American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

The Caucus.

Both the “Independents” of Pennsylvania and the “Half-Breeds” of New York at first proclaimed their opposition to the caucus system of nominating candidates for U. S. Senators, and the newspapers in their interest wrote as warmly for a time against “King Caucus” as did the dissatisfied Democratic journals in the days of De Witt Clinton. The situation, however, was totally different, and mere declamation could not long withstand the inevitable. In Pennsylvania almost nightly “conferences” were held by the Independents, as indeed they were in New York, though in both States a show of hostility was kept up to nominating in party caucus men who were to be elected by representative, more plainly legislative votes. It was at first claimed that in the Legislature each man ought to act for himself or his constituents, but very shortly it was found that the caucuses of the separate wings were as binding upon the respective wings as they could have been upon the whole. Dead-locks were interminable as long as this condition of affairs obtained, and hostility to the caucus system was before very long quietly discouraged and finally flatly abandoned, for each struggle was ended by the ratification of a general caucus, and none of them could have been ended without it. The several attempts to find other means to reach a result, only led the participants farther away from the true principle, under republican forms at least, of the right of the majority to rule. In Pennsylvania, when Mr. Oliver withdrew, fifty of his friends assembled and informally named General Beaver, and by this action sought to bind the original 95 friends of Oliver. Their conduct was excused by the plea that they represented a majority of their faction. It failed to bind all of the original number, though some of the Independents were won. The Independents, rather the original 44, bound themselves in writing not to change their course of action unless there was secured the previous concurrence of two-thirds, and this principle was extended to the 56 who supported Mr. Bayne. Then when the joint committee of 24 was agreed upon, it was bound by a rule requiring three-fourths to recommend a candidate. All of these were plain departures from a great principle, and the deeper the contest became, the greater the departure. True, these were but voluntary forms, but they were indefensible, and are only referred to now to show the danger of mad assaults upon great principles when personal and factious aims are at stake. Opposition to the early Congressional caucus was plainly right, since one department of the Government was by voluntary agencies actually controlling another, while the law gave legal forms which could be more properly initiated through voluntary action. The writer believes, and past contests all confirm the view that the voluntary action can only be safely employed by the power by the law with the right of selection. Thus the people elect township, county and State officers, and it is their right and duty by the best attainable voluntary action to indicate their choice. This is done through the caucus or convention, the latter not differing from the former save in extent and possibly breadth of representation. The same rule applies to all offices elective by the people. It cannot properly apply to appointive offices, and while the attempt to apply it to the election of U. S. Senators shows a strong desire on the part, frequently of the more public-spirited citizens, to exercise a greater share in the selection of these officers than the law directly gives them, yet their representatives can very properly be called upon to act as they would act if they had direct power in the premises, and such action leads them into a party caucus, where the will of the majority of their respective parties can be fairly ascertained, and when ascertained respected. The State Legislatures appoint U. S. Senators, and the Representatives and Senators of the States are bound to consider in their selection the good of the entire State. If this comports with the wish of their respective districts, very well; if it does not, their duty is not less plain. Probably the time will never come when the people will elect United States Senators; to do that is to radically change the Federal system, and to practically destroy one of the most important branches of the Government; yet he is not a careful observer who does not note a growing disposition on the part of the people, and largely the people of certain localities, and imaginary political sub-divisions, to control these selections. The same is true of Presidential nominations, where masses of people deny the right of State Conventions to instruct their delegates-at-large. In many States the people composing either of the great parties now select their own representative delegates to National Conventions, and where their selections are not respected, grave party danger is sure to follow. There is nothing wrong in this, since it points to, and is but paving the way for a more popular selection of Presidents and Vice-Presidents—to an eventual selection of Presidential electors probably by Congressional districts. Yet those to be selected at large must through practical voluntary forms be nominated in that way, and the partisan State Convention is the best method yet devised for this work, and its instructions should be as binding as those of the people upon their representatives. In this government of ours there is voluntary and legal work delegated to the people directly; there is legal work delegated to appointing powers, and an intelligent discrimination should ever be exercised between the two. “Render unto Cæsar those things which are Cæsar’s,” unless there be a plain desire, backed by a good reason, to promote popular reforms as enduring as the practices and principles which they are intended to support.

Fredrick W. Whitridge, in an able review of the caucus system published[^[39]] in Lalor’s Encyclopædia of Political Science, says:

“A caucus, in the political vocabulary of the United States, is primarily a private meeting of voters holding similar views, held prior to an election for the purpose of furthering such views at the election. With the development of parties, and the rule of majorities, the caucus or some equivalent has become an indispensable adjunct to party government, and it may now be defined as a meeting of the majority of the electors belonging to the same party in any political or legislative body held preliminary to a meeting thereof, for the purpose of selecting candidates to be voted for, or for the purpose of determining the course of the party at the meeting of the whole body. The candidates of each party are universally selected by caucus, either directly or indirectly through delegates to conventions chosen in caucuses. In legislative bodies the course of each party is often predetermined with certainty in caucus, and often discussion between parties has been, in consequence, in some degree superseded. The caucus system is, in short, the basis of a complete electoral system which has grown up within each party, side by side with that which is alone contemplated by the laws. This condition has in recent years attracted much attention, and has been bitterly announced as an evil. It was, however, early foreseen. John Adams, in 1814, wrote in the “Tenth Letter on Government:” “They have invented a balance to all balance in their caucuses. We have congressional caucuses, state caucuses, county caucuses, city caucuses, district caucuses, town caucuses, parish caucuses, and Sunday caucuses at church doors, and in these aristocratical caucuses elections have been decided.” The caucus is a necessary consequence of majority rule. If the majority is to define the policy of a party, there must be some method within each party of ascertaining the mind of the majority, and settling the party programme, before it meets the opposing party at the polls. The Carlton and Reform clubs discharge for the Tories and Liberals many of the functions of a congressional caucus. Meetings of the members of the parties in the reichstag, the corps legislatif and the chamber of deputies are not unusual, although they have generally merely been for consultation, and neither in England, France, Germany or Italy, has any such authority been conceded to the wish of the majority of a party as we have rested in the decision of a caucus. What has been called a caucus has been established by the Liberals of Birmingham, England, as to which, see a paper by W. Fraser Rae, in the “International Review” for August, 1880. The origin of the term caucus is obscure. It has been derived from the Algonquin word Kaw-kaw-wus—to consult, to speak—but the more probable derivation makes it a corruption of caulkers. In the early politics of Boston, and particularly during the early difficulties between the townsmen and the British troops, the seafaring men and those employed about the ship yards were prominent among the town-people, and there were numerous gatherings which may have very easily come to be called by way of reproach a meeting of caulkers, after the least influential class who attended them, or from the caulking house or caulk house in which they were held. What was at first a derisive description, came to be an appellation, and the gatherings of so-called caulkers became a caucus. John Pickering, in a vocabulary of words and phrases peculiar to the United States (Boston, 1816), gives this derivation of the word, and says several gentlemen mentioned to him that they had heard this derivation. Gordon, writing in 1774, says: “More than fifty years ago Mr. Samuel Adams’ father and twenty others, one or two from the north end of the town where all the ship business is carried on, used to meet, make a caucus and lay their plan for introducing certain persons into places of trust and power. When they had settled it they separated, and each used their particular influence within his own circle. He and his friends would furnish themselves with ballots, including the names of the parties fixed upon, which they distributed on the days of election. By acting in concert, together with a careful and extensive distribution of ballots, they generally carried their elections to their own mind. In like manner it was that Mr. Samuel Adams first became a representative for Boston.” (History of the American Revolution, vol. i., p. 365.) February, 1763, Adams writes in his diary: “This day I learned that the caucus club meets at certain times in the garret of Tom Dawes, the adjutant of the Boston regiment. He has a large house and he has a movable partition in his garret which he takes down and the whole club meets in his room. There they smoke tobacco until they cannot see one end of the room from another. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, wardens, fire wards and representatives are regularly chosen in the town. Uncle Fairfield, Story, Ruddock, Adams, Cooper, and a rudis indigestaques moles of others, are members. They send committees to wait on the merchants’ club, and to propose in the choice of men and measures. Captain Cunningham says, they have often solicited him to go to the caucuses; they have assured him their benefit in his business, etc.” (Adams’ Works, vol. ii., p. 144.) Under the title caucus should be considered the congressional nominating caucus; the caucuses of legislative assemblies; primary elections, still known outside the larger cities as caucuses; the evils which have been attributed to the latter, and the remedies which have been proposed. These will accordingly be mentioned in the order given.

“The democratic system is the result of the reorganization of the various anti-Tammany democratic factions, brought about, in 1881, by a practically self-appointed committee of 100. Under this system primary elections are to be held annually in each of 678 election districts, at which all democratic electors resident in the respective districts may participate, provided they were registered at the last general election. The persons voting at any primary shall be members of the election district association for the ensuing year, which is to be organized in January of each year. The associations may admit democratic residents in their respective districts, who are not members, to membership, and they have general supervision of the interests of the party within their districts. Primaries are held on not less than four days’ public notice, through the newspapers, of the time and place, and at the appointed time the meeting is called to order by the chairman of the election district association, provided twenty persons be present; if that number shall not be present, the meeting may be called to order with a less number, at the end of fifteen minutes. The first business of the meeting is to select a chairman, and all elections of delegates or committeemen shall take place in open meeting. Each person, as he offers to vote, states his name and residence, which may be compared with the registration list at the last election, and each person shall state for whom he votes, or he may hand to the judges an open ballot, having designated thereon the persons for whom he votes, and for what positions. Nominations are all made by conventions of delegates from the districts within which the candidate to be chosen is to be voted for. There is an assembly district committee in each assembly district, composed of one delegate for each 100 votes or fraction thereof, from each election district within the assembly district. There is also a county committee composed of delegates from each of the assembly district committees. The function of these committees is generally to look after the interests of the parties within their respective spheres. This system is too new for its workings to be as yet fairly criticised. It may prove a really popular system, or it may prove only an inchoate form of the other systems. At present it can only be said that the first primaries under it were participated in by 27,000 electors.

“The evils of the caucus and primary election systems lie in the stringent obligation which is attached to the will of a formal majority; in the fact that the process of ascertaining what the will of the majority is, has been surrounded with so many restrictions that the actual majority of votes are disfranchised, and take no part in that process, so that the formal majority is in consequence no longer the majority in fact, although it continues to demand recognition of its decisions as such.

“The separation between the organization and the party, between those who nominate and those who elect, is the sum of the evils of the too highly organized caucus system. It has its roots in the notion that the majority is right, because it is the majority, which is the popular view thus expressed by Hammond: ‘I think that when political friends consent to go into caucus for the nomination of officers, every member of such caucus is bound in honor to support and carry into effect its determination. If you suspect that determination will be so preposterous that you cannot in conscience support it, then you ought on no account to become one of its members. To try your chance in a caucus, and then, because your wishes are not gratified, to attempt to defeat the result of the deliberation of your friends, strikes me as a palpable violation of honor and good faith. You caucus for no other possible purpose than under the implied argument that the opinion and wishes of the minority shall be yielded to the opinions of the majority, and the sole object of caucusing is to ascertain what is the will of the majority. I repeat that unless you intend to carry into effect the wishes of the majority, however contrary to your own, you have no business at a caucus.’ (Political History of New York, vol. i., p. 192).—In accordance with this theory, the will of the majority becomes obligatory as soon as it is made known, and one cannot assist at a caucus in order to ascertain the will of the majority, without thereby being bound to follow it; and the theory is so deeply rooted that, under the caucus and primary election system, it has been extended to cases in which the majorities are such only in form.

“The remedies as well as the evils of the caucus and nominating system have been made the subject of general discussion in connection with civil service reform. It is claimed that that reform, by giving to public officers the same tenure of their positions which is enjoyed by the employes of a corporation or a private business house, or during the continuance of efficiency or good behaviour, would abolish or greatly diminish the evils of the caucus system by depriving public officers of the illegitimate incentive to maintain it under which they now act. Other more speculative remedies have been suggested. It is proposed, on the one hand, to very greatly diminish the number of elective officers, and, in order to do away with the predetermination of elections, to restrict the political action of the people in their own persons to districts so small that they can meet together and act as one body, and that in all other affairs than those of these small districts the people should act by delegates. The theory here seems to be to get rid of the necessity for election and nominating machinery. (See ‘A True Republic,’ by Albert Strickney, New York, 1879; and a series of articles in Scribner’s Monthly for 1881, by the same writer). On the other hand, it is proposed to greatly increase the number of elections, by taking the whole primary system under the protection of the law.[^[40]] This plan proposes: 1. The direct nomination of candidates by the members of the respective political parties in place of nominations by delegates in conventions. 2. To apply the election laws to primary elections. 3. To provide that both political parties shall participate in the same primary election instead of having a different caucus for each party. 4. To provide for a final election to be held between two candidates, each representative of a party who have been selected by means of the primary election. This plan would undoubtedly do away with the evils of the present caucus system, but it contains no guarantee that a new caucus system would not be erected for the purpose of influencing ‘the primary election’ in the same manner in which the present primary system now influences the final election. (See however ‘The Elective Franchise in the United States,’ New York, 1880, by D. C. McClellan.)—The effective remedy for the evils of the caucus system will probably be found in the sanction of primary elections by law. * * * Bills for this purpose were introduced by the Hon. Erastus Brooks in the New York Legislature in 1881, which provided substantially for the system proposed by Mr. McClellan, but they were left unacted upon, and no legislative attempt to regulate primaries, except by providing for their being called, and for their procedure, has been made elsewhere. In Ohio what is known as the Baber law provides that where any voluntary political association orders a primary, it must be by a majority vote of the central or controlling committee of such party or association; that the call must be published for at least five days in the newspapers, and state the time and place of the meeting, the authority by which it was called, and the name of the person who is to represent that authority at each poll. The law also provides for challenging voters, for punishment of illegal voting, and for the bribery or intervention of electors or judges. (Rev. Stat. Ohio, secs. 2916–2921.) A similar law in Missouri is made applicable to counties only of over 100,000 inhabitants, but by this law it is made optional with the voluntary political association whether it will or not hold its primaries under the law, and if it does, it is provided that the county shall incur no expense in the conduct of such elections. (Laws of Missouri, 1815, p. 54.) A similar law also exists in California. (Laws of California, 1865–1866, p. 438.) These laws comprise all the existing legislation on the subject, except what is known as the Landis Bill of 1881, which requires primary officers to take an oath, and which punishes fraud.”