conservator of the peace, but also chief executive officer of the mayor's court and at the same time collector of the taxes.

The marshal became the mayor's appointee under the act of 1881 governing cities of the first class and an appointee of the board of fire and police commissioners, with the title, chief of police, under the act of 1887, governing cities of the metropolitan class.

The last named act gave over the entire control of the police and fire departments to the board of fire and police commissioners, consisting of the mayor, as ex-officio member, and four others appointed by the governor for terms of four years, two retiring biennially. This novel tenure and composition of a metropolitan administrative board was adopted to give it a greater independence. Responsible to the governor, a state officer, and chosen from the representatives of at least three political parties, its non-partisan character is still further guarded by the subscription of each member to an oath: “That in making appointments, or considering promotions or removals, he will not be guided or actuated by political motives or influences, but will consider only the interests of the city and the success and effectiveness of said departments." This board has also been given the supervision and granting of liquor licenses, under the state law, a duty that previously rested upon the city council and city clerk. It would be interesting in an excursus to trace the extent of the powers of Nebraska municipalities over the licensing of the liquor traffic, but such deviation would, I fear, unnecessarily prolong my paper.

MINOR CITY OFFICIALS AND BOARDS.

Having hurriedly sketched the development of the original elective charter officers in our municipalities, the subsequent additions to the administrative machinery must be passed with a very brief mention. Other municipal officers beside those already alluded to, have been

elective at different times. The city engineer, beginning with the general act of 1869 until that of 1881; the city solicitor for the brief two years after 1869; the street commissioner from the general act of 1871 to that of 1881-all of which are now appointed by the mayor. A chief of the fire department came into the same category from 1881 to 1887, when he was made responsible to the board of fire and police commissioners.

Recent legislative acts have introduced a complication of administrative boards of variegated composition and tenure. We have the board of public works, with three members, appointed by the mayor, holding each for three years and taking office in different years. We have the board of health, comprising the mayor, chairmen of certain council committees and certain subordinate officials whose duties lie in the line of sanitation. We have the board for the inspection of buildings, comprising certain specified subordinate officials. We have a public library board of nine members appointed by the mayor. And finally we have a board of park commissioners, comprising five members appointed one each year for terms of five years each by a majority of the judges of the district court in which any city of the metropolitan class may happen to be situated. Other offices that may be found necessary may be created and the duties prescribed by ordinance of the city council.

POWERS OF LOCAL ADMINISTRATION.

Into the powers of local administration which have been at different times vested in our municipal government, I shall go but in a general way. It has been the evident intention of the legislature at all times to leave all matters of strictly local moment to the municipal government under restrictions calculated to prevent abuses and to protect both the people and the state government. These powers, roughly speaking, refer first, to providing the requisite ordinances and regulations for the preservation

of the health, safety and good order of the community; and second, to the raising of a revenue necessary to defray the expenses of the government and of the machinery and improvements required for the efficient exercise of these powers.

Under a system of jurisprudence which demands that every municipal government show an expressly delegated authority from the legislature for every act of its officers, the development in Nebraska has been necessarily in two directions. There has been a constant increase in the number of specifically mentioned powers conferred by special charter and general act, and at the same time, a constantly increasing number of minute restrictions and limitations upon the exercise of those powers. Take, for example, the system of special assessments for benefits from local improvements. They were first authorized in Omaha by its charter amendment of 1865, and then only for sidewalks, and in case the property owners failed to construct them when properly notified to do so. An amendment of the following year provided for special assessments "for improvements to any extent" to be levied upon the abutting property, provided, they were demanded by a petition representing two-thirds of the assessed value of the property affected. The details of the system were further evolved in the general acts of 1869 and 1871 and in successive enactments until at present the complicated procedure is authorised for a great number of expressly designated purposes, while the property owner liable to special assessment is hedged about by innumerable safeguards intended to prevent arbitrary action on the part of the city council, and to insure to each the due respect of his property rights. A development, similar in nature, may be discerned in very many of the other powers of municipal government.

CONCLUSION.

In conclusion let me present two or three points which have been suggested by this study.

First, the general form of municipal government in Nebraska has existed unchanged in spite of much experimentation. Corporate capacity has been exercised by the mayor and council assisted by such officers as have been found necessary or desirable. The bicameral council which has found favor in many cities and which has been tried in many others has never commended itself to Nebraska legislators, and the one chamber council has thus far sufficed.

Second, with the increasing number of city officers and the increasing complexity of their duties and functions the responsibility of municipal officers has been altered and shifted. The two classes of officers, elective and appointed, have varied in composition, the city clerkship for example, alternating his responsibility between the voters and the city council. Some elective officers, such as the city engineer, have become appointive by the mayor and council. The experiment now making in certain eastern cities of holding the mayor responsible for the efficiency of all the executive departments and vesting in him the entire control over the appointment and dismissal of the departmental heads has as yet made no headway in this state. On the other hand, the desired independence has been sought by dividing responsibility and taking it away from the voters as directly expressed by the ballot and placing it elsewhere. Members of the board in control of the fire and police departments look to the governor for appointment. Members of the board in control of the park system owe their selection to the judges of the district court. Certain members of the board of health owe their places to the president of the city council, others to the mayor and council, while the voters select but four of the executive officers directly. I wish merely to call attention here to the development, not to criticize it.

A third point upon which this sketch has thrown some light is the practical failure of our constitutional inhibition

against special legislation to effect any material reform. While the legislature no longer designated the community to be incorporated by its name or by describing its boundaries, it does substantially the same thing by creating classes and subdivisions of classes based on population intended to include particular cities under the guise of being general in character. Nor has this change abolished the regular biennial applications for charter amendments or the interminable charter tinkering. Its abuse has not gone quite so far as it has in Ohio, which passes general laws relating to cities which had by the last census, say more than 25,300 inhabitants, and less than 25,310 inhabitants, but it has given every influential city a statute affecting itself only.

Incorporation of municipalities by general laws has been an advance over incorporation by special charter in form rather than in substance.

THE SOLDIERS' FREE HOMESTEAD COLONY.

S. C. BASSETT.

The completion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869 made desirable for settlement in the young state of Nebraska, millions of acres of tillable land; land covered with highly nutritious grasses; easy of cultivation; of great fertility; abounding with living, running streams of water, and perhaps most necessary of all, underneath, and within easy reach, an inexhaustible supply of purest water for all domestic purposes. The land was practically devoid of