Robert Heinlein - Take Back Your Government!

How to Start

"Put down your bucket where you are!"

The late Booker T Washington,4 in his life-long attempts to advise his people on how to help themselves, had a favorite anecdote about a sailing ship, becalmed and out of fresh water off the coast of South America. After many days they sighted another ship, a steam ship, and signalled, "Bring us water. We are dying of thirst." The other ship sent back this message, "Put down your bucket where you are!"

They were in the broad mouth of the Amazon, afloat in millions of gallons of fresh water - and did not know it!

Here is how to start in politics:

Get your telephone book. Look up the party of your registration - or, if you are not registered in a party, the party which most nearly fits your views. I don't care what party it is, but let us suppose for illustration that it is the Republican Party. You will find a listing something like Republican County Committee, Associated Republican Clubs, Republican Assembly, or perhaps several such. Telephone one of them.

Say, "My name is Joseph Q. (or Josephine W.) Ivorytower. I am a registered voter at 903 Farflung Avenue. Can you put me in touch with my local club?"

The voice at the other end will say, 'Just a minute. Do you know what ward you are in?"

You say no. (It's at least even money that you don't know, if you are a normal American!)

The voice mutters, "Fairview, Farwest, Farflung - " The owner of the voice is checking a file or a map. Then you hear, in an aside, "Say, Marjorie, gimme the folder on the 13th ward."

"What do you want to know?" says Marjorie. She knows them by heart; she typed them. She is a political secretary and belongs to one of two extreme classes. Either she is a patriot and absolutely incorruptible, or she can be bought and sold like cattle. Either way she knows who the field worker in the 13th ward is.

After a couple of minutes of this backing and filling you are supplied with a name, an address, and a telephone number of a local politician who is probably the secretary of the local club. You may also be supplied with the address and times and dates of meetings of the local club, if it is strong enough to have permanent headquarters. The local club may vary anywhere from a dub in permanent possession of a store frontage on a busy street, with a full time secretary on the premises and a complete ward, precinct, and block organization, to a club which exists largely in the imagination of the secretary and which meets only during campaigns in the homes of the members.

Your next job is to telephone the secretary. This is probably not necessary. If the local organization is any good at all, the secretary of the local club will call^ow, probably the same day. Marjorie will have called him and said, "Get a pencil and paper, Jim. I've got a new sucker for you." Or, if she is not cynical, she may call you a new prospect.

She will have added you to a card file and set the wheels in motion to have your registration checked and to have you placed on several mailing lists. Presently you will start receiving one or more political newspapers - free, despite the subscription price posted on the masthead - and, in due course, you will receive campaign literature from candidates who have the proper connections at headquarters. Your political education will have begun, even if you never bother to become active.

Note that it has not cost you anything so far. The costs need never exceed nickels, dimes, and quarters, even if you become very active. The costs can run as high as you wish, of course. The citizen who is willing to reach for his checkbook to back up his beliefs is always welcome in politics. But such action is not necessary and is not as rare as the citizen who is willing to punch doorbells and lick stamps. Some of the most valuable and respected politicians I have ever known had to be provided with lunch money to permit them to do a full day's volunteer work in any area more than a few blocks from their respective homes.

I know of one case, a retired minister with a microscopic pension just sufficient to buy groceries for himself and his bedridden wife, who became county chairman and leader-in-fact of the party in power in a metropolitan area of more than three million people. He was so poor that he could not afford to attend political breakfasts or dinner. He could never afford to contribute to party funds, nor, on the other hand, was he ever on the party payroll - he never made a thin dime out of politics.

What he did have to contribute was honesty, patriotism, and a willingness to strive for what he thought was right It made him boss of a key county in a key state - when he was past seventy and broke.

I digress. This book will have many digressions; politics is like that, as informal as an old shoe, and the digressions may be the most important part. It is sometimes hard to tell what is important in the practical art of politics. Charles Evans Hughes failed to become president because his manager was on bad terms with a state leader and thereby failed to see to it that the candidate met the local leader on one particular occasion in one California city. The local campaign lost its steam because the local leader's nose was out of joint over the matter.

Mr. Hughes lost the state of California; with its electoral vote he would have become president.5 A switch of less than nineteen hundred votes in the city in which the unfortunate incident occurred would have made Mr. Hughes the war-time president during World War I. The effect on world history is incalculable and enormous. It is entirely possible that we would have been in a League of Nations (not the League - that was Woodrow Wilson's League); it is possible that Hitler would never have come to power; it is possible that World War II would never have occurred and that your nephew who fell at Okinawa would be alive today.

We cannot calculate the consequences. But we do know that world history was enormously affected by a mere handful of votes, less than one percent of one percent -less than one ten-thousandth of the total vote cast.

An active political club6 can expect to deliver to the polls on election day, through unpaid volunteers driving their own cars, as many votes as the number that swung the 1916 presidential election. It could be your club and an organization you helped to build.

Which is why you must now telephone the local club secretary. It may be your chance to prevent, by your own direct and individual action, World War III!

The club secretary, Jim Ballotbox, will not give you the brush off. Even if it is a tight machine organization, founded on graft and special privilege, an honest-to-goodness volunteer who is willing to work is more to be desired than fine gold, yeah, verily! If it is that sort of a club, presently you will be offered cash for your efforts, anywhere from five dollars per precinct per campaign on the west coast, through five dollars per day during the campaign in the middle west, to a sound and secure living month in and month out on the east coast.

(These figures do not refer to the Republican Party, as such, nor to the Democratic Party. They refer to the Machine, no matter what its label.)

Don't take the money. Remain a volunteer. You will be treated with startled response. Every time you turn down money you will automatically be boosted one rung in the party councils. And the progress is very fast.

But, no matter which sort of club it is, you will be welcomed with open arms. You have already caused a minor flurry at the downtown headquarters by volunteering during "peace time"-other than immediately before a campaign. It shocked them but they rose to the occasion and put you in touch with your local leader. They are used to volunteers during campaigns - and are aware that most of them are phonies who expect at least a postmaster's job in return for a promise to work one precinct plus a little handshaking at a few political meetings. If it should happen that you call up during a campaign, you will be treated a litde more warily until you have established that you are in fact a volunteer and not a hopeful patronage hound, but you will be received pleasantly and given a chance to work. This applies to any political club anywhere at any time.