be allowed to lose a Recall election through public apathy.

Sometimes the full performance of official duty necessarily involves the adoption of policies that are temporarily annoying and unpopular. Almost any large plan, whether it be for the reconstruction of a street, the overhauling of a school curriculum or the reorganization of an official staff, arouses hostility. Children often have to be forced to take medicine or submit to operations necessary for their welfare, perhaps even essential for the preservation of their lives. Are the people like children? Will they revolt at the first prick of the needle or at the first taste of bitterness of the drug, and recall their political doctor? "Only under a democracy can a nation commit suicide,” says Dr. Weyl. Will the people do it under the Recall system? I think not. A far-seeing statesman may occasionally be driven from office for proposing remedies too painful for endurance. But, on the whole, statesmen are more likely to be recalled for temporizing, inadequate policies than for thorough-going measures that appeal to the imagination. The only thing needed to win popular support for a policy is to show the people that the policy is necessary for the permanent welfare of the state or the city even though it involves temporary hardships. The American people have almost too much imagination. They are almost too ready to postpone present comforts for expected future benefits. The very genius of their restless, progressive life, of their unremitting toil, of their tolerance of unpleasant and unwholesome conditions, is the dream of future achievement. The people at large are not half so likely

to be sordid and to resent rugged statesmanship as are the minority who have wrecked the representative system in order to get control of government and who are now busily engaged in taking the profits.

In the end, the discussion of the Recall simmers down mainly to the fundamental differences of attitude and opinion between those who believe in popular government and those who do not. To those who believe in it, manhood suffrage is an existing condition,' merely preliminary to universal adult suffrage—which is the theory of democracy. To those who do not believe in it manhood suffrage is a condition tolerable only on account of its failures, tolerable only as it can be diverted in practice from democratic theory and made an instrument for carrying out the will of the aristocracy. So long as the electorate can be influenced, can be bought and sold, can be driven or led, can be overawed or manipulated into the support of the vast structure of privilege and vested rights which constitutes the Powers-That-Be in American society, manhood suffrage is accepted by them, not as a theory, but as a condition. Are the people as a mass sane and selfreliant? Are they capable of intelligent and consistent political action under leadership that has only public ends in view? Are they, or are they not? Here is the nub of the controversy that rages about the Initiative, the Referendum, the Recall. To be sure, there are legitimate differences of opinion about the practicability of certain specific forms of these measures; there is doubt in regard to some details. But when the discussion wages hot, the big party lines stand out. On one side are those who do not so much disbelieve in

these specific things as they instinctively oppose the acceptance of them and array themselves against those who are aggressively for them. On the other side are those who do not so much believe in the necessity of the Recall as they resent the opposition to it. They want to know why all this hullabaloo about it, why all this paralyzing fear that public officials will lose their independence as against their constituents.

CHAPTER XXII

SECOND OBJECTION TO THE RECALL-THAT IT WOULD MAKE PUBLIC OFFICE LESS ATTRACTIVE TO HIGHCLASS MEN

Ar the present time public office, especially high office, is in itself sufficiently attractive to men of calibre, but they are often deterred from seeking or accepting it by the terms imposed upon candidacy. There are, indeed, plenty of fairly capable men who would be willing to serve as aldermen and legislators even at the meagre salaries now usually paid, if the conditions of nomination, election, and subsequent service were conducive to self-respect and free action. There can be no denial of the fact that Americans like to hold office. Perhaps one of our troubles is that too many of them have political ambitions at the same time. It is the unseemly striving, the expense of the competitive canvass for votes, the secret obligations to the political machine and the business interests that finance it, the insufferable dullness of legislative stagnation while the official performers mark time waiting for the political impresario to nod, the innumerable checks devised under our government to prevent decisive official action,-it is these things that deter so many high-class citizens from seeking careers in the public service. Even in our efforts to dethrone the political boss and give the

control of nominations to the people in the direct primaries, an offensive emphasis has been put upon the expectation that men who are to have office must throw themselves at it by filing petitions or paying fees and making formal declaration of their own candidacies. The recognition in the law that the man must seek the office, rather than the office seek the man, throws a wet blanket over the aspirations of men who wish at least to observe the forms of modesty. Even if modesty is not quite so deep as receptive candidates would have the public believe, yet the fiction is a useful one, as it preserves the ideal that public office is primarily an opportunity for public service rather than for selfadvancement.

That high-class men are now too scarce in the city council, in the state legislature, in Congress, in the executive and administrative departments of government, and even upon the bench will be freely admitted by the most eloquent advocate of the status quo. When it comes to considering the effect of the Recall upon the situation, we are compelled to resort to analysis. We must look into the nature and disposition of "highclass" men. We must inquire whether they constitute a homogeneous element of the population or are themselves liable to sub-classification. Are appearances ever deceiving in relation to them? Then we must inquire more fully into the underlying causes that have created the conditions which now moderate the political ambitions of these best-qualified persons. Is it necessary and inevitable in the very nature of society that high-class citizens, apparently in robust health, should suddenly become "sicklied o'er with the pale