entitling them to be put on the register. Often this formality even is dispensed with: fictitious names and addresses are given in. Or, again, the same persons present themselves for registration in several election districts, or even several times in the same district under different names. These frauds are not always easy to prevent, even with all the good will and honesty of the registration officials, for it is a difficult matter to prove the identity of people, in the case of negroes, for instance, who all resemble each other. In several States the register contains a more or less detailed description of each elector, his age, colour, his height measured in inches, and even his weight into the bargain (Boston), or other particulars which may establish his identity. In certain States registration frauds have been reduced to a system, and employed with singular audacity, as an instrumentum regni, by the Machine. For instance, the famous Democratic Machine, which for many years, after the Civil War, ruled over the State of Maryland, kept itself in power by means, among other things, of the registration frauds which it organized. In England, as we have seen, the registration system also gives rise to abuses, but not altogether of the same kind: there it is the practice of improper objections and exclusions which is the curse of the system; here, on the contrary, it is the inflation of the register. In both countries abuse and fraud have only developed in a highly reprehensible manner, have emphasized, the rigorous principles which govern the right to a vote in each of them, the principle of privilege and the principle of individual right; it looks as if these abuses were in a way the penalty for the niggardliness with which the electoral right was doled out, on the one hand, and the heedless liberality with which it was distributed on the other.

Along with registration, the party Organizations devote themselves, in much the same way, to the naturalization of aliens likely to increase their electoral contingents. In the cities each large party committee has a permanent sub-committee in charge of the naturalization of immigrants. But it is especially on the eve of the elections that the Organizations start off in pursuit of all the aliens who can be naturalized. The Organizations make them go through all the necessary

formalities, pay the naturalization fees1 for them, and keep them warm, so to speak, for the coming election. Not unfrequently the committees or the candidates interested procure naturalization for aliens who have not complied with the requirements of the law, that is to say, obtain fraudulent naturalizations. The reader will remember how Tweed's Ring manufactured naturalized electors en masse in New York. These frauds are much facilitated by the extreme liberality of the American naturalization laws, and by the careless way in which the public authorities, especially the courts of law, verify the qualifications of the applicants. In certain States, the party committees get aliens admitted just before the elections in regular batches, a hundred or more per day, of people who barely understand English. The federal law requires a previous residence of five years for obtaining the status of an American citizen, but in a good many States (in fifteen) the immigrants are allowed to vote on a simple declaration of their intention to get naturalized and after a term of residence in the State varying from three to eighteen months. Besides this, even in States where definitive naturalization is required, it is sufficient to obtain it on the eve of the election to have the right to take part therein. Thanks to the shortness of this interval, the Organizations keep an easier hold on the new citizens whom they have just introduced into the electoral body, and reap the fruit of their labour swiftly and surely. In the State of New York it was enough, down to 1895, to have obtained naturalization ten days before the election to have the legal right to vote. The law of 1895 (chap. 927) has extended this term of ten days to ninety, and at the same time forbids party committees and candidates, on penalty of a fine, to pay naturalization fees or to incur any expense with the object of procuring the naturalization of aliens.

V

The registration of electors and the naturalization of aliens having settled the legal composition of the electorate, the party Organization proceed to attack the latter directly. They

1 These fees, however, are very low, much lower than in France, and even than in England; they seldom exceed half a dollar.

VOL. II-X

begin by reconnoitring the ground and making an estimate of the forces available on each side. All over the Union, in each locality, polling lists are drawn up showing which party each elector is going to vote for; if he has not made up his mind or has not given an indication of his choice, he is ranked among the doubtful. Special agents, paid by the party committees, scour the country to assist in this task and to make a more exhaustive political enquiry about each particular elector; they take down a quantity of details relating to his person, his race, his religion, his business, his circle of acquaintance, his pecuniary position, to whom he owes money or is under any obligation. In short, a sort of political and social survey is made for each locality. The data supplied by it are grouped and transmitted from one committee to another, along the whole line, up to the national committee. Each committee will derive from it useful information for determining its policy in its respective territorial area: the national committee will pass over all the States in which the preliminary poll has disclosed a very large majority favourable or hostile to the party and to its candidate for the Presidency; it has no need to convert the majority in the first case and it will never succeed in converting the majority in the second; it will, therefore, concentrate all its efforts on the States in which the majority is inconsiderable or uncertain, where the parties are so well matched in point of numbers that a small group of electors may turn the scale in favour of either side; winning this small group will mean winning the whole State. The same calculation holds good for the divisions and the subdivisions of the States and for all the local elective posts which have to be filled up. Although their interests are absolutely identical, the various committees, from that of the county up to the national committee, may, however, by reason of this very calculation, divide their efforts: the national committee, having no chance of getting its candidate for the Presidency a majority in a certain State, will leave the party to its fate there, but in several districts of that State in which the party is able to return congressmen, members of the local legislature, and other office-holders, the respective committees of that party will plunge into the fray with all their might. Thus the poll taken in each locality is of general import for the

whole Union, as well as of special significance for each political subdivision in the States.

Generally there are two polls: the first goes on in the beginning of election time, in the month of September, and serves as a basis for the whole campaign; while the last is completed at least a fortnight before the election (which takes place on the first Tuesday of November) and furnishes hints for the dispositions to be made at the eleventh hour. In the States where the issue of the contest is always uncertain, which have the reputation of "close" or "doubtful" States, such as Indiana, each elector is asked what his views are on three separate occasions, ninety, sixty, and thirty days before the election; it is the second poll which gives a really faithful picture of the situation. Owing to the exceptional care which was always bestowed on the taking of the poll, its results used to be considered very trustworthy. But for some years past they have become more and more tainted with uncertainty, owing to the abrupt oscillations in the political sympathies of the electors, who have grown more capricious and more independent. The enquiry is supposed to be made on the eve of each election, but in the immense majority of cases it is held only for the great elections of the presidential year, unless the off election is of exceptional importance, such as certain elections for State Governor or even municipal elections. On no occasion, probably, is the mind of the electors probed with such care and method as for the municipal elections of New York, in which the wonderful Machine of Tammany Hall works to perfection, and the "braves" of the "Great Wigwam" fight pro aris et focis. The poll enables the party organizers to settle on the distribution and the best use of their means of action over the electorate. These means of action, established by long practice, are sometimes of a general scope, sometimes they present the character of arguments ad hominem. The former are aimed, as in England, at the intelligence and the senses of the voters, but are so under different conditions and often, also, in different forms. Those intended to act on the brains consist of speech and print.

VI

Eloquence is lavished on the electors in a continuous series of meetings of every kind, of every shade of importance, and in every place; from mass-meetings which attract thousands of people, the meetings go down to small gatherings in outof-the-way country spots, attended by a handful of farmers. Sometimes they are held in immense enclosures built expressly for the occasion, sometimes they take place on large lawns or at street-crossings. Sometimes the assemblage is a promiscuous one, sometimes it is composed of special groups, professional or others, commercial travellers, clerks in dry-goods stores, etc. Wherever there is, and whenever it is possible to collect, a gathering of human beings, floods of oratory are poured forth on behalf of the parties, day after day, during the whole of the campaign. Appealing even to the lowest strata of the electorate, who can hardly be reached by print, the meetings, in fact, do succeed in attracting electors of every degree. According to an estimate made on excellent authority, the proportion of electors who do not attend meetings hardly exceeds ten per cent. However, it is only in the "presidential years" that this great flocking together of electors occurs. In the "off years "the stump is more or less idle, and special circumstances are necessary to make the election campaign become "a speaking campaign" in these years. During the presidential campaign there has been so much speaking, and in such a high key, that the words of the innumerable orators have not yet died away and still resound in the ears of the electors at the ensuing local elections; so in the "off years" the programme is confined to small ward meetings and others, and then at the next presidential campaign the high pressure operation is repeated.

The meetings are got up by the committees; this is one of the most important, if not the most important, of their duties. The national committee supplies the eminent orators, who have a national reputation and who travel, by its direction, from one State to another, to make the great hits; the State committees procure the less important speakers. There is no lack of performers. All the committees, from the national committee and the congressional committee downwards, receive