The Times News

THE TIMES-NEWS, HENDERSONVILLE, N. C.
THE BLUFFERS
By WICKES WAMBOLDT
Usually the citizens of a graft-ridden, ring-ruled municipality are kept bluffed into thinking they are helpless. If the citizens knew their power and knew how to use it, they would invariably and speedily free themselves from the clutches of their exploiters.
The evil political machine is always composed of a small minority of the citizenry. Most honest citizens want honest government and they will not lend themselves to a dishonest order.
Every local political ring has but a small percentage of the public in its membership; but that which it has, is organized. And it bluffs around in such a way with such an appearance of force as to make the rest of the citizens think, "What's the use? We can't do anything. We're helpless."
For instance: The other day I was analyzing the political situation in a city of fifty thousand inhabitants. For years this city has been hideously harmed by a ruthless, pernicious, political ring.
Yet this city has fifteen thousand registered voters. And the political ring which rules it, can not control more than four thousand of those fifteen thousand votes.
These four thousand voters the ring can absolutely control. It could deliver those four thousand votes to any person or group of persons it chose to. Through an order from the boss of the ring, any man on a ticket could be made to run high or low.
"How in the world," you ask, "can a political gang with only four thousand votes, rule a city having fifteen thousand registered voters?"
Simple enough. The first thing is the bluff—the feeling among the people that they can't do anything about it. That makes them apathetic. As a result, less than eight thousand of the fifteen thousand voters commonly go to the polls. The ring's solid bloc of four thousand votes can of course always control in an election where less than eight thousand votes are cast.
So the ring nominates its candidates with its four thousand votes. The people see that; grow further despondent; and say, "What's the use?" and fail to turn out in sufficient numbers on election day, thus allowing the ring with its four thousand votes to elect its handpicked nominees, who always do just what the ring tells them to do after being elected. That is the picture. And that is all there is to it—yet not quite all:
Some intelligence and some effort are needed to give a city honest officials—just as some effort and intelligence are necessary to get any worthwhile thing done.
The citizenry should organize a strong committee and draft the right kind of candidates. Then the citizens should get together in the various precincts, boost for their candidates, get the voters out in the primary, and nominate them; then get the voters out in the general election and elect them.
The citizens in the control of a political machine are no more helpless if they but knew it, than is a ten-foot-high elephant in charge of a wizened little mahout.
The elephant could knock the life out of the mahout any time he desired to do so. The people can knock the life out of a gang of political racketeers anytime they desire to do so.
An important distinction is that should the elephant destroy his mahout, he himself might be destroyed by a greater power. But when the people destroy a political gang, they are always rewarded by a better, finer condition.
In a democracy, there is no power greater than the people, if they will choose to use their power.