Although it may have been his own official duty as district attorney to see that certain laws are enforced and to prosecute the law breakers, he fully realizes that municipal reform at least will never attain its ends until the public--the respectable, well-to-do, church-going public--is converted to an abandonment of what Mr.Hodder calls administrative lying.
Consequently his intellectual candor is more than a personal peculiarity--more even than an extremely effective method of popular agitation.

It is the expression of a deeper aspect of reform, which many respectable reformers, not merely ignore, but fear and reprobate,--an aspect of reform which can never prevail until the reformers themselves are subjected to a process of purgation and education.
It has happened, however, that Mr.Jerome's reputation and successes have been won in the field of local politics; and, unfortunately, as soon as he transgressed the boundaries of that field, he lost his efficiency, his insight, and, to my mind, his interest.

Only a year after he was elected to the district attorneyship of New York County, in spite of the opposition both of Tammany and William R.Hearst, he offered himself as a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination of New York on the comprehensive platform of his oath of office; but in the larger arena his tactics proved to be ineffective, and his recent popularity of small avail.

He cut no figure at all in the convention, and a very insignificant one outside.

Neither was there any reason to be surprised at this result.