ployers' Liability and Workingmen's Compensatory Law. Subsidiary to the Bank Guarantee Law is a statute known as "the Kansas Blue Sky Law;" this law provides that the State Bank Commissioner shall investigate the books of any concern offering stock for sale in the State; and when the mining stock peddler, or the land company's agent, or the cement stock salesman shows up with blue sky for sale in Kansas, he must leave the State. It is estimated that this law saves Kansas investors $2,000,000 a year. The State is free from swindling, stock-selling pests. Subsidiary to the Workingmen's Compensatory Law are two laws that may be called shadows cast before. One provides for the pensioning of schoolteachers in certain cities-an entering wedge; and the other authorizes the county commissioners in Kansas counties to pension worthy persons rendered helpless from any cause, whom the commissioners feel should not be sent to the poorhouse. This is, in effect, an old age pension, and it is the first one adopted in the United States.

The tendency of these Kansas laws is twofold: first, to make it easy for honest men to control politics against self-seeking politicians; and, second, to administer the State's affairs so that substantial justice between man and man will be achieved.

And one of the phases of the establishment of justice-though by no means the most important is the encouragement of prosperity by laws that will attract capital seeking investment, promote thrift, and encourage industry. Taking the year 1905 as the beginning of the awakening of Kansas, we find that the total increased valuation for Kansas has grown from $387,553,548 steadily year by year to $2,777,073,762; and while a full valuation law, which was secured with the Tax Commission in 1907, has increased this total greatly, the increase of assessed valuation during the years of the full valuation law has been three hundred millionsum nearly as large as the entire valuation before Kansas woke up. To-day Kansas has an assessed valuation of $1,642.30 for every man, woman, and child in the State; this is the largest per capita valuation in the United States. The commercial reports show less than a score of millionaires in the State, rated, all told, at less than fifty millions, and it will be seen that the distribution of wealth is probably more equitable in Kansas than it is anywhere else in the civilized world. It may be shown that in seven years the State taxes

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have increased one million dollars, but the budget shows that increase to be largely spent upon higher education; and, even though the amount spent has increased, the increase in the higher educational budget has not exceeded the increase of attendance at these institutions of higher learning. Moreover, a comparison of the figures of the cost of higher education in Kansas and in other States is illuminating. The per capita cost to Kansas for normal school education is about $75, for the Agricultural College the per capita cost is about $107, and for the State University it is about $171, making an average per capita cost in the Kansas institu tions of higher learning of $117. Now the average per capita cost for higher education in eleven States having institutions that rank equal to those of Kansas-States like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Michigan, and Ohio-is $202, making a saving in Kansas of 42 per cent over the average cost in the country for similar education. This seems to indicate that, with the equitable distribution of a large per capita wealth, thousands of children are sent into the Agri cultural College, the normal schools, and the University, but the increased cost of maintaining these institutions in Kansas is much less than it is in any other State.

Another interesting phase of the prosperity barometer is found in the banking figures.

While not a dollar has been lost to any depositor in any bank in Kansas-State or National-since the Bank Guarantee Law was passed three years ago (because the National banks in Kansas have organized a voluntary guarantee society), at the same time the money deposited in Kansas banks-State and National-has increased from $118,000,000 in 1905 to over $175,500,000 in 1911. The banking capital and surplus, State and National, in Kansas in these same years has increased from less than $26,000,000 in 1905 to over $41,000,000 in 1911. The popularity of the Bank Guarantee Law in terms of dollars is found in the fact that over sixty per cent of the increase in bank. ing capital and surplus in seven years has been invested in State and private banks, while the deposits have increased in a similar ratio in these banks. The State Printer during the six years of State ownership and management has built, equipped, paid for, and maintained at full efficiency a State printing plant costing $103,000; he has supplied the State with about 14,000 requi

sitions for printing at a total cost, building, maintenance, equipment, printing, and all, of $552,716, as against a cost of $557,171 for the printing alone of about 10,000 requisitions during the six years just previous to the State ownership. Taking out the cost of the building, equipment, and maintenance, it will be seen that under State ownership and management it has cost the State about $300,000 less to do the work required than it would have cost under the old system. The reform of the State Treasury has brought $129,000 in interest into the State in six years that went into private hands as a political slush fund before the people began to govern the people in Kan

When a State abolishes the convention system, it removes the demand for political jobs; for conventions are the market-places of politics. There the trades are made that force inefficient men into public offices to pay political debts. In Kansas the passing of the convention system has seen the passing of the political errand-boy on the State's payroll. Every year sees some department of the State administration pass into the hands of the institutions of higher learning. The Agricultural College now appoints and controls the State Highway Engineer, the State Dairy Commissioner, the State veterinary expert, and has charge of the work for the prevention of the spread of diseases in live stock. The University College of Medicine is taking over the administration of laws controlling the public health; the Dean of the Medical School is the administrative officer of the State Board of Health; and the administration of the Pure Food and Drugs Law, the water surveys, matters of municipal sewage disposal, and practically all matters pertain ing to the public health, are under the control of the University. At the University the State has erected a hospital where all physically defective children must be sent by the county commissioners for treatment, and here all sick or crippled workers in the State, old and young, may receive free treatment, with the bed charges paid by the county commissioners of the counties sending these patients. Not only in matters of public health does the University serve the State, but the Chancellor is official custodian of weights and measures, the curator of the University museums is State Fish and Game Warden and administers the game laws, the Engineering Department is assisting the Public Utilities

Commission to appraise the railways and utilities of the State, and the Department of Sociology and Economics has offered its services in rate adjustments. Moreover, the University and the Agricultural College are seeking to take over jointly the administration of the State Architect's office and furnish to school districts, counties, and cities plans for all public buildings, parks, and boulevards, either free or at cost, thus making for a permanent plan of architecture in the State, and at the same time taking the department entirely out of politics, as the Highway Engineer, the Dairy Commissioner, the State veterinary officers, the administration of the laws relating to hygiene, the Game Warden, and expert work in the Public Utilities Commission are out of politics.

Kansas leads the country in the number of cities under the commission form of government, with the initiative and referendum and recall, largely because the law was written in the University and the Secretary of the Kansas Municipal League is at the head of the extension department of the University, and the University Bureau of Municipal Research industriously spreads the propaganda for the commission form of government. The commission form of government is putting ward politicians out of business as rapidly as the primary put State politicians out of business. But with the State under the convention system, a group of institutions of higher learning that were doing so much service work for the State would excite the envy of statesmen out of jobs, and the University and the Agricultural College would not be free, as they are to-day. The activity of these institutions of higher learning in the administrative work of the State is more than a substitute for the inefficiency of cheap politicians. This activity is the answer of a democracy to the charge that a self-governing people cannot do the expert work required of a highly organized society without the interposition of a leisure governing class to direct the activities and to choose the experts needed for the higher branches of social service.

One further instance of the value of popular government in a State is found in the administration of the Kansas Penitentiary. During the three years of administration of the Penitentiary under Governor Stubbs, the crib, the water cure, and other corporal punishments have been abolished. Thirty minutes daily is given to recreation in the prison yard, when the men are allowed to play

baseball, basket-ball, football, and other games in season, and for that period the men are permitted to talk and enjoy themselves practically without restraint. The Bible class has grown from 60 to 325; liberal privileges, including attendance at a night school, have been granted upon good conduct; deaths from tuberculosis have been reduced from nine a year to one a year. Vermin have been washed and scoured from the cells. An old hill farm is furnishing out-of-doors work for the men, building them up morally and physically, and furnishing all of the milk and butter and sorghum and most of the tomatoes, cabbages, and potatoes used in the institution. Next year much of the meat consumed at the Penitentiary will come from the Penitentiary farm. Heretofore the ingratiating contractor has sold these foodstuffs to the Penitentiary, and in the old days there was politics in it; now there is manhood in it, and of the ninety-seven men paroled by Governor Stubbs only seven have broken their parole and only one has committed a crime. Clean cells, fresh, wholesome food, fair rules justly administered, recreation, out-of-door work, and night schools are making over such men in the Kansas Penitentiary as selfrespect can hold to honest conduct. And at

present the Governor is asking the Legislature to turn the increasing profits of the institution to the support of the families of the convicts. Now all of this good work is impossible if a penitentiary is filled with political guards and office-holders who are there solely for the money there is in it. But when, in conventions operated for the few by the few, every county has its defeated candidate for sheriff who has been promised a job as guard at the penitentiary to keep him still, what can a Governor do? The system made him. He must maintain the system. Only when the people begin governing the people do the evils of the oligarchy disappear.

What Kansas has done toward establishing a free State government any American State may do. Ten years ago the domination of the State government of Kansas by the power of organized wealth buying political

Above everything, the lesson of the Kansas movement is a lesson of faith and hope faith in the every-day wisdom of the voters when their activities cover a series of years, and hope for any American community that has permitted, through civic indolence and habit, the Government to pass from popular control to machine rule. Always it should be remembered that, no matter how low the standard of political honor has fallen, it may be lifted, and that, too, without waiting for new-fashioned weapons. All that is needed is a strong public willexpressed in sane, unselfish leadership-and diligence in citizenship linked with common sense. For, after all, with men, as with States and nations, growth to any excellence depends upon purpose, diligence, and sanity. In Kansas it is that old spirit of justice brooding over us; for a century and more we have called it the American spirit, and that spirit, like the Watcher of old, "neither slumbers nor sleeps."