In the almost unique opportunity for a simplified government which has been presented to the people of any county, they have strenuously and successfully resisted the change. Such an instance happened a few years ago in the county of San Bernardino, California. The people had already adopted a county charter in which the powers of the county were vested in a single small board of elective officers somewhat on the commission plan now in use in many American cities. It was regarded by many as the highest type of modernized county organization adopted up to that time anywhere in the United States. But in the interval that elapsed between the adoption of the charter and its going into effect, someone discovered (or thought they discovered) that the people were about to be deprived of their ancient liberties and that a local oligarchy was about to be erected. Soon petitions were in circulation and this perfectly good charter, which had been adopted but never tried out in practice, was amended so as to nullify the very principle of organization which pointed to greater simplicity and a better fixing of responsibility. For nearly a century popular government has been galloping down the highway that leads to governmental confusion. Nowhere does the record state that because the people elected long strings of officers, the people therefore _controlled_ those officers. All the while the services which government could render have become more and more numerous and the public needs of the people more pressing. And all the while too, the filling and holding of office for office sake has been vested with exaggerated importance, so that the county more perhaps than any other civil division has been the home of fictitious political “issues.” At regularly recurring intervals the nation-wide county system has been shaken to its foundations over the private futures of their local Tom Joneses and Tom Smiths. One of these respective gentlemen must leave his growing law practice and sacrifice his time to his county by serving papers for the county judge or prosecuting criminals before the Grand Jury. And none but the people is competent to judge which of the two it shall be. Is the district attorneyship to be filled? Then, properly speaking, there would seem to be nothing to do but to search for the highest technical ability in sight and place it above the influences of any consideration but that of preserving the civil rights of the whole people. It is a simple criterion, around which no “issue” could properly arise. But popular government has regularly and almost universally thrown the selection of the public prosecutor over into the political arena, where tests of fitness for specific duties count not half so much as a good campaign speech or the ability to swing a township into the Republican or Democratic column.