If you can't find a chairman for your club who can conduct meetings along the lines described above, then
you must accept the gavel, but continue to search for such a person. You can do more from the floor where your latitude is greater. But let us suppose that you have managed to select a fair group of provisional officers at your first meeting. Your remaining business is to plan for your first public meeting.
CHAPTER V
The Practical Art of Politics (continued)
Club Meetings and Speech Making
Pick a date for the first public meeting of your baby dub at least two or three weeks later than the organization meeting. This will give you time to insert notices in the local papers, send out postcard invitations, arrange for extensive telephone follow-up, and, if you can afford it, print and distribute handbills. You can do none of these things until you arrange for a hall; you'll need the time.
Make the hall small. Not only is it cheaper, but, more important, it is much, much better to have standing room only in a small hall than to rattle around in too large a hall. I know of nothing more dispiriting than to face a meeting in which more than half the seats are empty. Twenty people can have a rip-snorter of a meeting in a small room and build up to a fine campaign; a hundred people can be overcome by contagious melancholia in a hall which would seat five hundred.
Plan to get there early in order to fold up and hide most of the folding chairs, then don't get them out until you see that you need them. People always slip into the rearmost vacant seats at a political meeting (I don't know why - but I do it myself). This habit makes a half-filled hall still more gloomy. So if you must accept a hall with lots of floor space, go easy on the chairs and fill up some of the rear with refreshment tables, or card tables covered with literature, signs, or registration forms.
About chairs - the local undertaker usually owns several dozen folding chairs of the more comfortable and unnoisy variety and he can usually be persuaded to lend them, rent-free for good will, even if he is of a different political party, if you will pick them up after business hours and return them the same night or earlier than any scheduled funeral the next day. A couple of dozen make one automobile load.
The loan of chairs may solve your hall-rent problem for your first meeting as it will permit the use of space not ordinarily used as a hall, such as a retail store owned by one of the members (set up chairs between the counters).
In many states the use of school buildings is permitted for public meetings. I have used them fairly successfully but do not ordinarily recommend it. You are likely to have to choose between an auditorium much too large, or a classroom in which adults feel silly in the little seats and can't sit chummily together. Smoking is usually prohibited and you are likely to have to agree to get out by 10 p.m. Furthermore, regulations frequently prevent taking up collections and collections are necessary to a political club which is not to be a burden on a few. But many a fine meeting with worthwhile results has been held in a school building. It is your problem, with local factors.
A lodge hall is a best bet, with a small American Legion hall a close second. You will find if you poke around that there are many little halls concealed above store buildings and in back of restaurants which are available for surprisingly small fees - $3 to $10 per evening, heat and light thrown in, and even less on a permanent arrangement. Before you take a $10 hall remember that the hall rent should not run more than ten to fifteen cents per person per evening. How large will your crowd be and will they be good for more than two-bits a head in the collection?
Your problem depends on the average economic status of the constituency in which the club is formed - as will be almost all of your practical problems of mechanics, as opposed to techniques.
Publicity for the first public meeting. Don't depend on the persons at the organization meeting to supply the audience at the first public meeting. They will be full of enthusiasm and promises and some dunderhead will point out triumphantly that if each one of you brings ten friends to the next meeting the crowd will be one hundred (or two hundred, or a hundred and fifty). You will be justified in shooting him on the spot for this piece of asininity, but don't do it
Agree heartily that that is just what we are looking for - and bear in mind that getting out a crowd is still up to you. Some of those present will in fact bring friends; Joe Pollyanna won't show up at all.
How to get a crowd - how indeed! This is a cause of grey hairs to all amateur politicians. The most important point you have already covered-don't let the hall seem empty. The next most important point is to see that you have an attraction. Get the central organization, through its secretary rather than through its speaker's bureau - the things that hide in speakers' bureaus should crawl back into the woodwork! - to provide a really good rip-snorter of a speaker, preferably with a name which is a public drawing card. Be firm about this. Point out that they want a club in that area, don't they? Threaten to throw up the sponge. Kick your heels and scream. But get a good speaker even if he has to fly down from the state capital.
Provide some entertainment. Tap dancers, even bad ones, go over well. There is probably a children's "talent" school in your town or neighborhood; the coach will display her proteges free of charge, but don't let her schedule more than fifteen minutes and make it all dancing. Be firm in refusing recitations, little plays, and singing. Never use singers - unless it's Paul Robeson, Bing Crosby, or Frank Sinatra.
A man or woman who plays popular piano well by ear and can lead singing in old-time favorites is worth his weight in marked ballots. There is one somewhere, of your party, within ten blocks of your house.
Okay, you've got your program. Now to haul them in off the sidewalk. If there is an editor-publisher-owner of a small town or local community paper of your party in your area, he should be at the organization meeting and you will see to it that he is appointed chairman of the publicity committee - not "publicity man"; you keep that open for the man who is going to do the work, when you find him; the editor won't. But he will give you a free half-column ad and he will write up a litde story himself. He will probably donate some throw-away hand bills as well. Get volunteers to distribute them, or see what you can do with three boys and some small change.
More involved mediods of publicity are covered in the ninth chapter; the same principles apply here. The daily papers will print (but just barely) your notices; announcements tacked to telephone posts are illegal some places but entirely practical in most cases; and bumper signs (see ninth chapter) are good. But direct mail coverage followed by telephone calls on the day of the meeting are your best bet. This will take a little money - not much but, if you can't afford it yourself, you must raise it at the organization meeting. (The hall rent can wait; it will be covered by the collection at the first public meeting.)
Passing the hat in a private home, if that is where your organization meeting is held, is probably in bad taste. I suggest that you approach two or three persons privately, selecting them for their ability to cough up, and nick each one for a share. A dollar buys a hundred postal cards, it need not be much.