training fits him in a high degree not so much for government as for politics. So long as mass meetings constitute the chief method of political campaigning the man of many and easy words has a natural advantage over his competitors. Until recent years his rival, the merchant, the banker, the manufacturer, or the engineer, has been known wholly by his works and not his words. But the multiplication of conventions, associations, chambers of commerce and similar bodies has brought many of these men upon the platform, and the public at large is gradually learning that the gift of speech-making consists largely in having something to say. None the less, up to the present we have clung to our traditions and have elevated the lawyer to a dominant place in all legislative bodies.

Lawyers, as a class, should of course be represented in any legislature, but their enormous over-representation in Congress involves disastrous consequences. Observation of lawmaking bodies in many countries leads to the conclusion that lawyers make a most unsatisfactory type of legislators. It is not that they lack intelligence but that the whole course of their professional training and practice tends to unfit them to play an important part in constructive enterprises of any kind. Throughout his career a lawyer is occupied, not with the reality of things but with the appearance they may be made to bear in legal argument; not with the consequences which flow from an action, but with the legitimacy of its origin. He is always concerned with the past as a source of precedent rather than with the future as a field for achievement. Pending legislation is often to the lawyer something which will later be discussed and interpreted by lawyers, instead of an instrument designed to effect a definite practical aim. It is

largely due to the lawyer's attitude towards legislation and to the influence it has exerted upon the form and texture of enactments that so many laws passed for the purpose of removing abuses in our economic and industrial system have, until recently, resulted in many lawsuits and little reform.

But our political shortcomings are as much due to those who stay out of politics as to those who go in. Editors, as has been already noted, doubtless have their full share of representation, but what shall we say of the great fields of finance, commerce and industry? That such vital interests should be inadequately represented in a nation which does more business than any other, which leads the world in engineering, and which has a larger laboring population than any other non-Asiatic country, indicates that there is something seriously wrong with our political method. The defect lies in the fact that both as to voters and as to candidates for political office, a great body of our most serviceable men are what may be called absentee citizens,-they withhold themselves both from the polling booth and from the nomination list.

As regards the abstention from voting the remedy may in part be found by devoting more attention in our schools and colleges to the subject of civic duty, and in the extension and development, both among Republicans and Democrats, of the educational work performed by such organizations as the National League of Republican Clubs and similar bodies. Education, indeed, is the key to the situation.

But an increase in the number of intelligent voters will not of itself effect any profound change in our politics, unless the voters are supplied with a better class of candidates for office. Viewed as the country's and

the world's greatest business organization, our Government must necessarily depend for its success upon the same factors which make for success in other large businesses. One of our most pressing needs is to secure a larger number of business and professional men for the government service, as legislators and office holders. This shirking of their civic responsibilities is highly discreditable in our men of affairs. They have regarded politics as a matter of merely academic interest, or, with unctuous rectitude, as an unclean vocation. But the plain, unvarnished reason for the failure of so many business men to discharge their political duties has been their unwillingness to make the necessary sacrifice of social pleasure, of business opportunities, and of monetary reward-a point to be more fully discussed a little later.

There is fortunately, however, a growing realization that our business prosperity no less than our civic efficiency depends ultimately on the political conditions of the country, and that in politics, as in business, integrity of purpose and straightforwardness of methods are essential to abiding success. That other callings besides those of the lawyer and the editor could furnish constructive thought to the work of legislation will hardly be questioned.

Reference may properly be made at this point to the contributions that ought to be made to our political life by a profession which has been closely identified with the country's economic progress,-engineering. The engineer is exceptionally well qualified for public service. The quality of his training and the nature of his work compel him to take up every problem in the spirit of empirical science,-a search for the truth; and he is ascustomed to arrive at his conclusions only through a process of reasoning instead of through the influence of

sentiment. The success of the engineer's career depends upon the realization of his predictions, and he cannot, with any effect, urge extenuating circumstances to explain his failures.

The extremely practical character of his work makes it second nature for the engineer to expect performance to follow upon the heels of promise, a quality entirely lacking in the average politician, whose principal aim seems to be to beguile the voter with a pleasing assortment of political panaceas. This sense of responsibility in the engineer is developed by his intimate association with the details of his enterprise. He cannot sit forever in an office and transmit his orders by telegraph and telephone. He must for a great part of his time be actually on his job, in close personal contact with his foremen, his mechanics, his laborers; and it is from this contact that he acquires a knowledge of men, of their thoughts, their needs, their ambitions-i.e., the human equation, the most important factor even in politics.

It is not to be forgotten, also, that the engineer plays a great part in the general progress of civilization. In his quest for the metals, the mining engineer is a pioneer. He is followed closely by his confreres, the civil engineer, the mechanical engineer, and the electrical engineer, each of whom contributes a unique service in developing the natural resources of the world and in laying out and building up those great industries in which both capital and labor find their employment.

Like the engineer the trained business man is peculiarly fitted to solve political problems. The large majority of political questions, domestic and foreign,the tariff, taxation, banking laws, transportation regulations, contract,-deal with business, while from the very nature of his daily work the business man, like the states

man, is in contact with his fellowmen. Of business men, as of engineers, it is unfortunately true that they have taken little part in politics.

It would, however, be unjust to the followers of these callings if the blame for this state of affairs were to be placed entirely upon their shoulders. To a large extent the condition is due to a number of very unsatisfactory features in our political system. The successful man of business, in whatever field, has in most cases at the age of forty years well established himself. He is usually in the class that pays surtaxes on its incomes. He occupies a position of power and influence among his associates, and has reasonable grounds for expecting his position to improve as time goes on. Suppose that such a man is ambitious for a public career, and becomes a candidate for a State Legislature or for Congress, what must he expect to face? In the first place his general character would fall under the attack of his professional political opponents, and his name would be associated with all those insinuations and charges which are the mean and common weapons of political warfare. In addition, if he were elected to Congress or to a State Assembly, the first thing that would happen to him would be that his net income would be reduced by probably fifty or seventy-five per cent.

Let us suppose that he accepts this sacrifice as his contribution to good citizenship, and decides to do his best toward the furtherance of constructive legislation. A very short experience in a legislative chamber would serve to convince him that the majority of his fellow members were more concerned about party advantage and reelection than about the public welfare, and that legislative debate was addressed less to the merits of the points at issue than to the need of placating the animosities and