In the United States minor parties do not usually live long. Very few of them survive a dozen years. There are reasons for this. In the first place the Democrats and Republicans are constantly adapting their platforms to the needs of the country. When any movement among the people becomes strong enough, one of the leading parties takes it up. If large numbers of voters, for example, should desire the abolition of divorces, one of the political parties would soon put an “anti-divorce plank” in its platform, and would thereby prevent any new party from making much headway on that particular issue. In the second place the American voters, taking them as a whole, have become accustomed to the two-party system. Very few of them are willing to forsake the old party organizations without strong reasons for doing so. When they do, temporarily, as a great many Republicans did in 1912 and a great many Democrats in 1920, they usually drift back again before very long. A new party, moreover, is difficult to organize and expensive to maintain. It has no chance to win the election and most people do not care to belong to an organization which never wins. So the easiest way to get new things adopted in public policy is to persuade one of the leading parties to champion them. [Sidenote: The Socialist platform.] =The Socialist Party.=—Among the “third parties” which exist at the present day the Socialist party is the strongest. It has a program widely different from that of either the Republicans or the Democrats. The Socialist party is organized to promote the public ownership of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, mines, forests, factories, and all other such economic instrumentalities. In addition to its economic program the Socialist party advocates the adoption of various political changes such as the abolition of the United States Senate, the election of all judges for short terms, and the abolition of the Supreme Court’s power to declare laws unconstitutional. In point of strength at the polls the Socialist party stands far below either of the two leading parties. It is much weaker in the United States than in the various countries of Europe. [Sidenote: Is “independence” a virtue?]