Don't be too sure. Out of three votes, even with conscientious citizens, at least one will probably fail to show up for the primaries unless you follow up and, possibly, provide transportation. Furthermore you have a chance to win new club members and find new precinct workers. New club members, new precinct workers, are behind those closed doors. You must ring the doorbells.
We have covered all the important types, though you will encounter infinite variety in the types. You will encounter crackpots, and lonely people who will talk to you endlessly, and serious people who welcome a chance to exchange views. You will find some who will sit you down and ply you with cake and coffee and others who are obviously suspicious of you. Once in a long, long time you will encounter outright rudeness and it will leave you shaken, sick at heart, and reluctant ever to risk another rebuff.
Don't let it drive you home. Smoke a cigarette. Walk up to the corner drug store, buy a malted milk, and look at some comic strips. Then go back and tackle the next doorbell. The chances are that the person behind it will be as friendly as a puppy. Most Americans are.
You will find out a lot about your fellow citizens and what you find out will usually increase your faith in democracy and make you proud to be an American and a member of the human race. It will warm you up inside and give you new confidence about the future.
Why is a political club? I have already stated that elections are won in the precincts, not in clubs. Political clubs are hard to keep alive and require constant attention; why should you bother?
The political club is the organization of the doorbell pushers. It is the means by which you get them together and keep them together. It provides the necessary minimum of loose organization necessary to any cooperative enterprise.
But it does more than that. It is your principal means of keeping up morale among the volunteers. Field work in politics can be a lonely business; after a day or even an evening of punching doorbells you may feel that nobody cares but yourself, to hell with it, let the country go to the dogs, why should you knock yourself out-it isn't appreciated.
Then you need the company of other politicos, citizen. You need shop talk from others who have been through the same mill. You need to listen to how they are tackling things down in the twelfth ward and what the chances appear to be. You need to hear the ever hopeful comments of the old timers and the optimistic predictions of the campaign managers.
You'll listen to gossip about what the governor told Joe Shortterm in a secret conference last Wednesday and just what Joe thinks of the governor. You'll hear that Dr. Toplofty has decided to run for Congress in the third district and you will agree that that stuffed shirt doesn't stand a chance unless he quits spending all his time speaking in front of organizations made up of other stuffed shirts just like himself.
You'll stay up a little later than you should and drink a little more coffee than you should and you'll buy two tickets to the Fourth of July dance. Next day you will feel like punching some more doorbells. It doesn't look quite so hopeless. After all, your district has a more favorable registration than the twelfth ward and Jack Sidewalk seemed to be fairly confident that the party could carry the twelfth.
You'll go to the dance. You may not dance more than three or four dances, but it seems you had a swell time.
You picked up a couple of ideas from the chairman of the Westside Club and heard two wonderful pieces of scandal about, respectively, the street commission and Senator Shortchange.
In addition to building morale and acting as a clearing house for political information the club performs the serious function of acting as a school and a seminar in government. The candidates speak before the club and are there subjected to questioning and searching examination impossible at the public rallies. No candidate nor office holder, up to and including the level of governor, can afford to refuse a summons to appear before a club. If circumstances interfere, he will be apologetic about it and try to arrange another date.
This fact gives you a chance to know intimately the men who run our government. In a country as large as ours this is a most valuable opportunity and one of which most people appear to be unaware. If you avail yourself of it, the mysterious and remote processes of your government will become as familiar and personal as the ministrations of your family physician.
The club is also the work shop of democracy. It conducts much the same business and under much the same rules as does our Congress - with this difference: The club conducts such business frequently in advance of the Congress. Many a bill has been submitted, and passed, in the sacred halls of Congress because some private citizen, a tailor, or a grocery man, or a school teacher, first submitted that bill as a resolution before some small and amateurish political club.
The political club is in fact part of our government, although an unofficial part. New ideas are tried out in it, debated, referred to committee, modified, and made ready for the public arena, just as plays are sent to Atlantic City for a try out.
How to Form a Political Club: just one person is necessary to a successful political club. He (or she) is usually the secretary, though he may be the chairman, the treasurer, a member of the membership committee, chairman of the program committee, or not even an officeholder. Whatever the title this person is the de facto executive secretary through willingness and energy.
He sees to it that invitations and notices are mailed out. He is a day-in-and-day-out one-man membership drive. He sees to it that the hall rent and postage costs are collected from the membership. He arranges for speakers and plans for social events. He borrows chairs, promotes refreshments, dickers for halls, inserts notices in newspapers, and welcomes newcomers.
In a large club he may be twins, triplets, or even quintuplets. But no club is without him. He has the qualities of a Sunday School superintendent, a Scoutmaster, or an amateur orchestra leader. You have met him, or her, in lodge meetings, in the Rotary Club, in the Parent-Teachers' Association, or in the ladies' aid. All human organizations are dependent on such persons; it takes just one to make a political club.
When to Form a Club: Don't try to form a club unless you yourself are prepared to be this spark plug. I can recall at least two clubs, well and carefully planned by persons who had the temperamental qualifications, which never got further than a couple of meetings because the persons who planned them were tied up with other work and had assumed that they could start the ball rolling and then let the rank and file carry on.
It ain't so... except by rare accident.
Don't start a club unless you are prepared to stay with it and nurse it along during its lifetime. You may plan to keep it alive during one campaign and then let it die if it can't walk alone. Such a club can be very useful. Or you may plan it as a permanent community organization in which case the job never ends. However, in the latter case, you will probably come across one or more foster parents who can be depended on to carry on the good work even if you move out of town.
It is a lot more trouble to found and run a club than it is simply to be an active member and a precinct worker. However, if you live in an area where one ought to be founded and are willing to put out the amount of effort it takes to run a scout troop, then go right ahead. It takes no special talent as long as you are willing and know the techniques.
It is not even necessary to be the sort of person who makes friends easily and is known as "popular." I have seen clubs, successful clubs, run by persons who were neither intelligent nor pleasing in manner, but who had the single virtue of industry. However, the ability to make friends is so useful in running a club, and is, in fact, so useful everywhere in politics, that we will digress again and discuss it before taking up the techniques of forming and running a club.