ABSTRACT
The American state is a province in a greater commonwealth, but it is a province in which it is not difficult to distinguish what may perhaps be termed the vestigial remains of sovereign power. Local government in the United States develops from the corruption to honesty as soon as the rich in America are ready to surrender the advantages, sometimes the immense advantages; they have gained from the fact of its corruption. The democracy of the American states has always been partial and, for not a few of the races they have absorbed, at many points pitiful and incomplete. The epoch of Franklin Roosevelt has, indeed, made for changes in local institutions by bringing within the ambit of federal regulation matters which were previously the prerogative entirely of a local machine. The hope of the next age in this realm lies in the possibility that 'freedom from want' may become a living part of the American system.
