Most of us have from time to time in the course of our lives, heard a good deal of indignation expressed by worthy citizens over the politicians’ organization and use of the controllable vote. But if we give a little thought to the manner in which the electoral representative system actually and necessarily operates, we will see that the organization of the non-propertied voters was a perfectly natural, and one might say an inevitable result of their enfranchisement. It was a step to which they were and are practically invited by the situation itself, and for taking which neither they nor their leaders are logically blamable. The only people to be criticised are those who opened the door to this class of voters. The unpropertied vote became an organized group, because it could not otherwise function in our political system, which operates entirely though groups or classes and ignores the individual. A few of the astute public men of a century ago understood this; the mass did not; they imagined that in extending the suffrage to the unpropertied, the incapables, they were conferring a harmless compliment upon scattered individuals whose votes would be distributed among those of the other classes, and absorbed in the general mass without perceptible effect. Had this been the only result, the gift of the vote would have been a barren one, costing the givers nothing and of no benefit to the recipients. But far from being empty, it was costly, it was real, and the newly enfranchised immediately made use of it, as we have seen, forming themselves into effective groups for the accomplishment of their own small and sordid desires. And so the generation of Americans who saw manhood suffrage established, were astonished to find shortly after, that the voting power was almost suddenly taken out of their hands by a new force in politics. They have never been able to get it back, and most people do not yet understand the theory of what has occurred. They do not comprehend, their ancestors of the last century did not comprehend that the enfranchisement of the unpropertied voters meant that they were invited not merely as individuals, but as a class, and through their own local groups or subdivisions to take such part in forming the government as they were able. It was not merely that they were enfranchised as a body, but that our political system is such that only by groups, classes and factions can any share in the government be obtained. This fact is so important, and though patent to every one its significance has been so generally overlooked, that it deserves the entire chapter allotted to it in this volume.