Excerpt from The Dethronement of City Boss: Being a Study of the Commission Plan as Begun in Galveston, Developed and Extended in Des Moines, and Already Taken Up by Many Other Cities, East and WestDes Moines was peculiarly fitted, by its central location, its medium size and its typical character as an American community to solve this problem for the country. It could, in a way, draw upon the experi ence of the entire civilized world through the medium of its own citizenship. It numbers among its in habitants natives of every county in Iowa, every state in the union, every country in Europe and every other quarter of the globe, and the travels, reading and studies of its nearly one hundred thousand people have covered every part of the world and embraced the full range of ordinary observation and experience. It is the seat of a university and several other strong institutions of learning, and its newspapers are con ducted by able, conscientious and public-spirited men, catering to large and very intelligent constituencies. Moreover, no small part of its ability to deal with the larger problems of its life is due to the organization of its women in clubs which give constant and seri ous consideration to whatever has a bearing upon the welfare of the community.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis 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.