ereignty can be exercised wherever cowardly city officers allow criminals to trample upon it. Modern Safeguarding of Popular Government In the State Circle we first encounter a State Constitution, setting up and limiting a three-fold government: legislative, judicial, executive, based on the people's majority ballots. Under permission of that Constitution, the most fundamental legislation is that which safeguards the ballot against undue influence of corporations and other "interests" by the secret ballot, in some cases also by the short ballot; in some cases by proportional representation; in many cases by a popular primary; in all cases by a Constitutional Amendment for election of U. S. Senators by the people. Next in logical order is legislation to safeguard legislation, such as the "Sovereign People's" Initiative and Referendum, corresponding to messages and vetoes of a President, only that the People's "initiative" is more imperative than the President's message. Logically, next are civil service reform laws to prevent the abuse of partisan appointive power.3 How great are the usual powers of a Governor in the matter of law enforcement, Governor Joseph E. Folk, of Missouri, showed in his term by the suppression of gambling and Sunday saloons. Others have shown how great are a Governor's usual powers by prohibiting and so preventing prize fights, as every Governor might and should do. In recent years there has been a tendency to limit both the Legislature and the People, and at the 3 For literature on above reforms apply, with stamp, to Short Ballot Organization, Richard S. Childs, Sec., 8 West 9th Street, New York City; Department of Representative Government, Mr. Geo. H. Shibley, Director, 1869 Wyoming Avenue, Washington, D. C.; National Civil Service Reform League, 8 West 40th Street, New York City. same time increase the powers of Executives in city, State and nation that some one person may be held responsible. Laws regulating courts come next. Passing from the machinery of Government to general legislation, laws on commerce and industry usually get first attention on the ground that getting a living is the fundamental problem. Along with other labor laws comes Sunday rest, which also has a bearing on what the courts have called the two chief concerns of Government, the public health and the public morals. Here we reach the issue of the Bible in schools, now getting back to its American place as the first and most important book opened in the school day. Here come health laws, and laws on vice and crime, and on drink and dope, whose sale, except as a prescribed medicine, is now a crime and a mother of crime. This brings us to the State problem of law enforcement, where all three branches of State Government come into closest relations. Strange to say, the National Bar Association at its annual meeting of 1922 in San Francisco, voted down a resolution urging those few States that have disregarded the oath of all their officials to "support and defend the Constitution" by neglecting to pass a law to enforce the federal prohibition amendment, to pass enforcement laws as in duty bound. This vote of the Bar Association is in marked contrast to the action of the "Judicial Section" of that body in 1921, which appealed eloquently to leading citizens to cease from their contemptuous violation of the Constitution on the ground that such conduct is an invitation to anarchy. 1S When the State Legislature has done its duty in providing enforcement legislation against any evil it is equally important that executive officers shall be alert to catch offenders, and that courts shall become a "terror to evil doers" in imposing adequate sentences, allowing no shysters to defeat the ends of justice. In the courts. lies much of the remedy for the divorce evil, which is discussed in the next chapter as preeminently a national issue, along with child labor, another of an increasing number of what were formerly State problems that have become in recent years national problems because one State by a low standard on any of these issues may work great injury to all other States for reasons which will be shown.* Every State should have a comprehensive social betterment organization like the New York Civic League, of which Canon Wm. Sheafe Chase is President and Rev. O. R. Miller is Secretary (address 452 Broadway, Albany), to promote good legislation and its enforcement, and educate public sentiment in support of all moral reforms. In a National Anti-Saloon League Convention the author heard one of the workers say, without contradiction, that the best State reform paper in the nation is the New York Civic League's Reform Bulletin, sent every week to all pastors in the State to reach them Saturday with report of the exact status of all moral measures in the Legislature, and suggestions for pastors to pass on to their people. Greatest of State Fights for Good Laws in 1921 One of the issues we encounter in the State Circle is Sunday rest. No right of labor is so fundamental as the God-given right of every workman to a legally protected day in every week, which is for his whole house 4 We can hardly more than set in logical order for later study these State issues, many of which are taken up for discussion in the forums of Part II. The Topical Index at the end will show what is to be found in this book on each of them and from what agencies more information can be secured for further individual or social study. hold at once a rest day, a home day, and a weekly independence day.5 When the "Blue Laws" outcry moved westward from New York City, like a poison gas attack, it struck Wisconsin with full force. Those who wanted seven days a week for uncensored vampire pictures had federated with anti-prohibitionists, pugilists, gamblers and Sunday profiteers, to repeal or nullify all moral legislation, and they had shrewdly calculated that the anti-blue law banner would be the best bugaboo they could put at the front to create prejudice against all laws that interfere with commercialized vices. The Wisconsin Lord's Day Alliance clearly foresaw that an attack would be made on the sane and reasonable Sunday law of that State, and so was not surprised nor unprepared when the Milwaukee papers announced that Senator H. Morris, of Milwaukee, had prepared, and intended introducing in the Senate a bill for the "repeal of the blue Sunday laws." For reasons best known to himself, however, Senator Morris did not introduce the bill, but instead it was committed to Senator Czerwinski, a member of one of the immigrant nationali National organizations devoted in part to maintenance of the American Sabbath have long been of the opinion that Sunday legislation should be left to State legislatures. All save California and Oregon have Sunday laws. It is not regarded as necessary to urge a national Sunday rest law. There has been none pending in Congress since 1889. It was on the prompting of Sunday movie interests that the press generally gave the people to understand there was a most drastic national Sunday law impending in 1920. The national law could apply to nothing not within power of State and Territorial legislatures except the mail and military service, both of which are under Executive Sunday rest orders. All that is asked of Congress is to give the people of the Capital City, composed chiefly of Government officials from all the States, the same protection against unnecessary Sunday work they had in their home States. The principal opponents of the District of Columbia Sunday rest bill are members of a little sect that believes it is foretold that Congress, if it passes a Sunday rest law, will proceed to require everybody, including Congressmen, to go to Church on Sunday or die. It is an amazing fact that Congress has for a third of a century yielded to this insane opposition. Closely related to Sunday is the subject of sports which is discussed, also the related problem of gambling, in Part II, in forum Nos. 11 and 12. Labor and Sunday also are both discussed in other forums of Part II. In the next chapter divorce is discussed as a national issue along with child labor, but on both subjects better State laws should also be sought. ties, who evidently did not see the inappropriateness of making an attack upon an institution that is fundamentally American. His bill provided for the adding of "Public Diversions, Sport, Games and Play" to the list of permitted works of "necessity," and then deliberately cut out from the statute the words "the first day of the week," thus actually nullifying and making useless the entire law. The heinousness of this attempt was not only evidenced in the form of it, but in the dishonest way in which its passage was sought. On May 23rd, 1921, the efficient Secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance, Rev. S. Patterson Todd, received word that there would be no further legislation introduced or committee hearing held. On May 25th this bill was introduced, and on May 27th the motion picture men of the State were given a hearing on the bill. The same day the legislature adjourned until June 1st, and the bill was set for a vote on the forenoon of that day, the purpose evidently being to pass the measure before the defenders of this American Christian institution could rally to its defense. At the last moment in the Senate session, Senator Czerwinski offered an amendment restoring to the bill the words, "the first day of the week," so that the final question was on the legitimatizing of Sunday sports, which would make those who furnish commercialized amusements labor seven days a week. The Secretary's first movement was to secure a delay in the vote in the Senate, and in this he was successful, the vote being set for June 8th. And despite the fact that the enemies of this American institution had been circulating petitions for six months, securing votes of meetings called to protest against so-called "blue laws," and that the friends of Sunday rest had only six days in |