ing elected to the
Premiership, certain political advantages, in the form of appointments
to office and "patronage" generally, would accrue, not necessarily to
Mr. Crooks himself, but to his "machine," the citizens of Woolwich, and
the Liberal party in the County of Kent at large. We see here how the
local "boss" may become all-powerful in national affairs (and this is of
course only one of fifty ways) and how the interdependence of the party
in the nation with the party organisation in the County or the
municipality tends to the fattening of the latter and, it must be added,
the debauching of all three.

At the last general election in England, in January, 1906, there is no
doubt that the Conservative party owed the loss of a large number of
seats merely to the fact that it had been in office for so long, without
serious conflict, that the local party organisations had not merely
grown rusty but were practically defunct. In the United States the same
thing, in anything like the same degree, would be impossible, because
between the periods of the general elections (which themselves come
every four years) come the State and municipal elections for the
purposes of which the local party organisations are kept in continuous
and more or less active existence. A State or a city may, of course, be
so confirmedly Republican or Democratic that, even though elections be
frequent, the ruling party organisation will become, in a measure, soft
and careless, but it can never sink altogether out of fighting
condition. When a general election comes round, each great party in the
nation possesses--or organises for the occasion--a national committee as
well as a national campaign organisation; but that committee and that
national organisation co-operate with the local organisations in each
State and city and it is the local organisations that really do the
work--the same organisations as conduct the fight, in intermediate
years, for the election of members to the State Legislature or of a
mayor and aldermen. And each of those local organisations necessarily
tends to come under the control of a recognised "boss."

Let us see another of the fifty ways in which, as has been said, one of
these local bosses may be all-powerful in national affairs. A general
election is approaching in Great Britain, and, as before, the Liberal
party is in doubt whether to select as its candidate for the
Premiership Lord Rosebery or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerma