10 GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE. people. The question of raising a loan for various public improvements was submitted to the people, but Councils refused to take a referendum on the gas lease. A test vote THE POLITICIANS AS MASTERS, -referring constitutional amendments to the people as required by organic law, and for the rest submitting what they choose and enacting what they like without reference to the voters. POLITICIAN TO VOTER-State your opinion on these matters, please taken by The Inquirer in an average ward just before the lease was made, resulted in 32 ballots for and 2,583 against it-81 to 1 against the action of Councils. Councils were flooded with petitions, mass-meetings were held and the press DEMOCRACY AND DIRECT LEGISLATION. 11 was practically a unit against the lease. But, the legislators were acting as şervants of the corporations and not as agents of the people, tho drawing salaries as such, and they gave T THE PEOPLE AS MASTERS, -through Direct Legislation by which the OPTION of ordering a referendum is transferred from the legislators to the voters. It puts the VOTER TO POLITICIAN:-Let me see those bills in your pocket also. away the people's property to their co-conspirators in spite of all the people could do. The people must wait till the next election even to turn out the rascals, and even that would 12 GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE. not bring back the property for such franchise grants become valid contracts enforceable in the courts as soon as the stock and bonds are sold to innocent parties. If Philadelphia had had the referendum, however, the lease would have been stopped-instead of holding useless mass-meetings and sending in impotent petitions, they would have sent in a mandatory petition for a referendum vote on the lease and snowed it under at the polls. Legislators and councilmen are willing now to submit measures in respect to which they are acting honestly, but they do not submit gas grabs and franchise steals, and when asked to give the people a vote on such matters the legislators and councilmen declare that the people do not know enough to vote on these things they know enough to vote on constitutional amendments, but a railway or electric light bill is beyond their comprehension. The Ohio Legislature passed a law allowing 50-year franchises, and before the indignant people could elect a new legislature to repeal the law, the Councils of Cincinnati granted a 50-year street-railway term which became an irrevocable contract to burden the present generation and the next. The Illinois Legislature under pressure from Chicago companies also passed a 50-year law, and it was only by such demonstrations as put the Boodle Councilmen in fear of their lives that the citizens of Chicago prevented a 50-year extension of street railway privileges in that city. With the referendum there would have been no grant in Cincinnati; and in Chicago, instead of practically mobbing the legislators, the people could have settled the matter by mandatory petition and a vote at the polls. The Ohio and Illinois franchise laws, and the Broadway franchise, Philadelphia lease and Cincinnati grant are but samples of a great mass of legislation for private purposes against the people's interests. In such enactments, there is no element of government by the people they are illustrations of government by councilmen and legislators acting as the agents of the corporations that have bought them, or retained them, government by politicians and monopolists not gov DEMOCRACY AND DIRECT LEGISLATION. 13 ernment by the people. It was not the people's wish to give away the Philadelphia gas works, or the Broadway franchise, or grant 50-year terms. Councils and Legislatures made strenuous efforts to hide the considerations paid them by the companies, and to conceal the real nature of the transactions, conscious that they were acting against their public duty and the people's interest. Yet the people had no means of stopping these iniquitous grants, and once enacted they became irrevocable contracts, and if the stock and bonds have been sold to innocent parties they can be enforced in the courts, even tho the company's charter be revoked by the legislature (111 N. Y., 1). With the referendum such outrages would be impossible. The case is stronger still in respect to national government. There would have been no war of conquest in the Philippines if the people could have called for a referendum on it at the start. The larger part even of those who will vote to sustain the administration would have voted against such a policy if it had come to the people before it became a part of the Republican record. The Rebellion might have had a short existence, or none at all, if a referendum could have been taken on the issues involved as Lincoln desired. England would probably not have gone to war with the Transvaal if the people could have called the question before them at the start. In fact there would be few wars if the common people who have to do the fighting and the paying were allowed to decide the matter, or if every legislator who voted for war were obliged to enlist, and indeed no able bodied man ought to vote for war unless he deems the cause so great and just that he would be willing to march in the front rank to battle. The fugitive slave law would have quietly yielded to the referendum, instead of remaining to embitter our people and help to bring on the war. The income tax decision would have been speedily swept from the record if the people could have called for a referendum on the matter. Postmaster General John Wanamaker could easily have carried his postal 14 GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE. telegraph bill in 1890 if he could have appealed from Congress to the people for a specific vote on the question-mllions of voters have petitioned for a postal telegraph and only the telegraph companies and their attorneys opposed it. Several times the House has passed an amendment providing for direct election of United States Senators, but every time the Senate turns the measure down. The present system compels the election of state senators with reference to national issues instead of state issues as should be the case, and it affords special opportunities for the purchase of senatorships, opportunities which unfortunately have been too much improved in recent years. The proposed reform is a most excellent one, and is widely desired by the people, but their will is blocked by one little body of senatorial delegates. We call our elected delegates "representatives" and "agents"— curious agents that can refuse to obey the principals' instructions, make regulations, decrees and ordinances to govern him against his will, refuse to make rules he wants, and give away his lands, franchises and privileges by the hundred million dollars worth to railroad companies, lumber trusts, steel and sugar trusts, etc. such so called "agents" are masters not agents at all—there can be no real relation of principal and agent except where the principal possesses the powers of veto, instruction, control and discharge, which are inherent in and essential to that relation wherever it exists. Our delegates. are frequently misrepresentatives instead of representatives. No system that does not provide means for preventing misrepresentation is justly entitled to be called a representative system. Direct legislation is essential to perfect the rep esentative system, and eliminate the misrepresentations that so frequently occur under our present unguarded system of law-making by final vote of delegates secure from veto till their term expires. III. OUR ELECTIVE ARISTOCRACY. We have gone a long way towards self-government since the days of absolute despotism, but we have not fully attained |