trades-unions in the American Federation of Labor are evidence of the
willingness and ability of wage-earners to cope practically with
national problems. And at this point is to be observed a fact of capital
significance to advocates of pure democracy. Whereas, in independent
political movements, sooner or later a footing has been obtained by a
machine, resulting in disintegration, in the trades organization, while
political methods may occasionally corrupt leaders, the politician labor
leader uniformly finds his fellow workmen turning their backs on him.
The organized workers not only distrust the politician but detest
political chicanery. Such would equally be the case did the wage-workers
carry into the political field the direct power they exert in their
unions. And in politics this never-failing, incorruptible power of the
whole mass of organized wage-workers may be exerted by direct
legislation. Therewith may be had politics without politicians. As
direct legislation advances, the machine must retire.

Here, then, with immediate results in prospect from political action,
lies encouragement of the highest degree--alike to the organized
workers, to the men grown hopeless of political reform, and to the men
in active rebellion against the two great machine ridden parties.

Encouragement founded on reason is an inestimable practical result.
Here, not only may rational hope for true reform be inspired; a lively
certainty, based on ascertained fact, may be felt. All men of experience
who have read these pages will have seen confirmed something of their
own observations in direct legislation, and will have accepted as
plainly logical sequences the developments of the institution in
Switzerland. The New Englander will have learned how the purifying
principles of his town meeting have been made capable of extension. The
member of a labor organization will have observed how the simple