and during the campaign it endeavors to secure the widest publicity with regard to the character and policies of the various candidates. It has undoubtedly wielded some influence for good in the city, and party managers in selecting candidates in many wards in the city cannot ignore its recommendations.

The non-partisan organization of New York is the Citizens' Union, a group of persons united without regard to party for the purpose of securing the honest and efficient government of the city of New York by the nomination and election of candidates or by endorsing the nominees of the regular parties whose character and policy the Union can approve. The Citizens' Union, however, differed at first from the Municipal Voters' League in being a sort of political party with officers, committees, and conventions modeled somewhat on the plan of the older parties. By uniting with the Republican party, which is in a minority in New York City, it was able in 1901 to contribute powerfully to the election of Seth Low as mayor; but it was unsuccessful in the next mayoralty contest, and since that time has confined its work largely to political education and the endorsement or nomination of candidates for minor offices. It maintains a representative at Albany to keep a watch on legislation affecting New York City. It issues bulletins from time to time on the questions of local government, and scrutinizes the important acts of the city administration.

The widest-reaching non-partisan organization, however, is the National League of Women Voters formed by certain leaders in the woman suffrage movement shortly after the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. It consists of local and state associations federated in one great national society. Women of all parties are affiliated with it. They do not endorse or support political parties as such. They favor many specific legislative proposals, state and national, and they sometimes give their support to candidates who agree to promote the measures they have approved. The League maintains headquarters in Washington, holds an annual convention, keeps speakers in the field enlisting the interest of women in public affairs, conducts schools of citizenship, gives special attention to laws pertaining to women, and urges the election or appointment of qualified women to positions in local, state, and national governments. The League also carries on investigations in problems of efficient government

and social welfare and actively supports the cause of international peace. To enlarge its membership and promote its objects the League has laid the country out into seven great regions, each with its director and local headquarters. More than two million women are associated with it, and the sphere of its influence is constantly widening.

Fifty Years' Warfare on Party Abuses a Balance Sheet

Half a century has now elapsed since the mighty boss of Tammany Hall, William Marcy Tweed, was sent to prison; nearly forty years have passed since the enactment of the famous Massachusetts ballot law; two decades have run their course since Wisconsin's adoption of the first state-wide direct primary system. Where do we stand now? Are our public officers of a better quality, more efficient, more intelligent, more honest? Has corruption diminished? Are party bosses shorn of their power or reduced in strength? Is the government more responsive to the wishes of the people? Is there less slavish devotion to party machines? Is the independence of the voter increased? Is public opinion more alert, more influential in party councils and official circles? If our governments, national, state, and local, are more responsive and efficient to-day than half a century ago, how much of the improvement is due to the unending stream of election and primary laws that has flowed from the state legislatures?

The correct answers to these questions would require the establishment of criteria which are scarcely formulated at the present time a science of government which we do not possess. Still a tentative balance sheet may be struck, on the basis of some obvious facts and many opinions hazarded by students and practitioners of government. There is no doubt that the whole election process has been lifted to a higher plane during the past fifty years. Elections are no longer held in saloons the licensed saloon is gone. Brawls, drunkenness, and disorder are no longer the prominent features of election day. Local elections are sometimes tainted with fraud, but there is less ballotbox stuffing; there are fewer cases of ballot stealing and defacing; and it is not often that the voter has his head broken at the polling place. There seems to be more independence on the

part of the voters both within and without the established party organizations. There is still a large annual crop of political scandals, but perhaps the offenders are driven from office more resolutely and more quickly than before. There are political bosses still, but they do not appear to be as mighty as the men of old like Marcus A. Hanna, Matthew Stanley Quay, Boies Penrose, and Richard Croker. On the whole there is reason for believing that our public officers have higher standards and more professional skill than they did half a century ago; but this is largely due to civil service reform, the recent advance in technical education, the establishment of many official associations for the improvement of administrative methods, and the growth of private societies for the criticism and discussion of government. Bryce, that keen observer, that cautious student of public affairs, that informed man of the world, looking over the American commonwealth once more near the close of his rich, full life, concluded: "No Englishman who remembers American politics as they were half a century ago . . . will fail to rejoice at the many signs that the sense of public duty has grown stronger, that the standards of public life are steadily rising, that democracy is more and more showing itself a force making for ordered progress."

"1

1 Modern Democracies, Vol. II, p. 165. See also R. S. Boots, The Direct Primary in New Jersey. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. CVI; Robert C. Brooks, Political Parties and Electoral Problems.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR

The Political Rôle of Governor

The governor is the central figure in state politics and administration. He is no longer a mere "presiding officer" as Jefferson wished him to be a nonentity or a servant of the legislature as all the early state constitutions, except those of New York and Massachusetts, sought to make him. He now enjoys executive powers of a high order. He is, at least in the public mind, responsible for complex and technical administrative work of vital significance to public welfare. Nearly every new constitutional convention seeks to enlarge his prestige and authority. The statutes which flow in an unending stream from the legislatures add to his duties and widen his control over personal liberty.

Politics, even more than the law, tends to exalt the position of the governor. Next to the President of the United States, it is the governor of the state who engages the interest of the voters. Thousands who do not know the names of the men who represent them in the legislature know who is the chief executive and have some idea of his personality and opinions. As a rule the number of votes cast for governor rises far above that cast for any other state or local officer. So great is the popular interest in the office that even the most powerful party managers in making nominations must be on their guard; they may choose a nonentity or even a man of doubtful reputation for auditor or treasurer, but seldom, very seldom for governor. They may even be forced by public opinion to choose someone whom they dislike or distrust. In the old days in New York, when Senator Platt was "boss" of the state, he was compelled to take Theodore Roosevelt as the Republican candidate for governor in spite of himself. "Senator Platt picked me for the nomination," said Roosevelt. "He was entirely frank in the matter. He made no pretense that he liked me personally; but he deferred to

the judgment of those who insisted that I was the only man who could be elected, and that therefore I had to be nominated."

After his nomination a candidate for governor is expected to interpret the vague desires and drifting opinions of the people, especially the voters of his party, and transmute them into a rather concrete program of legislation and administration. It is true that this function of concentrating and defining opinion is supposed to be discharged by the party and the results are supposed to be expressed in the platform. But in actual practice the voters pay little attention to the platform and a great deal of attention to the personality, speeches, and declarations of the candidate for governor. They know from experience that he, not the platform, will set the tasks of the legislature. After he is elected and assumes office, a governor continues the function of formulating popular opinion on issues as they arise from time to time during his term. He presses his policies and measures upon the legislature, and may take the stump to arouse support among the people for his program. As the representative of great popular interests, he may overshadow the legislature and the judiciary and spring into prominence as a national figure. Indeed in the strategic states, such as New York, Ohio, and Indiana, the office of governor may well be a stepping stone to the Presidency. It was as governor of New York that Cleveland arrested the attention of the country and secured the prestige which sent him to the White House. McKinley had been governor of Ohio as well as a Representative in Congress before he was elevated to the presidency. It was his triumphant reëlection as governor in 1893 which made his career secure. "The brilliance of this victory," says Herbert Croly in his Life of Hanna, "made a profound impression on the public mind. No such majority had been known in Ohio since the war. Hundreds of telegrams and letters of congratulation were showered on the victor, and two thirds of them welcomed him as the next President of the United States. For the first time he began to be named, not merely as an eligible, but as the logical, candidate. Two days after the election, his name was placed on the editorial page of the Cleveland Leader as its candidate for the nomination." Roosevelt was governor of New York when he was elected Vice President and thus made the successor of McKinley. It was as governor of New Jersey that Wilson drew