municipal parties or factions. The success of such an attempt would have a demoralizing effect on party organization."1 The growing success of non-partisanship in municipal government, however, has demonstrated the weakness of this old-fashioned argument. The recent experience of the cities indicates the value in local elections of any electoral system, whether "nonpartisan" primaries, preferential voting, or proportional representation, which will discourage the maintenance of the same party divisions in both national and local affairs.

Now state government in the United States is a form of local government. In the state legislatures, as has been shown, national party lines are of secondary importance. The majority party organizes the legislature, appropriates for its own members the speakership, the committee chairmanships, and the majority of the places on committees, and makes a partisan distribution of the legislative patronage. Thereafter little attempt is made, except in a few close states, to operate the machinery of legislation on a partisan basis, and members rarely vote on party lines. The party caucus ordinarily has nothing to do after the selection of the candidate for the speakership. It is the "organization" or the governor to whom members look for leadership. Neither of these relies for support exclusively upon the party majority, but accepts assistance wherever it can be found. It is only in the distribution of the patronage that partisanship upon national lines is the rule in state government. If state politics were separated from state administration by the removal from the ballot of non-political offices and by the general introduction of the "merit system," one of the principal difficulties standing in the way of state non-partisanship would be overcome. Non-partisanship in state and municipal elections does not mean the absence of partisanship. It means merely the repudiation of national party affiliations as the basis of action in state and municipal politics. Doubtless it would be more difficult to organize special parties upon state issues than it is to organize special parties upon municipal issues. For that reason the recognition of national political associations and the protection of the integrity of the major parties may be more suitable measures in the

The autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt, compiled and edited by Louis J. Lang, pp. 358-359.

government of the states than in municipal government for making representative government responsible to the majority of the voters, but they are certainly less suitable than in the government of the nation.

The second query which must be considered before the claims of the advocates of proportional representation can be accepted is this. What is it that in actual practice under American conditions will be proportionally represented?

The advocates of proportional representation often appear to assume that it is groups of voters, united for the purpose of promoting the public interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed, which will be proportionally represented. Now, as Graham Wallas has so convincingly shown, "the origin of any particular party may be due to a deliberate intellectual process. . . . But when a party has once come into existence, its fortunes depend upon the facts of human nature of which deliberate thought is only one." 1 When the highly artificial major parties are broken up, as the advocates of proportional representation claim they will be, into smaller and more natural groups of voters, it is by no means certain that the lines of subdivision will be rational, that is, that "principles" will be the basis of union between the members of such groups. In Ashtabula, we are told, as a result of the first employment of proportional representation, "all sections and factions are represented in the new council." Though the seven councilors were elected in the city at large, regardless of the former division into four wards, "there were two from the first ward, one from the second, two from the third, and two from the fourth. . . The 'drys' and the 'wets' are represented. The Protestants and Catholics; the business, professional, and laboring men; the Republicans, Democrats, and Socialists; the English, Swedes, and Italians are all represented."2 Now this was probably, as claimed by the advocates of proportional representation, the most representative body in the history of the city. But much besides "principles" was represented. Local, religious, partisan, social, and racial ties were likewise represented. If the "drys" and "wets" or the Swedes and Italians deliberately or instinc

1 Human Nature in Politics, pp. 82-83.

Proportional Representation Review, 3d series, no. 37, pp. 19-24.

tively unite in order to elect special "dry" and "wet" or Swedish and Italian representatives, there is no security that these representatives will actually represent them on any but the liquor or racial question. To what extent, under such a system, voters will unite in the choice of representatives as a result of rational intellectual processes and to what extent as a result of impulses and instincts of which they may not be consciously aware, can be determined only by experience. The practice, however, of electing men to represent particular localities in city councils because they are Republicans or Democrats in national politics, fails to insure that such representatives will actually represent their constituents on any local question; and impulse and instinct certainly are not excluded from politics under the system of local representation. At all events, the defects of the existing representative system are serious, especially in populous urban localities, and the advantages claimed for proportional representation are substantial and important. The proposal is at least promising enough to merit further trial, but municipal rather than state government seems the more suitable field for the experiment.

The Socialist plan of reform, as applied to the government of the states, is objectionable, considered as a whole, because it places an excessive reliance upon direct action by the electorate and upon reforms in electoral methods. Direct action by the electorate, as has already been pointed out, serves as a useful check on the operations of representative government, but its usefulness is limited, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The reform of electoral methods has already made considerable progress, but much remains to be done before an election can become a wholly reliable means of expressing public opinion. The existing laws against corrupt practices represent rather the growing purpose of the states to control the conditions under which electoral opinion is formed than any large measure of success in carrying out that purpose. Meanwhile, plans for the reform of state government which depend for their efficacy almost entirely upon electoral action and upon the improvement of the methods of voting and of counting votes, rather than upon the improvement of methods of legislation and administration, seem likely, if adopted, to prove disappointing to their advocates.

III

THE OREGON PLAN

Another noteworthy plan for the reform of state government is that elaborated by a group of Oregon reformers, well known in their own state under the name of the People's Power League. The essentials of this plan are explained by one of its principal authors, Mr. U'Ren, in a letter to which reference has already been made.1 "In my opinion the experience of mankind indicates that the path to follow to make the best government is the election of a responsible and responsive legislature composed of the brightest constructive minds in the community; that the executive shall be a member of the legislative body; that laws made by the people, or by the legislature and not disapproved by the people, shall be the supreme law of the land, superior to the courts and all other officers. That only the chief executive and the members of the legislative bodies should be elected by the people; that the preferential method should be used in the election of the executive, and some effective method of proportional representation in the election of other members of the legislature. The executive should be directly and alone responsible for the maximum of all appropriations of public money. This is to kill corrupt log-rolling. The comparative success of the parliamentary form of government and of the Prussian cities in my opinion is clearly because of their partial application of these principles. It is to be understood of course that the initiative, referendum, and recall are absolutely essential parts of any successful system of popular government.

2

1 See Equity, July, 1913, pp. 163–164.

2 The Oregon plan as a whole was never submitted to the people of Oregon. The state-wide initiative and referendum, adopted after a long struggle in 1902, the direct primary, municipal home rule, the corrupt practices act, and the recall, adopted by means of the initiative in 1904, 1906, and 1908, may be regarded as instalments of the general plan. The proposals relating to the reform of legislative organization and procedure were submitted to the people in various forms in 1910, 1912, and 1914, but were rejected. The proposals for administrative reform were submitted in 1910 and in part in 1912 with the same result. The proposals for judicial reform were submitted in part in 1910 and adopted, but that part of the plan seems never to have been completely worked out. The details of the plan vary somewhat in the different proposals which were submitted to the people, but its general nature is best represented by the Introductory Letter of 1911, published by the People's Power League.

The resemblances between the Oregon and Socialist plans are apparent. Both include the abolition of the state senate and the election of members of the house by some system of proportional representation, the abolition of the executive and judicial vetoes, and the adoption of the direct popular veto, initiative, and recall. But the differences are no less important. The Oregon plan, as set forth in 1911 in the Introductory Letter of the People's Power League, abandons the direct popular election of executive officers, with the exception of governor and auditor, and presumably would have abandoned the direct election of judges, had that part of the plan been fully worked out. The governor is authorized to appoint the principal department heads, secretary of state, treasurer, attorney-general, state printer, and superintendent of public instruction, together with a new officer, called the state business manager, who is charged with the supervision of the rest of the administrative work of the state, except that of the railroad commission. The state business manager is clearly intended to be the most important administrative officer. Indeed it seems to be the purpose of the plan that he should occupy much the same position in relation to the governor as the city manager occupies in relation to the council under the Dayton plan of municipal government. These department heads are removable by the governor at will and collectively form an executive council or cabinet. The governor is expressly forbidden, however, to remove the state business manager or any subordinate administrative officer for partisan reasons. Thus the governor becomes exclusively a political leader, and the conduct of administration is vested for the most part in a responsible professional administrator and his subordinates. Politics is separated from administration, and by removing the purely administrative officers (except the auditor) from the ballot, the number of elected officers is greatly reduced, without diminishing popular control over those who exercise political powers. In brief, the introduction of the short ballot is a leading feature of the matured Oregon plan. As the ideas of the Oregon reformers developed, they came to be as much interested in the promotion of administrative efficiency as in the progress of democracy.1

1 The Oregon plan of 1911 provided for a further reduction of the burden thrown upon the electorate, under the existing Oregon system of popular government, by