Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII THE OVERWORKED POLITICAL PLATITUDES 1 THE people are beginning to see, through the dust of party strife, that the art and science of government are concealed by party labels and watchwords. Not many know that "Republican" and "Democrat" are synonymous with tweedle-dum and tweedle- dee, but more are demanding that the administration of the common life be no longer obscured by the ambiguity of platforms and the personality of candidates. Yet the clever politician continues to sidetrack the patriotic citizen. The encouragement which has come most recently from the rebuke of political rings by men whose nomination had been demanded bythe people, as was the case in the choice of both Taft and Bryan, is marred by the surrender to the ring in the choice of vice-presidential candidates and platform planks. Party shibboleths continue to mislead; party loyalty injures patriotism; hysterical citizens see in the opposing candidates only demon and demigod, but more nearly than ever before there emerges from the smoke of conflict a vision of the meaning of a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It is not presented consciously by either candidate, it is only casually indicated in those principles which each party considers paramount, but it is better defined. i Published in the New York Sunday Times, October 4, 1908. Observation of the party conventions reveals a people in their quadrennial spectacle of receiving uncomplainingly a stone when they have rather incoherently asked for bread. A study of the platforms does not betray any striking issue between the parties. We look in vain for any adequate treatment of the most vital interests of the masses of the people; the few principles which are peculiar to either party seem insipid by contra...