Four American Party Leaders (Paperback)

FOUR AMERICAN PARTY LEADERS HENRY WARD BEECHER FOUNDATION LECTURES DELIVERED AT AMHERST COLLEGE BY CHARLES EDWARD JERRIAM PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1926 All rights reserved TO SUSAN INTRODUCTION Leadership is one of the basic factors in the organ ization of life, and its implications are everywhere of profound significance. Wherever we look, whether among plants, animals or humans, we find dominant centers emerging and the relations of dom inance and subordination developing. This is univer sally true, whether we are dealing with the simplest and most elementary types of existence or the most complex forms of social and political organization. In the plant and animal worlds these functions have been studied intimately by many careful and per sistent workers but in the higher forms of social and political life much less careful attention has been given to the analysis of the nature and effects of these relations. 1 Long ago we ceased to believe that rulers gov erned because they were the sons or blood relations 1 See C. M. Child, Physiological Foundations of Behavior, Chap ter X C. J. Herrick, Neurological Foundations of Animal Be havior, Chapter XVIII W. M. Wheeler, Social Life Among Insects. vii viii INTRODUCTION of gods or even that they ruled by special divine right. 2 The mystery that doth hedge about a king has largely been dispelled, and with it the lesser lights around the throne. It may still be assumed, however, that there is some other kind of a mystery - that surrounds a leader of men, some magic that grows out of mysterious human nature and de fies human analysis and understanding. Political leaders, some believe, aresupermen, inscrutable, in soluble types, to be accepted as in the earlier times earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, or other works of nature were accepted. Human nature, however, is no more of a de fense against modern science than divine right in the earlier period of human development, for the whole trend of modern social science is toward the discovery of the secrets or rather the sequences of human nature. We no longer look upon the human beings who may be our masters with super stitious awe, but rather with scientific curiosity as to how they are constructed and how they operate, and with determination to reduce, the mysterious to its very lowest terms. The great man 9 is not merely a hero to be worshipped as if in some occult way endowed with semi-divine attributes, but he or she a Quoted from my Introduction to H. F. Gosnells Boss Platt, INTRODUCTION ix presents a problem, a situation to be analyzed and explained. His biological inheritances, his social environment, his social training, his life experience, his developed traits and characteristics, measured as closely as may be and with increasing precision these are the factors from which the great man may be understood and with them the less great and the near great. This is as true of the great man or the leader in the political world as in any other field of the larger social world. In the last generation increasing attention was given to the examination of the social origins and environment of leaders, following Carlyles period of hero worship and great man adoration. In the present generation increasing attention is being given not only to the social entourage out of which the leader comes, but also to the analysis of the individual qualities of the leader, and finally to the interrelation of these qualities to the environment. We want to know what sort of an environment makes a Lincoln or a Roosevelt, and also what the special qualities of these types are, as they may have come out of inheritance or been shaped by environ ment and experience, and to know how these special traits or types of behavior react upon the environ ment. x INTRODUCTION Inevitably the study of leaders involves the study of followers as well, and, indeed, the whole question of the political interests of man...