wealth. We have progressed in all the arts and sciences that tend to the comfort, the health, and the culture of our people. We have become great among the nations, and have startled the Old World with our rapid growth. And all this has happened under the constitution as it now stands, and as our forerunners made it for us.

But what assurance is there that this condition will always be ours?

We have before us the example of great nations of the past, and we know that indifference, personal ambition, greed, love of ease, and laxity in the observance of the law, have been the chief instruments in the decay of the mightiest powers the world has ever known.

A wave of unrest is now disturbing the minds of men generally, and is manifesting itself in a desire for a change in the fundamentals of government. The same feeling was noticeable throughout the civilized world about sixty years ago.

Now, as then, there must be concession to the sincere and patriotic men who see danger to the country in the aggressions of organized wealth and its influence in all departments of government. It is not enough to say to these men that a remedy is vicious and unconstitutional and revolutionary, though it be all of these things, when no other remedy is offered. Is it not better to suggest a remedy for the evils that all men recognize. These men demand more capable and impartial administrators, and this object may be attained by simplifying the machinery of government, thus making those chosen to office more truly representative.

It should not be forgotten by those men who now seek a change in the fundamental law on which our government rests, that while a change may be for the better it is just possible that it might be for the worse.

Ours is a government of parties, and every individual should meet his share of the obligations which, as a citizen, are his, by interesting himself in a political organization, and exercising any power he may possess of education, experience and political knowledge, to influence those with whom he comes in frequent contact, and in combating those forces which might tend to undermine the Government, by instilling in his associates a higher respect for those in high office and a deeper sense of loyalty to the common weal.

Our government has been built up by the sacrifice of many lives, and to preserve this institution, to guard its system of laws and order, for those who are to come after us, is the first duty of every patriot. The discontent that is continually affecting other governments, causing revolutions and seditions, should in no wise influence us. This country can boast of a happy, contented, law-abiding population, whose prosperity will undoubtedly continue and increase, as the development of the country grows.

The approaching national election promises to provide a contest more bitter than that of any previous election of this kind, but, as our people are noted for their fairness and good sense, we may feel assured that those who have the good of their country at heart-and they are many-will not allow party strife, party prejudices, and party politics, to overshadow that quality which is so characteristic of our great nation, the Spirit of Patriotism.

Editorial

THE CIVIC DUTY OF THE ORDINARY CITIZEN. (Dallas Morning News.)

ONE of the greatest impediments to good government in this country is the failure of the ordinary citizen to coöperate with those who are chosen to direct the government, to assist them in those innumerable ways that constantly offer themselves. This is true with respect to national, state and municipal governments, but true in a higher degree with respect to municipal than to the two other governments, for the reason that the national and state governments are better able to exercise their powers of compulsion, and can thus more effectually constrain the citizen into giving that coöperation which ought to spring spontaneously from his sense of civic duty. The social compact is, in ordinary times, a weak bond. In crises, or even in emergencies that rise much short of the level of a crisis, we fall into close and disciplined phalanx, with the result that, although those occasion more formidable obstacles and more complex difficulties than are usually encountered by those who have the responsibility of directing, they are able to discharge their duties with more efficiency and with more ease. The burden is increased many fold, but so is their strength from the aid given them by a united citizenship that for the moment makes itself amenable to their direction. It is the difference between operating with a disciplined body of men and with a mob crudely organized.

To give a homely but cogent illustration of both the fact and its consequence, there are few recreances in municipal government that excite more indignant complaint on the part of the ordinary citizen of a municipality than the failure of the officials to keep at least the business streets clean, and yet there is no task of municipal government toward the performance of which the ordinary citizen could contribute more and does contribute

less. The complaint of the ordinary citizen because of unclean streets is equaled only by his contribution to their uncleanliness. Sanitary ordinances he obeys grudgingly, complaining all the time of the failure of the officials to keep the city in a sanitary condition.

We have cited this instance, a homely one, to be sure, merely as an illustration; the principle of it is of universal application, runs like a huge flaw through every relation of citizenship. The social sense is stunted, the feeling of obligation to assist in an active way in the enforcement of laws is well-nigh absent. The community of interest which we have and must have in the efficient discharge of governmental functions is but vaguely felt except in times of stress. Ours is a censorious citizenship. Never anything goes amiss, never any recreance or blundering that there is not a unisoned and full-throated growl of protest. We cry out against the weakness of those in authority, while their fault is apt to be largely the fault of lacking the superhuman strength to overcome an immense mass of inert and resistent citizenship. Even if everyone were inspired with a perfect patriotism and a perfect wisdom, the time will never come when we may hope to drop a ballot in the slot and get good government with automatic certainty. Much of the inefficiency and much of the mismanagement which are so much decried in those we put in authority is, in reality, the inefficiency of citizenship. We have made infinitely more progress in the art of governing than in the art of being governed. Between our precepts and our practices there is the paradox of demanding much that we will submit to only with reluctance.

With us the phrase "self-government" signifies little more than the right to vote in the election of officers; the idea, which makes the real meaning of the phrase, that self-government obligates us to accommodate ourselves and our conduct to laws and institutions, only slumbers even in those minds where it is existent at all. In our vanity we conceive of self-government as a privilege which distinguishes us somewhat from most peoples of the earth; the notion that it entails a duty as much above that which rests on people who are not self-governed as our privilege exceeds theirs, remains to be cultivated in the mind of the ordinary citizen. He speaks of public officers as "public servants," acting meanwhile as if it were his prerogative to test their strength by resisting them in little ways that do not

incur a fine or a jail sentence. The compliance we make to laws and institutions is mostly of that grudging kind which is prompted by the fear of their penalties and power, and thus they and their administrators have to overcome an immense dead weight before they can accomplish anything beyond negative results. There is not only a passive quality to our citizenship, but a reluctant quality, whereas it ought to be an active citizenship, animated by a sense of civic kinship.

It is this dead weight, and often this resistance, that has to be overcome that operates more than anything else to retard our political and social progress. The lubricant for all governmental machinery must be the spirit of coöperation among the citizens who set up that machinery. As that is abundant or meager, the machinery will be efficient or inefficient, and this very largely regardless of the strength and wisdom of the men who are put in immediate charge of the machinery. To revert to the homely illustration, if every resident of a city should resolve that he himself will not for a month make any unnecessary addition to its litter, the sanitary force which would thus be generated would be ten times that which the city can employ, and there would be a metamorphosis that would amaze. What we need above all else in this country is an enlarged and quickened sense of the individual's civic duty and responsibility.