learns how to swim. The decision on a question will depend on each individual's view of its effect on him. Education will

clarify that view, train it, make it wider, nobler, more altruistic. Then the people will be ready for such a decision. But the only way to get them ready is by the training which responsibility and decision give.

Others say: "The majority is always wrong; great leaders and thinkers have always been in a minority when they started." This has a semblance of truth which conceals a sophistry. Great leaders have always been in a minority when they started. It has been their province to see the principles and laws under which future society will likely move. It is their mission to make known these principles, even unto martyrdom. But I deny that they know better than the majority the laws under which present society is fitted to grow and develop. A minority may see clearly into the future; the majority knows the present. If nobler and finer laws are imposed on a people than they are fitted for, these laws will, if enforced, hamper the development of the people; if not enforced, they will lead to a disrespect of law, and disintegrate the state. Direct Legislation will give the people the laws they are fitted for, and under which they can freely develop. To illustrate: We have passed out of the age of chattel slavery. We regard it, and correctly, as a cursed institution. Yet at one time it was beneficient. In that far-off age it was the custom to kill and eat captives taken in war and when some one kept them alive and used them as slaves, it marked a distinct advance in civilization. Had some power then enforced a law against chattel slavery, it would have been an evil to society.

Education will intensify the good effects of Direct Legislation. A well-trained and educated community will make more rapid progress under it than an ill-trained one, but it will be good for both. The ignorant community will not have as good laws as the other nor make as rapid progress, but Direct Legislation will educate it and the individual in it. It will make more mistakes, but a burnt child dreads the fire, and its

"As yet democracy can scarcely be considered to have been an experiment. It has not been tried. A government by the

mistakes are the most effective education a community can have. There is no need of waiting for some ideal time in the future when the people are fitted for Direct Legislation; they are fitted for it now, and they need it to fit them for a finer state in the future. But one trouble now is, not that our laws are too far in advance of the people, but that the mass of the people are in advance of the laws. The good that is in the people cannot voice itself and exercise leadership. Our law-makers are not chosen because they have special fitness for making laws, but because they are able politicians and because their want is money, power or influence. Under Direct Legislation there would be no use in going to the Legislature, because if a job was lobbied through, the people would veto it. Gradually, the capable, high-minded men would take place as leaders. Our laws would be suggested, drafted, criticised by the best of the people who would be true leaders, because they would be the best servers or servants of the people. Thus our laws would be ahead of the people all the time, leading and educating, but not so far ahead as to be beyond comprehension. Should a group of ardent reformers urge a law which the people were not ready for, they would defeat it and there would be some disgruntled reformers who would have to start at educating again. Thus would the education in this great national university proceed, and the best of it would be that it would be continually developing, training and educating individuals into "thinking and self-sustaining citizens" by throwing responsibility and power into their individual lives. It would develop individuality. It would bring out strong personalities. It would raise the state to a higher pre-eminence than ever before by improving the individuals, of which it is composed. On the other hand, by the communion and responsibility of voting it would develop a solidarity of feeling and a social conscience, uniting with a higher patriotism, a nobler and more vital social organism that the world has ever known. The argument of education for Direct Legislation is one of the strongest of its many strong arguments.

people is a dream yet to be realized. There do not exist any purely democratic institutions."-Dr. Geo. D. Herron.

Hon. John W. Leedy (Populist), Governor of Kansas:

I believe in direct legislation mainly for two reasons: 1. As I understand it, most of the amendments proposed provide that whenever a law is declared unconstitutional by a Supreme Court it shall be referred to a poll of the people, and if a majority of the people vote in favor of it it shall become a law, anything in the constitution or constitutional construction to the contrary notwithstanding. This would really make the people supreme. At present, they are theoretically supreme, as they can alter their constitution, but that is so difficult a matter that it is almost impossible. And direct legislation will make them constantly su

preme.

2. As a public official I want to be a public servant. I think I know in many things

what the people want, but on some I am uncertain, and direct legislation will keep me constantly informed of just what the people want on each measure. It will be a guide to progress, an index finger to the right path, an efficient aid to every honest public official.

The late Edward Bellamy, author of "Looking Backward," "Equality," etc.:

Every reform platform or declaration of principles ought to contain a plank demanding direct legislation in its three branches, the popular referendum, the initiative and the imperative mandate. I fully believe, also, that the power to recall any elected agent should always remain in the elective body, to be exercised at any time the agent proves unsatisfactory, without regard to the nominal term of office. No person in private business would employ an agent on any

I believe the time is not far distant when the people of this country will reach the conclusion that in order to secure the reforms which are desired by an overwhelming majority of our citizens or to retain them when secured, they must have some simple and effective method of expressing their views on important governmental policies directly at the ballot box.

There is scarcely a state in the union which has not settled vexatious questions most satisfactorily to the public in the shape of constitutional amendments, although it is doubtful if most of those voting knew that they were putting the referendum in practical operation.

JOHN BURNS.

John Burns, of London, England:

It seems next to impossible for us to secure a united vote in the interest of labor on account of factions and parties. If every British trade unionist would advocate direct legislation-would unite on this one reform, which in my judgment is the most important political reform at this time-I believe we could accomplish more for the cause of labor in one year than we have accomplished during the past forty years.

Dr. George D. Herron, Professor of Applied Christianity in Iowa College, author of "The Christian State," "The Christian Society," etc.:

Unbelief in God is no more fatal to free

unbelief in the people.

We can no more stop the progress of democracy where it now is than we can take the race back to the Garden of Eden. From the idea of the absolute monarchy we have progressed to the idea of representative institutional government. But we have scarcely reached the half-way house of political progress. We shall have to move on to the goal, which is the fulfillment of democracy in the direct self-government of the people. In a pure democracy the people will be their own legislators, making their laws directly, or through an elective and representative system that will receive and effectuate in legislation the actual will of the people.

There can be no true democracy with the present systems of representative government. And these have accomplished the beginnings of their own doom. There have been few important measures before our State or national legislatures during the past decade which could not have been passed upon by the people themselves with intelligence and character, with thoroughness and directness, wholly beyond the moral or intellectual comprehension of the men, many of them virtually self-chosen, now legislat

There is one class of objectors to direct legislation whom I do not expect to satisfy and whom I want to cut out at the start. Those who expect a perfect system, embracing all sides of life, a utopia which will work itself without human effort, a system under which mistakes are impossible, will not find it in direct legislation, nor anywhere else that I know of. For the objector who says: "I will not have anything to do with direct legislation because it won't always do justice, because it won't directly give the work. less man work, because it won't directly abolish the saloon, relieve the destitute, etc.," I have no answer. He had better not waste time reading this article, but continue his search for the impossible. The first knowledge for him to get is that he is rainbow chasing, and he probably cannot get that in any other method than by searching for his panacea method.

I wish those to read this article who are looking for a definite remedy for a definite evil, one of the greatest group of evils of our time, legislative corruption and foolishness and popular ignorance and apathy. All the objections to direct legislation may be embraced under three heads: Fear of the people.

I.

2.

able.

That direct legislation is impractic

3. The anarchistic objection that we do not want any laws at all, but should do away with them all so as to get complete freedom.

The man who makes the first objection. that he fears the people always makes it about others than himself and his class. He

is fitted to take care of his own affairs, and he and his class are fitted to take care of the government. It is thus a question of individual and class pride and what he wishes for himself, the care of his own individual affairs and a share with others in his class in the government of all, he's unwilling to give to those outside of his class. He is intolerant, a species of political bigot. He thinks that we should have paternal and coddling government by those in his

class over those not in his class. He really is not opposed to the principle of direct legislation that the majority should decide on measures, but with him it is a question of the franchise. He would limit the decision on measures to some small class in the community, either the rich, the land-owners, the priestly class, the educated, the aristocrats, either chosen hereditarily or as representatives. He may be opposed to the rule of the people, but he is not opposed to the rule. of the majority in his own class. There is only one majority even in a class, but there are numerous minorities, and if he is in favor of the rule of a minority in a class which minority shall it be? The Czar of all the Russias really heads a majority of the bureaucracy, or governing class of Russia. So what he who fears the people really wishes to discuss is not the question of direct legislation, but the extension or the limitation of the franchise.

But to answer him in detail, there are five reasons usually given for fears of turning over decisions on measures to the people.

A. People are apathetic and will not vote, a principle has to be dramatized in a man, be personified in a person before the people will really consider it. Suppose this to be true, what happens? Those who are interested in a measure vote for it. There is thus an automatic selection of those best

posted and most interested; hence a better decision. I would have all interested, posted and vote at every election, but if they are not interested and posted they had better not vote. Apathy is to be deplored, but as long as all have an opportunity to vote, the absence from the polls of some is merely that those interested decide.

Then will the apathy of the people equal the apathy of our present law-makers concerning vital issues? Legislatures smother, dodge and avoid vital questions. Some legislator may create an opposition which will limit his popularity and hinder his reelection if he tackles a burning issue. The mere statement of this question is sufficient