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States which must be carried to elect a President. This Black Horse Cavalry is the most important force in the
practical work of the Democratic and Republican parties in the present campaign. Neither of the old parties'
nominees for President can escape obligation to these old-party bosses or shake their practical hold on many
and powerful members of the National Legislature.
Under this boss system, no matter which party wins, the people seldom win; but the bosses almost always
win. And they never work for the people. They do not even work for the party to which they belong. They
work only for those anti-public interests whose political employees they are. It is these interests that are the
real victors in the end.
These special interests which suck the people's substance are bi-partisan. They use both parties. They are the
invisible government behind our visible government. Democratic and Republican bosses alike are brother
officers of this hidden power. No matter how fiercely they pretend to fight one another before election, they
work together after election. And, acting so, this political conspiracy is able to delay, mutilate or defeat sound
and needed laws for the people's welfare and the prosperity of honest business and even to enact bad laws,
hurtful to the people's welfare and oppressive to honest business.
It is this invisible government which is the real danger to American institutions. Its crude work at Chicago in
June, which the people were able to see, was no more wicked than its skillful work everywhere and always
which the people are not able to see.
But an even more serious condition results from the unnatural alignment of the old parties. To-day we
Americans are politically shattered by sectionalism. Through the two old parties the tragedy of our history is
continued; and one great geographical part of the Republic is separated from other parts of the Republic by an
illogical partisan solidarity.
The South has men and women as genuinely progressive and others as genuinely reactionary as those in other
parts of our country. Yet, for well-known reasons, these sincere and honest southern progressives and
reactionaries vote together in a single party, which is neither progressive nor reactionary. They vote a dead
tradition and a local fear, not a living conviction and a national faith. They vote not for the Democratic party,
but against the Republican party. They want to be free from this condition; they can be free from it through
the National Progressive party.
For the problems which America faces to-day are economic and national. They have to do with a more just
distribution of prosperity. They concern the living of the people; and therefore the more direct government of
the people by themselves.
They affect the South exactly as they affect the North, the East or the West. It is an artificial and dangerous
condition that prevents the southern man and woman from acting with the northern man and woman who
believe the same thing. Yet just that is what the old parties do prevent.
Not only does this out-of-date partisanship cut our Nation into two geographical sections; it also robs the
Nation of a priceless asset of thought in working out our national destiny. The South once was famous for
brilliant and constructive thinking on national problems, and to-day the South has minds as brilliant and
constructive as of old. But southern intellect cannot freely and fully aid, in terms of politics, the solving of the
Nation's problems. This is so because of a partisan sectionalism which has nothing to do with those problems.
Yet these problems can be solved only in terms of politics.
"1_2_4">APPENDIX D. SPEECHES FOR STUDY AND PRACTISE 264
The Art of Public Speaking
The root of the wrongs which hurt the people is the fact that the people's government has been taken away
from them--the invisible government has usurped the people's government. Their government must be given
back to the people. And so the first purpose of the Progressive party is to make sure the rule of the people. The
rule of the people means that the people themselves shall nominate, as well as elect, all candidates for office,
including Senators and Presidents of the United States. What profiteth it the people if they do only the electing
while the invisible government does the nominating?
The rule of the people means that when the people's legislators make a law which hurts the people, the people
themselves may reject it. The rule of the people means that when the people's legislators refuse to pass a law
which the people need, the people themselves may pass it. The rule of the people means that when the
people's employees do not do the people's work well and honestly, the people may discharge them exactly as a
business man discharges employees who do not do their work well and honestly. The people's officials are the
people's servants, not the people's masters.
We progressives believe in this rule of the people that the people themselves may deal with their own destiny.
Who knows the people's needs so well as the people themselves? Who so patient as the people? Who so long
suffering, who so just? Who so wise to solve their own problems?
Today these problems concern the living of the people. Yet in the present stage of American development
these problems should not exist in this country. For, in all the world there is no land so rich as ours. Our fields
can feed hundreds of millions. We have more minerals than the whole of Europe. Invention has made easy the
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