er, by the opportunities of place and
personal gain in the organization. The one kind typifies the body of
voters; the other the dominant minority of the party.

When one speaks, then, of a party in America, he embraces in that term:
first, the tenets or platform for which the party assumes to stand
(i.e., principles that may have been wrought out of experience, may have
been created by public opinion, or were perhaps merely made out of hand
by manipulators); secondly, the voters who profess attachment to these
principles; and thirdly, the political expert, the politician with his
organization or machine. Between the expert and the great following are
many gradations of party activity, from the occasional volunteer to the
chieftain who devotes all his time to "politics."

It was discovered very early in American experience that without
organization issues would disintegrate and principles remain but
scintillating axioms. Thus necessity enlisted executive talent and
produced the politician, who, having once achieved an organization,
remained at his post to keep it intact between elections and used it for
purposes not always prompted by the public welfare.

In colonial days, when the struggle began between Crown and Colonist,
the colonial patriots formed clubs to designate their candidates for
public office. In Massachusetts these clubs were known as "caucuses," a
word whose derivation is unknown, but which has now become fixed in our
political vocabulary. These early caucuses in Boston have been described
as follows: "Mr. Samuel Adams' father and twenty others, one or two from
the north end of the town, where all the ship business is carried on,
used to meet, make a caucus, and lay their plans for introducing certain
persons into places of trust and power. When they had settled it, they
separated, and used each their particular influence within his own
circle. He and his friends would furnish themselves with ballots,
including the names of the parties fixed upon, which they distributed
on the day of election. By acting in concert together with a careful and
extensive distribution of ballots they generally carried the elections
to their own mind."

As the revolutionary propaganda increased in momentum, caucuses assumed
a more open character. They were a sort of informal town meeting, where
neighbors met and agreed on candidates and the means of electing them.
After the adoption of the Constitution, the same methods wer