Dr. Schurman Hits Roosevelt Policies.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 13, 1912:
Direct Government Ancient, He Says, and Always Fails—Risen Leaders Lead to Despotism.
ARRAIGNS THE BOSSES, TOO
Good Words for Wilson and Also Hughes at Dinner of State Editors, Ending Convention.
    The fifty-ninth annual meeting of the New York Press Association, which has been in session at the Garden City Hotel, at Garden City, L.I., since last Wednesday, ended last night with the annual dinner at the hotel. A majority of the editors of the newspapers of this State and a hundred or more invited guests were at the tables. The principal speech of the evening was by Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman, President of Cornell University, who, speaking on the right of the people to rule themselves, said many things of self-proclaimed leaders that led to the belief that he had Theodore Roosevelt in mind.  Dr. Schurman compared Gov. Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey with ex-Gov. Charles E. Hughes of New York, pointing out how much each of them had accomplished in the way of good legislation by discussing matters of great moment with the people themselves instead of going by the will of the bosses.
    "One of the greatest questions," said President Schurman, "that is now before the American people is the right of the people to rule themselves. They are profoundly dissatisfied with existing conditions of government. They feel that they do not rule themselves. Their powers and functions have been usurped by others. They find themselves dominated by bosses. They believe that the bosses are in collusion with the money power, and that the public interest is sacrificed to special interests. In the end they suspect it is the money of the rich and not the reason and conscience of the general public that is shaping the policies of our Government.
    "In this atmosphere of general distrust there have naturally arisen leaders who boast themselves the friends of the people. They denounce all others as grafters and crooks, and claim for themselves a monopoly on righteousness. They alone are patriots; they alone are devoted to the public service. And the remedy they prescribe for the ills of the body politic is as simple as their self-righteous speech is brief.
    "Each of these reformers proclaims that the people should rule, that the people should make him the organ of that rule— in short, that the people alone put him in office. The self-serving demagogue starts out with the doctrine of the rule of the people but he ends with the dangerous despotism of one man rule, the rule of himself. He deceives the unwary with his initial promise of the restoration of popular rule, which is the easier to do by advocacy at times of direct government where the people are assured they may become their own rulers by the simple process of reducing to impotence their Governor and legislators, and even their Judges. The people are to gain self-rule by destroying the independence and undermining the responsibility of the representatives they themselves have chosen to make, to interpret and to execute their laws! The initiative, the referendum, and the recall thus lend themselves admirably to the demagogue's scheme of making himself an autocrat.
    "This scheme of direct government is today proclaimed as a mark of progressiveness in government. In fact, nothing could be more reactionary. It is as old as history. It was tried in ancient Greece and it failed. It was tried in ancient Rome and it failed. It led always either to anarchy or despotism. Free government was impossible on that basis. And the race to which we belong made the glorious discovery of representative government. We have been using it for many centuries in Europe and America. It is the one great contribution we have made to the science of Government. Shall we after more than a thousand years of successful experience discard it in favor of those antiquated and outgrown failures of Government which novices and demagogues are reviving amongst us— I mean the initiative, the referendum, and the recall?
    "Why are the boss and the moneychanger so influential in our politics? For one reason, because we do not give power enough to the delegates and agents of Government whom the people elect or keep them long enough in the public service. An Assemblyman in the State of New York is elected for one year only a Senator and Governor for two years only. And the Governor has no power to appoint his coadjutors in the administration of the Government; from Secretary of State to Engineer they are elected by the people. I say the people themselves would have more real control of the executive Government of the State it they elected only the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor, and permitted the Governor to name his own Cabinet like the President of the United States.
    "The theory is that the people by directly electing the State Engineer, Controller and other executive officials, who co-operate with the Governor, are exercising the inalienable right of ruling themselves. The fact is that there are so many of these officials for State, county and city, that no voter can know anything about most of them, and the power of nomination has in most cases fallen into the hands of the bosses. The alternative is to substitute for that direct government which would have the people exercise directly all sorts of public functions, the well tried system of representative government under which the people directly elect the principal officials of government, give them power to appoint their subordinates and assistants, and hold the chief executives responsible for the results. This reform, would exclude the boss from the selection of all State officials except the Governor, and the people would be free to concentrate their attention upon the candidates for that important office.
    "Even at the present time, however. though the Governor's voice cannot be heard in our legislative halls, he has the wide expanse of the State as his forum and the example of Mr. Hughes in New York and of Mr. Wilson in New Jersey shows how much of good a Governor can accomplish by discussing legislative policies before the people of the State. And just in proportion as the people recognize the Governor not only as their agent in administration, but also as their leader in legislation, is the boss crowded out of the place he has too long occupied as the broker standing between lawmakers on the one hand and big corporations who would purchase legislation on the other."