individually insignificant, however ruinous in their cumulated potency. Hence a leading politician seldom troubles himself to enter a State legislature, while the men who combine high character with talent and energy are too much occupied in practising their profession or pushing their business to undertake the dreary task of wrangling over gas and railroad bills in committees, or exerting themselves to win some advantage for the locality that returns them.

I have not mentioned among these depressing conditions the payment of salaries to members, because it does not seem to make any substantial difference. It is no doubt an attraction to some of the poorer men, to penurious farmers, or half-starved lawyers. But in attracting them it does not serve to keep out any better men. Probably the sense of public duty would be keener if legislative work was not paid at all. This is matter for speculation. But, looking at the question practically, I doubt whether the discontinuance of salaries would improve the quality of American legislators. The drawbacks to the position which repel the best men, the advantages which attract inferior men, would remain the same as now; and there is nothing absurd in the view that the places of those who might cease to come if they did not get their five dollars a day would be taken by men who would manage to make as large an income in a less respectable way.

After this, it need scarcely be said that the State legislatures are not high-toned bodies. The best seem to be those of some of the New England States, particularly Massachusetts, where the venerable traditions surrounding an ancient commonwealth do something to sustain the dignity of the body and induce good men to enter it. This legislature, called the General Court, is, according to the best authorities, substantially pure, and does its work well. Its composition is inferior to that of the General Courts of sixty years ago, but does not seem to be declining at present. Connecticut has a good Senate, and a fair House of Representatives. It is also reported to be honest, though not free from demagogism. Vermont is pure; New Hampshire, a State where constituencies are reproached with bribery, less respectable. Next come some of the North-Western States, where the population, consisting almost entirely of farmers, who own as well as work their land, sends up members who fairly represent its average intelligence, and are little below the level of its average virtue. There are no traditions in such States, and there

are already corporations rich enough to corrupt members and be themselves black-mailed. Hence one is prepared to find among the legislators professional politicians of the worst class. But the percentage of such men is small in States like Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, probably not more than from five to ten per cent, the other members being often ignorant and narrow, but honest and well-intentioned. In Ohio and Indiana the proportion of black sheep may be a little higher.

It is hard to present a general view of the Southern States, both because there are great differences among them, and because they are still in a state of transition, generally, it would seem, transition towards a better state of things. Roughly speaking, their legislatures seem to stand below those of the North-West, though in most a few men of exceptional ability and standing may be found. Kentucky and Georgia are among the better States, Louisiana and Arkansas, the former infected by New Orleans, the latter a singularly rude community, among the worst.

The lowest place belongs to the States which, possessing the largest cities, have received the largest influx of European immigrants, and have fallen most completely under the control of unscrupulous party managers. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco have done their best to poison the legislatures of the States in which they respectively lie by filling these bodies with members of a low type, as well as by being themselves the centres of enormous accumulations of capital. They have brought the strongest corrupting force into contact with the weakest and most corruptible material; and there has followed in Pennsylvania and New York such a Witches' Sabbath of jobbing, bribing, thieving, and prostitution of legislative power to private interest as the world has seldom seen. Of course even in these States the majority of the members are not bad men, for the majority come from the rural districts or smaller towns, where honesty and order reign as they do generally in Northern and Western America outside a few large cities. Many of them are farmers or small lawyers, who go up meaning to do right, but fall into the hands of schemers who abuse their inexperience and practise on their ignorance. One of the ablest and most vivacious of the younger generation of American politicians 1 says:-"The New York legislature taken as a whole is not so bad a body as we

1 Mr. Theodore Roosevelt of New York, from whose instructive article in the Century Magazine for April 1885, I quote the passage in the text.

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would be led to believe, if our judgment was based purely on what we read in the metropolitan papers; for the custom of the latter is to portray things as either very much better or very much worse than they are. Where a number of men, many of them poor, some of them unscrupulous, and others elected by constituents too ignorant too hold them to a proper accountability for their actions, are put into a position of great temporary power, where they are called to take action upon questions affecting the welfare of large corporations and wealthy private individuals, the chances for corruption are always great; and that there is much viciousness and political dishonesty, much moral cowardice, and a good deal of actual bribe-taking at Albany, no one who has had practical experience of legislation can doubt. At the same time, I think the good members outnumber the bad. The representatives from the country districts are usually good men, well-to-do farmers, small lawyers, or prosperous storekeepers, and are shrewd, quiet, and honest. They are often narrow-minded, and slow to receive an idea; but they cling to it with the utmost tenacity. For the most part they are native Americans, and those who are not are men who have become completely Americanized in their ways and habits of thought. . . . The worst legislators come from the great cities. They are usually foreigners of little or no education, with exceedingly misty ideas as to morality, and possessed of an ignorance so profound that it could only be called comic were it not for the fact that it has at times such serious effects on our laws. It is their ignorance quite as much as actual viciousness which makes it so difficult to procure the passage of good laws, or to prevent the passage of bad ones; and it is the most irritating of the many elements with which we have to contend in the fight for good government." 1

The same writer goes on to say that after sitting in three New York legislatures he came to think that about one-third of the members were open to corrupt influences, but that although the characters of those men were known to their colleagues and to the "lobby," it was rarely possible to convict them. Many of this worst third had not gone into the legislature meaning to make gain out of the position, but had been corrupted by it. They found that no distinction was to be won there by legitimate

1 Any one with experience of legislative bodies will agree with the view that ignorance and stupidity cause more trouble than bad intentions, seeing that they are the materials on which men of bad intentions play.

methods, and when temptation came in their way they fell, having feeble consciences and no statesmanlike knowledge. Or they were anxious above all things to pass some local measure on which their constituents were set, and they found they could not win the support of other members except by becoming accomplices in the jobs or "steals" which these members were "putting through." 1 Or they gained their seat by the help of some influential man or powerful company, and found themselves obliged to vote according to the commands of their "owner." 2

The corrupt member has several methods of making gains. One, the most obvious, is to exact money or money's worth for his vote. A second is to secure by it the support of a group of his colleagues in some other measure in which he is personally interested, as for instance a measure which will add to the value of land near a particular city. This is "log-rolling," and is the most difficult method to deal with, because its milder forms are scarcely distinguishable from that legitimate give and take which must go on in all legislative bodies. A third is black-mailing. A member brings in a bill either specially directed against some particular great corporation, probably a railway, or proposing so to alter the general law as in fact to injure such a corporation, or a group of corporations. He intimates

1 "There are two classes of cases in which corrupt members get money-one is when a wealthy corporation puts through some measure which will be of great benefit to itself, although perhaps an injury to the public at large; the other when a member introduces a bill hostile to some moneyed interest with the expectation of being paid to let the matter drop. The latter, technically called a 'strike,' is much the most common, for in spite of the outcry against them in legislative matters, corporations are more often sinned against than sinning. It is difficult in either case to convict the offending member, though we have very good laws against bribery."-Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, ut supra.

2 "There came before a committee (of the New York House) of which I happened to be a member, a perfectly proper bill in the interest of a certain corporation; the majority of the committee, six in number, were thoroughly bad men, who opposed with the hope of being paid to cease their opposition. When I consented to take charge of the bill, I stipulated that not a penny should be paid to ensure its passage. It therefore became necessary to see what pressure could be brought to bear on the recalcitrant members; and accordingly we had to find out who were the authors and sponsors of their political being. Three proved to be under the control of local statesmen of the same party as themselves, and of equally bad moral character; one was ruled by a politician of unsavoury reputation from a different city; the fifth, a Democrat, was owned by a Republican (!) Federal official, and the sixth by the president of a horse-car [street tramway] company. A couple of letters from these two magnates forced the last-mentioned members to change front on the bill with surprising alacrity."-Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, ut supra.

privately that he is willing to "see" the directors or the law-agents of the corporation, and is in many cases bought off by them, keeping his bill on the paper till the last moment so as to prevent some other member from repeating the trick. Even in the North-Western States there is usually a group of such "scallawag" members, who, finding the $300 they receive insufficient, increase their legislative income by levying this form of taxation upon the companies of the State. Nor is the device quite unknown in New England, where a ten hours labour bill, for instance, has frequently been brought in to frighten the large corporations and other capitalists into inducing its author to drop it, the inducements being such as capitalists can best apply. Every considerable railway keeps an agent or agents continually on the spot while a State legislature is in session, watching the bills brought in and the committees that deal with them. Such an agent sometimes relies on the friends of the railway to defeat these bills, and uses the usual expedients for creating friends. But it is often cheaper and easier to square the assailant.1 Of course the committees are the focus of intrigue, and the chairmanship of a committee the position which affords the greatest facilities for an unscrupulous man. Round the committees there buzzes that swarm of professional agents which Americans call "the lobby," soliciting the members, threatening them with trouble in their constituencies, plying them with all sorts of inducements, treating them to dinners, drinks, and cigars.2

In these demoralized States the State Senate is apt to be a worse body than the House, whereas in the better States the Senate is usually the superior body.3 The reason is two-fold.

1 The president of a Western railroad, an upright as well as able man, told me that he was obliged to keep constant guard at the capital of the State in which the line lay, while the legislature was sitting, and to use every means to defeat bills aimed at the railway, because otherwise the shareholders would have been ruined. He deplored the necessity. It was a State of comparatively good tone, but there was such a prejudice against railroads among the farming population, that mischievous bills had a chance of success, and therefore desperate remedies were needed.

2 "One senator, who was generally known as 'the wicked Gibbs,' spent two years at Albany, in which he pursued his business' so shamelessly that his constituents refused to send him there again; but he coolly came out a year later and begged for a return to the Assembly on the ground that he was financially embarrassed, and wished to go to the Assembly in order to retrieve his fortunes on the salary of an Assembly-man, which is $1500 (£300)!”—Mr. J. B. Bishop of New York, in a paper entitled Money in City Elections, p. 6.

3 Some of my American informants would not admit this; and some fixed the percentage of corrupt men, even at Albany, much lower than Mr. Roosevelt