Direct legislation has found in Massachusetts a soil less congenial for speedy growth than in most of the other States. This has been due in part to the commonwealth's deep-rooted conservatism. To be sure her population has undergone most radical changes. Massachusetts has become the city State. More than two-thirds of her people—a proportion higher than in any other State—are living under municipal government, in cities of 12,000 and over. Thirty per cent of the inhabitants of the State are of foreign birth, while at least 25 per cent more are of foreign parentage. Yet, in spite of the fact that in hardly any other American State have the transforming influences of city life and immigration become so powerful, they have not succeeded in sweeping the commonwealth far from its ancient moorings: the Constitution of 1780 remains its fundamental law, and the traditions of a century and more ago control the voter of today.

The slowness of the growth of the direct legislation movement in Massachusetts has been due also, in part, to the relative excellence of her system of representation, from which it results that defects and abuses which have proved a serious menace in connection with legislation elsewhere have not caused equal alarm in the Bay State. In the first place, both houses of her legislature have a membership large enough to make possible pretty thorough-going representation. Moreover, to a greater extent than any other New England State, Massachusetts approaches genuine equality of representation. Her legislators are elected by districts. Charges of gerrymandering are not very common, and there is here no representation of rotten boroughs which is for a moment to be compared with what is to be found in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and to a less flagrant extent in several other States.