rative strength and efficiency of the central government. But the
failures have none the less been sufficiently distressing; and if they
are permitted to continue, they will compromise the success of the
American democratic experiment. The Federal government has done much to
ameliorate the condition of the American people, whereas the state
governments have done little or nothing. Instead of representing, as a
government should, the better contemporary ideals and methods, they have
reflected at best the average standard of popular behavior and at worst
a standard decidedly below the average. The lawlessness which so many
Americans bemoan in American life must be traced to the inefficiency of
the state governments. If the central government had shared this
weakness, the American political organism would have already dissolved
in violence and bloodshed.

The local authorities retain under the American Federal organization
many of the primary functions of government. They preserve order,
administer civil and criminal justice, collect taxes for general and
local purposes, and are directly or indirectly responsible for the
system of public education. If it can be proved that the state
governments have exercised any of these functions in an efficient
manner, that proof certainly does not lie upon the surface of the facts.
The provisions they have made for keeping order have been utterly
inadequate, and have usually broken down when any serious reason for
disorder has existed. A certain part of this violence is, moreover, the
immediate result of the failure of American criminal justice. The
criminal laws have been so carefully framed and so admirably expounded
for the benefit of the lawyers and their clients, the malefactors, that
a very large proportion of American murderers escape the proper penalty
of their acts; and these dilatory and dubious judicial methods are
undoubtedly one effective cause of the prevalence of lynching in the
South. There is more to be said in favor of our civil than of our
criminal courts. In spite of a good deal of corruption and of
subserviency to special interests, the judges are usually honest men and
good average lawyers; but the fact that they are elected for
comparatively short terms has made them the creatures of the political
machine, and has demoralized their political standards. They use court
patronage largely for the benefit of the machine; and whatever influence
they have in politics is