the constitutions and functions of government, Bankers' Associations on financial topics, Civic Leagues on electoral and administrative reform, and educational gatherings of every variety on subjects with which his position at Princeton particularly qualified him to deal. He was known as a radical and a democrat, and-what is not necessarily implied by the latter term-a Democrat in the political sense.

But if Mr. Wilson's entry into active political life was not in itself remarkable, there were certain features connected with his adoption that did make both the nomination and the acceptance surprising. Nothing could be more antagonistic to Mr. Wilson's political ideals than the principles, if principles they could be called, that governed the tactics of the Democratic (and equally of the Republican) Party in New Jersey; and nothing was calculated to be more fatal to the aims of the professional politicians than the election of the candidate of their choice. But the Democrats wanted office at any cost. They had not a man who could carry the Governorship on his own or the party's merits. Woodrow Wilson could carry it, and the Democratic caucus had little doubt that once they had him elected they could bend him to their purposes, as they bent every holder of public office from Governor to sanitary trustee. That accounts for the party's side of the transaction. Mr. Wilson's acceptance is easier to explain. He had lived for twenty years in New Jersey. He had no illusions on the condition of the public administration, dominated as it had been for a

generation by one or other of two corrupt and unprincipled party gangs, working always in ostensible rivalry, though often in secret collusion. Never did an American State stand in

greater need of a "clean up," and if Wilson were invested with the powers that would enable him to carry out that salutary process, he was not the man to shrink from applying them. He warned his supporters that they were running a man who went into politics with his hands free and unpledged to party bosses. They accepted his conditions, conscious of the value of a candidate of Dr. Wilson's personality and character to a party of damaged reputation, and privately satisfied that his assertion of political independence was worth exactly as much as the protestations of a dozen self-styled independents in the past.

The political atmosphere into which the university president plunged when he motored from Princeton to Trenton to make his speech of acceptance in September 1910 could hardly be paralleled in English public life. Democracy in America is theoretically unfettered. Every man votes as he will, and the successful candidate represents the free and spontaneous choice of a majority (or at least a plurality ") of the electors. In actual practice the whole system of government, municipal, State, and Federal, tends to fall into the hands of a narrow party caucus, always astute, often unscrupulous, sometimes corrupt, basing its power on an evil tradition which justifies the doctrine of "the spoils to the victor," and enables the party leader to bind his

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followers to him by the actual enjoyment or the confident hope of the countless official appointments to which he holds the patronage. When a change of Administration in the Union, the State, or the city means the removal of an army of officials, who in this country would be permanent national or municipal servants, and the substitution of another army appointed by the victors at the polls, it is quixotic to hope that political life can be clean. As it is, the domination of the machine," with its rings and bosses, operates to enthrone material interests in politics and reduce the conscientious and independent elector to impoNominations of candidates are made, not by the rank and file of the party direct, but by delegates appointed usually at a carefully packed meeting, at which the party managers rarely have any difficulty in securing the adoption of a list prepared in caucus beforehand and put to the meeting as a whole. At the actual election the free and independent voter, presented with a formidable list of rival candidates for Federal, State, and local office (a New York ballot sheet in the 1916 election measured eight feet in length), backs his party ticket solid, with disciplined and undiscriminating loyalty to the machine.

Legislators thus elected are under a perpetual obligation to consolidate their own and their party's position by devoting themselves consistently to the conciliation of individuals and corporations (public companies) whose goodwill is a party asset. The prevalence of actual cor

ruption in American public life is probably less than Americans themselves sometimes suggest, but the relations between individual members of a State Senate or Assembly and a railroad apprehensive of regulative legislation, a light or power company playing for the grant of a monopoly, or a contractor angling for the supply of goods to a public institution, are notoriously equivocal. The art of reciprocal back-scratching is nowhere more scientifically developed than in American State politics.

In modification of these strictures it should be added that the standard of political purity is much higher in some States than in others, and that, taking the Union as a whole, the level has been substantially raised in the last twenty years. Many States, by making a "direct primary " (i.e. the choice of party candidates by a direct vote of the rank and file of the party, instead of by a packed delegation) statutory, have done a good deal to weaken the boss and the party machine. New Jersey had adopted the direct primary for certain offices before the date of Dr. Wilson's candidature, but in most respects State politics were still at the mercy of the rival bosses and their subservient and interested followers. The Republicans had held the Governorship for fourteen years, and the Democratic boss, ex-Senator James Smith (who was on such terms with the head of the rival machine as to secure a substantial share of the pickings), was perfectly conscious, not merely that the position could only be won for his party by a candidate of Dr. Wilson's calibre, but that even

so the success of the candidature would largely depend on the extent to which the party nominee remained dissociated from the traditions of the party machine and relied for his appeal on the force of his own personality.

He

Dr. Wilson's speech of acceptance, after his nomination as candidate had been carried on the first ballot (i.e. by a clear majority over the combined votes of rival candidates) in the Democratic State Convention, defined his attitude on the political issues then immediately pending. touched on six questions in particular, three regarded as of primary and three as of secondary importance : reorganization and economy in administration; the equalization of taxation; the control of corporations; employers' liability; corrupt practices at elections; and conservation of natural resources for the good of the commonwealth. In reply to questions he declared himself resolutely opposed to the boss system, and determined to break it by promoting the election to office of men who shared his views.

After seven weeks spent in the necessary speech-making throughout the State, Mr. Wilson was, on November 8th, elected Governor of New Jersey with a plurality of nearly fifty thousand votes. At the Presidential election three years before the Republican plurality had been over eighty thousand. The elections for Senate and Assembly gave the Democrats control of the latter, with a majority on a joint ballot of the two chambers, but the Republicans retained command of the Senate. The actual figures were: Senate,