to state-wide uses in Oregon in 1908.  It failed, however, to capture popular imagination to the same degree as the initiative and referendum.  At the end of ten years’ agitation, only ten states, mainly in the West, had adopted it for general purposes, and four of them did not apply it to the judges of the courts.  Still it was extensively acclaimed in cities and incorporated into hundreds of municipal laws and charters.

As a general proposition, direct government in all its forms was bitterly opposed by men of a conservative cast of mind.  It was denounced by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge as “nothing less than a complete revolution in the fabric of our government and in the fundamental principles upon which that government rests.”  In his opinion, it promised to break down the representative principle and “undermine and overthrow the bulwarks of ordered liberty and individual freedom.”  Mr. Taft shared Mr. Lodge’s views and spoke of direct government with scorn.  “Votes,” he exclaimed, “are not bread ... referendums do not pay rent or furnish houses, recalls do not furnish clothes, initiatives do not supply employment or relieve inequalities of condition or of opportunity.”

=Commission Government for Cities.=—­In the restless searching out of evils, the management of cities early came under critical scrutiny.  City government, Mr. Bryce had remarked, was the one conspicuous failure in America.  This sharp thrust, though resented by some, was accepted as a warning by others.  Many prescriptions were offered by doctors of the body politic.  Chief among them was the idea of simplifying the city government so that the light of public scrutiny could shine through it.  “Let us elect only a few men and make them clearly responsible for the city government!” was the new cry in municipal reform.  So, many city councils were reduced in size; one of the two houses, which several cities had adopted in imitation of the federal government, was abolished; and in order that the mayor could be held to account, he was given the power to appoint all the chief officials.  This made the mayor, in some cases, the only elective city official and gave the voters a “short ballot” containing only a few names—­an idea which some proposed to apply also to the state government.

A further step in the concentration of authority was taken in Galveston, Texas, where the people, looking upon the ruin of their city wrought by the devastating storm of 1901, and confronted by the difficult problems of reconstruction, felt the necessity for a more businesslike management of city affairs and instituted a new form of local administration.  They abolished the old scheme of mayor and council and vested all power in five commissioners, one of whom, without any special prerogatives, was assigned to the office of “mayor president.”  In 1908, the commission form of government, as it was soon characterized, was adopted by Des Moines, Iowa.  The attention of all municipal reformers was drawn to it and it was hailed as the guarantee of a better day.  By 1920, more than four hundred cities, including Memphis, Spokane, Birmingham, Newark, and Buffalo, had adopted it.  Still the larger cities like New York and Chicago kept their boards of aldermen.