If the reader will peruse the list of measures passed or considered by Congress or his state legislature for the current year, he will perhaps be able to judge whether his representative in Washington or in the state capital is competent to deal with such matters. Not one in a hundred is fit for the job. For most of the subjects of legislation the average public representative has had no previous training whatever. And if after long service he happens to become proficient in any of them, the chances are that he will be sent back to private life by the vote of a manhood suffrage constituency under orders of the district boss. As a consequence it is well known that the legislative output is and has been for generations past very inferior indeed. The abuse of state legislation is dealt with elsewhere in this volume; it is so notorious that it needs no proof, and is so vast that its complete discussion is far beyond the compass of this work. The reader experienced in politics is probably well aware that Ostrogorski is right, in his brief summary (p. 374): “The laws are made with singular incompetence and carelessness. Their number is excessive, running into volumes each session; but they are mostly laws of local or private interest. The motives which enter into the making of these laws are often of an obviously mercenary nature.” (_Democracy._) Before the German war the state legislative output in the United States was about fifteen thousand enactments per year, of which about one-third were public or general laws and the remaining two-thirds special and local statutes. This year it is probably greater. In a recent single session of Congress upwards of twenty thousand bills and resolutions were introduced, of which about five thousand were passed, including nearly two thousand public or general laws. Probably nine-tenths of this legislation is unnecessary and a large part of it is undoubtedly vicious. The just resentment of America’s business men is being constantly voiced at the manner in which business interests are being flouted by the doctrinaires and demagogues to whom our political system entrusts the reins of government. The following extracts from the address of Otto H. Kahn, before referred to, will serve to illustrate some phases of this attitude of business towards politics: