The present writer's view as to the vital relationship of the economic revolution to an understanding of all aspects of modern American life and society was presented in an article entitled "The Problem of Teaching Recent American History" in the Historical Outlook, vol. xi (1920), pp. 352-355. The first chapter of Charles Edward Merriam's American Political Ideas, 1865-1917 (New York, 1920) is a brilliant exposition of the fundamental factors of the period. The same point of view has been worked out, with more or less conscious intent, in Charles A. Beard's Contemporary American History, 1877-1913 (already cited), chaps. ii, iii, iv, ix; Frederic L. Paxson's The New Nation (Boston, 1915), especially chap. vi; Paul L. Haworth's The United States in Our Own Times, 1865-1920 (New York, 1920), especially chap. x; and best of all in Charles Ramsdell Lingley's Since the Civil War (New York, 1920), chaps. iii, ix, xi, xiv, xxii.

The most extensive treatment of the modern period of American history to 1917 may be found in vols. 22-27 of The American Nation: a History (Albert Bushnell Hart, ed.; New York, 1905-1918), written by William Archibald Dunning, Edwin Erle Sparks, Davis R. Dewey, John H. Latané and Frederic Austin Ogg. These volumes give attention to social and economic factors as well a's to political, constitutional and diplomatic developments.

The unity of the recent period is being clearly recognized by students of the cultural and intellectual history of the United States. Of such volumes the following are particularly valuable: Charles F. Thwing's A History of Education in the United States Since the Civil War (Boston, 1910); Fred Lewis Pattee's A History of American Literature Since 1870 (New York, 1917); Ellwood P. Cubberley's Public Education in the United States (already cited), chaps. xi-xv; Charles Edward Merriam's American Political Ideas, 1865-1917 (already cited); and James Melvin Lee's History of American Journalism (Boston, 1917), pp. 317-450.

CHAPTER XII

THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES

I

With the ratification of the nineteenth amendment shortly before the presidential election of 1920, several millions of women received the right to use the ballot for the first time. Gloomy predictions had been made, time and again, that this extension of the suffrage boded ill for the welfare of the nation because of the inability of the feminine mind to comprehend political matters. The election has receded far enough into the past for us to see now, with clearer vision, that the chief obstacle in the way of intelligent voting by the women was not their fancied mental inferiority in political matters but rather the incapacity of the political parties to make themselves intelligible to the women.

What was so dramatically revealed in the campaign of 1920 was not a new thing in our recent political history. Every year has witnessed the entry of a million or more new partners into our great democracy-young men newly attaining the age of twenty-one, and foreign-born citizens fresh from their final naturalization papers. These new voters have all been confronted with the same need to align themselves with parties that faced the huge battalions of women voters in 1920.

The importance of making a reasoned decision need not be argued in a country in which the motive power of government is generated by parties. Such a choice would not be,

and should not be, the same for all voters; but it is supremely important that the selection, whatever it be, should be made upon the basis of unbiased information and of an independent judgment of the principles and policies for which each party stands. Hence if our government is to be motivated by the collective intelligence of the citizens, it follows that every facility should be afforded voters to discover the truth about the political parties through which they must act.

Whatever may have been true of certain periods of the past, every new voter who has sought to cast a conscientious ballot in recent elections will agree that our democratic methods of government have failed at this critical point. There seems to be a conspiracy, not of silence but of volu- 2 bility, to conceal the real meaning of parties. Efforts of intelligent citizens to penetrate the darkness and confusion surrounding party meanings have too frequently caused 2 them to react in disgust or in consequent indifference thereafter to the political life of the nation; or else the individual, in lieu of anything better, has allowed his party loyalty to be dictated by the social pressures of the community in which he lives or by the inherited prejudices of his clan.

One of the most alarming tendencies of contemporary times in the United States has been the steady decline in the proportion of citizens who perform their periodical functions at the polls. Not only is this true in state and local elections but in national elections as well. This tendency has been most marked since the McKinley-Bryan campaign of 1896; and its lowest point was reached in the last presidential contest (1920) when about half of the citizens entitled to vote went to the polls. Many factors have contributed to this phenomenon, but an important element has undoubtedly been the failure of the major parties to convince the voters that they represent clearly differentiated bodies of opinion.

The mental confusion of the average man is readily under

stood when many signs lead him to believe that there are, in fact, no essential differences between the major parties. Thus, prior to the national conventions of the presidential campaign of 1920, the New York World, a traditional Democratic organ of vast influence, announced its readiness to support Herbert Hoover for president regardless of which party might nominate him. And the Saturday Evening Post with its mammoth reading public called upon the great parties to join in making Mr. Hoover their presidential choice. Mr. Hoover at that time was engaged in sternly disavowing that he was a party man in any orthodox sense although he subsequently reached the conclusion that he was a member of the Republican party. The impression has undoubtedly won wide acceptance in the country that the great parties are like two armies that have been sitting opposite each other for so long a time that they have forgotten the original cause of their quarrel.

II

How, then, can one learn what the parties stand for? Party platforms originated back in Jackson's day for the express purpose of clarifying such matters for the voter in advance of the election; but since that time, they have tended to degenerate into collections of pleasant generalities that are more likely to bewilder than enlighten the inquiring voter. The popular attitude toward them has become one of indifference or cynicism, because of the proneness of a party to straddle the principal issues and its likelihood of disregarding its other pledges should it succeed in winning the election. Indeed it is not too much to say that the chief function of a party platform today is one of internal importance. For reasons that will be noted later, the typical platform is a treaty of amity designed to compose differences among discordant elements of the party for the duration of the cam

paign and to permit the party to present a united front against the common enemy.

One reads the platforms in vain for those statements of fundamental differences and tendencies which might constitute a clarion call to a citizen to identify the public welfare with the one party rather than the other. When such attempts at definition are made, as in the platforms of 1908, the promise falls far short of fulfillment. It may be helpful for the voter to learn from the Republican platform that "The trend of Democracy is toward socialism, while the Republican party stands for a wise and regulated individualism"; but what is he to think upon discovering from the Democratic platform that "The Democratic party is the champion of equal rights and opportunities to all; the Republican party is the party of privilege and private monopoly"?

Next to these official declarations of party belief, the voter is forced to turn to partisan newspapers and campaign orators for the information he seeks. Here again he encounters difficulties: who would trust a lover for an unbiased and dispassionate opinion of his sweetheart? A copy of the London Chronicle of May 8, 1766, yellowed with age, expresses a conviction that bears the fresh impress of truth today, so far as party liegemen are concerned: "Party is a fever that robs the wretch under its influence of common sense, common decency, and sometimes common honesty; it subjects reason to the caprices of fancy, and misrepresents objects; we blame and pity bigotry and enthusiasm in religion; are party principles less reprehensible, that, in a worse cause, are apt to intoxicate and disorder the brain, and pervert the understanding?" The attitude of John Randolph of Roanoke toward the Whig party of his time may be taken to represent the viewpoint of the orthodox party man toward the opposition party. The Whigs, de

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