We hold emphatically that these matters are not properly matters for final judicial decision. The judges have no special opportunity and no special ability to determine the justice or injustice, the desirability or undesirability, of legislation of such a character. Indeed, in most cases, although not in all, the judges in the higher courts are so out of touch with the conditions of life affected by social and industrial legislation on behalf of the humble that they are peculiarly unfit to say whether the legislation is wise or the reverse. Moreover, whether they are fit or unfit, it is not their province to decide what the people ought or ought not to desire in matters of this kind. They are not law-makers; they were not elected or appointed for such purpose. They are not censors of the public in this matter. We do not purpose to exalt the legislature at their expense. We do not accept the view so common in other countries that the legislature should be the supreme source of power. On the contrary, our experience has been that the legislature is quite as apt to act unwisely as any other governmental body; and it is because of this fact that the experiment of so-called commission government in cities is being so widely tried. We respect the judges, we think that they are more apt on the whole to be good public servants than any other men in office; but we as emphatically refuse to subscribe to the doctrine of the divine right of judges as to the doctrine of the divine right of kings. We are not specially concerned with the question as to which of two public servants, the court or the legislature, shall have the upper hand of the other; but we are vitally concerned in seeing that the people have the upper hand over both. Any argument against our position on this point is merely an argument against democracy. THE KEYSTONE OF PROGRESSIVISM Moreover, any professed adherence to our other doctrines, while at the same time this doctrine is repudiated, means nothing. During the last forty years the beneficiaries of reaction have found in the courts their main allies; and this condition, so unfortunate for the courts, no less than for the people, has been due to our governmental failure to furnish methods by which an appeal can be taken directly to the people when, in any such case as the cases I have above enumerated, there is an issue between the court and the legislature. It is idle to profess devotion to our Progressive proposals for social and industrial betterment if at the same time there is opposition to the one additional proposal by which they can be made effective. It is useless to advocate the passing of laws for social justice if we permit these laws to be annulled with impunity by the courts, or by any one else, after they have been passed. This proposition is a vital point in the Progressive program.