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.