THE STRUGGLE IN AMERICA.-HOW

PRESIDENTS ARE MADE.

WHEN I was in New Orleans, in the spring of the present year, I was talking with the head of a large business house about the prospects of trade. He told me they had been improving, "but," he added, "of course everything is at a standstill now; we never do much business in the Presidential year. To outsiders (and indeed to many insiders) the game scarcely seems worth the candle. Not a few of the more thoughtful Americans are beginning to question whether it was not a mistake on the part of the framers of the Constitution to give their Presidents so short a term of office. This was indeed the opinion of the most clear-sighted among their own number, and Hamilton went so far as to propose that the head of the State should be appointed for life, subject only to good behaviour. But though he was defeated there was surely a middle course between his proposal and the four years' term that was finally adopted. Under present conditions this term is evidently much too short. The country has scarcely recovered from one attack of fever before it becomes the victim of another. This quadrennial nuisance is becoming so intolerable that many are beginning to question whether there is any necessity to have a President at all. I have even heard it whispered-though with bated breath-that a truly constitutional monarch, such as we have in England, might not be altogether a bad change. It has been said that had there been no George Washington there would have been no President. No doubt the fact that such a born leader of men was ready to

their hand gave additional force to their desire to create the office, but their feeling that it was necessary to have a vigorous executive with a single head was so strong that there is little doubt that the office would have been created though Washington had not lived. But while (as Mr. Bryce has shown) no part of their scheme was regarded with more complacency, no part has so utterly belied their expectations. They elaborated a cunningly devised plan by which they hoped, on the one hand, to make it impossible for anyone to gain his election by appealing to the passions of the people, and on the other, to secure through all time the choice of a citizen who should be independent of party faction. The present nominations show how lamentably their plan has failed. Whatever be the issue of the present struggle it must flatly belie these praiseworthy intentions. McKinley would be an ideal representative of political sectarianism, Bryan of demagogue worship. It has been so more or less during the last hundred years. With scarcely an exception "the race has never been to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." Men have been nominated, not because they would make good Presidents, but because they made good candidates. object of the party managers has been rather to win an election than to secure a competent leader. Even after election very few have been able to shake off the trammels of party. In England we have often bitter party contests over the election of a mayor, but when once the contest has been decided, every English mayor worthy of his position has sunk the party in the interests of the town. Unfortunately it has not been so with the American President, and it scarcely could be. He is the fountain, not of justice, but of patronage. Thousands of lucrative employments drop into his hands directly he enters the White House, and he is expected to pay for his election by scattering them among those who have secured it. Instead of being the choice of a nation he is the creature of a party--and he is compelled to remember his creator.

The

At the close of last year Europe had a taste of the mischief such a man may do when driven to desperate methods to restore the fortunes of a demoralised party on the eve of an impending election, and she is now, watching a struggle, the

issue of which may bring untold disaster. There is no nation that has so keen an interest in that struggle as England, except the United States herself, for there is no nation that has such enormous interests at stake. Whatever shakes the credit of one country inflicts irreparable injury on the other. Accordingly we find that the probable issues of the fight for the White House are being discussed on all sides. So keen is the interest taken in it, that English people are actually endeavouring to unravel the tangles of American politics, and are inquiring how Presidents are made. In the present article I must confine myself to the endeavour to answer that inquiry. The Constitution of 1787, which determined that there should be a President, regulated also the necessary qualifications and mode of election. The plan that was then laid out has been adhered to ever since, with the exception of a slight change which was found necessary in order to distinguish the votes that were given respectively for President and Vice-President. After providing that no person shall be eligible for the office who is not "a natural-born citizen" or who has "not attained the age of thirty-five years," the Constitution directs (Art. II. as amended by Art. XII.) that—

Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no senator or representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.

The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit, sealed and certified, to the seat of Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted; the person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest number not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by Fallot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each State having one vote."

So much for the provisions of the Constitution. These are, what we may call, the specifications of the machine, but ordinary minds, in order to understand its workings, will need to see it in motion. I will endeavour to supply that need, but first let us note these points. The President is not chosen by the direct vote of the people, but by a certain number of electors selected by popular vote to make the choice. These electors constitute what is called the Electoral College. Every male citizen of the United States, if he has registered as such and has attained the age of twenty-one, is entitled to vote for the members of this College. The vote is taken by ballot on the same day-the Tuesday after the first Monday in November-in every State in the Union. Each State is entitled to choose a number of electors equal to the number of its representatives in both Houses of Congress. The present Electoral College will consist of 446 members, a majority of whom (224) must vote for one of the candidates to secure an election. The representatives of each State meet separately, never in a body; their votes are given in writing, and then sealed and transmitted to Washington. About one month later these votes are opened and counted by the President of the Senate in the presence of both Houses of Congress, and the result declared.

It will be seen that, if all goes smoothly, this is a drama with three acts. In the first, we have the popular vote; in the second, the votes of the 446 members of the Electoral College given in their several States; in the third, the counting of those 446 votes in the presence of both Houses of Congress. The curtain will rise for the first act at 8 o'clock on the morning of November 3, it will fall at 6 p.m. on the same day. Elections which take place in the various States previous to that, such as those which have recently been reported in our newspapers, have nothing whatever to do with the election of a President except in so far as they may influence public opinion; for that election, no vote can be cast until 8 a.m. on November 3. On that day, over the whole of the United States, the voters will choose the members who are to constitute the Electoral College.

In order to give greater vividness to the picture we will take one State-say Nebraska-as an object lesson. Nebraska is half as large again as England, but polling booths will be found

at convenient distances, in every part of the State. At the door of the booth the voter will find the agents of the three presidential candidates. Each of these will give him what is called the "party ticket." The "party ticket" is the list of persons nominated by each party as candidates for the office of presidential elector. In those States which have not yet introduced the "Australian ballot," i.e., our English system, these "party tickets" are actually used as the ballot paper, and placed in the ballot box; but in Nebraska, and in all the more enlightened States, they only serve as useful guides to the bewildered voter, through the perplexities in which he becomes involved directly he enters the polling booth. Unless two or more parties agree to coalesce, each party "runs its own ticket," in other words, it nominates the full number of representatives to which it is entitled in the Electoral College. As we have seen, each State may send to that College a number equal to its members in Congress. In Nebraska that number is eight, arrived at in this way—the population of the State is rather over one million, the present basis of representation is one to each 174,000, consequently it is entitled to send to the House of Representatives six members; to this we have to add two, the number of its representatives in the Senate. At the present election there are three parties each running its own ticket, so that each "party ticket" will contain eight names, and the official ballot paper from which the voter has to make his selection will contain the names of no less than twenty-four persons; even this number would be embarrassing without party guidance, but this is nothing compared with what it might be, of what it will be in some of the more populous States. At the last election there were five presidential candidates, and as New York sends thirty-six members to the Electoral College, the ballot paper in that State would contain 180 names, most of them entirely unknown to the great body of the electorate: even now it cannot contain less than 108. This difficulty only arises at the election of presidential electors. When the election is for members of the House of Representatives the State is divided into Congressional districts, and each district sends one member; but when the Electoral College is chosen, it is chosen on a general ticket for