The failure to observe this principle of action at the Republican National Convention of 1912 has started the most widespread and serious movement against extra-legal government that we have yet had. According to all the rules of astute politocratic management, the representatives of extra-legal government in that convention should have acquiesced in the selection of the most popular and prominent leader available, in spite of the fact of his independence. They should have driven into power with him as many of their adherents as possible, or let him go down to defeat. Whichever happened, extra-legal government, as conducted by means of the control of an extra-legal oligarchy over successful candidates for office, would not have been disrupted and a general movement inimical to the whole basis of extra-legal government would have been averted. The revelation of the existence of a power in a few hands which could legally override popular desires in the selection of a candidate for the president of the United States, and the exhibition of what, to a large number of people, must have seemed to be the actual exercise of such a power, and the defeat of the popular will clearly expressed could have only the result of launching one of the greatest independent political movements of half a century, with its principal attack upon extra-legal government as it has grown up in the United States. This is the same sort of mistake that the advocates of slavery made when they underestimated the unexpressed determination of the North to preserve the Union. There are, of course, as many rival vote-directing organizations as there are political parties which have become established and have a name with any good-will attached. If two of these organizations are at all well matched and occupy practically the entire field, their leaders frequently make secret agreements according to which the governmental power is divided. One takes the city and the other the county, or one a great metropolitan district and the other the state. Such arrangements are preferred to a life-and-death struggle for supremacy. They result in a combination which it is exceedingly difficult for the politically ignorant majority of the electorate to overcome.