How young men can go political

JAY FRANKLIN

Plain sailing directions for young men intent on navigating the seas of New Deal politics

The returns from the New Deal tidalwave of November 6, 1934, indicated that the country seems set for an era of political change, with youth in the saddle. There has been nothing like it since the birth of the Republican Party, nothing so hopeful since the election of Thomas Jefferson.

For the first time in three generations, the political gates have swung open to youth, and if our young men are to profit by this opportunity, they must learn quickly. They must learn about the true nature of politics, about the real character of the American people, about their own powers and limitations. The older generation has been defeated. The new generation must now educate itself in the art of going political, effectively.

The depression has given us a first-class political education, yet the overwhelming mass of young Americans have failed to grasp the first principles of modern politics. They don't yet know what it is all about. They are unable either to frighten their elders into giving them jobs, or to formulate a political theory which will automatically assign jobs to them. They generally believe that the way to "go political is to get a government job. On the contrary, the way to get a job today—government or otherwise—seems to be to go political.

To date, the story of politics has been the story of a race between brute force and shrewd propaganda. When the armored knight, on horseback, could ride down base varlets, feudal absolutism was the political rule. When English archery made the varlet the homicidal equal of the knight, demoeracy was born. Modern technology— which has supplanted the horse with the tank, and the bow-and-arrow with the gasbomb -suggests that the political power of the future may rest with the small, tightly organized political army—viz., Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler.

Although the modern problem is somewhat more complicated, and the old assumption of democracy as an armed truce between potentially homicidal equals has broken down, it is not wholly foreign to the problems that have preceded it. The municipal gangs and political machines of the United States support the same theory —that when you have lethal weapons which enable a comparatively1 small, compact, sternly disciplined group to stand off the mass of society, political power belongs to those groups. Also, to put it bluntly, if one man with a machine gun can overawe a city mob, one bomb in the right power house, or aqueduct, can starve or destroy a community.

THEY ORDER THESE THINGS DIFFERENTLY ABROAD.—Observe the technique by which a group of ambitious young men made themselves the rulers of Russia. Nearly a generation before the Bolshevik coup d'etat of November, 1917, Nicolai Lenin studied the history of the Jesuits and decided that success lay in discipline rather than in numbers. Outlawed and discredited, the Communists organized in cells, in groups, which demanded active participation in party work from all party members. For fifteen years and more, Lenin and Trotzky forged the weapon—a political part) as compact and efficient as a machinegun—which brought low the Tsarist Empire and has since grown in every nation on the face of the globe. That little group laid its hand on the nerve centers of the Russian Empire, paralyzed them, and then used them to flash new impulses to every corner of what is now the Soviet Union. Today, as in those early days when the Bolsheviki were "impractical dreamers'" in exile in Switzerland and England, the young Communist starts in the ranks and works his way up, by long obedience, to the seat of power.

Mussolini and Hitler adopted the same model. Human nature has developed nothing more efficient in two thousand years than this blend of discipline and conviction. Mussolini's work was relatively short, lie prepared his successful March on Rome in the autumn of 1922 in the astonishingly short period of four years. Before that, however, lay a lifetime devoted to the theory and practice of revolutionary agitation.

Hitler, being Central European, was unable to act save in the name of the Treaty of Versailles. For ten years he denounced that treaty. He tried a one-man revolt in Munich, went into hiding, and then returned to build up his political party of Nazis by a blend of the Italian and Russian methods. He came to power in 1933, but behind him stood the youth of Germany and a decade of struggle.

These European examples are valuable to Americans for only one reason—the method involved in recruiting young men to the political colors. The old men fought back with money and ideas but were powerless against young men who were not only paid in hard knocks, suffering, imprisonment, and often death, but who were required to pay money for the privilege of being a Communist, a Fascist or a Nazi. Between the mercenary and the man who pays for a chance to fight, lies all the difference between defeat and victory. Another suggestive fact in the European set up is that publicity, propaganda, the press and the radio are no substitutes for the old fashioned methods of direct speech, public meetings and personal contacts between members of a political party.

ENGLISH POLITICS—AND AMERICAN.— Only in one land—England—is there any system in effect which can check the growth of a young revolutionary party. I here, it is not customary to regard youth as a positive disqualification for political office. The young Englishman who goes political finds his way made easy. All he needs to do is to attend Oxford or Cambridge, and, if he becomes prominent as an undergraduate, he can find work as private secretary to a member of Parliament or a Cabinet Minister. Thus he serves an apprenticeship and in time gets a chance to run for Parliament himself. He does not need to live in the district which elects him: he is simply assigned to it as a candidate by the Party managers. It would be inaccurate to describe this English system as designed to buy off the potential leaders of opposition to the established order —though such is its effect. Instead, it offers youthful talent a chance and so does not force youthful energies to take the roundabout, uncertain, and arduous road of revolution.

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The American system is quite different. Our political life is permeated by fear of youth. The Constitution frankly admits this in its various age requirements for Representatives, Senators, and the President. For the gifted young man who would enter politics, there is still only the Roosevelt route, established by the great T.R. and faithfully followed by F.D.R. You are elected to the State Assembly, After a while you take appointive office elsewhere—as Civil Service Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Police Commissioner. Then you run again, for the Governorship or the Vice-Presidency, and, in time, you emerge on top after years of experience in electioneering and practical administration.

Or, if you are merely industrious, you can take the Farley route. You work with and for the machine, keeping your nose to the grindstone and your record regular; you deliver the votes in your ward, your precinct, your state; you hand out jobs and contracts and passes and favors, and concentrate as fiercely on the next election as do Ford officials on their next body-model. You apply the principles of Big Business organization to politics, taking orders from above and passing them on below. In time you become Boxing Commissioner, Campaign Manager, Postmaster General, and Chairman of the National Committee, as a brakeman becomes a railroad president.

This is a formidable set-up for a young American to tackle. Nor, as has already been indicated, is our soil hospitable to the Communistic or Fascist approach, so long as sabotage and the chance of chaos remain to offset the power of the small political armies so fashionable elsewhere.

THE MODUS OPERANDI.—Here then, young man, is a practical program for you in politics. Wherever you live, find out who is the local political boss. You may not even know there is one, but there probably is. To combat him, get together a group of people of your own age, even as few as five or six will be important. Meet in your own house and form a political club. Call yourselves the Federated Freebooters, the Amalgamated Anarchists, or the Saviors of the Country, and decide that you'll make things unhappy for the local boss. Vote in every election—one side or another or both; play both ends against the middle; mix things up. If you find a close election, swing your block of votes out of sheer devilment, just to spoil the boss's plans. Attack crookedness in local government and take it for a ride.

Local issues are generally so piffling that you won't have any feeling that you are being untrue to American institutions in any way. When a big political movement—state-wide or nation-wide—comes along, go with it, but keep worrying your local politicians, your ward bosses and precinct fixers.

When you have it solidly organized, start working out from your own little group. Win others to your side by the simple and effective means of making yourselves useful to your neighbors. Turkeys at Christmas is an old rule, hut carry it a hit further; especially if you haven't the price of a turkey. If your neighbor's child gets into trouble, help him out. If the man next door is evicted, pass the hat around and go down to see the judge. Call in a body on the hanker who forecloses a mortgage, and ask him if he can't extend the time. Don't forget that the old rule of politics in any Christian land is: the way to he the master is to he the best servant.

All of these suggestions are, of course, tentative, but they embody the most entertaining, direct, and practical method by which serious-minded, wellintentioned, public-spirited young men can get into American politics today. Local government in America has become a stench and a corruption in too many communities. You need to be trained, and local politics need to be cleaned up. The combination is fortunate and the opportunity attractive. Let loose, not only the sword of civic virtue but the salty purge of humor in these dark places. Learn your trade and cut the ground from under the machines, good and had, in the very places where the machine took root. After that the world of politics may be yours.