Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/74

 6o THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

home election, the faithful Whig or Democrat of the border crossed the line to assist at the later election in an adjoining commonwealth. In 1844 Alexander Duncan, a representative from Ohio, who claimed to have suffered severely from this pipe- laying, introduced into the national house a bill which provided for the choice of all presidential electors and congressmen upon the same day. He selected the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, possibly for climatic considerations, pos- sibly to avoid the times of state elections. New York was the only state that chose state ofificers on that date. The states- rights sentiment of the time could not go quite so far, and the law as finally enacted, January 23, 1845, applied only to the presidential electors. It gradually induced the several states to fix the same date for the election of congressmen and of state ofificers. By so doing, they saved time and expense. The public mind was therefore educated to the idea of uniformity. The Civil War broke down the jealousy of national regulation which had preserved the subject of elections to the sphere of statehood. For these reasons, in 1872, feenjamin F. Butler could, and did, secure, without serious opposition, the enactment of that part of Alexander Duncan's bill which had failed in 1844; namely, the choice of all the national representatives upon the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.

Probably these legislators thought little of the ultimate effects of their laws. Only now, for one thing, are we beginning to see that a uniform time for the final election has been operating strongly for uniform times of the conventions and of the prima- ries. Here and there new party rules and new state laws are regu- lating action more pronouncedly. Mr. Josiah Quincy asserts that " neither party can afford to come very far behind its oppo- nent in the matter of the date of making nominations." In a recent contest the Populist county conventions in seventy of the one hundred counties of Kansas were held on the same day. Tuesday has become "election day " even for state and munici- pal elections held on other days than the national November date. More than one hundred cities and towns of Illinois hold their spring elections on the same April Tuesday. The primary