To one who witnessed the break-up of the Whig party in 1853 and of the Democratic Party in 1860 the plight in which parties find themselves at this time may be described as at least, suggestive. The feeling is at once to laugh and to whistle. Too much "fuss and feathers" in Winfield Scott did the business for the Whigs. Too much "bearded lady" in Charles Evans Hughes perhaps cooked the goose of the Republicans. Too much Wilson--but let me not fall into _lèse majesté_. The Whigs went into Know-Nothingism and Free Soilism. Will the Democrats go into Prohibition and paternalism? And the Republicans--
The old sectional alignment of North and South has been changed to East and West.
For the time being the politicians of both parties are in something of a funk. It is the nature of parties thus situate to fancy that there is no hereafter, riding in their dire confusion headlong for a fall. Little other than the labels being left, nobody can tell what will happen to either.
Progressivism seems the cant of the indifferent. Accentuated by the indecisive vote in the elections and heralded by an ambitious President who writes Humanity bigger than he writes the United States, and is accused of aspiring to world leadership, democracy unterrified and undefiled--the democracy of Jefferson, Jackson and Tilden ancient history--has become a back number. Yet our officials still swear to a Constitution. We have not eliminated state lines. State rights are not wholly dead.
The fight between capital and labor is on. No one can predict where it will end. Shall it prove another irrepressible conflict? Are its issues irreconcilable? Must the alternative of the future lie between Socialism and Civil War, or both? Progress! Progress! Shall there be no stability in either actualities or principles? And--and--what about the Bolsheviki?
Parties, like men, have their ups and downs. Like machines they get out of whack and line. First it was the Federalists, then the Whigs, and then the Democrats. Then came the Republicans. And then, after a long interruption, the Democrats again. English political experience repeats itself in America.
A taking label is as valuable to a party as it is to a nostrum. It becomes in time an asset. We are told that a fool is born every minute, and, the average man being something of a fool, the label easily catches him. Hence the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.