The Dominion. THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1910. REFORM IN AMERICA.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 844, 16 June 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1910. REFORM IN AMERICA.

♦ Those of us who are profoundly convinced of the importance of effecting a series of sweeping reforms in the government of our country should find encouragement in the rising tide of reform in American politics—municipal, State and national. In the Federal House and Senate the Republican "machine" has been heavily smitten if not actually quite disabled by the reform sentiment of the nation acting through the Republican "insurgents." In New York, largely as a results of the' labours of Governor Hughes and some journals of high standing like the New York Post, war has been declared, and is being carried on with. great vigour, against the corruption that has for years defiled the State. Legislature; the big cities have begun to change their •methods of government in order to end once for all the "graft" and villainy that has flourished in such towns as San Francisco, Philadelphia and Pittsburg. On October 12 of last year we gave an account of that "government by commission" which is a direct result of the growing reform sentiment of the American public. Ifc was the city of Des Moinea, in lowa, it will be remembered, that led the way by placing tho control of its affairs in the hands of an independent Board, consisting of five men elected by the whole city and entrusted with , full authority. This plan was an enormous success in Des Moincs, and when we wrote a dozen cities had taken up the idea. The Washington correspondent of the London Times. '■ in nn article nrintod on May, 2 last, brings

tho story of the reform movement up to date. The "Des Moines plan" is now ahnost general in the Middle West and is being adopted in communities so dissimilar as South Carolina, Massachusetts and California. Pittsburg, disgusted by its recent scandals, is reported to be contemplating government by commission, and Buffalo, the second city of the State of New York, has applied for a charter to- the same end. The significance of this movement is in the fact that it has begun, as the Times notes, "by getting behind the party organisations altogether' and giving direct effect to the desires of the people at large." In a country like Britain, in which "graft" is practically unknown, and in which the functions of the State are fortunately strictly limited, there is no problem-in corruption: politics mean simply the clash of policies. Nobody says, for it cannot be said, that in such a country"one party is as bad as the other" in point of administration. The American reform movement, the Times declares, means nothing less, logically carried out, than the reform of representative government, and it adds: That is a thin;; which is very much needed, not only in America, but in every country where, representative government holds sway. .Representative, institutions aro everywhere on their trial, and it is not too much to say that they aro not improving- as they go on. They are more and more failing in tho chief function of all institutions, which is to Fccuro tho best men in the country to carry on its affairs. Representation assemblies are more and more usurping executive functions for which they are unfit, with the result that these functions, in so far as they are exercised at all, fall into the hands, not of the men fittest to govern, but of the men most dexterous in working tho party machine. The truth 6f these words is not hard to realise in New Zealand, where the affairs of the nation are now managed almost entirely from the standpoint of helping the interests of a not very large group associated with the party in power. In New Zealand, as in America, the form of government "has become so warped as to rest, in a democratic country', on an oligarchical basis." America is rising against the deeply entrenched political oligarchy that has clone it so much injury. We aro encouraged to believe that New Zealand will before long follow suit.