Twenty years ago the author of “Congressional Government” declared that all the checks and balances of our political system had failed to preserve the balance of power between the three departments of government, and that the result was Congressional supremacy. To-day we must admit that these checks and balances are still unavailing but that we now live under a system of executive supremacy. Is this change due chiefly to factors of personality or does it correspond to new conditions in the social and economic life of the people? Is executive supremacy to be explained away by reciting the names—Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, Roosevelt—or has something far more fundamental than a mere growth of personal influence taken place? Certainly the latter is true.

Aside from the element of personality, four important causes have tended to produce the changed relations between executive and legislature:

I. The growth in volume of government business.

II. The rise of new public questions of a technical character.

III. The popular demand for greater speed in government action.

IV. The growing unwieldiness of large legislative bodies.