This lasted during the first two or three decades of the present century, till the electoral suffrage began to be generally lowered, and a generation which had imbibed Jeffersonian principles had come to manhood, a generation so filled with the spirit of democratic equality that it would recognize neither the natural leaders whom social position and superior intelligence indicated, nor the official leadership of legislative bodies. As party struggles grew more bitter, a party organization became necessary, which better satisfied the claims of petty local leaders, which knit the voters in each district together and concentrated their efforts, while it expressed the absolute equality of all voters, and the right of each to share in determining his candidate and his party platform. The building up of this new organization was completed for the Democratic party about the year 1835, for the Whig party not till some years later. When the Republican party arose about 1854, it reproduced so closely, or developed on lines so similar, the methods which experience had approved, that the differences between the systems of the two great parties are now unimportant, and may be disregarded in the sketch I have to give. It is not so much these differences as the variations between the arrangements in cities and those in rural districts as well as between the arrangements in different "Sections " of the country, that make it hard to present a perfectly accurate and yet concise description.

The essential feature of the system is that it is from bottom to top strictly representative. This is because it has power, and power can flow only from the people. An organization which exists, like the political associations of Britain, solely or mainly for the sake of canvassing, conducting registration, diffusing literature, getting up courses of lectures, holding meetings and passing resolutions, has little or no power. Its object is to excite, or to persuade, or to manage such business as the defective registration system of the country leaves to be fulfilled by voluntary agencies. So too in America the committees or leagues which undertake to create or stimulate opinion have no power, and need not be strictly representative. But when an organization which the party is in the habit of obeying, chooses a party candidate, it exerts power, power often of the highest import, because it practically narrows the choice of a party, that is, of about a half of the people, to one par

ticular person out of the many for whom they might be inclined to vote.1 Such power would not be yielded to any but a representative body, and it is yielded to the bodies I shall describe because they are, at least in theory, representative, and are therefore deemed to have the weight of the people behind them.

1 The rapid change in the practice of England in this point is a curious symptom of the progress of democratic ideas and usages there. As late as the general elections of 1868 and 1874, nearly all candidates offered themselves to the constituency, though some professed to do so in pursuance of requisitions emanating from the electors. In 1880 many- I think most-Liberal candidates in boroughs, and some in counties, were chosen by the local party associations, and appealed to the Liberal electors on the ground of having been so chosen. In 1885 and again in 1892, all or nearly all new Liberal candidates were so chosen, and a man offering himself against the nominee of the association was denounced as an interloper and traitor to the party. The same process has been going on in the Tory party, though more slowly. The influence of the locally wealthy, and also that of the central party office, is somewhat greater among the Tories, but in course of time choice by representative associations will doubtless become the rule.

VOL. II

G

CHAPTER LX

THE MACHINE

THE organization of an American party consists of two distinct, but intimately connected, sets of bodies, the one permanent, the other temporary. The function of the one is to manage party business, of the other to nominate party candidates.

The first of these is a system of managing committees. In some States every election district has such a committee, whose functions cover the political work of the district. Thus in country places there is a township committee, in cities a ward committee. There is a committee for every city, for every district, and for every county. In other States it is only the larger areas, cities, counties, and Congressional or State Assembly districts that have committees. There is, of course, a committee for each State, with a general supervision of such political work as has to be done in the State as a whole. There is a National Committee for the political business of the party in the Union as a whole, and especially for the presidential contest.1 The whole country is covered by this network of committees, each with a sphere of action corresponding to some constituency or local election area, so that the proper function of a city committee, for instance, is to attend to elections for city offices, of a ward committee to elections for ward offices, of a district committee to elections for district offices. Of course the city committee, while supervising the general conduct of city elections, looks to each ward organization to give special attention to the elections in its own ward; and the State committee will in State

1 Within the State Committees and National Committee there is a small Executive Committee which practically does most of the work and exercises most of the power.

elections expect similar help from, and be entitled to issue directions to, all bodies acting for the minor areas districts, counties, townships, cities, and wards-comprised in the State. The smaller local committees are in fact autonomous for their special local purposes, but subordinate in so far as they serve the larger purposes common to the whole party. The ordinary business of these committees is to raise and apply funds for election purposes and for political agitation generally, to organize meetings when necessary, to disseminate political tracts and other information, to look after the press, to attend to the admission of immigrants as citizens and their enrolment on the party lists.1 At election times they have also to superintend the canvass, to procure and distribute tickets at the polls, to allot money for various election services; but they are often aided, or virtually superseded, in this work by "campaign committees" specially created for the occasion. Finally, they have to convoke at the proper times those nominating assemblies which form the other parallel but distinct half of the party organization.

These committees are permanent bodies, that is to say, they are always in existence and capable of being called into activity at short notice. They are re-appointed annually by the Primary (hereinafter described) or Convention (as the case may be) for their local area, and of course their composition may be completely changed on a re-appointment. In practice it is but little changed, the same men continuing to serve year after year, because they hold the strings in their hands, because they know most and care most about the party business. In particular, the chairman is apt to be practically a permanent official, and (if the committee be one for a populous area) a powerful and important official, who has large sums to disburse and quite an army of workers under his orders. The chairmanship of the organizing committee of the county and city of New York (these areas being the same), for instance, is a post of great responsibility and influence, in which high executive gifts find a worthy sphere for their exercise.

One function and one only is beyond the competence of

The business of registration is, I think, in all States undertaken by the public authority for the locality, instead of being, as in England, partially left to the action of the individual citizen or of the parties.

these committees - the choice of candidates. That belongs to the other branch of the organization, the nominating

assemblies.

1

Every election district, by which I mean every local area or constituency which chooses a person for any office or post, administrative, legislative, or judicial, has a party meeting to select the party candidate for that office. This is called Nominating. If the district is not subdivided, i.e. does not contain any lesser districts, its meeting is called a Primary. A primary has two duties. One is to select the candidates for its own local district offices. Thus in the country a township primary nominates the candidates for township offices, in a city a ward primary nominates those for ward offices (if any). The other duty is to elect delegates to the nominating meetings of larger areas, such as the county or congressional district in which the township is situate, or the city to which the ward belongs. The primary is composed of all the party voters resident within the bounds of the township or ward. They are not too numerous, for in practice the majority do not attend, to meet in one room, and they are assumed to be all alike interested. But as the party voters in such a large area as a county, congressional district, or city, are too numerous to be able to meet and deliberate in one room, they usually act through representatives, and entrust the choice of candidates for office to a body called a Nominating Convention. This body is composed of delegates from all the primaries within its limits, chosen at those primaries for the sole purpose of sitting in the convention and of there selecting the candidates.

Sometimes a convention of this kind has itself to choose delegates to proceed to a still higher convention for a larger area. The greatest of all nominating bodies, that which is called the National Convention and nominates the party can

1 I take township and ward as examples, but in parts of the country where the township is not the unit of local government (see Chapter XLVIII. ante), the local unit, whatever it is, must be substituted.

2 Now, however, it sometimes happens that a primary is held for a whole Congressional district or city, the party voters voting at party polls (under a statute) for the persons proposed for party candidates, just as they would vote at an election. In a recent (1893) such city primary election at Louisville (Ky.), I find the primary treated by the local journals as being virtually the election.