is recent popularity of small avail. He cut no figure at all in the
convention, and a very insignificant one outside. Neither was there any
reason to be surprised at this result. In municipal politics he stood
for an ideal and a method of agitation which was both individual and of
great value. In state and national politics he stood for nothing
individual, for nothing of peculiar value, for no specific group of
ideas or scheme of policy. The announcement that a candidate's platform
consists of his oath of office doubtless has a full persuasive sound to
many Americans; but it was none the less on Mr. Jerome's part an inept
and meaningless performance. He was bidding for support merely on the
ground that he was an honest man who proposed to keep his word; but
honesty and good faith are qualities which the public have a right to
take for granted in their officials, and no candidate can lay peculiar
claim to them without becoming politically sanctimonious. Mr. Hearst's
strength consisted in the fact that he had for years stood for a
particular group of ideas and a particular attitude of mind towards the
problems of state and national politics, while Mr. Jerome's weakness
consisted in the fact that he had never really tried to lead public
opinion in relation to state and national political problems, and that
he was obliged to claim support on the score of personal moral
superiority to his opponent. The moral superiority may be admitted; but
alone it never would and never should contribute to his election. In
times like these a reformer must identify a particular group of remedial
measures with his public personality. The public has a right to know in
what definite ways a reformer's righteousness is to be made effective;
and Mr. Jerome has never taken any vigorous and novel line in relation
to the problems of state and national politics. When he speaks on those
subjects, he loses his vivacity, and betrays in his thinking a tendency
to old-fashioned Democracy far beyond that of Mr. Bryan. He becomes in
his opinions eminently respectable and tolerably dull, which is, as the
late Mr. Alfred Hodder could have told him, quite out of keeping with
the part of a "New American."

Mr. Jerome has never given the smallest evidence of having taken serious
independent thought on our fundamental political problems. In certain
points of detail respecting general political questions he has shown a
refreshing freedom from conventional illusions