County Consolidation
| Published date | 01 January 1940 |
| Date | 01 January 1940 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000271624020700122 |
| Author | J.B. Shannon |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
168
County
Consolidation
By
J.
B.
SHANNON
E VERY
epoch
reflects
some
domi-
nant
intellectual
note.
Ours
is
an
age
of
urbanization
and
industrializa-
tion.
In
many
respects
the
twentieth
century,
now
approaching
its
mid-point,
represents
a
reaction
to
the
nineteenth.
For
three
hundred
years,
a
wide
disper-
sion
of
man
over
the
unoccupied
portions
of
the
globe
took
place-centrifugal
forces
prevailed.
A
reverse
process
set
in
near
the
end
of
the
nineteenth
cen-
tury
as
the
frontier
with
its
great
open
spaces
came
to
an
end
and
was
suc-
ceeded
by
a
new
frontier
centralized
in
city
growth
induced
by
the
centripetal
forces of
technology.
The
vast
economic
power
manipulated
by
the
Robber
Barons
soon
remade
the
United
States
in
terms
of
a
centralized
corporate
industry.
It
was
perhaps
in-
evitable
that
government
should
soon
re-
flect
the
same
trends
which
dominated
the
economic
life
of
the
country.
To
cope
with
contemporary
problems,
to
come
to
grips
with
national
problems,
it
was
necessary
for
government
to
create
and
use
national
institutions
and
to
set
up
state-wide
agencies
rather
than
to
employ
existing
local
governmental
bod-
ies.
Citizens
in
a
frontier-agrarian
civi-
lization
were
able
to
deal
with
their
most
fundamental
problems
individually
and
locally,
but
this
is
not
true
of
industrial
people.
The
folklore
of
the
business
61ite
came
by
gradual
transition
to
be
the
symbols
of
governmental
reformers.
Efficiency,
system,
orderliness,
budgets,
economy,
saving,
were
all
injected
into
the
efforts
of
reformers
who
sought
to
remodel
municipal
government
in
terms
of
the
great
impersonality
of
corporate
enterprise.
The
inevitable
next
step
was
to
include
county
government.
The
ideology
of
the
Taylor
Society
was
applied
first
to
cities
and
then
to
rural
institutions.
Governmental
insti-
tutions
were
to
be
remade
in
terms
of
the
ideals
of
efficiency
held
by
big
business.
STUDIES
OF
GOVERNMENT
As
America
became
adult,
she
turned
to
the
study
of
herself
and
her
problems
with
the
same
serious-minded
drive
that
she
had
earlier
employed
in
exploiting
her
natural
resources.
As
scholars
in
the
field
of
government
studied
more
intensively,
they
began
to
talk
of
a
sci-
ence
of
government.
That
institutions
of
local
government
should
come
in
for
keen
scrutiny
was
inescapable.
Early
political
scientists
and
publicists
not
only
were
influenced
by
the
severely
scientific
German
approach,
but
brought
into
their
study
of
rural
government
their
ideas
of
corporate
management
and
the
advances
in
municipal
managership.
When
the
county
was
first
studied
seriously
a
quarter
of
a
century
ago,
it
is
not
surprising
that
it
was
dubbed
the
&dquo;dark
continent
of
American
politics.&dquo;
In
the
eyes
of
the
scientist
or
expert,
county
government
was
an
incorrigible
thing.
Ever
since,
county
government
has
been
looked
upon
as
a
sort
of
coun-
try
cousin
by
its
superior
city
relatives.
As
our
agricultural
population
has
pro-
portionally
declined,
due
in
no
small
measure
to
the
systematic
exploitation
of
agriculture
through
a
conscious
na-
tional
policy
favoring
industry-the
tariff-this
attitude
of
contempt
for
all
things
rural
has
continued
to
grow.
The
most
prevalent
form
of
agricul-
tural
government
was
the
county-an
importation
from
England
with
a
faint
odor
of
feudalism
about
it.
Originally
an
administrative
agency
of
the
central
government,
it
became
a
mongrel
thing,
partly
an
institution
of
local
self-govern-
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