their own, with no attempt at agreement upon dates. Furthermore, hardly any two of these State systems were alike in all respects. Under what motive or stimulus did the presidential primary movement gain such favor that a large number of States adopted it? It is the plain truth of political history that the great national party conventions were not regarded as truly representative of party sentiment. Methods of choosing delegates in the different States had been subjected to severe criticism. Thus delegates from all the Southern States sat in the Republican National Convention in the ratio of the population of their States, even when it was well known that no electoral votes could be secured in those States for a Republican candidate. There were tempting opportunities for machine politics and for the manipulation of delegations by so-called "bosses." The presidential primary system sprung into being in order to secure a check upon the professional politicians.

"Primaries" Admittedly a Failure

Furthermore, in 1912, there was a rivalry between two eminent Republican candidates which seemed to call for a preliminary referendum. These two candidates had both occupied the presidential chair and needed no publicity effort on anybody's part. Thus in certain States, as, for example, in Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or Illinois, the conditions in 1912 made the popular primary seem to be a desirable test. There were many who believed at that time that the days of the great conventions were at an end. It was predicted that the primary system would be standardized, that nominations would be secured by popular referendum, and that the conventions would merely ratify the main choice, name candidates for the Vice-Presidency, adopt platforms, and adjourn. Such predictions have not been justified, however, in the course of political events. Immense efforts have been made in many States this year to secure victories in these presidential preference primaries that would help to shape the decisions of the great party conventions. The process did not, however, turn out to the satisfaction of any candidates whose friends ventured to seek a popular verdict in advance.

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SENATOR HIRAM W. JOHNSON, OF CALIFORNIA (Mr. Johnson's personal campaign had been aggressive and somewhat spectacular. The Convention was obliged to compromise upon a candidate whose positions were regarded as less extreme)

General Leonard Wood. Next was Governor Lowden, of Illinois. A little later the candidacy of Senator Hiram Johnson, of California, came forward in a dashing and brilliant way. The candidacy of Mr. Herbert Hoover was not so much tested in other primaries, but it secured a large popular vote in California in view of Senator Johnson's immense strength in his own State. Senator Harding's candidacy was not greatly pushed outside of his own State of Ohio and such neighboring States as Kentucky and Indiana. The object of the primary system was to bring the candidates frankly and directly before the people in order to guard against such invisible manipulations by political leaders in accord with private interests as might control the conventions and secure the nomination of a ticket not in the best sense representative of the party's aspirations. But a primary system having these commendable purposes is not an easy thing to deal with in practical experience. The more prominent the candidate by reason of the sincere good will of a host of citizens, the more difficult it becomes to ignore the fact that the State

laws provide for the primary test. Experience, moreover, has shown that the primary test cannot be met by a nation-wide candidate without organization and heavy expense.

Money 1 and Results

It has always been admitted that a party may legitimately expend several million dollars in pushing the campaign after the conventions have made their nominations and before election day. But it should be remembered that the preliminary primaries are also election contests, and that men who have been made active candidates by reason of their prominence and popularity cannot well go through with these ordeals without organization and publicity work that runs into large expenditures. Men who are known as receptive candidates, and who do not rely upon personal popularity but upon the chances of a deadlocked convention, have no temptation to expend sums of money in the preliminary contests. It is not fitting, therefore, that they should disparage those candidates who took the trouble and risk of having their names entered in various State primary elec

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GENERAL LEONARD WOOD AND MRS. WOOD, AS
PHOTOGRAPHED AT CHICAGO

(General Wood was a strong candidate with one-third of the Convention, but failed to prove himself the second choice of an additional 200 delegates)

tions. It would be absurd to claim that the mere expenditure of money secured delegates who went to Chicago prepared to vote for Hiram Johnson on the first ballot. It is equally beside the truth to attribute the votes

that went to General Wood or Governor

Lowden or Senator Harding to the expenditure of money by the respective campaign managers in northern States holding primary elections.

Harmful Ordeal

had been no

It is not probable that these candidates would have fared worse in the convention if there State primaries for the presidency. All of them were before the country for no reason except that they were regarded as good presidential timber by great numbers of their fellow citizens. The money raised and expended in the preliminary contests, far from being used to secure political, manipulation, was used mainly for opposite reasons. The primary system has not been at all adapted to the political conditions of the present year. It has been a useless ordeal, tending to hurt rather than to help the candidates. Leading Republican candidates, however, could not very well ignore the existence of the State laws that provided for the primary contest. If a man were unfit in either a public or a private sense for the presidency, the more money his backers should expend to bring him prominently before the people, the more certainly would his unfit-j ness be exposed. This is a very large country, and the conduct of an organized political effort is not a matter of a few dollars. The total expenditure on behalf of General Wood was probably not enough to send a single letter with a single small pamphlet by mail to each voter in the country. number of candidates had been named in advance for both great parties, and all of them were upright and able men. There was no possibility of influencing either great convention this year by improper methodsmuch less by bribery and corruption.

Candidates and the Investigation

A

It was, perhaps, useful upon the whole that the facts about preliminary expenditures should have been brought out by the sub-committee at Washington under the chairmanship of Senator Kenyon. But many readers of newspapers were misdirected, either by headlines or by comment, into forming the opinion that there had been an intentional misuse of large funds to secure the Republican nomination

for General Wood or Governor Lowden, and to secure the Democratic nomination for Mr. McAdoo. The facts as disclosed did not lead to any such conclusions. The thing that stands most evidently condemned as a result of the inquiry at Washington is the presidential primary itself, at least as now provided for under the different State laws. Governor Lowden preferred to spend his own money, while on General Wood's behalf a large sum was advanced by a disinterested friend of undoubted honor, sincerity, and patriotism. It became evident after the inquiry that these expenditures had somehow hurt the prestige of Governor Lowden and General Wood as candidates. Yet the thing at fault was the system. These two candidates themselves were doubtless as free from any thought of spending money in improper ways as were the other candidates. In the light of all the facts and circumstances, there should be improvement made in the primary system, or else it should be abandoned.

How the

Furthermore, it should be kept Primary System clearly in mind that these cumBegan bersome and expensive primaries for getting at the real preference of Republican voters were adopted, not because a choice by great conventions with about a thousand delegates was intrinsically to be condemned, but simply because the Republican National Convention was not fairly representative of the actual Republican voters. The Democratic party, for obvious reasons having to do with the distribution of the Democratic vote, can get along very well with a convention made up of delegates apportioned to the States in accordance with

Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Florida are accorded as many delegates as the Northern States of like population, upon whose voting the fate of a Republican candidate must wholly depend.

The Southern

With one or two hundreds of delegates in the Republican ConDelegations vention from States in which the Republican party is practically non-existent, there is serious danger that, in a time when the delegates from actual Republican States are divided in opinion, the ticket may be made and the platform shaped by groups of Southern delegates-holding the balance of power -who can do nothing after the convention is over for the success of the ticket or the platform. The great Republican split of 1912 was brought about by this state of affairs. Control of the convention by a bare majority turned upon contests between rival Southern delegations. The situation tempts the managers of leading candidates to invade the South long before convention time and organize their own groups of politicians. Through a week or more preceding the opening of the Republican Convention at Chicago on June 8, the National Committee was occupied in dealing with contests from almost every one of these Southern States. All sincere and intelligent Republicans realized the impropriety of the system that had produced these contests. Everyone testifies that this year's contests were patiently heard at Chicago, and adjusted with scrupulous fairness. But the system itself was seen to be wrong and fraught with danger.

The

Old Rule as Modified

After the disastrous split of 1912 the rules were changed so as to allot only one delegate instead of two delegates to each Congress District in which less than 7500 votes had been cast for the Republican ticket in the next preceding election. This new rule resulted in reducing the representation of Texas from 40 delegates to 23, of Louisiana from 20 to 12, of Arkansas from 18 to 13, of Alabama from 24 to 14, of Georgia from 28 to 17, of South Carolina from 18 to 11, of Florida from 12 to 8, and of Virginia from 24 to 16. North Carolina lost only two delegates and Tennessee only four. Every State in the Union retained its four delegates-at-large, regardless of population or of Republican votes. More than a hundred of these Southern seats were contested at Chicago in the

recent convention. They were all from States which will probably give large majorities to the Democratic ticket in November.

Drastic Reform

Now
Expected

If the Republicans should leave undisturbed the 192 delegatesat-large, assigned equally to the forty-eight States, and should base about 800 seats in the convention upon actual Republican votes as cast in previous elections, they would secure a convention body so fairly able to express Republican sentiment that the cumbersome preference primaries might well fall into disuse. Any rearrangements to make the national convention truly representative and to keep the National Republican Committee and the State Republican Committees in reasonable accord with prevailing party sentiment would obviously strengthen the party and at the same time react favorably upon the political and governmental conditions of the country at large. In the closing moments of the convention at Chicago, after the ticket had been agreed upon, a rule was adopted authorizing the National Committee to deal with the problem of representation; and we may expect a reformed system before 1924.

Conventions Always Are Disappointing

The Democratic party at San Francisco will reach results that must inevitably disappoint many people; and in the first smart of resentment over what will have upset their plans or rendered futile their preliminary labors, they will say bitter and disparaging things. This is what always happens at the end of every national convention of either great party. But if it is probable in advance that there will be a stubborn contest at San Francisco, with many people doomed to disappointment, how much more certain was it, in the opening days of June, that the Republicans were not going to end their convention at Chicago in a love feast of overflowing enthusiasm. The Democratic primaries have this year made no particular impression, because the party situation has been overshadowed by the influence of the White House. But several Republican candidates had been compelled by circumstances to take the primary contest seriously, and their managers had gone to Chicago prepared to force conclusions. much feeling had been aroused within party circles that when the convention opened on June 8 it was not believed by careful and detached observers that any one of the three leading candidates could win.

So

The Deadlock

at Chicago

The Republican convention consisted of 984 members, and half of these plus one, namely 493, were requisite to success. General Leonard Wood began with 2871⁄2 on the first ballot and reached his highest vote, 3142, on the fourth ballot. Governor Lowden, of Illinois, began with 2111⁄2 on the first ballot and ultimately obtained the same strength as General Wood. The highest number of votes received by Senator Johnson was 148, on the third ballot. The great delegations of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were predominantly against General Wood, and also against Senator Johnson. The Wood supporters and also the Johnson supporters were in the main resolutely opposed to Governor Lowden. It is quite possible that Lowden might have been nominated but for the Senate investigation and the disclosures regarding the use of money in Missouri. Delegates were disposed to regard Lowden himself as the unlucky victim of this episode, and he came through the convention retaining the personal respect and good will of everybody concerned; but it was widely asserted that his availability as a candidate had been seriously injured.

The

The convention itself was a Convention most reputable and well-conItself ducted body of men and women. It opened on Tuesday morning and closed Saturday evening. It had become evident Saturday forenoon that a compromise candidate must be found, and Senator Warren G. Harding, of Ohio, best met the conditions. A ninth ballot to test out the disposition of the convention toward Ohio's candidate proved favorable, and on the tenth, with Pennsylvania and New York ready for agreement, the nomination of Warren G. Harding was accomplished with a large margin to spare. The delegates had become fatigued and were eager to return to their homes, to escape the heat and the exactions of hotel-keepers. The balloting had not begun until the middle of Friday afternoon. The convention's time for three days seemed to be frittered away by futilities; but, quite regardless of the postponement of the voting, there had been undercurrents in constant motion. It is reasonable to express the opinion that the convention actually arrived at deliberate results, although its final conclusion came by a series of negative verdicts rather than by positive affirmation. When on Friday the orators named their candidates there

HON. WARREN G. HARDING, SENATOR FROM OHIO (Mr. Harding was nominated for the presidency at Chicago on the tenth ballot, having received 692 votes)

was protracted applause, successively, for Wood, Lowden, and Johnson; but the gallery demonstrations were not infectious or convincing, although they were led by strong bodies of voting delegates.

Some Marks

Sentiment

When Mr. Herbert Hoover's of name was presented there was no delegate whatever to start a demonstration, demonstration, but there was prolonged cheering and flag waving in the galleries, and it seemed to be spontaneous. There were many men and women of great intelligence attending the convention who were advocates of Hoover; and Hoover headquarters were maintained on a generous scale. But on the first ballot Hoover received only 512 votes, and the highest number cast for him was 92 on the last ballot, when the earlier alignments were breaking up. As we have remarked in previous numbers of the REVIEW, there had been a general disposition to nomi