The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-14
THE NEW POWER IN POLITICS.

THE NEW POWER IN POLITICS.
 The quiet and almost unperceiVed
 usurpations of political power by the
 party National Committee, during the
 past fifteen or twenty years, are well
 worth study. They furnish an excel
 lent example of the continual readjust-
 ments which the exercise of power in a
 democracy is always undergoing. They
 show, too, that the substance of politi-
 cal control may exist where there is lit-
 tie appearance of it, and make it clear
 how poorly the book theory of govern
 ment may correspond to the actual
 facts. Parties themselves are extra
 Constitutional. The authority of the
 party convention, like that of responsi-
 ble government in England, derives from unwritten law. One thing we may
 always be sure of--a man or a commit
 tee will accept and wield every particle
 of power that offers itself. Power
 cleaVes to him who power eXerts. It
 ought not to surprise us then, if we find, on examination, that what was at l first only simple and temporary agen- cy of party activity has silently taken to itself new powers and assumed to exert them year in and year out, in-
 stead of merely through A presidential compagin That, in word, is what I think can be shown to be true of the role in our political life which the Ma tional Committee has come to play. In it's present prestige and animus, it would dictate to the very party which created 1t. It would control conven- tions, It would prescribe candidacies It would distribute party rewards. It would both consolidate and perpetuate the power which has fallen to it. In short, the clay of the National Commit tee is ready to say to the party potter that moulded it. What doest thou?"
 He the chairman) sits at the re- ceipt of customs To him are confided all the wishes and the schemings, and he makes all the promises, that go with the money paid him. Hence it becomes his concern to see that there is honor among politicians. And nothing is more inevitable than the resultant heighten- ing of his political power repository as he is of secret liens upon party action, and the one mysterious agent by means of whom they are made good.
 word or two will suffice to bring out the almost complete mastery of party machinery which has fallen into the hands of the National Committee since it became a continuous and continuous ly active body, and took to itself such new and great powers. When the chair man now calls to order national con- vention, he is really facing a large sometimes a majority, of dele gates who are there because he willed | them to be there. To "call' the con- vention has in fact come to be pretty nearly the same thing as deciding who | shall be among the called" The pro- | duct which the party machine turns out | depnds too much upon the man who | gives the signal to set it in motion and | who himself gets up steam and oils the bearings. not to have a strangely sus- pieious wav of proving to be of just the | kind he wanted
 Who is the one democrat whom the republican managers felt bound to con- suit and defer to in the beginnings of 1 the Spanish war. in regard to their tar If legislation as well as their currency bill, and in all the minutiae of business in Congress? It is Senator Jones. And this is clearly not because he is a man ' of transcendent ability, not merely be- cause he is senator from Arkansas. but because he is, and has been for years chairman of the National Committee Of the democratic party-The Atlantic Monthly