5. There should be ward organizations, township, town, city,
congressional district, state and national organizations. The party
should work wherever there is an elective office, from the lowest up to
the Presidency.
6. As a rule, none of the organizations will need to be large. In most
cases they will be able to control the action of the two Great Parties
without that. In the matter of membership, quality will be the main
thing, rather than quantity.
In small constituencies, where a town constable or a justice of the
peace is to be elected it will often be the case that a Casting Vote
lodge of fifty members can elect the nominee it prefers. In every such
community the material for the fifty is present. It will be found among
the men who are disgusted with the prevailing political methods, the low
ambitions and ideals, of the politicians; dishonesty in office;
corruption; the frank distribution of appointments among characterless
and incompetent men as pay for party service; the evasion and sometimes
straight-out violation of the civil-service laws. The fifty will be
found among the men who are ashamed of this condition of things and who
have despaired of seeing it bettered; _who stay away from the polls and
do not vote;_ who do not attend primaries, and would be insulted there
if they did.
The fifty exist in every little community; they are not seen, not heard,
not regarded--but they are there. There, and deeply and sincerely
desirous of good and sound government, and ready to give the best help
they can if any will place before them a competent way. They are
reserved and quiet merchants and shopkeepers, middle-aged; they are
young men making their way in the offices of doctors and lawyers and
behind counters; they are journeyman high-class mechanics; they are
organizers of, and workers for, the community’s charities, art and other
social-improvement clubs, university settlements, Young Men’s Christian
Association, circulating libraries; they are readers of books,
frequenters of the library. They have never seen a primary, and they
have an aversion for the polls.
7. Men proposing to create a Casting Vote lodge should not advertise
their purpose; conspiracies for good, like conspiracies for evil, are
best conducted privately until success is sure. The poll of the two
Great Parties should be examined, and the winning party’s majority
noted. _It is this majority which the Casting Vote must overcome and
nullify._ If the total vote cast was 1,000 and the majority vote fifty,
the proposers of a lodge should canvass privately until they have
secured 75 or 100 names; they can organize then, without solicitude; the
balance of power is in their hands, and this fact by itself will add
names to its membership. If the total vote is 10,000 and the majority
vote 1,000, the procedure should be as before: the thousand-and-upward
should be secured by private canvass before public organization is
instituted. Where a total vote is 1,000,000 the majority vote is not
likely to exceed 30,000. Five or six canvassers can begin the listing;
each man secured becomes a canvasser, ten know three apiece who will
join; the thirty know three apiece who will join; the ninety know three
hundred, the three hundred know a thousand, the thousand know three
thousand--and so on; the required thirty or forty thousand can be
secured in ten days, the lodge organized, and its casting vote be ready
and self-pledged and competent to elect the best of the nominees the two
Great Parties may put up at that date or later.
8. In every ward of every city there is enough of this material to hold
the balance of power over the two Great Parties in a ward election; in
every city there is enough of it to determine which of the two nominees
shall be mayor; in every congressional district there is enough of it to
elect the Governor; also to elect the legislature and choose the U. S.
Senators; and in the United States there is enough of it to throw the
Casting Vote for its choice between the nominees of the two Great
Parties and seat him in the presidential chair.
9. From constable up to President there is no office for which the two
Great Parties cannot furnish able, clean, and acceptable men. Whenever
the balance of power shall be lodged in a permanent third party with no
candidates of its own and no function but to cast its _whole vote_ for
the best man put forward by the Republicans and Democrats, these two
parties _will select the best men they have in their ranks_. Good and
clean government will follow, let its party complexion be what it may;
and the country will be quite content.