ABSTRACT
In order to exploit still further the situation in which the ruling parties are open to pressure, a quite special system has very recently been put into operation by those representing the workers' interests. This is the system of questioning candidates, which has been made disreputable by its opponents, the supporters of the Socialist Parties, with the somewhat disrespectful description of a 'begging policy'. For a while the parties stood in sharp opposition to each other on the currency issue. The Democrats yielded too easily to the interests of the owners of silver mines and came out for the free coinage of silver. The position of the two parties vis-a-vis Civil Service Reform is just as indecisive; both are equally hostile to it and both attest their sympathies for it with equal warmth. The two major parties can be differentiated from each other no more by social class than by political principles.
