ABSTRACT
The American system of party organization was the outcome and the expression of triumphant democracy. The eclipse of the old ruling class, which became definitive after the first quarter of the last century, appeared to leave the individual, now a member of the sovereign people, in possession of the field. Moral and intellectual opportunism appeared as the sovereign dictate of wisdom as well as of the democratic creed. To immobility of political forms in the State the stereotyped party organization tended to add immobility of mind in this political society, where growing wealth increased the number of persons who are satisfied with things as they are. To preserve its cadres, the Organization was always trying to make opinion crystallize within them, to prevent the new currents of public feeling from gathering volume and flowing into fresh channels. It kept opinion a prisoner inside old formulas which often were nothing but pure conventions.
