REMEDIES FOR BOSS RULE

Congressman Kent of California delivered yesterday the last of the series of lectures on the Progressive Movement, his subject being, "Leadership as Opposed to Boss Rule."

The human race is old and changes slowly, but we must not despair, for in a relative world one can not attain an absolute goal. We should be patient and do what we can to bring it about that more people can with reasonable hope aspire to a condition of greater happiness. It is to this aim that modern politics gives at least lip-homage.

Government inevitably means restraint and we have government only because restraint is preferable to anarchy. We find today a condition where there exists also an individual restraint which the government must counteract. It is this restraint of the majority by a privileged minority that democracy must fight.

Causes of Boss Rule.

Our constitutional fathers made a system of governmental checks and balances and provided a system of selection of officials which shows their distrust of the people. The elaborate processes by which officials were chosen and the survival of parties after their purpose had been accomplished, these together with the spoils system caused the growth of boss rule. The direct primary, the referendum, the recall and the initiative are all successive steps in eliminating the boss from politics and bringing the government under direct control of the people. Likewise the commission form of city government does away with machinery and increases efficiency without lessening popular control over governmental machinery in any way.

Few elective officers with greater concentration of powers and responsibilities and the abolition of checks of all kinds that only make for inefficiency, this must be our aim. We have today many economic problems, of immigration, of mal-employment--even more insidious than unemployment--even more insidious than unemployment--and of land tenure. They may be cured by proper use of governmental power. The Reformation was a doing away with religious machinery which prevented man's reaching God. The political reform of today is the doing away with bosses which keep the people from running their government. The hope of democracy lies in making itself more democratic.