bailey] THE SCIENCE-SPIRIT IN A DEMOCRACY 7 



to put it through, and this undoubtedly solidified the opposition. I 

 think there was a strong feeling among the people that a new dis- 

 pensation had been handed them from above. Although printed and 

 disseminated widely, the document did not have a fair hearing before 

 the people, they did not understand all the implications, they had 

 no opportunity to express a real choice on the different measures 

 in it and some of which were novel and striking. It is too bad 

 that this great document could not have been made the means of 

 public education throughout an entire winter with privilege 

 to vote on it at a special election. The state should have taken 

 means to have had the constitution discussed deliberately before 

 labor-unions, granges, teachers, and many other groups, not so 

 much with the partisan idea of passing it as of understanding it. 

 It could have been made a means of great civic awakening even 

 though the constitution failed of adoption in the end. As it is, 

 only another passing episode of legislation is in the public mind, 

 and it seems to have aroused little desire to reopen the question 

 and to solve certain great political problems on their merits. 

 Perhaps its defeat may even delay the opportunity to keep the 

 political establishment abreast of other human attainments. 



And now, again, let me take an illustration from the field of 

 personal publicity. The partisan receives the applause of his 

 party. For a moment he is a chieftain. He is elevated perhaps 

 far beyond his merits, his commonplaces are labeled as wisdom, 

 his virtues are paraded, his portrait adorns the shop windows, 

 the billboards and fences, and it appears proudly in the newspapers. 

 Personal advertising is far too easy in party programs. It makes 

 much of the ostentation of premature reputation. Too often it 

 tries to make reputation by means of publicity. How many are 

 the young men whom I have known to be broken on the wheel 

 of publicity, and crushed in the small show of public office ! The 

 only publicity worth the while is that which comes slowly, as the 

 person grows in age and experience and good works. It endures 

 until the end, and is not the flicker of a moth before a spot-light. 

 It may be all independent of newspaper comment or notoriety. 

 The passing of the word of approval or appreciation from mouth 

 to mouth, from organization to organization, is more significant 

 and more worth while than all the publicity of all the periodicals. 

 When the bald publicity program leaves our politics shall we have 

 a new breed of office-holders, — those who do not look for tempor- 



