In some ways what we call the party IN some ways what we call the party management, or the machine, appears to have existed in America before the party. "This day," wrote John Adams in his journal in February, 1763, “learned that the caucus club meets, at certain times, in the garret of Tom Daws, the Adjutant of the Boston Regiment. He has a large house, and he has a movable partition in the garret which he takes down, and the whole club meets in one room. There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the garret to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to vote regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, fire-wards, and representatives, are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town." In other words, the town-meeting of Boston, with its vaunted freedom of will and frank discussion, only registered the decision of an exterior government. Sam Adams, attending the caucus, scribbling for the newspapers, appealing in shrewd and simple fashion to the artisans and watermen of Boston, was the primitive boss who brought things to pass. The father of the American Revolution was the leader of the machine.

Although the framers of our Federal Constitution must have had experience with scheming caucuses and with wise political managers, they had no conception of parties in any broad sense. Of intrigue, of faction, of enmity between rich and poor, of tendencies in old-fashioned government, of human ambition, they had knowledge in abundance; but of parties organized, officered, drilled, manVOL. 101-NO. 2

ipulated, fitted to work consistently for power with inconsistent principles, they knew next to nothing. This was natural, for colonial history had not taught them the lesson, though the colonists had had long controversies and had even made occasional combinations. England had not yet achieved systematic party government, but was giving an example of confusion, out of which in the course of the next few years were to arise clear-cut party systems and managements. With infinite pains the men who framed our Constitution laid down ideas of individual freedom; they devised with great cunning a clever system of checks and balances in order that the government might do no harm; but they left to haphazard arrangements, or to voluntary associations unknown to the law and unknown to the theory of the state, the difficult task that was in itself the great problem of democracy. To these associations, which soon arose, was left the task of furnishing a medium for transmitting the will of the people to the government

this balanced mechanism which the Fathers had so nicely fashioned.

Here was the great political and constitutional problem of the decade to come; and clearly enough, if we omit the tremendous struggle over slavery and secession, the development of these associations is the greatest fact in our constitutional history. Little by little these formless voluntary associations were hardened into institutions. They were for a long time altogether extra-legal; only within the last few years have statutes distinctly recognized the existence of

parties and made regulations for nominations, with an acceptance of the fact that parties and party mechanism are established and have their important function in the conduct of the body politic. Until about twenty years ago, even ballots were printed by the party officials; the candidates or the political managers were themselves responsible for a large part of the expense of conducting an election. The party organization was allowed to grow undisturbed, and to develop its own capacity for representing or controlling the popular will and for controlling the government described on a piece of parchment locked in a safe at Washington. These party systems themselves came to have constitutions and tens of thousands of zealous officials, whose great object was, not to transmit the unsullied will of the people to the government at Washington, but to advance the interests of their own organizations. >

No one doubts the importance of the little group of party leaders in England who by virtue of their inherent capacity rise to the head of the loose party organization and in the Cabinet determine the

policies of the government. No one doubts that the English Cabinet is an institution, though it is unknown to the law, and though its conferences are as secret as those of the Vatican. But we have not seen, or are just beginning to see, in America, that the complicated system which manages parties and directs government in this country is an institution to be taken seriously as an established fact, and that the problem of self-government now is the problem of controlling this institution that manages 1 It is an interesting fact that this aspect of

our constitutional history has received little attention in our histories. A few scholarly treatises have covered some portions of the subject. The most brilliant of these treatises, and perhaps in some ways also the most mistaken, is written by a foreigner, who has the perspective of posterity but also its opportunities for error: Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Parties. See also Macy, Party Organization and Machinery.

the government which is described by the parchment at Washington. Much of the confusion in our discussion of political problems, much of the incoherence of popular effort, comes from the failure to look facts fairly in the face and to watch the make-up, the methods, and the purposes of the government that has for its purposes the management of what we call the Government. The present task of democracy is not to prevent the party management from getting possession of the government, but to make that management responsive to the will of the people. This task is as dignified, as important, and as difficult as the old struggles for representative government, for a responsible ministry, for, in fact, any of the devices and arrangements which were worked out in the course of the long effort to reach political liberty. England, by the revolutions of the seventeenth century, established the principles of her constitution; but her great victory for real self-government came when the party machine was fully recognized as legitimate and was made, in part at least, subservient; the great event was this establishment of the party management in the Cabinet and the fixing of its responsibility.

In America the situation is confusing because we have so many interacting systems and because the mechanism of the government that is described by the Constitution does not easily lend itself to the management of a single party organization. If the party machine could boldly take possession of the government at Washington and manage it in all its ordinary law-making operations, carrying out secret determinations openly and as of right, then we could see the simple fact. But we have clung stupidly to the worn-out idea that the President should not be a party leader but a representative of the whole people, and that his cabinet is not a party council but a meeting of administrators. In England the party machine — though the law does not see it is frankly in possession of

the government. In America the national party mechanism is organized outside of the government: its make-up is scarcely known to any one save the professional; we go upon the humorous supposition that since the party is made up of many people, we really control it. Just at present in national politics the situation is comparatively simple. One party controls both houses of Congress, though between the organization in the Senate, where a small band of veterans is in command, and in the House, where one dominant figure valiantly and frankly leads and directs, there are not infrequent differences of opinion. The same party is in control of the executive offices, and the President makes no bones of the fact that he is the head of the party in whose principles he believes and whose success he thinks helpful to the nation. The national committee is under the influence of the real head of the party, who is also the head of the government. When Mr. Roosevelt four years ago insisted that he must decide who should lead the national committee, he took a step toward simplification, toward bringing it about that the party should in considerable measure be organized in the government. If now party government and legal government could be made one, perhaps forever an impossible ideal in the complexity of our system, the task of realizing democracy would be lightened or at least made plain; the task would be to direct and influence the party system that is frankly in control of the government, and to do this in such a way that the main body of the people would actually determine what policies should be followed and what men should be put into high office. I need not pretend that, even under such circumstances, even with this one government to be looked after, the task would be easy. It is doubtful if even then democracy would be realized as an actual form of political control; but the work of direction would then be made at least comprehensible.

And yet such a discussion as this is

absurdly academic and theoretical. We have a complex system outside of the government with an occasional approach to organization within the limits marked out by the Constitution; and the task of a democracy that craves realization is to manage this superior organization and not to let it get entirely away from popular influence. Everybody knows dimly that corporate wealth in this country is managed by remarkably few men; we have recently been instructed with much rhetoric about the "system," and, though we may not take all the rhetoric seriously, we know that what we fear is the domination either of organized wealth or of organized labor. If the emperors of organized riches could overcome their own internal disorganizing individualism and set to work to control the government, what would be their method? Surely not to send their own lieutenants and their trained legions into the offices, or to grasp themselves the places of trust, if one dare use that good word to describe places of profit; not even to seize themselves upon the offices in the party management, the pretorian guard, which controls the government. In their own way, they would from without manage the government which manages the Gov

ernment.

That this sort of thing has taken place in our cities in a more or less disorganized and incoherent way nobody would deny. If the big concerns, which wish to rule the cities in behalf of their own yawning coffers, were fairly organized and not struggling among themselves, we should have three governments: first, the one described by the charter; second, the one represented by the boss and the party machine; third, the one of wealth and lucre. And of these the last would be not to be sure the only government reaping profit - but the one whose wishes were finally regarded and which could transform desires into acts and pelf. Under such circumstances, would we still cling to the notion that by occasionally casting pieces of white paper

into black ballot-boxes we had self-government, and would we content ourselves with thinking that the government described by the charter was our government? Surely it is clear that the thing we want to do is to control the party government, and not to let it fall into the hands of a third combination, for whose power, when once it is made complete, there is no remedy but revolution. This thought, of course, underlies the objection to corporate contributions to party committees. Our means of controlling and holding in check the party management of the national parties are so inadequate, that we almost hold our breath for fear of the annihilation of popular government, when we think how difficult it would be for us to prevent government by organized wealth if the contest were once on.

A glance at our history will illustrate the difficulty of controlling party management and of making it really subject to the will of the main body of the party. The earliest system of presenting candidates for office was through a caucus of office-holders. The governors of the states were nominated by a caucus of legislators, and candidates for the presidency were put forward by party caucus in Congress. Those persons who, because of social standing or influence, were thought capable of holding office, assumed the duty of telling the people for whom they might cast their ballots,

a negation of popular determination. This superimposed system was bound to disappear with the rise of democratic sentiment, with the extension of self-confidence among the people, and with the widening of the suffrage that came as the West developed. In the years after the war of 1812, when the masses of the people were beginning to feel their power distinctly, changes were wrought in the nominating system in the states. First came the "mixed convention," made up in part of office-holders, who received into their number persons who were not office-holders; and soon in some of the states the "pure convention" was

in existence a body of men coming from the various parts of the state for the purpose of selecting the candidates of their party for state office. This was the result of a revolt against the self-assumed authority of the office-holders. It was an effort to make the government more nearly and immediately what it pretended to be, the people's own.

In 1824 the régime of the congressional caucus was overthrown. There was then but one party, and personal rivalries within it were the order of the day. When therefore a rump caucus nominated the palsied Crawford for the presidency, this "regular" nomination was treated with little respect by the supporters of Jackson, Adams, and Clay. This disrespect was in part due to the fact that there was only one national party, for under such conditions the authority of customary mechanism is endangered; but to be understood aright the situation must be seen in connection with the general democratic upheaval which was everywhere apparent, which marked the new rise of popular selfconfidence, and which shortly, in the advent of the spoils system, heralded an effort of the people to make the government really their own. The protest against King Caucus must be read in the light of the social temperament of the day; it ushered in the reign of Jacksonian self-satisfied democracy, which meant so much in the political, educational, and intellectual history of America.

As no one of the candidates received a majority of the electoral votes, the election of 1824 was decided by the House, a fact hard to be borne by the protestants against congressional nomination. In the next few years the democratic protest was variously registered: by the total disappearance of the congressional nomination; by the triumphant election of Jackson as the man of the people; by the attack on the office-holders and the installation of the spoils system; and by the holding of national conventions to present candidates for election.

Here came, however, one of those recurring contradictions which show the difficulty of popular government, which apparently prove that mechanism is a necessity, and which on the other hand indicate clearly that a mechanism established to register popular desire tends irresistibly to control it. It is apparently an impossibility to set up a transformer the purpose of which is to transmute public wishes into governmental action, and to have that device work as an inanimate sensitive mechanism. The invention is used at once for the old end, not to transmit power from the people to the government, but as a means of controlling the people; the power passes through such a mechanism downwards to the masses and not from them upwards to the government. The convention system, the result of an insurrection against dictation from office-holders, was not long a means for expressing popular wishes. The party management used it freely and deftly; it gave new opportunities for the skill of the professional political mechanic. And we are now seeking to get rid of this device originally established to give greater scope for popular desires; in the various states of the union we are now making attempts to establish systems of popular nomination, because it is believed that we can make the government our own by transferring to the people the right to say for whom they may cast their ballots. In national politics, too, we have come to have little faith in the nominating convention, though at times it is impressively subservient, in spite of the management, to popular demands, expressed in all sorts of unmechanical and unsystematic ways.

But of greater significance than the convention system, which came in Jackson's time as a protest against superimposed control and dictation from officeholders, was the spoils system. This, too, was, in national politics at least, the effect of a protest against an office-holding régime, the result in some measure of

the notion that the government was not for any official class but for the people. As a matter of fact, of course, it did not operate to democratize the government; on the contrary it provided a means of financing party management; it furnished the sinews of war to party government. The men who occupied their time in manipulation for the purpose of getting and holding office and for managing the government were now furnished by the public with the funds for political warfare and for carrying out their plans of campaign. When once a party is fairly organized, with a selected body of leaders, with lieutenants and subalterns in every nook and corner of the land, it needs funds. No matter how praiseworthy the party principles, continuous activity under expert guidance requires funds; and the spoils system was a device whereby the great governmental system which managed the party was provided with funds from the public treasury; for office was given by party leaders to pay party debts, and, moreover, portions of the official salaries were paid over to the party management to finance its operations. It is worthy of note, too, that under the spoils system persons inducted into office because of their activity as party workers were expected to serve the party and its organized board of direction. When once that idea prevails, the real government is obviously the party organization; the so-called government is the instrument, the conventional grooves through which the system standing without expresses its authority.

There has been a great outcry against the spoils system by many who do not appear to see the simplicity of the whole matter and its preeminent rationalness. The establishment of so-called popular government brought parties, — parties with principles and parties with hunger. We cannot conceive of the possibility of getting on without them; it is easier to imagine the demolition of any part of our constitutional organization, the