of the West also, as soon as it enters the towns, tending to
support the Socialists and Labor parties rather than the reformers, we
realize that the distrust has no such local cause.

Perhaps the issue is more clearly seen in the hostility that exists
among the working people and the Socialists towards the so-called
commission plan of city government, which the progressives unanimously
regard as a sort of democratic municipal panacea. The commission plan
for cities vests the whole local government in a board of half a dozen
elected officials subject to the initiative and referendum and recall.
The Socialists approve of the last feature. They object to the
commission and stand for the very opposite principle of an executive
subordinate to a legislature and without veto power, because a board
does not permit of minority representation, and because it allows most
officials to be appointed through "influence" instead of being elected.
They object also, of course, to the high percentages usually required
for the initiative and the recall. It is Socialist and Labor Union
opposition, and not merely that of political machines, that has defeated
the proposed plan in St. Louis, Jersey City, Hoboken, and elsewhere, and
promises to check it all over the country. As a device for saving the
taxpayer's money, the commission plan in its usual form is ideal, as a
means for securing the benefits of the expenditure of this money to the
non-propertied or very small propertied classes, it is in its present
form worse in the long run than the present corruption and waste. State
legislatures and courts already protect the taxpayers from any measure
in the least Socialistic, whatever form of local government and
whatever party may prevail. It has caused more than a little resentment
among the propertyless that the taxpayers should actually have the
effrontery to propose the still more conservative commission plan as
being a radically democratic reform.

It is on such substantial grounds that the propertyless distrust the
democracy of the progressives and radicals. They find it extends only to
sections or districts where small capitalist voters are in a majority.
The "State Socialist" and Reform attitude towards political democracy is
indeed essentially opportunistic. Not only does it vary from place to
place, but it also changes rapidly with events. As long as the new
movement is in its early stages, it deserves popularity, owing to the
fact