Athens feared that if the town hall grew too small to hold a convocation of the people, Hellenic democracy would perish from the earth. Here in America we cannot revert to the town meeting. But in the interests of Americanism, I believe the political parties of this country will be forced, by the developing intelligence of public sentiment, to create systems of party education which will have to bear the light of day--and the challenge of severe competition. Party education now means campaign literature, speeches only by candidates or for them, a virulent emotionalism which even the unsophisticated voter no longer takes seriously. A party “stands firm” for “social and industrial justice” for all men and women alike. But these same men and women, who do _not_ attend conventions, who are sorely in need of social and industrial justice or who would like to help in securing it for others, never learn what its concrete definition is, or how to secure it through the vote. Our political parties need, first of all, _great leaders_. And after the great leaders we need an informed and alert and sensitive citizen body, insistent for information, undismayed by long ballot sheets, at home among political ideas. We need party laboratories, publicists not advertisers, a thoroughgoing machinery for getting studies and facts and opinions to people in a form in which they can weigh and use them. The very introduction of the word “political” revives the conventional fear that the immigrant will be “used” in dark and dangerous ways. It is certainly true that he has been. But what America really needs to face with greater apprehension is the immigrant that is _not used_. The time has passed for a negative position. How is the political force of the foreign-born residents and citizens to be intelligently and practically connected with the body politic? It is folly to let our fear of the word “political” justify our gross neglect of the political intelligence and potential power of from one third to one half the population of many of our important cities and towns. The _use_ of the immigrant politically is more likely than anything else to put an end to the political _abuse of_ him.