Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/756

 740 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

We do not want the government to monopolize the whisky busi- ness. Switzerland is no criterion for America in this matter.

In Switzerland the cantons vote state churches, and support them from the public treasuries. Is that an example for the American states to follow? Says Mr. Lowell:

In a community as intricate as ours, legislation is a very intricate matter, and requires a great deal of careful study. This is far less true of Switzerland. .... The initiative has not been a success even in Switzerland, and there is no reason to expect it would work any better elsewhere.

A REVOLUTIONARY MEASURE

Should the popular initiative with the referendum become the mode of making laws, the same power will control the constitution that passes the laws. That power can and will be disposed to remove all constitutional barriers to the law it favors. (O. M. Barnes.)

To speak of the initiative as a revolutionary scheme is not an extravagance of language. It is not only revolutionary in its possibilities, but in its intent. A representative government with the power of veto in the executive cannot exist in a state where the popular initiative is operative. To say, as some members of the Illinois Referendum League have said, that it is not intended to use the power to the full extent, is an idle answer. The ele- ments that are giving the Referendum League its greatest support demand the power only to use it. In the councils of the Chicago Federation of Labor this has been more than once declared. One of the officials of that organization asserted that under the initiative and referendum the Teachers' Federation of Chicago, having joined the Federation of Labor, would have power enough to depose the present board of education of that city and to elect a board of its own choosing, meaning thereby that it would elect a board subservient to itself. Mr. O. M. Barnes reminds us that a resolution was presented in a labor congress at Cincinnati not long ago, and given prolonged discussion, demanding

such amendment to the constitution of the United States, and the constitutions of the several states thereof, as will deprive the aforesaid supreme courts of power to set aside laws duly enacted by the legally chosen representatives of the people.

The Michigan Law Review states the case thus :

Direct legislation proposes this : Whenever any law is pronounced uncon-