efore him, however ugly, and a wholly Gallic hatred of
hypocrisy." It is Mr. Jerome's intellectual veracity, his somewhat
conscious and strenuous ideal of plain speaking, which has been his
personal contribution to the cause of reform; and he is right in
believing it to be a very important contribution. The effective work of
reform, as has already been pointed out, demands on the part of its
leaders the intellectual virtues of candor, consistency, and a clear
recognition of facts. In Mr. Jerome's own case his candor and his clear
recognition of facts have been used almost exclusively in the field of
municipal reform. He has vigorously protested against existing laws
which have been passed in obedience to a rigorous puritanism, which,
because of their defiance of stubborn facts, can scarcely be enforced,
and whose statutory existence merely provides an opportunity for the
"grafter." He has clearly discerned that in seeking the amendment of
such laws he is obliged to fight, not merely an unwise statute, but an
erroneous, superficial, and hypocritical state of mind. Although it may
have been his own official duty as district attorney to see that certain
laws are enforced and to prosecute the law breakers, he fully realizes
that municipal reform at least will never attain its ends until the
public--the respectable, well-to-do, church-going public--is converted
to an abandonment of what Mr. Hodder calls administrative lying.
Consequently his intellectual candor is more than a personal
peculiarity--more even than an extremely effective method of popular
agitation. It is the expression of a deeper aspect of reform, which many
respectable reformers, not merely ignore, but fear and reprobate,--an
aspect of reform which can never prevail until the reformers themselves
are subjected to a process of purgation and education.

It has happened, however, that Mr. Jerome's reputation and successes
have been won in the field of local politics; and, unfortunately, as
soon as he transgressed the boundaries of that field, he lost his
efficiency, his insight, and, to my mind, his interest. Only a year
after he was elected to the district attorneyship of New York County, in
spite of the opposition both of Tammany and William R. Hearst, he
offered himself as a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial
nomination of New York on the comprehensive platform of his oath of
office; but in the larger arena his tactics proved to be ineffective,
and h