Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/85

 THE TIME ELEMENT IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS 7 I

trade among the cities of the great lakes in the same equitable manner as does the keeping by them of a common seventh day of rest.

The coinciding action of multitudes of electors moves the patriotic imagination. Let the legislator devote a single period to municipal elections, and let a hundred great cities elect at one and the same time — what a quickening of civic life! What an impulse of emulative rivalries ! What a gathering of scattered, confused efforts into one steady, distinct movement !

With certainly known and regularly recurring days for the primaries, everybody can take a well-timed preliminary interest in their problems. With time uniformity, whatever hectic spice may be lost to elections through restraint upon the gambling politician is replaced a thousand fold by the increased freedom of the voter. Democracy's danger lies not in an excess of iso- lated, but in an excess of imitative action. Independence of judgment for the voting rank and file supplies to politics its true and desirable variety.

In fine, intelligent planning of the times for political action may do much to place both men and measures upon their inde- pendent merits, or to conserve and to extend that equality upon which the American republic is founded, an equality of voters, of candidates, of political parties, of counties, and of states.

L. G. McCONACHIE. Chicago.