voters. The language quoted from the Act is susceptible of two interpretations. It may mean the majority of all the voters of said city when they vote, etc., or a majority of such voters as may vote. The Act was probably intended to be passed on one meaning, and to acquire its validity through the other. The effect would have been

the same if not more than one thousand votes had been cast, and six hundred of these in favor of the Act.

It appears, then, that any Act which can be lobbied through the legislature and past the governor, and then smuggled past a popular vote, can be launched upon the State or any town or city, against the wish and the judgment of the mass of the people, helpless for resistance. One of the inferences is as to the folly of the referendum, which will be discussed later.

But the ambition of the legislature was capable of still higher flights. In 1895 was established the Metropolitan Water Board of three persons to hold office for five years, one appointed in separate years by the governor and council, with salaries amounting to $14,000. Their powers are much the same as those of the transit commission: they have full power to appoint and remove any and any number of employees at their pleasure, and to fix at once their duties and compensation; and are required only to submit an "abstract" of their accounts once a year to the legislature. After a description of certain lands the Act says:

Said board may take any other lands in fee, easements, rights, and other property that said board may deem necessary or desirable for carrying out the powers and duties conferred on them by this Act.

The object of the board is to construct a storage reservoir and conduit from the Nashua River and a pond in the town of Clinton.

Said board shall incur such expenses as they may deem necessary in constructing, operating, and maintaining the water works; and may agree with any parties injured as to damages to be paid.

Which damages, if the parties cannot agree, must be settled by a lawsuit. To meet the payments called for by the board, the State treasurer is authorized to issue twenty-seven millions of dollars of bonds on the credit of the State, the proceeds to be held at the disposal of these three men.

The value which the legislature places upon the liberty and rights of the people may be illustrated by one example among many in the establishment of the office of State Fire Marshal, created in 1894, with a salary of $4500, and a deputy at $2500, for the purpose of investigating the causes of fires.

Section IV. of the Act reads:

で

The fire marshal and deputy fire marshal shall each have the powers of a trial justice for the purpose of summoning and compelling the attendance of witnesses before them, or either of them, to testify in relation to any matter which is by the provisions of this Act a subject of inquiry and investigation. Said fire marshal and deputy fire marshal may also administer oaths and affirmations to persons appearing as witnesses before them: and false swearing in any matter or proceeding aforesaid shall be deemed perjury and shall be punished as such. Said fire marshal and his subordinates shall have authority, at all times of day or night, for the performance of the duties imposed by this Act, to enter upon and examine any buildings and premises where any fire has occurred, and other buildings and premises adjoining or near [mark the word] the same. All investigations held by or under them may at their discretion be private, and persons other than those required to be present by the provisions of this Act may be excluded from the place where such investigation is held, and witnesses may be kept separate and apart from each other and not allowed to communicate with each other until they have been examined.

It is a boast under the common law that an Englishman's house is his castle. It seems that that privilege is no longer enjoyed by the citizen of Massachusetts. The tribunal is no doubt less severe than the Spanish Inquisition, but the principle is much the same.

There appears to be no doubt that a great social revolu

tion is going on in Massachusetts, which threatens not only the character of the government but of the people, and to break with all the great traditions of the past. But it would be grossly unfair and unjust to charge this to democracy, to universal suffrage, or to the people. The people are not aware of what is taking place, as, indeed, they have no means of knowing, and if they were, they are powerless in the absence of proper organization and leadership to resist it. As already observed, they do all that can possibly be expected in placing men of good character in public life. The real evil consists in the suppression of legitimate and responsible executive power, in the absorption of the control of government by the legislature, and the use of it without any check or responsibility and under the pressure of local and private interest and of the lobby. If any stand is to be made against this downward tendency, the only possible force with which to effect it is the strength and determination of the popular will.

Τ

CHAPTER XXIII

THE STATE GOVERNMENTS

IT would be beyond the scope of this work to go into a

similar analysis of all the other State governments. We can only glance at the common results of organizations substantially the same. As showing how the legislatures tend to absorb and centralize power just as much as a despotic ruler, the following extract from a daily paper is of interest.1

New England has always been the section of the country where the township had the greatest importance in the government. Each State was made up of a large number of little democracies, which prided themselves upon being sufficient unto themselves in all but a very small number of things which they committed to the State.

And then follows an abstract from the Manchester, New Hampshire, Mirror and American.

The township was the ideal republic, upon which all other political divisions were modified up and down. The school and highway districts were subdivisions of the towns, as the State was a collection of towns. Each town was to all intents and purposes independent. Its people, bound together by long acquaintance with each other, by family ties, by common interests, and by pride in their township, managed their own affairs and paid their own bills. They decided what roads they would have built and kept them in repair. They determined how much and what kind of schooling their children needed, and paid the expense out of their own pockets. They supported their own paupers, and left others to do the same. They were not rich, but they would have scorned an offer by the State to do any of these things for them as they would have resented State interference with their internal affairs.

1 New York Evening Post, February 10, 1897.

All this has entirely either disappeared or is fast vanishing. In New Hampshire the highway and school districts have been abolished; State officials have been multiplied, and their functions extended. "The legislature," says the Mirror, "regulates our outgoing and our incoming, tells us in what pond we must not catch pickerel, and on whose land we may hunt chipmunks; it dictates what we shall eat and what we shall drink." Now the idea is steadily making headway that the State shall control and support the schools and build the highways.

And the article then goes on to show the same tendencies in Vermont and Connecticut. This article, like most other such essays, speaks as if this were the deliberate wish and action of the people. But there is no evidence of this. There is just as much spirit of local pride and independence as ever. It is the effect of party greed, which, acting through the legislature, is promoting centralization and multiplying offices as the reward of and stimulus to party work; while the absence of common leadership, of any voice in legislation on behalf of the public interest or of the administration of government, the want of personality in the governor which can arouse the enthusiasm of the people and guide their resistance, place them at the mercy of intriguers who know how to manage the legislature. These things are gradually killing out the interest of the people in public affairs and preparing them to submit, after the paternal despotism of the legislature, to that of a strong hand, as, at least in appearance, a lesser evil.

The great State of New York affords, perhaps, one of the most instructive examples of the effect of government by a legislature. To compare with what has been said of Massachusetts take this clause from a message of Governor L. P. Morton to the legislature in January, 1895.

While I think a great reduction in expenditures could, without injury to the public service, be secured in all the departments of the State, I feel that a greater extravagance arises from the multiplicity