Control of Political Parties in America (Tragedy and Hope)

When the business interests, led by William C. Whitney, pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally. Indeed, some of them intended to contribute to both and to allow an alternation of the two parties in public office in order to conceal their own influence, inhibit any exhibition of independence by politicians, and allow the electorate to believe that they were exercising their own
free choice. Such an alternation of the parties on the Federal scene occurred in the period 1880-1896, with business influence (or at least Morgan's influence) as great in Democratic as in Republican administrations. But in 1896 came a shocking experience. The business interests discovered that they could control the Republican Party to a large degree but could not be nearly so confident of controlling the Democratic Party. The reason for this difference lay in the existence of the Solid South as a Democratic section with almost no Republican voters. This section sent
delegates to the Republican National Convention as did the rest of the country, but, since these delegates did not represent voters, they came to represent those who were prepared to pay their expenses to the Republican National Convention. In this way these delegates came to represent the business interests of the North, whose money they accepted. Mark Hanna has told us in detail how he spent much of the winter of 1895-1896 in Georgia buying over two hundred delegates for McKinley to the Republican National Convention of 1896. As a result of this system, about a quarter of the votes in a Republican Convention were "controlled" votes from the Solid South, not representing the electorate. After the split in the Republican Party in 1912, this portion of the delegates was reduced to about 17 percent.


Tragedy and Hope, A History of the World in Our Time