ul people in machinery, and so we take our analogy for
political reforms from machinery. We found that by uniting various
mechanical elements we could make machines which would do as much as one
hundred or one thousand men in the same time. So we think that if we are
only acute enough to devise a governmental machine which will work
without effort on the part of the people, we can sit at home while
elections run themselves so well that only what the good people desire
in political action will necessarily result. We want the equivalent of
what, in the slang of practical mechanics, we call a fool-proof machine,
because anybody can run it and no fool can interfere with its normal
operation. So these political reformers are hunting a
corrupt-politician-proof machine for government. It does not and cannot
exist. No government can exist which does not depend upon the activity,
the honesty and the intelligence of those who form it. The initiative,
the referendum and the recall have been urged and in many states
adopted, as a machine which no boss or corrupt politician can prevent
from producing honest, effective political results. They are expected to
reform everything and those who doubt their wisdom are, for the time
being, in the minds of many enthusiasts, public enemies.

The representative system, on the contrary, recognizes that government,
in the actual execution of governmental measures, and in the actual
detailed preparation of governmental measures, is an expert matter. To
attempt to devise and adopt detailed legislative measures to accomplish
the general purpose of the people through a mass vote at a popular
election is just as absurd as it would be for all those present at a
town meeting to say, "We will all of us now go out and build a bridge,
or we will use a theodolite." Thus to say that by injecting more
democracy you can cure the defects of our present democracy is to
express one of those epigrams that, like many of its kind, is either not
true at all or is only partly true and is even more deceptive than if
it were wholly untrue.

Take the power of appointment in executive work. You elect officers,
choosing men of character, intelligence, and experience for a few great
offices, and then what do you do under the Federal Constitution? You
turn over to the President the appointment of great officers because he
needs intelligence, knowledge and skill to make their selections.

Consider the system of general dir