Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/69

 THE TIME ELEMENT IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS 5 5

certain number of days before the election. The county central committees may make such petitioning — as a protest against their nominees — difficult, or even impossible, by holding late conven- tions, and will do so where the spirit of independent voting threatens their power. Again, if a wise county finds itself fee- ble or entirely wanting in "timber" for the elective offices, it may aim to secure the appointive offices of the state. To this end it holds off until the seasonable hour, or, it may be, until the last moment. If a point is reached, before the state convention has met, where the statistics from the other counties indicate that this particular county can wield the balance of power, then its convention meets and pledges its delegates in return for the larger promises of patronage incident to such a critical time. If the statistics of instruction from the other counties leave the out- come doubtful up to the very eve of the state convention, the said county chooses at the eleventh hour unpledged delegates, who freely exercise their diplomatic talents in the hotel lobbies and headquarters at the state gathering.

The best recent example of a successful use of all the time con- ditions by a single county containing a vast city in a populous commonwealth is afforded in the election of John R. Tanner to the governorship of Illinois. For this office three or four other prominent Republicans of the Prairie State had set their caps as early as had Mr. Tanner. But he had transferred his residence from the southern portion of Illinois to the county in which Chicago is situated, the great county of Cook. Himself the chairman of the Republican state central committee, he had cul- tivated the acquaintance and won the alliance of the leading spir- its in the Cook county Republican central committee. Together, therefore, shortly after the call of the national committee for the St. Louis convention, they outlined their plan. They would issue the call for the state convention on the twenty-eighth of January, the day after the county convention at Olney should have declared for Mr. Tanner. They would issue the call for the Cook county convention on the fourth of February. They would hold the county primaries on the fourteenth of February, and the county convention on the fifteenth. With but a week elapsed, the county