A book ought to be written describing how our government actually works.  I do not mean the formal machinery of administration and law-making at Washington or at our state capitals.  These multitudes of officers and groups of departments, these governors and presidents, these legislatures and congresses, are not the government; they are the instruments of government.

The people are the government. What said Lincoln in his greatest utterance?  “A government of the people, for the people, and by the people,” are the great American’s words.  And Lincoln knew.

The real thing is found at the American fireside.  This is the forum of both primary and final discussion.  These firesides are the hives whence the voters swarm to the polls.  The family is the American political unit.  Men and measures, candidates and policies, are there discussed, and their fate and that of the Republic determined.  This is the first phase of our government, the first manifestation of our institutions.

Then comes the machinery through which these millions of homes “run the government.”  I cannot in the limited space of this paper describe this system of the people; the best I can do is to take a type, an example.  In every county of every state of the Nation each party has its committee.  This committee consists of a man from each precinct in each township of the county.  These precinct committeemen are chosen by a process of natural selection.  They are men who have an aptitude for marshaling their fellow men.

In the country districts of the Republic they are usually men of good character, good ability, good health, alert, sleepless, strong-willed.  They are men who have enough mental vitality to believe in something.  When they cease to be effective they are dropped, and new men substituted by a sort of common consent.  There are nearly two hundred thousand precinct committeemen in the United States.

These men are a part of American institutions in action.  They work all the time.  They talk politics and think politics in the midst of their business or their labor.  Their casual conversation with or about every family within their jurisdiction keeps them constantly and freshly informed of the tendency of public opinion.

They know how each one of their neighbors feels on the subject of protection, or the Philippines, or civil service, or the currency.  They know the views of every voter and every voter’s wife on public men.  They understand whether the people think this man honest and that man a mere pretender.  The consensus of judgment of these precinct committeemen indicates with fair accuracy who is the “strongest man” for his party to nominate, and what policies will get the most votes among the people.

This is their preliminary work.  When platforms have been formulated and candidates have been chosen, these men develop from the partizan passive to the partizan militant.  They know those who, in their own party, are “weakening,” and by the same token those who are “weakening” in the other party.