in a complete report.

TABLE 7.

Payments for expenses of invested funds.-Under this head the Bureau of the Census tabulates the cost of the administration of sinking, investment, and public trust funds for municipal uses where such cost is reported separately. In most American cities the sinking and investment funds are administered by the city treasurer or comptroller, and in such cases few expenses, if any, are charged to the account of their management; the same is true to a less extent of public trust funds. These facts explain the absence of payments for expenses of invested funds from the report of many cities, and the small amounts reported for others.

Payments for expenses of public service enterprises.Under this head the Bureau of the Census includes the payments for the expenses of those departments or offices of a city which are organized for the purpose of providing the public, or the public and the city, with some utility. Enterprises organized mainly for the purpose of furnishing the city with some public utility or with some service which most cities obtain from private enterprises are classed as "municipal service enterprises" and are reported in Table 6. The report for 1907 includes for Milwaukee, Wis., a payment of $33,527, for the expenses of the public service enterprises of Milwaukee county, which were not included in the previous reports of the census on statistics of cities.

Table 7, as presented for 1907, differs from the corresponding table in the special report for 1906 in that the payments for the care and administration of gen- . eral real estate are omitted therefrom. These costs for 1907 are included in Table 5. This change in classification is deemed desirable because such real estate is, as a rule, acquired incidentally through purchases at tax sales, or is held after having been purchased for some particular use, and that purpose has been abandoned. The receipts from real estate so acquired and held are usually small, a fact which shows that the properties were not acquired for purposes of investment nor for the purpose of being operated as public service enterprises. Receipts from rents of real

estate in Chicago, Ill., and from leasehold rents in Cincinnati, Ohio, are regarded as exceptions to this rule and are included in Table 7, column "all other public service enterprises."

Of the Massachusetts cities of over 30,000 population, 6 are in the metropolitan water district and obtain the supply of water for their several systems from the metropolitan waterworks. The metropolitan system is operated by the state for the benefit of the cities and towns, and all costs of construction, extensions, and maintenance are apportioned among the municipalities benefited. These costs are annually assessed against the cities in three parts: (a) For the accumulation of sinking funds to redeem bonds issued for the construction or extension of the metropolitan system; (b) for interest on such bonds; and (c) for expense of maintenance. The Massachusetts Bureau. of Statistics in its report on the Cost of Municipal Governments in Massachusetts includes the three classes of payments with expenses of maintenance and operation of city water-supply systems. This office enters the maintenance charge in Table 7 under "other expenses of operation and maintenance," but the interest is tabulated in Table 8 under "interest on debt obligations," and the payments for sinking funds in Table 10

under "payments on account of indebtedness." An exhibit of the amount of the metropolitan water debt chargeable to each city, together with the annual increase or decrease in such debt for each city, can not be presented, but the payments of a city to the state sinking fund may be considered as a discharge of a portion of the obligation to the state on this account. The three classes of payments above referred to are separately presented in Table IX. rately presented in Table IX. The 6 cities included in this report paid all of these state charges from the earnings of their water-supply systems:

TABLE IX.-Payments by Massachusetts cities to the state on account of metropolitan waterworks: 1907.

Total..

New York, N. Y.

2 Chicago, Ill.

St. Louis, Mo.

Boston, Mass.