In the historical development of individual nations revolutions come and go as tremendous earthquakes, upsetting the standing order and creating new constellations and configurations. After an earthquake on former plains new mountain ranges arise and, vice versa, enormous peaks suddenly disappear; quite so in the case of a revolution, which overturns century old institutions and organizations. At the time when the upheaval occurs, it often seems that the whole social structure is destroyed forever and that something entirely new is being created. And yet, everyone who has studied history knows very well that even in revolutions we have a constant evolution, that much of the old order remains and that the new institutions have many attachments in the past, no matter how completely new they may seem at the moment of their political birth.

Take the French Revolution of 1789 as a most vivid example. It might have seemed to contemporaries that the whole former French state and government, the social as well as the economic structure, had disappeared and were utterly destroyed.

An observer who had much to do with the departments at Washington once remarked that the whole philosophy of rank in the government service was unsound. Anyone, he reasoned, could be the head of a department; to be the head of a division was much more difficult; while the office boy must be a real diplomat. There is doubtless much of truth in this view; and it may perhaps be pleaded in excuse of the habit which discussions of the federal personnel problem seem to have developed, of beginning (and, not infrequently, also ending) with the case of the government clerk.

Nevertheless, it is to be questioned whether the government clerk, or the subordinate personnel of the administrative services of the government generally, presents nearly so difficult a question as does the directing personnel. By and large, doubtless the most immediate problem of the federal personnel system today is to secure in the posts of responsibility and discretion a capable type of administrator.

In this view, logically the first item to be considered in a discussion of the federal personnel problem is the method of selecting the chief of the administration—the President; and, next in order, the method of selecting the chiefs of the executive departments—particularly, the chiefs of the predominantly administrative departments—post office, war and navy.

Little attention has been devoted in this country to political areas and their relationship to each other. Not much is to be gained from a theoretical discussion of this subject, and this article is based upon a detailed study of conditions in Illinois. Similar problems present themselves in every state, although the details vary in different parts of the country, and the effort is made here to bring out the general issues involved, using the conditions in a single state as the basis for discussion.

Attention should at the outset be called to the fact that the situation is complicated by the fact that this state has but one great city. The position of Chicago and Cook County constitutes one of the serious political problems in connection with reorganization of state and local government.

The Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic was proclaimed by the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets in November, 1917, shortly after the Bolshevist party had overthrown the Kerensky government by the force of arms. Eight months later, the Fifth All-Russian Congress adopted a constitution. Since it was the party of Lenin and Trotzky that had invented the slogan “all power to the Soviets” and changed Russia from a prospective democracy to a soviet republic, American public opinion came to identify the soviet form of political organization with bolshevism and all the policies it stands for, including the dictatorship of the proletariat, and nationalization all along the line of economic life.

In January, 1919, a successful trial of proportional representation was made in the municipal elections of Sligo, and in the following July a local government (Ireland) act extended the system to all Irish municipal elections. The form employed is the Hare plan, the “single transferable vote,” as it is usually called in the United Kingdom. On January 15, 1920, the first general trial of the new scheme was made, when elections were carried out in 127 Irish municipalities.