Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/45

 Rh and the lobby as a rule means bribery, direct or indirect. It is a regular thing for "sand-bagging" bills to be introduced, whose only object is to extort money from wealthy interests which the bills threaten. And on the other hand the most salutary measures often fail if they antagonize the profits of powerful corporations. Meanwhile legitimate legislative business is choked by a mass of bills, while the vicious committee system puts it in the power of small cliques to smother at will almost any measure they please. Our legislatures are no longer deliberative bodies.

As to our city councils, the very name in our large cities has become malodorous. If one should explain to this audience that in German cities membership in the municipal council gives valuable social rank, an involuntary grin would ripple from the platform to the door. Such a notion seems to us quite weirdly grotesque. We are surprised and thankful if one more than a third in such a body will occasionally vote against corrupt measures. And when a man of character and standing consents to an election to the council, the community looks on it as almost quixotically self-sacrificing. Is it not a fact that we have come to expect much more from the President of the United States than from Congress—that we look to the governors of our states for protection from the crude and corrupt action of our legislatures—and that civic reform is embodied in the mayor? It may be admitted that states occasionally have selected for their chief magistrates some very extraordinary individuals. About two years ago there was an eruption of wild-eyed governors in several states—political pimples, indicative of poison in the blood of the body politic. But after all that was an incident—one on the whole which has occurred rather seldom. And on the other hand, can any one at this moment point to any state legislature which is clearly and unmistakably as valuable to the public as the few executives in question were valueless?

A second grave fact which confronts us is the actual tyranny which prevails at too many points and at too many times in the republic.