state assembly has also its joint caucus of each party for the two houses taken together, and its most important business is perhaps the nomination of United States senators when party exigencies seem to demand it. In like manner, the party members in the House of the Federal legislature meet in caucus for similar purposes. Certain historical applications of the term caucus should also be mentioned. In the somewhat chaotic condition of political organization in early party history the legislative caucus, which was made up of the party members of the two houses of a state assembly, sometimes assumed the right to nominate candidates for state and even for Federal offices. The congressional caucus composed of the party members of the two Houses of Congress exercised for almost the whole of the first quarter of the last century the function of choosing presidential candidates. These secret gatherings, arrogating to themselves the guidance of party conduct, were never acceptable to the people, and in course of time gave place to the more popular party agent, the nominating convention. A convention, as a definite part of the machinery of the party, is the agency for gathering together a number of primaries by means of delegates. The primary, or the caucus, or the mass convention, sends its representatives to act for it in the convention. The ratio of representation is determined by some rule which the party authorities have adopted. In the States the number of delegates assigned to the different areas is usually based upon the party vote for the leading candidate in the last preceding election. In the national conventions of the two principal parties the number of delegates from each State is fixed at twice that of its presidential electors. These rules have been made by the conventions themselves. The national convention which nominates candidates for President and Vice-President is connected through a series of intermediate conventions with the primaries. First, the primaries of a county send delegates to a county convention. All the counties in the State send delegates to a state convention, and delegates from the States and Territories make up the national convention. Party authorities may decide that only the four delegates-at-large shall be chosen by the state convention, and that the two delegates from each congressional district in the State shall be chosen by a district convention. The great nominating conventions of the two chief parties thus represent the mass of the voters in the various States and Territories. Delegates come to them directly from the people, commissioned to act on their behalf in the high duty of expressing a choice for a man to fill the Chief Magistracy of the nation. Meetings of delegates to frame constitutions, or to adopt or reject a proposed constitution, are also called conventions. In these different connections the term is associated with the exercise of the highest political powers. The convention, the primary, and the caucus (when the word is used as a synonym for primary) represent the direct authority of the people. The party committee belongs to a different class, being one step removed from immediate popular control. It is an agency of the convention or the primary. It corresponds to each recurring convention, and is commissioned to act on its behalf. Each important primary has its local committee. These several committees constitute the permanent part of the party organization. Party committees are as numerous as are the important governmental areas to be supplied with elected officers. This implies an enormous number of party officials. In the two great organizations of our chief parties are more persons holding responsible official positions than there are in all the elective civil offices above those of the ward or the township in the whole country. The members of the committees of the party are its constantly active official agents. They guard and foster party interests not only during the campaign periods but also throughout the intervals between conventions and elections; they collect information which is of value to party leaders, and give currency to party opinion. These services are given without pay, though in a few of the most important committees, such as the national committee or a state central committee, there are paid secretaries and clerks. While a very large proportion of the committeemen receives no compensation, it is true that those who consent to bear the burden and heat of the day in party service are accounted worthy of consideration when the party is casting about for recipients of party honors. Many members of the party, however, who render faithful and effective aid in humble and obscure ways, never seek or receive reward or recognition of any sort.1 1 All that is said on the use of terms as applied to party organs is subject to correction from the direct observation of actual usage. The things named are subject to change, and technical definition is difficult or impossible. F. H. Dallinger's "Nominations to Elective Office" and E. C. Meyer's "Nominating Systems" are convenient sources of information upon the whole subject of the working of party machinery. The convention system is fully treated in chaps. x, xi, and xii of J. A. Woodburn's "Political Parties and Party Problems.'' The new Primary Election laws of the various States define the recently added party terms. See also digests of recent legislation by S. G. Lowrie in American Political Science Review, May and August, 1911, and "Primary Elections," by C. E. Merriam, 1908. CHAPTER VI THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE STANDING in intimate relations to the President as the head of his party and holding a position of the highest importance and responsibility in the party, is the national committee. It is the one perpetual and permanent party institution which stands for the unity of the entire party, since in its composition every part of the nation is represented, and its chairman is both the nominal and the actual head of the formal organization-the director and governor of the machine. Historically speaking, the committee has grown in consequence and power with the growth of the party. As the party has become the regular and accepted organ of political expression, the national committee, chosen in orderly manner and surrounded by all the sanctions of an established institution intrenched in the habits and affection of a great people, has supplanted the irregular and self-appointed agencies of the early days and assumed prestige and authority When the Whig party went out, in the years immediately following its defeat in 1852, and the people who had become accustomed to the biparty system of government were left with only half the machinery needed for the working of such a system, |