In Anglo-Saxon countries polit tends to party divisions. according to one general classification: those }who are in and those who are out.
Bloes, such as are known on the Continent, have appeared in various Anglo-Saxon countries, including. Great Britain and the United States, but they have seldom outlasted the particular issue which brought them together.
From the begining of American history there have been two parties. Even in the Constitutional Convention there were those who favoured strong centralized government and those who wanted the states to be paramount. Alexander Hai ton and John Jay represented one school; Thomas Jefferson the other.
The Federalists were the first to achieve national power, but Jefferson, leader of the Republicans, as the' Democrats were then called, was the third President, and x of Democratic Presidents followed because the Federalists had crumbled. The difficulty with the Feder-lists was that they were so engrossed in national affairs that they altogether forgot to look to their fences in the states, The Nati al officers were elected by the voters, of states—as they still are—and therefore the party.without an organization in each state was and is in a weak position, During the administration of Madison, there was an era of good feeling, party lines being altogether disregarded for a moment, But with Monroe two great parties. again came to the surface: the Democrats, who continued the traditions and-vote as their fathers voted, but one might almost say, that there are no ancestors for New Yorkers (city folks), so many of the voters being immigrants, the sons or the grandsons of immigrants. One cannot go back to political traditions of three generations in the United States. Four or five generations comes closer to the time when party lines were tightly drawn over clearly defined issues, Great issues are injected into the two parties either bya third party. temporarily coming, to. life" and conquering the party's platform as the various western. cheap money movements succeeded in doing when William Jennings Bryan won the nomination by oratory and poor economies. Or in some cases, 8 revolt within the party brings to the front a radical group who are fighting over some public issue, as Roosevelt. succeeding in doing' on the question of conservation of rational resources. But usually, the radicals are kept down, the force of organization in both parties Laing sufficient to control the situa tion. The recent Republican and Democratic conventions were indies ative of the cohesive power of party organization. A" strong radieat group in the Republican party. op~ Posed Coolidge, while it is surprising: that tne Democratic party, usually odds with Wall Street, aceepte Davis, Yet, both nominations wer achieved finally by steam-rolles methods: that is, the bosses put in Coolidge and other bosses Kept out policies of Jefferson, and the Whigs, who wanted a strengthening of the ment. The Whigs found their eh strength where the Federalists had found it, in New England and the manufacturing and mercantile states of the East, while the Democrats were strong in what was.
those days the south and the west.
The Slavery Issue.
These two parties jogged along fighting each other in and out of office until the slavery issue ro ganized all opinion in the United Staten into two parties, those who believed in states rights as applied to the question of slavery and those who did not. The Democrats, following the Jeffersonian tradition, favoured states rights, while the newly organized Republican Party followed the Federalist Whig tradition of the pre-eminence of the national "government. The Re publican Party produced Lincoln, perhaps the greatest of all Amer~ fean'presidents, who, with chan for all, fought the Civil War and won it." The slaves were emancipaced, the south was practically eliminated for a time from national polities and the Republicans remained in power from 1860 to 1924 with the exception of 16 years, the administrations of Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson.
The fundamental pol the United States, as history of that country clearly indicates, is as between states rights and the accession of power to the rational government. That was Drought out in the effort of Govern: or Smith of New. York to bring this issue forward again in cone nexion with prohibition. With the exception of that one question, the two parties have for many years lacked a programme, lacked a differentiation. One might say, for instance, that the Republicans favour a high tariff' while the Democrats want one low. But Southern Democrat wants a high tariff on cotton, although he insists that the tariff on steel shall be low, because he produces: no steel. Vice jverea, the Republican in the North is quite willing for the tariff on pine-apples to be low, because his state produces no pine-apples, In a word, the tariff issue is not one of political parties, but-of local need: of states particularism. Generally, tthe tariff is a compromise among the states,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.