reform legislation going on the Statute books. But nevertheless the
machine was compelled in response to the popular demand to permit the
passage of a direct primary law, however inadequate and disappointing it
may prove to be, and a railroad regulation law, however ineffective.

The machine's success was not on the whole so much in its permanent
defeat of good measures as in delaying their adoption. The machine,
except in the case of the race-track gamblers, could and did put off the
day of the people's reckoning with machine-protected interests, but on
desperately small margins at times, and under conditions which point
plainly to the machine's ultimate undoing.

A bull once attempted to stop a freight train with his head. The train
was brought to a standstill and the animal driven off the track. A short
time later the bull tried the same experiment with an express train. The
train did not stop, nor was it seriously delayed.

The aim of the reform movement is to place the government of Nation,
State and city back into the hands of the people. To this end States and
municipalities throughout the country are trying the direct primary
system of nominating candidates for office, extending the principle of
local option, establishing the Initiative, the Referendum and the
Recall, and experimenting, often with admirable success, sometimes with
discouraging failure, with other "wicked innovations," as Assemblyman
Grove L. Johnson would call them.

Without the machine fully appreciating what has been going on,
California has for a decade or more been pushing rapidly to the fore in
the promotion of these reforms. In this State the reform policies have
found their best expression in recently adopted municipal charters.