ey to be engrafted on our
American system?" More than once have I been asked this question when
describing the Initiative and Referendum of Switzerland.

The reply is: Direct legislation is not foreign to this country. Since
the settlement of New England its practice has been customary in the
town meeting, an institution now gradually spreading throughout the
western states--of recent years with increased rapidity. The Referendum
has appeared, likewise, with respect to state laws, in several forms in
every part of the Union. In the field of labor organization, also,
especially in several of the more carefully managed national unions,
direct legislation is freely practiced. The institution does not need to
be engrafted on this republic; it is here; it has but to develop
naturally.

_The Town Meeting._

The town meeting of New England is the counter-part of the Swiss
communal political meeting. Both assemblies are the primary form of the
politico-social organization. Both are the foundation of the structure
of the State. The essential objects of both are the same: to enact local
regulations, to elect local officers, to fix local taxation, and to
make appropriations for local purposes. At both, any citizen may propose
measures, and these the majority may accept or reject--_i.e._, the
working principles of town and commune alike are the Initiative and the
Referendum.

A fair idea of the proceedings at all town meetings may be gained
through description of one. For several reasons, a detailed account here
of what actually happened recently at a town meeting is, it seems to me,
justified. At such a gathering is seen, in plain operation, in the
primary political assembly, the principles of direct legislation. The
departure from those principles in a representative gathering is then
the more clearly seen. In many parts of the country, too, the methods of
the town meeting are little known. By observing the transactions in
particular, the reader will learn the variety in the play of democratic
principle and draw from it instructive inference.

The town of Rockland, Plymouth county, in the east of Massachusetts, has
5,200 inhabitants; assesses for taxation 5,787 acres of land; contains
1,078 dwelling houses, 800 of which are occupied by owners, and numbers
1,591 poll tax payers, who are therefore voters.

At 9 a.m., on Monday, March 2, 1891, 819 voters of Rockland assembled in
the opera house for the annual town meeting,