People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1895 — Politics as a Career. [ARTICLE]

Politics as a Career.

W. IT McCracken, A. M.. one of the ablest of contemporary writers upon the principles and institutions of representative government, and the author of several valuable works on the development, history and workings of Iho Swiss Democracy, contributes a thoughtful and forcible paper to the January Arena on “Politics as a Career.” Among the encouraging conclusions reached by this life-long student of every form of democracy, ancient and modern, is that no honest man can enter political life in America to-day except as a reformer, and that as a reformer he will be treated with scorn and contumely and have little or no influence. As a means of mailing and executing laws our politics have reached the lowest stage to which they may safely go; although things nay drift on for many years to come without any dire or final catastrophe. As a game, politics in this country could not well be improved. There is more uncertainty, gamble and scramble with us in -one election contest than all the effete monarchies put together can show in a. whole year. The reforms needed in our political machinery to make government by and for the people possible are direct legislation by means of the initiative and referendum and proportional representation that will leave no body of voters practically disfranchised, as under existing gerrymander rule.