appear, to have all his teeth pulled out if Mr. McKinley was not elected. But alongside these playful proceedings the election bet also became a pretext for gambling in all classes of the population and among persons of all ages. This form of gambling is much stimulated by the party committees, who have made it a regular means of influencing the electors, by laying bets themselves, or through others, on their candidates; the more these candidates are backed and the longer the odds given, the more their success must appear certain to the electors who have not made up their minds. The committees therefore, to encourage the gambling, themselves provide the layers of the odds with money, and spend large sums on this account, which are afterward entered under "sundry election expenses or some other vague heading. The law has intervened to prohibit election bets, which are often also used as a means of bribery. As early as 1839 a law was passed in this sense by the legislature of Maryland, making all bets or wagers about an election punishable by fine. At the present moment similar laws exist in a great number of States (New York, California, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, etc.), making persons who bet, or who shall become interested in the bet, liable to fine, imprisonment, to the loss of the right to vote or to be elected; but all these laws are a dead letter, they are never put in force.

The "straw votes" are a general rehearsal of the impending election, conducted in certain sections of the population or in certain localities for the purpose of eliciting the views of the electors. These polls are held on the stock exchange, in large factories, or other establishments containing a great number of electors; the vote is secret. Or a canvass is made, by a return of votes collected from house to house or by means of post cards addressed to a large body of electors. The result of these anticipating votes furnish "evidence" of the strength of the candidate and of the "hopeless" weakness of his rival. Being often taken in a genuine way, by a newspaper, for instance, for the purpose of gauging public opinion, these ballots are always apt to influence those electors who like to be on the winning side.

II

The extraordinary development of these electioneering methods which, by appealing now to the intelligence and now to the imagination, operate collectively on large masses of electors and appear to whirl away all classes of the population, with far greater force than in England, by no means excludes the direct action of man on man, so powerful in the old society of the mother-country. The arguments ad hominem which are addressed to the electors individually find plenty of scope in the United States, first of all in the classic form of the canvass, of the personal solicitation of votes. The importance of the canvass is somewhat diminished in America by the decisive rôle of the nomination, which discounts the result of the election and which makes the candidates bring their efforts to bear, not upon the electors, but upon the delegates to the convention. For instance, in the South where, owing to the traditional supremacy of the Democratic party, the nomination of the candidate is equivalent to election, personal canvassing is not much practised. But wherever parties are evenly matched, in all the "doubtful" States, it is carried on energetically. The modus operandi varies a good deal. The lower strata of the electorate are canvassed by paid "workers" (the law does not prohibit this as it does in England), who visit them in the evening to "devil out the voters," according to one expression. The workers strive not so much to argue with the electors as to make themselves pleasant; they shake hands with negroes, they invite the bystanders to have a drink; the offer is only too readily accepted: half-a-dozen are asked, and fifty present themselves; people hurry up from all sides as soon as the report spreads that a politician has come down and is standing treat. The canvasser is generally of a social status somewhat higher than that of the canvassed, but he is obliged to adapt himself to them, to descend to their level. As the decisive moment approaches, redoubled efforts are made to win the "doubtful" electors, one by one; emissaries are sent to them who have a special influence over them, to whom they are under an obligation, or whom they wish or are obliged to stand well with for some reason or another. The minute reconnoissance of the positions made at the begin

as is

ning of the campaign, in the form of a poll, has indicated who is to be taken in hand and in what way. In the rural districts, where everybody is known, with all their ins and outs, the emissary is clearly marked out; he takes charge of his man to put him in the right way, "he is horseshading him,"1 Isaid in the West. The canvassers of this sort are zealous auxiliaries who look for no reward but the success of the party and the satisfaction of having contributed to it. The Organization has the moral right to requisition, on the eve of the election, every faithful follower of the party for the work of conversion; and all respond to the pious appeal.

The candidate himself does not always take a personal part in the election; each candidate has his own method. Generally he pays a visit to the most important electors; but if he is an inferior man, from a social and moral standpoint, as is often the case with municipal or legislative candidates, it is better for him not to meet the respectable electors. Instead of this, he will go from one drinking-saloon to another to ingratiate himself with the frequenters of the bars. A candidate who is careful of his dignity shrinks from doing this, and acts on the electors through the stump. In the cities, however, it is not so necessary, nor is it easy for the candidate to bestow many marks of personal attention on the electors; he has no points of contact with the heterogeneous and floating populations of the large cities; he would not know how to address them, what to say to them. Personal action will be more effectively exercised over them through the men of the Organization, of the Machine, who are rubbing up against them every day, who always have their net spread to catch them. In the rural districts, on the other hand, the candidate must show himself. He is exempt from the baby-kissing business, which does not exist in America, but he is not at liberty to shirk that of hand-shaking; he is obliged to stop at the streetcrossings, to chat with people, to show that he has no pride about him. A good many candidates proceed with method in

1 The expression "to horseshade," "to be horseshaded," which means to talk politics, is derived from the habit which country folk had, when they came to church on Sunday, of putting their horse in a shady corner and sitting down there themselves to discuss political affairs with a friend, whom they met at this great rural rendez-vous.

their country rounds: provided with a carriage and a stock of cigars, they visit all the electors, and if they are not known in the district, they get a member of the local committee to accompany them. The visitors come in, the candidate is introduced, a cigar is offered, and a brief conversation is started, the remembrance of which will perhaps be fondly treasured up by the inmates. Later on, the good woman of the house will say to a guest: "Two or three months ago, the very chair in which you are now sitting was occupied by Congressman So and So." There is, however, a category of candidates debarred by custom from intervening personally in the election campaigns, viz., the candidates for the Presidency; their greatness is supposed to prevent them taking the field; their adherents may move heaven and earth, but they themselves must remain in the background and calmly await the popular verdict. Yet this rule or custom has been more than once departed from; several presidential candidates have descended into the lists, by hurrying from one State to another, by making speeches, and giving innumerable hand-shakes to the thousands of men who had flocked together to listen to them or to see them.1

The civilities of the candidate and the endless variety of arguments employed by the canvassers and their volunteer assistants to induce the elector to vote their way, act, or are supposed to act, by free persuasion. But sometimes these arguments are supplemented or replaced by the force of the authority wielded over the elector by the person who asks for his vote. This form of pressure is mostly exerted by employers of labour. It would appear to be not so uncommon in the East, which is the great stronghold of capitalism; in the West the independent spirit of the workmen makes them less inclined to submit to it. The foreman or the masters give the workman to understand that the rate of their wages, or their engagement itself in the factory or workshop, will depend on the defeat or the success of the candidate; if personal exhortations are not ventured on, they are conveyed to the workmen in a quasi

1 During the presidential campaign of 1896 the "silver" candidate, Mr. Bryan, led the attack in person and “beat the record" of all his predecessors by the number of miles which he travelled, of the speeches which he delivered, and of the hand-shakes which he distributed.

anonymous manner by handing to them on pay-day, in an envelope containing the money, a little puff of the candidate or of the party favoured by the employers; or bills are posted up in the workshop stating that if a particular candidate is elected the wages will fall, or the factory will be closed or have to restrict its out-put. In a good many States (of the West as well as of the East) the legislator has felt bound to intervene and prohibit the use by the employers of "pay envelopes " containing the names of candidates or political mottoes or arguments, and the exhibiting in their establishments of placards or notices intended to influence the vote of the workman.

III

Lastly, the most direct argument addressed to the personal interest of the elector consists, as in other countries, of the purchase of votes for cash. Less common than is generally supposed in Europe, bribery plays a considerable part in the political life of America, and an increasing one. The reader will remember how inexpensive elections were before the Civil War. It was only in three or four large cities, with New York at their head, which already contained a wretched population exposed to the temptations of ignorance and vice, that money was had recourse to for getting votes at elections. But after the war, the exasperation of party spirit and the extraordinary development of the spoils system, which made booty the sole object of election contests, led to bribery being used as a regular weapon. The rapid growth of the cities, inevitably accompanied by the rise of a poverty-stricken and semi-criminal class, the arrival of wretched emigrants from Europe, and the extension of the suffrage to the besotted negroes, had, in their turn, swelled the venal contingents. The appearance on the political stage of the rich "corporations" and, in general, of the big industrial and financial concerns trying to pack the legislative assemblies, the executive, and the judiciary, greatly helped to supply the funds required for buying votes. The economy of the American electoral system, which makes the result of the presidential election depend on a few "pivotal" States, whatever the distribution of the whole popular