shall pay to the Secretary of State sufficient money to pay all the expenses for paper and printing to supply one copy with every copy of the measure to be printed by the State; and he shall forthwith notify the persons offering the same of the amount of money necessary.

The Secretary of State shall cause one copy of each of said arguments to be bound in the pamphlet copy of the measures to be submitted as herein provided, and all such measures and arguments to be submitted at one election shall be bound together in a single pamphlet. All the printing shall be done by the State, and the pages of said pamphlet shall be numbered consecutively from one to the end. . . . The title page of every measure bound in said pamphlet shall show its ballot title and ballot numbers. The title page of each argument shall show the measure or measures it favors or opposes and by what persons or organization it is issued. When such arguments are printed, he shall pay the State Printer therefor from the money deposited with him and refund the surplus, if any, to the parties who paid it to him. The cost of printing, binding, and distributing the measures proposed, and of binding and distributing the arguments, shall be paid by the State as a part of the state printing, it being intended that only the cost of paper and printing the arguments shall be paid by the parties presenting the same, and they shall not be charged any higher rate for such work than is paid by the State for similar work and paper.

Not later than the fifty-fifth day before the regular general election Distribution of pamphlets. at which such measures are to be voted upon, the Secretary of State shall transmit by mail, with postage fully prepaid, to every voter in the State whose address he may have, one copy of such pamphlet ; provided, that if the Secretary shall, at or about the same time, be mailing any other pamphlet to every voter, he may, if practicable, bind the matter herein provided for in the first part of said pamphlet, numbering the pages of the entire pamphlet consecutively from one to the end, or he may enclose the pamphlets under one cover. In the case of a special election he shall mail said pamphlet to every voter not less than twenty days before said election.

168. A Public Opinion Bill

A modified form of initiative and referendum is provided by a measure which has long been advocated by many ardent reformers in Massachusetts:

SECTION I. On a request signed by one thousand voters, asking for the submission of any question for an expression of opinion and stating the substance thereof, the secretary of the Commonwealth shall transmit such request to the State ballot law commission, who shall determine if such question is one of public policy, and if they so determine, shall draft it in such simple, unequivocal, and adequate form as they may deem best suited to secure a fair expression of opinion. Thereupon the secretary shall prepare and furnish suitable forms, each to contain spaces for not more than one hundred signatures, and if such forms shall be signed by five thousand voters, he shall upon the fulfilment of the requirements of this act place such question on the official ballot to be used at the next State election. Forms shall bear the date on which they are issued, and no applications made on forms issued more than twelve months before the election concerned shall be received.

SEC. 2. Signers of request for the issuance of forms and signers of applications shall append to their signatures their residence, with street and number, if any, and shall be certified as registered voters by the proper registrars of voters. One of the signers to each paper shall make oath of the genuineness of the signatures thereto, and a notary public, justice of the peace, or other magistrate, when taking such oath, shall satisfy himself that the person to whom the oath is administered is the person signing such paper, and shall so state in his attestation of such oath. All provisions of law relating to nomination papers shall apply to such requests and applications as far as may be consistent.

SEC. 3. Applications shall be filed with the secretary sixty days before the election at which the questions are to be submitted. Not more than four questions under this act shall be placed upon the ballot at one election, and they shall be submitted in the order

in which the applications are filed. No question negatived, and no question substantially the same, shall be submitted again in less than three years.

169. Arguments for the Initiative and Referendum*

These passages from a catechism prepared by several distinguished advocates of the initiative and referendum sum up the leading arguments in favor of the system:

Q. What is meant by the Referendum?

of the referendum.

A. The Referendum means the referring of a law or ordinance Definition or any specific question to the people for decision at the polls. A vote on a law or ordinance may be taken, not for the purpose of decision, but merely to secure an accurate and definite expression of public opinion. This is a quasi-Referendum or public-opinion vote, such as is in use in Illinois; also in some cities, such as Chicago and Detroit. The Referendum also means the right of the people to demand the submission of an enactment or measure to the voters for decision; and it is also used to designate a statute or constitutional amendment securing this right.

Q. Is the Referendum un-American?

un-American

A. The Referendum is not un-American unless the principle of The referenmajority-rule or rule by the people is un-American. It is majority- dum is not rule that is important, and whatever means prove necessary to secure it must be adopted. So far from being un-American, the Referendum is most emphatically American both in principle and practice. From the earliest days of our colonial government in New England the people not only voted directly on specific measures but practically all the laws were made by direct vote of the citizens. This practice has continued in unbroken succession so far as local or town government is concerned, but city and state government has lost its original character. As the growth of numbers made it necessary to rely more and more on representatives, the direct vote of the people was lost, because no one thought of any way in which it could be retained. But now that we have a

The cost of government not in

creased.

Representative gov

destroyed.

plan whereby the direct vote can be taken without an assembly of the people, it is possible to go back to the original American system of actual popular sovereignty. From the standpoint of principle, no government is American unless it is a government by and for the people; and no government can be a government by and for the people where the will of a small body of so-called representatives can override or disregard the will of the people.

Q. Has it made frequent elections necessary, thus greatly increasing the cost?

A. Instead of making elections more frequent and thus increasing taxation, the experience of the Swiss is the reverse. It is not worth while for politicians to attempt to squander the people's resources or for private interests to bribe them to do so when the people have it in their power upon petition of a small minority, to submit any measure passed by a legislature to a direct vote of the people and veto it if a majority so votes. This removes from the legislators the temptation to corruption. The Governor of South Dakota, a year or two after the constitutional Direct-Legislation amendment went into effect, said: "Since this Referendum law went into effect we have had no charter-mongers or railway speculators, no wild-cat schemes submitted to our legislature. Formerly our time was occupied by speculative schemes of one kind or another, but since the Referendum has been made a part of the constitution these people do not press their schemes, and hence there is no necessity for having recourse to the Referendum."

Q. Does it take from the people's representatives any just rights that belong to them, or in any way limit their legitimate exercise of power?

A. The Referendum takes from the people's representatives no ernment not power that justly belongs to them. The legislators are the agents and servants of the people, not their masters. No true representative has a right or a desire to do anything his principal does not wish to have done, or to refuse to do anything his principal desires to have done. The Referendum merely prevents the representatives from becoming mis-representatives by doing, through igno

rance or dereliction, what the people do not want, or neglecting to do what the people do want. A legislative body may depart from the people's will because it does not know what the people's will is, or because the pressure of private or personal interest, contrary to the public interest, overcomes the legislators' allegiance to the people's will. In either case the Referendum is the remedy and the only complete remedy; the only means whereby real government by the people may be made continuous and effective.

Q. Does it destroy "all the safeguards of debate and discussion, of deliberate action, of amendment or compromise"?

A. No. The advantages of the present legislative system, — its compactness, experience, power of work, etc., are retained with the Referendum, but the evils of the present system, its haste, complexity, corruption and violations of the will of the people, are eliminated. Under the Referendum the city or state has its body of legal experts, trained advisers, and experienced legislators, of course, and they continue to do most of the law-making, but their power to do wrong or stop progress, their power to do as they please in spite of the people is removed. The state that adopts the Referendum has the service of its legislators, without being subject to their mastery. If the representatives act as the people wish, their action is not disturbed. If they act against the people's wish, the people have a prompt and effective veto by which they can stop a departure from their will before any damage is done. This is a much-needed safeguard of popular institutions. The Referendum raises the legislators to their old position of councillors or advisers to the people and places them above suspicion, because they cannot sell out. It also gives them an independence they do not now have.

Q. Why is it imperatively demanded to-day?

Referendum

to control

A. The Referendum is imperatively demanded because there has arisen in our midst in recent years a powerful plutocracy com- bosses and posed of the great public-service magnates, the trust chieftains and corporations. other princes of privilege who have succeeded in placing in posi