magnitude, the labor vote has always been courted by Democrats
and Republicans with equal ardor but with varying success.



CHAPTER II. THE RISE OF THE MACHINE

Ideas or principles alone, however eloquently and insistently
proclaimed, will not make a party. There must be organization.
Thus we have two distinct practical phases of American party
politics: one regards the party as an agency of the electorate, a
necessary organ of democracy; the other, the party as an
organization, an army determined to achieve certain conquests.
Every party has, therefore, two aspects, each attracting a
different kind of person: one kind allured by the principles
espoused; the other, 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."