Take Back Your Government!

Chapter X

How to Win an Election (conclusion)

The Final Sprint

Last Week Mail Coverage: Your candidate has called on more than 3,000 people, possibly as many as 5,000. (Fantastic? I once rang 8,000 doorbells under similar circumstances.) Your precinct workers and you yourself have worked on the rest of the 25,000 targets. (You did not have time, you yourself? My dear lady - or sir - you must have time. I suggest a firm date for Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, one to five. Accept no other engagements for those hours.)

The campaign has not been perfect, but 20,000 aimed shots have been fired, in addition to the shotgun spread of publicity and meetings. However many of these shots were fired weeks ago; you need to use last minute reminders.

I suggest the use of either penny postal cards or personal letters - nothing in between. The usual political advertising, sent third class in an unsealed envelope and addressed by stenciling, then stuffed till the envelope bulges with wordy printed matter, has a way of landing in waste baskets unread.

A post card will be read because it is short, and it stands a chance of being kept around for a few days as a reminder. A personal letter of any sort, sent first class, will be read and noticed.

Even for postal cards your postage alone will be $200, plus printing costs and the (volunteer) effort of addressing and signing-all cards should be signed by someone, even if with an "authorized" signature, not marked as such. The signing and addressing take many hours and the work will need to be done long before the mailing date.

The final mail coverage will be the largest single expense in your campaign and may be one-third of your total campaign expenses. You may be forced to use postals, rather than letters, to save time and expense, but I suggest that you consider personal letters for the persons the candidate called on, as these are your prize prospects.

("Five thousand personal notes? It would take a crack typist four months to do such a job!" So it would-)

A man named Hooven invented a sort of player-piano typewriter which types any given copy over and over again, using a standard typewriter. The pseudo-player-piano roll can have signals cut in it which stops the typing and permits a human typist to insert a name, a date, a phrase, or any other variation in the copy, without disturbing the set-up. There is no way to tell a Hooven-typed letter from one typed entirely by hand.

Hooven-typing service is available in most large cities; you can do business by mail if your community does not have it It is much more expensive than printing and much cheaper than equivalent service by a typist. (Some day, he said dreamily, I hope to awn one of these marvelous gadgets for the use of my own district organization.)

I suggest some such copy as this - make it short, both for economy and effectiveness:

(Letterhead)

(date)

Dear Mrs. Boggles,

I hope you will recall my visit to your home last April 3rd and our discussion of the primary election. The election is next Tuesday. Naturally, I would like to have you vote for me for the Demican nomination for Congress. I enclose a short memorandum of my qualifications and the issues I am committed to support

Whether you support me or not, I urge that you and your family turn out and vote next Tuesday. The privilege and the duty of voting are more important to the safety of our country than an individual's candidacy.

Faithfully yours,

Jonathan Upright

JU:htc

The name and the date of the visit are the only items which require the Hooven robot to stop for an insert If you use printed post cards you fall back on "Dear Fellow Demican" and "recent" Full coverage by post card of the persons called on is better than partial coverage by personal letter, but do not be tempted to cover the whole list of registered voters by mail-it won't pay its freight

It is worth while for Mr. Upright to thumb through his cards and dictate as many post-scripts as possible, which are to be hand-written by the person who signs his name. "ES. My regards to the chow puppy-JU" or "I'll be after Bobby's vote in 1960!" or "Will you write to me your opinions on that reclamation matter?" or "I hope your husband is completely well by now."

Some of your precinct workers may be able to afford Hooven service for their own precincts, or they may be industrious enough to tackle the job of writing or typing personal notes - a big job but manageable for single precincts. Otherwise you will supply them with printed postals with the "trademark" picture of Mr. Upright occupying a third of the space, and a short "Dear-Neighbor" note on the rest, following the general idea of Mr. Upright's note. Leave space for the precinct worker to sign, and use the type face which simulates typewriter type style.

You may be forced to ask those who can afford it to pay the postage. It comes to a couple of dollars per worker; it amounts to a couple of hundred dollars at least to the campaign fund. One of the inspiring things about volunteers is the way they will give till it hurts right before an election, whereas a paid worker expects everything furnished to him as well as his fee.

Special attention must be given to the unregistered potential voters turned up during the campaign by Mr. Upright and the precinct workers. You have been obtaining regular reports on these people, daily from TJprightand weekly from your area supervisors, and you have been turning the names over to deputy registrars with whom you have friendly liaison. These votes are free for the asking and they may amount to a couple of thousand, enough to turn a bad defeat into a narrow victory. (These are the votes Mr. Dewey needed but didn't get in 1944-the "sleepers.") Special attention by mail and special attention on election day is indicated. You can vary your printing or your Hooven set up.

Your mail coverage should be delivered to the post office, tied in bundles by districts, on Friday afternoon before the election.

Election Day: The campaign is over, all but the final sprint That sprint needs careful preparation.

An ideal election day organization has block workers on every street, a precinct captain and lieutenants, a squad of automobiles directed from each precinct headquarters, a trained telephone organization, workers at the polls, a flying squad to take care of physical opposition, and another squad of legal eagles to take care of more esoteric matters. The whole thing is organized like a war ship going into battle.

You won't have any such organization; you won't find it anywhere save in some large cities east of the Mississippi, and it won't be complete even in those cities.

Your ideal organization - which you won't achieve; 80% is a fine score - will consist of three workers in every precinct, one at the polls, one at the telephone, and one with an automobile, plus roving area leaders with a telephone contact for each, a telephone and a couple of helpers for you, and two lawyers on tap who will drive to any trouble spot in a hurry. You dispense with muscles in your flying squad and depend on the fact that no one, not even a bad cop, will break the peace in the presence of a lawyer who announces himself as such.

Mr. Upright spends the day circulating around among the workers, giving them that "appreciated" feeling.

Tb achieve such an organization you need several times as many workers as there are in your Doorbell Club. It is not really hard to manage-for one day-if your area supervisors are active and alert. Some of them won't be. Since your efforts must be incomplete work according to the following priorities:

(a) Cover every contact in the precincts canvassed by Mr. Upright even if it means persuading your best workers to leave their own precincts completely vacant

(b) Try to cover every precinct which has been worked by anyone.

(c) Do not put workers in any precinct which has not previously been canvassed unless you are blessed with more workers than you know what to do with, in which case completely untrained workers may hand out literature at the polls in those precincts. Tell them about any local regulation which limits how dose to the polls they may work and caution them not to argue with anyone.

(d) If a precinct has but one worker he or she may accomplish almost as much as three people by working in this routine: Telephone as many as possible the night before and between eight and ten the next morning. Make dates to take people to the polls, where needed, between ten and noon - a full car-load at a time. After lunch go to the polls and remove from the files all who have voted, then get to work on the telephone with the remainder, making more transportation dates for four to six o'clock. At six o'clock weedout the files further and make frenzied attempts to get a few more to the polls during the evening, giving quite as much attention to the inactive list as to the live contacts. As soon as the polls have dosed, grab a hasty supper and return to the polls for the count. Remain there, watching the count (inform the senior polling official of the intention). When the count for congress has been completed, telephone the result to head quarters, and then leave for the election night party. It is a long day's work but it is a perfect picnic for any healthy, intelligent person.

(e) If two persons are available, the same work is split up, except that the polls are not left unguarded even for a moment from the time they are closed until the count is completed.

(f) If three persons are available one of them may try to glean a few votes just outside the polls at the required distance for campaigning. He is permitted, under most state laws, to double as a poll watcher, thus keeping a running record of who has voted for the automobile workers, provided he does no electioneering while inside the balk line. He sets up a "headquarters" - a parked car, a card table, or a packing case - and covers it with signs for your candidate, and then attempts to hand some small, simple printed reminder that Jonathan Upright is running to each person who approaches the polls. If the local administration is unfriendly and unscrupulous he may have trouble with cops. If this is anticipated, have your best lawyer have a talk with the chief of police ahead of time, explaining your intentions, going over the law, and reaching a full understanding as to just what will be allowed. If your police chief is recalcitrant, let him know that you intend to fall back on the federal authorities - there are pertinent Supreme Court rulings which can scare the boots off a local official if he knows that you know your rights.

A second poll worker is desirable, as there are usually two approaches in view of the no-electioneering balk line. Anyone who is old enough to walk can be an assistant, the younger the better.

(g) Telephone workers may be found among supporters or wives of workers who are tied down by small children or ill health but can use a telephone. They must be provided with lists, by the precinct worker, and mimeographed instructions, from you. Here is an adequate formula: "How do you do? Mrs. Duplex? Mrs. Duplex, this is the Jonathan Upright-for-Congress Citizen's Committee. Have you voted yet today? Would you like to have one of us call to take you to the polls by automobile? Oh, that's quite all right - you can take the baby with you; we will take care of him during the few minutes it takes you to vote. Is there any other member of your family who needs transportation? Very well then, suppose we pick you up sometime between ten a.m. and noon? No?

"How about between four and six? Three o'clock is better? Very well, then, we will make a special trip for you at three o'clock; I'll make a note of it. Not at all, we're glad to do it."

No direct attempt to campaign would be made in these phone calls; limit them to offering service and reminding the voter of the election, while mentioning the name of the candidate as often as possible by referring to the committee by its full name. The person who makes the pick-up limits his campaigning to signs on the car and to handing to each passenger as he gets in a copy of the same small printed item used at the polls.

Election day work is simply to turn your potential votes into real votes by seeing to it that all your supporters get to the polls. Many times your interest lies in a minor candidate or in a proposition on the ballot. Votes for these can frequently be obtained by the courtesy of supplying a ride to the polls. Many people vote only for candidates for president, governor, and senator. The votes of these people can be sewed up for Mr. Upright if one of Mr. Upright's friends supplies the transportation.

Watching the Count: These votes gained on election day can be lost on election night, in the count. One of the commonest pieces of chicanery in the counting is to take advantage of the feet that many people neglect to vote for any but the head of the ticket If the ballot is of the style in which the candidates are grouped by offices it is very easy to mark incomplete ballots after the polls are closed. Thus with 300 ballots cast for governor of which only 250 have been marked for a congressional choice, split 110 for Doubletalk and 140 for Trueblue, five minutes work behind closed doors can change the result to 160 for Doubletalk and 140 for Trueblue without leaving any provable evidence of fraud.

Ballots arranged by tickets rather than by offices are more usually faked by throwing out as improperly marked any split ticket ballot which does not suit the dishonest polling judge and by accepting such ballots when the split does suit him, no matter how many technical mistakes the voter may have made.

Actual stuffing of the ballot box is very rare and the cash-in-hand purchase of votes is still more rare, whereas the election which is actually changed in outcome by these methods is so seldom found that it may be regarded as a museum piece.

These crude methods of blatant dishonesty are not used by the more successful city machines, even when the Machine is corrupt to the core, because they are not

as efficient nor as reliable as machine methods which are technically honest. If a Machine resorts to use them it is a symptom that it is on the skids. (Cf. Kansas City vote fraud trials.)

Your watcher will not be able to do much actually to check the count, because there is so much going on. But the presence of the watcher, announced as such to the official in charge, will be an almost airtight deterrent against fraud. In addition to purportedly watching the count the watcher keeps careful track of how many ballots are discarded as spoiled and for what reasons; this can strongly affect the outcome of a contested election.

Voting machines make the above routine unnecessary. It may be possible to inject fraud into an election conducted with a voting machine other than by the crude methods of coercion or bribery, since anything that one mechanical engineer can design another can modify to produce a different result, but there is nothing for you to do at this point. The detection of skullduggery with the innards of a voting machine would call for a type of investigation, probably by the FBI, beyond the scope of practical field politics.

The watcher telephones the outcome to headquarters, where you and Upright are keeping your own tally while chewing your naUs down to the elbows. Then she, or he, goes to the election party.

The Election Night Party: When the polls closed you moved from the office headquarters to the space in which die Doorbell Club meets. You expect three times the membership of the Club but that's all right - let 'em crowd in; it makes them happier.

You did not stop for dinner; your stomach isn't behaving quite as it should. A sandwich picked up "to go" is all you want. Upright shows up from the field about the time you get there and the two of you, alone for once, or with the office girl and one or two others, get ready for the party. You place someone at the telephone and arm her with a tally sheet. You turn on the radio to the best station for returns-the snap tallies on the major offices are already beginning to come in - and set up the big black board to post returns on the whole ballot You place an excited, high school-age adherent in charge of this, and turn your attention to the refreshments.

Three times the membership of your organization gives a figure of 300 - three hundred quarts of beer. That's a lot of beer; you have purchased it in kegs, if you could not get it donated, and made an arrangement to return untapped kegs for credit, so you display only one keg at a time and keep the rest under lock and key. You have five hundred paper cups, not of the largest size.

Coffee and soft drinks are available for those who do not drink. A very small amount of food, doughnuts, cheese and crackers, has been obtained, but you hide it away and will not display it until about one o'clock in the morning.

Don't try to serve hard liquor; it will bankrupt you. Some will bring their own and some will get tipsy. It?s a free country.

A few people are beginning to show up and it breaks up the depression that you and Upright have been suffering from since the polls closed. They crowd around him, shaking his hand and slapping him on the back, and urging him to have a drink "right out of the bottle." Some of them also speak to you.

After that they pour in a steady stream; the place gets crowded and stays crowded. Most of them are your friends; some of them are the perennials who go to all the election parties every election night. You wedge yourself in back of a table to get away from the press and bend one ear to the telephone while trying to watch the telephone tally and eat your sandwich and drink some coffee. Judge Yardwide, according to the radio, has a safe

lead over the field for the gubernatorial nomination. You nod knowingly and with pleasure - with Yardwide at the head of the ticket the final election should be easier to win.

The first telephone reports come in; they are simply awfull Your sandwich shows a tendency to want to come up again. Upright squeezes his way through the crowd, nodding and smiling and speaking to people, then bends over and glances at the figures.

His face is suddenly grave, but he pats your arm. "Never mind," he says. "It's all been worth it, even if we lose. If I ever run again I want you to manage me."

You feel like bursting into tears, but there are too many people present

After a while it begins to swing. Upright is creeping up on Hopeful.... Upright-982; Hopeful-1,005. Upright-2,107; Hopeful - 2,043. You're ahead!

Upright - 5,480; Hopeful - 5,106. You begin to breathe more easily.

Upright-9,817; Hopeful -8,166

Upright - 12,042; Hopeful-Wait a minute-you hear your district number mentioned on the radio, and the telephone is ringing at the same time. "Quiet! Keep quiet-please!"

You get some modicum of surcease, at least around the radio: " - minor contest seems to be settled," the announcer is saying cheerfully. "Jack Hopeful, through his manager, has just conceded the nomination in the Umpteenth District to the Honorable Jonathan Upright. The statement urges all voters to support the Demican ticket this fall. Mr. Hopeful could not be reached for a personal interview but it is understood that- "

You don't hear the rest. You've won.

The rest of the evening is pretty light-hearted. You break away from the radio and circulate around a bit even though your feet are killing you. You try a glass of beer but you let it go flat while you duck back to the radio. The attorney general fight has taken a very interesting twist; it's likely to cause some complications. About three a.m. you and the nominee and two other faithfuls squeeze into a booth in an all night restaurant and you eat the biggest meal you have eaten in over two weeks. You've got die first edition with the preliminary returns and you eat while one of you reads the figures aloud.

At four a.m. you fall into bed and die. Post-Mortem Upright- 16,107 Hopeful-11,373

Figures from earlier contests, corrected for population and registration changes, show that a candidate in a two-man race will receive 10,000 votes in your district if he files and makes a superficial campaign. Comparison with other districts and previous years on a percentage basis shows that your district had 2,000 votes more than normal.

Therefore your campaign methods stirred out about 6,000 votes, of which some 2,000 were new votes not normally to be expected in a primary. This is the final proof of the correctness of your technique, since winning could have resulted from the deficiencies of Hopeful's campaign rather than the excellence of yours.

Detailed examination of the results by individual precincts shows that the candidate stirred out between a third and a quarter of the majority and that the precinct workers did the rest. The decision to have Upright go directly to the homes of the voters has been justified.

The cupboard is bare but the bills are paid - all but the beer; you pledged your own credit on that. You must remember to return the two kegs left over - that will help, and perhaps you can get one or two others to divvy up while they are still feeling good over the victory. Upright intends to reimburse you but you don't want to stick him for it - his personal expenses have been a little heavier than he had anticipated.

We Was Robbed! Or perhaps you did not win. Maybe there was a bad break at the last moment, or a schism in the Club, or something. Suppose the outcome was: Hopeful-12,785; Upright-12,009.

It is easy to cry fraud, easy to charge it up to a machine, to dirty campaigning, to stuffed ballot boxes. But you won't be right, not one time in a thousand. No, citizen, depend on it - if you lose it is almost certain that it was because not enough people wanted your man to win and most especially that not enough supporters worked hard enough or intelligently enough.

At the very least in every election there is a high percentage who just don't vote - in a primary more than 50%. You cannot blame those lost votes on chicanery. Perhaps you did the best you could and the outcome was indeed affected by some dirty tricks, at the polls or elsewhere, but the result still represents die will of the American people, at least by passive consent. Accept it

Closing Ranks: You won't get anything out of your workers and you won't try to - you will wait till the next regular meeting of the Doorbell Club. In the meantime you are very busy.

There is the matter of gathering up records of the primary in order not to have to depend on the county clerk's records next time. Some of the precinct area supervisors may be disciplined enough to help you do this, but the let-down may continue until the posted voting record and results have been taken down. A 35-mm. camera furnishes a convenient way to get these records without stopping to copy the data, but it's too big a job to cover die entire district single-handed even widi a camera to help you. Do the best you can and pick up die rest from die official records next winter.

Your memo pad has a score of such jobs, loose ends to be picked up. You want to get them out of the way promptly so that both you and the nominee can get at least a week's rest, out of town, after the state convention and before starting the final campaign. A shorter holiday is needed before then, too, if you can manage it. But you have got to consolidate your victory by getting the party factions inside the district together before you dare leave town or make any campaign plans.

The entire slate of county committee candidates from the Doorbell Club have been elected, yourself among them-you now control the district delegation. The nominee is an ex-officio member of the state committee and is a delegate to the state convention. On your advice he has appointed state committeemen, yourself among them. You must plan to attend the state committee meeting at the capital but you may not have time to stay over to observe the convention - there is so much to be done.

(Your own state may provide for party organization somewhat different from that implied here, although this is typical. You must be familiar with it, whatever it is. Don't be caught with less representation on either the county committee or the state committee than your pro-rate necessary to control your district.) But your first job is to see Jack Hopeful. We have assumed that Mr. Hopeful is a regular member of your party and not a stooge of the other party. You want and need his support in the final election. Get hold of him or his manager and invite them both to your house for dinner. Mr. Upright will be there also. After dinner you will talk over the coming campaign.

Don't offer him anything. Don't assume that he wants anything. Treat it as a matter of course that he and his manager will support the straight party ticket, including Mr. Upright. Mi-. Upright will ask him to serve as chairman of the district campaign committee

for the ticket, while explaining to him that the work need not be any more strenuous than he wants to make it. The office will in fact be titular, since you will dominate the executive committee and the committee as a whole. You will remain personal manager for Mr. Upright, and, as chairman of your district's delegation of committeemen, you will be in authority on any official party matters.

You don't speak of these aspects to Hopeful; you offer him the top stuffed-shirt position in exchange for his nominal support. His manager is offered a vice-chairmanship and a place on the executive committee.

They may accept, pitch in, and be most valuable. Or they may hem and haw and leave, after asking for time to "think it over." Or they come right out and ask for money or appointments or both. They may have campaign debts to meet, or they may demand outrageous salaries to campaign. Hopeful may want help in landing a major piece of patronage for himself, or he may expect you to pay off his obligation to his manager by letting him have one of the congressional secretaryships if Upright wins. For some curious reason many unsuccessful candidates seem to feel that their successful rivals owe it to the defeated to pay off their campaign debts and commitments.

It's a form of blackmail; don't give in to it.

Upright should explain that he can't promise appointments to anyone since he has consistently refused to promise them inside his own committee. Appointments will be settled if and when - after the final election. As for money - there isn't any.

They may give in with bad grace, if they have no place to go and wish to stay in good standing in the party, or they may leave. If they do, they will be self-righteous as can be about the whole matter. For some reason your refusal to pay the bills they ran up trying to defeat you will seem like a clear case of moral turpitude to them.

Bring up your heavy artillery. Get some Big Names, preferably from the camp of the party's nominee for governor, to call on Hopeful and explain to him, sweetly but firmly, that if he ever intends to get anywhere inside the party he had better stay regular, lend his name, invite in his supporters, and, as a minimum, preside at one or two pubfic meetings for Upright and die ticket

The chances are you will get him. But don't buy his "support"; it isn't worth it.

In the mean time you will have seen to it that personal notes of thanks are prepared (Hooven-typed, perhaps) for every worker, endorser, and contributor in Upright's campaign. Make the ones to precinct workers different from and more emphatic than the odiers and let all of diem be a call to arms for the final ticket in die final campaign. In addition, make the first meeting of die Doorbell Club a jubilation in which each worker is thanked individually and his majority is announced.

You will want to get everyone possible out to die first meeting of the party-wide breakfast group; here is where your spade work for party harmony will pay off. In addition to gathering in Hopeful there are at least twenty party factions in the district, one for each candidate for each office on the ballot. You will need all of diem and will make personal appeals by telephone to die leaders in die campaigns diat lost, in addition to die usual postal card notice. You have many different fights to straighten out here, dozens of sets of feadiers to smooth, but your job is easier dian it was widi Hopeful, as you appear in the capacity of broker for everybody's interests.

Out of it all you try to whip together a campaign committee for die whole ticket, as diat is die best way to elect your own man. You turn your thoughts to "face," everybody's face and you help to preserve it by offering them all a chance to do the noble diing in public by

declaring for the whole ticket. Titular offices in the campaign are passed out to anybody who seems to want one, with great fanfare (the possibilities of the words "vice-chairman," "director," "secretary," "coordinator," and "committee" have never been exhausted).

From these other groups you get new members of the Doorbell Club, at least on a temporary basis. You may retitle it, if expedient, for the duration. You now need a membership about four times the best you could do in die primary.

There is money to be considered, all over again. It is easier to raise now, but you need more of it. Better put money raising in the hands of the gubernatorial nominee's local manager, for die campaign as a whole, and handle your own resources as a separate account for the congressional campaign. Don't forget to insist that die national committee kick in for die congressional district and be darn sure some bright boy down town doesn't beat you to it and get his hands on it through a more direct pipeline to die national committee.

Some county and state committees seem to be under the delusion that the way to raise money is to assess die candidates. This is all wrong; the committee should raise money and support the candidates. If assessed, don't pay it; their help isn't worth much if that is how they work.

From a proper state or county committee you may expect some money, a lot of active help, and much free or partly free printing. Your printing bills should be small in the second campaign as the stuff you will use will be for the whole ticket.

You may want a few items in which Upright's name is emphasized over that of the rest of the ticket, by lay out and type face.

We won't run through the final campaign in any detail. In general it is just like the primary campaign, except that everything is more complicated, the numbers are larger, the emotions are stronger, the amounts of money are larger, and you have the disadvantage, as it is usually figured, of running against an incumbent The Honorable Mr. Swivelchair has more friends and more acquaintances, but he has also accumulated a back log of enemies and mistakes. Still, incumbency is usually figured as an asset and that is the safe way for you to figure. If Swivelchair is the stooge of a tight and well-established machine, you will not only have to work harder but will have to count on some trouble of the dirty sort. The election night count in particular will have to be closer. Figure your trouble spots and make your watchers there your smallest women; they will be safe. Men might have their arms broken.

There will be more Big Operators in your hair, more blokes with votes-in-their-pockets, more people widi their hands out, more hopeful patronage hounds, more of everything which makes politics complicated without adding to the vote.

There is just one thing to be remembered in the midst of all this hurly-burly and confusion: Keep your eye on the ball!

The votes are still in the precincts. Punching doorbells still remains the only way to get out the vote you need, despite anything you may hear from the Important Politicians from down town.

Maintain your own practice of spending two afternoons each week punching doorbells.

Schedule Mr. Upright for another 500 hours of canvassing and see to it that he keeps to his schedule.

Keep your campaign centered around the Doorbell Club and don't use them for anything but canvassing until election day.

Ignore the opposition as before.

The only real differences are these:

(a) You all campaign for the whole ticket and emphasize Mr. Upright only by getting in his name more frequently, principally through quoting him by name in support of the platform and the ticket.

(b) You canvass from a selected list as before, but this time you ignore, in your canvassing, all the members of your party who voted in the primary. With the exceptions of the ones who had to be carried co the polls (and will have Co be again) these people can all be depended on to get to the polls and to vote the straight party ticket. Instead you canvass all members of your party who failed to vote in the primary ... and all members of minor parties and all unaffiliated voters. The known members of the other party you ignore. You have nearly 40,000 people to reach; you haven't time enough nor people enough to do more. Your effort will be to turn out the largest possible vote of your own party... especially the voce of the "sleepers."

(c) Therefore you will put more effort than ever into organizing your election day forces. If additional help for election day can be obtained from the county or state committee you will want it, since it does not require local information, other than a prepared list, Co do election day work, and it does not even take that Co be a poll worker or a count watcher.

And that's all

Along toward the last of the campaign very heavy pressures will be brought against you co change the campaign, but one will come from an unexpected source. A senior member of the party, resident in your district, a nominal member from the beginning of the Upright committee and a fairly heavy contributor Co it, is likely to call on you. He won't put it quite bluntly but the idea is that you should lie down and let Swivelchair win.

He will say you have made a good fight but that Upright does not have a chance. Upright isn't quite ready yet; maybe in two years, or four years, but not this year. On the other hand he happens to know that Swivelchair plans to go for Senator next time; on that occasion he could throw a lot of support to Upright if Upright did not cause Swivelchair too much expense this time. Why not be practical, take a long view, and get along?

You wouldn't even have to drop the rest of the ticket, naturally; just persuade Upright that there was no sense in throwing good money after bad-and get sick for a while.

As for you - well, what appointment would you like? Maybe it could be arranged.

There is no particular reason why you should not indulge in the rare luxury of losing your temper, although it won't help any. Send him about his business. Don't make it an issue - now. But don't let him sit in on any party conclave during the campaign, nor ever again, if you can keep him out. He's a Trojan horse.

Don't let it shake your faith in human nature. Instead, it should build up your faith. They would not try to buy you off if they were not frightened! It is a shiningjustification of your faith in the nature of the average citizen. Your methods and your beliefs are being vindicated in the most practical way possible - and die opposition knows it.

Some time later you will again find yourself seated behind a table with an election night party going on all around you. The radio will be blasting, the phone will be ringing, you will be trying to eat a sandwich and listen to the radio while thinking with half your mind about how to scrape up the postage for the eight or nine hundred-odd letters of thanks that Upright will have to send out in the next two weeks.

The early returns aren't going too badly; Upright is even running a little ahead of the ticket in some spots -but it's still touch-and-go. Swivelchair's organization is experienced and well trained; it can't be discounted. You decide to put off worrying about the postage, and so forth, until about Thursday. You'll find the money; you always have. There haven't been any returns on congressional districts for about an hour. You are getting jittery. The announcer is introducing candidates and notables - why don't those stuffed shirts get off the air?

Here come some figures-9th district, 10th district, 11 th district, 12th district - the announcer stops. What's got into him?

'Just a minute, folks, some new figures just in... any moment now. Here's one item of news anyway. The new figures clearly show that in the Umpteenth District, in a surprise upset, Jonathan Upright has unseated old-timer Congressman Swivelchair. The incomplete returns show a lead of-" You have elected a congressman. You can't leave on that vacation the next day. In fact you can't leave for a couple of weeks. Besides the thank-you notes there are the post-election meetings of the Doorbell Club, the breakfast dub, and the state and county committees. Upright wants to discuss appointments with you, too, of his secretaries. You don't want to go to Washington with him; you don't even want to be on the payroll as his field secretary and stay in the district, as you don't want to be his employee - your position depends on your being your own boss. This attitude gives you at least a veto in the appointments he does make-and on his later appointments. Your own plans have more to do with tying in the Doorbell Club to Washington through a weekly newsletter from Upright and a regular procedure whereby the Club will be kept informed as to what is going on, what it means, and votes their approval or disapproval for the information of Upright and the two senators.

It is nearly a year and a half later that you are sitting in your living room, thumbing through the current Congressional Record - the only tangible thing you got out of either campaign - when you notice a roll call vote on a measure you have been following. It's a good measure in your opinion, and important to the whole country. This is the last vote, the one that sends it to the President for signature. You note with approval that Upright voted for it-as you knew he would; you have corresponded about it.

It just squeaked through, by one vote. You suddenly realize die significance. One vote - Upright's vote, for Swivelchair had a definite record against this sort of measure.

One vote. Your vote!

Your own efforts have put a constructive measure into effect for the whole 140,000,000 Americans -you did it, with your bare hands and the unpaid help of people who believed you.

It's a good feeling!

CHAPTERXI

Footnotes on Democracy

"The target is who and what?"The people, yes-sold and sold again for losses and regrets for gains, for slow advances,for a dignity of deepening wots."- Carl Sandburg

"When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can perfection be expected? It therefore astonishes me to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does...."

-Benjamin Franklin to the Constitutional Convention

The art of politics is as confused and unorganized as a plate of hash and as endless as a string of ciphers. Despite the numerous digressions many things pertinent to the art, as distinguished from the issues, have necessarily been ignored. Some of them are much too involved for available space and quite unnecessary to a basic book, as you will learn about them as you come across diem, with litde loss to you, if your grounding is firm.

We must pass by such matters as the workings of state and national conventions, the work of state legislatures - "cinch" bills, "must" bills, the effect the Speaker can have on producing a "do pass" committee vote, the rules committee, stopping the clock-and the inner workings of congress - seniority, cloture, the functions of floor leaders and whips, senatorial courtesy. Lobbying and lobbyists, proper and improper sources of campaign funds, blocs, the preferential ballot, the publication of political newspapers, the Hatch Act, the organization of national committees and national campaigns, the political inter-relations of city, state, and county-all of these matters will face you with fresh political problems, but your answers will depend much more on how you look at issues; the techniques will turn out to be familiar to you. Only the names will be changed.

Nevertheless, whenever a large family makes a journey, no matter how many neat pieces of luggage they may own, there are always left-over items for which there is no assigned space but which must not be left behind. These are wrapped in brown paper and carried under the arm. This chapter is such a bundle.

The Personal Expenses of Volunteer Politics: Let's be specific. You can be quite active without spending a dime, but there are expenses which make your work much easier and more enjoyable. Here is minimum budget for comfort and freedom from embarrassment:

One extra meal out per week....................... $1.00

Pass-the-hat collections and dues, per wk.... .50

Transportation, per week............................. .40

Additional postage, political, per week......... .25

Weekly total................................................... $2.15

This budget permits much higher expenses during the most active weeks of campaigns because there will be many off-season weeks when the additional expense of being a politician is limited to a few postal cards and a phone call.

The budget ignores the fact that you aren't spending money on movies, bridge at a tenth, nor on other recreations or hobbies when busy with politics. Politics on the above budget is cheaper than most recreations, i.e., entering politics can save you money instead of costing you money, even though you pay your own way.

Political contributions and trips to conventions can run to any figure you care to spend. So also can any hobby. You will need the moral courage to say firmly, "I'm sorry but I don't have die money," when you can't afford it. You will be respected for it and it will cost you no political influence in die long run.

Coping with Communists: Communists are not very numerous but they get around; you will run into them everywhere. There is a popular belief that Communist infiltration is found only in the left wing of the Democratic Party; I have not found it so. A Communist cell can pop up wherever more than four people assemble. I have spotted them in organizations so reactionary that their presence, if known, would have caused deaths from apoplexy.

Communists are most easily understood if you think of them as a fanatical, evangelical religious sea. I speak here of American Communists; I have no knowledge of Russian Communists, having never met one to my knowledge and having never been to Russia.

From the standpoint of religion the peculiarities of communists form a recognizable pattern. They have an outrageously unscientific "bible" which they point to as being the last word in science. It appears in "authorized" and "forbidden" translations. They have a god - the idea of the "proletariat" - a major prophet, a minor prophet, and an apostate saint. They are absolutist in viewpoint and brook no argument Anything is moral to them which serves to propagate the faith, no matter how offensive to the unbeliever. Theirs is a "higher" morality; what we have is a "decadent, bourgeois" morality. They are indefatigably zealous. They are usually sincerely and altruistically devoted to their cause. You will find other such characteristics.

Their favorite technique is to bore from within. The operators are usually clandestine Communists, hiding behind some other party label-this is not offensive to their own strict moral code. They will make use of democratic parliamentary procedure and the democratic concept of free speech to ends destructive ofboth. Their notion of free speech is one in which you hire the hall and they do all the talking, on a subject of their choice. It is stricdy a one-way proposition - try it in their hall sometime!

A common technique is to operate in a cell of three -one to make a motion, one to second it, and the third to harangue. They generally spread around the hall to do this and may not even appear to be acquainted.

A chairman confronted with this triple play can find himself in a pickle. The subject picked by the cell is always one which can be made popular with the particular crowd and which is not overtly connected with Communism. A group of three can often stampede a crowd into some action disastrous to the objectives of the crowd but suited in some devious fashion to Communist purposes.

An able chairman can prevent this by means described earlier in this book if he spots the Communist cell.

Fortunately this can often be done in plenty of time. American Communists are hardly ever very intelligent although many display some aspects ofbriltiance. They tend to behave in regular patterns which they have been taught and by which they can be spotted, but they can most easily be spotted by their addiction to catch words and phrases.

These shibboleths change from season to season, but, if you are in politics, you will hear them, come to recognize them, and listen for them.

A few years back the word "activize" was such a touchstone. "People's" this and "People's" that has enjoyed a long popularity, as has "United Front." There is no way to tell you what these words will be at some time in the future. Listen for them and check the Daily Worker now and then to see what they are up to.

Some of them reveal themselves by calling themselves "Communist-sympathizers." This sort of person explains that he is not a Communist himself, but sympathetic to their social ideals. Consider, citizen - have you ever heard of a Democrat-sympathizer, or a Republican-sympathizer? There ain't no such animal.

Communists are merely irritating nuisances rather than dangerous. Only the timid and the mendacious profess to fear a communist revolution in this country. Anyone acquainted with the mares and the culture of this country can see that ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred, at the very least, don't want any part of Communism. It does not fit in with our individual ambitions.

Of what use, then, are the American Communists?

They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of clanger to the Republic.

Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.

Unfortunately we are more prone to ignore the sick spot thus disclosed and content ourselves with calling out more cops.

Lawyers in Politics: Lawyers constitute around half of all our state legislators and congressmen. They hold other political offices way out of proportion to their numbers in the population. Many people take this as a matter of course and it is in fact a logical consequence of certain features of our social structure.

We have already mentioned the fact that a lawyer can run for office easier than most other people and that, in many offices, he can take a bribe in an undetec-table manner. However these are not real objections to lawyers in public life; lawyers are certainly as patriotic and as honest as the average run of men and I believe that they average more intelligent than the general run.

Nevertheless it seems very unfortunate that lawyers should make laws. It may even be argued that lawyers should not be judges. The latter idea is certainly radical, but the profession of judging is by no means the same as the profession of the solicitor or the barrister. It could be a separate profession; the origin of the identification of the two professions seems to go back to Biblical times, when priest, teachers, judges, and lawyers were all one profession. Two of the professions separated out; the other two could be separated just as, in England, the two professions of solicitor and barrister are separate. There is now no legal requirement that the justices of our Supreme Court be lawyers.

But lawyers do their greatest damage in lawmaking. In the first place lawyers speak a language not known to the rest of us; they write laws in that language and then we must hire one of their guild to tell us what the law means. They assert that their special language is necessary, as ordinary speech is not suffitiendy exact. One may doubt this; many semanticians have disputed the claim. A layman is surely entitled to doubt it, even without the special analytical skills of the semantician and without knowing the other language, since lawyers are forever disputing as to what a law means after they have written it.

I wonder what the result would be if one could attack the constitutionality of a law on the grounds that it could not be understood by the ordinary literate adult? The ordinary adult is required to obey the laws-which carries with it the implication that there must be some way of telling him what it is that he must do. How would it be to require that laws be expressed in such terms in the first place?

Even a lawyer cannot require me to rimpf unless he has some way to tell me, in English, what it is I have to dotorimpf.

A foreign language is a minor vice of the lawmaking lawyer, however. Foreign languages can be gotten around, more or less, through interpreters. The worst thing a lawyer brings to the task of lawmaking is a faulty orientation.

You have heard of the Fillyloo Bird? He flies backwards because he does not care where he is going but he likes to see where he has been. Lawyers as a group are strongly related to the Fillyloo Bird, by training, by lack of training, and by association. They look to the past

That's a helluva way to try to draw up a new law to cover a new situation!

We are now confronted with the disheartening spectacle of lawyers attempting to draw up laws on the subject of atomic physics. They look to the past for precedents; there are no precedents - and their own esoteric professional training does not require that they be exposed in any fashion to science nor the methods of science.

The dilemma is not new, it is just more acute. In a myriad ways we permit a group of men who know rather less about the real world than do farmers, engineers, mechanics, or grocers make for us our most important decisions, in accordance with dusty precedents of dead men of their own clique.

The real trouble with lawyers in public life is that most of them don't know anything that really matters.

A Third Party? The emphasis that has been placed herein on the two major parties and the necessity for party regularity and party discipline may lead some to think that I oppose any attempt to form new political parties. If so, I wish to correct the impression.

Party regularity and party discipline are pragmatically necessary and morally correct in any political party if that party is to carry out its responsibilities. This is especially true with respect to unsuccessful candidates in a party primary; no man should offer himself as a candidate in a party primary unless he is prepared to abide by the majority will of the political group he seeks as a sponsor. Running in a primary is a voluntary action, very similar to joining a caucus; it carries with it responsibilities as well as privileges. A candidate need not enter a primary at all; he is always free to run as an independent instead.

In some states the right of a person to participate in a primary may be challenged and he may then be called on to prove his right by taking an oath to support the ticket which results from such primary. Such a procedure is morally correct; if universal it might do much to put a stop to the present eat-your-cake-and-have-h-too attitude of some irresponsible politicians.

Special circumstances arise from time to time when two groups, strongly opposed on basic issues, struggle for the privilege of wearing a party label claimed by

both. In such cases there is usually no pretense that the losing faction will support the winner and there should be none. Consequently no obligation to party regularity exists. But the more usual case is much more like that of the spoiled brat who insists on having his own way in every respect or he won't play.

All of which adds up to this: if you decide to bolt, go whole hog. Leave the party. Join the other party or join a third party. Don't expect either the Republicans or the Democrats to permit you to wield influence if you insist on flirting with the other party whenever the whim seizes you.

The issues involved in forming a third party at this or any time are beyond the scope of this discussion, although it is evident that both parties are now wracked with internal stresses over basic issues which bring each wing of each party closer to the corresponding wing of the other party than are the right and left wings of either party, within the same party. An ideological realignment would appear rational; a third party may be the convenient means to such end.

The practical aspects-our proper business here- depend on whether or not the risk is justified by the objectives. Forming a third party is a highly speculative venture; it fails much more often than it succeeds. But it has been done successfully many times in our history. Mr. Lincoln was elected by third parties for both terms, first by the Republican party and next by the Union party - the latter fact seems to be little known. In 1864 the so-called "Radical" or regular Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, who had been the Republican nominee in 1856. The Union party was a coalition of both Republicans and Democrats.

The Failure of "Reformers": It is a truism in political history that the only thing worse than an officeholder under a corrupt machine is the reformer who replaces him.

Why should this be? Surely most of these reform gentlemen are honestly devoted to the cause of good government and have the best of intentions when they take office. Within my experience practically all of them were, I believe, sincere.

The downfall of some of them can be charged to sheer naivete; they were quite unprepared to cope with the liquor and lady lobbyists, the pressure groups, and the stab in the back. Some of them were cold zealots who could not maintain power because they did not understand what people wanted as well as did the bosses. And some were tragic cases who found themselves unable to live on the miserly stipends which we so frequendy offer as a reward for statesmanship and succumbed to opportunities for graft and bribes.

But the most numerous variety, it seems to me, fail through conceit, from a type of swelled head arising from self-righteousness. I am a "reform" politician myself; this phenomenon is of great interest to me. It surprised and worried me to find out that so many of my ilk were such frail reeds when we got the chance to carry out our intentions.

The life and death of a reformer often runs something like this: He starts out full of enthusiasm and moral indignation. He is determined to have nothing to do with anything resembling what he calls "playing politics." He won't make any promises; he will remain a free agent at all times, devoted to the best interests of all the people.

Presently he finds that he has to makesome promises; a man who isn't committed to anything can't get anywhere in any field, since social living depends on contractual arrangements. Being ignorant he usually makes the wrong promises; they become inconvenient to keep.

Here is where his swelled head ruins him-

He is surrounded (always) by sycophants who tell him what a great guy he is, a new Savonarola no less, and that he is much too big to be bound by bad promises because he has obligations to the whole people which over-ride commitments to individuals, particularly when he was trapped into them (which may be true).

A conscience which tells you that you can break your word for higher, more moral reasons is a very convenient thing to have around. You can get it trained so that it always gives you the answer you want that day. "Mirror, mirror, in my hand, who is the fairest in the land" - and sure enough, it's yourself!

After a succession of such incidents the Machine is back in office.

Political machines, both the fairly decent and the utterly corrupt, have accumulated a great deal of true information about politics. Reformers can't compete unless they know these facts and are prepared to offer all the Machine does and a little more. The two most important facts the reformer must learn from the Machine are these: (a) Promises must be kept, and (b) votes are in the precincts.

You can tear up the rest of the book. Are Democracies Efficient? This used to be a favorite subject for pessimistic pondering during the 'thirties; we seem to have answered it definitively between December 7, 1941, and August 6, 1945. I used to be worried about it myself; I was devoted to the democratic way of life but honestly wondered if it were destined to be engulfed in this "Wave of the Future" which then enjoyed a certain popularity.

My doubts were settled permanently by a refugee from Nazi Germany. A gentile and a very prosperous Berlin businessman, he had preferred ducking over the border and landing in New York penniless and with no prospects to toeing the Nazi line.

I expressed my misgivings to him. He answered, "Don't ever let anyone tell you that any form of dictatorship is more efficient than freedom. Being made up of human beings, both systems make mistakes. The difference is this: In a free country when the mistake begins to show, somebody sets up a howl and presently it is fixed; under a dictator nobody dares to criticize, and the mistake is perpetuated as a permanent, inflexible rule."

To be sure the touchstone he used was free speech, but democracy and free speech are Siamese twins; one can't stay alive without the other.

But Can I Be Effective? Notwithstanding the pretty picture in the last chapter of Muriel Busybody electing Mr. Upright, unseating Mr. Swivelchair, and eventually diereby effecting in at least one instance the whole course of national life you are still entitled to reasonable doubts as to whether or not the case is typical. After all, I wrote the plot; I may have phonied it.

Remember Susie? Susie, the one-woman army? Susie and her kids? (When her oldest was about nine Susie announced die intention of taking them all to the mountains for a week's vacation. The kid was not impressed. "Look here, Mother," she said, "is this really going to be a vacation - or just another convention?") The primary laws of the state in which Susie lives require that delegations to national conventions for the purpose of nominating candidates for president be elected by the people of the party and that the delegates be bound by law to support the candidate under whose name their names appear on the primary ballot, thus giving the people direct voice in the selection of presidential candidates. The law provides further that lists of such delegations may appear on the ballot only as a result of circulation of petitions among the party's voters and such petitions require a great many names to be valid.

Susie had volunteered to obtain for her candidate such a petition, but the Big Politicians downtown told her not to worry. 'Joe Whoosis up north has the whole thing under control," they told her. "He's got the money to take care of it and he is going to use experienced, professional, paid petition circulators." There was a strong implication diat her casual volunteer methods were too sloppy for this Big Time Stuff.

So Susie shut up but she did not put it out of her mind. She watched the newspapers for announcement of the filing of the petition, but failed to find it. With the deadline one week away she telephoned the Big Politician. "How's the petition coming along?"

"Huh? Oh, that - Whoosis is taking care of that. I told you."

"No forms have been filed as yet with the registrar."

"Oh, he'll file 'em up nordi. Don't worry."

On Friday, still seeing no newspaper announcement, Susie decided she would have to find out for herself; she put in a long-distance call to Joe Whoosis. She got his office but not him. Whoosis was sick. The petition? Well, there had been some mix-up about the money, but the secretary thought that it was probably being taken care of, down south.

Susie knew durn well it wasn't being taken care of down soudi; Susie swung into action.

She had a bunch of old petition filing forms thriftily saved from another election; she had her file of 3 x 5 cards; she had a telephone. It was Friday afternoon, beautiful weather, and about half the city had gone away for the weekend - including half her contacts. Never mind.

First she dug up several volunteer typists and put them to work filling out the headings of the petitions... . There were more than a thousand such headings to type. This started, she began calling her district leaders, thirty of them, volunteers all, the Muriel Busybodys of die organization.

She located about half of them, told them the house was on fire - get busy! By midnight the last of them had picked up her (or his) petition forms and had left to marshall the forces. The next morning Susie spent digging out secondary leaders in the uncovered districts.

Saturday and Sunday was all die time there was, as all day Monday, Monday night, and Tuesday would be needed to check the forms against the Great Register, cast out the unqualified names (about 40% on any petition) and arrange by precincts the remainder - then file the petitions by four p.m.

A weekend is a poor time to try to circulate a petition at best, but picnics and ball parks and union meetings and crowds pouring out of churches provided places where circulators could make their pitches and fill a form fairly quickly. Susie needed - and got - fifteen thousand names by Monday morning.

The petition was filed with twenty minutes to spare and was eventually qualified as valid. The Big Politicians never got around to submitting a single name.

Now as to the significance of this amazing display of the efficiency of the volunteer fireman-Susie's state is large; it holds about fifty votes in a national convention. It also holds its preferential primary for president much earlier than the primaries or conventions of most other states.

If Susie's state had failed to support her candidate it is quite unlikely that his name would ever have been offered at the national convention ... and without Susie's intervention -bare-handed, no money, no tools save some 3 x 5 file cards - it would have been impossible under die law for her candidate to receive the convention votes of her state. The situation was critical and could have been disastrous - in a fashion directly parallel to what happened to Mr. Willkie's chances in 1944 when the Wisconsin primary went against him.

Since it is not desirable to tie this example to a particular party we will omit the matter of whether or not Susie's candidate was nominated and subsequendy elected president-but I will say diis: On one weekend Susie, middle-class housewife and mother of three, working from her living room telephone, drastically changed the course of state and national politics and left her mark on world affairs and on world history for some generations to come.

Many have done so on a much larger scale and much more prominently - I don't recall ever having seen Susie's picture in die papers. But at dial point she was one of the indispensable factors in die present course of history, like die boy widi his finger in die dike.

There are hundreds of utterly essential moving parts in every automobile, which are never noticed unless they fail. The volunteer in politics is most conspicuous when he is absent.

Still, you probably won't try to nominate a president The wearying prospect of managing a candidate may be more than you will ever want to undertake. Is operating at a lower level worth die trouble?

The answer is emphatically "yes" - for many reasons; I will mention three.

Volunteers are trusted. This results in them being called on when the party needs a person of certain integrity in a pinch - which happens rather frequently. I remember one campaign organization which was almost entirely salaried; there were only halfa dozen unpaid volunteers in the whole outfit. It was necessary at one point to disburse some fifteen thousand dollars for poll workers on election day; there were entirely proper tactical reasons, involving in part the known presence of spies in the organization, for keeping it quiet and for doing it at the last possible minute. The money had to be in dollar bills to permit small individual payments.

As a matter of course two female volunteers were selected to do the job - two because fifteen thousand one-dollar bills are bulky: I can see them now, two young and pretty housewives, each with handbag bulging with three thousand dollars and one with a shoe box under her arm, stuffed with nine thousand more pieces of lettuce. Off they went to disburse it, looking as if they had been shopping. And back they came the next day and returned four thousand dollars-which they could have snitched and no one the wiser.

No one worried about the possibility that they might head for Mexico - they were volunteers with established reputations - and it was much better than hiring an armored car with bonded messengers.

Volunteers are upgraded with great speed, while a mercenary stays in the ranks. There was die case of- we'll call her Helen. Helen had no personal political ambitions but she was always willing to get in and work. Two years after she started we had an appointment to die state committee to place and we were quite choosy about it; we wanted to be sure of point of view on issues of die person who gotit

Helen's name was not thought of at first because she had not been around much at the time; she was very busy having a baby. When she was thought of, she was at once selected. I called her up and asked her to serve. She was not anxious and pointed out that she was tied down and unable to be active. But she finally consented.

Two years later some of the female volunteers decided to get rid of the current national committee-woman; they wanted a new one and they did not want the usual Mrs. J. Huffington Puff clubwoman. Helen's election was assured before she was consulted - much to her surprise!

Two years later than that her congressman decided to retire; she was not even resident in the district (a congressman need not be) but the congressman and his manager tapped her to be his successor.

She became one of the best known and one of the most useful members of Congress, as statesmanlike as she was sweet and beautiful.

Yet in her whole political career she had never sought anything for herself. Her distinguishing characteristic was just a willingness to work, free, for what she believed in.

But die most important reason you can be effective has to do with die relative importance of various offices and of the several types of elections. The common belief about these matters is just the reverse of the true situation; most people seem to regard the office of president as the only one of importance and the presidential election every four years as the "main" election. Nothing could be further from the truth. The most important office in a democracy is the city councilman or selectman; the most important election is the local caucus-and so on up to the "major" offices and the "major" elections.

This is not news and it is no slur on the office of president. Most presidents have said the same thing repeatedly. It is axiomatic that die smaller die office the more closely it usually affects the citizen in his daily life. For example, the pavement out in front of my house was paid for by a city street bond lien laid directly against my home and the bonds were reputed to include eight cents per square foot of pavement of "honest" graft - "honest" graft is a name given to the condition diat results when specifications are so drawn that one bidder on a public contract holds a favored position and need not hold down his price. It is done by describing, in the language of the lawyers, a particular patented product to the exclusion of all others.

("Why didn't I stop it if I know so durn much about politics?" Ouch! I did not move into this house until after this street received its present payment; I came in from out of town.)

However that is not sufficient to prove the point We can stand a lot of graft in our local affairs - we always have! - and still muddle along. But can we stand another world war? Foreign affairs are directly in the hands of the President; from this point of view the office of president is surely the most important, even of overwhelming importance, with the character of the Congress almost as important.

True. But congresses don't grow on trees, nor are they brought by the stork. Nor do presidents spring full grown from the brow of Jove. Elections are won m the precincts! These "minor" elections are the major part of the process which produces a president each four years; the "main" election in November is only the last link in a long concatenation of events. The organization which is capable of electing a town selectman is the identical organization which joins with others like it to pick a president. The citizen who fails to participate in the contests for these "minor" offices is offered only a choice between Mr. Harding and Mr. Cox, or their successors. You can't be effective in politics if you limit yourself to presidential candidates. It is not possible.

Furthermore, these "minor" candidates have a way of becoming presidents. Fourteen of our presidents started in the state legislature, from John Adams to F.D.Roosevelt. Hayeswasacky solicitor; Cleveland and Taft were assistant prosecutors; Lincoln a village postmaster, Coolidge was a city councilman, President Truman a county judge, Benjamin Harrison a court reporter, and Johnson started as a town alderman. Nor is the time from "minor" office to presidency very long; par for the course seems to be about twenty-six years - some made it in less than twenty. (These figures do not include cases like Wilson, Hoover, or Grant, where the candidate entered public life late in his career-these figures tell how long it takes to go the whole route from "minor" office to the White House.)

The President for twenty years from now may be in your district; you may urge him to run for his first public office. In any case the chances are better than two to one that any future president will make his start in one of the minor, local offices which the politically naive hold in contempt.

If you want to affect the destiny of this your country, take over your own precinct; with your friends, take over your own small district and elect the local officials.

There is no other route.

"Qui Qustodiet Ipsos Custodes?" - which, freely translated, means "Who keeps an eye on the watchman?" and shows that the ancient Romans were no dummies when it came to figuring out the political facts of life.

In the Roman Republic the answer was "Nobody"; the republic folded up and the bosses started calling themselves Caesar.

"Qui custodiet - ?" There is no point in grousing about that "machine" unless you are willing to help form a machine of your own. "Machine" is simply an American word meaning an efficient political organization, one that lines up the vote and turns it out on election day - the Doorbell Club of the last chapter. The term has been used habitually with scorn, as if there were something dishonorable perse about efficient political activity.

A "corrupt" political machine is merely one which has been taken over by thieves while the citizens slept. Many of our city machines are not corrupt, unless you insist that patronage and a mild amount of favoritism are the same thing as bribery, racketeering, and gangsterism. Many machines, called so with contempt, are serving the public a good deal better than the public deserves.

But it is needful to guard the guardians.

Consider Philadelphia, city of William Penn, Ben Franklin, and brotherly love. The water is such that one prefers to buy bottled spring water; the Delaware is so contaminated that it eats the skin off battleships even above the water line. The subway runs occasionally; two major subway lines have been excavated but never finished for traffic, because somebody mislaid the money. Taxes? The place has a city income tax as well as all the usual taxes.

A private citizen attempted to take a picture of the Liberty Bell; he was arrested - it seems that pix of the Liberty Bell are a concession farmed out from city hall. The King of Hoboes complained that Philadelphia's skid row was the worst in the country.

A survey appeared to show a 30% incidence of active tuberculosis in crowded neighborhoods, a figure so high that I have trouble believing it-but the Philadel-phia slums make the New York "Old Law" houses seem like choice residences. In Philadelphia a row house is described and pictured in the newspapers, with dead seriousness, as a "model home."

They licked the problem of mosquitoes in the jungles of Panama, and New York City is so free from flies that screens are hardly necessary. Both pests should be allowed to vote in Philadelphia; they own the place. Food of every sort is exposed on delicatessen counters, exposed not only to flies, but to the coughing and sneezing and fingering of the shoppers. Maybe the streets were once cleaned; there is no evidence of it

One might expect the inhabitants of such a city to be aroused and indignant, anxious to throw the rascals out. Are they? I give you my word of honor, most of them are proud of it.

Many times I have asked a Philadelphian who complained about this or that specific symptom of his sick city what he was doing about it, to be met with a look of amazement, followed by. "Do anything? Don't be silly - you can't crack that machine. Why, I haven't voted in years!"

I remember seeing - not once but often - a stylish and beautiful woman, furred and smartly gowned, walk her dog in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. Presently she would wait, leash in hand, smug content on her face, while her doggie dirtied the sidewalk.

She looked to me like the Spirit of Philadelphia.

Let George Do It. Heinrich Hauser, in that amazing attack on the land that sheltered him, The German Talks Back, describes his notion of the typical American as an irresponsible, technically trained ignoramus, and predicts the downfall of this country because, he says, we lack social responsibility. He cites a case in which he claims to have been riding as a passenger in an automobile when his driver, a well-bred young American woman, passed by the injured victim of a hit-and-run driver-this, he says, is typical.

It is no defense to state that the German peasant is even less socially responsible than the American, nor is there much point in asserting that there is a difference between the callous behavior of an individual and the organized, government-directed brutalities of Nazi Germany. The indictment, if true, can destroy us anyhow. Personally, I'll bet ten-to-one on the Good Samaritan behavior of any member of the Doorbell Club, but honesty demands that we admit that there is a measure of truth in what this angry German says.

I know a man who seems to me a case in point. He is native born, well and expensively educated, possessed of a good job, married, and a father. He has both ample time and ample money with which to take an interest in politics-and he takes intense interest.

But interest is all he takes! His activity is limited to an occasional vote.

He is anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-immigrant. He thinks that the public schools should be segregated not only by racial groups but by economic classes, so that his children would not have to brush shoulders with the "lower classes." He is in business but he does not believe in free enterprise; he wants the rules rigged to favor his particular enterprise against free competition from other businessmen. The government to him is "They" and "They" are always doing something he does not like.

"They" have worried him so much that he has at last figured out an answer which pleases him. He believes that the trouble with government is government itself; we should abolish it. Then would come the millenium when men like himself would make their own rules and everybody would live happily ever after, free from the oppression of "They."

I would like to think that he and his kind do not exist in dangerous numbers, but I am not sure. I f the people who hold to the "They" theory are too numerous and the volunteers too few then Heinrich Hauser was right. What the Axis failed to accomplish we will do to ourselves.

Rough Stuff: l would be less than honest if I did not admit that it is sometimes physically dangerous to be a volunteer in politics, even in your own neighborhood.

During my first campaign I took hasty refuge in a polling place until a lawyer from our side came to rescue me, because of a car filled with six thugs who did not like my count-watching activities. I did not feel bold and heroic about the incident; I am somewhat timid. It scared the daylights out of me.

It also surprised and shocked me. The polling place was in a prosperous, super-respectable residential neighborhood; it had never occurred to me that there could be any danger - that sort of thing happened only down near the river. And not to me in any case! I was a respectable citizen!

As a matter of fact it does not happen very often, but it is a hazard you must count on. Later the same day I found that another poll watcher had been less fortunate than myself- beaten about the face and head, left lying on the sidewalk. I myself have never been hurt, but I have had some bad moments, and I have seen permanent scars on more than a few of my colleagues who stood up for their rights. My own city has experienced political bombings at least twice in recent years; there is a former police officer serving time now for one of them.

Even though the danger is comparatively slight, is not this a good enough reason for a decent citizen to stay away from the dirty business?

It all depends on the way you look at it. If it was worthwhile for your son, or your husband, or you yourself, to fight in a foxhole, on the high seas, or in the air, then it is worthwhile to protect the victory by a moderate additional risk. This can be the "moral equivalent of war" the philosophers talk about.

Politicians and Political "Scientists": There is actually no reason why political scientists should not know something about politics and some of them do. I am sorry to say that most of them whom I have met did not; they made sorry fools of themselves the first time they stepped from the classroom into the vulgar hurly-burly. Some of them had basic horse sense, learned from their mistakes, buckled down and became real political scientists. Others did not.

This is not an attack on the late Brain Trust, nor on educated men getting into politics. If there was ever a crying need in any field for trained, intelligent men, imbued with the scientific spirit, that field is government

Unfortunately many of the men who describe themselves as political scientists are neither political nor scientific.

Politics is a tag for the way we get things done, socially; many of them have only an academic knowledge of how we, the American citizens, conduct our affairs.

"Science" is a word with a definite meaning. It refers to a body of organized knowledge derived by a particular method. In brief that method consists of observing specific, individual facts, trying to find relations between them, setting up hypotheses, then checking those hypotheses by observing more pertinent facts. Under this method of investigation all scientific knowledge is founded on field work and laboratory work.

In some fields the basic facts can be observed on the campus, as in physics or chemistry. In others the scientist must regularly go to where his phenomena exist, because they can't be carried to the campus, as in geology and stratospheric research - if he is to learn anything new about his subject and not simply chew over what other men have said.

Is it not obvious that in order to study politics scientifically it is necessary to spend a lot of time where politics is going on?

I have at hand a letter from a friend of mine who is a professional political scientist, with all that years of post-graduate training in one of the most famous schools can give him. However he has had no experience in active politics. He writes:

"Do you think experience or practice in politics essential to an improvement in political interaction? I am a believer in empiricism in most things but believe that much more can be accomplished by scientific methods than by experience in government. That is, I feel that a man might be an effective partisan all his life, but end it with no greater ability to accomplish desirable political changes than in the beginning."

The above paragraph exhibits such complex confusion that I hardly know where to start. Let us begin by conceding that a man may be a very effective field worker in politics and still not do any good in the long run if his work is not enlightened by information and

understanding in current affairs, history, economics, sociology, and many other things. Politics is the broadest of human subjects and we have dealt only with one narrow field of it herein.

But how can a man hope to "accomplish desirable political changes" if he is not experienced in the mechanisms by which political changes are brought about? For that matter will he know a desirable political change when he sees one, unless he has rubbed shoulders with the crowded millions off campus?

But note the orientation, note how he contrasts "empiricism" and "experience" as being the opposite of "scientific methods." The sad fact is that all of his degrees and training have not exposed him to the basic idea of the scientific method. All scientific knowledge comes from experience, experience as concrete as careful observation, careful measurements, and careful experimentation can make it. "Empiricism" is a word with several related meanings; in scientific methodology it is usually used to refer to an early stage in an investigation when the observer has too few facts too inaccurately observed to permit him to make more than rough generalizations as his hypothesis. Politics is largely at the empirical stage because of its extreme complexity. Empiricism is appropriate to politics; no other scientific approach is possible.

Unfortunately, other approaches are possible; one is the method of armchair speculation of the philosopher. It is the classic method in this field, used by Plato, Aristotle, Spencer, and Marx - and the work of each is vitiated by it. They might as well have spent their time debating how many angels can dance on the point of a needle. But the method is still popular!

Is it too much to hope that some day someone will found a school of government which will include as one of its required laboratory courses active field work in at least one campaign? And then perhaps to require something as strenuous and unacademic as serving a term in a county committee, or running for office, or managing a campaign, or undertaking to lobby a bill through a state legislature, before awarding graduate degrees which entideaman to refer to himselfasapotitical scientist?

I feel wistful about it. Honest-to-goodness trained men could do so much good in public life if only we had a few more of them. Afterthoughts and Minutiae:

Don't put campaign literature in mailboxes other than through the matis. Postal regulations forbid it.

There is a small duplicating set available suitable for postal cards, which costs about a dollar. Sears Roebuck used to have them and probably does now. It uses mimeograph ink and a hand roller. Gelatine duplicators, hectograph-type process, and looking like a child's slate, may be had for three or four dollars in sizes which will take either postal cards or standard business stationery.

Unpredictable coincidences can play hob with a carefully planned campaign, leaving you nothing to do but laugh it off and forget it. I happened to pick the year to run for office that found the Nazi Sudetenland Fuehrer in the headlines; his name differs in spelling from mine by one letter!

In making a committee report it is diplomatic to say "your committee" instead of "the committee."

The difference between a caucus and an ordinary majority action is parallel to the difference between the Constitution and the laws which are made under it. A constitution is an agreement-to-agree-in-the-future, along certain lines and to serve certain known ends. So is a caucus. This may make it easier for you to explain it to the uninitiated.

Anti-handbill ordinances, anti-bill posting ordinances, and ordinances which forbid street-speaking and park-speaking without a permit should be opposed by all persons and parties devoted to democracy and freedom, as the avenues these ordinances close off are historically the only ones available at times to the poor and unpowerful. I am aware that it is a nuisance to have your doorstep littered with throw-away pamphlets, but it is still more of a nuisance to be thrown into a concentration camp. Democracy is worth a few nuisances.

Clubs should never have nominating committees; it is subversive of democracy. A motion to close nominations is never in order and should not be entertained. The proper procedure is to let a period of dead silence intervene, after inviting further nominations, then announce that they have closed. Be lenient in allowing laggards to slide home. Let them appeal to the floor if they wish.

Are you over thirty-five? Or under thirty-five? This is a touchy matter in volunteer politics for the old frequently work for the young, and vice versa. The power to keep things friendly lies with the leadership and the key to it rests in "face." When you are in a position of leadership to persons out of your own age group, whether younger or older, you will have no trouble if you go way out of your way to treat them with much more respect than you do persons of your own age.

Take a complete rest from people every now and then. Go away if you can. Being polite all the time is wearing.

On keeping oneself informed - of course you read a newspaper. But do you read the opposition newspaper as well? It is more informative in many ways. Both your state organization and that of the other party probably put out a little political newspaper; both are valuable to you. A free subscription to the Congressional Record may often be had for the asking; it is too long to read but it is well worth thumbing through for key votes and certainspeeches. Keeping track of voting records is essential to an enlightened politico; once, to my shame, I supported the wrong man all through a primary because I had taken another man's word as to the voting record of the incumbent. There are convenient summaries of all significant votes for both congress and state legislatures from several different sources-major daily papers, taxpayers groups, labor unions, the New Republic. It is not necessary to agree with the opinions of the source for these compendia to be useful to you. Keep them on file rather than trying to memorize them. File every copy of a platform, or a candidate's promise on issues. It is common credo that election promises are never kept and that platforms are mere bait; in my limited experience this cynical belief has been false somewhat oftener than it has been true. It is well to know the facts on individual cases.

My wife and I have found a delightful way to celebrate the Fourth of July; you might enjoy it. We read aloud the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They are grand poetry of the Biblical style and it is well to refresh the memory.

Speaking of poetry, I wish that I had the capacity to write something like The People,Yes -, which I quoted from at the head of this chapter. I commend it to your attention. But there is music of the same sort in the sound of a thousand doorbells -

Ben Franklin pointed out to the benefit of all politicians that the easiest way to get a man to like you is to get him to do you a favor.

A lot of people want to get into politics but they want to operate on the "higher levels." I think of these high-minded but impractical people as "ballet" liberals because of an incident which took place in New York in 1942. A group representing all of the arts had met to see what the creative artist could do to help win the war. It developed that there was a strong bloc present which thought that the correct course of action was to demand that Congress subsidize a national ballet! I like ballet as well as the next but it seems a curious "secret weapon." If you want to enter politics don't expect to do so through organizations which are ordinarily non-political, women's clubs, church groups, fraternal organizations, professional groups, and the like. Or, at least, do not expect to be effective in bringing pressure on an officeholder by representing yourself as being influential in such groups. A man who has been elected to office is not likely to be a fool on the subject of votes. He knows the political feebleness of such organizations

- that they do not vote as a bloc no matter how their leaders may bluster. Your petition will be discounted accordingly. If you represent a precinct organization you won't have to tell him so.

Amateur pressure groups, such as neighborhood indignation committees, all too frequently go to see councilmen and such and adopt a belligerent tone which suggests the officeholder is a crook and that he can be frightened easily. Both assumptions are likely to be mistaken.

Let us now praise bureaucrats. Bureaucrats come in for a kicking around from anybody at any time. As a matter of fact they are a pretty good lot Try to imagine what a strike of "bureaucrats" would do to the country. No, don't-it's unthinkable, frightening.

And lastly-I would like to put this in box car letters- even if you become state or national chairman of your party, try to remain your own precinct captain, or some sort of a doorbell pusher. It will keep your roots to the ground. Even the Caliph of Baghdad made a practice of disguising himself and going out to talk intimately to his people.

CHAPTERXII

The American Dream

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced...."-A. Lincoln, Nov. 19,1863

What of the issues?

We have piled up a whole book discussing the mechanical details of field politics, as if it were an automobile to be taken apart and repaired, put back together and made to run. Some of the details must have seemed very fiddling and far removed from the clean heights of statesmanship. It has been a worm's eye view of politics.

The activities described in this book would be bare bones indeed if they were ends in themselves. If we are to win elections for the competitive pleasure of winning, it would be better to play golf or bridge. So what of the issues?

It is not necessary that I speak here of specific issues. Even if you have no clear-cut political opinions on entering politics you are bound to form evaluations about issues. Whatever evaluations you had before you entered politics are bound to change and you will wonder how you could have held them.

But if you enter politics with honesty, ordinary sense, and a hope in your heart that you can help out, I am willing to trust my own future and the future of our

children to the evaluations you will form and the actions you will take. Whenever the American people take their affairs in their own hands, instead of letting them go by default, I have no fear of the outcome.

We need never be afraid of the vote of informed Americans. It is only the ignorant voter we have to fear, ignorant politically, no matter how fine his house or how expensive his schooling. Such people have never experienced democracy; they have merely enjoyed its benefits. It is hard to explain what democracy is; it is necessary to participate in it to understand it.

The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. "We ignored Hitler," he said. "We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all."

They thought of the government as "They." The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of die loyal opposition.

An adult is a person who no longer depends on his parents. By the same token a person who refers to or thinks of the government as "They" is not yet grown up. There are many such in America, too many, but not too many I diink to prevent the adults from taking care of our joint welfare. I'm a believer and a hoper.

There is more cynicism in this country than there are things to be cynical about. The debunking exceeds the phoniness. There is more skepticism than mendacity. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was sued for fraud because he claimed he could talk over the wires. The Wright brothers had to plead with people to please come look - we can fly! And none of the "smart people" believed that the pipsqueak "nation" of thirteen rebel colonies could ever hold together and form a living union. The spawn of the skeptics are still with us. "You can't fool me cause I'm too durn sly!" They are around us, busy belittling and sneering and grinning at every effort to make of this country what it can be. What it will be.

For you diere is the joy ofbeing in the know, of understanding the political life of your country, the greater joy of striving for the things you believe in, and the greatest joy of all, the joy of public service freely given, service to your fellow men without pay and without thought of pay. If you have not as yet experienced this joy, then there are no words with which to describe nor any way to convince you of its superiority to other joys; it is possible only to assure that it is so.

"War is an extension of politics by other means." - Von Clausewitz. And politics is an extension of war. The war did not end in August 1945; it goes on around you, around the world, in difficult guises. We are in more danger now than ever before in our history, dissension within, our ideas for which we fought subjected to many forms of attack, the peace we won whittled away, and over it all the menace of another war, a war that could strike in the night, defeat and utterly destroy America and the American Dream.

If we prevent that war it will not be by force of might, for we cannot expect time enough to bring that might into play. If we are to escape it, it must be by political action more enlightened and more nearly unanimous than any we have ever shown.

The "decadent" democracies showed on a hundred battered beach heads that free men could think, could lead themselves when their leaders fell, and could improvise with the means at hand. We face the new beach heads, we must face them with individual responsibility, improvise and fight with the means at hand. I can hear the strange express-train roar of the jet planes passing overhead from the fields in the valley to the north. Soon it will be the blast of the great rockets. It is the end of an era.

If we can tighten up democracy to meet the challenge of the super-sonic speeds of the fast new world we may yet be spared the silent death from the sky. If not-

It's up to you, Mrs. Blodgett and Mr. Harrison and Mr. Weinstein and Mrs. deary. You, too, Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Berzowski and Mr. Lorenzo - Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones and Miss Kelly-and up to me. I'll see you in the caucus and at the polls.

Good luck to you! Good luck to all of us.

The End