They might reflect whether this
increase, like that of the criminals and the insane, did not afford a
possible subject of legislation, but I doubt whether even a regenerate
state government would reach any very quick or satisfactory conclusions
in respect to this matter. Public opinion does not appear to have
decided whether the social fact of divorce abounding is to be considered
as an abuse or as a fulfillment of the existing institution of marriage.

Neither need the pernicious activity of such a government cease, after
it has succeeded in radically improving its treatment of the criminal
and its lunatics, and in possibly doing something to make the American
home less precarious, if less cheerful. It might then turn its attention
to the organization of labor, in relation to which, as we shall see
presently, the states may have the opportunity for effective work. Or an
inquiry might be made as to whether the educational system of the
country, which should remain under exclusive state jurisdiction, is well
adapted to the extremely complicated purpose of endowing its various
pupils with the general and special training most helpful to the
creation of genuine individuals, useful public servants, and loyal and
contented citizens of their own states. In this matter of education the
state governments, particularly in the North, have shown abundant and
encouraging good will; but it is characteristic of their general
inefficiency that a good will has found its expression in a
comparatively bad way.

It would serve no good purpose to push any farther the list of excellent
objects to which the state governments might devote their liberated and
liberalized energies. We need only add that they would then be capable,
not merely of more efficient separate action, but also of far more
profitable cooeperation. In case the states were emancipated from their
existing powerless subjection to individual, special, and parochial
interests, the advantages of a system of federated states would be
immediately raised to the limit. The various questions of social and
educational reform can only be advanced towards a better understanding
and perhaps a partial solution by a continual process of
experimentation--undertaken with the full appreciation that they were
tentative and would be pushed further or withdrawn according to the
nature of their results. Obviously a state government is a much better
political agency for the making of such experi