e direction of political purification. The early
reformers believed that the eradication of the spoils system would deal
a deadly blow at political corruption and professional politics. But
although they have been fairly successful in establishing the "merit"
system in the various public offices, the results of the reform have not
equaled the promises of its advocates. While it is still an important
part of the programme of reform from the point of view of many
reformers, it has recently been over-shadowed by other issues. It does
not provoke either as much interest as it did or as much opposition.
Municipal reform has, of course, almost as many centers of agitation as
there are centers of corruption--that is, large municipalities in the
United States. It began as a series of local non-partisan movements for
the enforcement of the laws, the dispossession of the "rascals," and the
businesslike, efficient administration of municipal affairs; but the
reformers discovered in many cases that municipal corruption could not
be eradicated without the reform of state politics, and without some
drastic purging of the local public service corporations. They have
consequently in many cases enlarged the area of their agitation; but in
so doing they have become divided among themselves, and their agitation
has usually lost its non-partisan character. Finally the agitation
against the trusts has developed a confused hodge-podge of harmless and
deadly, overlapping and mutually exclusive, remedies, which are the
cause of endless disagreements. Of course they are all for the People
and against the Octopus, but beyond this precise and comprehensive
statement of the issue, the reformers have endlessly different views
about the nature of the disease and the severity of the necessary
remedy.

If reform is an ambiguous and many-headed thing, the leading reformers
are as far as possible from being a body of men capable of mutual
cooeperation. They differ almost as widely among themselves as they do
from the beneficiaries or supporters of the existing abuses. William R.
Hearst, William Travers Jerome, Seth Low, and George B. McClellan are
all in their different ways reformers; but they would not constitute
precisely a happy family. Indeed, Mr. Hearst, who in his own opinion is
the only immaculate reformer, is, in the eyes of his fellow-reformers,
as dangerous a public enemy as the most corrupt politician or the most
unscrupulous millionaire. An