The old party bosses are dead. No machine leader will control as many delegates in the next national convention as will Mr. Gray Silver. So far as delegates are now led they are led by Senators and Representatives. A Senate group chose Mr. Harding at Chicago. And Senators and Representatives lie at the mercy of organized minorities.
The Republican party in 1920 was an agglomeration of minorities, held together by no better binder than the negation of Wilsonism. There were the German vote, the Irish vote and the other foreign votes; the farmer vote, the business vote, the old American vote, the frightened vote, the herd vote and every conceivable kind of vote. It was in effect a bloc, in the European sense of that word, a combination of small parties. These minorities were mostly unorganized in 1920 or imperfectly organized; their development vertically is now going on. Some of them will appear as definitely upon the floor of the 1924 convention as the agricultural group has upon the floor of Congress.
With the organization of minorities Congress becomes important, for it is in Congress that the Fathers in their wisdom provided for the expression of minorities. The Presidency, according to the argument used before in this book, dwindles to a charming embodiment of that great American negative—nationwide public opinion. The only ordinarily available positive—group opinion—finds its play in the Legislature. There will be determined upon whose shoulders the taxes will be shifted, who shall have effective rebates in freight rates, and more important still, who shall use for his group interests the government control of credit. Where these questions are being decided there public attention will concentrate. There will be the stress upon government.
GREY SILVER, THE MAN BEHIND THE FARM BLOC
As Congress becomes more important better men will be drawn into it. There will be a gain to public life in this country from emphasis upon the parliamentary side of government. As it is now only one prize in American politics is worth while and that is the Presidency. And there is no known rule by which men may attain to it. Candidates for it are chosen at random, from governing a State, from an obscure position in the Senate, from the army, it may be; in no case does it come as the certain reward of national service.
And if, as happened when Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson were made President, really able men attain the office, they may serve their country only four years, or eight years at most, and then must retire from view. In England, for example, similar men are at the head of the government or leading the opposition for the greater part of a lifetime. English public life would inevitably look richer than ours even were it not richer, for when they breed a statesman in England they use him for years. We discard him after four or eight years. We have not the system for developing statesmen and when by chance we find one we waste him.