Excerpt from Municipal Home Rule: A Study in Administration The unsatisfactory character of American mu nicipal government has, within the past few years, drawn unusual attention to the problems which it presents, and which, on account of the recent extraordinary development of municipal life, are becoming at the same time more numerous and more important. But as a result of the intimate connection of municipal with general government, all concrete attempts at municipal reform must of necessity depend upon an accurate delimitation of the sphere of action, which can, with due regard to the interests of the state as a whole, be assigned to our municipal organizations. The attempt to delimit such a sphere of action is the purpose of this little work. The science of municipal gov ernment in this country is, however, in such an early stage of development, and as a result, the theories with regard to municipal reform are so various, and indeed, so conflicting, that it has been thought wise to leave the realm of theories, based on a priori reasoning, and to endeavour in the delimitation of the sphere of municipal home rule, which it has been attempted to make, to find out exactly what is, by the present American law. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.