Hon. Hazen S. Pingree (Republican), Governor of Michigan, four times Mayor of Detroit, head of firm of H. S. Pingree & Smith, shoe manufacturers, of Detroit:

Give the people what they want is my motto, and as I understand that Direct Legislation is only a means to do this, I most heartily favor it. In my political experience, I have found that as I brought forward measures for the real benefit of the people, I lost more of the support of the superior classes and have had to rely on the masses, and I have found a fund of honesty and good sense in them not to be found elsewhere, and the wisest thing to give the peo

ple is what they want. So let us have Direct Legislation.

N. O. Nelson, Esq., President N. O. Nelson Manufacturing Co., of St. Louis, founder of LeClaire, business man and philanthropist:

I believe in Direct Legislation because the representative system has developed some disastrous weaknesses. It has relieved the people from responsibility and thus weakened their interest. From a choice of the ablest and best, indifference and ignorance have left the field to the shrewd, the unscrupulous, the vigilant selfseeekers.

A people can have and should have as good government as it deserves, but no better. Vicarious atonement in government as much as in religion is illogical and unfair. If all the people govern, then the classes must stand or fall together-the strong must raise up the weak or suffer and fall with them.

To-day the most practical need of the referendum is to cut short the purchase of

FINLEY ACKER.

legislators by franchise monopolies. When millions are to be made by or protected against legislative acts, corrupt men will seek to represent the people and will make out of their votes all that the traffic will bear.

I have no such overweening confidence in men permeated with the greed of our civilization as to believe that the legislators average worse than the voters or to believe that a majority of voters will be controlled by ethical motives. But when self protec

tion compels the venial voter to vote right, society, good and bad, is benefited.

With Direct Legislation we should get the public service of better men, awaken a better public interest and be saved from uch vicious legislation.

Finley Acker, Esq., head of the firm of Finley Acker & Co., wholesale and retail grocers, Philadelphia, Pa., and life-long Republican:

I regard the "Referendum" or "Direct Legislation" method as the most practical means, at this time, for checking the corrupt assaults which are being constantly made upon the treasuries of large municipalities. Careful observers realize the fact that municipal politics in America has developed gigantic and powerful business organizations, conducted for the purpose of enriching favored parties at the expense of the general public; and in pursuance of which, valuable franchises belonging to the people are disposed of without adequate consideration of the rights of the real owners.

Probably one of the most notorious examples of this character in American history was the disposal, against the protests of its citizens, of the gas monopoly in Philadelphia to a favored corporation at nineteen million dollars less than was offered by another bidder; and in face of the fact that a practical business analysis of the provisions of the franchise justified the belief that it would yield to the favored corporation, during the thirty years of its continuance, a profit exceeding fifty-eight million dollars. A peculiarly alarming and perplexing feature connected with this particular act was that among the recipients of what was commonly regarded "ill-gotten plunder extorted from the poor,' were to be found some of the very wealthy and "eminently respectable" citizens of Philadelphia, some occupying high social and religious positions in the community.

In view of the practical difficulties of organizing and maintaining a regular party organization which would successfully combat the present well-organized political forces, I am inclined to regard the "Referendum" as not only the most practical step toward checking dishonest legislation, but also believe it would bring to the direct con

sciousness of the voter, his right and power of self-government, and eventually make

proposition authorizing the city authorities to establish municipal water works, gas works or electric light works be submitted to the people.

The city of Des Moines has already had occasion to take advantage of the initiative and referendum and believes it to be of immense value.

Joseph Franklin, Esq., Vice President and Manager of the Wm. Barr Dry Goods Co., St. Louis, Mo.:

Would it be an advantage to put a check on law-making in this country? Yes. Experience has shown me that three-fourths of all the laws passed here, had best never be enacted.

Many of them are vicious, many useless and all expensive and confusing. A few laws properly administered are better than the thousands passed every year and that are neglected or enforced only for the benefit of some class or clique.

How can these streams, rivers, oceans of laws be stopped or dammed? It is an old saying that the fox never sent a better mes

JOSEPH FRANKLIN

that right something more than a text book theory.

Hon. John MacVicar (Republican), Mayor of Des Moines, Iowa:

Representative government at best can. only roughly estimate the wants of a community, and too often party platforms and pledges are misconstrued or neglected, representatives influenced either by greed or gain or ambition; but the people cannot be corrupted.

In the very nature of things, all classes and interests cannot be represented in our law-making assemblies.

Iowa municipalities appreciate the safeguard which our laws, providing limited direct legislation, have thrown around our city governments. Before a franchise can be granted or its term extended, it must be submitted to the people for their approval. The people of the Iowa municipalities may also take the initiative and require that a

HON. JOHN MAC VICKER.

senger than himself, and if it is recognized that the people of this country are the lawmakers it might be a good idea for them to follow the fox's example and attend to their own business. There would be no possible way, in the nature of the case, to pass any such number of measures and those that were passed would be apt to be of general importance.

I have faith in the decision of the whole people, because one cannot imagine any bad measures that would benefit them as a whole. They might occasionally be mistaken, but they could not willfully pass any laws of a bad character that would be good for them as a whole. Such laws are always advocated and passed at the instigation of interested parties and by people who are not as deeply interested as the great public themselves.

"God bless the man who invented sleep," says Sancho Panza, and so I say: "God bless the man who will invent a practical way to stop the flood of legislation in town

Hon. S. M. Jones (Republican), Mayor of Toledo, Ohio, President of the Acme Sucker Rod Manufacturing Co.:

We must have Direct Legislation before we can reach the ideal social state. I am ready for it. Certainly it would seem that when the people make their own rules (or laws), through the initiative and referendum, there would be nothing more to be desired, but even if Direct Legislation will not eliminate human selfishness, and though we had that form of government to-morrow, I am inclined to think it would require a marked change in our moral standards before society would be redeemed. As long as we point to a "successful man" or a "leading citizen"-simply because he started a poor boy and devoted his life to accumulating the fruit of other men's toil (and this is just what we do), Direct Legislation will only be a palliative, but it will be that and I am in favor of it.

"It will simplify laws. It will simplify government. It will kill monopoly. It will purify the ballot. It will supplant violence. It will broaden manhood. It will prevent revolution. It will make people think. It will accelerate progress. It will banish sectionalism. It will sever party bondage. It will abolish special privileges. It will wipe out plutocratic

dictation. It will reduce taxation to necessity. It will prevent the bribery of law makers. It will establish home rule in all municipalities. It will restore to the people their natural rights. It will aid honest representatives in serving the people. It will give us a government of the people, by the people, and for the people on a foundation of equal and exact justice to all." -J. A. Wayland.

"Christ's valuation of the other man, His saving of all men of every grade by His own sacrificial life and its issue; His creation of the indubitable equality of men before His cross on Calvary these are the basis of triumphal democracy." Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus, of Chicago.

What has politics got to do with religion or religion with politics? is the question at once asked on reading the above title. All problems, social, economic, industrial and political, are at their base, religious, not religious in the sense of ecclesiastical or as connected with any church, creed or sect, but religious in the broad general principles whose application will furnish their solution. The most damnable heresy of modern times is the division of the sacred from the secular. All things are sacred; none are secular. Christ, when on earth, claimed a universal dominion. He said: "All things are mine." He taught us to pray: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." He came here to establish a kingdom on this earth. In Revelations that kingdom is portrayed as the new Jerusalem, a city, a social organization descending onto this earth.

be a

You may believe any creed or none, member of any sect or outside all, may think the church the most beneficent institution of all the ages or the hide-bound curse of our time, yet this argument, going back to the fundamental religious principles, to the words of the great social and political reformer, cannot but interest and persuade you.

First, what are the principles at the basis of the Christian religion? Christ has condensed them into two in His summary of the ten commandments, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength and thy neighbor as thyself." The first is love to God, and implies the fatherhood of God; the second is love to man and implies the brotherhood of man. The fatherhood of God is person

"Christianity can realize itself in a social order only through democracy, and democracy can realize itself only through the social forces of Christianity. A pure social democracy is the political fulfillment of Christianity-the political organization of Christ's law of love."

Prof. Geo. D. Herron.

al, individual, it is our relation to God, it is not a principle to apply to our relations to each other. Its correlative and equal, the brotherhood of man, is social, and governs our relations to each other. It implies equality not necessarily of capacities, but of conditions and opportunities. Before the cross of Christ all men are equal. In the flood of His all-embracing love there are no distinctions of rich and poor, educated and ignorant, well-born and humble, weak and strong. As St. Peter said: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." All are equally children of the Father, all are equally brethren.

The early church, under the fresh inspiration of Christ's recent presence, had all things in common. Until the early impetus had waned, it was a complete and pure democracy. Our present church has striven with many back-slidings, many errors, to recognize this equality of man before God and among his fellows. As the ages go by we see slavery abolished, serfdom done away with and the spread of equality of conditions more rapid where Christianity is most dominant, less rapid elsewhere. In some denominations, such as the Congregational, the government is purely democratic. The principles which must be embodied into our political institutions are brotherhood and equality. We have already partially embodied them in our political system. Outside of the few limitations as to imbecility, criminality and sex, the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant are on complete equality in the value of their votes. This does not say that they are on an equality regarding their political influence, but regarding their political action in voting. And nominally all are equal before the law.