“If the alien, ignorant of our laws and customs, cows in fear of our government, he is very apt to believe that things are much the same the world over, and he may become and easy convert to the doctrine of resistance.  The skies will clear but meanwhile government must be firm, yet judicial, uninfluenced by the emotionalism that breeds extremes.  The less government we have, consistent with safety to life and property, the better for both happiness and morals.  A policeman on every corner would be a bad index to the citizenship of the community, for it would reflect a foolish concept of conditions by the municipal officers.”

The vision of Governor Cox in legislation is best to be studied in the statute book of Ohio.  The fact is that he was a pioneer in some of this, indeed in a large part of it.  Through the years he has insisted that government must deal with its problem by evolution lest revolution overtake it.  It was this sentiment that led him to deal with the industrial injury matter.  When he heard men inveighing against the courts, a discerning eye knew something was wrong and he gave his attention to righting that wrong.  His creed, not recently as a candidate, but in the years of his public career, has been expressed in this summary:  “Our view is toward the sunrise of tomorrow with its progress and its eternal promise of better things.”

The expression is found so frequently in his state documents that it might properly be set forth in the form of a creed.  But there has been more than what the great Roosevelt called “lip-service to progress.  The forward steps became a part of the laws.

In health affairs he asked for the appointment of a commission to study the need for adequate local administration and he urged its adoption before the General Assembly so forcefully that Ohio to-day has what is universally recognized to be the best system in America.  In placing the state department upon a footing commensurate with other institutions of government, case was taken to place it where it cannot be prostituted to partisanship.  There has been a growing number of governmental departments under Governor Cox in which partisanship is utterly forbidden.  They include the Board of Administration, dealing with the wards of the state, the social agencies, the educational, and the Fish and Game Department.  An actual census in all the varied public office activities in Ohio would disclose that although the Democratic party has been in possession of the Government for nearly all of the past twelve years, the number of members of the Republican party on the public rolls is almost as great as that of the victors.  The Governor has found that men in the world of business employ, at larger compensation than the state has afforded, the type of men he has most often selected for responsible posts.  It is one of the curious effects of progress in government that it has touched and awakened progress in business and in civic life.