UC-NRLF 273 fi77 MOFFE7 ^\ft^t. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. claK n/l/or- . m K3*T^ffitf;vi Avs>-t^*yfv e /-~ ill Hi THE SOCIAL SCIENCE LIBRARY SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT BY SAMUEL E. MOFFETT NEW AND REVISED EDITION NEW YORK THE HUMBOLDT LIBRARY 64 FIFTH AVENUE GENERAL COPYRIGHT, 1894, MY S. E. MOFFETT. COPYRIGHT, 1899, KY S. E. MOFFETT. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I The Source of Power, 9 II Direct Legislation, 24 III The True Functions of Representation, 46 IV -The Referendum and the Popular Assembly, 53 V -- The Branches of Government, ... 60 VI Parties, 74 VII Municipal Government, 86 VIII Town and County Government, . . . 105 IX The State Legislature, 113 - The State Executive, 123 XI The National Legislature, 129 XII The National Executive 160 XIII Proportional Representation, . . . .167 - The Work of the Popular Assembly, . 179 -The Boss, 184 - The Referendum in Calif ornia, . . .192 XVII Some Practical Examples, 196 XVIII 1894-1897, 201 (3) 120836 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Except for the final chapter and the correction of a few verbal slips the following pages remain as they were written in 1894. I have left them purposely without alteration, notwithstanding the temptation to avail myself of the easy wisdom that follows the event, in order that the truth of the principles they set forth may be subjected to the test of experience, each reader making the application for himself, with the developments of the past three years for his guide. S. E. M. NEW YORK, August, 1897. (4) SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT THE SOURCE OF PO\V The American citizen is fond of calling himself a sovereign. As a rule, however, his only act of sov- ereignty is that of deciding which of two bosses shall rule over him. When the two bosses are privately in partnership, as they often are, the principle of independent self-government, as we practice it, is carried to its logical limit. The first requisite to a thorough reform in Amer- ican politics is the restoration of close contact between the individual citizen and the agents whom he selects to conduct his public affairs. Everything depends upon that. We often talk about the advan- tages of managing the Government on business principles, but no attempt has yet been made in this country to carry out the idea to its natural con- clusion. Municipal reformers have imagined that they were returning to business principles when they advocated the concentration of executive power in a mayor elected for two years, and of legislative power in a council elected for the same period, and subject to the mayor's veto. To comprehend the (9) 10 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. business-like nature of this arrangement it is suffi- cient to imagine it transferred to the affairs of a private establishment. We may suppose the owner of a great dry-goods house saying to his manager : " You are to have the absolute control of the business for two years, except when a new policy is to be adopted, and then you will have the assistance of a dozen clerks. I shall keep my eye on you, and if I see you wasting my money or tangling up my affairs, I shall beg you to stop. You are under no obligation to pay any attention to my wishes, but, if you persist in wrecking the business, I may get a new manager when your two years are up, if you have left anything to manage." The first principle of business is that the pro- prietor shall have, not merely the right of reviewing the actions of his employes at fixed intervals, but absolute control of them all the time. This should also be recognized as the first principle of sensible politics. But how is the individual voter, who is the political proprietor, to exercise his right of regular control over his servants ? He must do it through a legal organization, and the best form of organization for the purpose is the popular assembly. The ancient Teutonic folkmoot is still the basis upon which a thoroughly trustworthy government must rest. All students of our institutions unite in. commending the admirable workings of the New England town meet- ing, but they do not seem to realize the fact that the principle of the town meeting is not bounded by the needs of a rural community, but is one of universal THE SOURCE OF POWER. 11 application. This truth has been more nearly recog- nized by Mr. Albert Stickney than by any other writer with -whom I am familiar, and I wish at the outset to acknowledge my obligations to his works for ideas on this subject, which have been of infinite service to me, and of which I have not hesitated to make free use. But 'even Mr. Stickney, in his luminous exposition of the value of the public meet- ing as the primary organ of sovereignty, falls short of appreciating its full possibilities. He limits the work of the local assembly to local matters, and contemplates an irrevocable delegation of the power of the people to representative bodies ; and he con- fides a more implicit trust in these bodies than there is any reason to believe they deserve, or would deserve, even under an ideal method of election. The people in their primary assemblies should not only be the ultimate source of power, but its per- manent depository. They should be able to check and guide the proceedings of their executive and legislative servants at every stage. The world has never yet had an opportunity to see what a scientifically organized system of govern- ment, regulated by public meeting, can accomplish, and yet it has witnessed some amazingly successful results, even with the imperfect methods hitherto in vogue. The Athenian Assembly was too vast for anything like real deliberation ; the New Eng- land town meeting tries to do a year's business in one day, and the Swiss Landesgemeinde combines both of these disadvantages. Excellent work on democratic lines is done by village communities in 12 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. various countries, but as it is all of a local nature it fails to call out the highest interest of the electors. An assembly of moderate size, in which every voter would be able to express his individual opinions, and which would not only deal with local affairs but would directly exercise a share of the national sovereignty, would develop a degree of intelligent activity in the citizenship of which as yet we have had no example. If the country were evenly settled, with a moderate degree of density, it would be easy to divide it into precincts, or townships, of about five hundred voters each, and these could be made the basis for a sym- metrical system of representation and legislation ; but we must build upon existing conditions, and make some sacrifice of symmetry to convenience. The assembly of five hundred voters, however, may be considered the normal unit of the body politic. In small towns it would constitute the supreme local government ; in larger ones it would form a council district. It would elect a county supervisor, and, alone or in conjunction with others, a member of the State Legislature. It would be the organ for the expression of the popular will in the initiative and referendum. It would be an arena in which all political and social elements would meet on common ground, and every measure of public policy would find assailants and defenders. The American citizen is the most diligent at- tendant on public meetings in the world, but the trouble is that he wastes his strength in futilities. It is pitiful to see him striving to satisfy his craving THE SOURCE OF POWER. 13 for association and deliberation with his fellow-men by decking himself out in the regalia of some " order " and parroting " rituals," or performing the solemn duty of " attending the primaries," whose decisions have been prepared in advance and forti- fied by stuffed rolls in the back-room of some saloon ; or taking part in indignation meetings to make " demands " on officials, which there is no legal power to enforce ; or joining in campaign rallies at which candidates rhapsodize over the beauties of platforms which they will forget by the day after election. When citizens are willing to put them- selves to so much inconvenience to accomplish imperceptible results, or no results at all, it is hardly unreasonable to assume that they will be will- ing to take a considerably smaller share of trouble for the sake of exerting a direct and material influence upon the management of public affairs in all their ramifications, State, local, and national. Universal suffrage has been criticised for making no distinction between wisdom and folly in the voters. Mr. Stickney has explained, so well that the elaboration of the point here would look like plagiarism, how the popular assembly meets this objection by making votes count by weight as well as by numbers. The man of intelligence can explain his views to the meeting and carry his less acute auditors with him. The man of lustrous integrity can always command a following for any plan to which he lends the sanction of his name. Disreputable votes would be neutralized by the repulsive influence of the men who cast them. 14 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. The habit of discussing public questions in assemblies in which all shades of belief were repre- sented would tend to promote a spirit of moderation and mutual concession. Under our present methods the country is split into innumerable cliques, in each of which narrow-minded intolerance is rampant. The members of bankers' associations encourage each other in the belief that farmers are visionary lunatics; farmers flock together in alliances and granges, and resolve that bankers are Wall Street cormorants ; manufacturers and railroad managers commiserate each other on the total depravity of workmen, and the halls of labor unions echo with denunciations of the tyranny of employers ; Repub- lican conventions announce that Democrats are bought with British gold, and Democratic cor tions brand Republicans as the hirelings of the American plutocracy. Even when the people of a city are discussing such a matter as a proposed : of bonds for the acquisition of water- \v< >rks, they do not, as a rule, come together and candidly discuss all the arguments, pro and con, but the advocates of the proposition hold a series of meetings in which the opponents of the plan are pilloried as the tools of a corporation, while the objections to the scheme are set forth in another series of meetings in which its promoters are arraigned as the heelers of polit- ical bosses. Neither side gives any fair considera- tion to the arguments of the other. A common assembly, in which men of all parties, creeds, and positions in life should meet on even terms, and every man should have an equal opportunity with THE SOURCE OF POWER. 15 every other to convince his neighbors of the sound- ness of his views, would be sure to mitigate asperi- ties, prevent rash and unbalanced decisions, and secure the nearest possible approach to a wise deter- mination of public issues. The assemblies should meet, of course, at the most convenient times and places. Instead of accu- mulating so much business as to absorb an entire day, as in the New England towns, they should meet often enough to dispose of their work com- fortably in an evening. One evening in a month would probably be found sufficient in most cases. Special meetings should be held as often as required. The attention of the assembly should not be dis- tracted by a multiplicity of duties. As a rule, not more than two or three subjects should be disposed of at one meeting, and never more than one at a single vote. The assemblies would dispense with all our pres- ent cumbrous and costly election machinery. They would take charge of the registration of voters, which should take place in every precinct in open meeting. Any qualified resident of the precinct should have the privilege of signing the roll at any meeting, subject to the challenge of any voter present, but he should not be permitted to take part in the proceedings until the following month, in order to give time for an investigation of his right to vote. Ordinary questions coming up for deci- sion would usually be decided viva voce, but all elections of officers should be by ballot, and a small number of voters, say five, should have the right to If) SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. demand a ballot on any question. Nominations for office should be open up to the moment of balloting. The essential features of the Australian system could be preserved with the utmost cheapness and simplicity. A small booth could be set up on each side of the platform, in full view of the meeting. The secretary could be provided with a supply of hand-stamps and movable rubber type. Nominations being called for, each name submitted could be set up in a stamp for each booth. When the nomina- tions were concluded the stamps, with ink-pads and a sufficient number of slips of blank paper, could be put in the booths, and the voters could pass through, one at a time, and prepare their ballots. If, from intimidation or any other reason, the friends of any candidate failed to nominate him in open meeting, there would be nothing to hinder them from writing his name on their ballots. As soon as the votes were cast they would be counted in the presence of the assembly, and the work of the elec- tion would be over. As everything would be done in an evening, after business hours, there would be no need of paying the judges and clerks, and the whole cost of the election could be limited to the price of the blank paper and ink and the wear and tear of the hand-stamps. Of course this plan would not work where seventy or eighty officers were to be voted for at once, as is often the case under present conditions. But this multiplicity of elective officers is recognized on all hands as an evil that must be abolished before we can hope to secure any improvement in our govern- THE SOURCE OF POWER. 17 ment, or even to check its progressive degradation. Under a proper system of official tenure, there would never be any necessity of electing more than one officer at a time. The plan of election suggested would enable us to go back to the wise and safe principle of majority rule. No candidate should ever be elected except by an absolute majority of all the votes cast. In this country circumstances have conspired to give the pernicious system of plurality election a fac- titious popularity. Chief among these circumstances has been the caricature of majority rule existing in some New England States a perversion by which a small minority has been enabled to retain perma- nent power. Candidates for State offices have been required to secure a majority on the first ballot, and in default of this have been compelled to submit their claims to a Legislature so apportioned as to be always controlled by a minority of the people. Can- didates for the Legislature have been forced into an indefinite succession of re-ballots, without any pro- vision for reaching an ultimate conclusion, until the patience of their constituents has been exhausted and the attempt at election has been abandoned. Instead of correcting these defects the tendency has been to' escape from them by plunging into plurality rule, which is another name for machine rule. When a plurality can elect, the support of party nomina- tions, good or bad, becomes a necessity for voters who regard the principles of their party as more important than the merits of candidates. Any divis- ion of the party vote may let in the other side. 18 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. When a majority is required to elect, votes may safely be scattered. There should be a provision, however, for reducing the number of candidates after the first ballot, in order to bring the contest to an early conclusion. It would not be expedient, as Mr. Gamaliel Bradford proposes, to eliminate all the candidates but the highest two on the second ballot, for that would destroy independent voting almost as effectually as election by pluralities. Suppose, for instance, that the Democrats, being in the major- ity in a given constituency, should divide their votes on the first ballot among four candidates, and the Republicans among only two. Each of the two Republican candidates would probably have more votes than the highest Democratic, and the Demo- cratic majority would be reduced on the second bal- lot to a choice between Republicans. This possi- bility would force partisans to stick to the regular nominees from the beginning. Independent voting could be made safe enough for all practical purposes by the adoption of the preferential principle, combined with a provision for two possible supplementary ballots. The work- ings of the system will be described in more detail in the chapter on Proportional Representation, but it may be said briefly that it would allow every voter to stamp on his ballot the names of candidates in addition to his first choice, indicating by num- bers, or by the arrangement of names, his order of preference among them. If any candidate had a majority of first-choice votes he would be elected. If not, the candidates having the fewest first-choice THE SOURCE OF POWER. 19 votes would be eliminated, and their votes would be counted for those whose names stood second in order on their lists. This process would be continued until some candidate had a majority or the preference lists became exhausted. Under this plan an election would almost always be brought about on the first ballot, but it might occasionally happen that the voters would be so divided into groups, each confining its expressions of choice within its own circle, that after all possible eliminations and transfers had been made a united majority would still be lacking. In this case a second ballot could be held, limited to the five candidates receiving the highest votes on the first, or to such smaller number as remained in the field after the possible eliminations had been completed. With the help of transfers an election would be almost inevitable on this ballot, but in the almost impossible contingency of a continued failure to elect a third ballot could be ordered, at which only the two leading candidates could be voted for. This would insure a choice except in case of a tie, when the result could be decided by lot. Under our present method these supplementary ballots would cause some trouble and expense, but with election by popular assemblies, in the manner suggested, all inconvenience would disappear. In the case of local offices, if no candidate were elected on the first ballot, the chairman of the meeting would announce the fact, and order a second, and, if necessary, a third trial, on the spot. In the case of officers representing larger constituencies the pro- 20 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. cess would require a little more time, but no more trouble or expense. When the votes were can- vassed by the central authority and the lack of a majority discovered, the assemblies would be noti- fied to vote again at their next meetings, and if a third ballot were required the process would be repeated. If time pressed, special meetings could be called. It would be important, of course, to have all meetings at which joint action was to be taken held on the same day. For all business except elections the presence of a majority of the registered voters of the precinct should be required to constitute a quorum. This would prevent the affairs of the locality from fall- ing into the hands of a little knot of regular attendants at the meetings while the citizens in general stayed at home. The assembly should have the right, just as in the case of a representative legislative body, to compel the attendance of absent members, under penalty of fine or sus- pension from the privilege of voting. But even if it did not exercise this right, and persistent abstentions delayed" the public business, no harm would result, for the delinquents would begin to feel the inconvenience caused by their negleet of duty, and would soon muster in sufficient numbers to keep the machine going. In the case of elections, however, no fixed quorum should be required. The proper punishment for a failure to vote for good officers is to be ruled by bad ones. If good citizens do not take sufficient interest in their own affairs to elect the right men to office, THE SOURCE OF POWER. 21 it is fitting that the persons who do take enough interest to vote should be allowed to have their own way. It may be said that the same principle would apply to all kinds of business, but there is a differ- ence. An unfortunate choice of officials can always be corrected, especially under the system of tenure to be hereafter explained, but a mistake in meas- ures is sometimes irremediable. Besides, if the assemblies were allowed to act on all questions, regardless of the number present, the fact that business always got itself accomplished somehow, whether the mass of the voters turned out or not, might induce in them a stay-at-home habit, which would be demoralizing. Even if parties retained their vigor, which would be impossible after the custom of direct legislation became well established, the combination of open nominations and majority elections would destroy the power of the political machines. That power rests, first, upon the control of nominations, and, second, upon the necessity pressing upon the rank and file of the party of supporting those nominations, under penalty of suffering defeat in the election. If anybody could nominate candidates up to the hour of voting, and partisans could scatter their votes without fear of giving the election to the other party, a machine nomination would carry no more weight than would be given by the character of the men who made it. The public-meeting system would enable young men to get into politics without crawling through the mud. There would be no necessity of bargain- 22 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. ing with a boss for an opportunity to be heard. Every citizen would be a legislator as a matter of right. He could attend the meetings of his precinct assembly, express his views there, and fit himself by practice in debate, in lawmaking, and in honorable political strategy, for more extended responsibilities. No debating society or school of politics could com- pare in fascination or in educating power with this open arena, whose prizes would be the things that grown men strive for, and not the counterfeit honors of school-boys. There is many a man who would not accept the Presidency of the United States, if he had to pawn his self-respect with a boss to get it, but who would gladly devote time and effort to work in a local assembly which he could enter freely, without any man's permission, and in which he could try, by honest, open argument, to win his neighbors to his views. The practice of acting together in such assemblies would develop among the people of every locality a habit of listening to reason instead of basing conclusions entirely upon prejudice and pas- sion. The feeling, too, that their deliberations were not mere talk, or mere appeals to officials to do something that might be refused, but were in them- selves the very mainsprings of political action, would give them the sobering responsibilities of power. When we remember that thousands of high- minded citizens are now willing to encounter the repulsive atmosphere of primaries held in saloons and billiard halls, for the sake of grappling with political evils intrenched behind almost every pos- THE SOURCE OF POWER. 23 sible advantage, and that thousands more are doing- hard, thankless, unpleasant work for the same ends through Good Government clubs and similar organi- zations, we can hardly doubt that they would wel- come the opportunity to make a clean, open fight for the right on a fair field. CHAPTER II. DIRECT LEGISLATION. The ideal democracy is that form of government in which the people in their own persons make their own laws. This was the only form of democratic rule known to the civilized republics of antiquity. It was abandoned for purely physical reasons, be- cause as States grew in size it became impossible for the citizens to gather and deliberate in a single assembly, and it was not seen how they could deliberate and vote without coming together in one place. This was why Rousseau thought that a true republic must necessarily be small. Montesquieu saw the logical connection between democracy and direct popular legislation, and he, too, was staggered by physical difficulties. "As, in a free State," he said, " every man who is held to have a free spirit ought to be governed by himself, the people in a body ought to have the legislative power; but as that is impossible in large States, and subject to many inconveniences in small ones, it is necessary that the people do by their representatives all that they are unable to do by themselves." The Teutonic device of representation was such a convenient substitute for the unwieldy, popular mass-meeting that it gradually came to be looked upon as a political end in itself, instead of as a con- (24) DIRECT LEGISLATION. 25 venient means of enabling- the electorate to evade the limitations of time and space, and we now hear practical methods of restoring the direct rule of the people criticised as "violations of the representa- tive principle." The representative system is a convenient medium for the transmission of political power, just as a system of shafts and pulleys is a convenient medium for the transmission of mechan- ical power, and it would be precisely as reasonable to object to a plan for gearing a generator directly to the machine it was to work, as a violation of the shaft-and-pulley principle, as to object to a practi- cable plan of direct legislation as an infraction of the principle of representation. The Swiss method of popular law-making through the referendum and initiative has been made so famil- iar to the American public through the works of Vin- cent, Adams and Cunningham, Moses, Winchester, McCracken, Cree, Sullivan, and others, that no very detailed account of it is necessary here. In Switzer- land, thirty thousand voters, or eight cantons, may demand the submission of any law passed by the Federal Assembly to the people at the polls, and fifty' thousand voters may demand the submission of a con- stitutional amendment proposed by themselves. All the cantons, except Freiburg, have the referendum in some form, and in several of them it is obligatory. In these no general law is valid until it has been rati- fied by a popular vote. The voting is carried on by ballot, precisely as in the election of officials. Although this particular form of direct legislation is, as I believe, capable of great improvement, it is 26 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. so infinitely superior to our present methods of law- making, that, if we should transplant it bodily to the United States, we should be vastly the gainers. The testimony of foreign observers to its admirable work- ing in Switzerland is almost unanimous. If we had nothing but theory to guide us, we should infer that the right of appeal from a legislative body to the people would greatly diminish the intensity of party conflicts; that it would tend to keep legislators of ability in place, regardless of their opinion on current issues; that it would promote sincerity among public men, prevent filibustering and log-roll- ing, check corruption, and make legislative debates business-like discussions of practical matters, instead of oratorical tournaments for the benefit of the reporters. Practical Swiss experience has shown us these results in actual operation. " One in visiting the chambers of the Assembly," remarks one observer, "is much impressed with the smooth and quiet dispatch of business. The members are not seated with any reference to their political affiliations. There are no filibustering, no vexatious points of order, no drastic rules of cloture, to ruffle the decorum of its proceedings. Interrup- tions are few, and angry personal bickerings never occur. . . . Leaves to print, or a written speech memorized and passionately declaimed, are un- known ; there are none of these extraneous and soliciting conditions to invite * buncombe ' speeches or flights of oratory for the press and the gallery. The debates are more in the nature of an informal consultation of business men about common inter- DIRECT LEGISLATION. 27 ests ; they talk and vote, and there is an end of it. This easy, colloquial disposition of affairs by no means implies any slip-shod indifference or super- ficial method of legislation. There is no legislative body where important questions are treated in a more fundamental and critical manner."* The same author adds that " the members of the Assembly practically enjoy life tenure ; once chosen a member, one is likely to be reflected as long as he is willing to serve. Reelection, alike in the whole Confederation and in the single Canton, is the rule ; rejection of a sitting member, a rare exception. Death and voluntary retirement accounted for nine- teen out of twenty-one new members at the last gen- eral election. There are members who have served continuously since the organization of the Assembly in 1848. Referring to this sure tenure of officials generally, the President of the Confederation, in a public address, said : ' Facts, and not persons, are what interest us. If you were to take ten Swiss, every one of them would know whether the country was well-governed or not, but I venture to say that nine of them would not be able to tell the name of the President, and the tenth, who might think he knew it, would be mistaken.' To some extent this remarkable retention of members of the Assembly may be ascribed to the fact that the people feel they are masters of the situation through the power of rejecting all measures which are put to the popu- lar vote." f *BOYD WINCHESTER, " The Swiss Republic," p. 78. f WINCHESTER, p. 80. 28 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. And again : " The members of the Federal Council can be, and are, continually reflected, notwithstanding sharp antagonisms among themselves, and it may be between them and a majority in the Assembly. They also continue to discharge their administrative duties, whether the measures submitted by them are, or are not, sanctioned by the voters. The rejection of measures approved and proposed by them does not necessarily injure their position with the coun- try. The Swiss distinguish between men and meas- ures. They retain valued servants in their employ- ment, even though they reject their advice. Valuing the executive ability of these men, still they may constantly withhold assent from their suggestions. The Council, substantially in its present form, came into existence with the constitution of 1 848, the first election of its members taking place in November of that year. The election, therefore, which oc- curred on the 1 3th of December, 1887, was the four- teenth triennial renewal of the Council, and covered a period of thirty-nine years. During this period the complete roster of the members embraces only twenty-seven names ; even this small ratio of change resulted in seven cases from death and eleven from voluntary retirement, leaving only two who failed to be reflected on the avowed ground of political divergence. This most remarkable conservatism on the part of the Assembly, in retaining the members of the Council by repeated reelections, has survived important issues of public policy, including several revisions of the constitution, upon which there was DIRECT LEGISLATION. 29 a wide diversity of opinion in the Council, some of whom actively participated in the discussions, antag- onizing the views of a majority of the Assembly the Assembly to which they owed their election, and upon which they relied for their retention in office. Their periodical reelection, though seemingly pro forma, carries with it a salutary sense of accountable- ness. This sure tenure of service in the Federal Council makes those chosen look upon it as the busi- ness of their lives. Without this permanence attached to the position, such men as now fill it could not be induced to do so."* The testimony of other witnesses to the effect of the referendum in securing stability in the per- sonnel of the government is quite as emphatic. " The composition of the National Council has changed but little of late," say Adams and Cun- ningham. " The Swiss voter is quite ready to vote again and again for the same candidates ; he proba- bly looks upon them as good men of business with long experience of parliamentary and federal af- fairs, and he knows very well that if measures are passed, of which, for some reason or other, he does not approve, he and his fellows can combine to reject them at the referendum. This, however, does not prevent him from again voting for the old representatives at the next election, and he will do so, in many instances, time after time."f "The members of the Federal Council are re- * WINCHESTER, p. 95. fSiK F. O. ADAMS and C. D. CUNNINGHAM, "The Swiss Con- federation," pp. 41-42. 30 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. eligible, and, in point of fact, the same individuals remain in office for a number of years, notwith- standing the existence of well-known differences among themselves, and between some of them and a majority in the Assembly. There have been, hitherto, only two instances of a member willing to serve not being reflected ; but from time to time some naturally resign, one for a more lucrative post, another to become the head of a diplomatic mission, another from a desire to retire into private life."* On the decorous and business-like proceedings of the Swiss legislative bodies, the same observers re- mark: " The debates are carried on with much decorum. There is seldom a noisy sitting, even when the most important subjects are being discussed ; inter- ruptions are few, and scenes such as unhappily have, of late, been painfully frequent in our House of Commons, do not exist. It is true that there are but forty-four members in one chamber and one hun- dred and forty-five in the other. But the sittings strike a spectator as being those of men of business, though the members are by no means devoid of eloquence." f In spite of the absence of any attraction in the way of high salaries, Switzerland is able to com- mand the services of its best and ablest citizens to a degree which we are unable to approach. The President of the Confederation is paid less than * ADAMS and CUNNIXC.H'AM, pp. 58-59. f ADAMS and CUNNINGHAM, p. 51. DIRECT LEGISLATION. 31 two thousand seven hundred dollars a year, and the cost of the entire Executive Council does not reach seventeen thousand dollars. But this modest out- lay, which would hardly satisfy the bookkeepers of an American business house, secures for Switzer- land some of the best administrative skill in the world. " Democracies have been justly reproached," says a recent historian, "for the fact that their political offices are not always filled by men of recognized ability and unstained honor ; that the best talent of the nation after a while yields the political field to adventurers. This is not the case in Switzerland, under the purifying working of the referendum and initiative. Nowhere in the world are government places occupied by men so well 'fitted for the work to be performed."* Mr. J. W. Sullivan finds that "an impressive fact in Swiss politics to-day is its peace. Especially is this true of the contents and tone of the press. . . . On all sides, over the border from Switzer- land, political turmoil, with its rancor, personalities, false reports, hatreds, and corruptions, is endless. But in Switzerland, debate uniformly bears, not on men, but on measures." " Removals of federal office-holders in order to repay party workers are unheard of." " While both legislators and executives are elected for short terms, it is customary for the same men to serve in public capacities a long time. Though the people may recall their servants at brief intervals, *MCCRACKEN, " Rise of the Swiss Republic," p. 344. 32 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. they almost invariably ask them to continue in serv- ice. Employes keep their places at will, during good behavior. This custom extends to higher offices rilled by appointment. One minister to Paris held the position for twenty-three years; one to Rome, for sixteen. Once elected to the Federal Executive Council, a public man may regard his office as a permanency. Of the Council of 1889, one member had served since 1863, another since 1866. Up to 1 879 no seat in the Council had ever become vacant, excepting through death or resignation." * All observers of Swiss politics are struck by the unwillingness of the voters to sanction sudden and radical changes. The referendum is the most powerful conservative force in the republic. The people are fearless in accepting innovations when they are once thoroughly convinced of their justice and necessity ; but rash and ill-considered projects have no chance of adoption. On the $d of June, 1894, after these words were written, the Swiss electorate voted upon a bill declaring that every man had a right to employment, and that if he could not get it elsewhere the State should furnish it. There is much to be said for such a proposition, and the average legislator would certainly regard it as eminently popular, whatever he might think about its wisdom, but the people of Switzerland rejected it by a vote of three hundred and eight thousand to seventy-five thousand. It is hardly necessary to dwell upon the contrast * J. W. Si i.i.i \ AN, " Direct Legislation by the Citizenship." DIRECT LEGISLATION. 33 to this state of affairs offered by our own conditions. When a leading New York journal complains that "Senators and representatives vote for the most dangerous measures, not because they believe they are sound or safe, but because they are afraid to oppose them, lest ignorance among their constituents should deprive them of their places in Congress," it is merely formulating a truism. Our political methods directly penalize independ- ence and honesty. As the only way of passing a given law is to elect legislators who will vote for it, and the only way of repealing it is to turn those legislators out and replace them by others who pro- fess different opinions, questions of legislation are inevitably and inextricably mixed with struggles for official place. From this it necessarily follows, that when a new issue comes up for discussion, our law- makers are under the stongest possible pressure to align themselves upon it, not according to their opinions of its merits, but according to what they believe to be the desires of their constituents ; and that when they have once committed themselves in this way, they are impelled to do all in their power to confirm their constituents in these supposed desires, which they themselves may, and often do, believe to be dangerous delusions. If they failed to read the prejudices of their dis- tricts aright in the first place, or if, having read them aright, and conformed to them, they allowed them to yield to increasing enlightenment, they would be in danger of losing their seats. Hence, insincerity has become so completely the rule in 34 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. representative governments, that it has come to rank as a virtue; and a politician who is always true to his convictions endangers not only his place, but his reputation. That this is literally true may be seen in the most cursory observation of current politics in America or Europe. It is not to be doubted, for instance, that there is a considerable number of Democrats who honestly believe in protection, and of Republicans who honestly believe in free trade. They are expected, however, to smother their own opinions, and speak, and vote, in favor of measures which they believe to be wrong; and if they fail to do so they are impaled as traitors to their respective- parties. In England, a Liberal may be elected to Parliament on a general pledge to favor home rule, and when he begins to legislate he may find that the particular home rule bill introduced by the leaders of his party is, in his judgment, so radically defective as to endanger the national safety. Nevertheless he must support it or be branded as a renegade. And, indeed, this enforcement of party discipline at the expense of personal independence, and even honesty, is a necessity under the present system, since it is the only way in which the people can retain any sort of control over legislation. But its effect in lowering the tone of public men is obvious. No politician can habitually defend measures of which he does not approve, for the sake of retaining his party standing and official place, without blunting his sense of right and wrong. This deterioration >f character would be bad enough if it accomplished effective results; but it does not even do that. The DIRECT LEGISLATION. 35 system that produces it is, of all known devices, the clumsiest, slowest, and most uncertain method of reaching any 'desired end. It has kept the United States in a ferment over the tariff for a hundred years and has settled nothing yet. Discussion on this subject has hardly advanced an inch since the debates on the first Revenue Act of 1789. For nearly twenty years our parties have been trying to find out what the people want done about silver, in order that the politicians may know what opinions to hold themselves, and they are rather more at sea now than they were in 1875. The only logical theory of representative govern- ment is that the people select the wisest men among them to decide things which they do not know enough to decide for themselves. There is much to be said for such a theory as that. If it could be thoroughly and consistently carried out it would be quite likely to give us an able government and a corrupt one. But it never is, and never can be, con- sistently carried out. Public opinion will insist on making itself felt, and the moment public opinion begins to interfere in the deliberations of a legisla- ture, we paralyze the judgment of the legislators without giving effective play to the desires of the people. A member of Congress, intent above all else upon saving his seat, hears ascending to him a confused roar of demands from which he must con- trive to extract the divine vox populi. Delegations of manufacturers and workingmen visit him to pro- test against the reform of the tariff. Mass meetings of his party insist upon immediate and radical 36 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. reductions. Newspapers command him to work for high, low, medium, or no duties on fifty different articles produced or consumed in his district. Let- ters and telegrams pour in upon him urging him to support and oppose the free coinage of silver ; to favor the coinage of the seigniorage and its sale as old junk ; to promote the extension of the national bank- ing system and the substitution of State bank issues. He reads election returns, and is told that the result means that the people do not want tariff reform ; that they are incensed at the delay in giving it to them ; that they are enraged at Congress for its partiality to silver, and infuriated at the President for his devotion to gold. In the confusion, his own opinions, if he ever had any, utterly evaporate. If we abandon the principle of independent action by legislators trusted to do what is best without regard to public opinion, we must fall back on the theory that the members of a law-making body should be true representatives of the people, endeav- oring, to the best of their ability, to carry out the popular will, and held accountable by their con- stituents for the fidelity with which they execute their trust. This idea is clearly stated by Mr. Woodrow Wilson, one of the ablest advocates of the party system of legislation : " It should be desired that parties should act in distinct organizations, in accordance with avowed principles, under easily recognized leaders, in order that the voters might be able to declare by their ballots, not only their condemnation of any past policy, by withdrawing all support from the party DIRECT LEGISLATION. 37 responsible for it, but also, and particularly, their will as to the future administration of the govern- ment, by bringing into power a party pledged to the adoption of an acceptable policy."* There is conspicuous here the assumption, which lies at the base of all the arguments in behalf of pure representative government, that a " party pol- icy " is a clearly defined unit, which may be unmis- takably condemned or approved by the voters. Yet the fact that it is nothing of the kind is one that lies on the very surface of our history. We have never had a national election whose returns made it pos- sible to determine just what policy, in the sense of a programme of legislation, the people wanted, although there have been a very few elections in which the popular will on some one overshadowing issue has been made tolerably clear. It was reason- ably plain in 1864, for instance, that the Northern people favored the prosecution of the war, but the election threw no light on their ideas upon recon- struction, emancipation, negro suffrage, or the finances. To put the " party-policy " idea to the test, let us suppose that I desire the reform of the tariff, and object to the further coinage of silver, the intensity of my wish for tariff reform being represented by one hundred, and that of my opposition to silver legislation being represented by ninety-nine. Sup- pose that my party passes a tariff bill satisfactory to me, and also passes a silver coinage bill. I am called upon to render judgment upon this " policy " * WOODROW WILSON, " Congressional Government." 38 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. at the next election. I do violence to my convictions on the silver question for the sake of my preponder- ating convictions on the tariff ; but my dissatisfaction (ninety-nine) on one question must be deducted from my satisfaction (one hundred) on the other, leaving me a net satisfaction of only one instead of the one hundred and ninety-nine which I could have had if I had been allowed to vote on each measure by itself. But this is putting the case too favorably for the " policy " theory. In this example the voter does get some opportunity, however slight, to move in the direction of his preponderating desires. But the situation is not often so simple. Suppose, for instance, that my ideas of a national " policy," quantitatively expressed, run like this : Tariff reform 100 Opposition to silver coinage 99 Economy in government 80 Annexation of Hawaii 50 Extension of civil-service laws 50 Strong navy .40 419 Suppose that my party meets my wishes on tariff reform and economy (one hundred and eighty), and the other party on silver, Hawaii, and the navy (one hundred and eighty-nine), while neither takes a satis- factory position on the civil service (fifty). Then, if I vote for my party, I vote for a policy of which I approve of only one hundred and eighty parts and disapprove of two hundred and thirty-nine, and if I vote for the other I vote for a policy of which I DIRECT LEGISLATION. 39 approve of only one hundred and eighty-nine parts and disapprove of two hundred and thirty. Thus my net satisfaction is fifty-nine less than nothing in one case and forty-one less than nothing in the other. And, moreover, the situation is almost certain to be still further complicated by the nomination of can- didates whom I do not consider fit to hold office, but for whom I must vote as the only way of exerting an influence on the choice of any policy at all. If the people were allowed to vote on measures as well as on men, I could exert my full power at the polls in favor of the whole four hundred and nineteen points of the policy I desired to see carried out, and, in addition, I could vote for the candidate I thought best qualified for legislative business, regardless of his opinions on disputed political issues. A disadvantage of representative sovereignty, which has become unpleasantly conspicuous within the past year, is the power it gives to unscrupulous minorities. When one party holds either branch of a legislative body by a small majority, a few of its members can absolutely dictate its policy. A half dozen protectionist Democrats in the Senate held their party by the throat last spring and summer, and compelled it to adopt a tariff programme which five-sixths of its voters would have repudiated. In order to pass a tariff bill it was necessary to buy the vote of each of these Senators by concessions to the interests he particularly represented. If a measure had been framed by a majority of the Democrats in 'Congress for submission to the people, it would have been drawn on broad, logical lines, capable of public 40 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. defense on general principles. As the object in view was to secure the votes, not of six or seven million citizens, but of six or seven Senators, the measure was logically and necessarily drawn in the interest of the Senators, rather than in that of the citizens. Another abuse that would be extirpated by direct legislation is the practice of log-rolling. An average legislative body will pass half a dozen bad measures of which no one, taken separately, would have strength enough even to gain consideration. The advocates of an unnecessary insane asylum at Goshen combine with the champions of a superfluous nor- mal school at Podunk, and with the help of the friends of a useless reformatory at Way back, a legislative majority is secured for a combined raid on the State Treasury. No such combination would be possible in a popular vote, where each propositi< >n would have to stand on its own merits, and if such a poll could be demanded, most of the schemes whose success depends upon vote-trading in legislatures would never be heard of. But the most serious evil connected with the delegation of the uncontrolled law-making power to a limited number of representatives still remains to be considered. It is the leverage given to corrup- tion. That every man has his price is too hard a saying, but that the great majority of men have their price is the simple truth. When votes are quoted at two dollars apiece, from five to ten per cent of the voters of a State can be bought. Ten dollars apiece would buy, perhaps, twenty per cent, DIRECT LEGISLATION. 41 a hundred dollars apiece would buy fifty per cent ; and if the price were raised to a hundred thou- sand dollars each, it is doubtful whether one voter out of twenty in any State of the Union could resist the temptation. Now, it often happens that the enactment or defeat of certain legislation is import- ant enough to rich corporations to make it worth their while to offer a hundred thousand dollars each, if necessary, for the assistance of a few members of Congress or of a State Legislature, but it would be impossible for any corporation to offer one hundred dollars apiece to a majority of the voters of the United States, and practically impos- sible to make such an offer to the majority of the voters of an average State. There are other ways, too, in which the private interests of legislators are made to influence their public action. The Con- gressional silver pool, at the time of the passage of the Sherman law of 1 890, and the senatorial specula- tion in sugar stock during the manipulation of the Wilson tariff bill in the Finance Committee, became national scandals. Every great railroad whose in- terests are affected by legislation has its attorneys in Congress or in the State Legislatures. The presi- dents and chief stockholders of important corpora- tions have held seats in the Senate, and openly spoken and voted in behalf of their private interests, without betraying a thought of impropriety. It is said that the true remedy for these evils is to elect good men to office. The advocates of this happy and original idea will have everything their own way when they show us two things: First, 42 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. how to insure the election of good men, and, second, how to keep them good after they are elected. It is useless to expect representatives to be very much better than the people they represent. It is as much as we can reasonably look for if they are no worse. A system of government whose satisfactory opera- tion requires the continual election of archangels to office is not a practicable working system. To have a really stable fabric of government, we must base it upon enlightened self-interest. As Mill puts it : " The ideally perfect constitution of a public office is that in which the interest of the functionary is entirely coincident with his duty." Now the self- interest of the average man, acting as one of the mass of voters, lies in the direction of good and honest government. It is worth more to him to have cheap sugar, pure water, and safe, rapid, and comfortable transportation, than to accept fifty cents from the sugar trust, a dollar from a water company, and two dollars from a railroad to be cheated, poisoned, jostled, and belated, with the prospect of being eventually flattened out or burned alive in a wreck. But the average man in the place of a legislator would certainly succumb to the same influences that corrupt the politician. It is the con- centration of temptation that makes the difference. The pressure that would be easily resisted when spread over the whole community becomes crushing when converged upon one point. And this concen- tration exists simply because the action of the legislative body is final. If the people could always demand the right to pass upon the decisions of their DIRECT LEGISLATION. 43 representatives, those decisions would no longer have a commercial value ; the lobby would disappear, and legislative bodies would once more become delibera- tive assemblies in which it would be a pleasure for men of intelligence and conscience to sit, and in which it would be to the interest of all the members to do the best possible work. An appreciation of the unfitness of legislative bodies to exercise unlimited power has led to a growing practice in this country of applying the referendum in its least scientific and most dan- gerous form. Deprived of the right to express their will, in case of need, in an orderly way, in the regu- lar channels of legislation, the people have resorted to the objectionable device of law-making by consti- tutional amendment. In many States the distinction between a constitution and a code has been almost wiped out. To check unfaithful legislatures, the ordinary course of law-making has been so hedged about with minute restrictions that a plausible case of unconstitutionality can be made out against any statute distasteful to powerful interests. In Califor- nia as many as ten constitutional amendments are submitted to the people by a single legislature, and an edition of the constitution five years old is as use- less for instruction in the actual state of the funda- mental law as a five-year-old almanac. A constitution ought to contain nothing but a frame of government and the necessary guaranties of individual liberty and property against the excesses of a majority. To protect the majority against betrayal by its own servants is no part of the duty of an organic law. 44 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. The majority ought to have the power to do that at all times for itself. If that power were secured to it, our State, constitutions could be cleared of all the undergrowth of petty restrictions that now encumbers them, and the noble simplicity of the national constitution could be imitated everywhere. It may be said that the people are not qualified to frame the details of legislation. Undoubtedly they are not, and neither is a numerous representative body. The critics of Congress and of our State legislatures can hardly find words to describe the botch-work with which our statute books are annually disfigured. Even in England, where the control of Parliament by the Cabinet secures a certain degree of unity in legislation, things are not much butter. On this point Mill remarks : " Any government fit for a high state of civiliza- tion would have, as one of its fundamental elements, a small body not exceeding in number the members of a cabinet, who should act as a commission of legislation, having for its appointed office to make all laws. * * * No one would wish that this body should of itself have any power of enacting laws ; the commission would only embody the element of intelligence in their construction ; Parlia- ment would represent that of will. No measure would become a law until expressly sanctioned by Parliament ; and Parliament, or either house, would have the power, not only of rejecting, but of sending back a bill to the commission for reconsideration and improvement." Now this device would work precisely as well in DIRECT LEGISLATION. 45 the preparation of laws to be submitted to the people, as in that of laws to be submitted to a legis- lative body. If Parliament or Congress is incapable of constructing or amending bills intelligently, if its proper function is merely to consider measures submitted to it by an expert commission, to say "yes" or "no," or to send them back for amend- ment, its duties are quite within the capacity of the mass of the voters. Of course, the public could not take time enough to consider all the bills that must be passed upon by a legislative body in the course of a year, but those supreme issues which absorb the popular mind, which divide parties, and with reference to which legislators profess to try to fol- low public opinion, could be quite as easily disposed of by direct vote of the people as by the circuitous and clumsy method of electing representatives to guess at what the people want. CHAPTER III. THE TRUE FUNCTIONS OF REPRESENTATION. Notwithstanding the inefficiency, confusion, and corruption that have flowed from the abuse of the representative principle, the fact remains that the device of representation in its proper place is an indispensable aid to good government. The people can safely intrust to a limited body the ordinary work of legislation. The one thing which they can not safely delegate to anybody, even for a limited term, is the sovereign power. They may never have occasion to review the work of their representatives but unless they retain the legal right to do so they will inevitably find their interests betrayed. The quality of finality is what makes the acts of a legis- lature worth buying. It is that which makes such scenes as this the inevitable prelude to the close of every session of a national or State law-making body. " ALBANY, April 27th. Sparks flew in both houses of the Legislature just before final adjournment to- day. For an hour the Senate was tied up on the Huckleberry Railway bill, owing to the filibustering tactics of the Democrats, who seemed to be able to do what they pleased. "In the Assembly there were several scenes of turbulence. Ex-Speaker , the Democratic leader, (*) THE TRUE FUNCTIONS OF REPRESENTATION. 47 assisted by John A. of Kings, Charles C. of New York, and one-half of the Democratic minority, took possession of the well, on the watch for ' sneak ' bills, and their vociferous objections and demands to have every bill of a questionable character read kept the House in an uproar which the pounding of the gavel could not quiet. Had it not been for these watchful and energetic young men, Mr. of Fulton and Hamilton, would have * sneaked ' through an innocent-looking measure that contained hidden in one page a clause to repeal section 57 of the general insurance law, which would have destroyed the existence of the American Lloyds." If a " sneak bill " could be challenged, after the adjournment of a legislature, and compelled to run the gauntlet of a popular vote, it would not be intro- duced. The people would never be compelled to consider a palpably dishonest measure. The mere fact that a constitutional right of appeal to the polls existed would purify legislation at its source. A business man with an efficient manager may be so well served as never to find it necessary to inter- fere with his subordinate's decisions. But he always is careful to retain the power of interfering if neces- sary. If his confidence in his manager's fidelity and ability led him to intrust to him absolute authority for two years to make contracts, buy and sell stock, and incur debts without any right of review on his own part, his business acquaintances would suggest that what he needed was not so much a manager as a guardian. And yet that is precisely what the people do in their political capacity, with- 48 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. out even the excuse that their hired managers are able and honest. On the contrary, the universa^ complaint is that legislators are inefficient, ignorant, and corrupt, in spite of which we grant them powers which it would be unsafe to intrust to assemblies of sages and saints. The true object of representation is the conven- ient dispatch of business. The great bulk of the laws required by a State or the nation may properly be disposed of by representative bodies, provided always that the people retain the right of reviewing the decisions of the legislators whenever they think proper. It is not probable that the national ar reviewed would average more than one a year. Nobody would wish to submit to popular vote an ordinary appropriation bill, or a bill for the estab- lishment of a zoological park in the District of Columbia. It is only those great measures that touch the interests and arouse the passions of a whole people, or which affect vast combinations of capital so closely as to make corruption inevitable if they are disposed of by a small body, that need to be referred to the decision of the ultimate sovereign. And it is these very measures that now fill our legis- lative bodies with ignorant and unscrupulous mem- bers, attracted by the opportunities for profit in them, and which repel the men whose character and talents ought to be at the service of the com- munity, but who do not care to risk their reputa- tions by mingling in contests from which no man's name emerges unscathed. There is no subject more important to the ulti- THE TRUE FUNCTIONS OF REPRESENTATION. 49 mate welfare of this country than that of the scien- tific care of forests. It is one that requires much expert investigation and studious attention to de- tails. It is one of those questions which could be dealt with to the best advantage by small represent- ative bodies, but Congress and the State legisla- tures have been so deeply absorbed in interminable struggles over issues, each of which should have been settled by a single vote at the polls, that they have hardly had time to give it a thought. Inter- national copyright, marriage and divorce laws, the promotion of scientific research, the improvement of the patent system, the development of irrigation, the systematic extension of water transportation, the elevation of Government art and architecture, the increase in the efficiency of the postal service, and the investigation of the best means of relieving poverty, checking vagrancy, and preventing crime, are a few out of hundreds of subjects which might profitably engage the attention of our law-making bodies. But our legislators seldom have time to think of such things. It is safe to say that within the past twenty years nine-tenths of the time of Congress not spent in the consideration of the regular appropriation bills has been devoted to the five subjects of the tariff, the currency, the South, pensions, and private claims. Of these, the last should not have come before Congress at all, except for the formal confirmation, in bulk, of the decrees of another tribunal. The rest were proper subjects for decision by popular vote. A commission of eminent protectionists should have drawn up a 50' SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. symmetrical protective tariff ; another commission of well-known free-traders should have framed a scien- tific tariff for revenue, and after full public discus- sion the people should have been allowed to choose between them. That would have settled the matter on a logical basis without waste of time. As it is, the majority of the Senate this year spent five months in the secret manipulation of a tariff bill, not in order to study and discuss its effects upon industry, commerce, and the public revenues, but to see how many favors would have to be given to each of a number of Senators for his vote. What these Senators needed was to be protected from themselves. A tariff decision by the people would have set them free for useful legislative work of a kind which the people would not be competent to perform. So with the currency. Doubtless the question of monetary standards is too recondite to be fully under- stood by the average voter, but the average voter who is honestly trying to discover the truth is at least more likely to reach a sensible conclusion than the Congressman who carefully avoids the truth if it runs counter to his interpretation of the ignorant prejudices of his constituents. No harmonious currency policy adopted twenty years ago, even if wrong in theory, would have been likely to do the damage that has been wrought by the unspeakable botch- work of insincere compromises perpetrated by politicians playing for their seats. The Massachu- setts Railroad Commission, although it has no power to enforce its decisions, exerts more influence and THE TRUE FUNCTIONS OF REPRESENTATION. 51 commands more respect than the commissions in other States whose laws invest them with autocratic authority. The reason is obvious. In Massachusetts, the commission, acting only through reason, must make the wisdom of its recommendations clear to the people, the Legislature, and the railroads. It can not substitute brute force for argument. Having no powers of oppression the corporations do not feel obliged to exert themselves to fill it with their tools, and men of high standing can serve in it without endangering their reputations. Similar considera- tions would improve the quality and increase the influence of legislative bodies if they were deprived of the dangerous gift of unchecked power. They could be safely trusted then to deal with a much wider range of subjects than now. Men of ability and character would be glad to join them, and take part in the discussion of the social, industrial, economic, scientific, and artistic questions with which they could occupy themselves, when there was no longer any danger of becoming involved in a scandal over the grant of a franchise or the pas- sage of a law to relieve a railroad of its taxes. The adoption of an important policy is a matter that should usually be decided by the people, but the detailed legislation needed to provide for its execution is properly the work of the people's rep- resentatives. In some cases, indeed, the people themselves should attend even to the details. A tariff bill, for instance, which, as usually framed, contains a scandal in every line, should be drawn up by a few experts of national reputation and voted 52 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. upon as a whole. But, in general, the citizens can safely confine themselves to the broad outlines of legislation. To fill in the lights and shadows in the most effective way is the true function of represen- tation. CHAPTER IV. THE REFERENDUM AND THE POPULAR ASSEMBLY. Thus far we have considered the referendum in its primitive form, as applied in Switzerland, and, for a few specific purposes, in the United States. In this form it is subject to certain disadvantages not great enough, indeed, to overbalance its supreme merits, but sufficiently serious to give a standing- ground for the opposition of conservatives reluc- tant to make any change in established institutions. If often used it is expensive. Our elections are conducted on a costly plan. The fees of judges, inspectors, and clerks, rent of booths, printing of ballots, advertising election proclamations, publica- tion of registers, and other necessary outlays, make up a total load of expense which no community likes to incur any oftener than necessary. More important still is the fact that so large a proportion of the total vote is cast without any clear understanding of the questions to be decided. If proposed laws were sub- mitted to popular vote, they would be published in the newspapers, but that would not imply that they would be generally read still less understood. Undoubtedly thousand of voters would either cast their ballots in entire ignorance of the subjects at issue, or would neglect to cast them at all. And those who thought they were voting intelligently (53) 54 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. would in many cases be simply carrying out the policy of certain newspapers, without ever having considered the other side. Moreover, there are com- plications in the way of securing and verifying signatures to petitions for the referendum. Lastly, a vote on laws held simultaneously with a general election for officers would add to the already too great confusion in the mind of the voter, while if it were held at a different time there would be another election day, with its inevitable inconvenience and disorganization of business. All these difficulties would be completely obviated by the system of popular assemblies described in the first chapter. The people being already organized and in the habit of meeting at convenient times. there would be no necessity for elaborate and expen- sive arrangements for recording their opinions. Suppose, for instance, that the question were whether the State taxes on improvements and personal prop, erty should be abolished. The people would be called upon to vote in their assemblies on the night of a regular monthly meeting. At the appointed time each assembly would gather in its hall. The advocates and opponents of the proposition would advance their respective arguments. When the discussion had proceeded far enough, a vote would be taken. Every voter would have at least some understanding of the question at issue, and the understanding would be fresh not the mere dried - up impressions of almost forgotten readings. In all probability, too, the matter would have been fully discussed at previous meetings as well as in the REFERENDUM AND POPULAR ASSEMBLY. 55 press in the intervals, so that the final debate would be merely the summing up of arguments already familiar. The vote would involve no more expense than the cost of a quire of white paper and a pad of stamping ink. It would be completed in an hour, and counted in the presence of the meeting in ten minutes more. All the difficulty in deciding what measures should be submitted to vote would be obviated. There would be no need of collecting and verifying names for petitions. A certain number of assemblies, could have the right, at any time, to demand the referen- dum on any bill. It could be provided, if thought advisable, that if the vote for this proposition in the assemblies reached a certain figure, the measure should be submitted even if its advocates were in a minority in each assembly, but this would be a superfluous precaution, since any measure whose friends commanded a majority in the nation or State would necessarily have a majority in a suffi- cient number of assemblies to secure its submission. The necessity of obtaining the affirmative action of these assemblies in advance would be a useful check upon the activity of agitators, who might otherwise be continually disturbing the people with calls to vote upon propositions that had no chance of success. Mill devotes a chapter to the elaboration of the thesis: " Representative Government the Ideally Best Policy," and every argument in it is designed to show the superiority of democracy over monarchy or aristocracy. The capital thus accumulated for 66 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. popular rule is transferred to the rule of representa- tive bodies with an easy celerity that reminds the startled observer of Heller's invisible transfer of a live rabbit from his sleeve to a hat. " From these accumulated considerations," the chapter concludes, " it is evident that the only government which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state is one in which the whole people participate ; that any participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful ; that the participation should be every- where as great as the general degree of improvement of the community will allow ; and that nothing less can be ultimately desirable than the admission of all to a share in the sovereign power of the State. But since all can not, in a community exceeding a single small town, participate personally in any but some very minor portions of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government must be the representative." It is evident that this conclusion is anything but warranted by the premises. It has been shown in Switzerland and elsewhere that it is quite possible for all to participate in much more than " minor portions of the public business," even when that participation is facilitated by no special organization, and the system of local assemblies would enable a nation of any size to act as conveniently as a small community, without some of its most conspicuous dangers. The chief peril of democracy in the ancient and mediaeval city states was the liability to sudden tumults, or inconsiderate decisions. A plausible demagogue, getting the ear of the popular REFERENDUM AND POPULAR ASSEMBLY. 57 assembly, could induce it to take action which it regretted as soon as it had time for sober thought. Athens voted on one day to massacre the men of Mitylene, and on the next revoked the sentence. In this country, under the plan proposed, a national question important enough to be submitted to the people would be voted upon simultaneously in thirty thousand different assemblies. In each there would be likely to be men who could offer fair statements of the opposing arguments, but no Cleon could make his voice reach far enough to have any dangerous influence on the total result. The division of the voting population into small bodies would be, not a mere physical necessity, but a thing advantageous in itself. Montesquieu said : " The great advantage of rep- resentatives is that they are capable of discussing affairs. The people are not at all fitted for this, which forms one of the chief inconveniences of democracy." Under the plan proposed the people would discuss affairs. They do it now, but for the most part they do it ignorantly. They meet their friends on street corners, or in saloons, or churches, or lodge-rooms, and casually exchange prejudices based on carelessly written, hastily read, and half- understood newspaper articles. They come together in political meetings, where all are of one way of thinking, and listen to plausible speakers who are under no obligation to consider facts or reason as long as they flatter the prepossessions of their hear- ers and make things warm for the enemy. In a popular assembly representing all classes and all 58 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. factions, and invested with a share of sovereign power, there would be discussions seriously deserv- ing the name. The stump-speaker would not revel in misrepresentations with impunity, because his opponents would be there to expose him. It is likely that the debates in such an assembly would be quite equal, in enlightening effect, to those in Congress, for what they might lack in ability they would make up in sincerity. Congressional discus- sions to a great extent are sham battles. The par- ticipants are not trying to convince each other or to exert any influence upon the determination of the question at issue, but to impress their constituents. This is why the reader of the Congressional Record is so often exasperated at seeing fallacies and mis- statements repeated and reiterated after one of the speakers has so manifestly demolished them that nobody has attempted to answer his arguments. He wonders whether the debaters can be so densely stupid as not to understand the refutation that is so luminously clear to an average intelligence. Noth- ing of the kind. They are merely counting on the fact that they can have their fallacies printed and circulated in their districts, while their constituents will probably never see the refutation. It is this that makes Congressional debates so unsatisfactory as a means of arriving at truth. They purport to be dis- cussions when they are really symposia of unrelated stump-speeches. In the popular assemblies there would be none of this double purpose. Having no constituents, the speakers would attempt to influence nobody beyond their immediate hearers. Those REFERENDUM AND POPULAR ASSEMBLY. 59 hearers would have to be convinced, in the very presence of the advocates of opposing- opinions, and every argument advanced would have to be met on the spot by a counter-argument appealing to the reason and sense of fairness of the audience. The conclusion reached, whatever it might be, would be the honest judgment of the assembly on the merits of the conflicting arguments, and not a prearranged verdict based on ulterior considerations. And, as truth is single, and exists in itself, while error is multifarious and exists only in the minds of those who hold it, it is likely that the truth would find its way into all the assemblies, while fallacies would be limited in range. It would certainly be remarkable if, after full and candid discussion, the same errors should commend themselves to the reason of a majority of the voters in thirty thousand independent meetings, composed of citizens of all classes, parties, and habits of thought. It will hardly be main- tained that such a thing would be as probable as the control of a single legislative body by prejudice, carelessness, or sinister influences. CHAPTER V. THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. Since the time of Montesquieu, it has been cus- tomary to treat the powers of government as falling naturally into three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial. As a convenient working arrange- ment this division is satisfactory, but not as a funda- mental principle. In that sense there are properly only two divisions the legislative-executive, or political, on one side, and the judicial on the other. The theory that the branches of government should be co-ordinate and independent is properly appli- cable only to these two it does not apply to the legislative and executive subdivisions of the polit- ical branch in their relations with each other. The duty of the judiciary is that of measuring the rights of citizens by an existing standard that of the laws and constitutional guaranties in force at the time when the acts to be judged were to be per- formed. This duty necessarily lies outside of the discretionary powers of a legislature, and can not be properly fulfilled if confused with them. But there is no such broad distinction between the legislative and executive powers. The executive is the hand of the legislature, carrying out whatever that decrees. The power of making laws necessarily implies the power of procuring their execution. (60) THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. 61 Without that power a legislature is a mere debating society. But a numerous assembly is not fit for the practical work of carrying out its own decrees, and, therefore, as a simple matter of convenience, the duty of execution is wisely intrusted to officials employed for that express purpose. These officials should properly be the servants of the legislature, not its independent associates. In just so far as they are independent they weaken the energy of government, divide responsibility and impart con- fusion where there should be unity and simplicity. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for the inde- pendence of the executive in the American system of government, the chief of which is that our legis- lative bodies are not trustworthy. As a rule they perform even their own work so ill that, so far from wishing them to control the executive, the people prefer an executive strong enough to guide, and, if need be, coerce the legislature. An Andrew Jack- son is always sure of popularity. Congress has no policy of its own, and even when elected under an express mandate to carry out some policy demanded by the people it muddles and blunders away its time, wanders off into mischievous byways, and accom- plishes anything at all only under the spur of con- tinual executive and journalistic admonitions. State and city legislatures are still more imbecile and infinitely more corrupt. The idea of making presi- dents, governors, and mayors the servants of con- gresses, legislatures and common councils, as at present constituted, is utterly out of the question. That the executive power should be subordinate 62 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. to the legislative by no means implies that the legis- lative body should take the lead and leave the executive to follow in its wake. The guide of an exploring expedition is subordinate to the travelers to whom he shows the way. It would be well for the executive to carry its leadership of the legislature to a much greater extent than is ever seen in Amer- ica. It should formulate policies, draw up bills, and urge their enactment. Only there should be no pos- sibility of a clash between the two powers. In case of a disagreement, the will of the legislature should always prevail, unless overruled by the people. To insure the necessary unity in the political branch of the government without incurring the evils of legislative mob-rule on the one hand, or of a perpetually belligerent party executive of the English type on the other, six things are necessary. 1 . Every member of the legislative body must be individually responsible to his constituents, and subject to recall at any time. 2. The people at large must have the right at any time of passing at the polls upon anything done or left undone by the legislature. 3. The practical experience gained in administra- tion must be made available for use in legislation by giving the heads of executive departments scats in the legislative body, and allowing their proposals for improvements in the laws affecting their depart- ments to take precedence over those of ordinary members. 4. The financial budget, including all receipts and expenditures, must be treated as a whole, and THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. 63 framed with the active cooperation of the treasury officials. 5. The executive must have unlimited powers of suggestion and initiative, but no power of veto. It must be given every facility for guiding legislation, but none for creating a deadlock. 6. The appointment and removal of subordinate executive officials must be entirely free from legis- lative interference, but the supreme executive head must be subject to removal by a sufficiently large legislative majority two-thirds, for instance on due notice, giving the people time to interfere. The continuous responsibility of the individual legislator to his constituents not an intermittent responsibility, reaching a crisis every two, four, or six years, but one effective at every moment of his career would rank with the referendum as a force for the maintenance of a high standard of represent- ation. The practice of ceding uncontrolled power for a term of years corrupts even good men that of keeping the representative always within reach would secure good service even from bad ones. The organization of the voters in popular assemblies would enable this control to be exercised with the utmost facility. In States of moderate size one assembly could elect a member of the legislature, and in any city at present existing in America one would be a sufficient constituency for a member of the common council. In such cases the control of the representative would be simplicity itself. If he were credibly accused of selling his vote to a corpo- ration, or of speculating in a stock affected by his 64 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. official action, he would be summoned before his assembly to explain. If his explanation appeared unsatisfactory his credentials would be revoked, and another representative would be elected. In the largest States it would be necessary for two or three assemblies to combine for the election of a member of the legislature, but the procedure in this case would be almost as simple as in the other. In any assembly any voter dissatisfied with the course of his representative could move that he be called upon for a defense. If the motion prevailed, the defense would be presented to all the assemblies of the district, and they would all vote upon its acceptance. In the case of a member of Congress, when a hun- dred assemblies might form the constituency, the proceedings would be a little less summary, but equally effective. Printed instead of oral explana- tions could be furnished, although the representative should have the right to appear in person before any assembly if he desired. To prevent annoyance from frivolous complaints it could be provided that no vote on the question of recall should be taken except on demand of ten assemblies, and that the representa- tive should not be compelled to submit to the ordeal twice within six months. This unbroken control of the representatives by the constituencies would dispense with the necessity for periodical elections. The suggestion of Mr. Stick- ney that members of legislative bodies should hold office as long as their conduct satisfied their fellow members is entirely impracticable, and would be THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. 65 open to obvious objections if it were not, but a tenure dependent on the will of the constituency would be both practicable and desirable. Under such a system there would be no general election day, and no fixed term of office. When there was a vacancy from any district the people would elect a man to fill it. As long" as he gave satisfaction he would not be disturbed. He would be free to devote himself to the business of legislation without the necessity of preparing to meet an approaching political revolution. If he ceased to do good work his constituents would recall him and elect some- body else in his place. There would be no disturb- ance of business, no general political upheaval, no sudden and violent changes of policy, no wholesale substitution of apprentices for experienced legis- lators. The legislative body would maintain its continuous existence, and the methods of conducting business would not have to be relearned at every session. The advantages of direct legislation by the people have already been fully discussed. It is sufficient to point out here the effect of the referendum and initiative upon the relations between the legislative and executive branches of the government. With the right reserved to the people to pass final judg- ment upon any measures deeply affecting their interests, all occasion for clashes between law- makers and administrators would disappear. The wrestle between President Cleveland and the Senate over the silver question, with its accompanying scandals in the distribution of patronage, would bb SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. have been impossible if the whole subject could have been referred to a popular vote. It was be- cause Congress and the President were jointly in complete possession of the sovereign power that they wrangled over it like dogs over a bone. They would not have quarreled over the right way to frame a measure for submission to the people. If this appeal were always open in the last resort, Congress would always be willing to listen respect- fully to the suggestions of the President, accepting them as the advice of an expert counselor, and not as the dictation of a rival power. The official who has to execute a law has better opportunities than anybody else for knowing how it works and what changes in it are desirable. It is most important that this experience should be utilized by the legislative body to the fullest extent. To make the head of a department dependent upon the good-will of some private member for the intro- duction of a needed bill, upon the courtesy of a committee for a perfunctory hearing upon it, and upon the indifferent services of half-instructed friends for its advocacy upon the floor, is to sacrifice knowledge to ignorance and force the government needlessly to put up with poor work when it could have good. In a legislative body not dominated by party passion or selfish interests, thorough knowl- edge will always take the lead. Mere eloquence counts for little, but a man who knows exactly what he is talking about, and who can give a candid and satisfactory answer to every question propounded, can generally carry his point. This expert knowl- THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. 67 edge, of course, is possessed by each official only with regard to his own department. The very fact that the Secretary of War has given such conscientious attention to his own work as to enable him to speak with authority upon it, disqualifies him from speak- ing with similar, or any, authority upon the work of the Secretary of the Treasury. This would be the sufficient condemnation, if there were no other, of tlie English system of cabinet solidarity, under which fifteen gentlemen assume a joint responsi- bility for things which only one of them knows any- thing about. The presence of heads of departments in the legislative body, each speaking for his own department, would enable each branch of the gov- ernment to exert its proper influence on the other. The executive officials could initiate legislation, and the legislator could hold the officials to the proper performance of their duty. Any reported delin- quency in a department could be brought at once to the test of a series of questions propounded to the head of that department on the floor. These ques- tions could not be evaded , and unsatisfactory replies, often repeated, would inevitably lead to a change of officials. That executive bills should have prece- dence over those introduced by private members is a necessary corollary from the considerations that make it desirable to give the heads of departments seats in the legislative body. As these officers pos- sess peculiar knowledge of the needs of their departments, it is to be presumed that the measures they propose are more urgent than those suggested by others, Of course, all the advantages to be gained 68 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. from the presence of department chiefs in the legis- lative bodies could be secured without giving them votes. The unity of the budget is a principle so essential to anything like scientific, or even decent, finance that nothing but inexhaustible wealth has enabled this country to get along without it. Our national financial system appears deliberately designed for the encouragement of extravagance. The taxes are fixed for an indefinite period, and the rates are- based to a great extent on considerations independ- ent of the needs of the Government. The general appropriations arc under the control of eight dif- ferent committees of the House and two of the Senate, and special appropriations for particular pur- poses may be proposed by any member of either branch and reported by any committee. Any appro- priation may be amended to any extent by either house, and any committee may report bills involving permanent expenditures on an unlimited scale. Each committee feels bound in honor to secure as large appropriations as possible for the subjects within its own jurisdiction, and feels under no obligation to exert itself toward maintaining a balance between the total receipts and expenditures of the govern ment. A single agency, having control of the whole subject of finance, and including the Secretary of the Treasury in its membership, would probably save more than the entire cost of the army and navy every year. If law-making is to be carried on by the har- monious cooperation of the legislative and execu- THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. 69 tive powers, there is obviously no room for an executive veto. Under the system suggested the functions of the executive would be advisory, not dictatorial. If, after hearing all the arguments the administrative officials had to offer, the legislature still persisted in going wrong, the proper and all- sufficient substitute for a veto would be an appeal to the people. The referendum would constitute a check on reckless legislation more effective than any executive interference could possibly be, and the voters would be restrained by no timidity in its application. As regards the sixth point, I must renew the expression of my obligations to Mr. Stickney, whose exposition of this branch of the subject leaves hardly anything to be desired. The weakest point in Mr. Stickney 's scheme of government is the omnipotence and irresponsibility of his legislative assemblies. It is this which would cause the whole fabric to break down if it could ever be brought to trial among a people of democratic traditions, which would be an impossibility in itself. But concerning the constitution and the responsibility of the executive, the plan is very nearly perfect, and it accords, in most essential respects, with the views that are becoming generally held by political thinkers. It establishes an unbroken chain of responsibility from the lowest executive official to the legislature. Each chief of a bureau should be personally responsible for the management of that bureau. That he may not be able to lay the blame for mismanagement on incapable or corrupt sub- 70 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. ordinates, he must have the power of removing any who fail to do good work. Similarly, every head of a department must be responsible for the condition of that department. He must obtain certain results from every bureau, and the instrument by which he must enforce them is the power of appointment and removal of the bureau chiefs. The supreme execu- tive head, in his turn, must be responsible for the efficiency of the government in every department, and he must change the head of any department that appears to be badly managed. Thus far we are not very remote from the theory, although con- siderably removed from the practice, of our present system of national administration. But when we come to the responsibility of the chief executive, we find something lacking. We do not theoretically accept the English principle that the king can do no wrong. We hold that the President is responsible, but we have omitted to provide any means of enforcing that responsibility. We can refuse to reelect him at the end of his four years' term, but if he be not a candidate for reelection, as often happens, and always when he is in his second term, he is as irresponsible as a Turkish sultan. Obviously the whole chain of accountability is worthless when this most important link is missing. If the chief executive officer should be responsible, as is gener- ally admitted in America, that responsibility must be enforceable by somebody, and that somebody can hardly be other than the legislature. Here we have the unity of the government secured, and we have the work of each man judged by the authority JNIVERSITY THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT." 71 O]*&s^ most competent to decide whether it be well or ill done. Here Mr. Stickney stops. Everybody thus far has an effective responsibility to an immediate superior, all ending in the legislature. To whom is the legislature to be responsible ? To itself ! Elected to serve during good behavior, the members are mutually to judge the behavior of each other, and to expel those who fall below a proper standard. This rcductio ad absurdum sufficiently explains why Mr. Stickney 's many acute and admirable ideas have not had the vogue they deserve. The present condition of the United States Senate indicates the fate of a government whose ultimate powers were lodged in a body free from any control but that of its own conscience. The natural sequence of the responsi- bility of the executive to the legislature is to make the legislature responsible to the people. Each individual member should be accountable to his own constituents for any wrong in which he had a share. In that way only can a permanent regard for the public interests be insured. The effective control of the legislature over the executive could be greatly promoted by the presence of the heads of departments on the floor. Without that presence the chief executive might sometimes have difficulty in determining whether things were going well in his administration or not. His sub- ordinates, of course, would tell him that they were, and he might not find it easy to check their asser- tions. But if the heads of departments had seats in the legislative body their manner of encountering 72 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. criticisms would show conclusively where the truth lay, and if, after that, their chief refused to call them to account for established mismanagement, he would properly be subject to discipline himself. Although the power of removal should everywhere be unchecked, it seems reasonable to believe that entrance to the public service, in the lowest grades, should be by open competitive examination, fol- lowed by probationary work, and that appointments in the higher grades, up to those which demand a degree of talent which could not be secured without free range of choice, should be made by promotions from the lower. This plan works well in the army and navy, where, indeed, the idea of promotion is maintained to the very top. It is the rule of the civil service in the best administered foreign coun- tries, and it has been applied with success to a lim- ited extent in our own. Persons who have won their places on their own merits are likely, on the whole, to be better qualified than those selected through favoritism, and the power of removal would be a sufficient protection against the injury of the ser- vice by the accidental intrusion of the undeserving. The object of the requirement of due notice before the removal of the chief executive by the legislative body is obvious. It would not only give the accused official an opportunity for defense, but would enable the people, if they thought him unjustly treated, to stop the proceedings, and, if necessary, recall their representatives. The need for a two-thirds vote for removal would also protect an accused head of the government against tyrannical action by a hostile THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. 73 majority. It should be understood, however, that removal as a means of enforcing a proper responsi- bility in the government would not be analogous to our present process of impeachment. There would be no formal trial and no necessity of alleging crime or misdemeanors. Simple mismanagement would be enough, and the discretion of the legislature would be absolute. CHAPTER VI. PARTIES. IT is an American and English habit of mind to regard a free people as necessarily divided into two great, hostile, political organizations. This sup- posed necessity has even been exalted into an immutable principle of human nature. The sug- gestion that it might be possible to conceive a free government without permanent parties has been disposed of by the summary rejoinder that such a thing would require a preliminary reconstruction <>f the constitution of the mind. If this be true, of course the question is settled, but possibly a little reflection may put it in a different light. The party system may be considered in two aspects first, as to its necessity ; second, as to its desirability. If it be an inevitable outgrowth of the human mind, of course the discussion of the second point will have a merely academic interest. If, on the contrary, parties can be shown to have no essential connection with the constitution of the universe, it may be w r orth while to devote some attention to the question whether they are a good thing in themselves. Parties are supposed to be the outgrowth of the differences of opinion and interest characteristic of free communities. Such differences have always (74) PARTIES. 75 existed and may always be expected to exist. The question is whether they necessarily tend to form a permanent line of cleavage, splitting the community into two approximately equal parts, each of which acts in political matters as a unit, in opposition to the other. There are something like fifteen million voters in the United States. That they should divide in the proportions of seven millions to each of two great parties, and a million to three or four scattering factions, seems no more necessarily implied in the nature of things than that eight, ten, twelve, or fourteen millions should act together, or, on the other hand, that no single group should exceed half a million or a million. If seven million voters can act together as a party, there appears to be no reason why they could not act together if they constituted the whole nation. Yet we know that when there were only seven million voters in this country, party lines were as deep as now, and when there were only a million, half of them were indus- triously engaged in fighting the rest. This curious persistence of party divisions, regard- less of the number of persons involved in them, seems to lend color to the theory that there is some mysterious and irresistible propensity of human nature that compels a community to segregate itself on factional lines. And there is an irresistible tendency in that direction, but it has nothing to do with human nature in the abstract. It is the direct result of our present methods of government, which are so arranged that political results can be attained only by putting certain men in office. Electioneering 76 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. for office, being thus made an indispensable means to the attainment of any desired object, naturally comes to be regarded as an end in itself. The people who wish the enactment of certain measures are compelled to associate themselves for the elec- tion of certain men. Immediately personal ambi- tions and loyalty to individual leaders overshadow the nominal objects of party organization. Soon a habit of joint action on all occasions is formed among men who originally came together for cer- tain definite purposes. The party assumes the coherence, discipline, and permanence of an army ; it persists long after the issues on which it came into existence have been settled, and we have the curious conception of " loyalty " and " treason " to a voluntary association created solely for the effective joint action of its members on matters upon which they all a^ree. The attempts to find an enduring philosophical basis for parties are as remote from practical affairs as Lucian's discussions of the politics of the moon. In England it is generally said that men naturally fall into the two great divisions of those who are satisfied with things as they are and those who want a change. In America we are told that the line of separation is that between the believers in a centralized government and the advo- cates of the rights of the States. In practice these distinctions are entirely mythical. The Tory Demo- crats, who are among the most zealous conservative campaigners in England, are less opposed to change than the Whig aristocrats who continue to act with PARTIES. 77 the Liberals. In this country the most sweeping encroachments on the rights of the States since the time of reconstruction have been made by Demo- cratic administrations and Democratic Congresses. There is no obvious connection between the exclusion of slavery from the Territories and the protection of manufactures by tariff duties. Yet the Republican party, which owed its existence to the former idea, and which was originally composed of men holding all varieties of opinions on economic subjects, now makes protection its supreme test of orthodoxy, in spite of which it still retains the allegiance of low-tariff .men who joined it solely because of its position on the dead and forgotten issue of slavery. That the persistence of parties is the result of struggles for official place, rather than of differences with regard to principles or policies, is demonstrated by the fact that the two great parties remain nearly equal in strength. When one greatly preponder- ates over the other for any length of time, there is a reorganization. This approximate equality is necessarily involved in contests for place, because it is essential to the vigorous prosecution of such struggles that each side should have a chance of success. If the question at issue were impersonal, there would be no more probability of an equal division than of a division in any other proportion. The difference is well illustrated by the election of 1 892 in California. On that occasion the Democratic vote for presidential electors ranged from 1 17,840 to 118,174, and the Republican vote from 117,504 to 78 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. 1 18,027. At the same time the people voted on nine constitutional amendments and other propositions. On the question whether United States Senators should be elected by the people there were 187,958 votes in the affirmative against 13,342 in the nega- tive. The act authorizing the San Francisco Harbor Commissioners to issue bonds to the amount of five hundred thousand dollars, for the construction of a new ferry depot, was approved by a vote of 91,296 to 90,430. An educational qualification for the suffrage was favored by 151,320 votes to 41,059. The proposition to refund the State debt was rejected by 85,604 votes in the negative to 79,900 in the affirmative. Three constitutional amendments were defeated the first, altering the power of the governor with reference to vetoes, by 87,708 votes to 69,286 ; the second, extending the length of legisla- tive sessions, by 153,831 to 36,442, and the third, increasing the salary of the lieutenant-governor, by 128,743 to 43,456. Two were ratified, one, limiting local debts, by 108,942 to 59,548; and the other, authorizing all cities of over three thousand live hundred inhabitants to frame their own charters, by 1 14,617 to 42,076. The fate of these nine propositions ranged all the way from defeat by a margin of 117,389 votes to success by a majority of 174,616. Yet if they had depended entirely upon legislative action, and the I )emocrats had indorsed them all while the Repub- licans opposed them, or the Republicans had indorsed them all and the Democrats opposed them, or one party had taken precisely the ground on each which PARTIES. 79 the returns show the people to have favored while the other took precisely the opposite ground, no politician familiar with the facts will say that there would have been a difference of ten thousand votes in the strength of the party tickets. Nor would the difference have been much greater if the Republican platform had declared for free trade and the Demo- cratic one for protection, or vice versa. Democrats would have continued to vote for Cleveland, and Republicans for Harrison, in any circumstances. In all the States it is more usual for constitutional amendments to be decided by enormous majorities one way or the other than by close votes. This is sufficient evidence that there is nothing in the nature of things impelling the people to split into two equal parts on questions of principle. There is no reason to suppose that if the tariff, or silver, or any other of the questions that now afford the pre- text for party battles, were submitted without per- sonal complications, the result would be different. But with all questions of principle eliminated, it would be impossible to maintain party divisions. When the politician could no longer rally his cohorts with an appeal to " stand by the immortal principles of our party," and the stump-speaker had nothing to say except, " Elect Smith because he wants the office," political allegiance would sit lightly on the masses. If one candidate were con- spicuously superior to his opponent, the people would be likely to flock to his support as generally as the people of California supported the proposition to take the election of United States Senators out of 80 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. the hands of the Legislature. This would be especially probable if the methods of election were properly reformed. So much for the inherent necessity of parties. What of their desirability? In England, where the system is carried to its logical extreme, the country is in a state of unceasing political war. Every important measure proposed in Parliament is a party measure, which must be supported in all its details by the members of one party, even when they per- sonally disapprove of it, and desperately fought at all stages by the members of the other, even when they think it in the public interest. At the begin- ning of a session the Cabinet looks over the majority upon which it must depend to keep it in office. Then it reckons up the various reforms, jobs, and fads upon which the hearts of different fractions of this majority are especially set, and composes from them a "programme," each item of which is the price of a certain group of votes, and may be distasteful, not only to the whole of the minority party, but to the bulk of the majority. If, as sometimes happens, there is some paramount issue on which the national mandate has been clearly expressed, this central dish on the parliamentary board is garnished with a variety of relishes, added to please small cliques of members whose support is necessary to the success of the party in its chief objects. No measure pro- posed by the minority, however meritorious it may be, has any chance of adoption. There is no pos- sibility of candid discussion, for almost every mem- ber speaks as an attorney, not as an unprejudiced PARTIES. 81 reasoner, and the few free lances who say what they think generally forfeit their influence by their infractions of party discipline, and gain the reputa- tion of being erratic and untrustworthy. The best way to attain sound ideas, as Matthew Arnold tells us, is to let the mind play easily about the subject under consideration, and form its judgment uncon- sciously from a contemplation of the topic from all sides. " For this judgment comes almost of itself ; and what it displaces, it displaces easily and natu- rally, and without any turmoil of controversial rea- sonings. The thing comes to look differently to us, as we look at it by the light of fresh knowledge. We are not beaten from our old opinion by logic ; we are not driven off our ground ; our ground itself changes with us." If we were looking for the process of all others most radically irreconcilable with the " sweet rea- sonableness," through which- the truth is best approached, we should find it in the clash of vin- dictive, unthinking, and irreconcilable prejudices that constitutes an English party contest. In America things are better in some respects and worse in others. Partisanship here is less universal in its scope, but even more squalid in its manifestations. The bulk of the legislation of Con- gress, and almost all of that of an average State legislature, in ordinary times, is non-partisan in character, and an adroit leader of the political minority may have almost or quite as much influence in its passage as if he belonged to the majority. But where the partisan spirit does get 6 82 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. in, its developments are expressibly small and mean. It turns out door-keepers, degrades school- teachers, and makes spoils out of the suffering paupers. It is the sole support of the power of bosses. It makes the promotion of one " party measure," which it often fails to carry, the excuse for years of jobbery and plunder. The persistence of parties, under our present conditions, is due to the fact that the citizen exhausts all his political power for a fixed period in a single act, and that act the election of some man or men to office. There may be a dozen prin- ciples which he would like to see embodied in legislation, but he can neither vote for each of them directly nor for a different man for each principle. The best he can do is to vote for a candidate whose views, on the whole, are most nearly in accordance with his own, and resign himself to being mis- represented on the points upon which lie and his candidate differ. From this has arisen the habit of picking out what seem to be for the moment the most important subjects in dispute, making them the issues on which candidates contest for election and ignoring less pressing matters. This at once divides the community into parties, having the nominal ultimate purpose of carrying out their characteristic principles, and the actual immediate purpose of getting their candidates into office. To attain this immediate purpose the parties bid for the support of groups of voters with special hob- bies by expressing sympathy with their desires, and the result is the modern " platform," with its amaz- PARTIES. 83 ing jumble of ideas, which, as a whole, corresponds to nobody's real opinions, and least of all to those of the men who draw it up. The party system, dividing the mass of the com- munity into two immovable and nearly equal sections, puts the entice control of politics into the hands of the small mobile element between. Some of these floating voters are independents, who honestly try to use their power in the public interest, but in too many cases they are in the market, either for legislative favors or for ready cash. The purchasable vote, whether of tramps or of millionaires, would be harmless if the desires of the whole people had free play. It is a division which gives so much importance to the " balance of power " that enables floaters and trusts to dictate terms to party managers. As party government has naturally grown out of present conditions, so it would naturally disappear if the conditions were changed. There is no reason why the man who believes in free trade, the single gold standard, and the Government ownership of railroads, should seek all those objects through one political organization, except that under our present methods he has only one vote, and must cast it for the candidate of one political organization or lose it. If he could vote on each important measure sepa- rately he would probably belong to one association, or party, devoted to the propagation of the free- trade idea ; to another working for the gold standard, and to another engaged in agitating for the nationali- zation of railroads. He would no more expect always 84 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. to associate with the same men in political matters than in social, religious, and business matters. A man does not attempt to promote the Westminster Confession, encourage vaccination, prevent cruelty to animals, and deal in stocks through a single organization, and there is np more reason why a single party should have the work of handling a dozen unrelated problems of government. The mere fact that all are called Democrats, and act together on two or three questions, is not enough to form one class of Representatives Bland, Johnson, Harter, Bryan, Cockran, and Tracy, sharply marked off from another class containing Senators Aid rich, Sherman, Cameron, ILinsbrough, Teller, and Wol- cott. With the introduction of direct legislation and the abolition of periodical elections, parties would cease to be either permanent or rigid. If free trade once became thoroughly established, and settled beyond danger of early disturbance, the party formed to work for it would disappear. New groups would be continually forming and dissolving. There would be no danger from excesses of party spirit, since men would lose the habit of regarding themselves as members of hostile armies when their allies on one question were their opponents on another. As the bulk of American legislation now is non- partisan, and those questions which arouse partisan antagonisms would then be withdrawn from the determination of the legislative bodies and referred to the people, there would be no occasion for parti- sanship in the representative assemblies, and men PARTIES. 85 would be elected to them simply on the score of their general ability and character, and would be kept in office as long as they did satisfactory work. There would be an end then of the curious super- stition that an idea whose reasonableness commends it to half of the nation must necessarily, by that very fact, be repugnant to the other half. CHAPTER VII. MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. The various evils for which it is the purpose of this book to suggest remedies are felt in their acutest form in the government of cities. They are so keenly realized that it is unnecessary to spend any time here in expatiating upon them. Applying the principles already discussed to the affairs of a typical city, let us see what the results would be likely to be as compared with those of the present method. Suppose our city to contain five hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom one hundred thousand are voters. We divide it into two hundred election precincts, with approximately five hundred voters in each. For every precinct we provide a meeting hall. Of course, three or four adjoining precincts could often use one convenient building in com- mon. There would be a primary assembly in each precinct composed of all the qualified voters within its limits. These assemblies would hold regular monthly meetings in the evenings, after working hours, and special meetings as often as necessary. Each precinct would be entitled to one representa- tive in the city council, and this representative would be the only municipal officer, except the auditor, for whom the citizens would vote. He (86) MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 87 would hold his place as long as he suited his con- stituents, and whenever he ceased to give satis- faction his assembly could revoke his credentials and elect somebody else. The members of the city council would receive no salaries. They would hold weekly meetings in the evening, and would be expected to have some private occupation or means of support with which their public duties would not interfere. They would elect the mayor, whom they would have the power of removing, after two months' notice, by a two-thirds vote. The mayor, like the members of the council, would have no fixed term of office. The mayor would appoint all the heads of the executive departments, except the auditor, and they would hold office at his 'pleasure. He would also appoint the municipal judges, who would retain their places during good behavior, and would not be subject to removal, except after formal trial on definite charges. All appointments would be made on the sole responsibility of the appointing power, without the necessity of' confirmation. The heads of departments would have seats in the city council, and each would be ex officio a member of the com- mittee having jurisdiction over the subjects dealt with by his department. The mayor, also, would have the right to address the council at any time. Each head of a department would have the right of appointing and removing his immediate subordi- nates, and they in turn would have the right of appointing and removing the officials under them; the principle being that every man in the public 88 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. service should be directly responsible to his imme- diate superior, and to nobody else. Thus there would be an unbroken chain of responsibility from the lowest clerk or janitor, through the chief of bureau, head of department, mayor, and city council, direct to the people. Every superior official who connived at a wrong committed by a subordinate would take it on his own shoulders, and the matter would come, by two or three stages at most, to the mayor, whose failure to act would subject him to removal by the city council, any member of which who condoned the offense would be liable to chal- lenge by any citizen in his precinct assembly, fol- lowed by a vote of dismissal. The auditor would be elected by the citizens at large, acting through their several assemblies. He would appoint his own deputies and would be sub- ject to removal by a two-thirds vote of the council, as in the case of the mayor. If reelected, however, he would not be liable to removal again within a year. It would be his duty to examine all claims against the city ; to refuse to audit any improper bills ; to maintain a general oversight over the finan- cial operations of the municipal government, and to report to the council, of which he would be ex officio a member, any discoveries of misconduct or sugges- tions of improvement. Every executive department would have a single head, but the superintend- ent of schools would have the assistance of an advisory council of twelve principals selected by himself. All important educational matters would have to be referred to this council for public discus- MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 89 sion and advice, but the ultimate decision in all cases would rest with the superintendent alone. Similarly, the chief of police would receive expert advice from a board of captains, and the chief of the fire department from a board of district engineers, but the final control of each department would be undivided. The city council would have the right to pass any municipal ordinance, without liability to executive veto, but on demand of one-fifth of the members of the council, of the mayor, or of ten pre- cinct assemblies, any measure so passed could be submitted to popular vote for approval or rejection. In the same way a vote could be procured on any measure on which the council had refused to pass. To see how such a system would work, let us com- pare it with the present methods in actual operation. San Francisco is an average city, with which I have the advantage of a more thorough acquaintance than with any other. It contains about sixty thousand registered voters, and consequently, under the plan proposed, would be divided into one hundred and twenty precincts, giving a city council of one hun- dred and twenty members. In each precinct the people would vote at indeterminate times for the auditor and for a member of the council. Only one of these would be elected at a time, and the people would have to show very much less political capacity than they have ever shown yet if they did not scru- tinize the names suggested with critical attention. Under the present system every citizen of San Francisco is expected to vote every two years for a mayor, sheriff, auditor, treasurer, city and county 90 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. attorney, coroner, tax collector, county clerk, record- er, district attorney, public administrator, surveyor, superintendent of streets, four superior judges, four police judges, five justices of the peace, twelve supervisors, and twelve members of the board of education a total of fifty municipal officials, in addition to those elected to fill vacancies. Each citizen is also called upon to vote at the same time for a representative in Congress, and a member of the State Assembly ; and every four years for an assesssor, superintendent of schools, nine presi- dential electors, a governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary of State, controller, State treasurer, State superintendent of public instruction, surveyor-gen- eral, attorney-general, railroad commissioner, mem- ber of the State board of equalization, State senator, two or more supreme justices, and clerk of the supreme court. At the last election, moreover, it was necessary, in addition to all this, to vote for or against five constitutional amendments and four propositions, and at the next election there will be nine constitutional amendments to be voted upon. Whenever a citizen of San Francisco goes to the polls he is required to assist in filling from sixty to eighty different offices, and is obliged to select from among about three hundred candidates. It would be natural to expect him in despair to give up all attempts at discrimination and vote a straight party ticket, and the fact that a large majority of the bal- lots deposited in San Francisco are scratched testifies to an honest determination to perform political duties which would work wonders for good govern- MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 91 ment if it were exercised under less discouraging circumstances. The mayor of San Francisco is generally honest. The majority of the legislative body, or board of supervisors, and most of the heads of departments, are always corrupt. Seven mem- bers of the board of supervisors can pass any ordi- nance that does not require the mayor's signature, and nine can pass anything over his veto. It has been customary to organize a " Solid Nine" for transactions in legislation of all descriptions, but sometimes there are more than three honest mem- bers in the board, and then it is necessary to be con- tent with such speculations as can be carried through by a " Solid Seven." This considerably restricts the field for enterprise. Lately the discovery that the annual order fixing water rates, which is usually considered the most profitable perquisite of the board, can be legally enacted without the mayor's signature, has largely increased the possibilities open to a bare majority, and correspondingly reduced the importance of the mayor. The income of the water company is over one million six hundred thousand dollars a year. The maintenance of this income depends entirely upon the votes of seven members of the board of super- visors, and these seven men have it in their power to keep the company's stock at par or practically to wipe out its value. The stock has never fallen very far below par. The people have repeatedly elected supervisors pledged to make material reductions in water rates, but the pledges are never kept. Under the present system of government there is absolutely 92 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. no remedy for these breaches of faith. Almost all of the nostrums commonly recommended have been tried. The plan of " electing good men to office " is followed at almost every election, and the only result is to turn good men into bad. The most sub- stantial and respected citizens in the community turn rascals when they become supervisors. The concentration of temptation is too much for them. The plan of rewards and punishments has been tried to the fullest extent. For years it has been the custom to promote honest supervisors to the mayor- alty, and from that the road has been open to the governorship, while dishonest ones have been dropped into political oblivion at the end of their first terms. There have always been a few ambi- tious aspirants in training for higher office, but the majority of the supervisors have been willing to sacrifice their political future for the sake of winning an independent competency for life in two years. Mass meetings have been held, and " ringing resolu- tions" adopted, mayors have remonstrated, and newspapers have bombarded the board with " scath- ing editorials," but as all these protests have been destitute of legal authority, the community having given an irrevocable power of attorney for two years, the supervisors have stolidly consummated their bargains without even taking the trouble to defend them. What would have been the situation under the plan proposed ? In the first place it would have been necessary for the corporation to obtain pos. session of sixty-one men instead of seven, and this MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 93 fact alone would have been likely either to raise the cost beyond what the company could afford to pay, or to reduce the temptation to a point at which it could be resisted. Supposing this difficulty sur- mounted, the work would have only begun. As soon as the corporation acquired possession of a councilman, he would be recalled by his precinct assembly, and another sent to take his place. It would be necessary to corrupt the whole city before a stable majority in the council could be secured. But before matters had pro- gressed very far in that direction, the subject would have been taken out of the hands of the council and submitted to a direct vote of the people. Obviously bribery under such circum- stances would be a waste of money, of which no sensible corporation would be guilty. A reasonable policy would be adopted, which could be defended before the public by honest arguments, and the resources, now spent in corruption, would be saved, to the common benefit of the pockets of the stock- holders and the morals of the community. Another common evil in San Francisco is fraudu- lent street work. Paving contractors are usually expected to share their profits with the officials who pass upon the performance of their contracts. If they make a satisfactory division, bad work passes as easily as good. If they refuse, good work is as certain to be rejected as bad. Obviously good jobs under such conditions are scarce. The public knows that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but, not knowing how to apply a remedy, it does 94 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. nothing. It would do no good to complain to the mayor. He has no authority to interfere with street work. That is under joint control of the superin- tendent of streets and the street committee of the board of supervisors. These irresponsible auto- crats may be, and often are, of different parties, so that even the resource of partisan discipline, such as it is, fails when applied to them. Is a party respon- sible for a corrupt superintendent of streets to be punished for the benefit of a party responsible for his corrupt partners in the board of supervisors? And what if the situation be, as sometimes happens, that the obnoxious officials do not represent either party, but were elected by a non-partisan uprising for reform? Of course the people can threaten the culprits with individual defeat at the next election, and this is usually done, but the menace of political action two years in the future does not protect the streets in the meantime not to speak of the paralyzing certainty that the persons to be eK will faithfully copy the examples set by their predecessors. If the government were organized on the pro- posed basis, any imperfect piece of street work would be noticed by the citizens of the precinct immediately affected, and would be discussed at the next meeting of their local assembly. The councilman from that precinct would be called upon to have the matter righted. He would demand an explanation from the superintendent of streets in an open session of the council. If the superin- tendent laid the blame upon a subordinate, he MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 95 would be required to dismiss that subordinate or assume the responsibility himself. If he chose the latter alternative, it would become the duty of the mayor to remove him, and the failure of the mayor to take action would be punishable by the council, which in turn would be held to account by the voters in their various assemblies. Of course the discovery of misconduct would not necessarily be left entirely to the people of the localities especially affected. Any resident of the city would have the right to direct attention to any fault he might discover in the administration of any branch of the government. Any member of the council could force any head of a department to furnish a public explanation of any suspicious circumstance occur- ring within his jurisdiction. Newspaper charges of mismanagement and corruption, which now are empty sensations, forgotten as soon as made, would then lead in every case to definite results. No journal could be so destitute of influence as to be unable to secure the cooperation of a councilman in putting its accusations into official form. Instead of calling upon the people to rise and beat the air in unavailing wrath, it would be able to concentrate the whole force of public opinion, not only in a moral, but in a legal, form upon the precise points at which it could accomplish the needed results. But now let us proceed to the crucial test of municipal reform in America the government of the city of New York. Any plan that would insure a pure and efficient administration there would work well anywhere. 96 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. New York is governed by corporations of politi- cians organized to exploit the various sources of revenue legitimately and illegitimately controlled by the persons who hold the municipal offices. The corporation at present in possession is known as Tammany Hall, but it is a mistake to suppose that the defeat or even the total destruction of Tammany would imply any permanent change in the methods of municipal administration. It is estimated that the city government of New York is equivalent to a capital of eight hundred million dollars, the income of which may be enjoyed by whatever combination of politicians succeeds in capturing it. It is doing violence to all the principles of human nature to imagine that this booty will be left to the disposal of high-minded political amateurs after the art of acquiring it has been so thoroughly taught by Tammany and its predecessors. Reform is spas- modic, but greed is permanent. Greed worl the time; reform works when it has no previous engagements. If Tammany were destroyed, a new combination, just as powerful and just as hungry, would be in control within four years. The machinery of government in New York has been brought to almost the highest possible point of perfection attainable under the principles now in VOL; tie. The confusion and irresponsibility that reign in San Francisco and other cities have been replaced by an almost complete concentration of administrative authority in the hands of the mayor, and the opportunities for corruption open to the common council have been nearly eliminated. Yet MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 97 New York is unable to secure even a tolerably good government for more than two years out of six. The only resource left to try on the old lines is the complete separation of municipal affairs from State and national politics, and this is the straw at which reformers are now grasping most hopefully. But a little reflection must show that no radical change in the present conditions can be expected from this reform, desirable as it is in itself. It has been tried in various cities without startling results. If it were completely established in New York, the biennial election would still be a lottery. The people of Brooklyn thought that they were getting good mayors when they elected Mr. Chapin and Mr. Boody. A mistake once made, would be irrevocable for two years, and in that time a new combination could be built up as formidable as Tammany. By virtue of its possession of the powers of the city government it would control the largest, most compact, and best organized mass of votes in the field, and to defeat it all the antago- nistic elements would have to be united in the support of a single ticket. Two opposition tickets, under the prevailing system of plurality elections, would insure the success of the combination. If the plan of government advocated in these pages were adopted for New York, it would be advisable, for the sake of convenience, to put a thousand voters in each precinct. As it is not likely that over four-fifths of the number would be in attendance at any one time, this would not swell the assemblies to an unwieldly size. On the basis 7 98 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. of a total registration of three hundred thousand, -the city council would contain three hundred mem- bers. These would not be swept into place on a general ticket on which, to most of the voters, the names were mere fortuitous collocations of syllables, but each would be elected on his own individual merits by a meeting of his neighbors at which he was bodily in evidence. The nominations would be made at the hour of election, and the beetle-bi < plug-ugly, ambitious of a seat in the council, would have to stand up and let his fellow-citizens see what they were voting for. The candidates could be called upon by any voter to express their views upon the proper choice for mayor, and the nature of a desirable municipal policy. This exhibition would be followed by an immediate vote, confined to the single office of councilman for the precinct, with no outside complications. The council thus elected would choose the mayor. This action would be more closely scrutinized than any other in its career. A bad choice would ;^et the councilmen responsible for it into immediate trouble with their constituents. They would be recalled and replaced by others who would vote to correct the mistake by removing the bad mayor and elect- ing a better one. The new mayor would appoint his heads of departments, and the character of his appointment would be subjected to microscopic scrutiny by the press. If there were any faults that failed to be detected by that examination, they would be disclosed when the new officials took their seats in the city council and submitted to a weekly MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 99 baiting regarding the management of their depart- ments. Whenever an acute reporter discovered a lurking job in any corner of the city government, he would prompt some friend in the council first, of course, filing a caveat on it for the benefit of his paper to ask embarrassing questions of the responsible official. Under this system the government would have a constant tendency to improve, instead of to dete- riorate, as it has now. The quality of the council would grow better from year to year, as the voters in the precinct assemblies became better acquainted with each other and had time to observe the conduct of their representatives. Unfit councilmen would be gradually eliminated, and the men who had com- mended themselves to their precinct assemblies by their intelligent interest in public affairs would be substituted. Of course there would always be a number of bad men in the council. There are certain districts in New York which could be fairly represented only by thieves and ruffians, and these would naturally elect thieves and ruffians to act for them. But the influence of this vicious vote would be localized and rendered harmless, instead of being permitted, as now, to taint the elections of the whole city, and even to determine the choice of a President of the United States. The council, in the end, would perfectly reflect the moral condi- tion of its constituents. So long as the mass of the people remains sound, that is all we need, and when the mass becomes corrupt, it will be time to abandon the attempt to maintain self-government. 100 SU(i(.I-:s'l K'NS ON GOVERNMENT. Compare the opportunities open to the well-mean- ing; individual citizen under this system with those open to him under the present methods. In the New York of to-day, the individual voter can do absolutely nothing in the intervals between cam- paigns. Throughout these periods he must be content to be governed by an irresponsible despot- ism. Upon the approach of an election it is open to him to decide whether to support or oppose Tam- many. Assuming that he so far subdues his feelings as to determine to act through the domi- nant machine, and further that he carries his devotion to the public welfare to such an extent as to heed the appeals of reformers to " take part in the primaries," he goes on the appointed evening to a hall tilled with men of unfamiliar aspect and not apparently intent upon the advancement of munic- ipal reform. I le is handed a ballot as large as half a page of a newspaper, filled with hundreds of names in closely printed columns. Probably not one of these names is known to our citizen, but he can safely assume that if elected their holders will stand, in the general committee and the nominating conventions, as the defenders of all the evils which our reformer particularly desires to suppress. It will be safe, therefore, for him to scratch them all and make out a new list. Supposing this physical impossibility to be performed, and the amended ballot, with the names of three or four hundred trustworthy candidates written upon it, to be dropped into the box, there remains the problem of getting it out. Our pertinacious citizen remains MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 101 on duty until the polls are closed, and then waits patiently for the returns. As preparations are made for putting out the lights and clearing the hall, he ventures to ask when the count is going to begin. An amiable inspector informs him that there is no hurry about that the box will be taken up to the Wigwam and opened sometime in the course of the next day. If the protesting citizen had a thousand com- panions, and if instead of one hastily scratched ticket they had provided a complete supply of properly printed opposition ballots in advance, this last precaution would finish them. In the absence of a quarrel among ttie bosses, the only opportunity to make a stand against Tammany corruption is at the polls in a general election, where a hundred and fifty thousand voters of all shades of opinion must sink their individuality and loyally sup-~ port exactly the same list of candidates, prepared for them by conferences that must necessarily take in a number of politicians as little worthy of confidence as the Tammany sachems themselves. This supreme effort must be made on a fixed day, and a failure or mistake then is irremediable for two years. In any case the part which any one ordinary citizen can play is so infinitesimal that the spirit of independent revolt against misgovernment is crushed out in most men by the apparent impossibility of effecting results. Under the suggested reorganization of the gov- ernment, the individual citizen would have at all times the fullest opportunity to make his influence 102 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. felt. Whenever he saw anything going wrong he could bring up the subject in his precinct assembly, where he would feel at home, and where his char- acter would have its due weight. If his arguments were convincing, he could secure a vote of the assembly instructing its councilman to demand a public explanation of the responsible official, or, if necessary, removing the councilman and substitut- ing one more in sympathy with the desires of his constituents. If the explanation demanded of the executive official proved unsatisfactory, coiineilmen from other precincts would at once join in the attack, the press would take the matter up, and before long there would have to be reform or resig- nations. Under the present system a corrupt government is corrupt all through, and the only light that is thrown into its foul recesses must come from the outside, from newspapers or other amateur investi- gators, with no official standing and no certainly authentic sources of information. Under the new plan, with each precinct assembly a living entity of itself, there would always, in the worst possible cir- cumstances, be a number of precincts controlled bv the best citizens, and the representatives of these in the city council would be in a position to posses inside acquaintance with every detail of the munic- ipal administration. They would have the right to call every head of department publicly to account, and to put searching questions, demanding categor- ical answers, regarding every instance of misconduct. With the chiefs of the city government thus pub- MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 103 licly on trial at every meeting- of the council, these meeting's would be fully reported in the newspapers, which would make them the great news " features " of their next morning's issues. The effect would inevitably be to arouse an agitation that would lead one precinct assembly after another to recall its unworthy representative in the council, and as the remainder saw their numbers diminishing and those of the reformers increasing, there would come a stampede for the winning side. The honest minor- ity would grow to the necessary two-thirds majority, the corrupt mayor would be removed, and his successor would institute a general house-cleaning in the departments. It may be said that the power of removing the mayor might be used by a dishonest council to rid itself of an honest executive. This danger would be effectively averted by forbidding the removal of the mayor except on two months' notice. If the mayor were plainly in the right and the council in the wrong, the citizens in their precinct assemblies could take advantage of the delay to instruct their councilmen to stop the proceedings, and, if necessary, they could recall their representatives and substitute others friendly to the mayor's policy. If, at the end of two months, there still remained a two-thirds majority of the council in favor of removal, it would be because the people plainly desired that action. One objection to the proposed plan may be said to be the fact that it subdivides the city so minutely as to imprison candidates for the council within too narrow limits. It should not be necessary, however, 104 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. for a councilman to live in the precinct he repre- sented. Every assembly should have the privilege of ranging over the whole city to find the man best suited to its purpose. The very minuteness of the subdivisions would tend to break down the per- nicious American habit of the localization of candi- dacies. A representative of some kind can always be found in :i ward, and consequently, even when the requirement is not enforced by law, there is a tendency to confine candidates within ward lines. But the proposed precincts would be so small that it would often be necessary to go outside of them to find somebody at once willing to serve and able to make a creditable appearance before the voters, and the good results of this practice would lead to its extension in other directions. When the people once became accustomed to the workings of the new system, they would draw the best men into the public service, wherever they might be found. CHAPTER VIII. TOWN AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. The principles already developed are equally applicable throughout the whole range of govern- ment in this country, from that of the rural township to that of the nation, and need only modifications in details to fit them to any particular case. In cities it is easy to carve out precincts of approx- imately equal size as the electoral units. In the rural districts regard must be paid to historical, topographical, and industrial conditions. When a certain community has been in the habit of consid- ering itself as an independent political entity, it is not well to cut it up because it has more than five hundred voters, or to tack it to another because it has less. Experience in New England has shown that a town can be satisfactorily governed by a single town-meeting when fifteen hundred voters, or even more, are entitled to take part in the assembly, and other towns govern themselves with fifty voters or less. As a rule, however, it would be advisable to introduce the precinct system when the number of electors ran much over a thousand. In these mat- ters a very wide latitude should be allowed to the discretion of localities, and the central legislative power should interfere as little as possible with the wishes of the people immediately concerned. (105) IOC) SUCCF.STIMNS ON GOVERNMENT. It is the custom in most American States to treat towns and counties as the creatures of the legisla- tures. Their legal powers are exhaustively enu- merated, and no action can be taken that is not expressly provided for. I should reverse this rule. Local government is nearer to the people than any other, and therefore, if properly organized, ought to have less need of restrictions in dealing with mat- ters within its sphere. The people of a given township know their own local needs and capacities better than the members of the legislature from the other end of the State. If they feel that it would be to their advantage to maintain a town library, or gymnasium, or bath-house, or street-car line, or electric-light plant, or art gallery; to encourage manufactures by exemption from taxation; to estab- lish labor stations for unemployed workmen, or not to do any of these things, it ought to be in their power to do or not to do them without being in any way hampered by general or special laws. Each town and county should be a sovereign republic in its local affairs, subject only to the general legal safeguards of property, contracts, and order. The recognition of this principle would immensely sim- plify the work of the State legislatures, and remove a prolific source of intrigue and corruption. There are no more unscrupulous lobbyists than the repre- sentatives of local interests, appealing to an indiffer- ent legislature for privileges that ought to be entirely within the discretion of the people immedi- ately concerned, and there is no more corrupting influence in the legislature than the habit of acting- TOWN AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 107 on matters upon which there can be no effective public opinion among the constituents of the mem- bers to enforce honest decisions. Some of the most venal members of the New York legislature are rural representatives who purchase, by absolute fidelity to the interests of their own constituents, an unlimited license to " strike " the corporations and tax-payers of the great cities. It is never safe to entrust a law-maker with jurisdiction over questions in which the public opinion to which he is immedi- ately responsible is not directly interested. There is little new to be said about the govern- ment of the rural town. Its main lines have been admirably worked out in the New England town meeting. It would probably be found best, how- ever, to assimilate the town meeting in its methods of action to the precinct assemblies already pro- posed for cities. Instead of coming together once a year for an all day's session, in which thirty or forty subjects are to be disposed of, and a dozen officers elected, the citizens could act more effec- tively by meeting once a month or oftener in the evening, and dealing with a few subjects at a time. The primary assembly, or, as it would probably continue to be called, the town meeting, should exercise the legislative and control the executive management of the town government. In addition it should perform the other functions already described as belonging to the precinct assemblies in the cities. It should elect a member of the county board of supervisors, take its part in the election of members of the State legislature and of Congress, 108 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVKRNMKNT. and serve as the organ for the expression of the popular will through the initiative and referendum. The executive officers of the town would be in effect a committee of the town meeting, just as the British Cabinet is a committee of the House of Commons. Each town should determine for itself what officers it needed, and the scope of their duties. It would probably be found best in all cases, however, to have one chief executive officer or town president, who would appoint and remove all the minor offi- cials. There should also be aboard of trustees lo attend to all legislative business that did not require the action of the people. In towns large enough to be divided into three or more precincts, one trustee should represent each precinct; in those in which all the voters met in a common assembly all the trustees should be elected at large. In towns of the former class the trustees should have the pov appointing and removing the chief executive ; in those of the latter class this power should be lodged in the town meeting. Of course in any case every trustee would hold his office at the pleasure of the popular assembly that had elected him. In the government of the small towns the people could conveniently perform a much larger share of public duties than in that of great cities. Every considerable expenditure of money, all street improvements, all questions of license and local taxation, and all important contracts, could properly be left to their determination. In towns divided into several precincts, it would probably be found of advantage to give each precinct assembly the con- TOWN AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 109 trol of such of its own street and road improvements as were to be paid for by special assessments on the adjoining property. This would bring such work nearer to the persons who had to pay for it, and it would develop a spirit of emulation among the different sections of the town which would tend to bring them all up to the level of the most pro- gressive. The government of counties is already developing over a great part of the United States along the right lines. We already have the board of super- visors, which needs only to be suitably combined with the town meeting to be a satisfactory organ of legislation. In California the initiative for county ordinances has just been introduced, and fifty per cent of the voters have now the power to compel the submission to the people of any measure they desire to have adopted. The principal defects of the best forms of county organization now existing are that the responsibility of the supervisors to their constituents is not fully secured, and that there is no unity in the executive government. In some States the supervisors are elected by artificial districts so large as not to permit any common feel- ing or interests among their inhabitants. In Califor- nia, for instance, counties larger than any New England State, except Maine, are governed by five supervisors, each of whom represents an unorganized district so extensive that the people of one end of it are strangers to those of the other. As the elec- tions are for four years, there is hardly more effective responsibility than in the United States 110 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. Senate. In New York, where each town has its supervisor and the elections are annual, the situa- tion is much better in this respect, but it is still not all that could be desired. Every member of the board should represent a body of men capable of getting together in a common assembly and dis- cussing his character and conduct, and he should hold his place as long as he satisfied this assembly, and no longer. If every precinct had a supervisor, and the precincts averaged five hundred voters each, a county of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, or five thousand voters, would have ten supervisors. In very populous counties, composed of great cities with fringes of suburban towns, such as Cook County, Illinois ; Kings County, New York ; Alle- gheny County, Pennsylvania, and Hamilton County, Ohio, the members of the city council could also act as supervisors, the representatives of the outside precincts meeting with them at fixed times for the transaction of county business. The various county executive officers are now usually elected independently. The same reasons that call for unity and unevadible responsibility in other spheres of government call for them equally here. It would be as easy to have a single executive head for a county as for a city or State, and this head, himself responsible to the supervisors, and through them to the people, should have the appointment and removal of all his subordinates. Two officials, however, should be free from his control. One is the auditor, who should be eleeted TOWN AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. Ill by the whole people, as in cities, and for similar reasons. The atmosphere of county seats breeds " court-house rings" with peculiar facility, and the people should have the assistance of an entirely independent expert in checking the financial opera- tions of their servants. The other is the sheriff, who should not be elected either by the people of the county or by the supervisors, but, as all our recent experience shows, should be appointed by, and responsible to, the governor of the State. It is the duty of the sheriff to preserve the peace and execute the laws without fear or favor. It is the duty of a roadmaster to make such road improve- ments and repairs as the people of the vicinage desire, but it is not the duty of a sheriff to give so much protection to life and property as may suit his neighbors. He must enforce the laws absolutely to their fullest extent. Though all the voters in the county may join a lynching party, or a whitecap raid, or a mob of riotous strikers, he must not hesitate to preserve the peace, and if necessary to summon the military power of the State to his aid. To ask this of him when he is dependent for office upon the men his duty requires him to suppress is to put too great a strain on ordinary human nature. Some men bear the test nobly, but from Fire Island to Sacramento the country is full of warnings that it is unsafe to leave the enforcement of the laws to local sentiment. The sheriff should be a State officer acting within the county, not a county officer executing the laws of the State. If that were the rule, disorder would generally be suppressed before 112 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. it had time to grow into insurrection. With this one exception there should be as little interference as possible with local self-government. Within its own sphere the county should be a democratic republic, just as the town should be in its smaller sphere and the State and nation in their larger ones. CHAPTER IX. THE STATE LEGISLATURE. In the light of the experience of the past thirty years it is amusing to read of the lofty expectations cherished by the founders of our political system with regard to the legislatures of the States. They were to be composed of the wisest and purest men of each commonwealth, selected by their neighbors for conspicuous merit, and standing as vigilant sentinels between the people and the encroaching power of the federal government. In short, they were to be and to do everything which the modern legislature most palpably is not and does not. The failure of our current political methods is more marked in the State legislatures than any- where else except in the government of cities. All of these bodies are ignorant and inefficient most of them are corrupt. They are usually controlled by corporations and bosses. They are so densely stupid that if properly managed they can even be cajoled into passing good laws. Last year the legislature of California passed one of the best and most stringent corrupt practices acts in the world without knowing what it was doing. The bill was quietly prepared on the outside and put through as a harmless concession to a few innocent reformers who might as well be humored in their 8 (113) 114 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. unpractical theories. The dismay of the politicians when they found out what they had really done was pathetic. Legislatures are corrupt and ignorant because, under our present methods, able and honest men can not usually get into them without sacrifices fur which the honor of membership is not sufficient reward ; because men of a low order of intelligence and morality can easily reach them by methods well within their capacity and congenial to their disjx >si- tion, and because when a man is once in, there are the strongest temptations to corruption, and hardly any pressure, outside of his own conscience, in the direction of honesty. In most of the States the leg- islative sessions are biennial. A member is elected in November, goes to the State capital in January, and sits for sixty or ninety days. His constituents have no hold on him, and, unless he represents a country district, most of them do not know his name. He is one of a crowd, and the session expires before he has produced a clear impression on the public mind. If he takes the precaution to avoid mixing himself in some conspicuous scandal, he can "trans- act business " every day with corporations and syn- dicates without getting himself especially talked about. After the close of the session he has over a year and a half of retirement before the next elec- tion, and long before that time expires nineteen voters out of twenty have forgotten his existence/ Moreover, the organization of the Legislature fur- nishes the most perfect possible shield for miscon- duct. All laws must have the concurrence of two THE STATE LEGISLATURE. 115 houses and the governor. In the case of good bills, nothing is easier than to smother them in committee in one house or the other, or to let them fall between the houses through disagreements on points of detail, or to crowd them out by other business, or to put them in such shape as to invite a veto. No indi- vidual member can be held responsible for the fail- ure to accomplish results in- such circumstances. When bad bills are to be passed, the evasion of responsibility is equally easy. In the tumult of the closing hours of a session almost anything can be slipped through without fixing the blame definitely upon the average member. At the worst, the responsibility for the enactment of such measures is divided among the members of both houses and the governor, and the share that belongs to any ordinary private in the legislative ranks is too small to be burdensome. These evils can be corrected by precisely the same methods that have been suggested for the correc- tion of corresponding ones in the cities. The Legis- lature, like the city council, must be brought into immediate and permanent contact with the individ- ual voter, who must retain an unbroken control over its action. There must be no division of responsi- bility between two houses and an executive with the veto power. The arguments for a second chamber lose their force in any case when the people retain the right of reviewing legislation through the refer- endum, but such a chamber is especially undesirable when it takes the form of a State Senate. Bad as the average legislature is, the Senate is almost inva- 116 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. riably its worst element. It is a pestiferous little cabal, always open to corrupt influences, always ready to strangle good bills and smooth the way for bad ones. The bicameral system was defended by Madison in the Federalist on six grounds : 1'irst. That a Senate " doubles the security of the people by requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient." It is obvious that this argument has weight only as against a single assembly of unchecked powers. The function here assigned to tlie Senate can be much better, more effectively, and more certainly performed by the people through the- re fere ml urn. Second. That "the necessity of a Senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sud- den and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions." Clearly the right of review at the polls would be equally effective here. I may men- tion a curious incident illustrating the comparative value of the two proposed checks on "sudden and violent passions." During the last session of the legislature of California a Sacramento newspaper criticised the conduct of the members in private life. As soon as the infuriated legislators came together after reading the articles the Assembly proposed a constitutional amendment removing the seat of government from Sacramento to San Jose. THE STATE LEGISLATURE. 117 The Senate, which exists for the purpose of moderat- ing "sudden and violent passions " and preventing the passage of " intemperate and pernicious resolu- tions," promptly concurred in the resolution by more than the requisite two-thirds vote, and so far as the legislature could accomplish it, a public investment of five million dollars and the estab- lished business interests of an important city were sacrificed for a newspaper squib. The Supreme Court subsequently decided that the resolution had not been passed in the proper form, and was there- fore void, but if it had been allowed to reach the polls the people would have corrected the reckless- ness of their representatives. Tliird. That a single popular assembly would have " a want of due acquaintance with the objects and principles of legislation. It is not possible that an assembly of men, called for the most part from pursuits of a private nature, continued in appoint- ment for a short time, and led by no permanent motive to devote the intervals of public occupation to a study of the laws, the affairs, and the compre- hensive interest of the country, should, if left wholly to themselves, escape a variety of important errors in the exercise of their legislative trust." This point would be fully covered by the election of members for indefinite terms. It is not met at all by the current methods of electing State Senators, few of whom have over six months of actual serv- ice in their entire time of office. Fourth. That " the mutability in the public councils arising from a rapid succession of new 118 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. members, however qualified they may be, points out, in the strongest manner, the necessity of some stable institution in the government." This assumes, of course, the complete renewal of the assembly at short intervals. On the plan of gradual renewal proposed, the assembly would be much more stable in its composition than any senate is now. /v/?//. That " without a select and stable member of the government the esteem of foreign powers will not only be forfeited by an unenlightened and variable policy, proceeding from the causes already mentioned, but the national councils will not p< that sensibility to the opinion of the world which is perhaps not less necessary in order to merit than it is to obtain its respect and confidence." These con- siderations, of course, apply chiefly to national affairs, but in any case they are fully met by the proposed method of election and tenure of office. Sixth. That without a senate there would be a " want, in some important cases, of a due respon- sibility in the government to the people, arising from that frequency of elections which in other cases produces this responsibility." Clearly this objection is totally irrelevant to an assembly whose members serve during good behavior. The principles already developed in treating of city councils apply equally well to the composition of State legislatures. If we assume the State to be divided into precincts averaging five hundred voters each, any State containing less than two hundred and fifty thousand voters, or say one mill- ion two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, THE STATE LEGISLATURE. 119 could conveniently allow each precinct to elect a member of the single representative assembly which would constitute its legislature. Nearly half of the States of the Union would come in this class at present, and their legislatures would range in size from about twenty-five to five hundred members each. The latter number may be taken as the highest effective working limit, and it would prob- ably be found best in practice to set the limit lower. In the more populous States, two, three, four, or more adjacent precincts would elect a joint repre- sentative. The same rule would be followed in the smaller States in the case of country precincts con- taining much less than the average number of inhabitants. A representative, once elected, would hold his place until recalled by his constituents. He could be called upon at any time to give an account of his conduct before the voters of his district in their primary assemblies. If he repre- sented a single precinct, the assembly of that pre- cinct would have the right to revoke his credentials whenever he ceased to give satisfaction ; if he rep- resented several precincts, a motion for his recall could be made in any assembly of the district, and if it prevailed there, would have to be voted upon by all the other assemblies of the district. The acts of the Legislature would not be subject to exec- utive veto, but any measure on which the governor, or one-fifth of the members of the Legislature, or one-tenth of the precinct assemblies of the State, demanded the referendum would have to be sub- mitted to popular vote before becoming a law. 120 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. The Legislature would elect the governor, and, by a two-thirds vote, after two months' notice, could remove him. The reasons for granting this power, and the safeguards against its abuse, would be the same as in the case of the appointment and removal of mayors by the city councils, and of executive heads in general by the corresponding legislative bodies. The heads of the principal departments of the State government would have seats in the Leg- islature, without votes, and would be consulting members of the committees dealing with the sub- jects under their charge. It is certain that under this system the average member of the State assembly would hold his place for many years. He would be able to acquire a thorough familiarity with the workings of the State government, as well as with the practical meth- legislation. Not being under obligation to any boss for his seat, nobody could sell his vote except him- self. But if he sold his vote the fact would imme- diately become known to his constituents, to whom he would not be a casual stranger, but an intimate acquaintance. He would be in danger of recall, and recall would mean, not the loss of the fag-end of a cheap sixty-day job, but the ruin of the promise of a long and honorable career. Besides, a bribed vote would be not only dangerous, but useless, for a reasonable suspicion of such a thing would lead at once to a demand for the referendum on the measure in whose interest it appeared to be east. In such circumstances nobody would be offering money for votes, and the members would be sub- THE STATE LEGISLATURE. 121 ject to no temptation. Thus the Legislature would improve, both in ability and in character. The length of the sessions would be a question to be determined by the needs of each State. Whether short or long, they should be held at least once a year, and the Legislature should be considered a continuous body, in which measures once introduced would retain their standing until finally disposed of. Biennial sessions are popular now, simply because legislatures can not be trusted, and their meetings are considered public calamities that should be incurred as seldom as possible. The business of the State often suffers by a two years' delay, and if the law-making bodies were able and honest there would be no more reason for limiting their sessions to alter- nate years than for doing the same thing in the case of a board of directors of a railroad. The conditions of modern life change so rapidly that when a growing State is bound in legislative ligaments that can not be relaxed except at brief intervals two years apart, there is certain to be distress. That legislative business should be continuous rather than spasmodic is a proposition that needs little argument. More time and energy are wasted in State legislatures, and in Congress, on measures which get partly through, and fail for want of time, than are devoted to those which finally become laws. There are bills in Congress which have appeared at regular intervals for twenty, thirty, or fifty years, have advanced as far as favorable committee reports, or even passage by one house or the other, and then have fallen in the ruck of crowded-out measures at 122 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. the end of the short session, to be revived in the next Congress, and laboriously helped through the same preliminary work as before, with the same futility. When a legislature meets once in two years, for a ninety-day session, organizes itself as a new body, receives every suggested project of law in the form of an entirely new bill, and appoints its committees to investigate all these measures from the beginning as if they had never been heard of before, it has not much time left for the actual con- sideration of many bills on their merits. If it were a permanent body, perpetually changing its indi- vidual membership, but never losing its own corpo- rate identity ; if its officers and committees retained their places until discharged, and if a measure once placed on its calendar were certain of being event- ually reached, considered, and disposed of, an enor- mous amount of wasted time would be saved. heartsick advocates of mildewed legislation would be relieved of suspense, the frenzied orgy of law- making by which lobbyists profit at the end of every session would be dispensed with, and new needs would no longer be obstructed by the debris of past failures. A legislature so constituted would be trusted by the people, and it would deserve the trust. If, by any chance, the public confidence were ever betrayed. the people would always have a remedy within easy reach. CHAPTER X. THE STATE EXECUTIVE. The American lack of system and responsibility in government is carried to the last extreme in the organization of the executive authority of the States. Some States are administered in a less chaotic manner than others, but as a rule the governing power is cut up into so many discon- nected and unrelated pieces that it is impossible either to preserve harmony among them or to maintain any approach to an effective responsibility for misconduct. The governor is supposed to be the supreme executive head, but his nominal sub- ordinates, in most cases, are absolutely independent of him. They hold their places by the same tenure by which he holds his own ; they are elected at the same time, serve for the same terms, and are subject to removal by the same process of impeachment. Sometimes the unity of the administration is still further broken up, and responsibility still further obscured, by the ingenious device of making the terms overlap. The governor and some of his assistants are elected at one time, and the other heads of departments a year or two years later. In this way the last shred of public control over the government is eliminated. When the governor and all the State officers are elected at once, and all (123) 124 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. happen to belong to the same party, it is possible to exercise a sort of clumsy justice by turning out the party if anything goes wrong in any department. But if only half the officers are elected at once, and tilings go wrong during the next two years, and then the other party gets the remainder of the officials, and they misbehave, too, the hold-overs < >f the first party continuing their misconduct, how is justice to be wreaked the next time ? The administration of national affairs, imperfect as it is, is undeniably better than that of the average State government, and this superiority can hardly come from anything else than the concentration of executive power in the hands of the President. If the governor of a State were given the right to appoint and remove his subordinates there would be a great gain in administrative efficiency. But there would still be something lacking. The gov- ernor would regulate the minor officials, but who would regulate the governor? His responsibility, under the present system, would be limited to the possibility of impeachment for crime, and of c for reelection at the end of his term. If he kept clear of criminal offenses and did not expect to be reflected, there would be no way of reaching him. Incompetency, reckless mismanagement, inexcus- able complaisance toward unfaithful subordinates, or even corruption in many of its most dangerous forms, might endanger the public safety without subjecting the governor to impeachment, or hasten- ing the slow progress of his official term. To be sure, his party could be punished for his misdeeds THE STATE EXECUTIVE. 125 at the next election, but this form of postponed vicarious atonement would neither afford relief from present evils nor insure against their repeti- tion under the new administration. What is needed is just such a continuous responsi- bility on the part of the governor himself to some superior power as he should have the right to enforce on his subordinates. An unfaithful clerk can be disciplined, not through a party defeat at the end of four years, but personally and at once, by an immediate dismissal. An unfaithful head of department or governor should be brought to account in the same way. The proper authority to remove the head of department would be the governor. The proper authority to remove the governor would be the people. As, under the system of continuous leg- islative responsibility described in the last chapter, the people would at all times be faithfully repre- sented in the Legislature, which they are not now, they could safely allow the Legislature to act for them in maintaining their control over the executive. The possibility of the abuse of this trust by the rep- resentatives could be prevented by requiring two months' notice of the removal of the governor, as in the case of the mayors of cities. There is no reason for any material structural dif- ference between the government of a State and that of a city on the one hand, or that of the nation on the other. At the last census there were twenty- eight States with smaller populations than the city of New York, and four with more inhabitants each than the Union had at the time of the Revolu- 126 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. tion. Several European kingdoms are less impor- tant in every way than the principal American vStatcs. The State governments have to deal with education, police, and justice, as those of cities do, and they have their armies, lands, and internal improvements, and work in aid of labor, agricul- ture, and mining, like the government of the nation. There are State and national bureaus of labor, State and national railroad commissioners, State and national weather bureaus, and State and national supervision of banks. The form of admin- istration that produces the best results in one sphere ought to produce them in the other. Perhaps the most glaring example of the ineffi- ciency of the present methods of government in the States is to be found in the attempts to regulate railroads. The favorite machinery for this purpose is a railroad commission; in some cases having merely advisory powers, and in others invested with despotic authority. Without such authority it is impossible to com pel obedience to the decisions of the commission, but when it is given it is found almost impossible to prevent its abuse. In California the commissioners are elected for four years, and although the system was created by the new consti- tution of 1879, f r the express purpose of restraining the exactions of a single corporation, the people have never succeeded in all the fifteen years that have since elapsed in electing a commission which that corporation has been unable to control. Rampant anti-monopoly demagogues; substantial, conserva- tive citizens, and machine politicians have all been THE STATE EXECUTIVE. 127 tried, and all have succumbed without a struggle to the arguments of the railroad lobby. The railroad commission system has been wrecked by the one per- vading political vice of irresponsibility. If, instead of a headless board, intrenched in office for four years, there had been one expert commissioner, appointed by the governor, holding his place during good behavior, and subject to questions in a legislature, itself in immediate touch with the people, one of three things would have happened. The commis- sioner would have done what the people wanted done, or he would have convinced them that they were wrong and he was right, or there would have been a new commissioner. The pest of executive boards, from which the national government is comparatively free, but which plays such an important part in the demor- alization of politics in the cities, is peculiarly preva- lent in the States. California, to recur again to the examples with which I am most familiar, has com- missions to look after railroads, State prisons, asy- lums, reformatories, harbors at three different ports, pilotage at three ports, the Yosemite Valley, the State Capitol, fish, health, dentistry, pharmacy, vet- erinary, medicine, State burial grounds, horticulture, viticulture, agriculture, silk culture, mining, educa- tion, arbitration, banks, building and loan associa- tions, claims, and equalization of taxes. The result of all this subdivision of powers is extravagance and general mismanagement. The superfluity of boards and commissions to do the work that ought to be done by single officers, inten- 128 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. sifies the obscurity, which is the worst of the dete- riorating influences to which our present State administrations are subject. At best our State offi- cials are too much in the dark. They are farther from the people than almost any other class of pub- lic servants. Cabinet officers at Washington work in a comparative blaze of light, and even in the govern- ment of cities the proceedings of unfaithful struct superintendents and police commissioners attract ct >nsiderable attention. But the State capital, except when the Legislature is in session, is under the obser- vation neither of the individual voter nor of the press. It is a retired nook, in which officials who avoid glaring scandals may do or neglect almost anything without bringing themselves into notice. If at every session of the Legislature any member could demand a public explanation from any head of a vState department of anything suspicious in the conduct of his office; if an unsatisfactory expla- nation would throw the burden of approving or punishing mismanagement upon the governor, who would have the power of removal and would be himself responsible to the Legislature for the way in which he exercised it or failed to exercise it, and if the members of the Legislature themselves held their places at the pleasure of their constitu- ents, there would be a substantial increase in the inducements to a faithful performance of duty. There would be light then where there is darkness now, and it is reasonable to suppose that the same law of human nature which now breeds deeds appropriate to darkness would then engender those that could thrive in the light. CHAPTER XL THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. Congress is at once the best and the worst of our various legislative bodies. It contains the highest average of ability ; it is much above the ordinary level in honesty ; it has members representing almost all shades of opinion, and it exhibits con- siderable independence and sometimes a fair degree of capacity for constructive statesmanship. But these merits are balanced by grave faults. Con- gress, like almost all other national parliaments, is clogged with business to such an extent that it is ceasing to be either a deliberative or a working body. At both ends of the Capitol true debate is almost extinct crushed out in the House by the pressure of the legislative machinery, and drowned out in the Senate by floods of inconsequential garrulity. Of the thousands of bills introduced at every ses- sion, the vast majority relate to matters of no public importance. Most of them deal with small private claims, which should never come before Congress at all in separate form, but should be dealt with by a special tribunal; those which passed the scrutiny of the court being subsequently approved by Cor:- gress in a general bill, and the rest being dropped. Time is wasted in every conceivable way, and the result is that the great measures of public policy, 9 (129) 130 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. which should absorb the attention of the national legislative body, are hurriedly considered in the intervals between trivialities. In dealing with possible improvements in Con- gressional organization and methods, I shall treat the subject from two standpoints first that of the government as at present organized; and second, that of the government as it would be if it were symmetrically reorganized on the lines laid down in previous chapters. Such a reorganization would be the work of a long time, and meanwhile the need for immediate reform is pressing. I shall first con- sider, therefore, the changes that may be readily made in the composition and procedure of Congress as it now exists, without the need of constitutional amendments or any radical transformation in the habits of the people. The great evil that afflicts Congress, in common with almost all other national parliaments, is that it is an amateur body set to do professional work. There is no work more complicated or more exacting than that of legislation, and yet it is taken up confidently by lawyers and merchants who never gave it a thought before their election, who treat it as a minor avocation during their terms, and who drop it as soon as they go home. The first requisite to raising the character of Congressional work is to make the members take it seriously. To do this effectively the term of office ought to be lengthened, or, better still, made indefinite, but this would requi stitutional amendment, and much can be done with- out it. As the term is so short, it is all the more THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 131 important that every moment of it should be utilized. At present a new House comes into existence on the fourth of March. Unless called in extra session it meets for the first time in the following December, nine months later. Its organization is not com- pleted before the Christmas holidays, when it goes home for two weeks. Sometimes it spends an addi- tional month or two in discussing its rules. It takes the committees until about the middle of April to mature their projects of legislation, and in the inter- val the House kills time. Unless a tariff bill or some other important political measure demands attention, the general appropriation bills absorb most of the time until the end of June and often longer, leaving new legislation to slip into such crannies as it may find. Congress always tries to adjourn as early as July, if possible, and business other than political is ruthlessly sacrificed in the effort. In December it comes together again. Little is usually accom- plished before the Christmas holidays, and the remaining two months of the term are monopolized by the appropriation bills and such fag-ends of legislation as can be squeezed in between conference reports. It is obvious that little could be accomplished under such conditions, even if Congressional pro- cedure were otherwise well adapted to facilitate the transaction of important business, which it decidedly is not. If the Secretary of the Treasury, appointed in March, first visited his office in the following December, got down to work in April, knocked off in July, began again in January, and retired in 132 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. March in favor of a successor who would not think it necessary to look at the office until the next December, the financial interests of the Government would be likely to suffer. The interests in charge of Congress are certainly no less important than those in charge of the Secretary of the Treasury. The only difference is that the secretary's duties are taken seriously and those of Congress are not. Every Senator and Representative should consider himself in the public service, precisely as the Presi- dent is, or a member of the Cabinet, or a clerk in a department. Congress should sit on every working day in the year, except during such short vacations as would be considered reasonable for a business man to allow to his employes. Meeting on the fourth of March, the House should complete its organization during that month, and it would then have twenty-three months of its term remaining f<>r the orderly transaction of business. By diligent application it would be possible to pass the appro- priation bills by the end of June, but it would be- better to make the fiscal year coincide with tru endar year. This would give ample time for the consideration of the appropriations, and would av< >id statistical confusion. This simple expedient would double the working time of Congress. To increase it still further, the number of members of the House should be red: Almost all national parliaments are too large for the effective management of so much business as they are called upon to handle, and almost all, accordingly, find themselves gorged by their own numbers. Un- THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 133 der the plan of organization heretofore advocated in this book, some State and municipal assemblies would be even larger than the present national House, but this disadvantage would be more than offset by the benefits derived from keeping them in close touch with the people. Beside, their business would be simple and easily managed compared with that dealt with by Congress. As long as we retain the present irresponsible organization of the national legislature, there is no reason why we should not have the advantage to be gained from manageable numbers. A House of one hundred and fifty members would be amply large. On the basis of the last census this would give about fifteen representatives to New York, nine to Illinois, three to California, two to Connecticut, and one each to Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and Wyo- ming. Nobody familiar with Congressional meth- ods would maintain that such an arrangement would not amply represent local interests. Senators arc now as intently concerned for the advancement of legislation demanded by localities in their respect- ive vStates as the representatives from the districts immediately affected, and, as a rule, the entire dele- gation from a State stands together in such matters. It would continue to do so if it were smaller, and, of course, if all the delegations were proportionately reduced in numbers their relative influence would be unchanged. But it would be a good deal better for a State to have one strong man in a House of 134 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. one hundred and fifty members than two weak ones in a House of three hundred and fifty-six. There can be no doubt of the fact that the reduc- tion in numbers would tend to raise the average ability of the House. In the first place, ability is not a very abundant thing, and it would be easier to find one hundred and fifty able men than three hun- dred and fifty-six. In the next place, it is always harder for a small man to make an impression on a large constituency than on a small one. The Senate, despite its pernicious method of election, reaches a distinctly higher average level of ability than the House. The President of the United States is usually a man of larger caliber than the governor of a State, and the governor of a State than the mayor of a city. This increase in the average ability of the House would be immensely promoted if the members were elected by the method of pro- portional representation, as they could easily be whenever a State had an odd number of represent- atives exceeding one. In that case the strongest men of each party in each State would find their way to Congress by a process of natural selection as unerring as that which now keeps them at home. Under the present system a Representative who fails to retain the favor of the politicians of his party in a single district is unable to gain a renotnination, and must retire at the end of his term. This rule tends to the progressive elimination of all the men of original minds and independent characters. The Representative is equally bound to lose his seat, regardless of his personal merits, in the event of a THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 135 change in the political sentiments of a sufficient number of his constituents to hold the balance of power, The change may not affect more than a hun- dred voters out of fifty thousand, but if it is sufficient to shift the control of the district it drives an able man from public life. Under the proportional plan such a man would have no trouble in finding a suf- ficient number of admirers in a State to constitute an electoral quota, and he would be sure of his seat as long as he deserved it. The importance of a reduction in the numbers of the House, from a business point of view, may be illustrated by a simple arithmetical computation. Congress is in session, on an average, for about ten months of its term. If all this time were devoted to business, for six days a week and five hours a day, with not an hour wasted in filibustering, prayers, roll- calls, holidays, eulogies on deceased members, or other traditional devices for avoiding work, this would allow three hours and thirty-six minutes to each Rep- resentative and Delegate during the whole of his Con- gressional career. As less than half of the total working time here assumed is really available, and as some of the older members occupy days instead of hours, the amount of time actually allowed to the average member during his two years' term would be liberally estimated at an hour. The value of this allotment is almost destroyed by the fact that when a member who has not acquired a reputation succeeds in getting the floor, only the persons in his immediate vicinity can hear what he says. In the Fifty-second Congress 10,623 bills and 214 136 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. joint resolutions were introduced in the House, and 3,895 bills and 161 joint resolutions in the Senate. If there had been seventy-eight thousand working minutes available, which was far from being the case, the House would have had seven minutes and twelve seconds for the consideration of each of its own proj- ects, taking no account of those that came over from the Senate. As there were single measures whose consideration took over a week apiece, it is clear that there could not have been much time for the others. Of course, the vast majority of the bills introduced were never considered at all, and were never meant to be considered. They were printed, sent to inter- ested constituents as proof that their Representatives were working for the good of their districts, and were safely put to sleep in committees. They represented part of the enormous glut of business caused by sending to Washington a mob of small men with no other means of securing home popularity than that of acquiring reputations for industry in the promo- tion of local interests. Much of this glut would be relieved by reducing the number and raising the standard of the Representatives, and the rest would be disposed of by proper provisions against speeial legislation. In a House of one hundred and fifty members, working eleven months in each year, or twenty-two in the course of a two years' term, there would be an average of nineteen hours available for each mem- ber, which would be ample for the expression of all the thoughts that would occur to the ordinary legis- lator in the course of his term. Every speaker could THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 137 be distinctly heard, and it would not be necessary for opponents in debate to catch the points to which they were replying from next morning's Record. In the Fifty-second Congress the number of bills and joint resolutions introduced in the House aver- aged thirty to each Representative and Delegate. There is no reason to believe that this proportion would be materially increased if the membership were reduced, especially, if the members were elected by proportional representation. At this rate a House of one hundred and fifty members would have four thousand five hundred measures for consideration instead of ten thousand eight hundred and thirty- seven, and with two thousand eight hundred and fifty working hours available there would be thirty- eight minutes for each measure instead of seven, and this time would be divided among one hundred and fifty members instead of among three hundred and sixty. Moreover, each roll-call, even if con- ducted according to the present wasteful method, would occupy only twelve minutes instead of half an hour. But the present method of voting is an anach- ronism, and should be abolished, even if not another change were made in the habits of Congress. It is more wasteful of time than any other single thing, and this wastefulness is deliberately perpetuated in the interests of obstruction. The House first votes on a proposition viva vocc. This is a process of extreme celerity. When there is dissatisfaction with the announced result or a desire to delay pro- ceedings, a division is demanded. Each side is sue- 138 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. cessively asked to stand up, and the Speaker, rap- idly running- his eye over the members voting, counts them, with the assistance of the handle of his gavel. This also is a reasonably expeditious method, and does not usually occupy over two min- utes. The next step is a call for tellers. When this demand is supported by one-fifth of a quorum, the Speaker appoints two members who take their stand in front of the clerk's desk, and all the rest file between them to be counted. At its best this is a rather long process, and at its worst it is very long. The members sometimes make their appear- ance so slowly that a good part of an afternoon is consumed in securing enough votes to make a quorum. After all this there remains the resource of the yeas and nays. On demand of one-fifth of those present the clerk is required to call the roll, when each member who desires to vote answers to his name. The roll is then called a second time, for the benefit of those who failed to hear their names on the first call. This process takes half an hour, and it is sometimes repeated a dozen times in one day. On such days, it is hardly necessary to remark, no other business is transacted. In the Fifty-second Congress the yeas and nays were taken in the House two hundred and eighty-four times, representing a loss of one hundred and forty-two working hours, or twenty-eight working days. As every day of the existence of that House, including Sundays and holidays, cost the people of the United States about $6,285, tne expense of maintaining this primitive way of voting footed up THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 139 not less than $175,980. This loss was at least doubled by the waste of time in voting by other methods. In other words, over one-fifth of the entire working time of the House was thrown away, at a cost of upward of three hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars, in the mere mechanical process of ascer- taining the opinions of the members. And, in addi- tion to the time lost in the act of voting, there were fifty-two calls of the House, representing an addi- tional waste of about five days and $31,425. All of this lost time and money could be saved by a sim- ple electrical device by which each member could touch a button, and have his vote registered and tabulated at the clerk's desk simultaneously with those of all the rest. Such devices have not met with favor because they would prevent filibuster- ing, and that is a privilege which the members do not like to abandon. But filibustering is not a thing which it is desirable to encourage. It has sometimes obstructed bad measures, but it has more often defeated good one. It is a species of legis- lative anarchy which is totally incompatible with orderly democratic government, under which dis- putes should be settled by votes and not by contests of physical endurance. A further advantage of an automatic registering apparatus would be the possi- bility of recording every vote on every question. At present in all cases in committee of the whole, and in the majority of cases in the House, questions are decided without calling the roll, and constitu- ents have no means of knowing how their repre- sentatives have voted. When acting in this irre- 140 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. sponsible way members often cast votes which they would never dare to cast if their names were to go on record. Closely connected with the waste of time by roll-calls is the wearisome quorum question, which keeps Congress in a turmoil through a large part of every session. The art of law-making often resolves itself into the art of keeping a quorum. This end has been reached by the clumsy and dangerous method of counting members present and not voting, but that plan is manifestly imperfect, since a member who does not wish to be counted can always evade the necessity by the simple expedient OF THC UNIVERSITY OF THE NATIONAL 5LA$2^ 141 The adoption of a system of instantaneous and compulsory voting, together with the practice of remaining at work throughout an entire congres- sional term, instead of through less than half of it, would effectually put an end to filibustering without the need of suppressing the minority by oppressive rules. A still more certain extinguisher of obstruc- tion would be the referendum. A minority would not venture to fight a measure by blocking public business if it had the option of appealing to a popular vote. In such a case filibustering would be directed, not against an accidental legislative majority, but against the people themselves, and such a campaign would be neither tolerated nor attempted. The Congressional Record has been subjected to a good deal of unthinking criticism, but it is really one of the most useful time-saving devices employed by Congress, and well worth its cost. The fact that the vSenate does not make as free use of it as the House, as an outlet for superfluous eloquence, is one of the chief reasons for the comparative dilatoriness of Senatorial proceedings. Speeches of Senators are not printed in the Record unless actually delivered, at least in part, while the House is generally glad to escape the necessity of listening to its garrulous members by granting them "leave to print." The result is that the public business is blocked for weeks in the Senate to allow prosy Senators to drone out interminable dissertations to empty desks, while the House consigns its unnecessary speeches to the Record without delivery and proceeds to work. 142 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. The " leave-to-print " device costs a little money for composition and paper, but the expense is trivial compared to the saving. The committee system is another feature of Con- gressional practice that has suffered much unde- served condemnation. While Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, Mr. Woodrow Wilson, and others, have been setting the fashion of an indiscriminate admiration of Eng- lish methods, such English observers as Sir Henry Maine have been impressed with the advantages of our own. The habit of specializing the work of a deliberative assembly, by assigning the preliminary examination and study of different varieties of it to different committees, is in strict accordance with American traditions, as illustrated in every sphere of life and every variety of organization, from the trustees of a college to Congress. It can not be uprooted, but the practice under it can be improved. The criticism that the representation of both parties on the committees destroys party responsibility ignores the fact that the great bulk of legislation, even in the times of the most intense political excitement, is non-partisan in character and can not be made partisan without destroying half its value. The Congressional committee system is sim- ply a recognition of the economic principle of the division of labor. It is beyond question, however, that this division has been carried altogether too far. There is no necessity for so many committees, except that of pro- viding their chairmen with clerks and convenient private rooms, and the efficiency of work which is THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 143 promoted by a moderate specialization is impaired by an excessive subdivision. There is no necessity for one committee on banking- and currency, and another on coinage, weights, and measures. These two committees, which deal with different branches of a single subject, on which it is imperatively neces- sary to have a harmonious policy, are often antago- nistic, and urge the passage of radically inconsistent measures. The work of the committees on military affairs and militia ought not to be divided ; nor that of the committees on interstate and foreign com- merce, merchant marine, and fisheries, railways and canals, and Pacific railroads ; nor that of the commit- tees on rivers, and harbors, and levees and improve- ment of the Mississippi River; nor that of the committees on pensions and invalid pensions ; nor that of the committees on claims, war claims, and private land claims ; nor that of the committees on judiciary, and revision of the laws. But the most mischievous instance of excessive subdivision of work is found in the management of the revenues and expenditures of the Government. Here, where, if anywhere, there ought to be unity, there are nine committees of the house, one with jurisdiction to decide how the revenues shall be raised and how much shall be levied, and eight to tell how the money shall be spent ; and there are three similar committees in the Senate. In addition to this, most of the other committees have the right to report legislation materially affecting the expenditure of the Government. For instance, the Committee on Invalid Pensions may report a pension bill whose 144 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. operations will drive the Treasury into actual bank- ruptcy, and the committees which are supposed to have charge of financial matters have no right to interfere. Substantially this very thing has actually been done. The Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds may report bills authorizing the construc- tion of twenty million dollars worth of new post offices, and, if they pass, the Committee on Appropri- ations has nothing to do but to find the money to settle the accounts when they come due. Of the committees which are given regular juris- diction over the appropriations only one, as a rule, pays any attention to the question of keeping Government's total expenses within its ineoine. The Committee on Appropriations, which controls six of the general appropriation bills, covering somewhat less than half of the aggregate expenses of the Government, considers itself charged, in some degree, with the duty of keeping an eye on the national balance-sheet. The other committees eon- fine their attention to the particular little reserva- tions in their exclusive charge. If the army or navy appropriation bill compare favorably with that of the preceding year, the committee on military or naval affairs thinks it has made a creditable record, regardless of the general condition of the Treasury. When, to this disjointed control of expenditures, we add the fact that none of the com- mittees that deal with appropriations have anything to do with revenues, and the further fact that the taxes are not adjusted to the needs of the Govern- ment, but are fixed for indefinite periods, and regu- THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 145 lated by considerations in which fiscal requirements play only a secondary part, the confusion and mis- management of American finances will need no further explanation. The way to import order and judicious economy into the financial operations of the Government is to put all matters relating to revenue and supply under a single control. There should be one budget committee in the Mouse, of which the Secretary of the Treasury should be a consulting member, and this committee should have exclusive jurisdiction over the national income and expenditure. Instead of reporting thirteen separate appropriation bills, unconnected with each other or with the revenue laws, it should present a complete budget, in which the total revenue and the total expenditure would be balanced ; any deficit under existing laws being made good by increased taxes, and any immoderate surplus being prevented by the remission of imposts. In England the passage of the appropriations accord- ing to the government estimates is made a question of confidence, and their alteration by Parliament involves the resignation of the ministry, but no such sacredness need attach to the work of the budget committee here. It would be sufficient to have the entire financial operations of the Government for the year provided for in one well-considered bill. If that were done Congress would not amend the measure without good cause, for every important amendment would visibly disarrange the whole fiscal programme, and would necessitate recasting the entire project to restore the balance. No such 10 146 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. responsibility is felt now. When the work of one committee is upset it is not felt that the work of other committees is at all affected, or that the opera- tions of the Treasury are embarrassed. When the year's balance-sheet exhibits results ranging all the way from a deficit of seventy million dollars to a surplus of one hundred and fifty million dollars, a discrepancy of a few millions more or less in one of thirteen disconnected appropriations can not be expected to make a very deep impression on the Congressional mind. Mill's idea of a legislative commission to prepare all bills, leaving the parliamentary body nothing to do but to accept or reject the measures formulated by it, or send them back for amendment, may not be practicable in this country, although such a commis- sion could doubtless be made useful in Congress merely as an agency for putting the crude notions of unpracticed members into proper shape, leav- ing the assembled legislators all their accustomed powers of amendment. But each House should certainly have a committee on the harmony of legis- lation, whose duty it should be to examine and report upon every measure submitted to it, not with regard to its merits, but with respect to its relations with existing laws. Every bill placed on the cal- endar, with a favorable report from any other com- mittee, should be referred to this committee before action, in order to discover whether it conflicted with any previous law, and if so, whether the repeal of that law, or of a part of it, would be desirable or the reverse. Of course such a committee should be THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 147 composed of expert jurists, thoroughly familiar, not only with federal legislation in all its branches, but with the laws of all the States, since it often happens that a new national statute produces serious local results by its inconsistency with State enact- ments or legal customs. A careful examination of new bills by a committee of this nature would greatly reduce the work of Congress, since it would show a large proportion of them to be superfluous, as sub- stantially duplicating existing laws, and another large proportion to be harmful, as inharmonious elements in the legal fabric. Those critics to whom the one thing needful for the reform of American Congressional practice is the creation of a directing and co-ordinating agency, like the English Cabinet, may take comfort in the reflection that something which bids fair ultimately to answer nearly the same purpose is being grad- ually developed out of existing materials in a natural and purely American way. The House Committee on Rules, after forty years of modest growth in power, rapidly rose in importance in the epoch-making Fifty-first Congress, and still further expanded its functions in the Fifty-second and Fifty- third Congresses under the impulse of the Demo- cratic desire to find some, means for the accomplish- ment of business without palpably imitating what they had so emphatically condemned under the Reed regime. Substantially all the important busi- ness of the House, aside from that of a routine nature, is now under the control of this committee. A bill to which there is determined opposition can 148 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. not even be considered without the consent of the Committee on Rules, which sets apart a day for the consideration of one measure, refuses to fix a day for the consideration of another, and arranges the order in which measures shall be taken up and the hours at which they shall be finally voted upon, in accordance with its views of party policy. Of course the special orders reported by the committee have to be ratified by the House, but this ratification is hardly ever refused. In doubtful cases the com- mittee is now accustomed to act in accordance with petitions signed by a majority of the members of the dominant party, so that the Committee on Rules may be considered the organ through which the majority acts. It is rapidly assuming the functions of the British Cabinet in laying out a programme of legislation, and it may very readily become in the course of a few years what the British Cabinet would be if its members had no executive duties and were under no obligation to resign on the defeat of their measures. A serious interference with the transaction of business in Congress is caused by the traditional methods of showing respect to the memory of deceased members. The death of a Senator or Representative always causes more or less loss of time, and sometimes absorbs two full working days one when the event is announced, and the other when eulogies are delivered. When there is a funeral service in the Capitol, the time lost may even reach three days. This would be excusable in a debating society, whose business, besides being of THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 149 small importance, is its own affair, but Congress, representing the entire nation, has no more right to waste the people's time in long-drawn conventional grief than it would have to waste their money in the same way which, by the way, it regularly does. It would be as reasonable for the whole population of the country to stop work for a day upon the death of a member of Congress, as for the body which transacts the collective business of that population to do the same thing. Appropriate reso- lutions, brief eulogies, and a committee to attend the funeral would be ample testimonials of respect without defrauding the public by making every death the occasion of a holiday a holiday, it may be mentioned, which the average member does not spend in the trappings of woe. The physical conditions under which Congress works are not favorable to intelligent debate. The spaces are too vast, especially in the hall of the House, and the members are too widely separated. The English plan of having benches with seats for only half the members would not work in Washing- ton, where the attendance is so much fuller, and the total abolition of desks would be a little too severe a privation. But the desks might well be reduced to half their present liberal proportions, with a view to having them serve merely for convenient note- taking in discussions instead of for private corre- spondence, and compact cushioned benches could take the place of expansive revolving chairs. The accommodation of the newspaper correspondents in the press galleries may illustrate the possibilities in 150 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. the way of the compression of the unwieldy legislative bodies that now sprawl disjointedly over their huge halls. If this compression were carried to a sufficient extent the members would doubtless acquire the habit of doing their letter-writing and newspaper- reading at home, or in rooms which could be pro- vided for the purpose. One of the most wasteful leaks of time in Con- gress is the habit of making speeches on all con- ceivable topics in total disregard of the pending question. This not only dissipates time, but often entirely prevents the enlightenment that ought to come from a debate. When a certain hour has been set for the final vote on the question of abolishing the Geological Survey, and a dozen members absorb all the intervening time with a controversy concerning the effect of the tariff on the production of tin plates, the vote has to be taken in ignorance of the probable nature of its far-reaching results. This abuse could be easily checked if custom justified presiding officers in calling members to order as soon as they began to wander from the question. The rules of the House require debaters to confine themselves to the ques- tions under discussion, and violations of the rules in this respect ought to be checked as promptly as in any other. It may contribute to a better understanding of the question of time-saving in Congress if we con- template some of the principal items of loss in tabular form. To maintain the House in the Fifty- second Congress cost $4,593,922.60. As there were THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 151 seven hundred and thirty-one days, including Sun- days, in the entire term, the average running expense was about $6,285 a 'day. Dividing the time as nearly as practicable according to the way in which it was spent, and apportioning the cost on this basis, we have : CREDIT. Days in term, including Sundays 731 DAYS. COST. Time lost before organization 278 $1 74.7 2^O Vacations 147 023,895 Sundays during sessions 42 263,970 Other holidays 23 144, 5 5 5 Honors to deceased members . 14 87,990 Yeas and nays 28 I7c q8o Other voting and quorum-hunting *3O *i88,55o Total conspicuous losses 562 $3,532,170 Business (outside limit) 169 $1,062,165 Average cost of each working day $ 27,183 * Approximate, but underestimated. The average cost of each working day, of course, represents the total expense of maintaining the House through the entire term, divided by the num- ber of working days. If all practicable time-saving devices were adopted it would be possible to pay some regard to the calendars. At present the Congressional calen- SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. dars, except the private calendar of the House, are legislative fictions. Measures are supposed to be taken from them in their turn, but in practice almost every public bill considered is taken up under a special order, regardless of its place on the nominal programme. If the calendars could be once completely cleared, the work of Congress would be lightened for a generation to come, for the majority of the bills introduced at the begin ning of every term are veterans that have been vainly appealing for consideration for years or decades in the past. There is little to be said about reforms peculiarly needed by the Senate. The best reform in that quarter would be total abolition, but as that is impracticable there is little to be done, in addition to the improvements suggested for the House, except to make such alterations in the rules as would enable the majority to transact business, to curtail speech-making on the floor by enlarging the privilege of printing in the Congressional J\< and to change the method of electing Senators. The plan of election by State legislatures, which seemed to the authors of the Federalist so obvi- ously the best conceivable as hardly to need cle fense, and which up to twenty or thirty years ago appeared to have fully vindicated itself in practice, has now unmistakably broken down. It is turning out a poorer quality of Senators year by year ; it is destroying the Senatorial sense of responsibility, and it is steadily degrading the legislatures. When a legislature that is to have the privilege of electing THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 153 a Senator is to be chosen, all considerations of State policy are submerged, the proper work of the body is lost sight of, and its members are chosen solely with a view to their action on the absorbing issue of the Senatorship. Often the election expenses of the majority are paid by one of the Senatorial candi- dates, and when members take office sold in advance on one question they are ready to be bought on all others. A corrupt Senatorial campaign means a corrupt legislative session for all matters of State policy. As long as we are saddled with the Senate, the only way of mitigating its evils is to have its members elected by the people. One other impor- tant reform remains to be mentioned. As long as we retain the present organization of the Government, the terms of Senators, Representatives, and Presi- dent should be equalized. The present discrepan- cies were intentionally created by the framers of the Constitution in the belief that the greatest need of the new government was a system of checks adequate to prevent rash action on the part of the people. Their various devices for attaining this object have been altogether too successful. It may be desirable to restrain the people from too hasty action, but it is certainly not desirable so to tie their hands as to prevent any action at all. The disloca- tion of power in this country makes it almost impossible to initiate and carry out a consistent national policy. Of the last ten Congresses only three have had even nominal political harmony between their branches and with the executive, and it is hardly necessary to say that the harmony exist- 154 SUGGESTIONS ON COYKRXMENT. ing at present is not more than nominal. In no case has the formal accord among the vScnate. House, and President lasted for more than two years, nor in all that time has a party in full possession of the Government ever developed its policy in Congress for as much as a year without being rebuked and discouraged at the State elections. If Senators, Representatives, and President were all elected for four-year terms, beginning and ending simul- taneously, the people would have more than three chances in ten of having their will executed, and Congress would have time to carry out a policy and have it in operation long enough to enable it to be fairly judged. In addition, the House could clear its calendar, instead of rolling the stone of business half-way up the hill, and then letting it roll down again for its successor to attempt to push up with the same results. Chosen under such conditions, the branches of government would generally be in harmony. As for checks, the all-sufficient brake on rash action could be found in the referendum. So much for Congress as it is, and as it might be made without seriously altering its structure. But beyond make-shift reforms is an ultimate ideal, and that ideal, it seems to me, is to be found in the reorgan- ization of the national legislature on the principles already developed in treating of State and local legis- latures. We need stability, wisdom, and experience in Congress. How can they be secured better than by abolishing the term system and substituting a ten- ure during good behavior? We need responsibility to the people not an intermittent, periodical THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 155 responsibility, but one felt in full vigor every hour. What better way of obtaining it can be imagined than to give the constituents of every member the right to recall him whenever his conduct ceases to meet their approval? Through a Congress so organized every abuse in the Government could be brought within the immediate control of the voters. Under this plan, the members of the House would be elected by the local primary assemblies, precisely as in the case of the members of the State legislatures and of the county boards of supervisors. The only difference would be that a greater number of assem- blies would have to unite in each election. For a House of three hundred members, about a hundred assemblies of average size would elect a Representa- tive. For one of five hundred members, about sixty assemblies would form a constituency. Once elected, a member would hold his place until recalled. A movement for the recall of any member could be initiated by the formal vote of any assembly in his district, on motion of any qualified voter. The proposition having been advanced by one assembly, all the others in the district would have to take action upon it on a specified date, allowing time for the Representative to offer his defense. If the recall were carried, the assemblies would immedi- ately proceed to a new election by the preferential method, elsewhere explained. The House thus constituted would remain in ses- sion all the year, except during short vacations. It would waste no time in periodical reorganiza- tions. Its Speaker would remain in office as long 156 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. as he retained the confidence of his constituents and of the members of the House. Its attaches would constitute a permanent staff. The House itself would be at once more stable and more responsive to public opinion than any legislative body now in existence. Its membership would be subject to no sweeping revolutions, but would be gradually and imperceptibly renewed. At all times the great body of the members would be experienced and competent legislators, and the apprentices would not have to learn their business at the expense of the public. The continuous existence of the assembly would never be interrupted ; bills would hold their place on the calendar until definitely passed or rejected, and work once done in connection with any measure would never have to be repeated. The initiative and referendum would add to the security of tenure. Under present conditions, while the people of any district would be proud of the dis- tinction and influence conferred upon them by the possession of such a representative as William L. Wilson, most protectionist voters would sacrifice those advantages and try to replace Mr. Wilson with an inferior man for the sake of carrying out their own views upon the tariff. If it were possible to take the final settlement of the tariff and all related questions out of the hands of Congress, they would gladly vote for the retention of the representative whose character and ability were worth so much to the district. Intelligent legislation would be secured, and Con- gress would be kept properly in touch with the exec- THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 157 utive, by the presence of the members of the Cabinet in the House, without votes, but with an unlimited right of discussion, and subject to the obligation of answering any questions asked concerning the oper- ations of their departments. The head of each department would be a consulting member of the committee or committees dealing with his special line of work. The Secretary of the Treasury would belorg to the Finance Committee, which would have exclusive jurisdiction over all questions of revenue and expenditure. The Secretary of War would be attached to the Military Committee ; the Secretary of the Navy to the Naval Committee ; the Secretary of State to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and so on. As these officials would hold office by a much less precarious tenure than at present, they would be much better acquainted than now with the affairs of their respective departments, and there would therefore be an assurance that all proposed leg- islation would be subjected to expert scrutiny before obtaining a favorable report from a com- mittee. If, in spite of all the opportunities for enlightenment, both in committee and on the floor, laws which the executive authorities thought unwise were still passed, the President would have no power of veto, but he would have the right to demand the vSubmission of the measure to the referendum. The same test would have to be accorded on demand of one-fifth of the members of the House, or of a thou- sand primary assemblies, distributed among ten States. An appeal could be taken from Congress to the people in the case of measures defeated, as well 158 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. as of those passed, and on the same terms. This would be a form of the initiative which would answer all practical purposes and would avoid some of the disadvantages of the inception of legislation by volunteer effort. With regard to the Senate, as previously remarked, the best reform would be total abolition. Pernicious even now, when it has some important functions to perform, the Senate would be simply a useless excrescence on a system in which the House accu- rately mirrored the desires of the people, and in which the power of ultimate decision in disputed cases rested in the hands of the entire citizenship of the nation. But the Constitution has tied our hands. By guaranteeing that no State shall be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate without its own consent, it has made the superfluous second chamber an indestructible part of our fabric of gov- ernment. But if we must have a Senate, there is no reason why it should not be rendered harmless. If its membership were reduced to one Senator from each State, the equal representation of the States would not be affected. If then, it were provided that in case of disagreement between the two branches of Congress, they should meet together and settle the dispute by a joint vote, the diminished numbers of the Senate would be swamped by the votes of the House. There are too many instances, both here and abroad, of meetings between the tw houses of legislative bodies in joint convention for various purposes, to permit such a scheme to be dis- missed as an unfair evasion of the constitutional THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE. 159 safeguards of the Senate. The Senators would have no right to complain, for they are elected themselves in precisely that way. If, in addition to all this, the Senate were deprived of the right of amending revenue and appropriation bills, we might consider that its teeth had been drawn, and, perhaps in time, the small States might consent to the abolition of the useless incumbrance. In the meantime, of course, the Senators, like Representatives, would be elected by the people in their primary assemblies. CHAPTER XII. THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE. The executive administration of the United States Government is carried on by a force of about two hundred thousand office-holders. This enormous machine is regulated, directly or indirectly, by the President. He personally appoints the more impor- tant officials, subject to confirmation by the Senate ; and the minor ones are chosen by his subordinates, the heads of departments. There are the possibili- ties of efficient service here, but they are neutral- ized by the customs under which the system is worked. It is impossible for any man or group of men at the head of a government to be personally acquainted with the qualifications of two hundred thousand minor officials still less with those of the multitudinous applicants for their places. In the vast majority of cases the men who hold the appointing power must select their subordinates and judge of their conduct on the testimony of others. That is what the President and the heads of depart- ments do. They take advice in the matter of appointments, but unfortunately they take it from the wrong sources. Instead of relying upon the recommendations of the men who have to superin- tend the work of the persons appointed, and who are better acquainted than anybody else can be with (160) THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE. 161 the needs of their divisions and the efficiency of their subordinates, they depend upon the sugges- tions of Senators, Representatives, and local politi- cians. These advisers are not particularly inter- ested in the efficient administration of the govern- ment, but they are decidedly interested in the advancement of their own political fortunes. Con- sequently, when a member of Congress "distributes the patronage " of his district, he gives the places, not to the men who will do the best work for the public, but to those who can do the best work for himself. It is unsafe in the management of large affairs to depend on advice from irresponsible sources, espe- cially when there is a selfish interest in giving unsound recommendations. When a Senator or Representative suggests an unfit appointment, he incurs no risk. He does not bear the blame for poor work in the department upon which his man is forced, nor can the President visit any punish- ment tipon him for his bad advice. An administra- tive official guilty of a similar betrayal of confidence could be degraded or removed. From many custom-houses, post-offices, and navy- yards we hear accounts of gallant, but unsuccessful, fights on the part of the men in charge, against the local politicians who desire to debauch the service for the profit of their retainers. These fights are unsuccessful because the superiors of the men who make them find it more to their advantage to have the support of the local politicians than to have a record of administrative efficiency in a particular 11 162 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. quarter. Displeased politicians make their displeas- ure felt, and there is no certain retribution for bad administration. Thus we have a grotesquely per- verted form of responsible government respon- sible to the politicians, but not to the people. A good collector could give a good management of any custom-house in the country if he were allowed a free hand in dealing with his subor- dinates. Under the present system we do not usually get the good collector in the first place, because it is not to the interest of the President's local advisers to recommend such a man, and lie would not be allowed a free hand if we had him. for similar reasons. Before there can be a general reform the motives for the appointment of the best men to all administrative positions and their sup- port in doing their work in the best way. regardless of politics, must be made as strong as those that now dictate submission to the demands of politi- cians. The power to make this change through all the grades of the services below himself now rests with the President. The President alone, if thor- oughly bent upon this object, could change the whole spirit of the executive administration, to its remotest ramifications, although he would be con- siderably annoyed during the process by the obstructive exercise of the confirming power of the always pernicious Senate. Even under our present system the President could make all executive offi- cials below himself look to the faithful performance of their duty, instead of politics, as the condition of their retention and promotion. The question is THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE. 163 how to secure this determination on the part of the President. The subordinate officials would be held to their duty by the supervision of their superiors, upon whom their retention in office, promotion, or removal would depend. All that would be neces- sary to complete the chain would be to subject the President to a similar supervision. The only power that could exercise this control over the chief magistrate would be Congress. But Congress, as at present constituted, would be mani- festly unfit to exercise such a function. Its mem- bers are the chief breeders of demoralization in the public service. To make it worthy to be trusted with the appointment and removal of the President, it must be made responsible itself by being brought within the immediate control of its constituents. When that is done a few trifling changes will be all that is needed to give us a thoroughly capable and honest executive administration. All we shall need will be the abolition of the Senatorial power of med- dling with appointments, and the establishment of a uniform tenure during good behavior. In France, the President is elected by the National Assembly, but as he serves for seven years he is sub- ject to no effective responsibility. This is a matter of less importance, since the real government of the country is in the hands of the ministers, who are dependent for their official existence on the majority of the moment in the Chamber of Deputies. The French system is too rigid as regards the President, and too unstable as regards the Cabinet, beside which the people have no continuous -control over the 164 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. Chambers. A nearer approach to a true responsible republican government is found in Switzerland, where the executive administration is in the hands of a council, elected by the Federal Assembly for three years ; arid the President of the confederation, whose special powers are only nominal, is elected annually by the members of the council from ani( mg its own members. Owing to the Swiss custom of indefinite reflections there is a more effective resp< vi- sibility here than appears on the surface. An official elected for three years, and expecting to retire to private life at the end of that time, may be careless in the performance of his duties ; but one who occu- pies a position which will be permanent if he con- tinues to deserve it, but which he may lose at the end of three years if he does not. is likely to be cir- cumspect in his conduct. But the chief guaranty of good government in Switzerland is the referendum. The people there are not obliged to tolerate bad or incompetent men for the sake of the measures they are supposed to represent. They vote for their men and measures separately. If the election of Presi- dent of the United States were thrown into the House of Representatives under present conditions, no excellence of administration would give a Demo- cratic incumbent any Republican votes. The reelec- tion of a member of the Swiss Federal Council, regardless of politics, is a matter of course. The recognition of good service in Switzerland does not involve the indorsement of an obnoxious policy. The source, although not the cause, of all the evils in American politics is the Presidential THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE. 165 election, and the Presidential election is dangerous because of the peculiar complication of interests involved in it. It determines at once a national policy that affects the interests and inflames the passions of millions of voters, and a wholesale dis- tribution of offices involving the livelihood of hun- dreds of thousands more. The President, by his veto power, can absolutely tie the hands of Congress, and, by his power of appointment and removal, can dispose of the fortunes, and almost of the lives, of an army of men. By our peculiar electoral methods, the choice of this potentate is made to depend upon the action of a few voters in the doubtful States. One vote in New York may make a change of seventy-two in the relative strength of candidates in the electoral college, and thereby may elect a Presi- dent, alter all the conditions of industry in the nation, and deprive hundreds of thousands of fami- lies of their means of support. One vote may do all this, and that vote may be had for two dollars, if not for a glass of whisky. When such tremendous results depend literally on the tossing of a coin, a Presidential election instills the gambling madness into the veins of the whole people. Nothing is seen but the stakes, and everything that can help to win is justified. Governors and State legislatures are chosen, not for their fitness for the work of making and administering the laws of the States, but to strengthen the party for the next Presidential cam- paign. Every attempt to throw off a corrupt local ring is checked by the plea that this is not the time the coming national campaign is too important to 166 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. permit the harmony of the organization to be dis- turbed. Bosses are allowed free loot of city treas- uries in exchange for votes for Presidential candi- dates. Unfit aspirants are carried into Congress on the back of a popular national ticket. If the President were deprived of the veto power, and the people were allowed to vote directly upon measures, all the formidable pressure of commercial and industrial interests would be lifted from the elections. If all officials held their places on the tenure of good behavior there would be no (U ate struggle between ins and outs. If, finally, the President himself, instead of owing his office to a quadrennial scramble for the floating voters of the doubtful States, were elected by the deliberate act of an assembly truly representative of the whole people, and held his place until the people, through a two-thirds vote of that assembly, saw fit to remove him, the whole demoralizing system of national campaigns would be cut out by the roots, and local officials and policies would have some chain being judged on their merits. CHAPTER XIII. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. It is impossible to combine all conceivable improvements in government in one system. That unfortunate fact impels me reluctantly to omit proportional representation of the completest type from an ideal scheme of reform, although I believe it will have a useful and important part to play in the transition period. The proportional plan of electing representatives to legislative bodies is so incomparably superior to all existing methods that it is not surprising that its advocates should regard it with a species of religious enthusiasm. It enables every important shade of opinion at the time of election to be accurately reflected ; it pro- motes the choice of the best and ablest men, as the present system promotes that of the worst and most commonplace, and it destroys the power of political machines. The best form is that proposed by Thomas Hare, with modifications in points of detail. Under this system the constituencies are grouped, several legislators being elected from each district. According to Hare's original scheme, indeed, there were to be no districts at all, but the entire legisla- tive body was to be elected in bulk. This, of course, would be subject to insuperable objections. In each district the total vote is divided by the (167) 168 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. number of members to be elected, and the quotient constitutes the " quota " necessary for a choice. The quota, as was shown by Mr. Droop, is more accurately reached by dividing the vote by the number of members plus one, and adding one to the quotient. Each elector votes for as many candidates as he pleases, designating them as first choice, second choice, and so on, and his vote is counted only for that one in the order of preference who first needs it. If the quota is six thousand, and A receives eight thousand votes, only the necessary six thousand are counted for him, and the remaining two thousand go to the next indi- cated candidates on the ballots. It is in the transfer of these surplus votes that the system has its weakest point. It is usually proposed to leave the selection of the surplus ballots to chance, either by lot, or by numbering the ballots as they come out of the box and making up the quota of those bearing the lowest numbers. Aside from the objection to allowing chance to- play any part in government, it is evident that such methods offer too good an opportunity for sharp practice. Mr. W. H. Gove illustrates the danger by this example: " Suppose one hundred votes cast showing a first choice for X, fifty of whom show A as second choice, and fifty show B as second choice, and that fifty of X's votes are to be transferred as a surplus. Then, although the votes to be transferred are selected by lot, as the system intends, and although any one selection by lot may hardly produce a materially different result from any other selection fairly made PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. 169 in the same way, it is evident that unfair enumera- tors might, by selecting the votes to be transferred, turn over all the fifty surplus votes either to A or B as they might choose, and thus the result might be very seriously affected." To avert this danger, Mr. Gove proposes to alter the whole character of the system by depriving the voter of his liberty of choice and permitting the candidate to determine in advance the disposition to be made of his surplus votes. This would destroy some of the principal merits of the reform, and would leave to political machines a large share of the power of which the Hare system would deprive them. The desired end can be attained in a much simpler way. In the example cited by Mr. Gove, the fair way of distributing X's surplus votes would be to give twenty-five to A and twenty-five to B. This is what would be accomplished by lot, if it fell out in exact accordance with the law of chances. Why not do it directly ? All that would be neces- sary would be to provide that the surplus votes cast for any candidate should be distributed among the second-choice candidates in the proportions in which they were designated on all the ballots of the candi- date elected. Suppose, for instance, that Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson are among the competi- tors at a certain election ; that one hundred is the quota necessary for choice ; that Smith receives one hundred and fifty votes, and is, therefore, elected with fifty to spare, and that ninety of Smith's ballots bear the name of Brown as second choice, thirty- nine that of Jones, and twenty-one that of Robinson. 170 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. Distributing the surplus votes in this proportion, Brown would receive thirty, Jones thirteen, and Robinson seven. This would be as fair as the fairest conceivable lot, and fairer than any lot that would be realized in practice. To carry the illus- tration further : Suppose that Brown had originally eighty first-choice votes, which the thirty transferred from Smith would raise to one hundred and ten, leaving ten to be distributed as a surplus. In deter- mining the proper proportions in this case only the eighty original votes could be used, as there would be no ballots to represent the thirty obtained from Smith. Of these eighty, suppose forty designated Smith as second choice, twenty-five Jones, and fifteen Robinson. Smith being already elected, his name would be eliminated, leaving the third- choice names to be counted on his forty ballots, of which Jones may be assumed to have twenty-five and Robinson fifteen. Thus, of Brown's original eighty votes Jones would have fifty as next choice, and Robinson thirty. Consequently, Jones would be entitled to five-eighths and Robinson to three- eighths of the surplus ten. Disregarding fractions and taking the nearest integer, Jones would gain six votes and Robinson four. The only objection to this method of transferring surplus votes is that the ballots are not transferred with them, and consequently the persons who have cast unnecessary votes for successful candidates are limited to a single additional choice: It is not likely that this drawback would prove serious enough to overbalance the advantage of absolute fairness in PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. 171 the first transfer, but if it should turn out so in practice the necessity of resorting to lot could still be obviated by the adoption of the plan proposed by Mr. Daniel H. Remsen, in his book on " Primary Elections." Mr. Remsen's method is thus described : " The votes which constitute the quota of each candidate having more than a quota of first-choice votes shall be (i) the votes of all those voters making no second choice ; * (2) the votes of all those voters whose second-choice candidate shall have received a quota of first-choice votes ; f (3) the votes of all those voters whose second-choice candidate shall have received the least number of first-choice votes ; J and thereafter, in order, the votes of all those voters whose second-choice candidate received the next higher number of first-choice votes until the said quota is filled ; but when the excessive votes then remaining to be credited would give any candidate more than a quota, that excess shall form a part of the quota in lieu of an equal number of votes having an unappropriated second choice, last forming a part of the quota as aforesaid. . . . When the quota of a candidate shall be partly composed of second- choice votes, the votes which constitute this quota shall be (i) the second-choice votes placed to his credit ; and thereafter first-choice votes in the order as provided above." I * Otherwise they would have no elective power. f As they are not needed by the second-choice candidate, j As such a candidate is supposed to be the least desirable. Otherwise they would have no elective power. (DANIEL H. REMSEN, " Primary Elections." 172 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. The Hare system, with some such modification, would be an ideal method of securing the representa- tion of all shades of political opinion in exact propor- tion to their strength in the community. Under it no ingenuity on the part of politicians would enable a popular minority to secure a majority of the repre- sentatives by any means short of fraud in the count. No other plan that allows complete liberty to the individual voter offers an absolute safeguard against this possibility. The Free List system secures the same result as far as parties are concerned, but it sacrifices the preferences of the individual. The plans of election by preponderance of choice, such as the Burnitz system, and that employed by the labor party in Cleveland, are peculiarly susceptible to the danger of minority rule in its most aggravated form. The Cleveland method is thus described by Dr. L. B. Tuckerman : "(i) Each voter will write on his ballot as many names as there are persons to be chosen, writing the names in the order of his choice ; first choice, first ; second choice, second ; and so on. " (2) In tallying the vote, the tellers will read the last name on each ballot first, crediting that name with one tally ; the name next to the last second, crediting the same with two tallies ; and so on, always crediting the name written first on each ballot with as many tallies as there names written on that ballot. And if a voter fails to write as many names as he is allowed to, no variation is made in the method of tallying the voter simply loses so much of his vote, which he has a right to do, if he chooses the PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. 173 last name still counts one tally, the next to the last two, and so on. "(3) The person receiving the highest number of tallies is first declared elected ; the person receiving the next highest, next, and so on, until all the vacan- cies are filled. In case of a tie, with but one vacancy to be filled, the incumbent is determined by lot. " The practical working of this rule (and we have tried it over and over again) is that every element in the electing body large enough to have a quota finds itself proportionately represented, and by its own first choice or choices." This desirable result would be attained under this system as long as all the voters acted freely and independently, but it would always be easy for an organized minority to beat an unorganized majority. A simple example will make the point clear. Sup- pose a constituency in which there are five hundred Democratic and four hundred and fifty Republican voters. Suppose that five places are to be filled, and that the Democrats, acting without concert, divide their vote equally among twenty candidates, while the Republicans, disciplined by an efficient machine, concentrate their votes on five candidates in uniform order. The vote of each of the twenty Democratic candidates would be : 25X5+25X4+25X3+25X2+25 = 375 The vote of the five Republican candidates would be: A 450X5 = 2,250 B 450X4 1.800 C 450X3 - 1,350 D 450X2= 900 E 450X1= 450 174 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. Thus the minority would elect its entire ticket, and the majority would not secure a single repre- sentative. The possibility of such a result, of course, would necessitate the creation of a strong Demo- cratic machine to prevent the waste of the Demo- cratic vote, and thus the politicians would be restored to power, independent action within the parties would be effectually suppressed, and the only advantage gained would be the division of the offices between the organized parties and such numerous bodies of independents as could agree upon joint action outside of them in fair proportion to their numbers. The same results would follow from the Burn it/, system, which is simply the Cleveland system inverted. Under this plan the lower-ehoiee votes are divided by the numbers representing the order of choice, instead of multiplying the higher-choice votes by the numbers in inverse order. Treating by this method the example already cited, we have five hundred Democratic votes equally divided among twenty candidates, each of whom would receive : The four hundred and fifty Republican votes would be distributed among five candidates thus: A *fo 45 o 6430 = 225 C 4 = 150 D *0 = H2\ E -<8> = 90 All the candidates of the minority party would have more votes than any of the majority party, and PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. 175 all would be elected. This possibility is inseparably involved in any system that admits the principle of decision by plurality. The only way to avoid it is to require either an absolute majority or a definite quota for an election. With that safeguard the original voter can feel free to act as he pleases without the fear of contributing to the defeat of his party. Under the Hare system it is mathemat- ically impossible for a minority of voters to secure a majority of. representatives, unless under circum- stances so exceptional as not to need to be taken into account. Complete proportional representation requires the election of several members to insure fair results, an odd number from one district. It is therefore inconsistent with the uninterrupted control of the constituents over their representatives, since no sin- gle member has a definite constituency that can call him to account. It implies election for prescribed terms, or at least the simultaneous renewal of an entire group of representatives, and I do not know of any practicable method of combining it with the continuous responsibility of the individual repre- sentative to a determinate body of electors. This continuous individual responsibility I regard as even more important than the maintenance of an exactly uniform proportion between the strength of the various groups of electors and the numbers of their representatives in the legislative body, especially as the referendum and initiative would furnish a per- fect corrective for any injustice that might occur in connection with particular measures. Proportional 176 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. representation would insure the choice of men in whom the people had confidence at the moment of election, but it would not afford any guaranty that the elected representatives would retain or deserve that confidence the next day. That guaranty would be given by the system of continuous effective responsibility. Under one plan the people would make successive disconnected trials at long inter- vals, and they might make mistakes every time ; under the other they could correct mistakes as soon as they were discovered. It would be the difference between shooting at a mark with a pistol and play- ing on it with a hose. A good shot might fail to plant his bullet in the right spot, but anybody could turn the stream on it after a moment's experiment- ing. But although all the advantages of proportional representation in its most perfect form can not be be combined with that election by single-membered constituencies, which is essential to complete and uninterrupted responsibility, there is no reason why some of them should not be. The preferential prin- ciple can be applied as well to the election of one member as to that of several. Suppose, for instance, that in a certain assembly four hundred and fifty votes are cast, of which two hundred and fifty are Democratic and two hundred Republican. I use the party names, although I think that party divisions would not long survive the accomplishment of the various changes heretofore proposed. Suppose the Democratic vote were divided among five candidates, and the Republican among two, in these proportions : PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. 177 DEMOCRATIC. REPUBLICAN. Wilson 80 McKinley 105 Mills _ _ 75 Reed 95 Crisp _ 40 Johnson 30 Cockran ...25 Suppose that a clear majority were required to elect, but that each voter were allowed to indicate his preference among the different candidates, after his first choice, his vote being counted for the one for whom it would first become effective. Suppose that, in the absence of a majority for any candidate, it were required to eliminate successively the candi- dates having the fewest first-choice votes and dis- tribute their votes among the others in the order of preference. We should begin, then, in the case assumed, by dropping Mr. Cockran. The distribu- tion of his votes according to the next choice of those who cast them might give Wilson 90, Mills 85, Crisp 43, and Johnson 32, with the votes of Reed and McKinley unchanged. Johnson would go next, and his 32 votes might raise Wilson's strength to 105, while Mills might have 95, and Crisp 50. Next Crisp would be eliminated, giving Wilson, perhaps, 135, and Mills 115. Reed would now drop out, and all his votes would go to McKinley, who would have 200. Lastly Mills would be excluded, and, with the addition of his 115 votes, Wilson would have 250 and be elected. The Democratic majority, which under the prevailing plan of plurality elections would have been defeated, unless its members had abandoned the privilege of independent voting, would be successful, and would be represented by 12 178 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. the man of its choice, without the intervention of a political machine. Of course if a number of assemblies were com- prised in the constituency holding the election, the transfers of votes just described would not be made in each assembly, but would be effected by the cen- tral canvassing authority. If it happened that so many candidates were in the field, and the factional divisions were so pronounced, that a majority could not be secured, even after all possible eliminations and transfers had been made, a new election would be ordered, as described in the first chapter. The choice in this case would be limited to the candi- dates remaining in the field at the close of the first count, if the number did not exceed five, or to the five highest if it did. If there were no choice on this trial, a third ballot between the two highest would settle it. This system would absolutely dispense with all occasion for caucuses, conventions, or party machin- ery of any kind. If parties continued to exist, which would be hardly possible, no voter would need to pay any attention to tickets prepared in advance, for anybody could vote for any candidate he pre- ferred without in the least endangering the success of his party. The majority would rule, whether it scattered its first-choice votes or not, and the bosses, whose present influence is derived from the fact that they can pin the rank and file of the citizens to the alternative of voting the regular ticket or incur- ring party defeat, would have to go out of politics. CHAPTER XIV. THE WORK OF THE POPULAR ASSEMBLY. As our political system is now organized, the individual voter has nothing to do except to read his paper if he can read attend the primaries, if he think it worth while, argue with his neighbors, and vote once a year, or once in two years, for a list of candidates prepared for him by his party mana- gers. This degree of political activity is certainly better than absolute stagnation, of the Russian kind. But it is far from exerting the stimulating and enlightening effect that would be produced by such a system of organized effort as would be created by the enrollment of the whole voting population in a network of primary assemblies, invested with jurisdiction over all departments of government, local, State, and national. Let us suppose this system in operation, and try to picture to ourselves the ordinary course of pro- ceedings in the assemblies. It is the night of the regular monthly meeting of the assembly of the nineteenth precinct of New York City. There are six or seven hundred voters in the hall the pre- cincts in New York being unusually large. The gathering is called to order by the chairman of the previous meeting, a new chairman is elected, he appoints a secretary, and the assembly is ready for (179) 180 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. business. A member of Good Government Club A rises to remark that there have been rumors of corruption in the police force, and asks the council- man for the precinct, who is in attendance at the meeting, what he knows about it, and what he pro- poses to do. The councilman responds that he has heard of the rumors referred to, and will bring them to the attention of the superintendent of police at the next meeting of the council, and insist upon a satisfactory explanation, or the removal of the accused officials. A citizen complains that the milkmen disturb his rest by rattling over the streets before daylight. A milkman explains that it is necessary to be out early, but that the wagons would cause no disturb- ance were it not for the bad condition of the street pavements. Thereupon a resolution is passed instructing the councilman to find out exactly what defects there are in the pavements and who is responsible for them, and report at the next meet- ing. A resolution is offered calling for a popular vote on the proposition to abolish the State and local taxes upon personal property and improvements. After some discussion it is laid over until the next meeting for further consideration. The representative in Congress from the district having died, and due notice having been given that an election would be held this evening, nominations are called for. Half a dozen candidates are pro- posed, most of them being well-known men whose names are offered at the same time in all the other THE WORK OF THE POPULAR ASSEMBLY. 181 precincts of the district. The hand-stamps and blank slips of paper are put in the booths, and the voters enter one by one and prepare their ballots, stamping as many names as they please in the order of their preference. When the voting is completed the chairman and secretary count the ballots in the presence of the meeting, and under the immediate supervision of representatives of the various candi- dates. The returns and ballots are then sealed and forwarded to the Secretary of State for the final canvass with the votes of the other precincts in the district. The next meeting, in addition to dealing with such local matters as demand attention, may have to take action upon a new tariff, and the next may be called upon to handle the question of woman suffrage, or prohibition. In the course of a year all the great, practical problems of government would receive intelligent discussion, and some of them would reach a definite settlement. The average Athenian citizen, who did not read books, but received his education by' public discus- sion in precisely this way, has been said to have been better trained politically than the average member of the British House of Commons. The illiterate American citizen is now almost totally inaccessible to enlightening influences, but the pop- ular assembly would give him more instruction than is enjoyed at present by the ordinary reader of books and papers. The " ignorant vote" then would lose most of its dangers, even if men unable to read and write were allowed to continue to take part in politics. 182 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. But it is not likely that they would enjoy that privi- lege very long. The result of the referendum in California, on the question of establishing an educa- tional qualification, indicates clearly that the masses of the people do not consider the rule of illiterates an essential part of popular government. No doubt one of the first acts of a true democracy would be to make education universal and compulsory on the one hand, and to ordain, on the other, that nobody should be intrusted with a share in the government until he had availed himself of the privileges so offered. If the system of popular assemblies once took root it is likely that the meeting-hall would supply the need of a bond of union for the neighborhood. The church used to be such a center of neighborly asso- ciation, and in the country districts the schoolhouse is now. But the precinct assembly hall would be something more than either. It would touch the life of the community at all points. In time, endear- ing associations would grow up around it. In many cases public-spirited citizens would give their pre- cincts handsome buildings, which, in addition to the meeting-halls, would contain libraries, gymnasia, baths, and club-rooms. In other cases the people would provide such buildings for themselves by tax- ation. Instead of a huge, chaotic aggregation of unconnected atoms, the nation would be a harmo- nious organism, with every atom occupying a recog- nized place. The individual citizen would have a civic home ; he would be surrounded in his precinct assembly and club-house with faces that would soon THE WORK OF THE POPULAR ASSEMBLY. 183 become familiar ; he would daily enjoy and appre- ciate the advantages of public order, and no man would be rendered indifferent to good government by the feeling that las poverty deprived him of any "stake in the country/- CHAPTER XV. THE BOSS. America has made two striking and original con- tributions to the art of government. One is the Supreme Court, invested with power to annul uncon- stitutional legislation. The other is the Boss. The former contribution is the one in which the Amer- ican people take more pride, but the latter surp it in practical importance. Every form of government develops its own types of leadership. Some forms breed demagogues, oth- ers statesmen, others military adventurers, others seraglio intriguers, others masterful orators. Ours breeds bosses. From a scientific point of view the system of boss-rule is one of the most perfeet and beautifully complex developments of modern civili- zation. It is a convincing illustration of the possible stability of a pyramid resting on its apex. The apex on which the boss rests his pyramid of government is a body of a few hundreds or thousands of men, who agree to render him any political serviees required in exchange for support at the public expense or protection in unlawful occupations. This force he employs to gain possession of the machinery of a party preferably the one locally dominant. Unless there is a rival boss in possession, this is THE BOSS. 185 not hard, for it is an unprofitable political servant that can not make the tour of a dozen primary polling places, and deposit at least one vote at each in the course of a day. Against such a force, an undisci- plined mob of reformers, limited to one vote each, and giving politics only such attention as they can spare from more serious occupations, is as helpless as an infant Sunday-school class against a regiment of regulars. When there are two aspirants for the boss-ship, the one that gets control of the member- ship rolls and the counting machinery of the party wins. So conclusive is this preliminary test of strength considered, that the embryo boss who fails here generally declines to trouble himself with the useless formality of voting his followers at the primaries, but either bolts or makes terms with his successful rival, and waits for a more favorable opportunity. Having once carried the primaries, the new polit- ical leader finds easy sailing thereafter. He holds a convention and nominates a local ticket, which, by virtue of its " regularity," commands the support of the entire party and is duly elected. The retainers who have made the victory possible are appropriately rewarded, some with city offices, some with contracts or jobs under contractors, and some with police protec- tion in dive-keeping, and other less reputable occu- pations, whose profits depend on a good understand- ing with the governing powers. The hold of the boss on the party machinery is strengthened by purging the rolls of the precinct clubs or associa- tions of unruly members, and manning the organ- 186 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. ization throughout with officers who can be depended upon to let in only the right kind of votes at the primaries, and to correct in the counting any mis- takes that may accidentally occur in the voting. The dictator is now in a position to make the political war pay its own expenses, and a handsome profit in addition. Beside the regular percentage on salaries, which his retainers in office cheerfully pay as the skipper's proportion of the booty captured on a successful cruise, he levies assessments on rich corporations in need of official favors; on large property-holders who wish to pay small taxes; on saloon-keepers who desire to conduct their estab- lishments under liberal interpretations of the laws ; on gamblers, confidence men, and other followers of vicious professions ; on purveyors of public supplies ; on contractors for municipal work, and in short on everybody whom the local government can either help or harm. His power brings in wealth and his wealth procures more power. He sends a solid delegation to the State convention of his party, and, by judicious combinations with the friends of candi- dates from different sections, he allies his machine with the State organization, and through it, if suc- cessful at the polls, with the State government. He sends another solid delegation to the Legislature, and markets its votes on the most favorable terms. Finally, if ambitious, he exerts his power as a State leader in the national convention, and later, under favoring conditions, his trades with the boss of the other party for local offices may determine the choice of a President of the United States. This is the THE BOSS. 187 mighty pyramid that rests upon the apex of a little band of political men- of -all-work willing to devote their entire attention to the duties laid out for them by their employer. And the curious thing about it is that this delicately balanced pyramid is in a state of stable equilibrium. When disturbed it always tends to return to its position on its point never to one on the broad base of popular rule. If, by a superhuman effort, it is set squarely upon its base, it rolls over on its point again as soon as the reformers who righted it let go their hold. This apparent paradox is merely the inevitable outcome of the principles of human nature. The boss wins because at each stage of his proceedings his forces are stronger than those of his opponents. His drilled mercenaries are more effective for carrying primaries than the undisciplined levies, hampered by the troublesome impedimenta -of con- scientious scruples, that oppose them. When the primaries are carried, he has at his disposal the potent force of party spirit. His fortunes in the campaign are linked with those of the national organization that holds a prescriptive right to the support of a majority of the voters of the city. Opposition to his ticket is disloyalty to the party. When he has attained power he commands the alliance of the great interests that consider it necessary to stand well with the authorities; and all the men for whom he has procured office or other favors, together with their relatives and friends, are diligent workers in his behalf. Here, as everywhere, it is the first step that costs. The 188 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. first primaries of the boss correspond to the mil- lionaire's first ten thousand dollars. After the foothold is gained, power flows in on one as wealth on the other. And even a complete victory at the primaries is not indispensable, unless there is another boss to fight. When there are only unorganized reformers to contend with, the boss can win if he can control a third or a fourth of the delegates in a convention. With that force available for trading, only a few judicious combinations are needed to secure a majority. .The boss system, having grown up of itself under our present political methods, has thereby proved its appropriateness to its environment. It is a of the survival of the fittest, or rather of creation by direct adaptation. Boss-rule has come to fill what would otherwise have been a political vacuum. And, although absolutely bad, it is not relatively an unmixed evil. It does for us after a fashion what, without it, we should have no means of having done at all. It introduces a certain unity and responsi- bility into the chaos of American municipal govern- ment. When streets are dirty, sewers dilapidated, schools inefficient, and police corrupt, the people may not know what particular officials are legally responsible, but they do know that their boss is not giving them a good government, and that it is time to change bosses. Sometimes, where abuses have been flagrant and the public patience sorely tried, such a realization has been known to work an improvement that has lasted for as much as two or three years. THE BOSS. 189 As the boss is the creation of our present methods, the question arises whether he would flourish if the system of government were changed. The natural presumption is that he would not. A type of animal life developed in accordance with the needs of life on land would not flourish in the water. The very perfection with which an organism meets the require- ments of one environment is a disadvantage to it when placed in another, and certainly there is no more highly specialized type of animal life than the boss. But let us imagine the experiment tried. Suppose an aspirant for the career of a boss to make his attempt in a city of five hundred thousand inhabit- ants, organized on the plan heretofore described. As there is no general ticket to be elected, there can be no primaries to capture. The embryo boss must send his retainers into two hundred precinct assemblies, each containing several hundred voters of all parties (if parties continue to exist) and induce at least two- thirds of them to recall their councilmen and elect others favorable to his schemes. As it is hardly sup- posable that his forces at the start will be numerous enough to allow him" to spare more than five or six men to each assembly, and as impromptu nomina- tions and the preferential system of voting will make it impossible for him to secure any advantage from the presentation of a "regular ticket," he is likely to find his undertaking rather arduous before he goes any farther. But assuming that five or six heelers are able to hypnotize four or five hundred voters in each precinct, the next step offers still more serious difficulties. The mayor must be removed, 190 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. for until this is done the retainers of the boss can not get the rewards earned by their extraordinary ser- vices. But to remove the mayor, two months' notice is necessary, and that means an appeal to the pre- cinct assemblies, now fully aroused from their hypnotic trance. But, suppose even this ordeal passed, the mayor removed, one subservient to the boss elected, and a clean sweep made of the subor- dinate officials for the benefit of the invading force. Instead of being ended, the work of the new dictator would have only begun. He would have proceeded thus far, simply because the people had allowed him to do so. If, at any time, they became dissatisfied with his rule, they could resume their control as easily as if they had never given it up. The boss could not fight from behind the intrenchments of subservient committees and packed primaries. He would have to stay out in the open, where his vote, like that of each of his followers, would count one, and the majority could always rule if it chose. And the fact that he retained his political existent one day would give no assurance that he would keep it the next. Whenever the people took offense and a boss never fails to offend them sooner or later they could extinguish him on the instant, withoiit waiting for a distant election day with the chance that their anger might cool in the meantime. And even while his power lasted the boss would be deprived of the most precious privileges of his class. He could not assess corporations and millionaires for the price of favorable city ordinances, for every such ordinance would be subject to rejection by THE BOSS. 1.91 popular vote. In such circumstances, is it likely that a boss could even begin to grow ? A boss is a specialist, who finds his opportunity in the management of political machinery too compli- cated to be worked by any but professional hands. When the machinery is made so simple that the people can work it easily and surely for themselves, the boss will disappear. CHAPTER XVI. THE REFERENDUM IN CALIFORNIA. While direct legislation is still generally regarded as a foreign novelty, its principle is recognized to a greater or less extent in every State in the Union. No State has made greater advances in this direc- tion than California, where the abuses of power by officials have been so flagrant as to compel the people to take continually greater shares of the work of law-making into their own hands. Like other States, California is governed under a constitution adopted by popular vote. In 1879, when the present constitution was ratified, the people were asked to express at the polls their opinion on the subject of Chinese immigration. The result of this referendum (883 in favor of the Chinese to 154,638 against them), in conjunction with a similar vote in Nevada, had much to do with the inception of the national restrictive legislation that followed. The practice of consulting the people with regard to proposed policies took root, and has since been widely applied. At the election of 1892 four propositions were thus submitted to vote. One of them related to an educational quali- fication for the suffrage. It might have been supposed that such a measure would be unpopular, and certainly no legislature would have ventured to (192) THE REFERENDUM IN CALIFORNIA. 193 commit itself to it without knowing what the voters thought. The result showed that a majority in every county in the State favored the restriction of the suffrage, the aggregate vote cast for the propo- sition being 151,320 to 41,059 against it. With this encouragement the next Legislature found no diffi- culty in framing a constitutional amendment, limiting the franchise to men able to read the constitution in the English language and write their names, and nobody undertook to amass polit- ical capital by denouncing the scheme as an attempt to create an aristocracy. Another proposition voted upon at the same time was one to settle the question whether the people wanted to elect United States Senators themselves, or whether they preferred to have the work done by the legislatures. The people decided, by a vote of 187,958 to 13,342, that they would rather do it themselves, and again the fifty- four counties were all agreed. The new constitution of California is less a consti- tution than a code of laws. Having tasted the pleas- ures of law-making, the people are pursuing them with progressive avidity. In 1890 they voted on one constitutional amendment ; in 1 892 on five, and this year they will vote on nine. They would have had ten before them this year if the Supreme Court had not decided that one of the proposed amend- ments had been improperly submitted. The tend- ency of these changes in the organic law is all in the direction of taking power away from representa- tive bodies and giving it to the people immediately interested. For instance, all city charters used to be 13 194 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. framed by the Legislature. Then cities of over one hundred thousand inhabitants were given the power to adopt their own charters, subject to legislative approval. Next this privilege was extended to cities of ten thousand inhabitants, and now it is enjoyed by all places with three thousand five hundred or over. A fertile source of scandal in past sessions of the Legislature has been the formation of new coun- ties. A constitutional amendment to be voted on this year will abolish this by authorizing the Legis- lature to pass general laws, under which the people who desire to form new counties will be able to do it for themselves. No county, city, town, township, or school district is allowed to incur any indebtedness without the assent of two-thirds of its qualified electors voting at an election. Whenever a new schoolhouse is to be built, or a sewer system constructed, or any other public work undertaken, for which an issue of bonds is necessary, the people have to sanction it by their votes. Even the Legislature can not raise the State debt above $300,000 without the consent of the voters, which is equivalent to saying that it can not now incur any new indebtedness at all. The establishment of high schools, by counties, towns, or union districts, has been left to the people at the polls. The control of irrigation is in the hands of the people of the localities interested. The voters in any drainage area may have an irrigation district marked off, with such boundaries as they desire, and may authorize an issue of bonds for the construction THE REFERENDUM IN CALIFORNIA. 195 of canals and ditches, the condemnation and purchase of water-rights, and other purposes appropriate to the objects desired, and the payments on these bonds are met by taxes on the lands in the districts. But the longest advance toward direct popular rule was made by the last Legislature, which inserted a provision in the county government law, requiring the board of supervisors of any county, on petition of half the qualified electors, to submit any proposed ordinance to vote, and making such ordinances, when ratified by a majority at the polls, valid as if passed by the supervisors in the ordinary way. This, of course, is the initiative in its com- pletest form, the only material variation from the Swiss system being the large proportion of signa- tures required to set it going. In view of the ease with which signatures to petitions are obtained in this country, this is not a serious defect. Any measure for which there is an earnest, popular demand, can easily command the required number of names. At the last session of the Legislature, an attempt was made to secure the submission of a constitu- tional amendment establishing the initiative and referendum in State matters. The referendum alone could probably have been obtained, but the legislative mind had not been educated quite up to the initiative, and the two fell together. It is con- fidently expected that both will be gained at the coming session. Should this expectation prove well founded, California may be the first American State to establish true democratic government. CHAPTER XVII. SOME PRACTICAL EXAMPLES. The test of a pudding is traditionally and justly believed to be in the eating. If the methods of government advocated in this book had been in operation during the past quarter of a century, how would they have affected the settlement of the practical problems we have been called upon to meet within that time ? In municipal affairs the most striking instance of misgovernment recorded in American history was the rule of the Tweed ring in New York. Tweed was a boss who rose to power like any other boss, except in so far as his methods were modified by the fact that he had the peculiar organization of Tammany to work with. The very existence of such a ruler would have been impossible under a system of government which gave the people com- plete and continuous control over their agents, and left no plausible ground on which political machines could appeal for popular support. But if a Tweed had been able to exist under such a system he could never have maintained his frauds without detection and punishment. Even if the ring had obtained complete control of the mayor, the auditor, and all the subordinate executive officials, it could not pos- sibly have captured every member of a city council (196) SOME PRACTICAL EXAMPLES. 197 elected independently by several hundred free popu- lar assemblies, and all subject to recall at the pleas- ure of their constituents. Even one such member, representing one solitary uncorrupted precinct, would have been able to lay bare all the records of the ring, and after that the rest would have had to join in the pursuit or be replaced by others who would. As it was, although it was generally suspected that something was wrong, the actual exposure of the Tweed conspiracy depended upon the coincidence of two extraordinary events. A subordinate official copied off the secret accounts of the ring, and he had the good fortune to intrust them to an incorruptible newspaper proprietor. There was no certain, official means of extracting information from unwilling cus- todians. But for treason in his camp, combined with his inability to buy back his betrayed secrets, Tweed might have stolen millions more. A parallel case is disclosed by the recent investi- gations of the Lexow committee. But for a combi- nation of national hard times and reckless political mismanagement in the State, the party friendly to Tammany would not have lost control of the Legis- lature, and if the other party had not secured a ma- jority there, no investigating committee would have been appointed. But even after the investigation had been held, and the truth about police corruption extracted, little of practical importance was accom- plished. Most of the smirched officials retained their places, and Tammany offered the excuse, which was sustained by the facts, that the blackmail and bribery uncovered were not peculiar to its own rule, 198 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. but had existed under all city administrations. Under the plan of popular government proposed, no such excuse would have been available, for at the first hint of corruption some member of the council, not needing to wait for a partisan legislative majority to order an investigation, would have probed for the facts, and the guilty officers either would have been dismissed at once or would have brought their supe- riors down with them. In any case the question would have been, not whether one political organi- zation deserved more general blame than another, but whether certain individual officials had been guilty of specific misconduct or not. If they had, they would have had to go, and their superiors could not have shielded them without inviting the same fate for themselves. In State affairs an excellent example of the com- parative working of the two systems is found in the course of the New York Legislature with regard to the government of certain cities. The Democratic Legislature of 1893 passed a series of bills modify- ing the governments of these places in the interest of local politicians. That these measures were locally unpopular was sufficiently demonstrated by their political results, the vote of Erie County, for instance, changing within a year from a small Democratic plurality to a Republican plurality of over ten thousand. Nevertheless, the bills had passed, and they had to be subsequently repealed, at the cost of much intervening trouble and con- fusion. The only way in which Democrats could resent an invasion of local self-government was to SOME PRACTICAL EXAMPLES. 199 assist in a political revolution which put the enemies of their national policy into power and discouraged the friends of Democratic principles throughout the Union. With a government organized on the plan suggested, no such trouble could have arisen in the first place, because home rule is of the essence of the system, and no Legislature would have had authority to interfere with it. But if it had been possible to start the schemes by which Mr. Sheehan and his allies made so much trouble for themselves and others, they could have been stopped before they had accomplished any damage. The people of Buffalo, and the other cities affected, could simply have recalled their representatives, and the matter would have been settled without a political upheaval. Of course the actual procedure would have been that when the representatives found how their conduct was regarded at home, they would have abandoned their plans before their constituents had a chance to recall them. In national matters the proposed system would have saved us most of the troubles we have experi- enced since the war. We should never had the discreditable wrangle between Congress and Presi- dent Johnson over reconstruction. The President would not have had the veto power, but if he had disapproved of the proposed legislation of Congress he would have demanded the referendum, and that would have ended the controversy. In the same way the tariff and silver questions would have been settled, sharply and decisively, nearly twenty years ago, and we should have had peace. Obviously we 200 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. should not have had a disputed Presidential election in 1 876, nor at any other time. We might have had occasionally a close vote in Congress between two popular candidates, but it is plain that such an inci- dent would not have aroused the passions engendered by a struggle involving the fate of two political armies. These are specimen instances. I can think of no problem of government, national, State, or local, in whose treatment the new methods would not bear comparison with the old to equal advantage. CHAPTER XVIII. 1894-1897. Events have moved rapidly in the past three years. The dangerous tendencies that were apparent when the foregoing pages were written have developed with accelerated speed. Americans have experienced the novel and painful sensation of rinding their re- pi:,)lic regarded abroad as the awful example instead of as the model of nations. Boss rule has intrenched itself in the government of states and cities. The Legislature of New York, under the absolute control of one man, has passed measures of the most momen- tous importance without debate and in sovereign dis- regard of the protests of the great communities whose interests have been sacrificed. Chicago has seen herself robbed of her streets for fifty years to come by a corrupt Legislature and City Council, and all her two million people have been powerless to pre- vent the outrage. San Francisco has suffered her annual betrayal to her water, gas and street-railroad monopolies. In national affairs we have had three more years of imbecile trifling with the currency question, and we have witnessed another complete tariff transforma- tion, with its accompanying scandals. The Senate has displayed its power for evil more conspicuously than ever before. A treasury unable to make both (201) 202 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. ends meet has been further depleted of millions to en- rich the Sugar Trust. Under both Cleveland and McKinley Congress and the President have worked at cross purposes, and neither the executive nor the legislative branch of the government has been able to carry out a consistent policy. The people of Greater New York are looking for- ward with dread to their fate under the cumbrous charter fastened upon them by the boss who owns the State Legislature. The elaborate political machin- ery, so ingeniously devised to make its management impossible to any but professional hands, shuts out the mass of the voters from any effective and continuous control of the work of administration, and makes it certain that the intervals of reform will be only rare and brief exceptions to the rule of bad government. The paper checks of constitutions are giving way everywhere before the scientific advances of the trained and skillfully led forces of corruption. " Slowly but surely," says Mr. Joseph B. Bishop, in the Century, " the boss extends his system until he gets possession of all the functions of the govern- ment. He gets control of the executive and the leg- islature first, and later of the judiciary, and then his deadly clutch upon the popular sovereignty is com- plete. We have had instances in more than one State, during the past year, of the fatal advance upon this final stronghold. ... If the bench shall really fall into the hands of the blackmailing boss, popular gov- ernment will cease to exist in the States over which he rules." 1894-1897- 203 And Mr. E. L. Godkin, writing in the Atlantic of the breakdown of representative government, has this to say of the condition of the legislative power in the chief State of the Union: " If I said, for instance, that the legislature at Al- bany is a school of vice, a fountain of political de- bauchery, and that few of the younger men come back from it without having learned to mock at po- litical purity and public spirit, I should seem to be using unduly strong language, and yet I could fill nearly a volume with illustrations in support of it." The causes that have brought about the present practical failure of republican government in America are so numerous and complex that it would need work on half a dozen different lines economic, political, social, moral, religious and educational to deal with them all. Before we can expect a perfect govern- ment we must have a profound regeneration of in- dividual character and of social standards, and these are impossible under a vicious economic system a system which sets continually before the eyes of the public official the corrupting spectacle of knavery successful and honored in private business. But while political machinery cannot take the place of personal character, nor undo the evil wrought by social and economic maladjustments, it undoubtedly has tremendous power, and there is no reason why that power should not be exerted upward instead of downward. And the need for such betterments as are within reach has become too urgent to be trifled with longer. In many states and cities the 204 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. republican form of government guaranteed by the constitution has already been destroyed. If we have an autocratic ruler it is a mere matter of detail that we call him a boss, instead of a king, or a sultan, or a czar. When the preceding chapters were written I en- deavored to show that the governmental machinery there proposed would enable the people to suppress the evils that had then become manifest. In the three years that have elapsed since that time these evils have grown more threatening, but everything that has happened has tended to confirm the correct- ness of this belief. Take, for instance, the most flag- rant instance of the sacrifice of the rights of a com- munity by its unfaithful representatives the passage by the Illinois Legislature of the laws under which the streets of Chicago have been given away to com- binations of street railroad, gas and electric light companies. Under the plan outlined these matters would have been of purely local concern. The State Legislature would have had nothing to do with them. They would have been brought up, in the first in- stance, in a council of about four hundred members, each of whom would have been subject to recall by his constituents. Before the ordinances could have passed the council every member who favored them would have been retired and replaced by another pledged to oppose them. But even if it had been possible to drive them through the council their pro- moters would still have been as far as ever from suc- cess. Their opponents could have demanded the 1894-1897. 205 referendum, and unless a majority of all the voters in the city desired to make a present of their property to the corporations the scheme would have disap- peared from view at that point. There would have been no need for the din of remonstrance with which the people and the press of Chicago vainly attempted to avert the threatened spoliation the mass meetings, the wild harangues, the triple-leaded editorials, the shrieking news " features," the delegations of visiting statesmen at the State capital. A simple explana- tion of the nature of the proposed measure would have insured its defeat, either through the mandate of the constituencies to their representatives in the council or through the referendum. If the government of Greater New York had been organized on these lines a charter of a dozen pages, simple, easily understood by everybody, and complete in itself, would have sufficed to regulate its operations, instead of a volume of six hundred pages, with several thousand additional pages of statutes incorporated in it by reference. There would have been none of the strain of anxiety that has prevailed through the whole of the past year over the question whether the first Mayor of the consolidated city would be a reformer or a spoilsman, and consequently whether the new metropolis would have a fair start in life or would be dragged through the mire of corruption for four years to come. There would have been no oc- casion for conferences or deals between good citizens and political bosses. Each group of three or four contiguous precincts would simply have elected the 206 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. councilman whom the majority of its voters pre- ferred, for such time as his work should prove satis- factory, and without any nominating machinery or any enforced co-operation of hundreds of thousand* of electors in a single act, and the election of a suit- able Mayor would have followed as a matter of course. If the curious reader will turn to Chapter VII of this book, written during the Parkhurst reform upris- ing of three years ago, he will find this remark about the city government of New York: " New York is governed by corporations of poli- ticians organized to exploit the various sources of revenue legitimately and illegitimately controlled by the persons who hold the municipal offices. The cor- poration at present in possession is known as Tam- many Hall, but it is a mistake to suppose that the defeat or even the total destruction of Tammany would imply any permanent change in the methods of municipal administration. It is estimated that the city government of New York is equivalent to a cap- ital of eight hundred million dollars, the income of which may be enjoyed by whatever combination of politicians succeeds in capturing it. It is doing vio- lence to all the principles of human nature to imagine that this booty will be left to the disposal of high- minded political amateurs after the art of acquiring it lias been so thoroughly taught by Tammany and its predecessors. Reform is spasmodic, but greed is permanent. Greed works all the time ; reform works when it has no previous engagements. If 1894-1897- 207 Tammany were destroyed, a new combination, just as powerful and just as hungry, would be in control within four years." Political prophets cannot be held to an astronomi- cal accuracy in the matter of dates, but in view of the fact that the time allowed by this prediction has a year yet to run, and taking into account the compli- cations introduced by the creation of Greater New York, it may be asked whether the rise of the Platt machine does not fairly bear out the forecast. In national affairs we have had a series of impres- sive object-lessons in the disadvantages of the present methods of government. Last year the currency and the tariff questions, together with several minor is- sues, were presented to the people together. Some men voted for the successful party because they be- lieved in the gold standard, others because, although they were bimetallists, they were opposed to the inde- pendent free coinage of silver; others because, al- though advocates of free silver, they thought pro- tection more important, others because, although they would have liked both free trade and free silver, they were afraid of " free riot " and " packing the Supreme- Court;" others because they wanted liberal pensions, and still others because they had always voted the Republican ticket, and never would vote any other, regardless of platforms or politics. No- body knows what verdict the country rendered at the polls. The idea was wide-ly prevalent at the time that it had given a mandate for the reform of the cur- rency on the gold basis, but the new President and 208 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. Congress evidently did not share this belief, for they shelved the currency question while they proceeded to enact a tariff law on the strictest protective lines. It is certain that Mr. McKinley received the votes of hundreds of thousands perhaps a million of free traders, but on the other hand hundreds of thousands of protectionists voted for Mr. Bryan. All we know about the popular desires is that the number of citi- zens who were superlatively anxious for the gll standard, or international bimetallism, or a protective tariff, or liberal pensions, or civil service reform, or a vigorous foreign policy, or conservatism in dealing with social questions, or who particularly objected to an income tax, or dreaded interference with the Su- preme Court, or who trained with the Republican party from force of habit, exceeded by 651,016 out of 13,875,653 the number of those who considered free silver, or a tariff for revenue, or free trade, or econ- omy in government, or social reform, or an income tax. or the abolition of government by injunction, or the maintenance of Democratic or Populist ciations, of sufficient importance to outweigh all other issues. The result of this nebulosity of the popular desires has been that Congress has acted without any sense of responsibility to the people. It has enacted such a tariff as nobody proposed during the campaign; it has trifled with the currency ques- tion, and it has given a group of predatory Senators a free hand to repeat the forays in the interest of the trusts which were carried on so successfully in 1894. If the government had been organized on the princi- 1894-1897. 209 pal of continuous responsibility no such campaign as that of last year, with its dangerous class cleavage and its hazard of all the interests of the nation on a single cast of the dice, would have been possible. In each Congressional district the man would have been elected who seemed to his constituents personally best fitted for the general work of legislation. In due course the silver question would have been de- bated in Congress on its merits, without regard to its effect on the elections, and a free coinage bill would have been either passed or defeated. In either case the matter would have been carried before the people, and a direct vote would have been obtained on that single issue, uncomplicated by any personal considerations or by any other policies. The same course would have been pursued with regard to the tariff and other matters of current interest. Mean- while it is not likely that either Mr. McKinley or Mr. Bryan would have been heard of as a Presidential candidate. Each of these leaders won his promin- ence as the representative of a principle one stand- ing for protection, the other for free silver. With the ultimate decision on matters of legislation relegated to the people, acting directly on measures instead of indirectly through the choice of men, the " standard- bearer " would disappear, and a President would be chosen simply on the ground of his probable effic- iency as an administrator. There is a general agreement among reformers that the weakest point of our present methods of gov- ernment is the system of nominations. It is here 210 SUGGESTIONS ON GOVERNMENT. that the boss finds the fulcrum that enables him to move the political earth. The plan proposed would abolish at a stroke the existing maze of nominating machinery in whose management the ordinary citizen who is unable to give his whole time to the work is at such a hopeless disadvantage as compared with the professional manipulator. There would be no formal nominations until the day of election, and then every- body would stand on an equality with everybody else. There would be no machinery in whose management the most expert boss would have any advantage over the amateur reformer. But while a complete change in our present sys- tem would be most desirable it is not to be expected 4 hat it can be brought about at once, or in any short time. Meanwhile the need for protection against our most pressing clangers is urgent. There is not a year, nor a month, nor a day to spare in checking the corruption that is eating out the heart of the republic. If there is any measure that promises substantial re- sults, and for which the public mind is ripe, it should be adopted without waiting for the slow process of a general reorganization. Such a measure is the S\\ i>s referendum. Its merits are pretty generally under- stood by this time; its practical workings are familiar to the American people in the shape of constitutional, license and bond elections, and its extension to all other important subjects would be merely a matter of detail. Former opponents of the most conservative type, such as Mr. Godkin, have come to admit its necessity. While it would not cure all the existing 1894-1897- 211 defects of our government, especially on the side of administration, it would dry up the most prolific sources of corruption. It would make it no longer worth while for rich corporations and other appli- cants for legislative favors to maintain pecuniary re- lations with bosses. Legislation would cease to have a money value. And when the taint of bribery dis- appeared from our government, all other reforms would become easy. CONDENSED CATALOGUE THE HUMBOLDT LIBRARY Containing tJte works of the foremost scientific -writers of the age. The Great Classics of Modern Thought. Single numbers 15 cents. Double numbers 30 cents. $3 a year. i Light Science for Leisure Hours. RICH'D A. PROCTOR. 2 Forms of Water in Clouds, Rivers, &c. Prof. JOHN TYNDALL. 3 Physics and Politics. WALTER BAGEHOT. 4 Man's Place in Nature. Prof. T. H. HUXLEY. 5 Education: Intellectual, Moral, Physical. HERBERT SPENCER. 6 Town Geology. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 7 The Conservation of Energy. BALFOUR STEWART. 8 The Study of Languages. C. MARCEL. 9 The Data of Ethics. HERBERT SPENCER. TO Theory of Sound in Relation to Music. 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