power. It is the function of the SocialDemocratic party to shape the proletarian revolt into a well-defined, class-conscious, political movement. Recognizing that the interests of working-people in all lands are the same, Social-Democracy teaches the international solidarity of labor. Though emphasizing the class-struggle, the Social-Democratic party exonerates itself of creating it. The party deplores the existence of classes and looks forward to their abolition in the Coöperative Commonwealth.

The International Socialist party declares itself the uncompromising champion of labor. It recognizes no other interests than those of the workers. It shall exert whatever influence it possesses for the immediate betterment of the working-class, but its great and ultimate object (to quote the S. D. F. of Great Britain) is: "the Socialization of the Means of Production, Distribution, and Exchange, to be controlled by a Democratic State in the interests of the entire community, and the complete Emancipation of Labor from the Domination of Capitalism and Landlordism, with the establishment of Social and Economic Equality between the Sexes."

PROGRAMME OF IMMEDIATE REFORMS.

Political.

Socialists stand for the fullest democratization of political institutions. They are a unit in demanding universal, equal and adult suffrage; proportional representation; payment of members of all legislative and administrative bodies; the initiative and referendum; the right of recall; abolition of all Upper Chambers; the suppression of all hereditary offices; the maximum of local autonomy in state and municipality; more liberal naturalization laws; and a legal holiday for elections.

Fiscal.

Social-Democrats are agreed on two things in matters fiscal: (1) that all indirect taxation, especially customs tariffs,

should be abolished, and (2) that until the Coöperative Commonwealth is inaugurated the whole burden of taxation should be shifted upon the shoulders of the well-to-do through inheritance, graduated income and property taxes. The appropriation of mining royalties, taxation of land values, repudiation of national debts and the nationalization of banks are also suggested.

Military.

Though universal peace is embraced in the Socialist ideal, Socialists do not advocate immediate disarmament. Until such time that arbitration becomes the sole means of settling international disputes, they recommend the substitution of national citizen-forces for standing armies, the furtherance of arbitration schemes, renunciation of aggressive foreign policies, the transference to the jurisdiction of the civil courts of offences against discipline, and the decision by the representatives of the people of questions pertaining to war and peace.

Juridical.

Judgment by popularly elected judges, free legal advice, free administration of the law, indemnification of innocent persons arrested and condemned, and abolition of capital punishment are the principal legal reforms advocated.

Education.

sents us with a very liberal programme: In matters educational socialism preCompulsory school attendance for all children under sixteen years of age; their equipment and maintenance at the public expense; the extension of manual training and technical education; free tuition in the higher institutions of learnall education to be secular. ing for pupils capable of advanced studies;

Religion.

Religion is to be declared a private matter, religious bodies to have no other status than that of other private organiza

tions, and where the old ecclesiastical relations to the state obtain churches are to be disestablished and disendowed.

Women.

In every department of life Socialists desire the absolute equality of the sexes. They stand for the enfranchisement of women, the abolition of all laws preju

dicial to women in their relations to men in public and private law, the exclusion of women from all industries specially injurious to their physique, and equal pay of the sexes for the performance of equal work.

Working-Class Legislation.

For the protection of labor the following reforms are demanded: Prohibition of child-labor; prohibition of unnecessary night-work; prohibition of female

labor in industries specially injurious to woman's physique; an uninterrupted rest of thirty-six hours per week for every worker; the fixing of a minimum wage and a maximum working-day of eight hours; more thorough government inspection of business establishments; responsibility of employers for injuries to their employés; insurance by the government of working-people against unemployment, disablement, old age and death.

Among sundry other reforms advocated may be mentioned free medical attendance of the sick, including medicine and midwifery; liberal divorce laws; municipal dwellings for the poor; and public control of the drink traffic.

Toronto, Canada.

EDWARD SLADE.

Q.

CHAPTER Two.

The Initiative.

WHAT is the Popular Initiative? A. The Popular Initiative is the right of a certain percentage of the voters, usually five to ten per cent., to propose a law, ordinance or constitutional amendment for action by the legislature or decision at the polls or both.

Under what is considered by many as the preferable form, the measure which is petitioned by the requisite number of voters, goes to the proper legislative body, which may adopt or reject it, amend it, pass a substitute, or refrain from any action in reference to it. If the legislative body does not enact the measure as petitioned for, or if it takes adverse action

in any form, the said measure together with the amendment, substitute or other action of the legislative body goes to the electorate for final decision at the polls.

In Oregon a somewhat different form is in use. Here, on the petition of eight per cent. of the voters filed with the Secretary of State, the bill or constitutional amendment included in the petition is submitted to the people at the next general election, and if the majority of those voting on the question vote Yes, the Governor announces that fact by proclamation, and from that date it is the law of the state without further question.

Q. Give reasons why the Initiative is needed now to preserve a government of, for and by the people in the United States?

A. Without the Initiative the legisla

ture can block the will of the people by refusing to act. By the Referendum the people can veto legislative action when it goes wrong. When through timidity, conservatism, corruption or the pressure of private interest in any form, the legislative body neglects or refuses to pass a law or ordinance desired by the public, action may be secured through the Initiative.

Year after year the legislature of Massachusetts has refused to act upon the eight-hour bill. If the right of Initiative existed the matter could be brought to a vote without delay and at a small part of the cost that is consumed in the yearly battle for it.

In many other instances during recent years the people have expressed their desire for legislation and their representatives have made ante-election pledges but after they were elected they came under the influence of the lobbyists and the representatives of public-service corporations and other privileged interests, when they have been false to their trust and have deliberately violated their pledges. By the Popular Initiative the people can secure needed legislation in a peaceful and orderly way, in spite of corrupt influences that have thwarted the voters and defeated the interests of the community.

The Initiative constitutes an effective means by which at all times the people may exercise their right of instructing their agents.

Q. Would the Initiative result in the demand for a number of unnecessary or foolish laws?

A. Experience in Switzerland and in our Western States proves that legislation under the Initiative is on the whole wise and conservative. Any one who will take the trouble year after year to read the statutes passed by our legislatures will find it difficult to imagine how any system likely to be adopted in a free country could possibly produce more foolish or vicious laws than the system of law-making by final vote of a few men,

largely under the influence of private and special interests, now in operation in this country.

In the long run the judgment of a free people is likely to be superior to the judgment of any small legislative body. This follows from a fundamental psychologic law: Truth is a unit; error and private interests are multiple. When men follow their errors or private interests they diverge. A few men may go together in allegiance to some error or private interest, but when the people as a whole unite it must be by a cancellation of their errors and private interests. In large communities as a rule it is only on the basis of truth and right that the people can get together in controlling numbers.

Moreover, the inertia of mankind and the effort and cost necessary to secure the requisite percentage of signatures to the petition render the Initiative essentially conservative. People will not ask for the passage of a law unless they are convinced that it is needed. This has been proved to be the case wherever the Initiative has been employed. But the possession of this right, together with the Referendum, has practically led to the disappearance of corrupt lobbies and other sinister influences that have long offered great temptations to the people's representatives and in many instances have rendered impossible the enactment of needed legislation while forcing to a successful issue laws that were not desired by the people and were inimical to their interests.

Q. What has been the result of the Initiative in Switzerland?

A. Like the Referendum, it has so safeguarded the people's interests that the lawmakers have striven to carry out the wishes of the voters. In Switzerland, after the Federal Initiative was adopted, only two measures were petitioned for in four years.

Q. Has it proved beneficial where introduced in America, and in what way?

A. It has proved very valuable in Oregon. The people have enacted a

Direct Primary Nominations law which seems to be utterly destroying the political machines, and a local option in licensing liquor selling, which is only applying Direct Legislation locally to one question and was needed and is valuable. The Initialive tends, as in this case, to decentralize and localize government by referring all local matters to each local community to decide for itself. They are going ahead this year to enact some amendments to the Constitution giving them Initiative and Referendum powers on all local and special legislation and city charters and ordinances, to be exercised by the people interested in the measures proposed and other measures.

In South Dakota honest citizens have several times been able to checkmate measures opposed to the public interest by the mere threat of agitation for the Initiative.

Even the Initiative of the Public Policy law of Illinois has through the several expressions of the electorate of Illinois and the city of Chicago brought about important and far-reaching changes in the policy of that state and especially of the metropolis. By means of this law and with immense majorities the voters of Illinois have expressed themselves as favoring the Initiative and Referendum in state and in municipalities, as favoring Direct Primaries, and as favoring homerule in taxation and the direct election of United States Senators. As the result of this last expression regarding the election of Senators, the legislature of Illinois put their state in line with other states in calling for a United States Constitutional Convention, and in their action used these significant words: "Now, therefore, in obedience to the expressed will of the people as expressed at said election, be it resolved," etc.

Also by means of this Public Policy law and with most decisive majorities, the voters of Chicago three times expressed themselves as favoring municipalownership of street-railways and some other public utilities.

Q. Is there anything un-American in the Initiative?

A. No. The Initiative has been in use in America from the earliest days and is still in use wherever the New England ¦ town-meeting system obtains. Here any ten citizens may by petition which is nothing more nor less than the Initiative, bring measures before the voters for consideration at the town-meeting. The Initiative simply adapts this well-established principle of the New England town-meeting to a larger and more complex civilization.

Q. Is the Initiative inimical to republican government?

A. Certainly not. It is the cornerstone of a truly republican form of government. This is well expressed in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Oregon, rendered December, 1903, in the case of Kadderly versus Portland.* In this ruling the Court held that:

"The representative character of the government still remains. The people have simply reserved to themselves a larger share of legislative power, but they have not overthrown the republican form of government, or substituted another in its place."

Q. Does the Popular Initiative take from the people's representatives any rights or powers that properly belong to them?

A. No. By it the people are enabled more thoroughly to control their representatives, who are or should be servants and not masters of the people.

Q. What classes of citizens oppose the introduction of the Popular Initiative, and why?

A. Those who doubt the people; those who have interests opposed to the people. Q. What classes favor the Initiative? A. Those who desire real popular sovereignty instead of sham sovereignty those who desire that the legislators elected by the people shall be representatives *74 Pacific Reporter, page 710.

and not misrepresentatives; those who desire to terminate the private monopoly of law-making; those who desire to kill the corporation lobby and abolish bossrule and machine-government; those who desire to bring better men into politics, to simplify elections, to lessen the power of partnership, to stop class-legislation, to elevate the press and educate

the people, to open the door of progress to all wise measures of reform, to establish a reasonable safety-valve for discontent, and to take the next great step in the improvement of representative government in harmony with the whole trend of modern political history throughout the civilized world and with the fundamental demands of democracy.

AF

FTER a lapse of eighty years, PanAmericanism seems again to be in the air, and it is probable that the Hon. Elihu Root, United States Secretary of State, will make his administration of the State Department memorable in cultivating the closest commercial and social ties between the United States and all the extensive Latin-American Republics. He appears destined to accomplish as much on the American continent as his lamented predecessor the Hon. John Hay accomplished on that of Asia. No American, indeed, with the possible exception of the martyr President McKinley, since the days of the late Hon. James G. Blaine, has shown a keener insight into the imperative necessity of increasing the ties of respect, friendship and commerce between Latin America and the United States. He will prove the faith of his convictions by attending in person the coming Pan-American Congress, to be held, next summer, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and, while in South America, will carefully study conditions on the spot, and the obstacles to be overcome.

A significant and important step in the direction of reviving the decadent trade of the United States with Mexico, the West Indies, Central America and South America has already been taken by the State of Texas, by officially sanctioning the proposed Pan-American Trades-College. The Hon. George B. Griggs, a

Senator of the Legislature of Texas, has for many years agitated this matter, and it is to be hoped that his untiring efforts will now win the favorable consideration of President Roosevelt and the Congress at Washington. The history of the movement may be briefly summarized as follows:

A special Joint Committee on PanAmerican Relations to whom was referred a concurrent resolution of the Texas legislature on the expediency of establishing in that State, near the Mexican frontier, a Pan-American Trades-College, made a favorable report on the sixth of May, 1905, and after reviewing the great disadvantages under which the United States are laboring as regards the vast and constantly growing commerce of all the Latin-American Republics to the south of the Rio Grande, most of which highly profitable commerce is monopolized by Europe, recommended that immediate steps should be taken to establish the Trades-College proposed, and that a special commission should be appointed to disseminate general information and to agitate for favorable action before Congress. They adduced very powerful and convincing arguments why such an institution should be in active operation at the earliest possible date. One of their strongest points is the humiliating fact that 25,000 Latin-American students, of the wealthiest and most cultured classes,