THE

HE Society for Political Education has been organized by citizens who believe that the success of our methods of government depends on the active political influence of educated, intelligence, and that parties are means, not ends. It is non-partisan in its organization, and is not to be used for any other purpose than the awakening of an intellgent interest in government methods and purposes, tending to restrain the abuse of parties, and to promote party morality on both sides.

Its organizers number both Democrats and Republicans, and are generally agreed upon the following political convictions:

The nation, parties, and public men, must keep good faith.

The right of each citizen to his free voice and vote must be upheld.

Office-holders must not control the suffrage.

The office should seek the man, and not the man the office.

Public service, in business positions, should depend solely on fitness and good behavior.

The crimes of bribery and corruption must be relentlessly punished.
Local issues should be independent of party,

Coins made unlimited legal tender must be of full value as metal in the markets of the world.

Sound currency must have a metal basis, and all paper money must be convertible on demand.

Labor has a right to the highest wages it can earn, unhindered by public or private tyranny.

Trade has the right to the freest scope, unfettered by taxes, except for government expenses.

Corporations must be restricted from abuse of privilege.

Neither the public money nor the people's land must be used to subsidize private enterprise.

A public opinion, wholesome and active, unhampered by machine control is the true safeguard of popular institutions.

Members of the Society are not necessarily required to agree with all the above.

The Society will carry out its objects by issuing annually, for its members, lists of books and tracts on current political and economic questions; enlarging the Library for Political Education; organizing Auxiliary Societies for debate, study, and correspondence; forming Reading Circles; urging the instruction of the young, in the public and private schools, academies and colleges of the United States, in the first principles of economic and political science, and aiding teachers with advice and information.

SUBJECTS AND QUESTIONS

PERTAINING TO

POLITICAL ECONOMY, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, THE THEORY AND ADMINISTRATION

OF GOVERNMENT, AND CUR

RENT POLITICS

RECOMMENDED TO STUDENTS AS SUITABLE FOR SPECIAL INVES

TIGATION, OR AS TOPICS FOR ESSAY-WRITING AND DEBATE;

WITH AN

ADDENDA OF QUESTIONS DISCUSSED BY THE POLITICAL ECONOMY CLUB OF LONDON AND THE SOCIETE D'ECONOMIE POLITIQUE OF PARIS.

NEW YORK

THE SOCIETY FOR POLITICAL EDUCATION

PREFACE.

IN preparing the list of subjects and questions here presented with a view of aiding special investigations, essay-writing or composition, and for debates on the part of students, the Executive Committee of the Society for Political Education have had in view the supplying of a want which their experience has proved to exist and to be urgent, and which, heretofore, no attempt whatever has been made to satisfy. Keeping also clearly in view the objects of the Society and the circumstance that it appeals for support to no one party, school, or sect, but to all who are desirous of acquiring and disseminating political and economic truths, the Committee have sought to make a suggestive rather than a complete collection of subjects and questions, and to also carefully avoid in their presentation or expression everything in the nature of party bias, or endorsement of any school or theory of political or social economy.

Acting tentatively in the matter of arrangement, in this first edition, the collection has been divided and classified under three heads, namely: first, elementary definitions; second, subjects for essay writing or compositions; and third, political and economic questions, already matters of controversy before the public, or which are likely to become such in the not distant future.

The elementary definitions are placed first because the words employed involve some essential political or economic idea, sometimes of the most abstract character, and without a clear understanding of which no profitable discussion of the questions in the subjoined lists can be expected. Students should be careful to