It should be distinctly understood at the outset that the proposed constitution of Indiana is a means, and not an end. The chief cause of its existence was the desire of Democratic leaders of the state to purify the suffrage in Indiana. This was not wholly an altruistic motive. The more intelligent Democratic leaders have been convinced for years that the only safety of the party lay in honest elections. That is why, in 1889, Indiana became a leader in the adoption of the Australian ballot law, and the most stringent and efficacious bribery law that has ever been devised, both of which were adopted as Democratic party measures.

At the legislative session of 1911, the Democratic party, for the first time, in eighteen years, came into full possession of the legislative power of the state. During those eighteen years, every Democratic effort to purify elections had been gracefully and effectively smothered. But, in 1911, the Democrats found their opportunity blocked by a legal complication. The constitution of the state fixes the qualifications of voters, and these can neither be added to nor taken from by statute law. To amend the constitution, the proposed constitutional amendment must be adopted by two successive legislatures, and by a majority vote of the people.

In papers read before this Association in 1906 and 1908, and in publications issued subsequently by the writers of those papers, the modern trend in state constitutions was quite fully presented. The detail of changes during the last three years has been so well covered in numerous publications, that a reiteration in this paper would surely be tedious and unfruitful. It may be sufficient to say that our state constitutions are constantly changing through amendment, that the powers of legislatures are undergoing further restrictions, that the executive is very slowly enlarging his powers, that the increasing mass of litigation compels an expansion of judicial organization, and that there is a growing emphasis on direct as against indirect democracy. Moreover, the states are slowly learning the art of regulating more effectively the great corporate interests under their jurisdiction; local government in county and city is in process of reorganization; taxation, public finance and the building of state-roads are important issues; and political parties begin to realize that at last their days of freedom and license are well nigh past, since they see before them, as a sort of handwriting on the wall, the direct primary, the short ballot, laws against corruption, and the voting machine in place of complaisant returning boards. Moreover our many states, diverse and widely scattered though they are, for the most part show a trend towards uniformity through the rise of the study of comparative legislation. Much of the credit for this should be attributed to the influence of such bodies as the American Bar Association, the National Civic Federation, the Conferences of Governors and the rapidly multiplying Legislative Reference Bureaus.

Massachusetts is a pioneer in municipal reform. She has given and is giving most careful attention to the problems of city government. But the same degree of attention and wise consideration have not been extended to the county. Outside of New England the numerous powers exercised by the county have often given rise to evils, but in Massachusetts the problem grows out of the insignificance of the county. There the county is the neglected organ of government. Reforms which are considered fundamental for good city government have not been adopted for the county. For example: the civil service laws which so efficiently regulate the appointments to city positions do not apply to the county, and furthermore, for some inscrutable reason, the county entirely escapes the legal tax limit imposed on the city.

The county problem in municipal affairs in Massachusetts presents three aspects:—I. The county problem in relation to the cities in general. II. The relation of the city of Boston to Suffolk county. III. The relation of the county to the problem of a metropolitan union.

The problem created by the overlapping of county and city governments is not as acute in New York City as in many of the large cities of this country for the reason that—except in so far as the administration of justice is concerned, and except for the fact that certain separate county officers are expressly provided for by the constitution for purposes more or less directly connected with the administration of justice—the governments of the four counties within New York City have been almost wholly consolidated with, and merged in, that of the city.

In order that the provisions by which this result has been accomplished may be more clearly understood and the present position of the four counties more intelligently presented, it will be worth while to trace briefly the history of these counties, prior to the creation of the present city in 1896, and their relation to the cities which previously existed within the limits of Greater New York.

The city of Chicago lies entirely within Cook County, and with the exception of a slight overflow into Du Page County, all of its suburban growth lies now and will for some time lie in the same county. Cook County is therefore the second in the United States in population, having 2,400,000 against New York County's nearly 2,800,000. The corporate limits of the city of Chicago include a slightly decreasing proportion of the county's population: in 1890 they contained 92.3%, in 1900 92.4%, and in 1910 90.9% of the total; that is to say, the city's suburban growth is slightly greater than its internal increment. The population of the county now outside of the city numbers 220,000. The area of the city is 191½ square miles; and of the county not quite five times as much, or 933 square miles.

It is of some interest to the problem of government and its possible reorganization to note that only 5 of the 102 counties of Illinois have an area as large as that of Cook, while there are two with actually less area than the present city of Chicago. The average and median size of Illinois counties is 540 square miles against Cook's 933. In population there are only two others that pass 100,000; and the next to Cook, with 2,400,000, or with 220,000 outside of Chicago, is St. Clair with 120,000. On the other hand there are 9 counties with a population of under or approximately 10,000 apiece—less than one sixth of a Chicago ward,—and most of these are decreasing in population.

The city of St. Louis and the county of St. Louis are two totally separate and distinct political subdivisions of the state of Missouri. The city of St. Louis is, for all political purposes, a county as well as a city, and has been such since the adoption of the Scheme and Charter in 1876. It is the existence in the city of St. Louis of the powers of a county, and its character as a political subdivision of the state, which makes it unique among the cities of the United States. At the time of the adoption of the charter I believe there was no other city in the United States which was organized in a similar manner, though subsequently other cities have framed charters more or less along the lines of that of St. Louis. In fact, the St. Louis Charter was, at the time of its enactment, considered by many a model instrument. The idea of “home-made” charters became popular. The spread of the so-called “Missouri Idea” was shown by amendments to the constitutions of several states. Most of these provided for a degree of “home-rule” for cities. The importance of the separation between the city and county which had taken place in St. Louis seems to have been largely overlooked in the legislation which followed, both in Missouri and elsewhere. That separation, however, was absolute. It was not a consolidation of the city and county. The city was carved out of the county of St. Louis, and made, for all intents and purposes, a separate county.

The history of San Francisco as a municipality is unique.

Two former Mexican pueblos, Yerba Buena and San Francisco, had been permitted to lapse and a Mexican Justice of the Peace exercised sole authority up to July 8, 1846, over the “Jurisdiction of San Francisco” which contained within its limits what remained of these two villages.

On July 8th, 1846, the American flag was hoisted on the plaza of Yerba Buena, and the surrounding territory was declared American soil. Military government prevailed until January 30th, 1847, when a provisional government was organized with an Alcalde as Chief Magistrate. The machinery provided by the Mexican colonization laws for the creation and government of pueblos was utilized and San Francisco as a municipality came into being by Ordinance of the Alcalde. Subsequently attempts were made before the treaty of Queretaro to organize a City along American lines, but were by military order stopped. Pueblo government continued until the adoption of a city charter under the Constitution of California.

An Act of the first Legislature of the State of California, passed February 18, 1850, divided the State into counties, fixing the boundaries of San Francisco County.

The City of San Francisco was created by Act of April 15, 1850, (Statutes 1850, page 223) which was an act to incorporate the City. This Act provided for a complete organization of the City and a full set of offices independent of the county offices of the County of San Francisco. Thus there were two sets of officers, one for the City and one for the County.

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.

From my view point there is very little of criticism or comment to offer on Professor Croly's article. I am in sympathy with most of his views. But is it quite fair to criticise voters who have had the power of direct legislation during only four elections because they have not already provided their state with good government, or even with “institutions which permit” good government? The people of Oregon have done some things for themselves within the past nine years of which he seems not to have heard.

For example, Professer Croly cannot imagine, “Why any self-respecting man or useful public servant should want to be an official legislator in a state like Oregon.” But if he is willing to be a member of the legislature at all there are the following reasons at least why he would rather be a member of the legislature in a state like Oregon than in any state not like Oregon, New York or Illinois for example:

In the legislature of Oregon he will not be offered a bribe to vote for or against any bill; he will not be offered payment to vote for any candidate for United States senator; he will not be invited to make his headquarters at any “House of Mirth” while he is attending the legislature; he will be very sure that no party boss or corporation lawyer is controlling the vote of his fellow members; he will not be offered any railroad passes or corporation favors.

It is quite possible to accept absolutely the standpoint of Mr. Croly's paper, and yet to dissent from its principal conclusion. The standpoint is that of the evolutionist, who regards contemporary “progressive” policies not as finalities, but as transitional phenomena in the development of popular government. The conclusion is that these policies are nevertheless bound to acquire a certain relative finality, which will make them self-obstructive of their own purpose. And the answer is that the movement momentarily expressed in these policies is deeper than they are, and that its vitality can overcome their mechanical limitations.

Mr. Croly identifies the Progressive movement with the devices of direct popular government, which he says it proposes to substitute for representative government. He takes Oregon as the type and Senator Bourne's famous rhapsody as the gospel of the movement. He analyzes the natural evolution of direct government out of the failure of delegated government. The once omnipotent representative legislatures were limited first by those who distrusted the people, through constitutional checks and judicial aggressions, and then by the Jacksonian democracy, through executive and party aggrandizement. But the very constitutional limitation was itself operated by direct vote of the people. As representative legislation degenerated, this originally restraining device became by contrast the only moveable portion of the system, and was the ordinary resort when real law making was needed. Direct legislation under the guide of constitutional amendment transformed constitutions into codes of laws, and the more detailed they became, the more impossible it was to legislate by any other method.

International affairs have rarely had any vital relation to the domestic interests of the United States. We are spectators rather than participants in the game of world politics. Except in moments of threatened war, the general public is quite indifferent to the management of American foreign relations. The main results of this indifference are either that the Administration is entirely free to adopt any policy it may choose, without the constant, corrective check of an intelligent public opinion, as in England, or is deprived of its effective support in some such diplomatic crisis as the Anglo-Venezuelan difficulty in 1896.

Moreover, at such moments as the recent Mexican imbroglio, complete and trustworthy information is most difficult to obtain. Certainly, the Department of State is not free to disclose, even to the Senate, all the facts and factors in the negotiations in progress. Nor does it seem prudent to publish immediately all of the correspondence. The most important facts of diplomacy are not always consigned to writing, or if in writing, are not to be published to embarrass for reasons of state or by way of doubtful precedent. Litera scripta manet.

Nor can the average reader rely implicitly on the Press. Leading articles, terse paragraphs and brilliant editorials may present in broad outline the salient facts in a diplomatic situation but err in their conclusions. Favorable comment is as likely to be undiscriminating as hostile criticism.

I must ask to be excused by my distinguished colleagues for the poverty and want of science of this work and I beg that it be considered merely as a contribution towards a future study of the subject. I was asked to lend my modest assistance to the convention only a few days before the opening of the session, so that it was absolutely impossible to prepare a more elaborate work.

I ought to state at once that it is very difficult to set forth the Latin-American point of view on the inter-American policy of the United States, because, if the question be what the judgment of the South and Central American Republics is upon the subject, then the general diversities geographic, telluric, climatic and sometimes racial, the diversities of culture, interests and development, of these Republics make impossible the existence of a common point of view, though a widely different belief is held in the United States. Furthermore, the personality of Latin-America as a political entity does not mean more than a “conventional lie,” for that is what it is.

Latin-America is merely a metaphysical person, a juridical entity created by the United States to be a pattern of uniformity to which it may adjust its international policy toward the people of the South and Central part of the Continent. Latin-America is a fictitious person and therefore a conception contrary to the reality. It is a legal impossibility being a de facto impossibility.

The two English-speaking federal states which lie side by side in North America have a profound interest for each other. They have been built up by peoples of the same race, and of the same political traditions. Canada, the lesser and the younger, has been deeply influenced by the United States, the greater and the older. Federation became a vital question in Canada only in 1865 when the United States was emerging from a terrible civil war. This war had turned on a constitutional question,—whether a federated state might secede from the union. The framers of the Canadian system learned the lesson taught by the war, and, in the constitution which they drew up for Canada, they made it impossible for the provinces ever to regard themselves as sovereign communities with the right to political independence. Canada thus learned without bloodshed the lesson taught by the agony of her neighbor.

If along different paths the two systems thus attained to likeness, in other not less vital respects they still show differences. It is my purpose to-day to discuss only one of these differences. The American system is based upon the conception that no one branch of the government should be supreme, and that each should be held to its proper tasks. The President, the Senate, arid the House of Representatives all possess real and independent power and, in the background, stands the Supreme Court ready to require all of them to obey the written constitution.

To the ordinary man on the street, a general election is only an intermittent opportunity for registering his more or less casual opinion as to men and measures. To the politician such an occasion is a decisive battle, long prepared for, upon the issue of which his political empire hangs.

The average elector takes himself seriously enough. He imagines that he weighs records and that he forms matured judgments quite apart from outside influences. He delights to hear himself referred to as one of the “free and independent electors of the grand old county of X.” The politician, however, looks upon the voter very much in the light of a pawn upon the chess-board, moved this way or that according to the nature and the intensity of the forces brought, by careful design, to bear upon him.

Probably neither estimate is wholly correct. Unquestionably there are times when the voter acts upon his own initiative, to the utter disregard of the most carefully prepared plans made on his behalf; but, as a general rule, he is influenced in no small degree, in the supreme act of marking his ballot, by agencies, outside himself, deliberately created and set in motion for the express purpose of securing his support for a particular policy, candidate or party. Hence the raison d'être for organization in political warfare.

The political affairs of Canada are carried on under a system of party government. That party which, for the time being, is dominant in Parliament, determines the policy and supervises the administration. His Majesty's loyal opposition, save in the capacity of critics, have little part in the conduct of public business.