One would not of course prevent the proposal of a bill by any member of the legislature, indeed this free action would be absolutely necessary as a measure of protection against executive oppression, but this should be prohibited until after the government programme had been disposed of.  After that task was accomplished the legislature might sit indefinitely, or as long as the public would stand it, for the purpose of considering private bills, and these could be referred to committees as at present.  The chances are, however, that the government programme would cover the most essential matters and what would remain would be the edifying spectacle of Solons solemnly considering such questions as the minimum length of sheets on hotel beds, the limitation in inches and fractions, of the heels of women’s shoes, the amount of flesh that could be legally exposed by a bathing suit, or the pensioning of a Swedish Assistant Janitor,—­all of which are the substance of actual bills introduced in various State legislatures during the session last closed.

Another grave weakness in our system is the election by popular vote of many judicial and administrative officers, coupled with the vigorous remnants of the old and degrading “spoils system” whereby many thousands of strictly non-political offices are almost automatically vacated after any partisan victory.  I cannot trust myself to speak of the infamy of an elective judiciary; fortunately I live in a state where this worst abuse of democratic practice does not exist, and so it touches me only in so far as it offends the sense of decency and justice.  In the other cases it is only a question of efficient and intelligent administration.  There is an argument for electing the chief executive of a city, a state or the nation, by popular vote, and the same holds in the case of the lower house of the legislature where a bi-cameral system exists, but there is no argument for the popular election of the administrative officers of a state.  There is even less,—­if there can be less than nothing—­for the changes in personnel that take place after every election.  Civil service reform has done a world of good, but as yet it has not gone far enough in some directions, while its mechanism of examinations is defective in principle in that it leaves out the personal equation and establishes its tests only along a very few of the many lines that actually exist.  I would offer it as a proposition that no election should in itself affect the status of any man except the man elected, and, in the case of a mayor or governor or the President, those who are directly responsible to him and to his administration for carrying out his policies; and further, that the voter, when he votes, should vote once and for one man in his city, once and for one man in his state, and once and for one man in the nation, and that man, in each case, should be his representative in the lower branch of the legislative body.  Choosing