Among the many serious political and economic problems, with which the American democracy is confronted, there is none, in respect to which public opinion is more profoundly interested and more radically divided than in those connected with state political reorganization. More than ever before in the history of the country such problems are assuming national importance. The so-called progressive divisions of both parties are committed absolutely to the thorough-going alteration of state political institutions. They propose to substitute a more or less complete system of direct popular government for the more or less incomplete system of representative government, which prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. West of the Mississippi River one state after another has been adopting their program. Certain states in the Middle West and the East have begun or are preparing to follow the example. The advocates of the new system overflow with enthusiasm and optimistic conviction. The most completely reorganized state in the Far West is declared by one of its senators to possess the best system of popular government in the world to-day. He and his associates are expecting and planning to introduce the blessings of this superlatively excellent system of government, not only into the unregenerate states, but ultimately into the national political organization itself.

The opponents of the system of direct government are no less interested in it than are its friends, but they believe it to be superlatively bad rather than superlatively good. They class it as a political heresy, comparable to the economic heresies, which have so frequently appeared, flourished and decayed in the frontier states.