The Nominating System

IT would hardly be possible to write a better description of the actual machinery of our nominating system than Mr. James Bryce’s in his American Commonwealth. In what I am about to say of it, therefore, I shall take for granted that the reader is familiar with it, or has abundant means of making himself acquainted with its working. Every American has either practical or theoretical knowledge of the process by which we select men for office. There are probably few Americans who have not either participated in it, or been exhorted to do so by writers on political morality. In fact, presence at the primary meetings, under the general name of “ attending to his political duties,” has been much preached as the chief political duty of the busy man who does not otherwise take an active part in polities. It used to be held more strongly than it is now that if a man had taken part in a primary, he might always with a good conscience vote for the candidate whom the primary and its resulting conventions presented to him. The primary has gradually assumed in our system the air of a scheme or device on which the republic rests. Of course it has differed in its character and composition in different parts of the country, but under whatever name, for at least half a century it has been treated by most political philosophers, as well as by practical politicians, as the fundamental fact of our politics, indifference to which on the part of the intelligent is the cause of nearly all our woes. For some years, in many of the discussions which abuses have excited, writers have been apt to ascribe, especially in the cities, the particular trouble under consideration to the refusal of respectable citizens to take part in the primaries. This refusal has even been more dwelt on than the abstention at elections, which this class have practiced on a large scale. Yet the primary meeting, as the source of the nominating convention, is a novelty in democracy. It is, strictly speaking, simply part of a new system of selecting candidates for office, as such is evidently an experiment, and is not necessarily a part of the democratic scheme of government. It is of the essence of the democratic system that the majority shall decide who shall hold and administer the various administrative and legislative offices, but the mode of choosing candidates for these offices is a matter which democracy leaves completely open. Nomination is the offer to the people of the services of certain persons. But the democratic principle does not define the manner in which these persons shall be picked out.

Accordingly, almost every kind of nomination for office has prevailed in democratic countries. The earliest and most natural is the one which has for the most part been in use in small democracies, — the selection for places of dignity or responsibility of persons eminent in the eyes of their fellow citizens for what is called “social station ; ” that is, generally acknowledged superiority of some kind, in private life. This is the plan to which nearly all communities resort in their more primitive and simpler stage. They single out men who have in some satisfactory manner raised themselves above their fellows, and have become what is called distinguished.” These are supposed to have a kind of moral right to offices which impose responsibility. In this stage, and in this stage only, is it true that the office, as the saying is, seeks the man, not the man the office. The agreement of his fellow citizens that he is the person the place or the work demands is a kind of recognition which the great man waits for, as most agreeable to him. This system prevailed in the beginning in all the small democracies of Greece and of Switzerland. And we have a suggestion as to the manner of nominations in New England in the early days in the account by Gordon, the historian, of the life of Samuel Adams, the New England agitator, where he says that in 1724 Adams’s father “ and about twenty others, one or two from the north end of the town where all ship business was carried on, used to meet, make a caucus, and lay their plans for introducing certain persons to places of trust and power.”

In the next stage the candidate does not wait for this recognition ; he offers himself for the place or honor. Both recognition and honor are desired, and he therefore nominates himself; that is, he calls public attention to his own fitness, and sets forth with what fidelity and efficiency he would perform the duties which the office might devolve on him. In a small democracy, this, as a rule, is all that is necessary. Having heard what the rival candidates, if there are rivals, have to say for themselves, the voters make their choice. The election comes quickly, if not immediately, after the nomination. People are supposed to be able to form a prompt judgment on the matter in hand. There may be intrigues in the candidate’s behalf, but what we call the “canvass,” or long process of persuasion, is not necessary and does not exist.

As the number of voters grows larger, the candidate is not left wholly to his own merits, or exertions, or reputation. A committee is appointed to look after his interests, and a canvass begins, for which the committee make arrangements. The members go themselves among the electors, or employ others to do so, to make sure, first, that the electors will vote for somebody, and then that this somebody is their own man. The nature of the arguments employed in his favor has probably never varied since the practice of electing candidates began. They are the arguments by which the voter is most likely to be influenced, no matter of what kind. It was through the canvass that the great and powerful first learned to conciliate the poor and lowly, and from the earliest times the various modes employed to cajole them have been a favorite subject of satirists. The first large democracy with which we have any acquaintance was that of England in the eighteenth century. Elections had been held before that time and the democratic spirit had prevailed in them, but it was only in the eighteenth century that they became really an important instrument of government, and the wealthy began to think it worth their while to use their money to influence the result. The contests were generally between landed proprietors and their connections, and the intrusion of a man like Burke into politics, on the ground of mere eloquence or ability, was a rare incident. Very soon elections began to determine the fate of ministries and influence the complexion of the House of Commons. Persuasion by argument was largely abandoned for bribery, and the use of the mob of non-electors for purposes of violence and intimidation became common. It was only in great cities, like London and Bristol, that men like Burke and Wilkes were able to displace the men of property or high connections, and we have in Burke’s address to the electors of Bristol probably the first specimen of a real argumentation from a candidate to the voters of a large constituency, without appeals to some sort of prejudice.

In America, the old method of the candidacy of local magnates, selected for the purpose by other men like themselves, their neighbors and friends, seems to have prevailed long after the settlement of the country. The practice of the English counties was preserved; that is, the selection by some people of influence — sometimes in New England the clergy — of a good person to send to the legislature or to fill any other elective office. In all the colonies, and for some years in all the States, offices were reserved naturally for men of local mark generally created by property and social position. In all small communities, it is property which gives most distinction. In fact, from the fall of the Roman Empire almost to our time, the world was governed by property, and property was mainly land, and was associated in the popular mind, to a degree which we now find it difficult to understand, with political power and prominence. A landless man was held to have no “ stake in the country,” and therefore to have no right to manage public affairs. “ Broad acres " became a synonym for wealth, and a natural title to political authority and confidence. This idea prevailed in the settlement of America, and found expression in large grants of land in several of the colonies. Probably nothing did as much to democratize America as the abundance of land and the ease of its acquisition. People began to perceive that a large landowner was not necessarily a great man, and the idea of government by landholders, which had held possession of the world for a thousand years, was killed by the perception. Of course this dispossession of the landholder was aided by the growth of personal property, through the progress of trade, commerce, and invention. The freeholder has never stood as high in politics as he did during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thereafter realty had to contend with personalty for influence in government.

America thus came out of the Revolution with the old and, one may say, human plan of treating some kind of previous social distinction, already known to the voters, as giving a title to nomination for office. The neighbors met and talked over the proper persons to fill certain places, and the ministers and persons in office gave advice. This is, as I have said, the human plan, which has always had recognition in business. Commercial agents and persons charged with trusts were always chosen in this way. Personal knowledge of the man by those holding the power of appointment was considered necessary. It seemed difficult, in small communities, to think of any other way. That a man was fit for office who was not already raised above his fellows, either by character or by the possession of property, was an unfamiliar idea. Nearly all the Revolutionary leaders were men of this kind. The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the drafters of the Constitution were all local notables. They were marked out for their work by some sort of prominence in their own homes. For nearly fifty years after the new government had been set up, nominees were known to everybody. Even nominees for the presidency were suggested by Congress, as state officers were in like manner suggested by the legislatures, the members of which were generally the men most prominent in their own localities. Why legislators had this weight and were allowed to assume this function may be conjectured from the size of the vote. In 1792 the vote for the governor of New York was only about 16,000, but by 1824 it had risen to 83,000. The growth of population diminished the number of well-known men, and the congressional caucus, which was simply a private meeting for the purpose of talking over common affairs, took on itself, not unnaturally, the duty of suggesting to the constituencies the names of candidates for the presidency. This practice appears to have begun as early as 1796, and by 1800 it had become so overbearing that the presidential electors provided for by the Constitution virtually ceased to have power or authority.

But the constituencies rapidly grew restless under congressional dictation. In 1808, a summons issued by Senator Bradley, of Vermont, “ in pursuance of the power vested in him as president of the late convention of the Republican members of both Houses of Congress,” was violently resented by Mr. Gray, a Virginia member, who “ took the earliest opportunity to declare his abhorrence of the usurpation of power declared to be vested in him (Bradley), of his mandatory style and the object contemplated,” and claimed for “ the people ” the right of " selecting persons to fill the important offices.” In 1800, when a few members met and pledged themselves to use their influence in support of Jefferson, they were denounced as a “ Jacobinical conclave,” ¹ an expression for which the publisher was brought to the bar of the Senate. The congressional caucus, however, continued for twenty years to do the work of nomination, though with increasing hesitation and timidity, and amidst growing discontent with its action. The Clintonian platform in New York in 1812 declared “ its opposition to nomination of chief magistrates by congressional caucus, as well because such practices are the exercise of undelegated authority, as of their repugnance to the freedom of elections.” The caucus tried to defend itself by proclaiming that its members met only in their individual capacity, and that its nominations were simply suggestions. The attendance on it, also, by individual members of the party, was fitful. Meetings seldom contained more than two thirds of those who might have been present.

The first suggestion of a nominating convention seems to have come from the New York American, which in 1822 proposed a general convention of Republican delegates to assemble in Washington a few months before election day, and nominate a candidate for the presidency. “ Coming immediately from their constituents,” it said, “ they would bring with them the sense of the people, and they would express that sense without being influenced by motives that might sway the representatives in Congress, who during the sessions at the seat of government may be supposed, without derogation to their purity, to have formed personal attachments and party combinations which would render them less fit for the important duty.” It will thus be seen that the convention was expected to be a body which, like the constitutional conventions and the Hartford convention, would meet to discuss, without foregone conclusions or pledges. After this, nomination by the congressional caucuses passed out of use. As late as 1823-24 the friends of Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, tried to call a congressional caucus for his nomination; but very few members attended, and the project failed. Nomination by the state legislatures then began, as a recommendation or mark of local commendation, in cases where there was not a general agreement on a particular man, owing to his eminence in the party. The use of the nominating convention is ascribed by Alexander Johnston to the fact that “ the new politicians, whom the rising democratic spirit and the extension of the suffrage were together bringing to the front, were determined to try the issue with the old party leaders in a new form.” ² In short, the voters wished to have a share in the work of choosing the candidates whom they were to elect. Social knowledge of these had ceased. It was no longer possible to presume on it. The United States had entered on a new era in its politics.

The establishment and growth of the nominating convention, in truth, constitute the capital fact of modern democracy in America. Of no other political phenomenon has the influence on the government and on the character of public men been so powerful. It is effecting a change in our political manners of which there is no parallel. But there is nothing in American history, of the progress and consequences of which there appears to have been so little prescience. There is no mention or allusion, either in Tocqueville or in any of our early writers, to its probable or possible effect. One finds no allusion to it in any of the commentators on the Constitution, early or late. The fact seems to be that its tendencies were hidden from the country during the reign of men of influence in our politics, such as Clay and Webster and Calhoun, by their own overwhelming importance, and subsequently by the absorbing political interest developed among all classes by the anti-slavery contest. This interest, it may be said, forced foregone conclusions on the conventions. Their work was done before they met, by public sentiment. They simply registered decrees already issued. It is since the war that the real working of the convention has been made manifest, and the vastness and complication of the machinery necessary for its production have become fully understood.

It was made necessary in the beginning, as I have said, by the size of the population. We were making the first attempt in the history of the world to govern a very large population by universal suffrage, and the previous modes of nominating candidates for office either by personal knowledge or by the recommendation of notables had broken down. The people had grown too numerous to have personal knowledge of candidates, and they were too democratic to accept the recommendation of any one claiming superior powers of discrimination. A system of nomination in which every one could take some part seemed to have been made necessary by the circumstances of the country, and the elected convention seemed the fairest and easiest. Indeed, it was hard then, as it is now, to conceive of any other.

Another fact speedily appeared, and that was that universal suffrage was made more difficult, as a political agency, through the mere growth of society. When it was first established, the electors were a small body who were animated by great eagerness to vote. In nearly all discussions about the suffrage, in the early part of the century, it was taken for granted that a great number of electors would feel the same eagerness to exercise it, as a few. The strong desire of the excluded masses to make their will known in this way was the fundamental assumption of what was called radical politics. It does not appear to have entered any one’s head that there would ever be difficulty in getting the bulk of the electors to come to the polls. There were many fears about the bad influence of their vote on the government, but there were no fears that they would not immediately and fully exercise the privilege conferred on them. In like manner, the canvass, as we call it, or the work of persuading them to vote in a particular way, did not seem likely to be arduous. Their number not being great, it was supposed they could be easily reached by influential speakers whose opinions had weight. There was no trouble, for instance, in getting at the 16,000 of the State of New York in 1792 except the trouble of traveling, which really gave electioneering a gravity in those days of which we now know nothing. A man who comes by an express train to talk to us cannot seem as serious an apostle as the man who comes by stage or on horseback. His place, in our day, is only inadequately filled by the swarm of young orators whom each party lets loose at the opening of a political campaign, who are rarely known to the body of the electors, and are listened to with the lukewarm attention which is all that a man who has not already made his mark can claim.

As the number of electors increased, too, the mere machinery of elections became more complicated. The early practice of viva voce voting, which was simple and natural in the days when each man either was entitled to vote as he pleased or owed his vote to somebody else, threw a large part of the trouble on the voter. But the ballot, which was well known in the ancient world, and was adopted by most of the American colonies, as numbers grew, threw greatly enlarged responsibility on governments. The provision of ballots and their distribution, and the enactment of precautions against fraud, which is much easier with ballots than in viva voce voting, made elections more complicated than they were in earlier days.

All this helped to increase the importance of the nominating convention. The work of finding candidates to please this growing multitude, and of making it seem worth their while to participate in the contest, became more and more heavy. One result of this work was to raise the value of party in the popular estimation. It was soon discovered that party spirit was a great assistance in managing large bodies of voters. For one thing, it greatly diminished the active work of canvassing. It was found, as voters increased in number, that the work of persuading or influencing was much lightened by party fidelity. To have a party, and be accustomed to act with it, helps the great body of voters in modern times in making up their minds what to do at elections, and in fact what to do in any matter of common concern with others. It is only the few who have firm opinions about anything but their own affairs. About public affairs the majority need the strengthening influence of agreement with others, — a fact of human nature in which, probably, party takes it rise. There is a certain feeling of pride and of strength and importance in belonging to an organized body of any sort, whether a regiment, a club, or a union, as we see in the multitude of associations which spring up in a free country, and which the mass of men love to join. As soon as you have secured a man’s devotion to his party, either through respect for its principles, or through pride in its action on some great occasion, or through admiration of its leaders, or through liking for that portion of it with which he comes in contact, the task of getting him to support its platform or candidates is greatly lightened. Indeed, argument ceases to be necessary. A presumption that the party is always right, even when it seems to him, at the first blush, wrong, arises in his mind. He becomes what is known as “ a lifelong Democrat" or “ a lifelong Republican ; " that is, a Democrat or a Republican who does not need to be convinced at every election, but who, having been satisfied early in life that his party was the best party, remains convinced, no matter how the platform may at first run counter to his beliefs, or how much he may disapprove of the candidates. In this way, large numbers of persons who have not time or head for politics remain always confirmed and unshakable conservatives or radicals.

This is interesting as throwing some light on the nature and origin of what is called “loyalty,” — a feeling of attachment to a ruler in virtue of his office that was unknown to the ancient world, but has played a prominent part in the politics of the mediæval and modern world. Loyalty does not really depend upon the character of a ruler, but upon his filling a certain office through hereditary title. The prince still remains entitled to as much devotion as the follower is capable of, no matter what the royal conduct may be. To meet the chance of his behaving badly the fiction of bad advisers was invented, and grew into the ministerial responsibility of limited monarchies. The king can do no wrong except through the suggestions of bad men, whose removal from his councils restores the power of his natural inclination to do right. The transfer of this feeling of loyalty to party has been accomplished within the present century in the American democracy. There is no doubt that in the early days of the government what is called “ party spirit” ran high, but it consisted mainly in abhorrence or detestation of the principles of the other party, rather than in devotion to or admiration of one’s own. That the party had not become the power it now is we see from the ease and swiftness with which both the Federalist and Whig parties disappeared under the influence of mistakes or adversity. The history of both Whigs and Democrats at a later period, however, shows that the feeling of party devotion was rapidly growing. Down to the outbreak of the war, the number of those who were hereditary Whigs or hereditary Democrats — that is, Whigs or Democrats because their fathers were, just like the old Jacobites in England or the Legitimists in France — was large. Men told you how they were brought up to admire Jackson or admire Clay, and were therefore under a sort of romantic obligation to vote the Democratic ticket or the Whig ticket, and to approve of measures fathered by either of the parties. After the war, the Republican party, which had really taken the place of the Whig party, came out of the conflict with claims on popular confidence and gratitude for which there is no parallel in political history except those of the English Whigs after the Revolution of 1688. It had saved from an immense disaster a great number of things which the nation valued, and there followed from this a strong presumption of its wisdom and virtue. It consequently retains the devotion of a large body of the nation in spite of errors or mishaps; but so does the Democratic party ; men vote both tickets in large bodies, without reference to measures or men, under the influence of simple party loyalty. Even in the government of cities, when affairs in no way connected with national politics are under discussion, it is found very difficult to get them considered from any but the federal party point of view. Men vote as Democrats or as Republicans about the police or the gas or the mayor, and can give no reason except that this is what they have always done.

Now, this party loyalty, this confidence that one’s own party is the best party to have power, is the basis of the present mode of management, and the origin of what is called “the machine.” It is the confidence of the managers that they may rely on loyalty to the party to secure votes, however weak may be their title, which makes the machine possible. The machine consists of one or a dozen men in each county or district, charged with the duty of seeing that party loyalty is kept alive under all circumstances, of seeing that all persons entitled to vote do vote in a certain way, and of protecting them against the influence of hostile arguments, or it may be of giving them a taste of these advantages of loyalty at once, by promises of employment, or of advertising, or of cash, or of custom, or of patronage. The machine, therefore, is constantly working against and discrediting discussion, either of men or of measures. Loyalty does not discuss ; it acts, and it has a certain contempt for the balancing of arguments. Given party loyalty and the nominating convention, and the creation of the machine becomes easy.

But in creating the machine a beginning is made with the primary. The hypothesis that one’s own party is always the best party rests on another hypothesis : that in every district the primary is attended by all those who have a right to attend it, and that they take part in its proceedings. The falsehood of this assumption is notorious. A fair sample of what may or does happen in the cities was afforded by an examination made by twenty-five leading Republicans into the conduct of the Republican primaries in New York in 1895. It was thereby shown that frauds in the proceedings were practiced on a very great scale ; that large numbers of persons voted at the primaries who had no right to do so ; and that an enrollment secured in this way was, the investigators said, unworthy of “ serious attention.” That this happens continuously in the great cities there is no reason to doubt. But exposures of this kind are made only occasionally, because exposures come from internal dissensions, the quarrels of two factions within the party. These differences rarely arise about measures. They are generally caused by disputes about offices. As long as there is no disagreement on this point, little is revealed about the constitution or procedure of the primaries in the cities. In the case here cited, although the frauds were brought to light after an elaborate investigation, nothing was ever done to punish them or prevent their having effect. The delegates thus elected took part in the presidential nomination almost without remonstrance.

But the attendance of persons who have no right to vote at primaries is not more remarkable or frequent than the non-attendance of those who have the right. In the cities the proportion of the actual vote cast to the total enrollment is rarely over one third. In the country the same thing happens. From inquiries I have made of competent authorities, it would appear that even in New England the attendance of the voters at the party primaries is very small. A competent observer writes from New Hampshire: —

“ I would say that, in my judgment, the attendance upon the primaries at our biennial elections in —— averages from one third to one half of the voters. In the country towns, where the vote has been close in recent years, I think the same proportion might prevail; but in towns where the majority is strong, one way or the other, I do not believe that over ten per cent of the voters attend ; and in the cities, while the proportion is quite large, the greater portion of those who do attend are the ‘ heelers ’ and rabble that are dragged in and driven in and bought in, in order to secure nominations for candidates. I think very few of the substantial, intelligent, well-to-do citizens attend the caucuses in the city. A better class attend those in the towns; ” that is, in the country.

Another, a leading editor in Vermont, writes that he thinks the Republican caucuses are attended by “ numbers sufficiently large to make them adequately representative of party judgment, in the farming communities as well as in the large towns and cities.” But he acknowledges that there is a machine, and that it has often to be fought, and that it is more frequently defeated than triumphant. In spite of an overthrow in 1889, he says : “ It got itself patched up again for the election of 1896, was beaten at the primaries after a red-hot canvass, but, grown more unscrupulous and desperate by its previous defeats, its candidate found in a convention that was perilously near an even division his opportunity — and I believe that he improved it, and that, for the first time in my knowledge of Vermont politics, money, used as corruptly as Tammany is said to use it to accomplish its purposes, decided the issue of the convention ; and scores of others believe as I do.”

Concerning Massachusetts, a careful observer writes me : —

“ In lack of any definite information regarding the attendance at the caucuses in Massachusetts towns, the nearest matter to the point is what I remember of a debate in the House of Representatives in 1895 upon the caucus bill, one of whose provisions was that the caucus should be open for at least thirty minutes. It was then represented, and not denied, in behalf of the towns, that there was no need of such a provision for them, that the attendance was usually small, and that the business was transacted by voice vote in a few minutes. Anything which I can recall of my own observation is to the same effect, and there is no doubt that the statements represented the general truth, whatever exceptions may arise occasionally.”

From Pennsylvania, I hear from a very good authority the following : —

“ Replying to your letter, I can say, from interviews with prominent politicians here and from the country districts, that the proportion of voters in the country districts who attend the primary elections is about fifty per cent of the total vote of the majority party, and less than ten per cent of the minority party. In many districts where there is no contest the primary election is scarcely more than a formality, and in some districts only a corporal’s guard of voters turn out. I think fifty per cent would be a fair average where there is interest in the result.”

It is hardly necessary to say that the result would not differ materially in other parts of the country. What one hears even from the States possessing the best reputation for pure politics is that there is a machine; that it is constantly and tirelessly at work ; that a large part of the energy of good citizens is expended in opposing it or preventing its having its way at elections ; and that this energy is generally displayed spasmodically, and only when the machine becomes too confident of its own power and attempts something unusually objectionable. A Maine newspaper of good standing, the Lewiston Journal, sums up the whole matter as follows : —

“ Until the caucus is reformed thousands of the more intelligent voters will stay away from the primaries; for, having gone to them repeatedly to find them under the control of a mob, or under the manipulation of those who have no regard for an honest reflection of party judgment, voters get disgusted with the entire caucus system and stay away from the caucus altogether, occasionally rebuking it by cutting and slashing the ticket at the polls. We have had samples of these mob caucuses in more than one Maine city; and even in cities where there is a more orderly caucus, the system of balloting pell-mell, without registration, gives great opportunity for fraud by giving the ballot to men who never voted at all, or who rarely vote except for immediate revenue. Now that we have the Australian ballot in the general election, the demand for the reform of the caucus is more than ever imperative.”

I have selected most of these examples from New England, because it is the part of the country in which American political customs have arisen, and in which the most serious view has always been taken of politics. New York and Pennsylvania may be said to represent more distinctly than any other part of the country what America is to be hereafter in the matter of wealth and population, and complexity of interests, and the growth of great cities. The cities are everywhere gaining on the country in number of inhabitants ; that is, the population is becoming more and more urban, and we may therefore conclude that the smaller towns, as they grow, will become more and more assimilated in political manners and customs to New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and will exercise a controlling influence on the government. To check this prospective preponderance, the recently amended Constitution of New York contains a provision that what is to be the Greater New York shall never contribute more than half the members of the Senate. So that the difficulty of securing the attendance of voters at the primaries, in so far as it is affected by numbers, is likely to increase rather than diminish, and the importance of party loyalty to the managers of parties is likely to grow, providing the present system of nomination continues.

This failure on the part of the bulk of the voters to attend the primaries for the purpose of participating in the choice of candidates appears to be due to causes not foreseen by the earlier Democrats. One is the decreased interest in politics caused by increased individual activity and complexity of private affairs. The contrast between the world at the beginning of this century and the world in our day consists not less in increase of population than in increase in the number of occupations, in facilities for making money, and in ease of moving from place to place. It is simply impossible, considering the limits of human powers, for a man living in 1897 to feel the same interest in the working of the machinery of his political party as the man living in 1817. The demands of other things on his attention are infinitely greater ; so are his opportunities of improving his condition ; so is the area over which he may extend his activity. The whole world, one may say, is his field. Literature, science, art, invention, philanthropy, make drafts on his attention of which his great-grandfather never dreamed. A good illustration of this change in the world’s outlook may be found in Pepys’s Diary. When Pepys, living in the latter part of the seventeenth century, met friends, they were apt to adjourn to a tavern and sing songs together or to one another. This meant scarcity of topics of conversation. Their world was a very small one, in which few things occurred worth talking about. At that time, attendance on political primaries would have been a distraction as well as a duty, and the merits of candidates would have been discussed with keen zest. In our day, song-singing to one another, among men, would be looked on as an extremely silly and uninteresting practice. To the agricultural communities which composed the civilized world at the beginning of this century it would not have seemed so. In brief, private affairs have assumed, in these later days, an importance as compared to public affairs which our forefathers never could have anticipated. This state of things is causing everywhere a demand for government without trouble, or with very little trouble. The demand for good and enlightened government is as great as ever, but the desire for simple government, which can be carried on without drawing largely on the time and attention of the private citizen, is greater than ever. Government was never so much considered as a means to an end, and not as an end in itself, as it is to-day, — a mode of looking at it which goes far to explain the success of “ the man on horseback,” or dictator, in troubled communities.

From the time of the Reformation until about 1830, men were mainly occupied upon political freedom ; the great concern of our day is domestic comfort, what is called success in life, or, in other words, pecuniary independence. We are mainly interested in this. We are eager that all should enjoy it, even the poor. Our questions are social questions. Political liberty has passed into the category of natural and usual things, like railroad traveling. We are now troubled about lodgings, diet, reading-rooms, old age, pensions, and the “living wage.” Consequently, there has for a long while been a decreasing interest in politics, except on great occasions, on the part of the busy, active, intelligent portion of the community. This tendency has been strengthened in our country by the slow or imperfect action of the vote on the conduct of public affairs. It is not exciting to vote in November for a congressman who will have no influence on legislation or administration for over a year. This is the arrangement of an older world, and one very different from ours. This is also true of the election of legislators or executive officers. One election is as much as the bulk of citizens in the great centres of industry and population are willing to give time to. The number of abstentions from the polls among the intelligent classes in cities is very great. But the mere selection of candidates under our present system involves two elections, a double demand on time and attention. Experience has shown that the average citizen will not answer this demand. The effect of his vote on a result which is not final is too uncertain to interest him. He dismisses from his mind the whole process of selection, and falls back upon loyalty to his party as a sufficient guide in ordinary times. It is only at periods of great excitement or great party excess, such as 1860 or 1884, that he troubles himself about, or rises in revolt against, the choice of candidates.

The result of this is that the work of choosing party candidates through the nominating machinery has fallen, as it were naturally, into the hands of an idle class, which either loves political intrigue or does not look further in politics than salaried offices, and a large portion of which consists of men who either have failed in life or have never had any regular occupation. In their hands the work of nomination has been reduced to a sort of game, of considerable complication, beginning with the holding of primaries, either fraudulent or very thinly attended, and conducted solely with the view of turning out a result secretly determined beforehand, either by a small knot of persons termed " the machine,” or by a single person known as " the boss,” who directs the whole operation. The object of the primaries is no longer to express the will of the party, but to secure for certain designated persons the support of party loyalty. The process is based on the confidence of those who conduct it that, whatever the result may be, the voters will accept it, for the sake of the party. The consequence is that the objections made originally to nomination by Congress or by the legislatures — that the nominators are self-constituted, and that the bulk of the party is not consulted — are fully applicable to the present mode of nomination. We have come back, under much more unfavorable conditions, to the earlier system, with more than all its faults.

It is a dangerous thing to attempt to describe causes in politics ; that is, to say exactly to what particular cause any political phenomenon is due. In truth, it may be said that nothing in politics has only one cause. Everything is due to a composition or combination of causes. The utmost we can aver is that, of the several agencies which bring a thing about, one has been unusually powerful. What we call the machine, for instance, has undoubtedly affected public life and political manners unfavorably; but then the machine could hardly have grown to its present proportions without public apathy ; and public apathy, in turn, is due partly to the machine, and partly to the size of the masses which have to be handled and must be persuaded before any direct effort can be produced. So we find ourselves almost in a vicious circle in accounting for any of the leading features of our democracy. Government is, undoubtedly, the product of the national character, but, on the other hand, it does much to mould the national character. The machine has assumed functions which have to be discharged by somebody, but in discharging them it produces indifference or dislike of the work among the rest of the community. The machine does not persuade. It acts, it arranges, it provides candidates and platforms, but it rather discourages persuasion. It does not support its candidates by arguments, but by appeals to party loyalty. The voter is asked to support this or that candidate, not on account of his principles or character, but because he is the party candidate. But there is nothing in a democracy so important as persuasion. That this work should be well done, and done continuously, is one of the conditions of healthy national life. Indeed, it may be called the heart of democracy, which sends the blood through all the national arteries. As soon as it ceases, circulation becomes languid or intermittent, the political institutions of a country become anæmic, and a dictator, or single ruler of some sort, appears in the distance.

The machine undertakes the work of providing the voter with candidates and getting him to come to the polls, but it does not undertake the previous process of keeping him informed about the rights and wrongs of public questions. It undertakes, if I may say so, to keep party spirit, but not public spirit, alive. It does not attempt any regular work of public instruction. In fact, it discourages discussion, and presents for leadership men clever in management rather than men clever in oratory, men skillful in a certain kind of intrigue for the party benefit rather than men skillful in propagating ideas of any kind. To this change in the type of the public men I venture to ascribe the frequency of what are called " crazes,” of late years ; that is, the sudden seizure of the popular mind by enthusiasm for some extravagant idea, or some scheme opposed to human experience and unwarranted by human knowledge. This disappears after a while before what is called “ a campaign of education.” A campaign of education, such as we have had to carry on against the greenback movement of 1875, or the excessive tariff of 1890, or the silver craze of 1896, is in reality an attempt to do in a few months, under stress of some pressing danger, the work of persuasion or instruction which should be constantly going on. This constant persuasion or instruction must be a condition of all safe and successful democracy, and to be carried on fruitfully should be carried on by public men. In the English democracy, one of the most wholesome signs of the times is the incessant appearance, both before and during the meeting of Parliament, of public men on the stump. In fact, addressing his constituents on all the leading questions of the day, home and foreign, is as much a part of an English leading politician’s functions as sitting in his place in the legislature during the session. It is part, and a most important part, of popular education. The discontinuance of this practice among us is one of the bad signs of our times. There are but few of our public men who ever address an audience except during some exciting canvass, and they then deal mainly in generalities, such as praise of their own party or denunciations of the other. Thorough discussion of distinct measures or events from all points of view, such as the discussions of the currency question which took place during the campaign of education in 1896, is very rare, almost unknown.

It may be said that this work is done by our press, but nothing could be further from the truth. There are but few newspapers which are conducted by men equipped for such work, and there are but few editors, however well equipped, who undertake it; nor does the public expect it of them. The ephemeral and superficial character of the newspaper is so deeply impressed on the popular American mind that the editor who attempts anything of the kind may almost be said to face a hostile or an indifferent audience. Even if the newspapers do it, they cannot do it with the authority of a speaker actively engaged in the work of legislation. The work of newspapers is really most effective when it consists in enforcing or spreading the views of distinguished public men, — always supposing that such men have the weight and authority they ought to have. The virtual disappearance of these men from our political arena is comparatively recent. If I said that it commenced with the appearance and growth of the machine, I should not be far wrong. There are plenty of men living who in earlier days did not make up their minds about any public question without hearing from Webster, or Clay, or Calhoun, or Silas Wright, or Marcy, or Seward ; and they never had to wait very long. These leaders spoke on the question, either in Congress or on the platform, with a distinctness, reasonableness, and thoughtfulness which make the collected speeches of such men as Calhoun and Webster, even to-day, very valuable fountains of information and suggestion. I myself can remember the time when the opinion of his party in New York was not fully formed until William H. Seward had said his say; when the business of the newspapers was mainly to comment upon and enforce his views ; and when the nearest approach we had to a boss was a devoted follower of an eminent public man, steadily engaged in spreading his fame and pushing his political fortunes.

Now, what is the reason of this change, of the disappearance of this class of men from public life, and of the comparative silence of those we have left ? In answering this question I bear in mind the caution I have already expressed against giving only one cause for political effects ; but I can myself make no analysis of American political manners which does not prove that the control of all entrance to public life by the boss and the machine is the chief reason why we are cut off from political instruction by people actually engaged in the work of government. There is no term of politics more frequently used than the term “ responsibility,” but the popular notion of its meaning is very vague. Men in office live under two kinds of responsibility. One is the theoretical responsibility, under all political constitutions, of officials to the people who elect them and pay them. But the other, and the one far more strongly felt, is responsibility to those from whom they get the permission to contend for the prizes of public life. These, and not the people, are their real masters. It is they who permit them to enter on the public stage ; it is they who can dismiss them or close their political career. The one is a vague, theoretical, or literary responsibility ; the other is real, practical, and constantly present to every officeholder’s mind. The boss and the machine hold the keys to all our leading offices. It is they who say whether a man shall even be allowed to compete for public favor. It is they who decide whether a second term in office shall be accorded to him, whether his career in public life shall be closed or continued. This question, as he knows well, is determined by considerations which have little to do with the real value of his public services. It is determined by secret rules of distribution in the matter of offices, of which every boss has a code. Whether the man shall have a nomination depends largely, not on his exposition of political doctrine or on his advocacy of certain measures, but on his services as an instrumentality for the division of patronage; for it is with patronage simply, and but rarely with measures of policy, that the boss occupies himself. It is he who decides what kind of office one who wishes to enter public life shall hold; whether he shall be a state legislator or congressman, a superintendent of insurance or the governor of a State. I have a case in mind where a man of some ability was ordered by the boss to resign his seat in Congress in order to become a city treasurer, and the order was immediately obeyed. It is to the boss that such a man has to render an account of his official career. It is the boss whom he has to please by his votes and speeches. It is the boss whose dissatisfaction may ruin him.

This power of the boss, too, is rendered all the more effective by our custom of insisting upon the candidate’s residence in the particular district or locality which he seeks to represent. In France and England all constituencies can choose their representatives among all the politicians in the kingdom, no matter where they live. It is thus nearly impossible for the dissatisfaction of one constituency to exclude a man from political life. If he offends or fails to satisfy one, he can, if a man of distinction, almost certainly find another. If he quarrels with one local boss or caucus, some other is generally glad to take him up. But with us a quarrel with the boss of his residence or home is fatal to a politician’s prospects. This residential qualification is the one thing needed to make the boss’s power over him complete.

Thus I am forced to the conclusion that it is this real responsibility to the boss and the caucus, and not to the public, which accounts for the disappearance of distinguished men from public life, and for the decline of instructive political oratory. The inducement to public speaking is a desire to affect the opinion of those who have real power over a man’s career. There are probably few men who would undertake it for the mere purpose of showing that they have something to say. They speak to increase their influence with the public ; to prove their fidelity as public servants ; to insure a continuance of public confidence in them, and thus to insure their continuance in the official positions they occupy. When the public has ceased to possess any power over their political career, when their renomination no longer depends upon public favor, the necessity of conciliating or impressing the public is naturally less felt, if felt at all. The boss controls every office in the principal States. He does not unite these offices in his own person, as Augustus or Tiberius did, but he designates the persons who are to hold them, and they accept his dicta with increasing docility. It is, therefore, not surprising that the boss’s wishes, his idiosyncrasies, his standards of political efficiency and duty, and not those of the public, should be constantly present to the candidate’s mind ; that he should seek most of all to please the boss. For oratory the boss has no use or admiration. His ideal of a public man is one who votes right, but does not talk, while the public has but little taste for or interest in the man who does not put himself in frequent and interesting communication with it. I dare say there are few in New York to-day who know the names of more than one or two of the Representatives in Congress from the city. The man in office feels but one responsibility ; for no man can serve two masters, and the power which gave him his place and can take it away is the master he seeks to serve, and in the ways the master prefers.

It is hardly necessary to dwell on the effect of this on the tone of public life. But there is one point connected with the making of what is called “tone" which ought not to be passed without mention, and that is the necessity, for its maintenance, of complete publicity as to the reasons for which a man gets office. There is nothing more necessary for the maintenance of what I may call political health than that all the world should know why a certain man gets a certain place. The distribution of place for secret reasons is one of the worst abuses of despotism, and the possibility of its return among us used to be dwelt on with a certain terror by the earlier commentators on the Constitution. Of course, I speak only of the larger and more responsible places concerning which public curiosity is excited. If these are even partially filled by men who do not appear to have reached them by what Burke called “manly arts,”—that is, by public services or openly ascertained qualifications, — the effect on tone is very rapid and very marked ; for tone consists not more in self-respect than in respect for those with whom one has to act. All attainment of public places by secret favor or intrigue, and the sudden appearance in responsible positions, for reasons unknown to the community, of men of patent unfitness, naturally lowers in their own estimation all the rest of the body to which they belong.

It is hardly within my plan to speak of remedies, and yet no discussion even of the tendencies of our nominating system would be adequate which did not make some attempt to say whether any substitute for it can be provided. I do not conceal my belief that the present system is the great canker of American institutions. I do not believe it can be long practiced without changing the structure of the government. It is accustoming the less intelligent class to what is really a new form, and is reducing the more intelligent to the despair of helplessness, and yet the maintenance intact of any government depends largely on popular habit and confidence. No constitution can retain its vigorous vitality which exists on paper simply ; it must also be rooted in popular customs and ideas. The type of statesmanship which a democratic constitution calls for must be carefully preserved, and so must the orthodox sources of distinction. Any growing willingness to be content with inferior men has to be combated ; the old ideals must be upheld. We must, as Emerson says, “ obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.” But when we come to speak of substitutes, we are met at the outset by the difficulty that the persons to be reformed are in the possession of power, and are thoroughly satisfied with the present system. They predominate in Congress and in most of the legislatures in the country, and would resist vigorously any attempt at change. People seeking something different at their hands would be likely to meet with the same reception as the European democrats who, after the downfall of Napoleon, sought constitutions at the hands of despotic monarchs. The class called the politicians have the strongest interest in the maintenance of the existing state of things. Moreover, the elected convention has effected such a lodgment in our political manners that any attempt at change would possibly be met with a good deal of popular indifference or dislike.

But in considering remedies we have of course to take note of the evils to be remedied. The primary meeting is defective : first, in that the party voters attend it in only very small numbers, and consequently it has ceased to express the party will, or expresses it only very inadequately; second, in that, as we know it at present, it offers no obstacles to the carrying out of arrangements made secretly and beforehand by the boss or managers. The delegates to be elected are generally decided on before the primary meets, and they are rarely persons who represent the intelligence or morality of the party. Any sufficient remedy, therefore, would either furnish inducements to voters to attend the party primaries, or furnish some substitute for the primaries, or in some way prevent such secret selections as are now made by the boss in advance of the meeting.

Dr. Clarke, of Oswego, who has labored on this question for a great many years, and has produced a plan of reform which he has in vain tried to get embodied in legislation, proposes to overcome the difficulty of popular indolence and indifference by dividing the voters into small district constituencies, of the same size as regards numbers, and drawn by lot from the total number of registered voters. These small constituencies, say of one hundred apiece, are each to choose an electoral delegate, and the assembly of all these delegates is, in a city, to elect the mayor or other elective officers. This is in effect, as far as the size of the constituencies is concerned, really the present system in a rougher shape. Each district is treated as a separate entity, and controlled by “ a leader,” who generally gets his living by holding some inferior public place, and keeps the voters of his party in discipline and order. The difference comes when Dr. Clarke proceeds to choose the “ electoral delegates.” The machine insists on designating them beforehand, and prescribing for whom they shall vote in any election in which they may take part. Dr. Clarke would conceal them from the machine by selecting them by lot, like jurymen, and making their services compulsory. The plan then has the two great merits of diminishing the size of the constituencies in an orderly manner, and of concealing from the boss the delegates who would be chosen. But the difficulty of its adoption lies not only in the latter fact, but also in the fact that it obscures or hinders the direct action, through party organization, of the free popular will which the masses still fondly believe to be within their reach and which they strongly desire. Its adaptation to our system of government, too, is therefore not so simple.

Another of the great difficulties of party primaries is the difficulty of determining who has a right to vote at them. The present mode of nominating assumes that a man always belongs to the same party, and always votes its ticket under all circumstances. Consequently, the usual qualification for a party voter is having voted the party presidential ticket at the previous election. But he may not have done so, for various reasons that no longer have any force; or he may since then have changed his mind, and may honestly desire to change his party. Party belongings are matters of opinion. We can only know from a man’s own statement to which party he really belongs, and it is against public policy to throw obstacles in the way of any citizen’s going freely from one party to another. It is through this possibility of change that public opinion acts on government. Yet in our nominating system we treat party as a permanent status, the loss of which excludes a man from all share in the work of nomination. For instance, unless I voted for Blaine in 1884 I could not participate in the selection of Harrison in 1888, and unless I voted for Cleveland in 1888 I should have been incompetent to aid in selecting him as the party candidate in 1892. So that in devising any reform the existence and utility of parties have to be acknowledged, and means have to be provided for recognizing a genuine party man and for the protection of primary meetings or conventions against bogus voters. I have not heard of any such practical available test, and the invention of one, as long as people insist on government through party, will be difficult.

The only mode of escape from this difficulty as yet devised is what is called “ independent voting ; ” that is, refusal to belong to any party, and free passage from one to another, as the circumstances may seem to require. But this necessarily involves the abandonment of any share in the work of selecting party candidates, and shuts the voter up to choice between two on whose nomination he has had no influence. Moreover, it takes out of each party, if it is to be effective, a large body of the most thoughtful and patriotic of the voters ; that is, of persons who still retain a keen sense of the fact that party is an instrument, not an end, and whose aid would be most valuable in raising the character of nominations. I do not think I err in saying that the power of the machine and of the boss over nominations has increased pari passu with the growth of independent voting. Each party, in getting rid of its more mutinous or recalcitrant members, solidifies the power of the machine, makes insurrection less frequent, and renders “kicking,” as it is called, more odious. It weeds out of the party management, too, the element most sensitive to public opinion, and most anxious to secure the approbation of the more thoughtful class of the community. What remains is composed of men hardened against criticism, indifferent to all approbation or disapprobation but that of their own fellows, and knowing little of any political virtue except that of fidelity to party friends. In the State of New York, which may be said to be the arena in which all political tendencies first show themselves, this has been strikingly true. In no other State is the independent vote so powerful and active as in New York, and in none is the machine so audacious or so insensible to warning. The overthrow of one party by this vote seems only to suggest imitation to the other. Each follows closely the very ways which have brought ruin on its predecessor, so that the independent vote is brought almost to the end of its resources. It can punish one party only by putting the other in power, and this party takes care that the condition of things which brought on the punishment shall continue unchanged, and even finds means to negotiate with the other for a division of patronage.

“Independent voting ” then has clearly ceased to be a remedy. Something better has still to be found. The most popular remedy is throwing the protection of law around the caucus or primary meeting, and making frauds in its composition or in the conduct of the proceedings criminal offenses. This, it is true, would prevent such cheating as took place in New York in 1895. but it would not secure a larger attendance of the voters, which is the chief need of the primary meeting. The meeting would still fail to represent the bulk of the party, though the law might make those who were present more decorous. And as assuredly as the attendance continued to be small, it would be controlled and its proceedings be prearranged by those who had personal interest in being present. Legalization would not overcome the reluctance of indolent or busy voters to take part in a proceeding which was not conclusive, and in which any opposition to a programme previously arranged by active party managers would make them unpopular, and expose them to discussions to which they would feel unequal. It would prevent gross frauds on the spot and make attendance safe and orderly, but it would do nothing towards making the primary a full representative of party opinion and feeling. In other words, it would still continue to grind out results carefully prepared by the boss, and the art of politics would continue to be taught to our youth, not as the art of government, but as the art of “getting delegates.”

Is the situation then hopeless ? Are we tied up inexorably simply to a choice of evils ? I think not. It seems to me that the nomination of candidates is another of the problems of democracy, which are never seriously attacked without prolonged perception and discussion of their importance. One of these was the formation of the federal government; another was the abolition of slavery ; another was the reform of the civil service. Every one of them looked hopeless in the beginning ; but the solution came, in each case, through the popular determination to find some better way. In all ages this has been one of the democratic characteristics. It is the only régime in which there is no disposition to stagnate. It may improve or it may deteriorate, but it is an incessant movement, and has a passion for experiments, some of which end badly, but those which have behind them the general human instinctive longing for efficiency are apt to succeed in the end.

The first condition of the successful removal of an abuse is its general recognition as actual. After this comes search for something to take its place. I think, from what I observe in the press, that this recognition has come, or is coming very rapidly, and that we shall before long see the beginning, at least, of the search. In some States, already, legislation for the reform of the primary is under consideration. In Michigan, a bill now in the legislature purposes to abolish nominating conventions and compel the primaries to nominate, which would strike a serious blow at the power of the boss, if voters could be got to attend.

K. L. Godkin.