“The majority of our legislatures are either constituted or controlled by men who either cannot or dare not discuss the measures proposed by them. They maintain silence against all reason and vote submissively in obedience to a ‘boss’ or they open their mouths only to obstruct legislation and to make a ‘strike.’” (_Democracy_, Hyslop, p. 127.) This is from Professor Lecky: “A distrust of the servants and representatives of the people is everywhere manifest. A long and bitter experience has convinced the people that legislators will roll up the State debt unless positively forbidden to go beyond a certain figure; that they will suffer railroads to parallel each other, corporations to consolidate, common carriers to discriminate, city councils to sell valuable franchises to street-car companies and telephone companies, unless the State constitution expressly declares that such things shall not be. So far has this system of prohibition been carried, that many legislatures are not allowed to enact any private or special legislation; are not allowed to relieve individuals or corporations from obligations to the State; are not allowed to pass a bill in which any member is interested, or to loan the credit of the State, or to consider money bills in the last hours of the session.” (_Democracy and Liberty_, Vol. I., p. 103.) In 1910 in a speech in Chicago Roosevelt said of the Illinois Legislature, referring to recent disclosures, that it “was guilty of the foulest and basest corruption.” (_New Nationalism_, p. 111.) Referring to the Gas Ring misgovernment in Philadelphia in and prior to 1870, Bryce says: “The Pennsylvania House of Representatives was notoriously a tainted body, and the Senate no better, or perhaps worse. The Philadelphia politicians, partly by their command of the Philadelphia members, partly by the other inducements at their command, were able to stop all proceedings in the legislature hostile to themselves, and did in fact, as will appear presently, frequently balk the efforts which the reformers made in that quarter.” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 412.) Bryce describes the condition of the California state government in 1877: