One of the important independent movements of the last fifty years is that which brought into existence the Progressive party. The spark which touched this off was what appeared to a large number of voters to be the refusal of those who legally controlled the Republican National Convention to make a nomination for president of the United States in accordance with the express wishes of a majority of the rank and file of the party. It was in effect an exhibition of the arbitrary action of the minority in refusing to carry out the expressed will of the majority. Those legally in control of the convention were supported principally by the delegates who had been sent as the result of the action of local political organizations in the states where no primaries had been held. Those who did not legally control the convention were supported by the delegates who were directed by the majority of the party electorate actually voting in the primaries, to nominate Mr. Roosevelt. In short, a great independent revolt had been started in the Republican party at the primaries. In the convention the popular will was directly matched against the forces, similar in appearance, if not in fact the same, to those of the usual extra-legal government. Naturally the efforts of the new party have been expressly dedicated to the disrupting of extra-legal government in this country. For the first time a national party has begun to proclaim the fact that extra-legal government does exist; that it can maintain and exercise its power against the will of a majority, and that it must be destroyed.