not so much for the purpose of agreeing upon any single group of reforming measures, as for the purpose of comparing notes obtained under widely different conditions and as the result of different legislative experiments.  Just in so far as this mixture of generous competition and candid cooeperation was seeking to accomplish constructive social purposes, for which the powers of the states, each within its geographical limits, were fully adequate, just to that extent it could hardly fail to make headway in the direction of social reform.

If the state governments are to reach their maximum usefulness in the American political system, they must not only be self-denying in respect to the central government, but generous in respect to their creatures—­the municipal corporations.  There are certain business and social questions of exclusively or chiefly local importance which should be left to the municipal governments; and it is as characteristic of the unregenerate state governments of the past and the present that they have interfered where they ought not to interfere as that they have not interfered where they had an excellent opportunity for effective action.  A politically regenerated state would guarantee in its constitution a much larger measure of home rule to the cities than they now enjoy, while at the same time the reformed legislative authority would endeavor to secure the edifying exercise of these larger powers, not by an embarrassing system of supervision, but by the concentration of the administrative power and responsibility of the municipal authorities.  I shall not attempt to define in detail how far the measure of home rule should go; but it may be said in general that the functions delegated or preserved should so far as possible be completely delegated or preserved.  This rule cannot be rigidly applied to such essential functions of the state governments as the preservation of order and the system of education.  The delegation of certain police powers and a certain control over local schools is considered at present both convenient and necessary, although in the course of time such may no longer be the case; but if these essential functions are delegated, the state should retain a certain supervision over the manner of their exercise.  On the other hand, the municipality as an economic and business organism should be left pretty much to its own devices; and it is not too much to say that the state should not interfere in these matters at all, except under the rarest and most exceptional conditions.

The reasons for municipal home rule in all economic and business questions are sufficiently obvious.  A state is a political and legal body; and as a political and legal body it cannot escape its appropriate political and social responsibilities.  But a state has in the great majority of cases no meaning at all as a center of economic organization and direction.  The business carried on within state limits is either