was one of the many palliatives for a constitutional weakness which required radical treatment. Even the boldest champions of direct government will hardly hold that it can take the place of representative government for the daily and ordinary conduct of public business. It is a shallow soul who does not recognize that continuity, steadiness and watchful control are essential to the proper undertaking and management of all important public enterprises. While we were in the corner-grocery and townpump stage of civilization it mattered little, perhaps, how often the laws were changed or the public officers rotated, but those who want to see our governments discharge with wisdom and efficiency the great duties imposed upon them by modern industrial conditions know very well that law-making in the polling booth, unsupported by organized and responsible agencies for carrying out the laws, is likely to increase that futile muddling which so constantly accompanies democratic enterprise. The minority who expect to substitute direct government for representative government is so small that it may be disregarded. The advocates of direct government are in the main seeking a means for making government responsive to public will and for holding representatives responsible.

It is a curious fact that in this new political quest only a few have stopped to inquire whether we have not set our legislatures to do impossible tasks. Many have written about the breakdown of representative government and some have written about the "failure" of democracy, but only a handful have taken the trouble to examine the limitations of government by legislatures and to consider whether that other branch of representative government, the executive department, was not better fitted for securing responsiveness and responsibility in many matters than the legislature itself. In view of this circumstance, it would seem timely, now that our ingenuity for creating safety devices appears to have been exhausted, to inquire whether some of our fundamental premises have not been wrong, whether a considerable portion of i the inefficiency and corruption of the legislatures has not been. due to our misconception of representative functions to the intrusion of the legislature into a field foreign to its institutional purpose; whether in assembling the parts of our machinery of representative government we have not got mixed in our plan,

with the result that it is impossible for the legislature to do the work for which it is really fitted.

If we inquire why so few among the great army of constitutional tinkers have failed to locate the cause of friction between parts and of uniformly bad results the reason is not hard to find. The whole representative system is framed on the idea that the will of the people shall govern, and that the representative body is the instrument through which this will is to be expressed between elections. Our first state constitutions were based on a distrust of both the executive and the people. Instead of using the legislature as a reviewing and approving body and providing for submitting issues between the legislature and the executive to the decision of the voters at the polls, our early constitution makers tried to make the legislature the mainspring in the exercise of political power-administrative as well as law-making. The first model having been so constructed, all subsequent attempts at reform were largely confined to patching up the old design.

The thinking of our constitutional lawyers has been moved by three main considerations: In the first place, Americans have been taught a certain exaggerated respect fo: "fundamental" law. This prevents real thinking and puts a premium on tinkering. In the second place, the spirit of distrust of executive powers which came down from the days when our fathers fought the minions of George III. still permeates all our political philosophy, even though we elect the executive by popular vote and have not the remotest idea that hereditary executives may be re-established on these shores. In the third place, petty politicians of the legislature knew very well, in spite of their homage to "immortal doctrines," that pork-barrel politics and spoils in patronage depend upon the real mastery which the legislative committees exercise over every detail of administrative organization and operation-upon the prostration of the great function of executing the public will to the exigencies of log-rolling and the geographical distribution of public plunder.

For these reasons, in the main, the place of the executive in our representative system has never received due consideration at the hands of political writers or constitution makers. For these reasons we hear reiterated in every constitutional convention such lofty and confusing sentiments as those uttered in the

convention of Kentucky a quarter of a century ago in protest against permitting the governor to appoint the state treasurer: "Yes, let him [the governor] become the mighty ruler of this great commonwealth, clothed with that power which alone belongs to the people, and which every lover of liberty should cherish. Yes, give him one power and soon he will step forward and ask for an increase of that power. I love our form of government. I love it for its glory, its beauty and its grandeur. I love it for what it has accomplished; but while I love it, I loathe in the deepest recess of my heart any effort whatever that will go in the direction of taking from the people of Kentucky the right to choose their own officers." Against such eloquence neither criticism nor thought can make headway easily.

Nevertheless, neither the fear of monarchy nor the dread of losing the precious right of voting for lieutenant-governor (although many states dispense with that officer altogether) could prevent the free play of the mind from reaching at last the important subject of the proper relations which should exist between the executive and the legislature. While this Kentucky Demosthenes was pleading for the right to vote for state treasurer, a number of publicists were thinking about the very foundations of government. For twenty-five years the enormous waste of our unrepresentative, irresponsible system had called attention to the needs for budget reform. In 1900, Professor Goodnow issued his little volume on Politics and Administration, which contributed so much to clear thinking about the place of administration in government. In 1899, Gamaliel Bradford published his informing work, The Lesson of Popular Government, in which the fatal weakness of administration by legislatures was exposed at great length and the remedy for the evil sought with due care in the experience of many countries. In 1910 the Short Ballot Organization was founded to give popular currency to a philosophy of politics which implied a great simplification of administrative organization with a view to securing responsibility in the legislature and executive.

In due time the somewhat academic discussion began to bear fruit. In 1910, President Taft obtained an appropriation to make a thorough study of the causes of waste and inefficiency in the Federal system, through what has since been known as the Economy and Efficiency Commission. In the New Hampshire

convention of 1912, and in the Ohio convention of the same year, the matter of state administrative reorganization was subjected to a searching discussion which marked the entrance of the controversy into the field of practical politics. In state after state, governors in their messages brought the issue to the attention of the legislatures and the voters. Commissions were appointed to make painstaking researches, and voluminous reports accompanied by recommendations of varying degrees of causticity began to give point to the preceding speculations.* In 1914, the Bureau of Municipal Research, which had kept abreast of all these currents in American politics and had contributed materially to correct thinking and practice in the matter of administrative and budget procedure, began to prepare for the coming constitutional convention in New York by making exhaustive researches into the government of the state. As was pointed out in the June, 1915, issue of this series (pp. ii-iii), the Bureau published two significant volumes on the subject and helped to prepare certain important bills relative to state finance and administration, which were introduced by Hon. John G. Saxe. One of these measures- that providing for a scientific budget system for the state-and the hearings thereon before convention committees were published in the June issue just cited.

The remainder of the bills supported by the Bureau dealt with administrative reorganization. They were:

Amendment No. 555, relating to the organization of the executive branch of the government, including the Departments of Audit and Law and the administrative divisions of the executive branch. (Introduced by Mr. Saxe.)

Amendment No. 510, relating to the powers, duties and functions of the executive branch, the Departments of Audit and Law, and the administrative divisions of the executive branch. (Introduced by Mr. Saxe.)

Amendment No. 560, to establish a State Department of Labor. (Introduced by Mr. Parsons.)

Amendment No. 608, to create a Department of Charities and Correction as a division of the executive branch of the state government. (Introduced by Mr. Parmenter.)

*For recent developments in this field see The American Science Review for May,

1915.

The most striking features of these proposed constitutional amendments are the following:

1. The appointment of the heads of the great administra-✓ tive departments by the governor, although several officers, owing to political exigencies, are left elective.

2. The establishment of a governor's cabinet, composed of the executive heads of the administration under the governor as chief executive.

3. The organization of a governor's staff to serve as a research and investigating agency for the chief executive. 4. The initiation of the budget by the governor.

5. The right of the governor and his representatives to appear before the legislature to submit, explain and defend administrative measures.

6. In case of the refusal of the legislature to pass such measures, the right of the governor to dissolve the legislature and submit the issue to the voters.

7. A constitutional procedure for locating responsibility and for giving publicity to the discussion of all issues which arise, whether they pertain to administrative measures or the bills of members. In other words, to do away with invisible government by establishing visible government.

The bills prepared on the basis of these principles were not intended to be complete or final. The purpose of drafting them was to get the leading ideas before the convention. No effort was made to work out a complete scheme. Indeed, the general plan was broken up into several parts and presented in more than one way in order to secure hearings by the proper committees of the convention. For example, proposal No. 470, printed in the June issue of this series, covers in considerable detail the matter of budget procedure for the use of the committee on finance; but, of course, the provisions of that measure concern as well the organization and powers of the executive department, and therefore deserved consideration at the hands of the committee on the governor and other state officers. For that reason some of the principles contained in No. 470 are to be found in Nos. 510 and 555, which were referred to the latter committee after their introduction by Mr. Saxe. Again, it will be found that No. 555 duplicates No. 510 in its broad