Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/83

 THE TIME ELEMENT IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS 69

campaigns. With advances in political and social conditions the need of additional checks upon the political manager has grown. His allies have been the increasingly speedier post-office, rail- way, and telegraph. His mentor has been the news column of the developing daily paper. His growing skill with these instru- ments, especially in the interesting interval between one election and the primaries for the next, shows that the initial movement yet belongs to the self-avowed candidate in America as else- where. His time for the selfish use of the railway, the post- office, the telegraph, and the news column may be curtailed by simultaneity of popular action. Their increased value for his bargainings may be eliminated by distinct national, state, and city campaigns.

In fixing the dates of a time schedule, the legislator may settle the conflicting interests of politics and other pursuits ; may give to the nation and to the states campaigns short enough to avoid injury to business, and long enough to educate the elec- tors for the intelligent performance of civic duties ; may choose and make permanent such seasons and days as will yield the best weather conditions ; may diminish the interference of cam- paigns with the sessions of Congress and the duties of congress- men ; may strengthen the control of the people over the political manager, by placing the primary and the nominating convention closer together, and thereby giving a longer interval between the nomination and the election.

Separation of the times for national, state, and municipal action will relieve presidents from sitting down at feasts with keepers of city gambling dens, and congressmen from campaigning with bullet-headed candidates for state legislatures. It will remedy that interference of political issues which repudiates a president's war policy, because a state administration has been mixed up in canal frauds. It will permit the average citizen to vote with his next-door neighbor for municipal ownership without encourag- ing that neighbor's tariff or monetary views. It will secure individual attention for each of the three governments. Three distinct types of healthy leadership will emerge. The champion of expanded commerce will not need to clash with the champion