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there was a mood among the leaders of all parties which felt that perhaps the La Follette purpose was going to work out. There was a time, during the early weeks of October, when there was a real expectation that the third party might get a larger popular vote than the Democrats, might end the campaign as the second party, and might force upon the Democratic leaders the necessity of considering what they would do and what they could do. The fact that La Follette failed pretty seriously in this hope of getting a larger popular vote than the Democrats, was a surprise to him and his leaders.

But the surprise was not confined to them. Quite a few observers and leaders of both parties anticipated during those weeks of the campaign, when the La Follette tide seemed to be running high, that La Follette would get a much larger vote than he did. Most of us figured in the beginning, in July, that La Follette would get about 10 per cent. of the total vote, which would have been slightly more than any third party, except the Progressive one in 1912, has ever received in recent years, but not enough more to classify the La Follette enterprise as other than one of those ephemeral third party movements. Then, during October, most of us revised our estimates and thought that La Follette seemed about to get fully 20 per cent. of the popular vote-an estimate which, if it had turned out to be correct, would have compelled us to revise also our estimates about the probable permanency of the new enterprise; and would have obliged the Democrats to do some hard thinking about their future.

In the end it turned out that La Follette's proportion of the total vote was about 14 per cent. But this 14 per cent. cannot all be credited to La Follette as the genuinely dependable following of a progressive or radical third party. A large percentage of La Follette's vote came to him,not as the dependable following of a radical leader and radical principles, but for other reasons.

A considerable portion of La Follette's vote was German. Because many of the

German voters regarded La Follette as the one political leader who, during the war, had a sympathetic understanding of their extremely difficult position, there was a disposition among the leaders of that vote to throw it to La Follette, not because of La Follette's principles, but rather in spite of his principles. One great German society, through its officials, formally pledged their support to La Follette; and, in communities in the West where the German vote is solidified and follows local leadership, it went in masses to La Follette. This German vote is not radical and could have no kinship to La Follette except on the basis of La Follette's course during the war in contrast with the course of other American political leaders. On the contrary, the German vote is prevailingly conservative. Aside from the relatively small number of German Socialists, the German voters are thrifty, home-owning, addicted to acceptance of the settled order, the sort of persons whom their neighbors speak of habitually and affectionately as "good citizens"-in all respects faithful to the ideas that make up conservatism.

SMALL RESIDUE OF DISCONTENT

SOFT

O THAT we can fairly deduct, from La we Follette's total vote, that portion of it which is German, and say it is only the remainder that reflects discontent, economic, political, or temperamental; that it is only the remainder that can be looked upon as the dependable basis for a radical party.

Just how large this remainder is, it is difficult to say. It depends on how much we must subtract from his total vote as being other than radical or progressive. At the time the leaders of the Steuben Society promised the German support to La Follette, they estimated six million as the total German vote in this country that would follow their leadership. It turned out that the entire vote La Follette received was less than six millions. If we cut the promise of the Steuben Society officials in half; and estimate that out of La Follette's total of, roughly, five millions, three millions were German;

we can then assume that the remainder of La Follette's vote was of the sort that naturally belongs with him. If this estimate is approximately correct, we can then say that the total of the vote that La Follette got which can be counted on as the basis of a radical or progressive party, is not more than about 6 per cent. of the whole vote of the country.

The fate of the Progressive party was repeatedly cited as precedent for failure on the part of La Follette. As it was said by one who followed Roosevelt in the Progressive enterprise of 1912: "We had the greatest leader, we had the most loyal followers, we had the most appealing platform, we had all the money and resources we could use; if Roosevelt couldn't start a new party under those conditions, then no one can start a new party." That was the verdict of most politicians about La Follette's recent effort, except for a few weeks of apprehension during the latter part of the campaign. That verdict of practical politicians was confirmed by the action of the people at the polls.

ROOSEVELT KNEW THE DIFFICULTIES

OOSEVELT knew well the difficulty of establishing a new party. Not only did he know the difficulty of it; he even doubted the desirability of it. Roosevelt, having regard to the Progressive party as a third party existing alongside the two old parties; and having regard to that party as a separate political organization, apart from it as a body of principles as regards that, Roosevelt did not start out with the intention of starting a new party; did not entertain the wish to form one, except for a brief period at the beginning; did not believe it was desirable that America should have a new and separate party taking in all progressive and liberal thought; and, during approximately fifteen sixteenths of the life the Progressive party had, entertained emotions about its probable permanence that varied from doubt of success to conviction of failure.

Without attempting, here, to go into detail about the situation that was forced

on Roosevelt by the Republican National Convention of 1912, it can be said that it was one of Roosevelt's permanent beliefs that America is better off in the absence of that kind of party division that exists in some countries, namely, one party embracing all the conservatives and another party embracing all the liberals and progressives. Such a system, Roosevelt believed, would lead to government by "violent oscillation"-this was his own phrase-by which he meant periods of extremely conservative government alternating with periods of extremely radical government; and then vice-versa, such as we have seen lately in Great Britain. Roosevelt regarded it as more desirable that we should continue to have in America what we had then and have now, two parties, each of them including some conservatives and some progressives. By this system we have what he used to describe as a particular advantage to believers in progress: we have in each election both parties trying to out-bid each other for the progressive vote by pledges of progressive action. At the same time both parties have the corrective of a conservative balance.

Roosevelt's starting of the Progressive party was not the fruit of his permanent thought. It was the outcome of the circumstances that attended the refusal of the Republican party to give him the Presidential nomination which he felt the majority of the voters in the party wanted him to have, and which he felt also he had fairly won. Without attempting to define more closely the motives that swept him into the organizing of a new party, it can be said that within a week after he had committed himself to it, he was not confident about its success. And at all times during the three years and nine months of existence the party had following its defeat in the election of November, 1912-during all that period Roosevelt, in his more thoughtful moods, felt that the attempt had been a failure and that the new party would not be permanent.

The test by which Roosevelt judged whether or not a permanent party had

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been founded was, not the vote he got for President, but the number of Progressive Congressmen and Senators elected. He knew that the vote he got was largely personal. The true test, he knew, was whether other men, running for other offices, with no basis for appeal

gripping enough; they can rarely be founded on several issues equally emphasized. Political campaigns can be won on one issue if it has the right appeal, better than on several issues.

THE ATTITUDE OF W. J. BRYAN

party, were successful. And when the returns of that election of 1912 showed that out of 435 members of Congress there were only 16 listed as Progressives, and out of 96 senators only 1 Progressive, Roosevelt took that, and not the votes he himself had received, as the true index. When, in the subsequent Congressional and Senatorial campaign of 1914, the Progressives again failed to establish themselves on a parity with the two old parties, the sign was convincing. Thereafter, the failure of the Progressive party, in the sense of an effort to make itself one of the two great American parties, was pretty clear. It lingered for some two years, but with diminishing vitality. There was one relic of the Progressive party that continued for some years, so solitary that it seemed archaic. In the Senate, until 1923, Hiram Johnson of California, who had been elected in 1916. was listed with the word "Progressive" opposite his name in the place where official party designations are set down.

Even worse than Roosevelt's attempt to found a new party failed, La Follette's has failed. Nevertheless, what of La Follette's issues? Shall it be said, as to each and all of La Follette's issues, that not more than a scant 6 or 7 per cent. of the American electorate favor them?

was wiser in this respect than La Follette.

who invented the phrase "paramount issue." Certainly Bryan knew, and practiced, the law of practical political psychology suggested by that phrase. In all his campaigns, Bryan managed that there should be one paramount issue.

In 1896, it was free silver. Great numbers of his party, including many of the Eastern leaders, believed the tariff should be emphasized equally. But Bryan refused. He believed in the tariff as an issue; but he believed more firmly in the practical effectiveness of focussing the attention of the country on one issue only. To those who demanded that the tariff be included as an issue, Bryan replied with one of his favorite devices of alluring utterance, the stating of a thing in words which, while they do not reproduce the Bible literally, call up in the reader's mind some familiar Biblical story, and the atmosphere of Biblical authority. The analogy to what Bryan is saying may not in truth be there; but the atmosphere and emotion favorable to Bryan's position is evoked. Bryan, harking thus subtly back to Herod, said that whereas tariff has slain its thousands, gold has slain its tens of thousands. And on that ground he declined to depart from the device of one issue and one only.

In his second candidacy, in 1900, Bryan did the same. In that year he made his paramount issue Imperialism; in 1908, anti-monopoly. He changed the issue each time, in adaptation to the varying conditions and varying moods of the people. But there was always one paramount issue.

In La Follette's case, voters who might have come to him on one of his issues were repelled by the others. On paper, it looks as if the way to build up a majority of the voters would be by adding the following

of issue a to the following of issue b. In fact, that is the way to neutralize groups of voters.

The truth is, there was not, this year, any one issue upon which a sufficient number of people were stirred, to make it the basis of a successful new party. If La Follette were considering available issues, he might have preferred not to

seeking to make the connotations of the word "monopoly" concrete, adopted a simple device. He said that if one concern has 50 per cent. of the business in its line, it is a monopoly; if only 49 9-10 per cent., the objections to monopoly do not lie against it.

THE FIRST OF FORTY PLANKS

FOLLETTE showed the weight he

have chosen his year for starting his new party, he might have waited until considerable masses of the people should be deeply concerned about some one issue. But his hand was forced by other conditions. La Follette is in his seventieth year. Four years from now, his vitality may not be equal to the immense strain of such a project. And the thing had to be done, if done at all, during La Follette's lifetime. There is no other person in sight about whom a new party could readily crystallize. Figures of such size are not to be found every year. In the present generation, only two, La Follette and Roosevelt, have emerged. If La Follette could not give the impetus to a new party while his energy remains sufficient, there is no other leader in sight. And so, forced by this and some other circumstances, La Follette cast the die in a year and under conditions not otherwise propitious.

placing it first on the list of more than forty planks that composed his platform.

Now the fact is, there have been several years during which La Follette could have made a more momentous start with the anti-monopoly issue, than the present one. There were at least ten years during which monopoly was a-perhaps the foremost issue in popular American thought. It was so in 1908, when Bryan adopted it as his paramount issue. And in 1912, monopoly came close to being the one clear issue between the two parties who were the main contenders in that year. Roosevelt and the Progressives had an attitude toward big business units that could be summarized in some such words as "Let these businesses grow as large as is economically sound-and we will watch them with a big stick." Wilson and the Democrats had an antimonopoly position, which might be expressed as "We will break these great combinations up into competitive units."

Wilson, as Governor of New Jersey, had devised, and had persuaded the legislature to pass, for the purpose of preventing monopoly in the state where most of the great corporations used to get their charters, the "Seven Sisters Laws." The "Seven Sisters" made a considerable furor at the time, but who remembers them now? Wilson, as President, really meant to prevent monopoly, to follow a policy of fostering smaller units of business against their great competitors; and he began by introducing the mechanism of the Federal Trade Commission. The Commission still exists; but with less momentum than it had in the beginning; contending against an attitude on the part of Congress and the courts which is, on the

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whole, not unfairly to be described as unsympathetic; and against comparative indifference on the part of the public.

For the change in the popular attitude toward big units of business, and for the recession in the attitude of the Wilson Administration, the war was partially responsible. With the war, solidarity of industry, coöperation among the units composing each industry, was seen to be, for the purpose of the war, not reprehensible but desirable. There came a time, indeed, when the attitude of the Government came to be one of more or less compelling business men to merge themselves into large units. Competitors in the shoe business, for example, who, in the aggregate, had been making several scores of different styles, were persuaded, almost required, by the Government, to coöperate in reducing the number of their models, and in other aspects of their business. In nearly every industry, similar coöperation was brought about under government sanction and leadership, sometimes under government pressure. The purpose was to achieve economy of man-power. It was largely the same kind of economy that had led business men to feel their way toward greater coöperation, toward large units of industry. This motive, which in peace-time had been merely one of business, became in war-time a motive of government, directed toward greater greater solidarity in the interest of the people, for the more effective and speedy effective and speedy prosecution of the war. The earlier, pre-war attitude of the Wilson Administration toward large units of business lapsed.

Out of this, whether desirably or not, came a greater popular tolerance of combination. The economic benefits of production on a large scale, and the a large scale, and the reduced costs that accompany it, came to outweigh, to some extent, the popular hostility toward combinations because of the suspicion against the power put into the hands of the individuals who control these combinations. Along with this went a greater tolerance on the part of government.

For nearly two decades, it was a major issue in American politics to prevent consolidation of the railroads. One of the two outstanding anti-trust movements ever undertaken by the Government was the preventing of the merger of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads in 1904. Twenty years later, the Government is actually demanding consolidation of the railroads into larger units; and the machinery is at this moment under way bringing practically all the railroads of the country into a smaller number of units. (It should be said that monopoly in railroad transporation, and in other public utilities, is in a different category from monoply in ordinary trades. Nevertheless, this government attitude of beneficence, of compulsion, toward railroad consolidation, is undoubtedly a sign of our current evolution, both in politics and in economics.)

BIG BUSINESS AND POLITICS

A FOLLETTE was not able to call us back to the older attitude toward big units of big units of business. During the recent campaign, who heard people in the smoking cars, or in the other places of congregation where men reveal what is disturbing their minds, talking about monopoly?

I am not sure that La Follette was happy in making clear just what he had in mind about large units of business. One could find it in the shadings of his speeches more definitely than in his formal platform. There is another aspect of "big business," differing from its legal standing or its economic desirability. La Follette was moved by the power "big business" has through its representatives in Congress, in the official personnel of the two parties, and elsewhere. As regards that, there is no such change in either the facts or the popular attitude. The representatives of business in the places of power, and the eagerness of their pressure for special interests, is less now than it has been in the past, but it still exists. If La Follette had been able to make that clear,