administrative control ought not to be obscured by drawing it into this other and very different field.

The second power we fear is the control of our life through the vast privileges of corporations which use the wealth of masses of men to sustain their enterprise. It is in connection with this danger that it is necessary to do some of our clearest and frankest thinking. It is a fundamental mistake to speak of the privileges of these great corporations as if they fell within the class of private right and of private property. Those who administer the affairs of great joint-stock companies are really administering the property of communities, the property of the whole mass and miscellany of men who have bought the stock or the bonds that sustain the enterprise. The stocks and the bonds are constantly changing hands. There is no fixed partnership. Moreover, managers of such corporations are the trustees of moneys which they themselves never accumulated, but which have been drawn together out of private savings here, there, and everywhere.

What is necessary in order to rectify the whole mass of business of this kind is that those who control it should entirely change their point of view. They are trustees, not masters, of private property, not only because their power is derived from a multitude of men, but also because in its investments it affects a multitude of men. It determines the development or decay of communities. It is the means of lifting or depressing the life of the whole country.

They must regard themselves as representatives of a public power. There can be no reasonable jealousy of public regulation in such matters, because the opportunities of all men are affected. Their property is everywhere touched, their savings are everywhere absorbed, their employment is everywhere determined, by these great agencies. What we need, therefore, is to come to a common view which will not bring antagonisms, but accommodations. The programmes of parties must now be programmes of enlightenment and readjustment, not revolutionary but restorative. The processes of change are largely processes of thought, but unhappily they cannot be effected without becoming political processes also, and that is the deep responsibility of public men. What we need, therefore, in our politics is an instant alignment of all men free and willing to think and to act without fear upon their thought.

This is just as much a constructive age in politics, therefore, as was the great age in which our federal government was set up, and the man who does not awake to the opportunity, the man who does not sacrifice private and exceptional interests in order to serve the common and public interest, is declining to take part in the business of an heroic age. I am sorry for the man who is so blind that he does not see the opportunity, and I am happy in the confidence that in this era men of strength and of principle will see their opportunity of immortal service.

I am not one of those who wish to break connec

tions with the past, nor am I one of those who wish change for the mere sake of variety. The only men who do that are the men who want to forget something, the men who filled yesterday with something they would rather not recall to-day. Change is not interesting unless it is constructive, and it is an age of construction that must put fire into the blood of any man worthy of the name.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIRECT LEGISLATION
IN AMERICA 1

THE referendum is an established principle in American political life. It is not a new-fangled device, as it is characterized by opponents. Apart from its state use in the adoption or amendment of state constitutions and on other important subjects, the number and variety of questions thus referred in cities is so large that one who examines into the history of his own and of neighboring cities will probably be somewhat amazed as to their frequency and importance. Aside from its best-known use to decide vexatious topics like local option and prohibition, the referendum is used on financial questions like issuing bonds, and on undertaking new enterprises, like schools, hospitals, public buildings, parks, boulevards, sewers, waterworks, lighting plants, as well as on the most fundamental questions like the incorporation of cities and the acceptance of their charters. The constitution of Massachusetts, by amendment adopted as early as

* By Robert Treat Paine. Reprinted from the Proceedings of the National Municipal League (1908)

1821, forbids the legislature to incorporate any town as a city except with the consent of a majority vote of the citizens of that town.

The direct legislation, however, to which we are directing our attention, introduces the distinction or differentiation in that the people themselves determine, and not the legislature or the municipal legislative authorities, whether or not questions shall be referred through the referendum to a popular decision. The referendum is not compulsory: it need not be used unless there is a positive demand for it—a petition signed by a fixed number or percentage of the voters asking for it. Its use is optional. It becomes therefore a true people's veto to be used when occasion requires in the judgment of the people whether the municipal legislative authorities so wish or not. The people thus become directly sovereign in regard to the acts of their own agents or representatives. Similarly the initiative takes its rise from an initial action by the people in those cases where their representatives appear unwilling to act in accordance with the supposed will of the community. The authority of James Bryce is not necessary to convince Americans that the government of their cities is the conspicuous failure in American political institutions.

The federal system, with its two chambers based on the theory of checks and balances, has been found wanting. Whether or not it sufficed for earlier days of simpler requirements when the non-interference idea of government prevailed is immaterial. Our