MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
IN 
ENGLAND.* 
An Interview with Albert Shaw, Ph. D., of Minneapolis, published in the 
Pall Mall Gazette, November 24 and 27, 1888. 
It will interest the subscribers to the Johns Hopkins University Studies 
in Historical and Political Science to learn that Albert Shaw, one of 
the editors of the Minneapolis Tribune, who took his doctor’s degree in 
Baltimore in 1884 and who has made various contributions to historical 
and economic literature, is now studying English Institutions upon English 
ground. Besides closely observing English politics and methods of admin- 
istration under the very best auspices in London, he has found time to 
examine the practical workings of Municipal Government in various parts 
of the United Kingdom. Some of the results of his comparative study of 
English municipalities are given in an “Interview” recently sought by the 
Pall Mall Gazette and published in two successive numbers of that journal, 
November 24 and 27,1888. Dr. Shaw’s remarks will perhaps be interesting 
and suggestive to a wide circle of readers in America, where popular inter- 
est in problems of municipal government is steadily increasing.—Editor. 
“ Mr. Albert Shaw, an American editor from Minneapolis, has been in 
this country for the last few months studying British institutions. During 
his stay here Mr. Shaw has contributed an article to the Contemporary 
Review and presented several volumes on co-operation (on which he has 
bestowed considerable study in America) to the library at Toynbee Hall. 
A topic which has occupied much of his attention during his sojourn with 
us has been the nature and working of British municipal institutions. He 
•It is proposed to issue from time to time (in connection with the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity Studies in Historical and Political Science) Notes on current topics of interest. 
This number of the Notes is issued in special connection with the papers on Municipal 
Government that are appearing in the Studies. Monographs on the City Governments of 
Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, Washington, New Haven, San Franeisco, and New Orleans 
have been already issued or are now ready. 2 
3Iunicipal Government in England. 
has visited Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, making a 
minute and comprehensive study of the last-named city. The results of 
his examination lie has embodied in an elaborate article, which will appear 
in the Political Science Quarterly, and it is probable that other articles from 
his pen will appear in other American magazines, which will enable our 
kinsmen across the the sea the better to understand the true inwardness of 
a British municipality. Before Mr. Shaw left for Germany he was kind 
enough to communicate to a representative of the Pall Mall Gazette some 
account of the general impression which he has formed of our munici- 
palities :— 
“‘One thing,’ said Mr. Shaw, ‘which impressed me immensely, is that 
civilization in the English towns may be said to be no more than twenty 
years old ; nearly everything that has been done in the shape of civilizing 
and improving your towns has been begun and carried through in the last 
twenty years. The result, however, is most gratifying. I confess that I 
was utterly unprepared from my American experience to find anything 
approaching the perfect and elaborate system of local government which 
prevails in your cities.’ 
“ ‘ In what respect is it better than your American system ? ’ 
The Superiority op our Municipal System. 
“‘In three things; it is simpler, it is more efficient, and there is much 
more trust shown in the people. For instance, to begin at the beginning, 
the simplicity of your system. A British municipality is one of the sim- 
plest forms of democracy. All your householders elect your council; a 
certain proportion of aldermen are elected, and this is the governing body 
of the town. The mayor, who is elected annually, is the creature of the 
council, and simply the ornamental head or temporary chairman of the 
local governing body. With us we have a far more complicated system; 
our municipal body has very restricted authority, neither does it elect the 
mayor, who is the executive. The mayor is elected by 'plebiscite of the citi- 
zens, and stands in no organic relation to the municipal assembly, his posi- 
tion being analogous to that of the President and the State Governors. 
That, however, is not all. The municipality is itself subject to the State 
Legislature to such an extent that whenever any important subject comes 
up it is the habit of the Legislature to appoint a Special Commission to 
relieve the municipal body of all duties and responsibilities relating thereto. 
In many cities, for instance, at the present time, the ordinary police admin- 
istration is in the hands of Commissions appointed by the State govern- 
ments, and various other interferences restrict and dissipate municipal 
responsibility. So much for simplicity. Secondly, as to efficiency. In 
America the local authority, not having the same large range of power 
which belongs to your municipalities, does not attract to itself the best kind 
of men. Second and third rate men, many of whom are not free from sus- 
picion of corruption, are elected, the more influential citizens feeling that it Municipal Government in England. 
3 
pays them better to submit to a little cheating and slovenliness in local 
administration rather than waste valuable time in looking after the small 
share of local business which falls to a member of the municipal body. 
Then again many of our municipalities are dominated by the liquor ques- 
tion. Elections turn solely upon high licence or low licence, prohibition or 
regulation. In presence of these issues very few people think of adminis- 
trative efficiency. Then, again, it is very seldom that we maintain our 
officials for so many years in office as is the case here. It is not at all un- 
usual to find a British municipal officer with fifty years’ experience behind 
him. Thirdly, there is much more power entrusted to your municipalities 
than is the case with us. I have seen nothing like Glasgow, for instance, 
in the whole of the United States. The extent and multiplicity of the 
powers vested in your corporation, the absolute freedom from any outside 
influences possessed by your municipalities, have no counterpart on our side 
of the Atlantic; with you the municipal Home Rule is carried to much 
greater lengths than it is with us.’ 
Glasgow an Ideal Municipality. 
“‘Yon were much impressed with Glasgow?’ 
{i ‘ Immensely impressed, it was a little world to itself. I had not ex- 
pected to find in an English-speaking country so perfect an example of civic 
administration. The whole people through their elected representatives 
look after the affairs of the whole of the community with an ability and a 
vigilance and a public spirit that are simply admirable.’ 
“ ‘ I am delighted to hear it. Then do you think Glasgow an ideal city?’ 
“ ‘ By no means; but there are very few cities which I have visited where 
there seem to be so many of the very poor living in such densely-populated 
slums. In some districts of Glasgow there are as many as 1,000 persons per 
acre, and the death-rate in consequence is still very high.’ 
“ ‘ Wherein, then, lies the excellence of Glasgow ?’ 
“ ‘ In the energy with which the citizens, having at last wakened to a 
sense of the evils around them, have set themselves to abate those evils. 
The perfection of municipal machinery represents continuous and persistent 
effort to undo the evil which a long period of laissez faire and indifference 
had allowed to spring up. That, indeed, is a very general phenomenon, 
and I think may explain much of what seems the very rapid growth of 
Socialism in the modern State. If the authorities had interfered but a little 
more in time there would have been much less need for their interfering as 
much as they have to do now, when they are driven to interfere to a great 
extent merely in order to counteract the neglected work of the past. Take, 
for instance, the overcrowding of Glasgow. When the Irish crossed from 
Ireland, and the Highlanders descended from the hills, attracted by the 
industries of Glasgow, they were allowed to be housed pretty much as they 
pleased. Vast buildings were run up like human warrens above ground, in 
which the necessary securities for light and air were not provided, and the 4 
Municipal Government in England. 
consequence was that there grew up in Glasgow a series of slums with which 
you have nothing in London to compare, for in London you have plenty of 
room and to spare in comparison with the people of Glasgow. The vast 
majority of the families of Glasgow live in one-room or two-room tenements. 
Owing to the neglect of the local sanitary authority to enforce the necessary 
conditions as to healthy existence, when the population thickened, the city 
council has had to enter upon very extensive operations for relieving the 
congested districts, in the houses of which scores of thousands of persons 
were pigged together. They have been pulled down now, and the inhabi- 
tants scattered in different directions.’ 
How the Town takes thought for the Poor. 
“ ‘ What impressed you most in Glasgow?” 
“ ‘ The extraordinary care that was taken by the authorities to look after 
the interest of the poorer classes. It was quite wonderful, and without any 
precedent in my American experience.’ 
“ ‘ Give me an instance.’ 
“ ‘ Oh, take this, for instance. It is only a small thing, but it is typical 
of much. Most of the population of Glasgow living in the rooms of tene- 
mented buildings, they enter them by passages and corridors which are o'ften 
of very considerable extent. All these staircases and corridors within tene- 
mented property are lighted by the City corporation just as they light the 
public streets. Part of this is recouped to the town by a charge to the 
owners of the property, but the lighting of these passages and staircases and 
corridors is recognized as part of the public duty of a public authority. The 
advantages are enormous. A gas-lamp is worth a policeman any day, and 
it is true economy and sound policy which have led to this extension of the 
lighting area of the town. Another admirable institution of Glasgow are 
the municipal lodging-houses. These will accommodate some thousands of 
men and women every night. Each person has a separate room and the 
use of a common room in which he can read and play draughts or chess, 
and of a kitchen in which he can cook whatever he likes as he likes for the 
sum of Ad. per day! It can be done at that figure and a profit made out of 
it, the proof of which is that one of the superintendents of the municipal 
lodging-houses started a similar lodging-house of his own as a private ven- 
ture in which he accommodates 600 persons nightly. Take another instance. 
The public washhouses in Glasgow are of simply unexampled excellence. 
They are all the property of the corporation, and established for the use of 
the people. Any workman’s wife can take the dirty linen of the household 
to the public laundry, and for the charge of 2d. an hour can secure the use 
of a small apartment, with hot and cold water laid on, with a boiler in which 
her washing can be boiled by steam. She must supply her own soap, but 
after she has washed the clothes all the moisture is removed from them by 
a patent wringer, and then they are thoroughly dried in a hot-air chamber. 
After that they are ironed by being passed through heated steel rollers and Municipal Government in England. 
5 
can be taken home, cleaned, and done up in less than an hour after entering 
the laundry to do a week’s washing for 2d. This is a convenience which 
must be seen to be believed. Another excellent institution attached to the 
laundry is the public bath. Admirable swimming baths for both men and 
women exist, in which the clear Loch Katrine water is maintained at the 
right temperature, and in these you can swim as long as you like for 2d. 
But I might go on for an hour describing all the arrangements that are 
made for the convenience and health of the community.’ 
“‘But,’ said our representative, ‘they have no free library in Glasgow?’ 
“ ‘ No; the ratepayer is poor, and although there have been repeated 
attempts to secure the adoption of the Free Libraries Act they have 
hitherto failed. There is, however, a free library in Glasgow, a very 
remarkable one, called after the name of its founder, Mr. Mitchell. He 
left £75,000 to establish a free library and reading-room, and the institution 
is one of the most popular and useful in the city. The reading-room is one 
of the best I have seen in Great Britain. All the best current literature of 
America as well as Great Britain is found on its tables, and I found it 
crowded whenever I entered, mostly by working people. The library is 
only for reference, no one being allowed to take a book home, but the con- 
tents of its shelves are in constant request. 
A Model Free Hospital. 
“Against the failure to adopt the Libraries Act you should put the extra- 
ordinary scale and admirable arrangement of the hospital for infectious 
diseases. An estate of thirty acres was purchased by the town outside the 
city. The mansion-house was converted into a place of residence for the 
nurses and the doctors. There are some seventy or eighty nurses, most of 
them ladies of good family, each of whom has her own apartment. The 
hospital is on the pavilion principle, and there are some seventeen or eigh- 
teen double pavilions, scattered at intervals all over the estate. The place 
looks like a small village. Everything is in apple-pie order, and as clean 
and comfortable as care and money can make it. Accommodation is 
adequate for a thousand patients, and if anybody in Glasgow falls ill of an 
infectious disease, whether he be a rich man or a poor man, he is packed 
off at once to the hospital, where he is much better cared for than he could 
be in his own house, and completely isolated, so as to reduce the danger of 
the spread of an epidemic to a minimum. In connection with this hospital 
there is a sanitary laundry, where the municipal authorities maintain a 
staff which undertakes the disinfection of all articles that have come into 
contact with cases of infectious disease. The hospital, I may say, is entirely 
free, if your child in Glasgow takes scarlet-fever, the town takes the whole 
charge of feeding, lodging, and doctoring that child for six weeks at least. 
But the whole sanitary service of Glasgow is admirable, and few sanitary 
chiefs have impressed me more favourably than Dr. Russell and Mr. Fyfe, 
who are the responsible heads of the health service of the city. The city 6 
Municipal Government in England. 
is divided into wards or districts, over each of which there is an inspector, 
who is responsible for the sanitary oversight of the population under his 
care. Tenemented houses are visited regularly by lady visitors, who are 
maintained as part of the corporation staff. The whole system goes like 
clockwork, and the result is that notwithstanding the immense overcrowd- 
ing, and the one-room system of a large part of the population, the authori- 
ties are perfectly competent to cope with an epidemic and to keep it within 
very narrow bounds.’ 
The Dredger and the Drains. 
‘“No; there again we have to face the consequence of long-continued 
neglect. Nothing can be more primitive than the drainage of Glasgow. 
The drains run straight from the houses and the streets into the Clyde, and 
empty themselves into the river close to the bridges and wharves of Glasgow. 
The result is that dredging is constantly carried on in order to clear the bed 
of the river of the sludge, which otherwise would choke it up. The banks 
are so foul and the odour is so offensive, that a stroll along the quays and 
down the stream is a very disagreeable experience. It has not been demon- 
strated that disease results from this nauseating condition of the river, yet 
it would certainly seem a dangerous nuisance. This primitive system is, 
however, doomed. Two large intercepting sewers, one on each side of the 
river, will be laid down before long, running parallel to the river by which 
the sewage will be conveyed to a considerable distance down the Clyde, 
where it will be more or less purified, the effluent run off into the tidal 
river, and the sludge barged out to sea. Sewage works of an elaborate sort 
will have to be undertaken by Manchester, owing to the making of the Ship 
Canal. At present the sewage is carried off by the river which runs through 
the city, but as that river is to he utilized for other purposes, they are pre- 
paring to erect a sewage-filtration works on a very large scale. The sewage 
farm and filtration works at Birmingham seem to me the most perfect of 
the kind that I have seen. Manchester takes the palm for the rapidity and 
efficiency with which refuse and garbage are cleared away from the streets.’ 
“ ‘Is the drainage of the city good?’ 
Cheap Trams. 
“ ‘ But to return to Glasgow ; have they made much progress in the way 
of municipal Socialism ?’—‘ That depends upon your definition of Socialism. 
The arrangement by which the tramways of Glasgow are worked is very 
interesting and suggestive. The line was laid down by the corporation and 
leased to a company under an arrangement by which the company had to 
pay interest and sinking fund on the capital expended by the corporation 
in laying down the tramway, so that by the time the lease expires they will 
have repaid the whole cost of the construction as well as the interest upon 
the amount expended. They also have to pay a rental of £150 a mile per 
annum and to relay the line at the conclusion of their lease, so that they 
will hand it over to the corporation in a better condition than it was when Municipal Government in England. 
7 
they entered upon it, for the steel rails (which they are to put down) will 
replace iron ones. Not only is the tramway company thus put under oner- 
ous obligations to the community which leases out the use of its streets, but 
the interests of the working classes are protected by a series of maximum 
fares which the tramway company is not allowed to exceed. The fares are 
very cheap. The distances are not great, and the penny fare is the rule, 
but it is stipulated that for an hour in the morning and an hour in the 
evening, when work-people are going to and from their work, they shall be 
carried at a halfpenny.’ 
“ * But how, in the name of wonder, does the tramway company survive 
under such conditions ? ’ 
“ ‘ It not only survives, but pays an average dividend of 10 per cent., 
besides providing for the sinking fund to defray £150,000 bonus which they 
paid to the original lessees to secure possession of the lease. Herein it seems 
to me that Glasgow teaches the cities in England and America a lesson, for 
they have literally chucked away, as if it were not worth having, the right 
to use the streets, on which they might have raised a very handsome reve- 
nue, although I could name a number of interesting and creditable excep- 
tions in England.’ 
The Monopolies of Service. 
“‘I suppose Glasgow owns its gas and water?’ 
“‘Certainly; and so ought every municipality. All the monopolies of 
service, such as gas, water, trams, and the like, should belong to the com- 
munity, and experience has shown that they can be administered with quite 
as much freedom from assumption as when they were left in the hands of 
private adventurers. The great difficulty of municipal finance hitherto has 
been that it has relied far too much upon rates, and a rate is always an 
unpopular means of raising money. If, on the other hand, the community 
kept the monopolies of service in its own hands it would be able in many 
cases ultimately to raise a magnificent revenue without laying on a rate 
at all.’ 
“ ‘ Did you find much trace of a tendency to municipalize the land in 
Englishmen ?’ 
“ ‘ No, very little. That is a question of the future, not of the present.’ 
“‘How many people do you think that the Glasgow corporation employ?’ 
“‘I would hesitate at answering that question; but if you reckon those 
who are employed by contractors who are doing work for the corporation, 
those who are employed upon the Clyde Navigation Trust (which is practi- 
cally a branch of the municipal administration of Glasgow, although other 
bodies are joined with it), you will find that there must be upwards of 
10,000 persons constantly employed in the service of the City. I would not 
like to pin myself to those figures, but they are not far out.’ 
The Moral of it all. 
“‘Then on the whole, Mr. Shaw, you are satisfied with our municipal 
institutions? ’ 8 
Municipal Government in England. 
“ ‘More than satisfied—I am delighted; and I think the experience of 
Glasgow is full of lessons for our new communities that are springing up all 
over the United States.’ 
“ ‘ What lessons do you deduce from it ? ’ 
“‘First, simplify your administration; secondly, trust the people; thirdly, 
give the municipality plenty to do, so as to bring the best men to the work ; 
fourthly, keep all the monopolies of service in the hands of the municipality, 
regard the supply of gas and water and the letting of the use of the streets 
to tramway companies as very promising sources of revenue; and lastly, use 
the authority and the influence of the municipality in order to secure for the 
poorest advantages in the shape of cheap trams, healthy and clean lodging, 
baths, washhouses, hospitals, reading-rooms, &c., to such extent, at least, as 
in a given case private enterprise shows itself inadequate to do what the 
welfare of the community requires should be done. I say this with no 
ardent bias towards socialism and with due regard for the financial aspects 
of these questions.’ ” 
Mr. Shaw’s doctor’s dissertation at the Johns Hopkins University was upon the subject 
of “Etienne Cabet and the Icarian Community,” since embodied in “Icaria,” Putnam, 
New York, 1884, afterwards translated and published in German, Stuttgart, 1886. Dr. 
Shaw’s first contribution to the Studies was in January, 1883, when his “Local Govern- 
ment in Illinois” was reprinted from the Fortnightly Review, where it first appeared 
October 1, 1882, under the title of “Local Government in America.” At the request of 
Mr. James Bryce, Dr. Shaw prepared for the Contemporary Review, May, 1887, the article 
on “The American State and the American Man,” designed to show the actual facts with 
regard to the extent of government interference in American economic life. He is the 
author of a very interesting monograph upon “Cooperation in the Northwest” in the 
“ History of Cooperation in the United States,” Baltimore, 1888. More recently, Dr. Shaw 
has edited a volume of papers by American economists upon “ The National Revenues,” 
Chicago, A. C. McClurg & Co., 1888. 
Since visiting England Dr. Shaw has contributed a valuable paper upon “ The American 
Tariff” to the Contemporary Review, November, 1888. He has made a careful study of the 
educational work of Toynbee Hall, or the Universities’ Settlement at Whitechapel in East 
London, described by Mr. Montague and Mr. Gell in the Studies for January, 1889. 
—Editor. 
PUBLISHER’S NOTICE. 
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No. 1, January, 1889.