The County

This is not a hand-book or a treatise on counties. Such a work cannot be successfully carried through without a much wider and more thorough research into the subject than has as yet been attempted. The author hopes that this present work will do something to suggest and stimulate such research. In the meantime the outlines of a very real and very important “county problem” are visible and they mark the scope of this volume.

Inasmuch also as it has not seemed advisable to encumber the text with an excessive number of footnotes, the author wishes to acknowledge particularly his debt to Prof. John A. Fairlie’s volume, The Government of Counties, Towns, and Villages, which was the source of much of the historical material, and to Mr. Earl W. Crecraft, whose studies of Hudson County, N. J., have been drawn upon at considerable length.