Background

Richard Spencer Childs was born on May 24, 1882 in Manchester, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of Nellie White Spencer and William Hamlin Childs, who founded the Bon Ami Company and became a wealthy businessman.

Education

In 1892 the family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Richard attended Adelphi Academy and then the Polytechnic Preparatory School from 1897 to 1900. He went to Yale University from 1900 to 1904 and graduated with a B. A. degree.

Career

His first job was with Erickson Advertising Company (1904 - 1918), but he also worked for Bon Ami Company (1911 - 1920); A. E. Chew Company, an exporting business (1921 - 1928); and American Cyanamid Company (1928 - 1947). From 1935 to 1944 he was executive vice-president of Lederle Laboratories, a division of American Cyanamid that marketed serums and biological medicines. His father, a progressive Republican who was active in the reform movement in New York City, had an important influence on him. In 1897 he took his son to a political rally for Seth Low, the Citizens Union candidate for mayor. There the young Childs witnessed an outburst of righteous anger directed against the local Democratic machine (Tammany Hall). It was then that he began to develop an interest in reform, which his father encouraged. In 1903, Childs, accompanied by his father, cast his first vote in the mayoralty election and was surprised to discover that he knew the top four candidates by name and nothing about the other fifteen. Stymied by the long ballot, he voted a straight Republican ticket. He was shocked to learn that his father, whom he believed to be a "brilliant and politically active man, " knew no more than he did and voted similarly. This experience made a deep impression on him. A foe of entrenched political machines, Childs made reform his avocation by the time he was in his mid-twenties. Drawn to civic organizations, in 1908 he joined the City Club of New York and the National Municipal League and the following year the Citizens Union of New York. It was then also that the young Progressive thought out the short ballot doctrine. Defining the long ballot, typically American, as one in which "there are many offices to be filled simultaneously by popular vote, " he reasoned that, in effect, voters delegated their choice of minor candidates to the party's "ticket makers. " He came to believe that the inattentive electorate would not cast an informed ballot for obscure offices they deemed trivial and uninteresting--and never would (it became an axiom of political science). Defining democracy as "government by elected officers, " he counseled that each voter should vote "only for officials important enough for him to care about, few enough for him to know about, and given power enough [to appoint lesser officials] to be held to account. " The visibility of naturally conspicuous elective offices--the sine qua non of a practical and workable democracy--would engage popular attention and permit concentrated public scrutiny at the election, Childs pointed out. Childs published a pioneer article, "The Short Ballot, " in The Outlook, a reform-minded journal, on July 17, 1909, initiating the "short ballot movement. " The National Short Ballot Organization, which he founded with Woodrow Wilson as its president, was formally launched on January 21, 1910, in New York City to encourage the adoption of the short ballot principle in municipal, county, and state government. Although it had merged with the National Municipal League by 1921, Childs continued to advance the short ballot principle throughout his long life. Arguing that unifying the powers of government was another essential for democracy, he warned that power divided among many separately elected officials--in effect constituting many little governments--defied popular control and obscured responsibility. He supported, for example, efforts to integrate state government by reorganizing and consolidating administrative agencies. Under his theory, which was first implemented in Sumter, on June 11, 1912, when the city voted to adopt the council-manager plan, every municipal power was possessed by a council--a single group of elective officers (the short ballot). Childs wanted the council member elected with the largest number of votes to be the "mayor" (rather than to be separately elected) and his power to be little or no greater than that of the other councilmen: the voter's attention would then be focused on the entire council. The council would appoint a chief executive, the city manager, who would be under their continuous control and serve at their pleasure (integrated government). Childs's council-manager plan combined democracy (a conspicuously responsible and hence accountable council) with efficiency (a manager in charge of the entire city administration). By 1976 the council-manager form of municipal government, which gave rise to the new profession of city management and which had clear advantages over traditional mayor-council government, was in operation in 2, 441 cities, including 70 with populations over 100, 000. Childs rose to leadership positions in the civic community: president of the National Municipal League from 1927 to 1931, president of the City Club of New York from 1926 to 1938, and chairman of the Citizens Union of New York from 1941 to 1950. In October 1947 he retired from business to become a full-time volunteer at the National Municipal League, where he worked until the end of his life. In 1949 he embarked on a crusade to abolish the elective lay county-coroner system, prevalent throughout the United States. He believed that coroners, including those few who were physicians, should not be popularly elected. By the mid-1960's, about one-half of the elected coroners in the United States had been replaced with qualified appointive medical examiners, and the National Association of Medical Examiners was organized at Childs's suggestion. Another reform project he took on, initiated in 1960, was a state-by-state study of legislative malapportionment, or election districts of widely unequal population, in state legislatures. His efforts to secure reapportionment to reflect increasingly more populous urban districts anticipated the "one man, one vote" decision of the United States Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr (1962). Childs defined a reformer as "one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat. His serene persistence against stone walls invites derision from those who have never been touched by his religion and do not know what fun it is. . Yet, in time, the reformer's little movement becomes respectable and his little minority proves that it can grow. " Selecting causes that he felt were worthy and having "the sense of time of a geologist" he knew a reformer needed, Childs devised and in his forthright and vigorous manner urged the adoption of mechanisms to solve the difficulties of democracy in the United States. Childs died in Ottawa, Canada, on a visit to one of his children.

Achievements

• The "father of the council-manager plan" (also known as the city manager plan), as he came to be called, he set about promoting his new "invention. "

Works

More photos

• book

  • Short-ballot principles.

    (High Quality FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION: Childs, Richard S. (...)

Connections

Childs married Grace Pauline Hatch of Chicago on June 15, 1912. They had four children.

Father:

William Hamlin Childs

He founded the Bon Ami Company and became a wealthy businessman

Mother:

Nellie White Spencer

Spouse:

Grace Pauline Hatch