It is, of course, an unnatural situation when the ordinary citizen has to spend a lot of time and effort if he would guard against being misgoverned.  He ought to be able to tend to his own affairs and leave the machinery of government to those who have been trained to it and whose business it is.  And while no political mechanism will ever wholly run itself, without watchfulness on the part of the people, experience shows clearly that it is possible by a wise system to make corruption much more difficult and more easily checked.  We Americans are beginning to awake from our complacent self-gratulation and realize that our political machinery is clumsy and antiquated and a standing invitation to inefficiency.  The discussion of the relative advantages of legislative schemes belongs to the science of government rather than to ethics; but their bearing upon public morality is so important that certain typical movements must be explained.  The stages by which the advanced form of popular government which we have now attained has been reached need not, for our purposes, be considered-the extension of suffrage to the masses, government by representatives, registration laws, the secret ballot, and the like.  We need only discuss several reforms now being agitated and tried, whose aim is to make government more responsive to the real wishes and needs of the people, and more difficult of usurpation by selfish interests.

I. We may first speak of several reforms whose aim is to improve our mechanism of election, in order that merit, rather than “pull,” shall lead to office, and that officials shall represent the people rather than the political rings.  It is not generally true that good and able men are unwilling to accept public office; what they are unwilling to do is to truckle to bosses, to do all the questionable things that will keep them in with the ring, or to spend large sums of money in advertising their claims to the public.  So thoroughly have political machines entrenched themselves that it is often practically useless for any one to oppose the machine candidate.  Appointees receive their positions for “political services” rendered, or in return for a “campaign contribution” for which they may hope to recoup themselves when in office.  To destroy utterly this political “graft” will be impossible until human nature becomes more generally moralized; but to render it more difficult and less common is the purpose of a number of measures, of which we may mention the following: 

(1) Civil service laws.  These require appointments to office, made by officials, to be made on the basis of competitive examinations which shall test the ability and knowledge of the applicants.  By this means, within a generation, tens of thousands of positions have been put beyond the reach of spoilsmen, and men of worth have replaced political henchmen.  Instead of a great overturn with every new political regime, the man who has now