The Boston Finance Commission

Extract

I regret that the suddenness of the call to speak upon this theme forbade the preparation of a paper, and compels me to talk in a random manner from such memoranda as I was able to put together hastily this morning. If the Secretary of the Commission were present, as was expected, he could give to you inside information; but I must speak from general knowledge, except as to the beginning of the Commission, with which it happens I was concerned personally.

Late in the autumn of the year, 1906, Walter A. Webster, Esq., then in my office, a young lawyer who had won high reputation for ability and honesty in the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, then expecting to make an address as Presiding Officer of the Republican City Convention, consulted with me relative to the financial situation of Boston, the enormous cost of its maintenance, the rapid increase of its debt, and the remedy therefor, and I agreed with him that the first requisite was a thorough knowledge of the actual condition and the causes thereof, that this information could be obtained best by a commission, and that, inasmuch as a portion of the debt and expense was due to state boards over which the city had no control, it would be better for such commission to be appointed by the Governor of the Commonwealth rather than by the city.