s will
not be lost, as they can be easily turned into a new direction. And
whatever political reaction may seem to take place, after certain
illusions have been shattered, will be a seeming reaction only, and due
to the desertion from the ranks of the supporters of the Socialist
ticket of municipal reformers who never pretended to be Socialists, but
who voted for that Party merely because no equally reliable
non-Socialist reformers were in the field, or had so good a chance of
election. Such separation of the sheep from the goats will be specially
rapid when some variation of the so-called commission form of government
will have been gradually introduced, particularly where it is
accompanied by direct legislation and the recall. For then municipal
Socialists will be deprived of all opportunity of claiming this, that,
and the other reform as having some peculiar relation to Socialism. And
this day is near at hand.

All municipal reforms that interest property owners and non-property
owners alike will then be enacted with comparative ease and rapidity,
while all political parties, and all prolonged political struggles, will
center around the conflict between employers and employees. State and
national governments will see to it that no municipality in the hands of
the working class is allowed to retain any power that it could use to
injure or weaken capitalism. And this specific limitation of the powers
of municipalities that escape local capitalist control, will be so
frequent and open that all the world will see that Socialists are going
to achieve comparatively little by "capturing" local offices.

I have already mentioned in a general way the position of the Milwaukee
Socialists in the Wisconsin legislature. Let me return now to their
representative in Congress. Mr. Berger had differentiated himself from
previous trade union Congressmen largely by proposing a series of
radical _political_ reforms: the abolition of the Senate, of the
President's veto, and of the power of the Supreme Court over the
legislation of Congress, and a call for a national constitutional
convention. Radical as they are, it is probable that these reforms are
only a foreshadowing of the position rapidly being assumed by a large
part of the collectivist but anti-Socialist "insurgents," and
"progressives." Even Mr. Roosevelt and Justice Harlan, it will be
recalled, protest in the strongest terms against the power of the
Supreme Court over legisla