it be widely distributed, and although general prosperity prevail, is by no means indicative of good government if at the same time there exists preventable or remediable distress among any considerable number of the citizens. The criterion of good government, in brief, is the degree attained in the prevention of misery without weakening moral fiber, rather than in the degree of promotion of prosperity.

What government can do-apart from its action in regard to national defense and kindred matters—may be expressed in a single phrase: it can see that the gates of opportunity are kept open for its citizens along the whole length of every road that crosses our political and our industrial life. In other words, it can insure to all men and women the chance to work and win according to their talent and diligence, and their moral fiber, and can guard the path to success from obstructions by trickery, fraud, oppression, or monopoly.

III

POLITICS AND THE CITIZEN

BECAUSE Our public affairs have always been dominated by party politics we have taken it for granted that they should continue to be so dominated. It is, we believe, unavoidable that our form of government should be permeated with party feeling, yet too much partisanship is often an unhealthy symptom both in legislation and administration. We need not go so far as to insist that political practices are necessarily an evil, because they are in fact a public good when in the right place. But when political activities get out of their right place we should have no hesitation in pronouncing them an evil though not a necessary one.

This consideration of politics apparently removes us from the rather theoretical questions concerning the general function of government, which we considered in the preceding chapter, and leads us to the very practical question as to what persons should compose the government. No one will contest the general fact that government in a democracy should reflect the will of the people. Government, then, faces three problems, allied yet distinct; namely, to ascertain the will of the people, to express that will, and to carry it out,-in other words, election, legislation and administration. Politics, as commonly understood, may be described as the gentle art of securing and retaining power, and has its birth in the first of these functions-that of ascertaining the will of the

people. Though it sometimes exercises a beneficial influence, its effect is more often baneful upon the other two functions,-legislation and administration.

Nothing is more unwise than to underestimate the force of the politician or to deride his abilities. Leadership is not attained either in business or in politics without the use of brains, and the man who is often contemptuously referred to as "the boss" is no weakling. That is why he is a successful vote-getter. It does not, however, follow that, because a man is a successful votegetter, he is a wise legislator or a prudent administrator. Many a successful candidate has turned out a failure, and if there is any truth in the cynicism that a statesman is a successful politician, it is often because men rise above their source, out of politics into statesmanship. As the old formal logic would have it, some politicians are statesmen, and it is equally true that some statesmen are politicians, but all politicians are not statesmen, neither are all statesmen politicians. The process of selection through election may result in the survival of the fittest-to be elected. This is very far from saying that it results in the survival of the fittest for the service for which they are chosen.

In its political phase, government presents its own peculiar difficulties which fall into two classes,—those concerned with the machinery by which representatives of the people are chosen, and those which concern the character of the representatives themselves. All the discussion for many years past about political machinery— the primary and the convention, the short and the long ballot, the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall-only serves to emphasize the fundamental fact that primarily it is not in the intricacies of political technique but in the character of the vote that good government has its

roots. The recluse in his study may deplore the imperfections of human institutions, but the practical man who really grasps the situation should get into action and contribute what he can to improve it.

No attempted perfection in the political machine can work an improvement in government if the voter remains ignorant of public issues or if large classes of the most intelligent citizens fail to vote and refuse to seek office. The effect of such abstention from the polls is to throw the control of politics into the hands of professional politicians, whose chief concern is to provide themselves with a living. This would not matter so much if they were possessed of talent which enabled them to serve the public's interest while serving their own; but this is usually not the case, and to-day it is from the general incompetence of politicians rather than from their occasional dishonesty that the cause of good government has more to fear. The matter is of such vital importance that it will bear some elaboration.

We have to consider, on the one hand, those who go into politics; on the other, those who stay out. Of the former the most important group both numerically and from the standpoint of the influence they exert, are the lawyers. The extent to which American legislation is dominated by lawyers is at once apparent to any one who will take the trouble to study biographies of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives. An examination of the current Congressional Directory will show that of 430 members of the House of Representatives 255 or 59 per cent are lawyers, while among the 96 members of the United States Senate 58 or 60 per cent belong to the same profession. It is clear that the numbers cited are far in excess of any that might be anticipated by considering the whole number of lawyers

in the United States, as compared with the total population.

This overwhelming influence of the lawyer upon our political life is based historically upon conditions that are rapidly passing away. Whether democracy chooses the wisest and best leaders may be questioned, but there is no doubt that up to the present it has chosen leaders -not followers,-men in one respect or another superior to the rank and file. The lawyer, by his office and training, became naturally a leader, especially in the rural districts; indeed, there was a time when the lawyer was the leading citizen of every American community. In LatinAmerican countries, where lawyers are not so numerous as with us, men turn to the physician as the man of education, and the medical profession plays a political rôle almost unknown among us. In far off Liberia where there are scarcely any lawyers or physicians it is strangely enough the minister of the gospel who is crowned with political honors.

Added to the prominence which the lawyer thus acquired in American communities was the fact that by his education and experience he was naturally fitted to be the spokesman for his community, since a not inconsiderable part of his preparation for his calling lay in cultivating the gift of expression. What more natural, therefore, than that one thus equipped should be called upon to voice public sentiments at election time. The doctor and the preacher have instinctively held aloof from politics, and the lawyer's chief competitor has been the newspaper editor, another class of men trained in the art of expression. It is interesting to find that both candidates for the Presidency in 1920 were trained, successful newspaper men.

The lawyer owes his prominence to the fact that his