ments than is a government
whose errors would affect the population of the whole country. No better
machinery for the accomplishment of a progressive programme of social
reform could be advised than a collection of governments endowed with
the powers of an American state, and really desirous of advancing
particular social questions towards their solution. Such a system would
be flexible; it would provoke emulation; it would encourage initiative;
and it would take advantage of local ebullitions of courage and insight
and any peculiarly happy local collection of circumstances. Finally, if
in addition to the merits of a system of generous competition, it could
add those of occasional consultation and cooeperation, such as is implied
by the proposed "House of Governors," the organization for social reform
would leave little to be desired. The governors who would meet in
consultation would be the real political leaders of their several
states; and they should meet, not so much for the purpose of agreeing
upon any single group of reforming measures, as for the purpose of
comparing notes obtained under widely different conditions and as the
result of different legislative experiments. Just in so far as this
mixture of generous competition and candid cooeperation was seeking to
accomplish constructive social purposes, for which the powers of the
states, each within its geographical limits, were fully adequate, just
to that extent it could hardly fail to make headway in the direction of
social reform.

If the state governments are to reach their maximum usefulness in the
American political system, they must not only be self-denying in respect
to the central government, but generous in respect to their
creatures--the municipal corporations. There are certain business and
social questions of exclusively or chiefly local importance which should
be left to the municipal governments; and it is as characteristic of the
unregenerate state governments of the past and the present that they
have interfered where they ought not to interfere as that they have not
interfered where they had an excellent opportunity for effective action.
A politically regenerated state would guarantee in its constitution a
much larger measure of home rule to the cities than they now enjoy,
while at the same time the reformed legislative authority would endeavor
to secure the edifying exercise of these larger powers, not by an
embarrassing system of supervision