102 The Evolution of the State. 



one-third of its entire delegation were born outside the 

 country whose important interests they were called upon 

 to serve ? So rank have these conditions become that they 

 are attracting the attention of statesmen everywhere. So 

 able and impartial an observer as Mr. Bryce has found it 

 necessary to say, " There is no denying that the government 

 of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United 

 States." Nor is this failure of minor importance. When 

 our constitution was framed, there were but thirteen cities 

 whose population exceeded 5000, and but one with more 

 than 40,000 inhabitants. To-day there are thirty exceed- 

 ing 100,000, and two exceeding 1,000,000. Ninety-seven 

 per cent, of the population for which our fathers provided a 

 scheme of government, lived outside the city limits ; to-day 

 less than seventy -eight per cent, inhabit the country. 



Within that time, space has been nearly annihilated ; 

 and communication is almost uninterrupted. A great 

 thought uttered at any center of the world instantly 

 vibrates throughout Christendom. The rapid acquisition 

 of surplus wealth fills the streets of the metropolis, and 

 the trend of all things, in densely populated centers, is 

 daily seen to be more and more toward complexity. This, 

 with a constantly changing environment, engenders problems 

 of which the franiers of our Constitution never dreamed. 

 Is it strange that the machinery should need to be readapted 

 to its new task ? 



But, it may be said, If the people are competent to govern ; 

 if, by the process of a natural evolution, the supreme power 

 has been rationally devolved upon the entire citizenship, 

 why is not an efficient appeal made to that original source 

 of power .^ Are we not justified, by the experience of the 

 last twenty years, in replying that, while exceptional 

 spasms of reform have here and there worked tenij)oniry 

 relief from especially aggravating epochs of corru})tion, 

 yet the people have really delegated their franchise to the 

 active leaders of the two great political parties ? My 

 meaning is, that neither any one, nor any thousand, nor 

 any twenty thousand citizens of any considerable city, can, 

 under existing machinery, do anything other than express 

 a preference at the polls. ]>ut the ballot was given, at its 

 origin, as a means of choosing from many, and not simply 

 of ])referring. Exactly stated, the government of this and 

 most of our cities is in the absolute control of a limited 



