It is Socialist and Labor Union opposition, and not merely that of political machines, that has defeated the proposed plan in St.Louis, Jersey City, Hoboken, and elsewhere, and promises to check it all over the country.

As a device for saving the taxpayer's money, the commission plan in its usual form is ideal, as a means for securing the benefits of the expenditure of this money to the non-propertied or very small propertied classes, it is in its present form worse in the long run than the present corruption and waste.

State legislatures and courts already protect the taxpayers from any measure in the least Socialistic, whatever form of local government and whatever party may prevail.

It has caused more than a little resentment among the propertyless that the taxpayers should actually have the effrontery to propose the still more conservative commission plan as being a radically democratic reform.
It is on such substantial grounds that the propertyless distrust the democracy of the progressives and radicals.

They find it extends only to sections or districts where small capitalist voters are in a majority.
The "State Socialist" and Reform attitude towards political democracy is indeed essentially opportunistic.