reach of time in which Liberty and Peace went up and down the nations of the earth, building their kingdom in the hearts of men and gathering the harvest of genius and toil; in which reason struck from the hand of force the sword of hate and plucked from the heart of war the germ of greed; in which conscience smote the thoughts of wrong and filled the mind with mercy's sweet restraint; in which power grew in the human brain, but refused the shelter of a glittering crown; in which the people of all lands and tongues, awakened to hope by the inspiration of our example, turned their faces toward the light of our advancing civilization and followed with the march of years the luminous pathway leading to a destiny beyond the reach of vision and within the providence of God. In this spirit New York nominates for President of the United States Alton B. Parker. 68. The Democratic Unit Rule The delegates of a state at a Republican convention may vote either according to their individual preferences or the instructions received from the local and state conventions sending them, and thus a state delegation may be, and often is, divided against itself. In the Democratic party, however, a majority of the delegates of any one state may decide how the vote of the entire delegation is to be cast. The practice is illustrated by the application of the principle to an appeal of the Ohio delegation at the Democratic national convention in 1904. Mr. Thomas McNamara, of Ohio (when the vote of Ohio was announced): I demand that the Ohio delegation be polled. The Presiding Officer: Does the gentleman question the correctness of the figures? Mr. McNamara: I do. The Presiding Officer: Then the gentleman from Ohio is entitled to a poll of the delegation. The delegation was polled and the result was announced Parker 28, Hearst 6, McClellan 9, Cockrell 2, Olney 1. Mr. E. H. Moore, of Ohio: I rise to a point of order. Demand for a poll Can the Ohio vote The Presiding Officer: The gentleman will state his point of order. Mr. Moore: I desire the ruling of the Chair upon the question be divided? whether or not the vote of Ohio can be cast as a unit. The district delegates are chosen in Ohio, not as they are in New York or Indiana, by delegates elected to the State Convention, but by Congressional Conventions held prior to the time of the holding of the State Convention. My point is that the State Convention therefore had no right to instruct these delegates. The Chair lays down the rule. Second, the rule, as the Chair will observe, is a modified one. It does not impose upon the delegates the necessity of voting as a unit. I desire the ruling of the Chair. The district delegates receive their credentials at the District Conventions, held at separate times, by delegates separately chosen, and in no wise hold their credentials from the State Convention. Therefore, our contention is that the State Convention had no power to impose the unit rule upon them. The Presiding Officer: The Chair overrules the point of order. By express rule of the Democratic Convention, the delegates come from a State and not from districts. Under the call for delegates to this Convention, each State is allowed as many delegates as it has Senators and Representatives, multiplied by two; and those delegates are the delegates of the State and not the delegates of the districts, no matter how chosen. And even if the call itself did not determine the point of order, the express rule of Democratic National Conventions does determine. The point of order is overruled, and the poll of the Ohio delegation showing that Parker has received twenty-eight of the forty-six votes to which that State is entitled in this Convention, the vote of Ohio will stand as announced by the Chairman of that delegation [i.e. forty-six for Parker]. 69. The Chairman of the National Committee The direction of the presidential campaign falls principally on the chairman of the national committee, who is selected by the presidential candidate of the party in consultation with his leading advisers. The power of this extra-legal officer in managing political affairs is thus described by Mr. Rollo Ogden in the Atlantic Monthly: and the Senator Hanna has outstripped all his predecessors in making Mr. Hanna the chairmanship of the national committee a centre of political campaign of power. Happy accidents have conspired with great skill and 1896. determination on his part to bring about such a consummation. He has now [1902] held the office continuously for five yearsindeed practically for seven years. It was in 1893 or 1894 that Mr. Hanna, then little known outside of Ohio, set about in his long-headed and far-planning way, the election of Mr. McKinley to the presidency. He perceived the thickening signs of a political reaction and in them he saw the great opportunity for his friend Mr. McKinley, and also for himself. The history of that campaign before the campaign of 1896 has never been written; but enough of it is known to show the signal ability and resolution with which it was planned and fought. Long before the Republican convention met, old masters like Senators Chandler, Quay and Platt recognized the rise of a political manipulator greater than themselves. This is referred to at present only to make the point that Mr. Hanna was party chairman in fact two years before he became so in name. In the course of those preliminary manoeuvres he had swept everything before him so that his accession to the chairmanship was foregone. On the heels of that came his election to the Senate. This both heightened his prestige and put him in a position to assert and extend his power as National Chairman. In the latter capacity (counting his two years or more of antecedent campaigning for the nomination of Mr. McKinley in 1896) he had made a host of pre-election pledges. His post in the Senate enabled him Sources of the chair man's power. to see that they were carried out. Never, it is safe to say, did a party chairman previously have so much to do with the apportionment of party patronage. The president gave him substantially a free hand in the South. Then there came along the Spanish war, yielding our Cæsar chairman further meat on which to grow great. Thousands of new appointments had to be made. For each applicant the endorsement of Chairman Hanna was eagerly sought. His power grew by power. After four years of its gradual increase came another successful campaign for the presidency under his management. . . . It is difficult to set off, each by itself, the elements of the political power of the party national committee, vested largely in its chairman, for the reason that they are all inextricably interdependent. The chairman has the spending of vast sums of money: this gives him political power. But he has the money to spend only because he is first in a position of political power. So of his rights of patronage; of control of party conventions, big and little; of his dictation in both party manoeuvring and public legislation: all these things dovetail into one another and appear now as a cause, now as a consequence. He has, for example, millions of dollars to disburse. There is good authority for the assertion that the Republican campaign fund of 1896 was upwards of seven millions of dollars. Mr. Hanna argued in 1900 that it ought to be twice as great, - presumably because the country was twice as prosperous. At all events, he was not cramped for funds in either year. Now the outlay of such huge sums necessarily means an increment of power for the man who controls it. Such will be the case if he is the most unselfish and incorruptible of mortals. Money is power in politics as everywhere else. A chairman who may determine how much is to be allotted to this state, that congressional district, this city and the other county, becomes inevitably the master of many political legions. There is no need of a hard-and-fast understanding between the giver and the recipient, least of all any corrupt bargain. Common gratitude and the expectation of similar favors to come are enough to bind fast the nominee for congress, the candidate for a senatorship, or the member of the national committee for any given state, a part of whose campaign expenses has been kindly paid for him from headquarters. It is really hard to think ill of the man who has sent you a large check. To oppose your humble opinion to his necessarily large and enlightened view of party policy and public advantage is sheer presumption. To vote for him or with him or as he bids you is thereafter obviously the line of least resistance. Thus it is that the bread which the national chairman casts upon the waters returns to him after not so many days. man and party The pecuniary aspect of the chairman's power has another The chairfeature. He collects as well as pays out; and with many of the collections goes an express or tacit party obligation which he alone finance. is fully cognizant of, and which it is his particular duty to see carried out. Rich men do not always contribute to party in obedience to the Scriptural injunction to give, asking not again. They make conditions either openly, or by hint, or gesture. Our own wealthy contributors to the party treasury have been suspected of coupling their gifts with an understanding about the tariff, about the seal fisheries, about ship subsidies and what not. It is not necessary to go into this. 70. The National Campaign * ... The waging of a great contest designed to influence millions of voters is a remarkable undertaking, the character of which may be partially estimated by this account of the methods adopted by the Republican party organization in the memorable "campaign of education," in 1896: phlet litera Since the beginning of the campaign the Republican National The pamCommittee has issued the astounding total of over two hundred ture. millions of copies of documents. There were also issued, under the direction of the same committee, about fifty million copies of documents from the headquarters of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee at Washington. All this work has |