le to the ordinary voter? Why, then, are
the more vexatious subjects so often shifted by the legislators to the
people?

The conservative objector is, first, apt to object before fully
examining what he dissents from, and, secondly, prone to have in mind
ideal conditions with which to compare the new methods commended to him.
In the matter of legislation, he dreams of a body of high-minded
lawgivers, just, wise, unselfish, and not of legislators as they
commonly are. He forgets that Congress and the legislatures have each a
permanent lobby, buying privileges for corporations, and otherwise
influencing and corrupting members. He forgets the party caucus, at
which the individual member is swamped in the majority; the "strikers,"
members employing their powers in blackmail; the Black Horse Cavalry, a
combination of members in state legislatures formed to enrich themselves
by plunder through passing or killing bills. He forgets the scandalous
jobs put through to reward political workers; the long lists of doubtful
or vicious bills reviewed in the press after each session of every
legislative body; the pamphlets issued by reform bodies in which perhaps
three-fourths of a legislature is named as untrustworthy, and the price
of many of the members given. The City Reform Club of New York published
in 1887: "As with the city's representatives of 1886, the chief objects
of most of the New York members were to make money in the 'legislative
business,' to advance their own political fortunes, and to promote the
interests of their factions." And where is the state legislature of
which much the same things cannot be said?

The conservative objector may not know how the most important bills are
often passed in Congress. He may not know that until toward the close
of a session the business of Congress is political in the party sense
rather than in the governing sense; that on the floor the play is
usually conducted for effect on the public; that in committees, measures
into which politics enter are made up either on compromise or for
partisan purposes; that, finally, in the last days of a session, the
work of legislation is a scramble. The second day before the adjournment
of the last Congress was thus described in a New York daily paper:
"Congress has been working like a gigantic threshing machine all day
long, and at this hour there is every prospect of an all-night session
of both houses. Helter-skelter, pell-mell, the 'unfinished