We face in government perhaps what it is said we face in industry and in war, organization on such a scale that men are no longer masters of it. Under such circumstances there is nothing to do but to break it up into its component parts. That is what the group or bloc system is, a resolution into component parts.
It is precisely what will happen in the industrial field if the great combinations of twenty years ago prove too unwieldy. The vertical trust, the single industry, organized like the Stinnes group or like the Henry Ford industry from the raw material to the finished product but seeking no monopoly, promises to take the place of the horizontal trust of monopolistic tendency. The bloc is a vertical organization appearing in the field of politics, which hitherto has been dominated by the horizontal organization of the parties.
A vertical organization, like everything vertical in this world, tends to rest upon the solid earth. It has its base in reality. The bloc introduces reality into public life. It will be represented by men who are not ashamed to stand frankly for the selfish interests of their group.
When we banished selfish interests from the government a few years ago we banished all interests—and even all interest, too—leaving very little but hypocrisy and timidity. The representatives of a group will not have to be all things to all men as our party men are, but only one thing to one kind of men.
If we cannot get our present parties to stand for anything, if for the same reason we cannot form a new party to stand for anything, we can at least introduce principles into politics through the force of group support. Blocs will be positive, not merely negative as the parties have become. They do not have to please everybody. They can and must be constructive.
The clash of ideas which we miss between parties may take place between blocs. I am assuming, as everyone in Washington does, that the farm bloc is only a forerunner of other similar political efforts, for every economic interest which is organized among the voters may extend itself vertically into Congress.
There will be a gain in decentralization, there will be a gain in honesty, there will be a gain in constructive political effort through the direct representation of the real interests of society in Congress.
Nor does there appear any danger of the break up into utterly unrelated minorities such as has taken place, let us say, in France and Germany. We have what most European countries has not, an elected Executive who plays an important part in legislation, the President with his veto power. So long as the presidential office retains this function, and it is always likely to retain it, there must be national parties within which the minorities, interests, or occupational groups, must coöperate.
Groups will not be able in this country as in Europe to elect members of the national legislature independently, then form a combination and pick their own Executive. They are under compulsion to elect the Executive at large by the votes of the whole people; they must hold together enough for that purpose.
The centrifugal tendency of minorities in the American system is thus effectively restrained. Groups must work within the parties, as the agricultural bloc has done and as the proposed liberal workers bloc promises to do. A handful of seats in Congress alone is not worth fighting for: that is why all third party movements have failed. A handful of seats in a European parliament is worth having; it may dictate the choice of the Executive; that is why parties are numerous abroad. In other words "bloc" is a useful name as indicating a radical departure in our political system but it contains no threat for this country of the political disintegration prevailing in Europe.