A CREATURE OF TRADITION
It all came about in this way:
The first settlers in the permanent Virginia colony found a climate
that was mild and a soil that was fertile. Numerous rivers radiating
through the country furnished a natural means for transportation.
Indians were not a serious menace. The settlers themselves were of the
landed gentry, closely identified with the established English Church.
Out of such a combination a very definite polity inevitably grew. The
people were destined to spread themselves far and wide; agriculture was
to be their chief pursuit; little government would be needed and the
forms and substance of democracy would have at best a slow growth.
For many years the local government consisted primarily of small groups
of settlements which were called hundreds or parishes and were presided
over by a vestry of “selected men.” When the plantations were large and
scattered, government was sometimes supplied by the owners themselves.
But in 1634 in Virginia, the example of English institutions took
firmer root and eight shires or counties were formed and made the
unit of representation in the colonial assembly and for purposes of
military, judicial, highway and fiscal administration. The officers
were the county lieutenant (the militia officer), the sheriff (who
acted as collector and treasurer), justices of the peace and coroners.
All were appointed by the governor of the colony on the recommendation
of the justices, and the latter thus became a self-perpetuating body of
aristocratic planters controlling the county administration. This body
of appointed justices constituted the county court, which to this day
in some of the southern states is not only a judicial body, but also
corresponds to the board of supervisors or the county commissioners in
other localities.
Such was one line of descent. The Virginians, like most of their
contemporaries, knew little and cared less for political science.
They simply turned to their English experience, pieced together some
old-country institutions and adapted them to the new world. Their
experiment succeeded for the time being at least. It could scarcely
have failed under such simple conditions.
Of quite a different sort were the influences at work in New England. A
severe climate, a rocky soil and menacing Indians drove the colonists
into compact communities, where they could live by shipping and
fishing. They too were fortunate in striking an environment that
rather exactly fitted their old-country experience. For they were
a homogeneous, single-minded body of people with firm traditions of
democracy and a common religious faith. From the congregational form
of organization that was characteristic of the Puritan movement to
the town meeting for purposes of civil government, was a single easy
step. Thus the “town” idea came to hold the center of the stage in New
England local affairs. But it never had the all-sufficiency in its
sphere which the county had in the South, and even New England had to
recognize a need for more comprehensive subdivisions. And so, in 1636,
Massachusetts was divided into four judicial districts in each of which
a quarterly court was held. In 1643 four counties were definitely
organized, both as judicial and militia districts, and before the
middle of the century there was established a system of representative
commissioners from each town, who met at the shire town to equalize
assessments. The office of county treasurer was created in 1654. Later
a militia officer was appointed, and within a few years county officers
were entrusted with the duty of registering land titles, recording
deeds and probating wills--functions transferred in part from town
officers and in part from the governor and council.
So from Virginia and Massachusetts flowed the two streams of
institutional influence, the former tending to make the county the
exclusive organ of local government, and the other emphasizing the
town. Maryland, though it had started out with a somewhat special type
of organization borrowed from the County Palatine of Durham, with its
manors and hundreds, later came under the sway of Virginian precedents
and three counties were established there in 1650. The Carolinas, which
were not thoroughly organized until the eighteenth century, followed
the Virginia plan in its main outlines. Georgia’s development was not
well begun until after the Revolution. Connecticut, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire and Maine all followed the lead of Massachusetts, though the
first two of these states minimized the importance of the county to an
even greater extent.
To these two lines of influence the central states added the idea of a
distinct administrative authority, which was composed in New York of a
new body made up of the supervisors of the towns, in New Jersey of the
local assessors and in Pennsylvania of special commissioners. These
new departures were established in the latter part of the seventeenth
century. In all of these states, it should be noted, the township also
existed for a limited number of purposes, such as the care of the poor,
for election, administration and for purposes of taxation.
The westward movement of population had begun before the Revolution.
Following in general the parallels of latitude of their native
soil, the pioneers carried their local institutions with them for
transplantation, regardless of the wholly different underlying
conditions that now confronted them. In their closely populated,
homogeneous settlements the New England pioneers that crossed over into
the Western Reserve had been accustomed to act through town meetings.
Nothing would do now but a reincarnation of the old institutions. The
six-mile rectangles into which the surveyors had divided the western
territory gave them their opening. There was accordingly developed in
the open prairie among the isolated homesteads a unit of government
that at least superficially resembled the old New England town. It was
but a geometrical expression, to be sure, but the mere shadow of it
seems to have given satisfaction. But in 1802, when the state of Ohio
was carved out of this territory, this exotic growth was cut short
and the “county-township” system of Pennsylvania was adopted. Indiana
followed Ohio in this step and the system came to predominate in the
Middle West, as for example, in Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.
The instinct for harking back to precedents appeared also in the
early history of Michigan. When it was organized as a territory it
was divided up into counties. But in 1825, under the stimulus of
immigration from New York where the township-supervisor plan was in
vogue, townships had to be established for particular purposes to meet
the prevailing demand for this type of self-government.
In the South, Kentucky and Tennessee took their cues from Virginia
and established the justices in control of the county administrative
affairs. Mississippi and Alabama took Georgia for their model.
In Louisiana, the parish authority corresponding to the board of
supervisors or commissioners is the police jury, which is elected by
wards very much on the principle of the New England town.
In the country beyond the Northwest Territory, the clash of New England
and southern influences was met by an interesting compromise. In
Illinois, for instance, the earliest settlement had been made under
southern auspices. The county type of local government was therefore
established, but of the style employed in Ohio and Indiana rather
than in Kentucky. In 1826, however, the justices were made elective
by precincts and later the township was made a corporation for the
purposes of school, road, justice and poor relief administration. By
1848 the “town idea” had grown strong enough to force the adoption of a
provision in the new constitution for a plan to afford each county an
option between the two systems. The northern counties quickly adopted
the township plan, while the southern ones clung to the original
forms. Wisconsin at an even earlier date (1841) had effected a similar
compromise which, however, was swept away seven years later when the
township system was made mandatory by the constitution. At a later
period Missouri (1879), Nebraska (1883), Minnesota (1878) and Dakota
(1883) permitted the adoption of similar optional laws.
In the new Southwest, the Northwest, the Rocky Mountain region and the
far West, owing in part to the comparative sparsity of settlement and
in part to the thinning out of the definite historical influences, the
county has acquired a greater importance than anywhere in the country
and the towns or townships, while they have been erected in a number of
the states, play but an insignificant part in local government. When
Texas became an independent republic, the American county system was
substituted for the earlier Mexican local government. Before the middle
of the nineteenth century counties had been established in New Mexico,
Utah and Oregon; ten years later in Nebraska and Washington; by 1870 in
Colorado, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and Arizona.
And so, the institution of the county has been driven westward in
obedience to precedent and through the instinct for imitation. Of
thoughtful foresight, of definite planning for a serviceable career,
about the same measure was applied as in the case of Topsy, who “jest
growed.” It could not be otherwise. Local government in pioneer days
had to be thrown together more or less on the “hurry-up” plan. On
the western prairies as in colonial Virginia, public needs were so
limited that it really mattered comparatively little what agencies were
employed.
Counties once established acquired a tendency to “stick” tenaciously to
nearly their original form. Even in the seventeenth century the county
in England was well into a decline. Its disintegration had begun with
the growth of populous centers, that demanded more government, both in
quantity and in variety. The seven Saxon kingdoms whence counties grew,
had ceased to be either natural or convenient self-governing units.
In a later period they have ceased to be even important subdivisions
for the central administrative departments, and they have been crossed
and recrossed by the lines of sanitary and other districts until the
original county may be said to be scarcely distinguishable.
In America even sharper and more pervasive social forces have been
assaulting this ancient institution. In our thinking of the Industrial
Revolution it has been customary to dwell upon its effects in urban
districts. This movement made the modern _city_. But its effect
did not stop there. Modern mechanical devices have also made the
original county boundary lines obsolete. Steam railway lines have
brought into close communication points which were once too distant
to be traversed easily and often, under all sorts of conditions.
Electric railways, in many instances have supplemented the process.
The automobile, particularly of the cheapest type, has brought within
easy reach of the court house points which a hundred years ago, when
the stage-coach was the standard of locomotion, were too remote for
frequent communication. And, finally, the extension of mail facilities
and the telephone have minimized the importance of face-to-face
business intercourse beyond anything ever dreamed of when counties were
first made.
Counties as we see them on the map often fail to take account of the
sweeping changes in the character of populations. On the western
prairies they were formed for a sparsely distributed people following
chiefly agriculture. In the midst of these regions at numerous points
have sprung up great centers of manufacture and commerce like Chicago,
Kansas City, St. Paul, and Omaha. In their train have followed the
multifarious problems of the modern city, which require a very
particular sort of governmental treatment.
To these conditions the county as an institution has consistently
maintained an attitude of stolid indifference. Division of old counties
goes on from year to year. (Bronx county separated from New York in
1914, to the accompaniment of a costly new court house and several
hundred new jobs and no benefit to the taxpayers and citizens except
a heavy increase in taxation.) But who can recall two counties that
have consolidated? Such an exhibition of modernity and of the spirit
of progressivism it is apparently not in the nature of the county to
afford.