American parties and elections

Preface

Certain features of this book may require an explanation or even an apology.

Complaint has been made, by those who have read the manu¬ script, that the central figure of the piece — that is, party — makes a belated entrance. Why, they ask, such an extensive and wearisome prologue; why all this preliminary explanation about suffrage, about public opinion, about the activity of organized groups? Is it not a canon of literary craftsmanship, laid down by no less an authority than Virgil, that the reader should be plunged “into the middle of things” at once? To me the prologue seems altogether essential. Party is an instrument of the electorate, the means by which the inchoate mass of voters — whether taken as so many iso¬ lated individuals or as a congeries of groups — makes itself polit¬ ically articulate. Party adjusts conflicting interests, gathers together the fragments of opinion, and imparts some degree of coherence to a disordered and chaotic scene. Before its nature and function can be understood we must have some conception of the materials upon which it works.

Even so, the detailed examination of negro suffrage or woman suffrage, of the prohibition movement or the agrarian movement, may be viewed with some impatience. In each case I have had a definite object in view. I have tried to explain the tactics of the Anti-Saloon League and the American Farm Bureau Federation, of the Nonpartisan League and the American Federation of Labor, because of their intimate relationship with party politics. I have dwelt upon the agitation for woman suffrage because it likewise reveals, better than any abstract treatise on social psychology, the hidden springs of public opinion. In a word, my purpose has been, not to obtrude my own philosophy, but to portray the concrete methods of group propaganda and leave the reader free to frame conclusions for himself. Robert Browning, whom Chesterton re¬ gards as the greatest of the English love-poets, never speaks of love ; out of the little familiar things of every-day experience he creates the living reality. The living reality of politics can never be con-

VI

PREFACE veyed by an abstraction. I have at least had in mind, all through this book, the necessity of describing political processes in the vivid language of experience. The ward boss is here, I hope, a man of flesh and blood. The significance of the direct primary movement is suggested by the story of La Follette’s struggle with the Stal¬ warts in Wisconsin.

In dealing with the suffrage, as in dealing with party organiza¬ tion later on, my aim has been not only to describe the situation of to-day, but also to explain how it came about. If they are to be comprehended at all, institutions must be placed in their historical setting. Young America should not be left with the impression that the election of hide inspectors is ordained by some eternal law or that the direct primary appears in the first chapter of Genesis. Riickert, a German poet of the last century, imagined a celestial visitor descending, at long intervals, upon a certain portion of the earth’s surface and finding now a dreary expanse of ice and snow, now a primeval forest, a smiling valley covered, with cattle and crops, or a city lost in the smoke of its throbbing factories; and to the question of how these things originated the invariable answer was, “So it always has been and always will be.” In their concep¬ tion of democracy Americans too often take that very attitude. They do not think of universal suffrage as a comparatively recent innovation, one that has still to vindicate itself and prove its adaptibility to the changing social environment. It is precisely because democracy is still new, still in the experimental stage, that, in spite of all its revealed defects, hope may be entertained for its future. We have the power to wreck it or to save it. As long as people treat democracy as a permanent possession, always at hand, like air or water or bread, and therefore little considered or prized ; as long as they think it can survive every sort of misuse and misapplication, they are inviting catastrophe.

I have laid tribute upon a great many books, for the most part specialized studies or biographies and memoirs. In so wide a field as is covered here one ’s own limited experience in politics and one ’s own first-hand collection of data count for little. It is necessary to rely in the main upon the experience and the research of others. Perhaps my practice of quoting directly and at some length from numerous authorities has been carried too far. I chose that method deliberately. The quoted passage is likely to be more vivid than any paraphrase could be ; and the distinction or the picturesqueness of the language may serve to arouse the reader’s curiosity and direct

PREFACE

Vll him to the book from which it was taken. Above all, for a mastery of this subject, emphasis should be laid upon the importance of wide reading, reading that looks towards a realization of the values in political life rather than towards a familiarity with mere detail.

It is difficult, indeed, to escape from being overwhelmed by a mass of detail. In this country parties and elections are regulated by forty-eight state legislatures. The investigator, who in England can turn to the Representation of the People Act of 1918 and dis¬ cover what the suffrage requirements are or how the voters are registered and how they cast their ballots, here must burrow into innumerable statutes and amendments to statutes, being forced to repeat forty-eight times the task that in England has to be per¬ formed once only. Then, having collected his data, he finds general¬ ization almost impossible. He can define the direct primary in terms of its essential attributes and observe that it is the required instru¬ ment for the making of nominations in thirty-eight states. But as soon as he penetrates a little below the surface he meets with an in¬ finite variation of practice. In describing the direct primary, there¬ fore, he is faced with an alternative ; either to produce something that resembles a statistical abstract or to give the amount of enlight¬ ening information which a foreign secretary accords to the House of Commons at question time. I have followed neither course con¬ sistently. Where detail has seemed of value and significance I have given it, hoping that those who are repelled by the dullness of certain chapters will at least recognize my good intentions.

I wish to express my gratitude to those who have assisted me in the preparation of this book ; particularly to Professor Frederic A. Ogg, the editor of the series in which the book appears ; Professor Arthur W. Macmahon of Columbia University, who has read the manuscript and saved me from many errors in judgment and fact ; Dr. Roger J. Traynor of the University of California ; Miss Helen M. Rocca, Secretary of Political Education, National League of Women Voters; and Dr. Edward Livingston Jenks, Miss Bessie Murray, and Miss Helen R. Rosenberg, former students of mine at the University of California.

Edward McChesney Sait.

Pasadena, California, Aprilf 1927.

Part I The Electorate And Public Opinion

CHAPTER PAGE

v i'- ' j Manhood Suffrage and Registration . 3

v' ^ II Negro Suffrage and the Solid South . 30

v III Woman Suffrage . 57 —

IV Public Opinion . 82

V Organized Groups and Public Opinion . . . . . . . 103

Part II Nature And History Of Parties

^VJ Party: Its Origin and -Function !\* . 141

MHI Further Observations on Party . 168

VIII The Evolution of American Parties . 205

Part III Party Organization

IX Development of Organization: Caucus and Convention . . 235

X Development of Organization: The Direct Primary . . . 268

XI National Party Executives . . 289

XII State and Local Executives . 313

III The Boss . 330

v'XIV The Machine . 348

Chapter I

The best approach to party is through the electorate and the methods by which the electorate gives expression to its will. Doubtless party is, in a broad sense, as old as politics; for even among primitive peoples, still in an early stage of political develop¬ ment, differences of opinion manifest themselves in the formation of opposing groups. But party as we know it to-day, with its elaborate organization, its hierarchy of committees, its manifold activities in mobilizing the voters and in fighting campaigns, is a phenomenon peculiar to the democratic regime. The reasons for this are obvious. Under an absolute monarchy, intolerant of organ¬ ized opposition, party savors of sedition; and it is consequently proscribed and outlawed. Under an aristocracy, where the gov¬ erning class is small and homogeneous, little is needed in the way of machinery ; social intercourse facilitates the shaping of opinion ; and party leaders are made sufficiently aware of that opinion by personal contact with their followers. Under a democracy, on the other hand, the voters are so numerous that they find it difficult to express collectively an intelligible opinion. They can do so only when the issues are presented to them in a simple form and nothing more than an affirmative or negative answer is required. It is the function of parties to present such issues to the electorate. Natur¬ ally, therefore, parties are recognized as having a legitimate, and even a necessary, place in the scheme of democratic government; and the magnitude of thei'r task, the continuous effort that must be expended in focusing attention on particular questions and in seeing that opinion, when once ascertained, is carried into effect, has led to a discipline and organization almost military in thor¬ oughness and efficiency.

Parties essential to democ¬ racy

CHAP.

I

No

democracy before the nineteenth century

But what do we mean by the term democratic government, or popular government? Does it imply an extension of the suffrage to some fixed part or proportion of the people, or merely to a comparatively large number? Sir Henry Maine came to the con¬ clusion that “the border between the Few and the Many, and again between the varieties of the Many, is necessarily indeterminate. ’ ’ 1 The same vagueness marked the view of Professor Burgess that the English reform act of 1832 set up a democratic government ; 2 for that act enfranchised less than five per cent of the population, perhaps one adult male in every five. In common usage, however, a democratic government is one based upon universal suffrage; and until the recent enfranchisement of women universal suffrage was taken to mean adult male suffrage.3

In that sense democracy must be regarded as a recent develop¬ ment, or achievement. It did not exist in the republics of antiquity ; in Athens, where citizenship was rigidly defined, the governing class formed a small minority of the population.4 * 6 It did not exist anywhere until the nineteenth century.® If, in 1787, the framers of the federal constitution condemned (in the words of Edmund Randolph) “the turbulence and follies of democracy,” if they felt (in the words of Alexander Hamilton) that the people seldom judge or determine right, they were reflecting the convictions entertained in the eighteenth century by men of substance every¬ where. Even Thomas Jefferson supported, in 1776 and 1783, a property qualification for the suffrage in Virginia; and in later years, while endorsing the principle of manhood suffrage, he did

I Popular Government (ed. 1886), p. 59.

3 Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law (1900), II, p. 95.

sCf. Sir John Seeley, Introduction to Political Science (1896), p. 324:

"I use ‘democracy’ here, in its modern sense, to mean ‘a government in which every one has a share’.” Bryce, Modern Democracies (1921), Vol. I, p. 22, says : “I use the word in its old and strict sense, as denoting a government in which the will of the majority of qualified citizens rules, taking the qualified citizens to constitute the great bulk of the inhabitants, say, roughly, at least three-fourths. ’ ’

4 In the time of Pericles an Athenian citizen must be the son of an Athenian father, himself a citizen, and of an Athenian mother. The slaves alone greatly

outnumbered the citizens.

6 Even for the election of the French Convention of 1792 a voter must be living on the product of his labor; and domestic servants were excluded. For a brief period manhood suffrage, or an approximation to it, prevailed in three of the English colonies in America — Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.

not regard it as an essential element of Republican faith.1 Nor did his followers generally accept it during his lifetime. Democ¬ racy must be associated with the period of Andrew Jackson rather than with the period of Thomas Jefferson. At the close of the Revolutionary War the right to vote depended upon the possession of property in every state but Pennsylvania, where the payment of public taxes was required, and South Carolina, where the pay¬ ment of a tax equal to the tax on fifty acres of land was an alternative to the property qualification. Nevertheless, in view of the wide diffusion of landed property, the electorate was rela¬ tively much larger than in England; and, although in some of the original states restrictions persisted for more than half a century, the United States has the distinction of being the first country to establish manhood suffrage. The main features of this evolution may be stated briefly.

Suffrage in the Colonies 2

The property qualification, which made its appearance during the latter part of the seventeenth century, became universal in the eighteenth. For this reason, and because of its continued importance after the Revolution, it deserves a careful analysis. Something must first be said, however, about the religious and moral tests which were so characteristic of New England in the earlier colonial period. The governments of Massachusetts Bay and New Haven, less definitely those of Plymouth and Connecti¬ cut,3 were of a theocratic cast. In Massachusetts Bay a law of 1631 declared that “for time to come noe man shalbe admitted to the freedome of this body polliticke, but such as are members of some of the churches within the lymitts of the same.” What constituted church membership ? Under this close union of church and state the secular arm reached out to maintain the orthodox faith and punish heresy; the approval of the magistrates and of the elders of ex-

1 G. A. Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915), pp. 457 and 461.

3 A. E. McKinley, The Suffrage Franchise in the Thirteen English Colonies in America (1905). See also Cortland F. Bishop, History of Elections in the American Colonies (1893).

3 In Plymouth a certificate of religious character or some proof of orthodoxy might be required. McKinley, op cit., p. 344. In Connecticut church mem¬ bership was probably required in the practice of early days, though not by law. Ibid., p. 389.

CHAP.

I

Religious tests in New England

CHAP.

I

Voting rights based on real prop< erty isting churches was required for the recognition of a new church. The religious test, rigidly applied, led to the exclusion of three-fourths or more of the adult males.1 When the English authorities insisted upon its abandonment, the legislature of 1664 devised an ingenious system which, while apparently making large concessions, in practice kept theocracy intact. The church-membership test was retained, but in a disguised form and with an alternative; others could vote provided they were twenty-four years of age, of good character (this to be attested by a certificate), inhabitant house¬ holders, and freeholders paying a tax of ten shillings in addition to the poll tax. Few could satisfy this tax requirement. Thus Puritan ingenuity, by such indirect methods as were employed against the Southern negroes two centuries later, disfranchised the heterodox for another twenty years. The New Haven theocracy had a shorter life, lasting from 1639 to 1664. All the New England colonies, even when the voters were not required to be orthodox churchmen, laid emphasis upon moral character. Thus in Plymouth “such as are Judged by the Court grosly scandalouse as lyers drunkards Swearers etc.” might be disfranchised. It should be observed that Baptists, Quakers, Roman Catholics, and Jews frequently found themselves excluded from political rights, though not in all the thirteen colonies.

That land should have been the normal basis of colonial suf¬ frage need occasion no surprise. Land was, in America even more emphatically than in England, the dominant form of wealth and remained such until the age of power-driven machines and the factory system. In England, under a statute which dated back to 1430, the county franchise extended only to forty-shilling free¬ holders — that is, only to those who held “free Land or Tenement to the value of Forty Shillings by the Year at the least above all Charges”; and the English precedent, though modified by colo¬ nial conditions — by the Puritan ideals of New England, by the frontier spirit of equality, and by the easy acquisition of land — exerted a powerful influence. For a time, in three colonies, the suffrage attached to freemen as distinguished from freeholders — until 1670 in Virginia and Maryland, and for some years before 1729 in North Carolina. But these experiments with manhood suffrage conflicted with the principles that generally prevailed in the seventeenth century. Thus the governor and council of

McKinley, op. cit., pp. 313 and 334.

Maryland, answering the complaints of poor freemen who, though subject to taxation, were now deprived of political rights, said in 1676: 1

“As to the votes of f freemen who have neither lands nor visible personall Estate, in the Eleccon of Delegates for the Assembly we doe say, that as the Lord Proprietary can call assemblys by his Patent whensoever & in what manner to him shall seeme most fitt and convenient, Itt is no wonder that he should chuse this as the fittest & most convenient manner, & most agreeable to the Lawe and Custome of England For what man in England can be ad¬ mitted to the Election of Parliament men that hath not a visible Estate in lands or Goods? nay are there not infinite numbers con¬ cluded in Parliament without vote in the Elections, though they have great Estates both in lands and Goods? As namely all unmarryed women be their Estates in lands never so great, & all both men and woman living out of Corporations, having no Es¬ tates in land be their Personall Estate never so considerable. This we say to the point of reason and law. But if itt be thought an unkinde way of preceeding with the poore ffreeman, or that the ffreeman be deerer To the ffreholder than himself his Wife chil¬ dren & fortune, & that they will needs submit themselves and all that is deare to them to be disposed of by the votes of the ffreemen that have nothing & that can as easily carry themselves out of the reach of Lawes by themselves made, to the prejudice of the free¬ holder as change their Gloathes Wee do promise to propound the case of the indigent freeman to his Lordpp at his return ...”

The freehold qualification, when first imposed, did not always involve the ownership of a stated amount of land. But later, as a more exclusive spirit came to prevail, the laws required a minimum which was based either upon income from the land (as in Eng¬ land), or upon the value of the land, or upon its size in acres. Each of these three criteria was preferred in a different section of the country : the first in New England, the second in the middle colonies, and the third in the South. Where the requirement was based upon area, it obviously worked to the disadvantage of the townsman, whose house anfi lot, though more valuable, perhaps, than a fifty-acre farm, would not entitle him to vote. Justice demanded that the town franchise should be differentiated from the country franchise, as in England ; or that a personal property

CHAP.

I

But alter¬ native qualifica¬ tions in¬ troduced

CHAP.

I

Situation at close of the colonial period qualification should be established generally as an alternative to the freehold qualification. Both of these methods were adopted. In Georgia alone was no concession made during the colonial period. The qualifications varied in the nine towns of North Caro¬ lina, where sometimes those in possession of any freehold, some¬ times those occupying or owning a house, could vote. In certain towns of Virginia and New Jersey, as in Annapolis, Maryland, freeholders and inhabitant householders could vote; in the towns of South Carolina, those possessed of real estate worth sixty pounds on which taxes had been paid. The owner of a town lot and a house twelve feet square was qualified in any Virginia town. Even in New York, where the freehold requirement was expressed not in area but in value, a freemanship qualification might be obtained in Albany and New York City by apprenticeship or purchase; and in New York City the landless freemen constituted forty per cent of the electorate.1 But, aside from special franchises affecting the towns alone, five colonies (doubtless chiefly in consideration of the towns) recognized personal property as an alternative to real estate : Pennsylvania, fifty acres or fifty pounds personalty ; Dela¬ ware and Maryland, fifty acres or forty pounds personalty; Con¬ necticut and Massachusetts, lands yielding forty shillings a year or forty pounds personalty. In South Carolina the alternative was a tax-payment of ten shillings.

It will be observed, then, that, while land may be regarded as the normal basis of the suffrage immediately before the Revolution, alternative qualifications had come into existence. Some did not apply to the counties; but others (personal property in five colo¬ nies, a ten-shilling tax-payment in South Carolina) were of general application. These alternatives foreshadowed the future evolution toward manhood suffrage, the first step being to substitute per¬ sonalty for realty, and the second to substitute the payment of taxes for every kind of property. Subject to the exceptions that have been noticed, the suffrage qualifications at the close of the colonial period may be expressed as follows: (1) Fifty -acre free¬ hold: Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (alternative in Virginia, twenty-five acres and a house twelve feet square). (2) One-hundred-acre freehold: New Jersey (alternative, fifty pounds personalty and some land) and South Carolina (alternative, a settled plantation). (3) Forty - 1 McKinley, op. cit., p. 218. .

shilling freehold: Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island (alternative, a freehold worth forty pounds). (4) Freehold in terms of value: New Hampshire, fifty pounds; New York and Rhode Island, forty pounds.

Forty-shilling freeholds and ten-shilling taxes convey no pre¬ cise meaning in America to-day. We are led to inquire what pro¬ portion of the people could vote under such qualifications. Unfor¬ tunately the available statistics will permit no more than a rough estimate. They do show a marked variation as between different colonies and as between town and country. The potential voters, that is, the persons qualified to vote, are said to have constituted only two per cent of the population in Philadelphia, but eight per cent in rural Pennsylvania ; 1 nine per cent in Rhode Island ; 2 sixteen per cent in Massachusetts.3 In New York City about eight per cent of the population actually voted; in Boston, during the decade that preceded the Revolution, an average of three and a half per cent.4 “At best,” McKinley says,5 “the colonial elections called forth both relatively and absolutely only a small fraction of the present percentage of voters. Property qualifications, poor means of communication, large election districts and the absence of party organization combined to make the most sharply contested elections feeble in their effects upon the community as compared with the widespread suffrage of the twentieth century.”

Democratization of the Suffrage 6

Neither in America nor in Europe has the expansion of political privilege rested on abstract doctrine. The chief consideration has been expediency, the welfare of the state. As successive classes have advanced in enlightenment, in economic power and in political consciousness, they have insisted upon recognition. This may be seen most clearly in England where the monopoly of landed wealth gave way before the new wealth of manufacture and commerce in 1832 ; and where the door was opened in turn to the urban proletariat in 1867, to the agricultural workers in 1884,

* But once the percentage rose to more than six.

6 Kirk H. Porter, History of Suffrage in the United States (1918).

chap.

i

Size of

colonial

electorate

Reasons for exten¬ sion of suffrage

CHAP.

I

Abstract ideas of little weight and to the women in 1918. The rural wage-earners lagged behind the urban wage-earners for various reasons, but mainly because, being scattered, they found organization difficult. Women, because of tradition, because of their secluded lives, and because of their slow emergence into the business activities of the community, were the last to press their claims. Somewhat the same phenomena may be observed in America.

Theory, unless it rests firmly upon economic tendencies and serves to clarify the developing popular thought, exerts little influence. Thus, although the theory of natural right was pro¬ pounded throughout the controversies over the elective franchise, it never became the basis of action. Suffrage was thrust upon the Southern negro after the Civil War, not because he was entitled to it, as so many professed, but because that course would work to the advantage of the Republican party and act as a bar to the re-establishment of slavery. Otherwise why did the Northern and Western states still exclude the negro from the suffrage while they compelled the Southern states to admit him ? 1 Natural right, since it must be present from birth, would enfranchise children; since it has no geographical limits, it would enfranchise the alien ; and since it is not dependent upon mental character, it would enfranchise criminals and lunatics. “If there is one thing settled,” said Elihu Root, “it is that voting is not a natural right, but simply a means of government. ” 2 In the exaltation of the moment and in order to justify a particular line of conduct, the Declaration of Independence asserted that all men are created equal and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Little will be found in the early state constitutions to support this thesis. Thus the Maryland constitution (1776, article V) : “Every man, having property in, a common interest with, and an attachment to the community ought to have a right to the suffrage.” Or Virginia (1776, section 6) : “All men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attach¬ ment to the community, have the right of suffrage.” Almost the same language is employed in the Pennsylvania constitution of the same year. The constitution of Massachusetts (1780, article IX) gives the vote to those “having such qualifications as they shall

1See Chap. II.

3 So, too, Judge Cooley in his Principles of Constitutional Law (p. 240): “ Suffrage cannot be the natural right of the individual because it does not exist for the benefit of the individual but for the benefit of the state itself, ’ ’

establish in their frame of government”; and that of New Hamp¬ shire (1784, article XI), to those “having the proper qualifica¬ tions.” Not one of the states approached more closely to any theoretical assumption.

In sum, the Revolution brought about no marked change in the suffrage laws. Discontent had been aroused, not by the domestic political institutions which the colonists themselves had built up, but by restrictions which an external authority had imposed. The position of the propertied classes remained almost as secure after, as it had been before, independence. It is true that eight of the thirteen states had modified their practice. Four adhered to the existing tests, but, in the case of Massachusetts, increased the qualifying values, or, in the case of Maryland, New York, and South Carolina, made them less onerous.1 New Jersey and Georgia substituted personal property for land,2 the latter also allowing mechanics to vote. Pennsylvania and North Carolina (the latter for the election of assemblymen only) abandoned property in favor of tax-payments without specifying the amount of taxes. This sum¬ mary statement shows that no serious inroads had yet been made upon the privileges of property which, indeed, maintained in most states a second line of defence in the form of high personal prop¬ erty qualifications required for membership in the legislature.3 According to Professor Thorpe, the voters constituted only three per cent of the population.4 Nevertheless, a liberalizing tendency was at work ; and when once that tendency had been set in motion, it steadily gathered momentum. Before the end of the century three of the original states followed Pennsylvania in setting up a tax-payment as the sole qualification for the suffrage (New Hamp¬ shire in 1784, Georgia in 1789, and Delaware in 1792) ; and three new states entered the Union with manhood suffrage (Vermont in

1 Massachusetts now required a freehold yielding £3 or personalty of £60 ;

Maryland reduced the personalty requirement to £30; New York reduced the freehold requirement to £20, added as an alternative a forty shilling leasehold, and also required the payment of state taxes; South Carolina now required a fifty-acre freehold or a town lot or the payment of a tax equal to the tax on fifty acres.

3 In New Jersey, however, a freehold of £100 was required in the election of senators.

z See the tables compiled by F. N. Thorpe, Constitutional History of the American People, I, pp. 68 et seq.

4 Thorpe, op. cit., I, p. 97. Also C. A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), Chap. IX.