< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu
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381
THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY

of our legislative assemblies have not been uncommon. As a result, there has long been a tendency to shackle our legislatures with more stringent constitutional restrictions. Numerous statutory enactments have been written into the organic law of many of the states which the legislature can not change. Provisions in the statutes of some states are often found in the constitutions of other states. The referendum and the initiative are another device to prevent an abuse of legislative power.

President Woodrow Wilson says:

Among the remedies proposed in recent years have been the initiative and referendum in the field of legislation and the recall in the field of administration. These measures are supposed to be characteristic of the most radical programs, and they are supposed to be meant to change the very character of our government. They have no such purpose. Their intention is to restore, not to destroy, representative government. . . . If we felt that we had genuine representative government in our state legislatures no one would propose the initiative or referendum in America. They are being proposed now as a means of bringing our representatives back to the consciousness that what they are bound in duty and in mere policy to do is to represent the sovereign people whom they profess to serve and not the private interests which creep into their counsels by way of machine orders and committee conferences. The most ardent and successful advocates of the initiative and referendum regard them as a sobering means of obtaining genuine representative action on the part of legislative bodies. They do not mean to set anything aside. They mean to restore and re-invigorate, rather.[1]

Our legislative bodies sometimes yield to the passions of the hour, but the cowardice and irresponsibility which lead to this result are to some extent induced by the fact that the courts may set aside what the legislature enacts. The contention that the referendum will lower the standing of our legislatures is open to question, but there can be no doubt that judicial control has promoted trifling on the part of our legislative bodies and undermined their authority. So long as the Interstate Commerce Commission was not clothed with the substance of power, the railways occasionally treated it with contempt by waiting to present their side of a controversy until it was taken up by the courts. In like manner, judicial control lessens the reliance of property owners upon political action and causes undue reliance upon the judiciary. It seems probable that many members of our legislatures would treat the railway interests with more consideration if they knew that legislative indiscretion would not have to run the gauntlet of the courts.

Notwithstanding the undermining influence of judicial control upon legislative authority, the railways have found political action by no means unavailing. It is notorious that the legislatures of many states have done the bidding of the railways in practically everything that has concerned the railway interest. Likewise, our municipal governments

  1. ↑ William Bennett Munro, "The Initiative, Referendum and Recall," pp. 87-88.
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