People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1895 — Possibilities of Direct Legislation. [ARTICLE]

Possibilities of Direct Legislation.

J. W. Sullivan, the author of Direct Legislation, thus recounts what the Swiss have done by the initiative and referendum: “They have made it easy at any time to alter their canton and federal constitution that is, change even radically the organization of society, the social contract, ard thus to permit a peaceful revolution at the will of the majority. They have simplified the structure of government, held their ■ officials as servants, rendered bureauocracy impossible, converted their representatives to simple committeemen and show that the parliamentary system is not essential to law-mak-ing. They have written their laws in language s) plain that a layman may be a judge in the highest court. They have frustrated monopolies, improved and reduced taxation, avoided incurring heavy public debts, and made a better distribution of their land than any other European country. They have practically given home rule in local affairs to every community. They have calmed disturbing political elements—the press is purified, the politicians disarmed, the civil service is well regulated. Hurtful partisanship is passing away. Since the people as a whole will never surrender their sovereignty, reactionary movement is possible only in case the nation should go backward. But the way is open forward. Social ideas may be realized in act and institution. Even now the liberty loving Swiss citizen can discern in the future a freedom in which every individual—independent, possessed in rights of nature's resources and in command of the fruits of his toil—may, at his will, on the sole condition that he respect the like aim in other men, pursue his happiness.”

Ben P. Parker, an old friend of the editor of the Pilot, has taken a place in the mechanical department of the paper. His home is in Atlanta where for two years he has been at work on Tom Watson’s great “People’s Party Paper.” Ben and his Brother Jesse set the type for several years on the only populist (greenback) paper in Georgia. It was published at Douglasville and was edited by their father, Chas. T. Parker, whose face is familiar to all the stalwart reformers who have attended third party conventions since the days of Peter Cooper. Georgia to-day has as many populists papers as democratic, and the woods are full of their supporters, who have for four years outnumbered their corrupt op ponents, but “been deprived of legislative power by flagrant frauds. Those who know the facts believe that another election will see the complete triumph of the party, the beginning of which originated in the humble printing office of the Weekly Review.