duties or privileges. Bureaus of municipal research have aided good government by exposing attempts to get around the laws, or by suggesting desirable legislation. Private associations, without definite authority to intervene, have watched over the performances of official duties in their own particular lines. Great hospital, medical and public health associations have done good work. The American Federation of Labor and other labor associations have cared for the rights of labor. Societies for municipal improvements, community betterment, playgrounds and parks, have improved conditions in the cities. The National Education Association and associations for helping the blind and otherwise aiding education have wrought many reforms. The Anti-Saloon League has succeeded where the Prohibition Party failed. The National Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A. and other like agencies have done work not heretofore dreamed of.

The New York directory of charitable and welfare associations contains almost 10,000 names of institutions. It includes hospitals, dispensaries, libraries, museums, Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., churches, homes and asylums of all kinds and other social welfare agencies, and embraces national, state and local associations. The social welfare units of New York City available for listing in a directory thus number almost 10,000, and are all helpful to good government, promote the general welfare and aid in securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. More and more these various unofficial agencies are coming together into county, city, state and national conferences or associations. More and more they are being recognized as helpful in promoting government for the people, and as increasing the happiness of the people, through their attention to social welfare, which is largely the basis of such happiness. Less and less do

government officials consider these social welfare units as interlopers. More and more their essential-even if unofficial-functions in the body politic are being recog

nized.

This supplementing of commission government with privately conducted agencies working along the same lines is a distinct and beneficent step forward in our purposive government. There are hundreds of these private activities, each of which has aided in its own line the cause of good government and government for the people. These private agencies serve to stir up public interest in their own subject and locality, and thus in all good government; and at the same time act as a check upon the official organizations. More and more as our government takes on the commission form, these agencies will grow in power and their helpful influence will be felt. They will serve as governors to regulate the machinery of purposive government. They represent the endeavors of patriotic citizens, with kindred spirits, to aid good government as individuals. The great governmental agencies may be considered as the chief organs of the body politic-the heart, lungs, stomach and liver-while the private agencies are the humble but vital pores of the body politic and essential to its good health.

In our democracy the growth of these unofficial and local associations has come almost entirely since our government took on its present commission form. It was not feasible for such associations to work in the olden days where there was no consolidation of particular interests in a single governmental department, or where, in case of such consolidation, the head of the department was a mere political appointee and its personnel was not protected by civil service. After the charities, corrections, education, public utilities or other public interests have

been consolidated under a commission or bureau or department, whose head is out for a record of efficiency and whose working force are trained men and women protected by civil service, it is possible for private and local associations to become acquainted, in all its ramifications, with the work of the department in which they are interested. Such associations can and do help to get through good legislation and foster its wise application thereafter; and this is very important as government for the people grows constantly more complex and scientific. They thus form a nucleus for a body of public opinion which steadies the work of the department itself, and educates and interests good men and women who often join that branch of the public service-to the benefit of the government and the people.

XXI

THE ADVANTAGES OF CONSTITUTIONAL CHECKS AND COUNTERCHECKS IN GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE

T

HE wonderful smoothness and non-revolutionary manner in which we have been able to revolutionize the powers and duties of our executives, judiciary, legislatures and political parties have come from the splendid set of fly-wheels with which our governmental machinery was equipped from the beginning. Prior to 1775, and for a while thereafter, we were enthusiasts for the equality of all men and as to their undoubted ability to manage themselves and their own affairs. This honest belief we incorporated in the preambles to our Declaration of Independence and of our first state constitutions. Then followed the heartbreaking years of the Revolution and the worse years between 1783 and 1789, in which our political, financial, economic, social and legal systems and our entire plan of government seemed a failure, even to some of its best friends. The plan was not at fault, but only our handling of it; but we did not appreciate that at the time. It seemed to be demonstrated, as claimed, that democracy could be successfully applied only to a small country, and not upon a large scale. Men had not had a chance to study the working of democracy in a country of large size, and when we tried the experiment, chaos and anarchy followed for a time. After the treaty of peace in 1783,

"The forces of disintegration and disunion began their fatal work. . . By 1785 the central government had literally fallen to pieces, shattered by the blows received from the jealousy and particularism of the individual States. Between the States themselves there was a feeling of hostility that resulted in the restriction of trade by the imposition of unfriendly tariffs."

It was after twelve years of this chaos and anarchy, in May, 1787, that our ablest political thinkers met to form a United States Constitution. During these years their faith in democracy as a basis for a strong and trusted national government had been rudely shaken. They believed that the real difficulty was with democracy itself, which must be a failure unless controlled by the severest checks to prevent the people from running wild whenever they chose. Gerry asserted that "the evils we experience flow from an excess of democracy," and that the people were "the dupes of pretended patriots"; that he had been "too republican heretofore"; that he was still republican, but had been taught by experience "the dangers of the levelling process." Randolph traced the evils of the day to "the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Adams, afterward our second president, expressed his distrust of democracy, and divided the people into "gentlemen and simplemen," and would have had the "gentlemen" formed into an aristocracy or possibly into a hereditary nobility, "as the surest way of obtaining recognition for the virtue and talent of the community." He condemned rotation in office as "a violation of the laws of mankind." He said

"We may appeal to every page of history we have heretofore turned over, for proofs irrefragable that the people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous and cruel as any