Take Back Your Government! Read online

  When you pick yourself up out of the wreckage, you and your wife and your kids, don't talk about what "They" did to you. You did it, compatriot, because you preferred to sit in the back seat and snooze. Because you thought your taxes bought you a bus ticket and a guaranteed safe arrival, when all your taxes bought you was a part ownership in ajoint enterprise, on a share-the-cost and share-the-driving plan.

  But the crisis is more than usually acute this year, the traffic is thicker, the curves more blind, the traffic signals less reliable, and there are a lot of places where the pavement is out which have not been marked on any map. More than ever your own welfare demands that you be alert and responsible.

  Do you favor peacetime conscriptions? How did your congressman vote on it? Have you got any sons under twenty-one? Should the budget be balanced on a pay-as-you-go plan? If so, are you willing to vote to raise your own taxes? Or would you rather cut the budget for the army, the navy, and for veterans' benefits? Is there some other way to do it?

  Should coal miners be forbidden to strike? Can you mine coal with bayonets? What would your rent be in a free market? Or are you still sleeping on a borrowed couch? When will a home be built for you and your kids? Can you afford it when it is built, if ever? Does your town have a building code which prevents the use of new materials and new construction methods? How do you feel about a loan to Great Britain? To France? To Russia? Are you willing to go on rationing to keep Germans from starving? How long should the occupation of Japan continue? Why? How did your congressman vote on FEPC? Do you know what FEPC is? How does it affect you?

  The Filipinos become independent this year - should we let Philippine sugar in duty free? Do you live in the Colorado sugar beet country? Is a Senate filibuster a legitimate defense of states' rights, or a piece of tyranny? Should an oil man be in charge of military and naval oil reserves? Was Secretary Fall an oil operator? Does it make any difference?

  ShouJd we insist that Russia give us free access and uncensored news reports so that we will know what she is up to? Is it worth fighting about? How about the Big Five Veto power? Does it make for peace or war?

  Should Russia get out of Iran? Should Britain get out of Egypt? Should we get out of Korea? Are the three cases parallel? Or very different? Is a Manchurian communist the same thing as a Brooklyn communist? Why? Why not? Should a sharecropper be a Republican or a Democrat? Should a stockholder be a Democrat or a Republican? What is the American Way of Life? Does it mean the same thing on the Main Line as it does on Skid Row?

  Are you sure about that last answer? Aren't we all in the same boat? Will an atomic bomb discriminate between bank account-or party labels?

  Now we are getting down to cases. All the other problems were of the simple, easy sort that we have blundered our way through, not too badly, for the past hundred and seventy years.

  We have a double-edged crisis this year, more acute on both its edges than any we have ever faced before, more acute, even, than Pearl Harbor, or the terrible War between the States.

  The first crisis is political and economic. Our way of life is being challenged by a revolutionary upsurge in all corners of the globe. We can meet it with hysteria, persecution, and a new isolationism, or we can define our way of life in action and defend it by practical accomplishment. An American who is well housed, well fed, and holding a good job is poor pickings for an agitator. But let him miss seven meals -

  The second crisis is amorphous but of even more deadly danger. We have entered the Atomic Era - but we are not yet used to the idea.

  Have you read the Smyth Report?3

  Do you know what the Smyth Report is? It is the War

  Department's report on the atom bomb and is titled Atomic Energy for Military Purposes by H.D. Smyth. It is available in any bookstore and most newsstands at $1.25. It is dull reading but quite understandable and is easily the most important document to the human race since the Sermon on the Mount.

  I won't try to tell you what it should mean to you. That's up to you. You are a free American citizen, for a while yet, at least. With good luck you should live another five or ten years. Whether or not you and your kids live longer than that depends on how you interpret the Smyth Report. But you must interpret it for yourself- no guardian angel will help you.

  Get it and read it. Then get a copy of your own precinct list and start investigating this year's crop of candidates. If your interpretation of the Smyth Report and the world events behind it is correct, there is still a chance that the Star-Spangled Banner will continue to wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

  Just a chance - that's all. But get busy, neighbor. _ There's work to be done.

  CHAPTER II

  How to Start

  "Put down your bucket where you are!"

  The late Booker T Washington,4 in his life-long attempts to advise his people on how to help themselves, had a favorite anecdote about a sailing ship, becalmed and out of fresh water off the coast of South America. After many days they sighted another ship, a steam ship, and signalled, "Bring us water. We are dying of thirst." The other ship sent back this message, "Put down your bucket where you are!"

  They were in the broad mouth of the Amazon, afloat in millions of gallons of fresh water - and did not know it!

  Here is how to start in politics:

  Get your telephone book. Look up the party of your registration - or, if you are not registered in a party, the party which most nearly fits your views. I don't care what party it is, but let us suppose for illustration that it is the Republican Party. You will find a listing something like Republican County Committee, Associated Republican Clubs, Republican Assembly, or perhaps several such. Telephone one of them.

  Say, "My name is Joseph Q. (or Josephine W.) Ivorytower. I am a registered voter at 903 Farflung Avenue. Can you put me in touch with my local club?"

  The voice at the other end will say, 'Just a minute. Do you know what ward you are in?"

  You say no. (It's at least even money that you don't know, if you are a normal American!)

  The voice mutters, "Fairview, Farwest, Farflung - " The owner of the voice is checking a file or a map. Then you hear, in an aside, "Say, Marjorie, gimme the folder on the 13th ward."

  "What do you want to know?" says Marjorie. She knows them by heart; she typed them. She is a political secretary and belongs to one of two extreme classes. Either she is a patriot and absolutely incorruptible, or she can be bought and sold like cattle. Either way she knows who the field worker in the 13th ward is.

  After a couple of minutes of this backing and filling you are supplied with a name, an address, and a telephone number of a local politician who is probably the secretary of the local club. You may also be supplied with the address and times and dates of meetings of the local club, if it is strong enough to have permanent headquarters. The local club may vary anywhere from a dub in permanent possession of a store frontage on a busy street, with a full time secretary on the premises and a complete ward, precinct, and block organization, to a club which exists largely in the imagination of the secretary and which meets only during campaigns in the homes of the members.

  Your next job is to telephone the secretary. This is probably not necessary. If the local organization is any good at all, the secretary of the local club will call^ow, probably the same day. Marjorie will have called him and said, "Get a pencil and paper, Jim. I've got a new sucker for you." Or, if she is not cynical, she may call you a new prospect.

  She will have added you to a card file and set the wheels in motion to have your registration checked and to have you placed on several mailing lists. Presently you will start receiving one or more political newspapers - free, despite the subscription price posted on the masthead - and, in due course, you will receive campaign literature from candidates who have the proper connections at headquarters. Your political education will have begun, even if you never bother to become active.

  Note that it has not cost you anything so far. The c
osts need never exceed nickels, dimes, and quarters, even if you become very active. The costs can run as high as you wish, of course. The citizen who is willing to reach for his checkbook to back up his beliefs is always welcome in politics. But such action is not necessary and is not as rare as the citizen who is willing to punch doorbells and lick stamps. Some of the most valuable and respected politicians I have ever known had to be provided with lunch money to permit them to do a full day's volunteer work in any area more than a few blocks from their respective homes.

  I know of one case, a retired minister with a microscopic pension just sufficient to buy groceries for himself and his bedridden wife, who became county chairman and leader-in-fact of the party in power in a metropolitan area of more than three million people. He was so poor that he could not afford to attend political breakfasts or dinner. He could never afford to contribute to party funds, nor, on the other hand, was he ever on the party payroll - he never made a thin dime out of politics.

  What he did have to contribute was honesty, patriotism, and a willingness to strive for what he thought was right It made him boss of a key county in a key state - when he was past seventy and broke.

  I digress. This book will have many digressions; politics is like that, as informal as an old shoe, and the digressions may be the most important part. It is sometimes hard to tell what is important in the practical art of politics. Charles Evans Hughes failed to become president because his manager was on bad terms with a state leader and thereby failed to see to it that the candidate met the local leader on one particular occasion in one California city. The local campaign lost its steam because the local leader's nose was out of joint over the matter.

  Mr. Hughes lost the state of California; with its electoral vote he would have become president.5 A switch of less than nineteen hundred votes in the city in which the unfortunate incident occurred would have made Mr. Hughes the war-time president during World War I. The effect on world history is incalculable and enormous. It is entirely possible that we would have been in a League of Nations (not the League - that was Woodrow Wilson's League); it is possible that Hitler would never have come to power; it is possible that World War II would never have occurred and that your nephew who fell at Okinawa would be alive today.

  We cannot calculate the consequences. But we do know that world history was enormously affected by a mere handful of votes, less than one percent of one percent -less than one ten-thousandth of the total vote cast.

  An active political club6 can expect to deliver to the polls on election day, through unpaid volunteers driving their own cars, as many votes as the number that swung the 1916 presidential election. It could be your club and an organization you helped to build.

  Which is why you must now telephone the local club secretary. It may be your chance to prevent, by your own direct and individual action, World War III!

  The club secretary, Jim Ballotbox, will not give you the brush off. Even if it is a tight machine organization, founded on graft and special privilege, an honest-to-goodness volunteer who is willing to work is more to be desired than fine gold, yeah, verily! If it is that sort of a club, presently you will be offered cash for your efforts, anywhere from five dollars per precinct per campaign on the west coast, through five dollars per day during the campaign in the middle west, to a sound and secure living month in and month out on the east coast.

  (These figures do not refer to the Republican Party, as such, nor to the Democratic Party. They refer to the Machine, no matter what its label.)

  Don't take the money. Remain a volunteer. You will be treated with startled response. Every time you turn down money you will automatically be boosted one rung in the party councils. And the progress is very fast.

  But, no matter which sort of club it is, you will be welcomed with open arms. You have already caused a minor flurry at the downtown headquarters by volunteering during "peace time"-other than immediately before a campaign. It shocked them but they rose to the occasion and put you in touch with your local leader. They are used to volunteers during campaigns - and are aware that most of them are phonies who expect at least a postmaster's job in return for a promise to work one precinct plus a little handshaking at a few political meetings. If it should happen that you call up during a campaign, you will be treated a litde more warily until you have established that you are in fact a volunteer and not a hopeful patronage hound, but you will be received pleasantly and given a chance to work. This applies to any political club anywhere at any time.

  If Jim Ballotbox happens tobe secretary of the other sort of club, the sort unconnected with a powerful, well-financed machine, he will be even happier to see you, although he may not be as schooled in the arts of graciousness as his full-time professional opposite number. His club will be in a chronic state of crisis financially, or even moribund; an enthusiastic new member is manna to him.

  He will have plenty for you to do. You can be chairman next term if you want to be and share with him the worries about hall rent, postage, secretarial work, and how to get people out to meetings. At the very least he will place you in charge of one or more precincts (which will make you nervous as a bridegroom; it's too much responsibility too suddenly) and he will unburden his heart to you. You will learn.

  There remain two other possibilities which may result from your telephone call to the downtown headquarters. The first is that there may be no dub in your district, in which case you will make your start directly at the downtown headquarters and will meet there the other active party members from your own area. You will join with them in organizing a local club before the next election. It is not hard to do; the process will be discussed in a later chapter.

  The last remaining possibility is that your telephone book contains no listings for your political party. This will happen only in small towns or in the country. If you live in a small town or in the country, you already know at least one party leader in your own party - probably Judge Dewlap, who served one term in the state senate and has been throwing his weight around ever since.

  Call him up. Tell him you want to work for the party. Perhaps you don't like the old windbag. No matter - he likes you. He likes all voters, especially ones who want to work for the party! He may suggest that you have lunch with him at the Elks' Club and talk over civic conditions. Or he may simply invite you to drop into his real estate office for a chat. But he won't brush you off. From now on you're his boy! - until he finds out he can't dictate to you. But by that time you are a politician in your own right and there is nothing he can do about it

  (That knife in your back has Judge Dewlap's finger prints on it.)

  We have covered all the possibilities; you are now in politics. As a result of one telephone call you have started. Stay with the club or local organization for several months at least. Attend all the meetings. Help out with the routine work. Don't be afraid to lick stamps, serve on committees, check precinct lists, or distribute political literature. Count on devoting a couple of evenings a month to it for six months or a year. Your expenses during this training period need not exceed a dollar a month. At the end of that time you are a politician.

  I mean it. You will have become acquainted with your local officeholders and political leaders, you will have discovered where several of the bodies are buried, you will have taken part in one local or national campaign and received your first blooding in meeting the public. You will find that you are now reading the newspapers with insight as to the true story behind the published story. You will have grown up about ten years in your knowledge of what makes the world go 'round.

  You will either have experienced the warm glow of solid accomplishment that comes from realizing that you performed a necessary part in a successful campaign for a man or an issue, or you will have taken part in the private post-mortem in which you and your colleagues analyze why you lost and what to do about it next time. (The answer is usually to start your precinct organization earlier, with special reference to getting your s
ure votes registered and to make sure they are dragged to the polls.)

  You will feel that you can win next time and probably you will. Politics for the volunteer fireman is not one long succession of lost causes-far from it!

  But the point at which you will realize that you are in fact a politician with a definite effect on public life is the time when your friends and neighbors start asking your advice about how to mark their ballots. And they will. Perhaps not about presidential nor gubernatorial candidates, but they will ask. and take your advice about lesser candidates and about the propositions on the ballot

  You may discover in the course of the first few months that you are in the wrong dub, or even in the wrong party. This does not matter in the least insofar as your political education is concerned. In fact it is somewhat of an advantage to make a mistake in your first affiliation; you will learn things thereby which you could never possibly learn so well or so rapidly if you had found your own true lodge brothers on your first attempt. It does not matter by what door you enter politics. If you have belonged to the party wrong/or you, by habit or tradition, a few months of active politics will disclose the fact to you. You can then reregister and cross over, bringing with you experience and solid conviction you could hardly have acquired any other way.8

  If the trouble lies in your having fallen first into the hands of a gang of unprincipled machine politicians, the mistake is still a valuable one, for you will discover presently that there is a reform element in your party, unaffiliated with the Machine. You can join them, taking with you a knowledge of the practical art of vote-getting which reformers frequently never acquire.

  You will be invaluable to your new associates. Most of the techniques of vote-getting are neither dishonest nor honest in themselves, but the machines normally know vastly more about such techniques than do the reform organizations. The honest organizations can afford to copy at least 90% of the machine techniques. It is curiously and wonderfully true that a volunteer, reform organization can use the machine techniques much more effectively than the Machine does, with fewer workers and less money. It is like the difference between the ardor of unselfish love and the simulated passion of prostitution; the unorganized voting public can feel the difference.