tionable, however, whether it would prove satisfactory for cities of metropolitan size, where the city constituencies are large and the number of offices to be filled by election large. It would seem that some form of partisan primary would prove preferable. This system of nominations has never, so far as I know, been proposed for state or congressional offices. Boston is experimenting with the non-partisan nomination by petition. It is understood the actual result of the first election was not entirely satisfactory to those who proposed the plan. This does not prove that the plan is not a good one. The experiment is a most important and interesting one, and will be closely watched. The experiment is favored by the comparatively small number of offices to be filled by election. This system has the advantage over the partisan direct primary of obviating the necessity of a nominating election. It has the advantage (in common with the non-partisan direct primary) of tending to exclude from municipal elections questions of national party politics. Whether it will prove popular for large cities with numerous elective offices is perhaps doubtful. That the system would ever be extended to state or congressional elections, seems most unlikely.

Whatever may be the respective merits of non-partisan nominations and the direct party primary so far as municipal nominations are concerned, it seems to me reasonably clear that the partisan direct primary is the system that has the balance of advantages in its favor so far as state offices and members of Congress are concerned. In these matters our practice of party nominations and party designations upon the ballot is too firmly fixed to be uprooted without causing dissatisfaction and confusion. So long as elective offices are so numerous and voting constituencies so large, the party nominations and the party designations on the ballot seem necessary, or at least desirable.

No doubt the success of the partisan direct primary depends on the extent to which the party voters perform their duty of going to the polls and voting. But this is true of any system of nominations. It will not alone put an end to machine politics, so long as the multitude of minor elective offices and the lack of adequate, or of adequately enforced, civil service laws, corrupt

Short Ballot

practices laws and laws for the punishment of bribery and corruption of voters and public officials make machine politics profitable and safe. No doubt if the voters are to exercise the discriminating choice which the act of voting should imply, the number of elective offices must be greatly decreased. It is practically impossible for the voter to ascertain for himself the qualifications and respective merits of the large number of persons whose names appear on our election ballots. Real choice becomes impossible. The average voter must and does rely largely on the party name. This is an evil which the direct primary cannot cure. It is perhaps the fundamental evil of our electoral system. It is said to have given rise (together with the practice of rotation in office) to our entire nominating problem. So the lack of adequate civil service reform laws or the adequate enforcement of them has left the jobs as spoils in the hands of those who controlled the elections. Corruption in politics and in office has been safe and enormously profitable because of the insufficiency of our criminal laws and the lax enforcement of them. Our politics will not cease to be venial and corrupt until thorough-going reform is accomplished in all of these directions. It is the opportunity for spoils and corruption money that gives rise to the political machine, and it will continue to exist as long as that opportunity exists.

But admitting all this-admitting that the direct primary will go only a short way towards the reform necessary to purify our electoral system, admitting that the short ballot, the civil service reform, corrupt practices laws, and the overhauling of our criminal laws and procedure are reforms even more fundamental and important, it still remains true, as it seems to me, that direct primary is the initial reform, the logical first step in the path of reform. For to accomplish any of these other reforms we must first elect to our congress, and our legislatures, men free from boss control. The democratization of nominations is the only or the speediest way to accomplish this result. Furthermore, of all nominating systems proposed as substitutes for the convention system, the partisan direct primary, cumbersome as it is, expensive as it is, seems on the whole the most promising for political offices.

The Principle of Wieldy Districts.

By RICHARD S. CHILDs, new yoRK,

Secretary Short Ballot Association.

A great weakness in our American attempt at democracy is the fact that it requires permanent organized political machines to make it work. (I don't mean parties.) To beat one machine we must create another. Without political machines our politics would be chaos.

One function of the machines is to make nominations for minor offices in which the people have no natural interest. Proper selection of the offices we put on the elective list will exclude all which are naturally obscure and in which the people take no interest, thus disposing of this need for machine rule. A second function is to provide the voter with ready-made tickets for convenience in voting when the number of elective offices is larger than the average voter cares to remember. Shortening the ballot by reducing the number of elective offices disposes of the ticket-making function of the machines.

There sometimes remains a third function for political machines even on this Short Ballot basis-namely, to conduct the large scale campaigns necessary in large districts. How to dispose of this work so that we can do without political machines is the problem.

The Problem

A large district containing, say, 100,000 voters is a very difficult battle-ground. There the independent contestant who aspires to office faces a task that is too big for one man or an impromptu organization.

In January, 1910, Boston put into effect a new charter providing for a mayor elected for four years, a council of nine members elected for three-year terms, three at a time in rotation, and a school board of five members elected one or two at a time for three-year terms. All are elected at large. All nominations are by petition. The ballot is non-partisan.

In the first election there were four candidates for mayor who survived the rather heavy petition requirements, namely, Fitzgerald, a Democratic ex-mayor under whose former administration there had been much complaint of misgovernment; Hibbard, a Republican ex-mayor; Storrow, the nominee of a committee of reformers representing the independent good-government vote, and Taylor, apparently representing no one but himself and his prospective constituents.. Taylor was out of the race from the start. It was recognized that his support was only personal, that he had no machine at his disposal to carry his message to the voters and that there was no long-standing, wellestablished "good-will" in his favor. He got 613 votes on election day. The other candidates all valued the support of the old machines and manoeuvered for it. The stock of the candidates rose and fell according to the rumors of their success in their flirtations. Fitzgerald had the whole-hearted though informal support of the Democratic machine which he had richly befriended in patronage and favoritism when in office before. He was elected with 47,000 votes.

Hibbard ceased to be a factor in the contest when it became clear that he would not have the support of the Republican machine. Only 1,800 votes were cast for him.

Storrow spent a huge fortune on his campaign and supported by the organized reformers gathered almost the entire antiFitzgerald vote (45,000).

In the future the political organizations of long standing, namely, the Democratic machine, the Republican machine (which will not always continue to keep aloof) and the Municipal League with its coterie of civic workers and reformers will hold a monopoly of the hopeful nominations. A candidate must always have the support of at least one of them in order to win. If he can secure the support of two of them he will be almost invincible. To build up de novo an impromptu volunteer organization capable of winning the election against the old-established organizations is hardly a hopeful undertaking.

To believe that in the future the people of Boston will not be sharing their control over the mayor with some coterie of permanently-organized political specialists is to assume either that

the politicians will refuse to sell their support to any bidders or that no candidates will bid for such support even if getting it will contribute greatly to success.

All this is only saying that large electorates are hard of hearing and that they can be so large as to be almost deaf.

To express it in another way, an electorate may be so large that it cannot do even a simple task without organizing for it, and in huge electorates it will have to be a more The Doctrine elaborate and costly organization than we can ask the candidates to improvise privately for a single campaign. And if the support of these standing armies is highly valuable to the candidates, it follows logically that these armies (or the captains of them) will hold an unassailable monopoly of the hopeful nominations. Democracy requires that there shall be reasonably free competition for elective offices. To give to any one set of men power to exclude various candidates from the contest may often result in barring out the very men the people would like. It is not possible to suppress permanent political organizations when they will be of great help in winning the great prizes of office, but it is possible to so arrange the battleground that there will not be enough advantage in permanent political organizations to encourage their existence.

The smaller the district and the fewer the voters to be reached by the candidate, the weaker is the grip of the machine, the easier it is for the political novice to succeed and the less is the advantage of the political specialist. (The reason that it rarely seems to work that way is because in small districts at present the offices are usually too petty to interest the people.)

Accordingly we establish a Limitation of Democracy-The District must be Wieldy.

Let the political unit or district be not so large but that an impromptu organization adequate to conduct an effective campaign can be put together at short notice by an average candidate. Permanent committees or political organizations cannot then do as they please and win, since the risk of exciting effective opposition, if their nominations are unsatisfactory, will be truly serious.

The exact maximum for the voting population for a "wieldy"