certain percentage of votes, in order to receive a place on the official ballot. Other candidates may be put in nomination and their names placed upon the official ballot by giving to the proper officer a petition signed by a certain number of qualified voters. The number required for state officers varies from 6,000 in New York to 50 in Mississippi, and the percentage from one-half of one per cent in Pennsylvania to five per cent in California. For Congressional and local nominations a smaller number is generally required; and states requiring a percentage usually hold to the same percentage.

The Party Machine. In order to do effective work there must be some permanent party organization. This is found in the party committee. Each political party has city, county, and state committees. These committees, either alone or associated with other politicians, are known by their friends as "the organization" and by their enemies as "the machine." To the organization belongs the duty of arranging meetings, sending out campaign literature, collecting money to pay the expenses of the campaign, calling conventions, and other necessary work of like character.

"The organization becomes dangerous when it passes beyond initiative and suggestion and routine work, and assumes the sole right to select persons for party nomination; or when, by preventing a fair expression of the will of the party voters, it forces unfit candidates upon the ticket; or when, going to the furthest extreme, it arranges with the worst elements in the other party for a division of the public employments and public contracts for private benefit.”

'Hart, "Actual Government," pp. 98-99.

The Boss. Within every political organization there is sure to be a leader. Such leadership, if directed toward the public welfare, becomes a powerful force for good. At his worst the boss is determined to hold the offices for his friends. In order to do this he will use every opportunity to strengthen his political following; many men will be attached to him by his personality, and more by the advantages he can give them. A successful ward boss will bail his political friends out of jail when they are in trouble, will secure positions for them in the public service or from contractors who wish his favor, will furnish relief for the unfortunate, and in a thousand ways will build up a large following. Sometimes the boss is content with the possession of political power, and expends his own money; but often, especially in the cities, the boss makes a fortune for himself or his friends, and the public pays the bill.

The unprincipled boss can secure large sums of money from corporations on promise of favors or by threats of injury, and may even permit vice to flourish in return for a cash payment. At his worst the boss makes politics a commercial enterprise for private gain instead of a means of serving the public. A machine organized for public plunder is always supported by a well-organized minority, which has great advantages over an unorganized majority.

Fortunately those in favor of good government are finding out the necessity of organized effort, and the result of an awakened civic spirit is manifest in many places.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT

1. What are the usual qualifications that a voter must possess? 2. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a property qualification.

3. In what respects do you consider the educational qualifications of the southern states open to criticism?

4. In what state may women vote at all elections? Give arguments against and in favor of woman suffrage.

5. Describe the Australian (or blanket) ballot.

6. What is minority representation? What is proportional representation?

7. Describe the usual methods of nominating local and state officers.

8. What is meant by the expressions "party machine" and "boss"?

QUESTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE TEXT

1. State the qualifications that voters must possess in your state. Are these qualifications wise and sufficient in your judgment?

2. Are there any reasons why women should be permitted to vote at elections for the purpose of choosing school directors that do not equally apply to elections for governor?

3. Consult a dictionary in regard to the meaning of "alien," ‘denizen,” and "citizen."

4. How are candidates for office nominated in your city, village, or town?

5. Has your state been "gerrymandered" recently? Show how it might be so treated with advantage to the party now in power. 6. Is the "boss" a necessary evil?

CHAPTER X

STEPS TOWARD A NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

Colonial Conditions. Until the meeting of the First Continental Congress in 1774, the thirteen English Colonies in America had never united for any purpose. Each colony had its own executive, legislature, and courts, and each had its own relations to England. The settlements were scattered, roads were poor, and there was little to draw the colonies together. It is very doubtful whether the English Government would have looked with favor upon colonial union.

There were, however, some bonds of sympathy which should not be overlooked: the colonists were, in the main, of the same race and spoke a common language; the same political ideas were at the basis of their governments; common dangers threatened them.

New England Confederation. The four colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Plymouth, and Connecticut in 1643 formed, under the name of the United Colonies of New England, a defensive and offensive alliance which lasted for forty years. It was not a government, but an alliance for the sake of offering stronger resistance to the Indians, the French, and the Dutch. Its importance in the history of the colonists was, that it made them familiar with the idea of common interests and actions.

The Albany Conference. In 1754 danger of war with France led to a meeting in Albany of representatives from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Benjamin Franklin, who was the leader of the movement, presented a plan for union which included an executive to be appointed by the king, and a council of forty-eight members to be elected by the legislatures of the colonies. The plan was approved by neither the Board of Trade in England nor the colonial legislatures. In the words of Franklin, "the crown disapproved it as having too much weight in the democratic part of the Constitution, and every Assembly as having allowed too much to prerogative."

The Stamp Act Congress.— Opposition to the hated Stamp Act had led Massachusetts to suggest a congress of all the colonies. Delegates from nine colonies1 assembled in New York in October, 1765, and drew up a protest, which they called the "Declaration of Rights," in which they denied the authority of Parliament to tax them, as it was their right as Englishmen to be taxed only by their representatives.

The Stamp Act was soon after repealed, but new grievances followed.

The First Continental Congress (1774). The repeal of the Stamp Act was followed by a series of taxes on imported goods, and, because of the resistance of the colonies to these taxes, by measures to compel them to pay the taxes. Feel

'New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia were not represented, though they sympathized with the action of the other colonies.