Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/740

 724 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

that in large part they are fraudulent and misleading. Every person who examined the alleged petitions of more than one hundred thousand signers, which the Referendum League pre- sented to the election commissioners of Chicago in 1902 and 1904, knows that there were lists of hundreds of names that were copied in the same hand ; that it contained the names of prominent per- sons long dead; and that it bore other evidence of being largely spurious. It can be said, on the authority of the attorney for the commissioners, that if trouble and expense had been taken to examine the whole of either petition, it would have been thrown out; but under the law the burden of proof rests with the objectors, and where it is not positively proved that there is not the required number of genuine signatures, the petition is accepted ; that is, the known fraudulent signatures do not invali- date the others ; and as it is practically impossible to submit such positive proof where the petition is very large, it is seldom urged. In these cases no one took even the pains to count the signatures to determine positively how many there were. They were accepted on the representation of the league.

The manner usually employed in securing a petition discredits the document. Copies of it are left at saloons, drug-stores, and on street corners, and anyone may sign any name and any num- ber of names he chooses. A popular petition is a mark for the ribald a popular joke. The few states that have adopted the initiative in part have stricter requirements concerning petitions; but where an attempt is made to get genuine signatures it involves great inconvenience and annoyance. Copies are usually taken through factories, wholesale houses, and offices where large numbers of men are employed, creating loss of time and dis- traction from business. Some large concerns in this state, as the writer personally knows, absolutely refuse to allow a petition of any kind to be circulated among their men during hours of employment. A law that will necessitate making the circulation of petitions almost continuous is in that respect alone open to very grave censure.

The probability of conflicting laws throughout the statr. should the people of each subdivision have the power to enact