OLD PARTIES AND NEW ISSUES
UNDERsuch conditions it was inevitable that after the issues raised by the war were settled, and as year by year they tended more and more to become nebulous memories, the new issues which arose should divide the parties each within itself rather than serve as a basis for true party division. The bonds were those of name, custom, and tradition rather than of principle. Each party could pride itself on fervent fixity of opinion as regards the issues that were dead, but each party showed complete indecision of purpose in dealing with the problems that were living. A party which alternately nominated Mr. Bryan and Mr. Parker for President, and a party wherein Messrs. Penrose, La Follette, and Smoot stand as the three brothers of leadership, can by no possibility supply the need of this country for efficient and coherent governmental action as regards the really vital questions of the day. Each party contains within its leadership and membership men who are hopelessly sundered by whatever convictions they really hold and who act together simply for reasons of personal or party expediency. It is impossible to secure the highest service for the people from any party which, like the Democracy, is wedded to States’ rights, as against those peoples’ rights which can be obtained only by the exercise of the full power of the National Government. On the other hand it is utterly hopeless to expect any sincerity of devotion to any principle of concern to the people as a whole from a party the machinery of which is usurped and held by the powers that prey, in the political and business world; and this has been the case with the Republican party since the bosses in June, 1912, at Chicago stole from the rank and file their right to make their own platform and nominate their own candidates.
So much for the incongruous jumble of conflicting principles and policies within each party and the lack of real points of difference between them. Their showing on this point is so bad that by sheer force of habit our people have grown to accept as a matter of course and without surprise the situations to which it gives rise. For instance, in New York State there was very little genuine surprise among the people as a whole when in the legislature the Republican adherents of the Republican boss and the Democratic adherents of the Democratic boss, after deliberate caucus and conference, repudiated their preëlection pledges as to primary legislation, and joined with hearty good will to defeat the measure which both had promised to support. It would be difficult to imagine a better instance of the way in which our present party conditions insure the absolute powerlessness of the people when faced by a bipartizan combine of the two boss-ridden party machines, whose hostility each to the other is only nominal compared to the hostility of both to the people at large.