men of scientific training and high ideals in political life.

What legislative checks to corruption are possible?

It is, of course, an unnatural situation when the ordinary citizen
has to spend a lot of time and effort if he would guard against being
misgoverned. He ought to be able to tend to his own affairs and leave
the machinery of government to those who have been trained to it and
whose business it is. And while no political mechanism will ever wholly
run itself, without watchfulness on the part of the people, experience
shows clearly that it is possible by a wise system to make corruption
much more difficult and more easily checked. We Americans are beginning
to awake from our complacent self-gratulation and realize that our
political machinery is clumsy and antiquated and a standing invitation
to inefficiency. The discussion of the relative advantages of
legislative schemes belongs to the science of government rather than
to ethics; but their bearing upon public morality is so important that
certain typical movements must be explained. The stages by which the
advanced form of popular government which we have now attained has
been reached need not, for our purposes, be considered-the extension
of suffrage to the masses, government by representatives, registration
laws, the secret ballot, and the like. We need only discuss several
reforms now being agitated and tried, whose aim is to make government
more responsive to the real wishes and needs of the people, and more
difficult of usurpation by selfish interests.

I. We may first speak of several reforms whose aim is to improve our
mechanism of election, in order that merit, rather than "pull," shall
lead to office, and that officials shall represent the people rather
than the political rings. It is not generally true that good and able