There have sprung up all sorts of collateral organizations to
help the officials: societies for municipal research, municipal
reference libraries, citizens' unions, municipal leagues, and
municipal parties. These are further supplemented by
organizations which indirectly add to the momentum of practical,
enlightened municipal sentiment: boards of commerce, associations
of business and professional men of every variety, women's clubs,
men's clubs, children's clubs, recreation clubs, social clubs,
every one with its own peculiar vigilance upon some corner of the
city's affairs. So every important city is guarded by a network
of voluntary organizations.

All these changes in city government, in municipal laws and
political mechanisms, and in the people's attitude toward their
cities, have tended to dignify municipal service. The city job
has been lifted to a higher plane. Lord Rosebery, the brilliant
chairman of the first London County Council, the governing body
of the world's largest city, said many years ago: "I wish that my
voice could extend to every municipality in the kingdom, and
impress upon every man, however high his position, however great
his wealth, however consummate his talents may be, the importance
and nobility of municipal work." It is such a spirit as this that
has made the government of Glasgow a model of democratic
efficiency; and it is the beginnings of this spirit that the
municipal historian finds developing in the last twenty years of
American life. It is indeed difficult to see how our cities can
slip back again into the clutches of bosses and rings and repeat
the shameful history of the last decades of the nineteenth
century.