the failures have none the less been sufficiently distressing; and if they are permitted to continue, they will compromise the success of the American democratic experiment.  The Federal government has done much to ameliorate the condition of the American people, whereas the state governments have done little or nothing.  Instead of representing, as a government should, the better contemporary ideals and methods, they have reflected at best the average standard of popular behavior and at worst a standard decidedly below the average.  The lawlessness which so many Americans bemoan in American life must be traced to the inefficiency of the state governments.  If the central government had shared this weakness, the American political organism would have already dissolved in violence and bloodshed.

The local authorities retain under the American Federal organization many of the primary functions of government.  They preserve order, administer civil and criminal justice, collect taxes for general and local purposes, and are directly or indirectly responsible for the system of public education.  If it can be proved that the state governments have exercised any of these functions in an efficient manner, that proof certainly does not lie upon the surface of the facts.  The provisions they have made for keeping order have been utterly inadequate, and have usually broken down when any serious reason for disorder has existed.  A certain part of this violence is, moreover, the immediate result of the failure of American criminal justice.  The criminal laws have been so carefully framed and so admirably expounded for the benefit of the lawyers and their clients, the malefactors, that a very large proportion of American murderers escape the proper penalty of their acts; and these dilatory and dubious judicial methods are undoubtedly one effective cause of the prevalence of lynching in the South.  There is more to be said in favor of our civil than of our criminal courts.  In spite of a good deal of corruption and of subserviency to special interests, the judges are usually honest men and good average lawyers; but the fact that they are elected for comparatively short terms has made them the creatures of the political machine, and has demoralized their political standards.  They use court patronage largely for the benefit of the machine; and whatever influence they have in politics is usually exercised in favor of the professional politician.  If they do not constitute a positive weakness in the system of local government, they are certainly far from constituting a source of strength; and considering the extent to which our government is a government of judges, they should exercise a far more beneficent influence than they do.