[MISC PUBS 
 
 \Lp_s Angeles County, Ca. 1 ' CT C 
 
 Supervisors, Brd. of. i) I "f 
 
 TMiscellaneous publications] 
 
 Efficient democracy for Greater Los Angeles. 
 
 plea for con true tive cooperation in city, 
 county and school administration as against 
 the proposed policy of county disruption. 
 1916/ 
 
 onstructive ooperation 
 in City, County and School Admin- 
 istration as against the Proposed 
 Policy 
 
 I : ARCH LIBRARY ^ 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 rS, CA. 90024 JOHN j HAMILTON 
 
 By 
 
 Member o_f the Board of Supervisors of 
 Los Angeles County 
 
 f 
 
 
 NOVEMBER 1916 
 
 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 
 
 Los A
 
 EFFICIENT DEMOCRACY 
 
 FOR 
 GREATER LOS ANGELES* 
 
 A community like this should have plenty of 
 elbow room. It should have space for growth and 
 development now, and should not be cramped after 
 it gets its growth. The question before the City Club 
 today is whether this matter should be considered 
 from the point of view of the present municipality of 
 Los Angeles, or from the standpoint of Greater Los 
 Angeles, which comprises thirty-seven incorporated 
 cities, forty unincorporated cities, towns and vil- 
 lages, much thickly settled rural territory and a large 
 area of mountainous and desert lands. 
 
 It has always seemed to me that the county was 
 here the real unit of local development; and the 
 longer I study the problem, the more I am convinced 
 that Los Angeles County, though nearly as large 
 as the State of Connecticut, is not too large to be 
 reserved for the habitation and control of the three 
 or four million people who will make their homes in 
 this area within half a century. Such a city or 
 metropolitan district can easily occupy and utilize 
 practically every foot of the San Gabriel, San Fer- 
 nando and Antelope Valleys, our extensive coastal 
 plain, the Santa Monica and Verdugo Mountains, 
 and those parts of the Angelus 
 and Santa Barbara forests which LOS ANGELES 
 lie within the limits of this COUNTY IS ONE 
 county. Feasible extensions of GREAT 
 our boulevards, interurban and COMMUNITY 
 steam railways, jitney lines and 
 
 *An address before the City Club of Los Angeles, 
 November 25, 1916.
 
 telephone and telegraph wires will soon bring every 
 part of this territory into easy intercommunication 
 and neighborly relationship. The boulevard system 
 is, in a large way, the street plan of this future Los 
 Angeles; and the interurban and jitney lines, modified 
 to meet changing needs, will afford rapid transit 
 without limit. 
 
 Under any conditions, the proposal of the City 
 of Los Angeles to proceed by annexation and other- 
 wise to organize a city and county of the San Fran- 
 cisco type would raise many interesting questions, 
 precipitate many complications and present many dif- 
 ficult problems. Under present conditions, with the 
 people of the United States facing, or within a few 
 months certain to face, the most momentous eco- 
 nomic and social crisis in all history, a crisis which 
 Los Angeles can no more evade than New York, 
 Chicago or Pittsburg, the question of annexation, or 
 city and county consolidation, or, reversing the order, 
 county and city consolidation, becomes absolutely 
 vital. 
 
 For the time has come when this country and 
 every city and community in it must have a definite 
 program, a definite policy and definite methods by 
 which to readjust their economic and social life to the 
 new conditions which the end of the war will bring. 
 This is the more imperative because the people of 
 the United States have decided to entrust their 
 national administration, until long after the war, to 
 the party which emphasizes state as against national 
 agency in dealing with our great 
 problems, and opposes tariff du- 
 ties as a means of shielding the 
 home market. This will necessi- 
 tate voluntary cooperation both 
 within and among the states and 
 all of the communities compos-
 
 ing them to a degree and on a scale never yet known. 
 Although I am one of those who voted for "the new 
 nationalism" rather than "the new freedom", I believe 
 we should all cheerfully accept the policy the country 
 adopted and that we can and must make it win. We 
 must intelligently, courageously and resolutely face the 
 most difficult situation the industries of the country 
 have ever been confronted with ; for the end of the war 
 will be much more of a shock to American business 
 than the beginning was. 
 
 Los Angeles, which has just gone through a period 
 of severe liquidation, is perhaps better prepared for the 
 ordeal than eastern cities that have largely abandoned 
 normal activities and devoted themselves to feverish 
 speculation arising from the manufacture of munitions; 
 but we must not measure the approaching change by 
 any we have experienced in the past, or flatter our- 
 selves that we shall "muddle through" it, finding old- 
 time methods sufficient. The return of thirty million 
 European fighting men to the paths of peace; the addi- 
 tion of their labor to that of millions of heroic women 
 who have become bread-winners and tasted the dig- 
 nity of self-support ; the application to old-world indus- 
 try of national energies habituated and hardened by 
 dire necessity to team work such as we Americans have 
 never known; the sudden stoppage in the United 
 States, by cancelled orders on an enormous scale, of 
 factories which have been making munitions or busied 
 with related production ; the transfer of these hundreds 
 of thousands of workers to competition with those who 
 have remained in habitual channels of production; the 
 sudden cessation of the stream of gold that is now 
 flowing westward across the Atlantic; the probable 
 sharp reversal of this money current; and the occur- 
 rence of these unprecedented readjustments at a time 
 when the world's wheat crop is many hundreds of mil-
 
 lions of bushels short, threaten- 
 
 GREATEST ing a year of bread riots in all the 
 
 ECONOMIC world's centers of population, 
 
 CRISIS IN have forewarned the nations and 
 
 HISTORY should admonish us that our 
 
 IMMINENT house must be put in order; that 
 
 drifting with the tide of events will 
 
 spell disaster; mat only by constructive cooperation of 
 all the individual and social forces at our command, on 
 definite lines, with high efficiency, can we achieve and 
 safeguard the welfare of the community of which we 
 are a part. 
 
 The program of the annexationists was not evolved, 
 as every municipal program should be, from the nor- 
 mal needs of the city. It was an expedient suggested 
 by the uncomfortable situation Los Angeles found her- 
 self in when she awoke to the fact that she had built an 
 aqueduct without providing distributing systems for 
 its water and electrical power. Nothing could be more 
 characteristic of our common human nature than that 
 those responsible for the city's general program, con- 
 fronted with interest coupons amounting to $3,700 a 
 day that must be "dug up" by their stockholders (the 
 citizens) instead of rolling in out of the (water and 
 power) business, should propose to their bosses a new 
 issue of stock and a colossal extension of the operations 
 of the establishment. The proposal would have been 
 worthy of the band of musicians who gave us the largest 
 investment company Southern California ever boasted ; 
 and, very naturally, it was born in and of the not very 
 cheerful atmosphere which has enveloped Los Angeles 
 since the musicians stopped to tune up their instru- 
 ments and were inconsiderately prevented from resum- 
 ing the entertainment. (This comment does not relate 
 to the great engineer whose fitting monument is the 
 Los Angeles aqueduct. ) 
 
 It was thus that the city decided, or permitted some
 
 excellent men to decide for it, that new territory should 
 henceforth be acquired, not because it was already 
 populated up to the urban level or soon would be, so 
 that it would be ready for municipal equipment and reg- 
 ulations; nor because the city charter was adapted to 
 the government of rural districts; nor because its people 
 needed our tutelage; but solely because we needed 
 it in our own business, and hoped to profit thereby, 
 and to conceal from others, and 
 especially from ourselves, the fact COUNTY 
 that it was a mistake to complete a DISRUPTION 
 20,000-inch aqueduct before we POLICY 
 had a market in sight for at least UNWISE AND 
 5000 or 6000 inches of water. UNFAIR 
 
 I do not believe that the Los 
 
 Angeles Chamber of Commerce will include in the 
 printed matter it sends out this year the boast that this 
 city is now the largest in area in the United States. 
 Neither do I believe that the sensitive future chronicler 
 of our local history will make prominent in his story 
 the proceedings of the city council on that recent day 
 when, certain citizens of the San Fernando Valley hav- 
 ing petitioned for relief from storm water, the council 
 decided not to act because if one situation of the kind 
 were dealt with, the many others needing attention 
 would ask for it. Doubtless, the historian will consign 
 this new rule of municipal action that only small 
 needs shall be met and large ones discreetly pigeon- 
 holed to the same limbo of oblivion with the record 
 of that splendid piece of municipal engineering which 
 calmly protected the Los Angeles harbor from being 
 filled with silt by turning the silt-bearing floods into the 
 harbor of Long Beach. 
 
 The charter of Los Angeles is not any too well 
 adapted to the government of the city itself. It is not 
 at all adapted to the government of an undeveloped 
 rural territory like the San Fernando Valley. It is not
 
 adapted to the beach cities, the foot-hill cities, or the 
 large semi-urban territory surrounding Los Angeles and 
 its suburbs. The legislation by which it is hoped to 
 persuade some districts and constrain others to come 
 into the city and drink Owens river water is out of har- 
 mony with the spirit of these new times and unfitted to 
 the administrative requirements of the population 
 affected. The proposal that, after Los Angeles has 
 absorbed, not to say digested, the territory it requires 
 as a water-marketing proposition, other territory be 
 given the option of coming into a city not prepared 
 to govern it or facing for a time the costly chaos 
 of having no county government at all and then going 
 to the heavy expense of organizing and maintaining 
 two or three new counties, losing 
 
 LOS ANGELES the valuable name and good will 
 CITY CHARTER of Los Angeles County without 
 NOT ADAPTED compensation, is not only in vio- 
 TO RURAL lation of the golden rule, but is, 
 
 TERRITORY unintentionally of course, im- 
 
 moral, as every selfish proposal is. 
 
 And it can be mathematically demonstrated that, aside 
 from the businesslike proposition of consolidating 
 offices of duplicated service, as we are now doing with 
 the offices of assessor and tax collector, and have 
 already done with the charities and inspection of 
 weights and measures, there is no possibility of tax 
 reduction in the plan. Also, it is surely practicable to 
 devise methods and secure legislation by which dis- 
 criminating water rates shall equitably distribute the 
 burdens of operation and indebtedness on account of 
 the aqueduct, without violating the pledges made to 
 President Roosevelt when the government yielded val- 
 uable rights to the city. 
 
 I do not deny that it will be difficult to effect the 
 charter amendments and constitutional and statutory 
 changes requisite for placing the aqueduct problem and
 
 the extension of the city's domain on a sound basis; 
 but the day is at hand when communities can no longer 
 operate along the line of least resistance, shirking any 
 part of their necessary work because it is difficult. For 
 the next generation, and especially during the five- 
 year period of grace usually assigned for readjustment 
 to conditions produced by the end of the war, democ- 
 racies must grapple with difficulties as stout-heartedly, 
 surmount obstacles as courageously and pursue chosen 
 policies as resolutely as those European populations 
 whose imperial masters and bureaucratic dictators have 
 directed their efforts along lines of recognized effic- 
 iency. 
 
 Maintaining that there is a better way that the true 
 line of development is by transferring duplicated func- 
 tions, one by one, from all the cities to the county, 
 until we have one great, united, 
 harmonious, prosperous and lo- COUNTY 
 cally self-governing community; CHARTER 
 and holding that the charter of MEETS 
 Los Angeles County is not only EVERY 
 well adapted to secure efficient REQUIREMENT 
 and democratic administration for 
 
 this large and populous metropolitan district of Greater 
 Los Angeles, but is probably the best instrument pos- 
 sessed by any such American community for local 
 governmental purposes, I desire to submit for the con- 
 sideration of the City Club a few facts concerning the 
 county charter which support these statements, but 
 which are not yet generally known. 
 
 The county charter was prepared by a board of free- 
 holders in 1912, and adopted by the people at the 
 presidential election in November of that year. The 
 fifteen freeholders were Frederick Baker, Willis H. 
 Booth, T. H. Dudley, W. A. Engle, David Evans, Leslie 
 R. Hewitt, H. C. Hubbard, J. M. Hunter, George F. 
 Kernaghan, A. M. Salyer, Frank R. Seaver, J. H. Strine,
 
 N. W. Thompson, Charles Wellborn and Lewis R. 
 Works. This board, representative of all sections of 
 the county, labored long and faithfully and produced a 
 fundamental law for the government of this community 
 of which the descendants of its framers will some day 
 be very proud. 
 
 In an introduction prepared by Judge Works, the 
 freeholders announced that the charter they had pre- 
 pared "presented as close an approximation to the 
 commission form of city government as is possible in a 
 county". They did not say that 
 
 WE CAN HAVE the instrument also contained pro- 
 COMMISSION- visions which would empower the 
 MANAGER county to adopt, without charter 
 
 SYSTEM OF amendment, the commission- 
 
 LOCAL GOV- manager form, now approved by 
 
 ERNMENT municipal experts as the last word 
 
 in local administration; but such 
 
 is, most fortunately for Los Angeles, the truth of the 
 matter. Paragraph 4 of Section 1 1 , authorizing the 
 supervisors "to provide, by ordinance, for the creation 
 of offices other than those required by the constitution 
 and laws of the state, and for the appointment of per- 
 sons to fill the same, and to fix their compensation", 
 makes possible the proposal, now under consideration, 
 that the county auditor, who is ex-officio a member of 
 the bureau of efficiency, be made controller and county 
 manager. It would also enable the board to create 
 the separate office of county manager, if preferred, 
 though I regard this as unnecessary. With an able 
 executive, perhaps himself an expert accountant, in 
 the auditor's office and bureau of efficiency, this may 
 be accomplished with saving of a large amount to the 
 taxpayers annually. 
 
 While the Los Angeles charter holds no promise of 
 being satisfactory when extended to a wider appli- 
 cation, the county charter could hardly be improved
 
 were it specially drafted to meet the very situation 
 which confronts us. 
 
 The county has moved slowly in the direction con- 
 templated by the charter framers. Not until 1915 did 
 the supervisors abandon the multitude of committees 
 formerly appointed and distribute their large super- 
 visory powers into five divisions general administra- 
 tion, public welfare, finance, highways, and public 
 works other than highways, one supervisor specializing 
 on the work of each division. Not even yet has the 
 county been given so much as a taste of real govern- 
 ment by commission, and the commission-manager sys- 
 tem has only been mentioned. Not until the election 
 held on the seventh instant did the county have a 
 board of supervisors chosen in its entirety under the 
 charter; and the full board or commission thus chosen 
 will not assume control of the county until the first 
 Monday in January. The transition has been slow and 
 the inertia of the old county system which was no 
 system at all hard to overcome. 
 
 Happily for greater Los Angeles, the two new mem- 
 bers of the board of supervisors just chosen are busi- 
 ness men of the best class, men of brains and character, 
 who will go into office untrammeled by the traditions 
 of the old regime, prepared and qualified to join the 
 one re-elected and two hold-over members in giving 
 the county a harmonious business administration, as 
 contemplated by the charter. What such an adminis- 
 tration will mean for the county, for Los Angeles and 
 its thirty-six sister cities, for the forty minor centers of 
 population, for the 158 common school districts and 
 the twenty-six high school districts of Greater Los An- 
 geles, we do not have to depend on imagination to 
 foresee. It is a matter of simple and easy calcula- 
 tion. It should demonstrate such possibilities of effic- 
 ient democracy in the next four or five years as will, in 
 my judgment, give Los Angeles the first place in
 
 America in reputation for good 
 
 FIRST PLACE local government. But the Los 
 
 AMONG Angeles that will become thus fa- 
 
 AMERICAN mous for success under the com- 
 
 COMMUNITIES mission form of government 
 WITHIN OUR should be the Greater Los An- 
 
 REACH geles that extends to the limits of 
 
 our county boulevard and interur- 
 
 ban system, not a divided, wrangling, mutually jealous, 
 suspicious and resentful trio or quartette of counties or 
 cities and counties. The reasons demanding that Los 
 Angeles County remain undivided are as cogent as 
 those which justified men in shedding blood to main- 
 tain the federal union a generation ago. 
 
 Every member of the board of supervisors repre- 
 sents a district, at least a part of which is in the city 
 of Los Angeles. The Second district, that of Superin- 
 tendent Norton, is wholly in the city. The board as a 
 whole is always loyally devoted to the interests of 
 Los Angeles. Its jurisdiction over the great territory 
 of the county, however, compels it to think in terms 
 of the larger community of which Los Angeles is the 
 heart the community which includes the beach and 
 harbor cities, the foothill cities, the three valleys and 
 the mountains. Its direct jurisdiction over all the rural 
 territory forces upon its attention the many problems 
 of the ranchers the men who have purchased farm 
 land from Los Angeles real estate enthusiasts at city lot 
 prices and must somehow make it pay returns thereon. 
 Its manifold points of touch with the seventy-seven 
 centers of population and its management, in a large 
 and somewhat nominal way, of the affairs of the 1 84 
 school districts and their $10,000,000 yearly revenue, 
 constitute it as the custodian, collectively, of the ma- 
 terial, moral and political interests of one of the most 
 interesting communities in the world. To be a member 
 of such a board is a wonderful privilege. It offers 
 
 10
 
 opportunity for public service greater than those of a 
 member of congress; equal to those of the governors 
 of some states. I believe that the five men who will 
 inaugurate the first administration on the charter plan 
 in January realize this and appreciate the responsi- 
 bility it imports. 
 
 In taking charge of the affairs of the greatest com- 
 munity on the Pacific Coast at a time when that com- 
 munity is hurriedly preparing to readjust itself to the 
 approaching close of the war, the new board of super- 
 visors must, without loss of time, accomplish the fol- 
 lowing results: 
 
 1. Divest the county administration of the last 
 vestiges of the antiquated, easy-going system of red 
 tape which has given the public waste and graft instead 
 of economy and thrift, intolerable delays instead of 
 prompt performance, and excuses instead of results. 
 
 2. Put the multitude of county offices, departments 
 and institutions, many of which are now operated on 
 the go-as-you-please plan, into correct relations to one 
 another, into direct relations with the board of super- 
 visors and under an efficiency system that will look to 
 team work in both departmental and inter-depart- 
 mental service. 
 
 3. Establish a system of accounts, records, reports 
 and supervision by both the board of supervisors and 
 the efficiency bureau which will insure steadily rising 
 standards of individual and de- 
 partmental service, with every HEAVY WORK 
 duty well and punctually done, FOR THE NEW 
 every letter, telegram, telephone BOARD OF 
 message, and personal inquiry SUPERVISORS 
 promptly answered and every re- 
 quest by citizens for service as promptly and eagerly 
 complied with as if they arose in a first-class private 
 business, anxious to increase its earnings. 
 
 4. Introduce constructive cooperation with all the 
 ii
 
 cities, school districts, and other public corporations of 
 the county, in eliminating duplications of service and 
 other waste, doing cooperative purchasing and assist- 
 ing one another in solving their respective problems. 
 
 5. Call into active partnership with the central ad- 
 ministration and with one another the local colleges and 
 other institutions of higher learning, the women's clubs, 
 the labor organizations, the chambers of commerce, the 
 civic centers and all the other organized civic forces ov 
 the county for the purpose of making and coordinating 
 economic and social surveys of Los Angeles county 
 and of the region which is or can be made tributary 
 to it; developing, correcting and carrying out the com- 
 munity program, and doing our part toward the state 
 and nation during and following the approaching crisis. 
 
 6. Plan and program the local and state legislation 
 necessary to free us from antiquated methods of doing 
 public business. 
 
 7. Organize to secure our fair share of state and 
 national aid in carrying out the community program. 
 
 8. Revive and fortify by enlightened conviction the 
 old spirit of faith and fearlessness by which Greater 
 Los Angeles has been made what it is and by which 
 it is destined to become the best as well as the biggest 
 of the world's residential cities, and an industrial center 
 the world will respect. 
 
 9. Adopt and put into practice as our standard of 
 civic conduct the golden rule. 
 
 10. Welcome and actually utilize for community 
 purposes the capital that the financial world is eager to 
 supply on bond issues at low interest rates, and see to 
 it that the resources that we possess are developed for 
 the common good. 
 
 To accomplish these results, petty, personal politics 
 must be eliminated at once and forever. Factional 
 quarrels must cease. First-class ability must be ener- 
 getically and persistently applied to the county' s-prob- 
 
 II
 
 lems of organization and administration. Under the 
 commission form of government, the board of super- 
 visors is the commission the directorate, the executive 
 committee, of a $20,000,000 business. It must either 
 appoint a general manager, or itself develop the ca- 
 pacity of a first-class general manager for dispatching 
 business rapidly and efficiently. 
 It must therefore delegate most of HARMONY 
 the detail work. It should, how- MUST REIGN 
 ever, keep a sharp eye on the IN COUNTY 
 efficiency record and a firm hand ADMINISTRA- 
 on the helm. It must know that TION 
 the work it delegates is done 
 
 also when, how and at what cost. The commission plan 
 has, on the whole, raised the standards of municipal 
 administration in this country; but it has succeeded only 
 in proportion to the amount of attention the commis- 
 sion as a whole has devoted to the public business. 
 Whenever and wherever cities have tried separate gov- 
 ernment of departments by commissioners instead of 
 government of the entire city by commission, they have 
 made administration expensive. The individual com- 
 missioners, left free to administer their several depart- 
 ments without the restraining influence of the whole 
 commission, entertain exaggerated ideas of the im- 
 portance of their bureaus, demand excessive appropria- 
 tions, and make trades and combinations with the other 
 commissioners to secure them. They become jealous 
 of interference by the commission or other commis- 
 sioners in their departments and resent the doing of 
 their business in their absence. They thus destroy the 
 commission principle and disintegrate the governing 
 body into three or five distinct offices, I am anxious 
 to avoid this perversion of the commission plan in 
 Los Angeles County. I hope to see Greater Los An- 
 geles enjoying commission government at its best, 
 with the board of supervisors acting as a highly efficient 
 unit.
 
 Public business cannot as yet be transacted with the 
 same freedom which enables the business man in pri- 
 vate life to go ahead and manage matters on direct 
 lines. Lawyers, on and off the bench, have seen to it 
 that public officials are hedged about with restrictions 
 intended to make them honest, but which only make 
 them inefficient. For example, the law directly author- 
 izes the county to operate a cement plant and sell its 
 surplus product; but because the lawyers would not 
 let the county put up a bond nor consent to the city 
 buying cement, however cheap, without advertising for 
 bids and exacting a bond, the harbor commission had 
 to purchase 45,000 barrels of cement from the trust 
 i F^ A i Tirr-u instead of getting a better article 
 
 NICALITIES from the countv - The Monolith 
 
 iv/ii TCT DC- nrwir plant would produce cement at 
 
 IVlUol Dti LHJl>t Z n , , .f , , 11 
 
 AWAY WITH 90c a barrel lf the ky woul 
 
 permit it to run on mil time ana 
 
 sell its surplus, as the law intends that it should. 
 
 Not long ago the city of Pasadena desired to pur- 
 chase a piece of road machinery which the county road 
 department had developed and made in its own shops, 
 and which it could conveniently spare. I succeeded in 
 putting the purchase through, but only after running a 
 gauntlet of red tape which required five times as much 
 time as it should have done. 
 
 It is on the program of the incoming board of super- 
 visors under the commission plan that this maze of red 
 tape shall be ruthlessly cut and the county government 
 made an appreciated instrumentality of accommodating 
 service not only to the rural districts but to Los Angeles 
 and every city, town, village and school district within 
 its limits. We are determined that the law shall be the 
 helpmate of the community, not its mischief-breeding 
 mistress. 
 
 It is also on our program that the unused and neg- 
 
 14
 
 lected civic energies of this community shall be called 
 into participation in the county administration. 
 
 There is a crying need for this change. The county 
 and our cities need the active assistance of the Univer- 
 sity of Southern California, Occidental College, Pomona 
 College, Throop College of Technology, Whittier 
 College , and every other institution of learning in 
 Los Angeles County. We can, in our advance 
 toward better things, utilize also the high schools and 
 even the elementary schools. We need, far more than 
 even the women themselves realize, the mother-wit that 
 is organizd into wonderful civic potentiality in the 
 women's clubs. We must have the helping hand of 
 organized labor, and must let the creators of wealth 
 know that their honorable part in the community 
 progress is recognized at its true value. We must 
 give a large place in our counsels to the Los Angeles 
 Chamber of Commerce, which is 
 demonstrating splendid efficiency ___ . p^p. 
 in developing new industries here. SSJriSfio 
 We must take into our all-embrac- JJ^EN S 
 ing combination of civic forces, r,v,r FHRrFQ 
 all the civic organizations not h, TCT T AV^ 
 only of Los Angeles, but of Long ~~f ! AKt 
 Beach, Santa Monica, Pasadena, 
 Pomona, Glendale, Whittier in 
 
 short, all of the population centers of Greater Los 
 Angeles. 
 
 The community program of Greater Los Angeles* 
 is clearly indicated by what the people of this city and 
 county have done and are headed toward doing. It 
 includes efficient local government, the best schools in 
 the world, abolition of the saloon and all evil resorts, 
 scientific sanitation, scientifically conducted charities, 
 
 * See page 20 of this booklet for the full community 
 program. 
 
 15
 
 red tape abolished, justice within the reach of all, 
 completion of our good roads system, elimination of 
 grade crossings, conservation of our harbors, forests, 
 watersheds and ranch lands by an adequate system of 
 flood and fire protection and reforestation, publicly 
 owned and operated transportation facilities to the 
 harbors and at sea, public ownership and operation of 
 plants for securing cheap water, power, heat and light 
 for industrial and domestic uses, and the management 
 
 of all these advantages so as to 
 
 PROPOSED insure abundant employment for 
 
 ECONOMIC labor and capital and a safe, rich 
 
 SURVEY A and satisfying community life for 
 
 PRIME all, at a minimum, cost. To make 
 
 NECESSITY our community program a success, 
 
 however, we must cease to follow 
 
 the rule of thumb in planning our activities. We must 
 do what France, Germany and Great Britain are doing 
 study national and world conditions and fit our civic 
 plans and methods to the world conditions confronting 
 us. For example, who knows how much of a handicap 
 the Los Angeles municipal power plant can carry in 
 the way of a purchase price for the companies' local 
 distributing systems? Was the price of $10,000,000 
 offered by the city for systems which could be built new 
 and better for $7,700,000, based on knowledge that 
 the city could pay the price and sell the power to fac- 
 tories low enough to enable them to engage in interna- 
 tional trade? It is known that the high cost of power 
 on the American side at Niagara Falls three to five 
 times the cost in Norway has driven big industries to 
 the Canadian side. The cry of "economic waste" 
 would not justify city officials in forgetting that the 
 power companies knew eight years ago that the aque- 
 duct would make the city their competitor, yet went 
 ahead to parallel each other's lines; that the average 
 age of their systems is less than that of the aqueduct 
 
 16
 
 project, and that the much talked of "economic waste" 
 will and should fall on them. Under the conditions 
 we have had in the past, cities could pay what they 
 pleased for public utilities and work out their prob- 
 lems in some way; but under the conditions which will 
 follow the war, world trade will go where the cheap- 
 est power is combined with other favoring industrial 
 factors. We should not blindly take chances like that. 
 The price of $10,000,000 offered by the city may put 
 Los Angeles out of the running so far as foreign com- 
 merce is concerned, or it may not. We should know. 
 We should by all means have the economic survey of 
 which I have spoken, and base our policies on facts, 
 not guesswork. 
 
 The county charter, now really to go into effect as 
 rapidly as the reorganized board of supervisors can 
 do it, opens the way for carrying out every feature of 
 the community program. It will require many years 
 to effect it all ; but the year 1917 should see great 
 strides taken along every indicated line. 
 
 The citizens of Los Angeles will readily perceive 
 what tremendous possibilities of favorable publicity 
 there are in having the first commission-governed 
 county in the United States, especially when the county 
 enjoying that distinction is the most productive county 
 in all the land, and yet can by the development of its 
 resources, quadruple its present production, Galves- 
 ton, Des Moines and Dayton have in turn held the cen- 
 ter of the stage in the development of plans of local 
 government in the past fifteen years. The next 
 step in American progress in that field is to demon- 
 strate a workable plan for the government of a metro- 
 politan district consisting of many cities, metropolitan, 
 suburban and independent, with semi-urban territory 
 surrounding them; and Greater Los Angeles has the 
 community, the plan and the men and women to 
 bring them together. 
 
 17
 
 There is more than opportunity in the proposal that 
 the colleges, women's clubs, labor organizations, cham- 
 bers of commerce, and civic organizations generally, 
 including civic centers, be taken into active participa- 
 tion in the administration of Greater Los Angeles. It 
 is a matter of two-fold necessity. It is necessary be- 
 cause this most American of all American commu- 
 nities will need every civic force it can muster and 
 combine to build and fortify itself for the tremendous 
 crisis ahead of it. It is also necessary because govern- 
 ment by politicians and office holders has ceased to be 
 a practical possibility. Councilmen, school directors 
 and supervisors now have a militant democracy to 
 serve, and that democracy will no longer accept any 
 kind of results, however excellent, that it does not 
 itself have a hand in bringing about. Excuses, secret 
 conferences and the necessary compromises of both 
 legislation and administration will no longer work to- 
 gether. Officials cannot do enough explaining or 
 apologizing to satisfy an aroused electorate which has 
 tasted power and likes the flavor. The remedy is to 
 let the citizen in on the processes by which the conclu- 
 sion is reached. 
 
 There is no occasion for regret in this necessity in 
 this community, the richest in the world in human re- 
 sources. On the contrary, there is everything to be 
 gained by making administration really democratic in 
 Los Angeles County. The grum- 
 
 COUNTY bling we everywhere hear about 
 
 ADMINISTRA- the real or alleged follies of city 
 TION MUST councils, boards of education, 
 
 BE TRULY boards of supervisors and other 
 
 DEMOCRATIC officials is the rumbling of a dis- 
 content that is justified, because 
 
 the kind of officialdom we have is not big enough or 
 broad enough for this big, broad city and county. It 
 
 18
 
 needs a strong infusion of efficient democracy. It is 
 going to get it in the county government. 
 
 It will at once be seen why any policy of annexation 
 which tends to force an unwilling multiplication of 
 county governments would mean chaos at a time when 
 construction is needed. It is plain, too, that what we 
 just now need is what may be called county-minded- 
 ness the ability and disposition to see things from the 
 point of view of Greater instead of Lesser Los Angeles. 
 
 The most cheering note I have heard in Los Angeles 
 in many a day was sounded by President Langmuir at 
 a recent banquet of the Municipal League. Comment- 
 ing on the splendid affirmative results of the charter 
 election by which the voters sanctioned the consolida- 
 tion of the offices of assessor and tax collector, he de- 
 clared that it was encouraging to see at last a break in 
 the chorus of "no, no", that the people had been giving 
 forth, and to hear once more a heartening "yes, yes", 
 from the voters of the city. 
 
 It is encouraging. It means, that at the time Los 
 Angeles needs, as she never before needed it, to part 
 company with that spirit of Mephistopheles "which 
 always takes the negative" and, buckling on her armor, 
 courageously to face new and as yet unknown condi- 
 tions, she begins to be herself again. I think we all 
 begin to sense that affirmative, creative, spirit stirring 
 within us and moving in the air. If we now cherish that 
 optimistic impulse and yield ourselves to the guidance 
 of the best that is in us, I hardly dare place any limits 
 upon the things we may do for ourselves and our chil- 
 dren, not only in surmounting the obstacles looming 
 so menacingly in our pathway, but in building up the 
 greatest, happiest, most prosperous, and most demo- 
 cratic community in the world. 
 
 JOHN J. HAMILTON.
 
 THE COMMUNITY PROGRAM OF GREATER 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 Being the Ten Principal Aims and Objects of the People 
 of Los Angeles County 
 
 1. Efficient local government, thoroughly coordinated, 
 firmly held under public control, based solidly on the merit 
 system, and extended to all properly public activities, insur- 
 ing a safe, rich and satisfying community life for all, at a 
 minimum cost; loyal cooperation with state and nation. 
 
 2. The best schools in the world, economically and 
 democratically managed. 
 
 3. The saloon, brothel and gambling den abolished 
 throughout Los Angeles County and in all its cities, whether 
 under state-wide prohibition or not, but preferably -with 
 California dry; libraries and play-grounds to be substituted. 
 
 4. The health of the people of the county and all its 
 cities fully safeguarded. 
 
 5. The aged, sick, defective, helpless and unfortunate 
 generously cared for through a system of scientific charities. 
 
 6. Red tape and legal technicalities eliminated; prompt 
 justice placed within the reach of all. 
 
 7. The good roads system completed, including moun- 
 tain and canyon roads, fire breaks and fire trails, and better 
 local roads and bridges everywhere; elimination of grade 
 crossings as rapidly as practicable. 
 
 8. Conservation of our harbors, forests, watersheds and 
 ranch lands by an adequate system of flood prevention and 
 control, including reforestation. 
 
 9. Publicly owned and operated transportation facilities 
 at sea and between our cities and local harbors. 
 
 I 0. Public ownership and operation of plants for secur- 
 ing cheap water, power, light and heat for industrial and 
 domestic uses; county, cities and school districts to cooper- 
 ate to promote industry and secure abundant employment 
 for labor and capital.
 
 %/-, 
 
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