Of parties with the executive as their head nothing remained but their name. The only nexus there could be between the executive and the mass of voters was personal. One year a party was Roosevelt, the next year it was Taft and the distance between Roosevelt and Taft was the distance between East and West. A little later it even changed its name and voted in another column because Roosevelt had adopted a new party name and gone unto a new column. Four years later it split up and much of it went to Wilson, who temporarily rallied a personal following just as Roosevelt had done. And because the dispensing of jobs was an unseemly occupation for the executive we reduced by law the patronage that was available for the sustenance of parties. Thus we substituted personal caprice for the permanency of parties and at the same time cut down the practical means of holding organizations together. At the same time the decay of government by business left parties no longer an instrument of the economic will of the nation. Thus the executive headship was wholly inconsistent with government by parties, upon which our magnified President was supposed to rest. A further inconsistency was that we adopted another theory for strengthening one man power. This was that the President was the leader of the people. Have we a government by parties there? Not at all; the power of the executive rests upon something outside of and superior to parties. If the legislative did not respond to pressure he might "go to the people," as it was called, through the newspapers and upon the stump. He might discipline the recalcitrant by stirring up public sentiment against them. He might build up a personal following to such an extent that his party must have it in order to win. He might encourage the movement away from parties by attaching people to ideas and measures, policies that the party had declined to accept. In this theory of executive power it was conceded that parties were not to be trusted. In the other it was held that they were a necessary link between the dissociate branches of government. It is no exaggerated notion that executive control of parties contributed to the disintegration of party government. It is nothing more than a statement of what actually happened. Roosevelt broke up the Republican party nationally. He left it with its name covering an agglomeration of groups and blocs and personal followings, supporters of various interests difficult to reconcile, whose votes fluctuate from year to year. Mr. Hughes, the same kind of executive and party leader as governor of New York, left the Republicans of that state in the hands of the little local banditti. Mr. La Follette, following the same methods as Governor of Wisconsin, left no one in that state definitely a Republican or a Democrat. Every voter there is the personal follower of some chieftain.