Nor is even this all; he must work up and join deputations to the sessions of the municipal administration and to those of the town and county authorities, to the state capitol, to Washington; he must write to the newspapers, he and others must at times bombard Congress and the state legislature and their committees with letters and telegrams. In short the system is this: you select the incapable and worthless for office and then wear your soul out in efforts to keep them from blundering and plundering. Common sense would suggest the selection in the first place of men who could be trusted; and if the method of selection failed, to replace it by a better one; but this cannot be done; manhood suffrage though rotten is sacred, and those who have the patience and courage continue their endeavors to make a marble temple of justice out of a mud electorate. This widespread attitude of suspicion and resentment toward public officials, originally private and individual, has of late years become open, formal and public through the systematic activities of clubs and associations of supposedly disinterested and public-spirited citizens principally located in large cities; non-partisan in character, and organized for the purpose of preventing or undoing the more flagrant of the illegal, immoral and improper operations of state and local governments. In plain words, just as we have detectives to watch thieves, so we have voluntary associations to watch public officials. This sounds queer, but it is true. And these societies founded on contempt and distrust of officialdom are not made up of eccentrics; they include some of the most intelligent men in their respective communities; they are kept busily employed a large part of every year; and are sustained by the best public opinion in their open opposition to the measures proposed by the manhood suffrage officials, and in their frequent active hostility to the officials themselves. These associations may well be called “watch dog” societies, their function being to protect the community from political wolves; to bark loudly on any attempt of theirs to rob the sheepfold and thus either to scare them off or to give such warning as will result in their designs being frustrated. Thus we have in almost every city and town “Taxpayers Associations”; “Citizens Associations”; “Good Government Clubs”; “Public Welfare Societies”; “Patriotic Societies”; “Security Leagues”; and the like; some temporary but others permanent bodies, formed for general supervision and bringing to book of legislators and public officials. These watch dog societies are always on the alert; ready to receive complaints from any source; to investigate them through committees, and to attack anybody and anything in what they may choose to consider the public interest. They even employ private detectives and lawyers in these enterprises, just as in pursuit of criminal offenders; and they