the state committee for
the district, who serves for a term of two years. The law says that "no
other person or persons whomsoever" than those so chosen by the voters
shall serve on the committee, so that members by courtesy or by
proxy, who might represent the boss, are apparently shut off. The law
stipulates the time within which the committee must meet and organize.
Under this plan, if the ring controls the committee, the fault lies
wholly with the majority of the party; it is a self-imposed thraldom.

Iowa likewise stipulates that the Central Committee shall be composed of
one member from each congressional district. But the members are chosen
in a state convention, organized under strict and minute regulations
imposed by law. It permits considerable freedom to the committee,
however, stating that it "may organize at pleasure for political work as
is usual and customary with such committees."

In Wisconsin another plan was adopted in 1907. Here the candidates for
the various state offices and for both branches of the legislature and
the senators whose terms have not expired meet in the state capital at
noon on a day specified by law and elect by ballot a central committee
consisting of at least two members from each congressional district. A
chairman is chosen in the same manner.

Most States, however, leave some leeway in the choice of the state
committee, permitting their election usually by the regular
primaries but controlling their action in many details. The lesser
committees--county, city, district, judicial, senatorial, congressional,
and others--are even more rigorously controlled by law.

So the issuing of the party platform, the principles on which it must
stand or fall, has been touched by this process of ossification. Few
States retain the state convention in its original vigor. In all States
where primaries are held for state nominations, the emasculated and
subdued convention is permitted to write the party platform. But not
so in some States. Wisconsin permits the candidates and the hold-over
members of the Senate, assembled according to law in a state meeting,
to issue the platform. In other States, the Central Committee and the
various candidates for state office form a party council and frame the
platform. Oregon, in 1901, tried a novel method of providing platforms
by referendum. But the courts declared the law unconstitutional. So
Oregon now permits each candidate to write his own platform i