Neither need the pernicious activity of such a government cease, after it has succeeded in radically improving its treatment of the criminal and its lunatics, and in possibly doing something to make the American home less precarious, if less cheerful.  It might then turn its attention to the organization of labor, in relation to which, as we shall see presently, the states may have the opportunity for effective work.  Or an inquiry might be made as to whether the educational system of the country, which should remain under exclusive state jurisdiction, is well adapted to the extremely complicated purpose of endowing its various pupils with the general and special training most helpful to the creation of genuine individuals, useful public servants, and loyal and contented citizens of their own states.  In this matter of education the state governments, particularly in the North, have shown abundant and encouraging good will; but it is characteristic of their general inefficiency that a good will has found its expression in a comparatively bad way.

It would serve no good purpose to push any farther the list of excellent objects to which the state governments might devote their liberated and liberalized energies.  We need only add that they would then be capable, not merely of more efficient separate action, but also of far more profitable cooeperation.  In case the states were emancipated from their existing powerless subjection to individual, special, and parochial interests, the advantages of a system of federated states would be immediately raised to the limit.  The various questions of social and educational reform can only be advanced towards a better understanding and perhaps a partial solution by a continual process of experimentation—­undertaken with the full appreciation that they were tentative and would be pushed further or withdrawn according to the nature of their results.  Obviously a state government is a much better political agency for the making of such experiments than is a government whose errors would affect the population of the whole country.  No better machinery for the accomplishment of a progressive programme of social reform could be advised than a collection of governments endowed with the powers of an American state, and really desirous of advancing particular social questions towards their solution.  Such a system would be flexible; it would provoke emulation; it would encourage initiative; and it would take advantage of local ebullitions of courage and insight and any peculiarly happy local collection of circumstances.  Finally, if in addition to the merits of a system of generous competition, it could add those of occasional consultation and cooeperation, such as is implied by the proposed “House of Governors,” the organization for social reform would leave little to be desired.  The governors who would meet in consultation would be the real political leaders of their several states; and they should meet,