The names Republican and Democrat are likely to last as convenient designations of the accord reached for national purposes between the vertical organizations which represent economic or other group interests of the people. Unity is thus preserved as well as diversity, which is what upon geographical lines, the Father of the Constitution sought.
You have only to regard the agricultural bloc to perceive the truth of this analysis. Primarily its members are Republicans or Democrats and only secondarily representatives of agriculture. They have rejected leadership of a separatist tendency, choosing the moderate guidance of Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Capper rather than the more individualistic generalship of Mr. Borah or Mr. La Follette. Some day their successors may be primarily representatives of agriculture and only secondarily Republicans or Democrats, but in one of the two big parties they must retain their standing, or share the fate of third parties, a fate made inevitable by the necessity electing of a chief executive at large.
SENATOR ARTHUR I CAPPER OF KANSAS
When the farmer votes for legislators who will represent primarily the farm interest, and the laborer for legislators who will represent primarily the labor interest and the business man for legislators who will represent the business interests self-government will assume a new importance, even though all of these interests will have to be subordinated to the general interest for the sake of coöperation with a party in the choice of an Executive.
I have compared the group organization to the vertical trust of the industrial world. The resemblance is striking. Take the instance of Herr Stinness, the most interesting figure in manufacturing today. Originally he was a coal mine owner. Instead of spreading laterally to monopolize coal he builds upward from his raw material to finished products. He adds iron to his holdings and manufactures electrical supplies and electricity. He owns his own ships for the carrying of his products. He would buy railroads from the German government for the transporting of them. He owns newspapers for political action. And the whole organization culminates with himself in the Reichstag, and in international relations where he is almost as significant a figure as the German government itself.
Mr. Henry Ford, a lesser person, started at the other end and organized downward to the raw material. He now owns his own mines, his railroads for shipping, his raw material and products, his steel foundries, the factories which turn out his finished products, his weekly newspaper, and he is himself a political figure of no one yet knows how much importance.