Well-meaning and public-spirited men, who have been engrossed in business for the best part of their lives, are perhaps excusable for not understanding the principles on which reform moves. Any one can see that if what was wanted was merely a good school board, the easiest way to get it would be to go to Croker, give him a hundred thousand dollars, and offer to let him alone if he gave the good board. But until very recently nobody could see that putting good school commissioners on Platt’s ticket and giving Platt the hundred thousand dollars was precisely the same thing. In an enterprise whose sole aim is to raise the moral standard, idealism always pays. A reverse following a fight for principle, like the defeat of Low, is pure gain. It records the exact state of the cause. It educates the masses on a gigantic scale. The results of that education are immediately visible. On the other hand, all compromise means delay. By compromise, the awakened faith of the people is sold to the politicians for a mess of reform. The failures and mistakes of Mayor Strong’s administration were among the causes for Mr. Low’s defeat. People said, “If this be reform, give us Tammany Hall.” Our reformers have always been in hot haste to get results. They want a balance-sheet at the end of every year. They think this will encourage the people. But the people recall only their mistakes. The long line of reform leaders in New York city are remembered with contempt. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. That weakness of intellect which makes reformers love quick returns is twin brother to a certain defect of character. Personal vanity is very natural in men who figure as tribunes of the people. They say, “Look at Abraham Lincoln, and how he led the people out of the wilderness; let us go no faster than the people in pushing these reforms; let us accept half-measures; let us be Abraham Lincoln.” The example of Lincoln has wrecked many a promising young man; for really Lincoln has no more to do with the case than Julius Cæsar. As soon as the reformers give up trying to be statesmen, and perceive that their own function is purely educational, and that they are mere anti-slavery agitators and persons of no account whatever, they will succeed better. As to the methods of work in reform,--whether it shall be by clubs or by pamphlets, by caucus or by constitution,--they will be developed. Executive capacity is simply that capacity which is always found in people who really want something done. * * * * *