Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/353

 Readings on Parties and Elections in the United States

By CHESTER LLOYD JONES

Associate Professor of Political Science in the University of Wisconsin

Cloth, 120, 354 pp. $1.60 net

As our civilization grows more complex and our population greater, the organization and working of party government becomes something in which the citizen feels an increasing interest, Whether we welcome the change or not, the state plays a growing part in onr everyday lives; many businesses formerly considered private are subjected ta control becanse of the peculiar relation in which they stand ta the public, The house of the citizen is no longer his castle within which the state may not prescribe the manner of life, and a large part of our popniation is no longer " free" to work where it will aud for as long as it may please.

Party is the means by which public policy is determined. To have efficient control we must have parties responsive to the popular will, parties whose actions turn on public policy, not on the will of agents whom the public cannot control. Government of the people is government by party in all modern states.

It is to make easy of access some of the best discussions illustrative of the development, present organization, abuses and remedies for the defects of our party government that this book is published. It is not a source hook; indeed, the chief reliance-has been upon secondary and contemporaneons writing, but it is believed that the material will, for this reason, have added interest because it deals with the living, growing forces of the present time,

The material of this volume, gathered by Professor Jones from all sanrces,

is invaluable to students of party government in the United States as well

as to every general reader and intelligent voter. The developments of the, last five years in Party Organization and the Legal Control of Parties are

emphasized. The volume will prove an especially valuable supplement to

such books as Ostrogorski's recently published " Democracy and the Party

System in the United States."