and, though compromise there must always be, most federal regulations, if they touch popular imagination at all, offend one section quite as much as they please another. A case in point is, of course, the new tariff law, which was greatly beneficial to the Southern States and at the same time was a staggering blow to many of the industries of New England. Other examples are the attempts to fix railroad rates and to regulate inter-State commerce, attempts which almost always come into disagreement with State laws. It must be remembered also that the difficulty is increased by jealous defense on the part of each State of its own rights.

Serious politically as these sectional divisions may be, however, they are not as dangerous for national welfare as are the divisions which arise on questions of more general import. In matters of financial legislation and regulation of business there is again sharp divergence of interest. In recent years such laws are, or appear to be, class legislation, and there results in consequence a horizontal division. When the income tax law was passed, for example, few complaints were heard as to the justice of the principle of taxing incomes, but there was, on the one hand, an outcry from the onehalf of one per cent of the population taxed that the measure was confiscation rather than taxation, and on the other, an even louder shout that at last the dishonest rich must bear the burden and the honest poor go free. What made it more dangerous in its effect on the popular imagination was that the minimum of taxable income was put as high as $3,000 for a single and $4,000 for a married man, thus enforcing the idea already shaping itself in the mind of the laboring classes that government has an inherent right to take money from a rich man but no right to take it from a poor man. So also, the so-called trust bills are considered by the most part of the business world-the honest rather more than the dishonest part-as unwarranted interference with quite le

gitimate business; whereas the laboring classes again, who understand these bills not at all, look on them with enthusiasm as instruments to punish the rich, as democratic levellers. It will be seen that such measures as these, which are, and announce themselves as being, social legislation, attack the question in just the opposite way from. which it has been taken up in England and on the Continent. In England, the attempt has been directly to help the poor through such measures as the Insurance Act and the Old Age Pension Bill. In America it is indirectly to help the poor through attacking the rich-a method, by the way, which gains wider popular applause.

That the fact of such legislation proves an unhealthy condition in the Commonwealth; that, in other words, representative government has not been a complete success, is generally admitted. But avoiding the extremes of opinion, represented on the one hand by the very few and usually silent men who see no future for America except in division into small republics or in a strongly centralized government, and on the other by those who are frankly anarchists, there remain two middle groups, each with its clearly defined opinion as to the remedy. One group, numerically small but financially powerful, would put the governing power more and more into the hands of experts. They would create a class which, without being very much in the public eye, would consistently run the machinery of government from year to year-officials more or less corresponding to English permanent under-secretaries but with greater authority. They would extend the civil service. They would have the government managed in a business like manner. The other group believes profoundly that the voice of the people is the voice of God. They would, therefore, cure the illness of the body-politic by steadily enlarging the power of the people. They urge the referendum and the initiative, the recall of judges and of judicial decisions. According to them, the people should.

not only make but also interpret the laws. They are jealous of experts and therefore of the civil service, fearful of any permanent office-still more of any permanent office-holder. This group is now completely in the ascendant, and under its dictation the country is steadily developing a policy of business restriction, the outcome of which no intelligent man can prophesy, but which the ignorant man hails with joy. Furthermore, the tendency is strongly towards a general policy of government ownership of public utilities, a condition of which many doubt the economic wisdom in any State, but which, under a government that shifts with every change of popular feeling, is big with possibilities of disaster.

Whether the faults of a democracy can be eradicated by making the government more democratic is a question which only a bold man would attempt to answer. This is, nevertheless, the method at present being used in America and achievements are thus far not encouraging. The general referendum and initiative have been adopted in some twenty States. They will soon be added to the Constitutions of other States. Many urge that they be made national. The results in a dozen States are summarized in the very useful appendix to President Lowell's recent book, "Public Opinion and Popular Government." The referendum, omitting that on constitutional amendments, which is usual in most States, has been used, through 1912, forty-nine times, and twenty-five times the Legislatures have been upheld. The initiative has been used one hundred and twenty-eight times (seventy-six times in the State of Oregon) and has been. successful fifty-nine times. fifty-nine times. This seems a fair average of success and failure, and is hailed by the supporters of the experiment as proof of its success. Such proof, however, really depends on whether the measures have elicited true public opinion, and analysis of the vote would show that this has seldom been accomplished. In In many cases there probably was no

public opinion. Personality in American elections counts for more than principles. The voters turn out almost invariably for this or that man, whereas in England they cast their ballots more for this or that principle. On such broad questions as woman suffrage and the prohibition of liquor, questions on which almost every one has an opinion, there have occasionally been heavy votes; on questions affecting some particular district, moreover, the voting has been often general in the district concerned; but in most of the matters submitted by referendum and initiative the people have evinced little interest, usually because they had no facts on which to base an opinion. It would be absurd, for example, to call the following a true expression of public opinion. An initiative was proposed in the State of Colorado for the publication of a pamphlet containing arguments on all measures to be referred to the people. This was lost, approximately 37,000 voting for and 38,000 against. Furthermore, only 29 per cent of those at the election voted at all, and probably not more than 75 per cent of the registered voters went to the polls. Nor does it seem a much more valuable index of public opinion when a much larger proportion of those at the polls, 78 per cent in fact, voted in Oregon on a State income tax, 52,702 approving and 52,948 opposing the measure. Perhaps the most significant fact, however, as one scans the lists, is the tendency shown in the results. Practically all laws to tax corporations, to apolish poll taxes, to add to the direct power of the people by permitting the recall or by greater extension of initiative or veto, have been acted on affirmatively. Correspondingly all laws to make judicial functions more independent, to restrict the power of labor unions, or to levy proportional taxes on all citizens, have been defeated.

A pertinent question to ask, therefore, even if it be admitted that referendum and initiative actually test public opinion, is whether the people who make up the majority of voters are

competent to judge. The opinion of one may be as good as that of another on such general and clearly understood question as woman suffrage or the prohibition of liquor, but why should the uneducated voter be able to form any sound opinion on a complicated legal matter? He would shrink from giving technical advice on the management of a business in which his savings were invested. There is no reason to believe that his advice is any more useful in the management of the business of government. Why, furthermore, should a resident of one part of a State understand the local needs of a distant section? In the Legislature such questions can be fully discussed, and the conflicting arguments weighed by the legislators. Among the electorate at large this is impossible. Yet a decision arrived at Yet a decision arrived at by the people's representatives is held in little esteem, whereas a direct decision, even if secured from a minority of the people, is devoutly accepted as the will of God-except by suffragists and prohibitionists when the vote goes against them. It is notable also that this divine fiat is most strenuously asserted when the vote has been particularly close.

The impulse of the uneducated citizen is to vote to curb the activities of the successful man of affairs, of whom he is jealous, and to secure himself from direct taxation. As Professor Barrett Wendell said several years ago in his prophetic book, "The Privileged Classes":" . . . in the course of the last century or so one great maxim of the American Revolution seems to have got queerly turned around. Our forefathers protested against taxation without representation; our fellow citizens now demand, as their natural right, something very like representation without taxation." This statement was derided as fantastic exaggeration. To-day it is literally true. One hears nothing of the demand because it is accorded, and as a "natural right." Poll taxes, long the only tax on laboring men, have in many places been abolished, and everywhere they are.

evaded, yet these people, who pay no taxes, have representation in the fullest measure. They now demand control, and to grant it is everywhere the tendency. Because they are in the majority they insist that through their representatives, or better by direct legislation, they should have, for example, the spending of money which others have contributed. The natural result is gross extravagance. The spendthrift who comes into a great inheritance is proverbially the prey of his friends, spends his substance recklessly, and so the man of the people, suddenly elevated to office, first rewards his friends by installing them in positions for which they may be quite as little fitted as he is for his, and then together they expend the funds collected in taxes from corporations and the richer citizens. This is not to accuse them of dishonesty. They are sometimes extravagant through ignorance of business methods; sometimes through a quite honest carrying out of their social and political creed that it is the duty of a successful candidate for office to repay his supporters.

A natural result of this is that only men who hold this creed stand a real chance of election. Those who have paid the taxes and who have the greatest interest in the proper spending of public funds, have little influence. Massachusetts, long considered one of the most conservative States of the Union, is now typical of all. Its Lieutenant-Governor went not long ago to Washington to protest against the appointment to Federal offices of "highbrows" his own contemptuous appellation for all who have inherited social position or independent means. ter an election in a certain State, an unusually intelligent postman was asked for whom he voted for Governor. "For the Democrat," was his immediate response. "I knew he wasn't as good as either of the other candidates, but he has worked up from the bottom and the others have not, so I thought he deserved to be rewarded." Such incidents are unimportant, except that they are symptomatic of the trend of

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American politics. Men, not principles, carry elections, and it is rapidly becoming universal to estimate men not for what they are at the moment, not for what their abilities may enable

them to accomplish for the State or for the nation, but rather for what their origins have been. Viewed from this angle, the excellent man who has started near the top is not comparable with the mediocre man who has started at the bottom. Even though the latter has not caught up, he has climbed farther. Although he may be less efficient for a particular work, he is more spectacular. Those who are still at the bottom trust him because they recognize in him one of themselves. Many vote for him because he represents their idea of democracy. Many also vote for him because they know that he will reward them by turning over to them a part of the public money of which their support has made him the temporary guardian and disburser. The result is that public offices are filled with men who are technically incompetent.

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Men are elected to office, therefore, on a basis which ignores technical fitness and is ultra-democratic. While in office, however, they are given free rein and have distinctly autocratic authority-an authority to initiate legislation and an almost despotic power over the rights of individuals. President Wilson has been called the most despotic of modern rulers, and this is hardly an over-statement, since he has chosen to exert his personal authority as President has done before. But there is no complaint. He claims no authority by the divine right of inheritance, which claim brought revolution in France, but by a divine right expressed through the suffrage. The people The people therefore acquiesce. The President is secure because of the origin of his power and because, in his official acts, he is supposed to represent the popular will. Had that will been formulated in clear principles, his hands. would be tied, but he was not elected to carry out a definite programme. Party platforms are subordinate to

party leaders. A President is elected because he represents, or is supposed to represent, the restless and perhaps rapidly changing wishes of the people. Just now these popular aspirations are towards a vague radicalism, and this Mr. Wilson was expected to work out in detail as he saw fit. The President thus has more power of personal initiative, a wider scope of action, than is ever the case with a British Prime Minister.

Inactivity is seldom the dominant fault of American officials. They are only too ready to make as many laws. as can be crowded into their terms of office. As a result, there is in America the anomaly of what prides itself on being a radical democracy under which people submit quietly to multitudinous and often vexatious rules and regulations. Personal Personal liberty is circumscribed to an often exasperating extent, sometimes merely by the idle whim of an official, as in the order of the Secretary of the Navy that officers should not drink. The time may come when the country will no longer submit to ill-considered regulations, but there is a present danger of the forcible breaking of the bonds because different men are affected in different ways. The seed of revolution sprouts only when very large numbers have a common grievance.

One reason for the law-making mania is, unquestionably, that the average citizen has at present little protection at law. The rules of evidence, the possibility of numberless appeals on trivial technicalities, the whole weary course of judicial procedure, make of the law a game in which the man with the largest purse is sure to win. Such a mass of absurd conventions and technicalities has grown up that people say, with some fairness, that the cleverness of the lawyer, not the justice of the cause, or that the rules of the game, determine the result. Some of the courts, moreover, have calendars so overburdened that no new case can reach them for years to come. The bar quite clearly realizes the situation and is foremost in de

manding reform, and is taking active measures to bring it about. The people demand, not reform-they do not understand what is to be reformedbut relief, and they would find it in a curtailment of judicial power; until that can be achieved, in the enactment of precise and, as they hope, easily interpreted laws.

It is no longer enough, however, that these laws should be precise. They must, to satisfy the popular clamor, be clearly favorable to one section of the people, the laboring class, as against another section, the capitalist class. The ancient idea of special privilege must be retained, but reversed in application. One often hears it said that the labor problem in America is not as serious as it is in England, and although this may at the moment be true, it bids fair within a few years to be far more serious. The explanation of this is not difficult to find. America, more than any other country, has gone mad during the last century over the idea of material progress. Wealth has increased to an almost inconceivable degree. Railroads have penetrated all parts of the land, and with ease of transportation, factories have everywhere sprung into being. But agriculture has not kept pace with machinery. Consequently the population has tended more and more to focus itself in the cities where the opportunities seemed greatest. greatest. Colossal fortunes have been made, but the money of the nation has fallen into the hands of comparatively few individuals. Wages have risen, but the cost of living has risen with even greater rapidity, and the result is that, although individuals may have more money than individuals of corresponding classes in Europe, the problem of living is more difficult. This is in itself enough to cause social unrest, and when in addition the population is concentrated in cities, where the poor see daily the luxury and extravagance of the rich, where the sight of innumerable artificial devices for increasing the comforts of life create correspondingly artificial needs, the motives for revolt

are violently present. To all this must be added also the fact that Americans are, contrary to the European idea of them, an intensely idealistic people. Millionaires think no longer only of building the biggest houses, but rather of building the most beautiful houses. The standard of taste is rising. Architecture is still experimental, but it strives for something more than mere show. Rich men give with a lavishness unknown in the Old World to hospitals, educational institutions, art galleries, and these gifts, made for the people, make them think more of the people, of those artificially created needs of theirs which are coming to be considered as rights. All this means a weakening of the solidarity of the upper classes, united a few years ago to defend themselves against reasonable demands, and now that there is nc longer question of resisting reasonable demands the laboring classes are united in pressing claims which ran far beyond the bounds of reason. With only feeble and spasmodic opposition special class privilege is again raising its ugly head.

All these problems, finally, are complicated by the necessity of distributing, civilizing. and absorbing annually some million of ignorant immigrants; men and women, who crowd the city slums, who lower standards of living, who are always ready to swell the ranks of the most turbulent elements, because they expected to find in America an easy road to wealth and are disappointed. They are disappointed to find cobblestones, instead of gold paving the city streets, but in place of wealth they find almost thrust upon them American citizenship. This, in fact, is a striking example of American idealism. The practical course would be to educate the children of these ignorant immigrants, to give them American ideals, and then to make them citizens. Instead, the immigrants themselves are almost instantly given the ballot in the optimistic belief that the exercise of citizenship will, in some incomprehensible way, teach the ideals on which such