THE THEORY OF PARTIES AND THE TWO
PARTY SYSTEM

By SARAH SCHUYLER BUTLER, Vice Chairman of the New York State Republican Committee. Reprinted from a pamphlet issued by The Women's National Republican Club, 8 East 37th Street, New York City.

The theory of parties.-Organization is the first step in effectively promoting any policy, whether it be in the world. of business, of charity, or of politics.

A political party is merely the application of the principle of organization to the political field.

As soon as a difference of opinion arises among the citizens of a country, as to any question of public policy, political parties almost automatically come into existence. For a political party consists of a number of individuals who have organized themselves into a group in support of certain principles or policies of government.

Here in the United States the first controversial question in our political life was whether the Constitution of the United States should be adopted. Two political parties were formed, the Federalists, who advocated the adoption of the Constitution, and the Anti-Federalists who opposed it. This was the beginning of our present political system.

The two party system. Our government is founded on the two party system.

This means that there are two political parties: a party in power and a party in opposition, each with definite functions.

The functions of the party in power are to carry on the business of government, to elect the majority of the public officials who are charged with conducting that business, and, if possible, to elect a majority of the members of Congress, so as to be able to pass necessary legislation.

The function of the party in opposition is to act as a constructive critic. It is supposed to act as a check if the party in power tries to go forward too rapidly along untried and untested paths of policy, and it is supposed to act as a spur if the party in power is too reactionary and fails to adapt itself to new and changing conditions.

The balance of power lies in the hands of the people of the United States themselves. If they decide that the party

in power is not satisfactorily fulfilling the task of conducting the nation's business they can transfer the power to the party in opposition. The position of the parties is then reversed, but there is still a party in power and a party in opposition, and each retains its definite functions.

Responsibilities of party membership.-The two party system lays certain responsibilities upon party members. In any organization the will of the majority must determine policies unless there is to be chaos. This is true in a political party.

The system of primary elections was instituted so as to give every party member the chance to express an opinion in regard to policies and candidates. Up to the time of the primary election it is not only the right, but the duty, of party members to make known their preferences.

But once the majority has decided, the minority must logically abide by the decision that has been made. This is not merely a political maxim, but is based on reason and common sense. First of all, every minority, however small, hopes that some day it will become a majority. When it does so, it will have no right to expect its decisions to be respected, if, when the situation was reversed, it was unwilling to accept the majority rule.

In the second place failure to support the party of our choice is a direct blow at the two party system, and before we undertake to break down that system we must understand clearly what we are doing.

The alternative to the two party system.-If we do away with the two party system what will take its place?

We shall be faced with two alternatives: the individualism which has prevailed for many years in most of the South American states, or the group system which exists in continental Europe. Either one of these means the end of responsibility in government.

In South America politics has consisted largely of battles between individuals and their groups of personal supporters. No continuity of policy nor any development of political principle is possible under such conditions, for as soon as one leader dies a natural death or is assassinated the situation becomes chaotic until another man appears who is strong enough to make himself the leader of a group and then the struggle begins all over again.

We are tending in this direction when we talk about "voting for the best man regardless of party." Ours is a government of laws, not of men. Our political parties are founded on certain definite political principles, and when we seek to exalt the individual at the expense of the principle, we are turning away from responsible government toward individualism and political disorder.

The group system is equally destructive of political stability. Let us take, for example, France, where there are fourteen or fifteen so-called political parties. In order to conduct the nation's business, each succeeding ministry must work out a legislative program which will attract a majority of these groups. Often they can be held together in support of a specific measure only, and as soon as that is disposed of the legislative majority of the government falls to pieces and has to be built up again from the beginning. The worst feature of this system is that the defection of one small group may upset the entire government, and there is no person or group upon whose shoulders the French people can put the blame.

A political party based on belief in certain fundamental principles of government has permanence and stability, but a group bound together by temporary or local interests can have neither.

The strength of our two great parties is largely due to the fact that each is national in its appeal. Groups and "blocs" subdivide the people instead of uniting them, and lay emphasis on local differences of opinion, rather than on general principles on which men and women in every part of the country agree. When such groups are formed local advantage is substituted for the national welfare, and interest takes the place of principle.

Under the two party system the party in power is responsible to the people for the conduct of public business. If it fails in its task it must take the blame and the party in opposition is given its turn in the management of the nation's affairs.

Voting the "straight ticket.”—The request to party members to support their party's candidates is, therefore, a perfectly logical one.

Suppose, for instance, that we vote for a president be

longing to one party, and for a senator or congressman belonging to another. We vote for a candidate for president because we believe in the policies laid down in the party platform which he has promised to support. We know that he cannot carry out those policies unless the Senate and the House of Representatives will pass the necessary legislation. Yet we send to Washington men who, however excellent as individuals, are nevertheless pledged by their party platform to vote against the very policies in which we believe.

We have only to remember what happened from 1918 to 1920 when we had a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. For two years legislation was practically at a standstill, the President blamed the Congress, the Congress blamed the President, and any constructive progress in governmental policy was impossible.

The same situation has existed since 1922 in New York state where one party has elected the governor and the other has elected a majority of the legislators. Neither side can carry out a consecutive administrative and legislative program, and the people's time and money are wasted.

The two party system gives us responsible and stable government. Any attempt to break down that system, either by the glorification of the individual candidate or by the formation of groups, can lead only to governmental instability and political chaos.

CARTOON PARTY EMBLEMS

By EUNICE FULLER BARNARD, in an article entitled, "The Political Zoo Has a Birthday," in the New York Times, Sunday, November 6, 1927, and reprinted through the courtesy of that newspaper.

The Democratic party also often is represented in cartoons as an old maid labeled "Miss Democracy." The old Roosevelt Progressive party often was called the "Bull Moose" party and frequently was represented in cartoons as the bull moose. It is but natural that cartoonists often use the camel as the emblem of the Prohibition party.

Some Democrats maintain that the rooster is the proper emblem of their party, but the cartoonists never have so recognized it.

To-morrow will be the Republican elephant's fifty-third birthday, and on Friday the Tammany tiger will be fifty-six. The Democratic donkey, the oldest member of our political

zoo, is the only one whose birthday does not fall around election time. He will be fifty-eight next January. All of them were born here in New York City, amid the rancors of the bitter decade following the Civil War.

They arose in no playful mood. One imagines them somehow springing gayly to life as mascots amid the noise of political conventions. Instead, they were prefigured on paper, as sharp invective-the lonely creation of a young German immigrant who had grown up in lower New York. Inside of five years this cartoonist, Thomas Nast, with his facile, but untrained pencil, became the political Æsop of the United States. Every animal he drew had a stinging moral in its tail.

Of the three party symbols, the donkey seems to have taken hold most slowly. In 1870, at the age of thirty, Nast was drawing for the vigorously Republican Harper's Weekly at the then fabulous rate of $150 per double page. He did a cartoon a week, and often two or three smaller ones besides, on all kinds of political subjects-local, national, and international. One week he would be satirizing Louis Napoleon and the next the graft at City Hall.

Nast's early work.-Nast's usual type of cartoon was rather detailed and scholarly. He often dressed up his politicians like characters from Shakespeare, explained by long quotations. There was Horatio Seymour as Lady Macbeth, and "Boss" Tweed as Hamlet's mother. Animals he had used relatively little. His training and experience, from the age of fifteen, when he began doing New York scenes for Frank Leslie, was with the elaborately realistic. He had gone to Italy to depict the triumphs of Garibaldi. His fame largely rested on his battle scenes of the Civil War.

At the time of the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, Nast worked as valiantly on the battle scenes of peace. He did elaborate drawings of Johnson as Nero, as Othello, and as a medieval king, dooming the abolitionistsBeecher, Sumner, Wendell Phillips, and Nast himself-to execution. Those were the almost unbelievable days in Washington when the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, whom Johnson was trying to remove, barricaded himself in his office night and day so that his successor could not take possession. Those were the days, too, when William M.