POLLS. In the United States, the term "polls" means the place where electors vote. Where the Australian ballot has been adopted, the law requires that the polling places be provided with ballot-booths, each of such dimensions as to accommodate one voter, and so constructed as to screen him from observation while he is preparing his ballot. The booths are shut off by guard-rails, and no unauthorized person is allowed to be present within these barriers. Ordinarily, the voter's name is marked upon an official check-list as he enters the ballot-booth enclosure and again as he deposits his ballot. The election officers must be drawn from different parties. In some states each party is allowed challengers during the vote, and watchers during the count. Growing stringency marks laws intended to protect the voter from undue influence while at the polls. Oregon even requires that no "political badge, button, or other insignia shall be worn at or about the polls on any election day." Severe restrictions condition the assistance which may be given to voters. Under the New Jersey law, 1911, no official ballot may be taken outside of the polling-place; if a person declares under oath that because of ignorance of the English language, or because of some physical disability, he is unable to mark his ballot without assistance, the board of registry and election may assign one of its members to assist him. All members of the board (but no one else) have the right to witness the preparation of such a voter's ballot, but they are forbidden to reveal the name of any person for whom the assisted elector voted. See BALLOT; BALLOT, AUSTRALIAN; ELECTION SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES; SUFFRAGE. References: G. W. McCleary, Am. Law of Elections (4th ed., 1897), 515-522; Article "Elections" in Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure, XV (1905), 362-374.

GEORGE H. HAYNES.

POLYGAMY. Polygamy is prohibited by law in the United States and the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that should one enter into it in accordance with the teachings of a system of religion, that fact cannot be plead as a defense; and that the

first punishable by statute in England in 1604, and is now everywhere illegal where monogamous marriage is recognized by the law of the state. By act of Congress, March 9, 1896, rights of inheritance, however, were secured to the issue of bigamous and polygamous marriages, and by another act, a few days later, the children of such unions "heretofore contracted between members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, born on or prior to the fourth of January, 1896, were legitimated." See MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. Reference: G. E. Howard, History of Matrimonial Institutions (1904), II. S. McC. L.

POOLING IN RAILROADS. A pool may be defined as an agreement among railroads for the division of competitive traffic or earnings. Its purpose was to prevent cut-throat competition and the consequent serious depletion of earnings. Beginning about 1870, pools were formed in practically every section of the United States where railroads were in competition. As there was no effective way in which adherence to the agreements could be enforced, but few of them had any permanence. They grew out of rate wars and their dissolution in turn created rate wars. With the passage, in 1887, of the Interstate Commerce Act these agreements, which were never legal in the sense of being enforceable at law, were made illegal in interstate commerce as they had been previously in many separate states. During recent years the recommendation has frequently been made in presidential messages and in the reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission that pooling be legalized under governmental authority and measures in conformity therewith have been introduced into Congress. Doubtless the extensive consolidation of railroads has diminished the importance of the pooling agreement, yet its reëstablishment would promote stability in rates and remove some of the opportunities for discrimination. However, the popular fear of monopoly has up to the present time (1913) prevented any action. See INTERSTATE COMMERCE LEGISLATION; TRAFFIC AGREEMENTS. References: A. T. Hadley, Railroad Transportation (1885), 74-76, 91-96; T. M. Cooley, in McCain, Compendium of Transportation Theories (1893), 229-250; Henry Hudson, in Quart. Jour. of Econ., V (1891), 70-94. F. H. D.

the members of which (since 1894) are elected triennially by the voters of parishes within the union, each parish having, as a rule, at least one representative. Women are eligible as voters and as members of the board. When the board of guardians has been elected it may add to its membership one or two persons from the list of voters. The board also elects its own chairman either from among its own members or from outside.

The chief function of the board of guardians is the maintenance and care of the union's workhouse or poorhouse. It appoints the officers of the workhouse, makes various regulations for its proper conduct and disburses the funds derived from the annual levy of the poor-rate. The assessment for this levy is, however, made not by the guardians but by officials known as overseers who are appointed by the parish meeting in each parish of the union (see PARISH COUNCIL). Boards of guardians may also raise money by loan for any permanent object, such as the erection of a new workhouse or pauper school; but for this they must have the consent of a national authority, the local government board (see LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND). In fact this central authority exercises the strictest sort of supervision over all the official doings of the guardians. It lays down general rules for their guidance, audits their accounts, passes upon any regulations they may make, and acts as arbitrator in any difficulties which they may encounter.

In addition to providing a workhouse the guardians may afford "outdoor relief" to persons incapacitated by age or otherwise. This outdoor relief takes the form of weekly allowances, but legislation relating to old age pensions has considerably reduced the strain upon the finances of the boards.

For the most part the poor laws of the United States have followed either Massachusetts, where the town system of poor relief prevails, or New York, where county care of the poor predominates. In some states both the county and town systems obtain.

In Massachusetts, elaborate "settlement laws" exist which complicate the question of poor relief according to residence, voting and payment of taxes, and have resulted in the distinction between state and town paupers. Similar laws, less complicated, exist in other New England states, but in most of the states a settlement is established by a year's residence within the state and "state paupers” are not recognized.

Massachusetts and New York have elaborate laws and agencies for the deportation of nonresident and alien paupers. Similar work, on a smaller scale, is done by the state authorities of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In nearly all of the states of the Union, almshouses are county institutions, though Massachusetts has a state almshouse, Vermont has town almshouses, and town almshouses and city almshouses exist in a number of the large cities of the United States. In some communities, as in St. Paul, Minnesota, almshouses and public hospitals are maintained by the city and county jointly.

In many states, state boards of charities or state boards of control exercise supervision over public agencies for the care of the poor and pass upon plans for almshouses.

In most states a portion of the insane, and in all states, a large portion of the feebleminded, are classed as paupers and kept in almshouses where the care is generally inadequate. In New York, Minnesota and California, all indigent insane patients are a state charge and are kept in state institutions.

References: P. F. Aschrott, The English Poor-Law System (1903); J. Redlich and F. W. Hirst, Local Government in England (1903), II, 203-223; and P. W. L. Ashley, Local Government (1905), ch. v.

W. B. MUNRO.

POOR LAWS. There has never been any comprehensive study of the poor laws of the United States. Each state has its own poor laws, and no effort has been made to secure uniform legislation.

The poor laws of Massachusetts and New York have been studied by Dr. John Cummings; the Connecticut poor laws by Dr. Edward Warren Capen.

The poor laws of Pennsylvania were compiled by Calvin T. Beitel in 1899; the poor laws of Michigan were compiled by Justice S. Stearns in 1900. But these compilations were

county asylums for insane are maintained under laws which ensure a high standard of administration and care.

Systems of "out-door relief" are found in most of the states. Except in the larger cities, this duty is usually imposed upon county commissioners, township overseers, village trustees or other officers who have other important duties. As a result, outdoor relief is usually inefficiently administered and in many communities it is used as an instrument of party politics.

In a considerable number of states it is forbidden by law to keep children of sound mind and body, except infants, in poor houses.

See CHARITIES, PUBLIC AGENCIES FOR; CHIL DREN, DEPENDENT, CARE OF; OUTDOOR RELIEF; POVERTY AND POOR RELIEF.

References: Indiana State Board of Charities, Reports, 1904, 14-16; 1905, 67; 1908, 75; E. J. Devine, Principles of Relief (1910);

H. H. HART.

POOR MAN'S DOLLAR. A term applied to the silver dollar because of the belief that silver coinage was more favorable to the earning and laboring class than the gold standard. See SILVER COINAGE CONTROVERSY. A. B. H.

Limited Number of People.-At the outset arises the question who are the people who are to enjoy popular government. At the time when the Declaration of Independence declared that "It is the right of the people . . . to institute new government," and the preamble of the Federal Constitution asserted that "We the people of the United States. do ordain and establish this Constitution," those who framed and subscribed those documents had in mind only a small proportion of the actual individuals then within the limits of the United States.

(1) About one-sixth of the whole population, namely, the negro slaves, were legally not members of the body politic (see NEGRO PROBLEM) though many free negroes were citizens. (2) Aliens were not considered to be a part of the people, though by international comity or by treaty they had the right to go to and fro, to engage in their callings, to sue and be sued; and if they remained in the country they usually had the opportunity of becoming citizens. (3) Even citizens were not necessarily part of "the people" in the sense of the time. Half the population was female, and in the conditions of that time entirely ineligible for the suffrage; and the legal rights and status of women were so inferior that they were not even the same kind of citizens as non-voting men. (4) Children were no part of the legal people, though by birth or by the naturalization of their parents most of them were citizens. (5) Indians resident within the United States, unless they abandoned their tribal status, were not citizens, and still less a part of the people (see INDIANS, CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL STATUS OF). Some of them were subject to slavery. (6) Several classes of dependent citizens were also

when normally voters, such as convicts, indentured servants and apprentices, prisoners for debt, the insane, the imbecile and the paupers. (7) Among the full grown free white men above 21, only a limited number had the suffrage; in some colonies not above a third. Of the 4,000,000 people in the United States in 1790 probably not more than 250,000 were "people" in the constitutional sense. (8) In colonial and later times, at the highest, 85 to 90 per cent of the qualified voters have taken part in elections. Many elections are so close that a fraction over fifty per cent of the votes cast determines the result; under the usual plurality system, less than a third of the votes cast may bring in a winning candidate.

Most of these conditions of Revolutionary times still persist sufficiently to make it certain that popular government is really minority (see) government. In six of the southern states the number of actual negro voters in proportion to the negro population is not much greater than it was in 1790 (see SUFFRAGE, NEGRO). Tribal Indians are still excluded, as are children, the defective, the dependent, and convicts. Hundreds of thousands of unnaturalized aliens have no vote. Only in nine states (1914) in the Union have women now the complete suffrage (see SUFFRAGE; WOMAN SUFFRAGE). Government of the people, even in the favorable conditions of the United States, is no more than government of the whole population by the considerable part of the adult men who choose to take part in elections (see BALLOT; Suffrage).

Types of Popular Government. Can popular government still be a government substantially, representing the popular will, and responding to the people's own conception of their needs? It does persist in four distinct types.

(1) The simplest form of popular government is the mass meeting of all persons entitled to participate. Many primitive governments had such popular meetings which appear in such forms as the boule of the Greek cities, the comitiae of the Roman republic, the Saxon witenagemot. There are several surviv als of this nearest approach to a real government by the people. Chinese, Indian and

(2) The usual form for carrying on popular government is a representative assembly, which is the great political invention of modern times. In the middle ages and later, membership in diets and estates was personal; in the case of cities, counties or provinces which could not be physically present, delegates were sent who, however, were really diplomatic agents and never truly representatives, since they acted solely under instruction from their home governments. In various European countries, however, particularly in England, there grew up a system in which cities and other territorial units sent representatives to a states general or parliament in which, having once been chosen, the delegates voted according to their free will, and their vote aided to constitute a law which was binding upon their constituents. This system of representation was transplanted to the North American colonies and there flourished, as nowhere else in the world, partly because of a very democratic constituency, partly because of mental alertness and interest in the public business. That system, continued in the new state governments, has flourished to the present day.

(3) The simplest form of representative popular government is a legislature chosen from time to time by those who have the suffrage, and creating for itself such executive and judicial authorities as it may think necessary. Such was the government of some of the German and Italian free cities, and of the earliest governments of New England. In the proprietary and royal colonies, the executive authority was largely determined by the proprietor or the Crown.

The original basis of representation in all forms of popular government was territorial; members of parliament stood for boroughs or counties, members of the colonial assemblies were chosen by towns or counties, usually an equal number from each town or county. Thus five thousand people in a populous county had no more influence in the assembly than a thousand people in a sparsely settled county. Ever since the Revolution a struggle has been going on to break up this system of territorial representation, and substitute one of electoral districts, nearly equal to each other in population. County representation still has some influence in the South; and in New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island, there is still town representation. On the other hand, in some states containing a large city, especially New York, there is a provision that the city shall not have more than a fixed proportion of the members of at least one house of the state legislature.

This principle of equal electoral districts, each voter casting his ballot in the place of his domicile, though much disturbed by the gerrymander (see), is an assertion of the fundamental right of every voter to an equality of influence in choosing representatives. It is not a universal principle; in Prussia the voters are divided into classes so that the small number of heavy taxpayers choose as many representatives as numerous small taxpayers; in England a man may vote in the same election in every district in which he has the necessary qualifications; and in Belgium, also, some persons have had more than one vote up to 1913.

Federal Popular Government.-To apply popular government to a small country with simple conditions is difficult, particularly if, as in most European countries, it has to adjust itself to a hereditary king, and house of nobles. The difficulty enlarges when the effort is made to keep up a popular and responsive government in a great country like France, with many millions of population, and a variety of commercial, economic and religious interests. More difficult still is the application of popular government to a federal country, in which there are numerous commonwealths, each the focus of a separate popular government. The problem here is to maintain two centers of governmental authority, each of which shall truly represent the people. All federal gov ernments have a non-popular element in the indirect and in some cases hereditary upper house of the legislature; and no federation has ever attempted to choose its executive and judiciary officers by direct popular vote,

(4) For a short time at the beginning of the Revolution the congresses and conventions of the revolting colonies were pure representative governments-barring the fact that the Tory voters, even if in a majority, were by force and threats prevented from voting for representatives. Every one of those governments was altered within a few years so as to include separate executive and judicial departments, some of which for the time being sprang from the legislature, some of which were chosen in other ways, or appointed by

Hence, popular influence is more difficult to exert in such governments. On the other hand the magnitude and interest of the affairs of the nation attract the voters, as is shown in the United States by the heavy vote in presidential as compared with state and municipal elections. The experience of the six federal governments now flourishing shows that the popular will can be expressed and enforced through the national government just as promptly and effectively as through the commonwealth governments.

subject throughout to the danger of abstention. Americans are very slow to transfer themselves from one party to another, but will often stay away from the polls and let the candidates of the opposite party come in, or will vote for a third candidate, knowing that their regular party nominees will thereby be defeated.

This simple process of voting according to reason and personal interest is greatly aided by the appearance from time to time of strong, vigorous and independent men from outside the party machines, who through other ways than politics get the public confidence, and who smash party slates and "queer" elections by scoring unexpected majorities. Once elected, prosecuting attorneys, mayors, governors, presidents and legislative leaders have unusual op

Nevertheless the rule of the majority is practically the only one possible in real popular government because if five men want one thing and four men want another the presumption is that if they break up their government the five will still be stronger than four. In all legislative matters, however, the majority means the majority of people chosen —or in most cases simply the majority of those present in the two houses of the legislature; through irregular or artificial electoral districts that majority may be chosen by a minority of the voters; within the legal majority, organized as a party, the caucus (see) is commonly considered binding on the dissentients; the caucus majority may be under the influence of a small number of party leaders, who again in some great states in the Union not infrequently accept the decisions of a single boss. What becomes of popular government under this system?

Indirect Popular Control.-Popular government survives because under the most elaborate political machinery there is more popular control than appears on the surface. The boss holds the leaders together because they think he can give them good things; those good things he provides through his influence on administrators and legislators (see INFLUENCE IN GOVERNMENT); that influence depends upon the belief that the majority of his party will stand by him, which ultimately goes back to his ability through his friends to control the elections. Here comes in a very effective popular check. Leaving out of account direct frauds and the refusal to record the results of the popular election, the party system is

as against the regulation party leaders. The beaten boss is always cruising outside the port, and will put in again if he can; but experience shows that the right kind of a man combined with the right kind of issue can in many states head and direct a real popular government.

One reason for the tendency to elect such men is the growing popular confidence in executive heads as centers of legislative influence. Mayors, governors and presidents frequently, through the conviction that they have the voters behind them, compel members of the legislature to pass bills for which they have very little stomach (see INFLUENCE IN GovERNMENT; PRESIDENT, AUTHORITY AND INFLUENCE OF).

Popular Control of Party Machinery.-Rep. resentatives the world over probably average as high in character and public spirit as the majority of their constituents, but do not necessarily average higher, and are much more subject than the electorate to personal influences good and bad. In the United States the control of the nominating machinery by the machine makes it impossible in ordinary elections to be elected at all without the imprimatur of the party leader, and that is the reason why the monied interests are able by their relations with party leaders to see that some members, and often a majority of members, in a legislative body are friendly to them. The direct primary (see) is a device for keeping government popular by enabling people to get on the party ticket without the leader's endorsement; and though not free from manipulation it considerably increases the chance of the majority in a district getting a representative to their mind. The initiative (see) and referendum (sec) are similar devices to act when the majority in the legislature gets out of touch with the majority of electors. While very different in principle and working from the legislation of a town meeting or other mass of voters, the initiative and referendum restore to the majority a power which has