Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III INEFFICIENT CITIZENS THE indifference of American citizens to the duties and privileges conferred upon them by the free ballot is a colossal arraignment of our good citizenship. The men who vote at all elections are very rare, indeed. No election, however important or how exciting as a contest, succeeds in dragging every voter to the polls. In most of our cities, the voting booth is never located farther than a few blocks from any voter in the district. Unless voting be deferred until the rush hours of the evening, the act of preparing and casting the ballot occupies but a few moments of time. Yet many men plead inability to be good citizens because they are "too busy." It would furnish an effective object lesson if one of these "too busy" men were to be compelled to render an accurate accounting for all of his time on election day. It can safely be stated that ninety-nine per cent, could not prove that they were busily occupied every moment. We Americans have time for everything else under the sun: the movies, the tango, the long lunch hour at the club, the theater, the lodge—anything we wish to do, it would seem; but unless we are fired by the excitement of an unusually thrilling campaign, we haven't time for voting. Spring elections frequently fail to bring out more than thirty per cent, of the registered voters. Seven men out of every ten stay at home. Only a few judges, a school inspector, an auditor to be chosen,that's all. "No use bothering, my one vote won't matter anyway; better stay comfortably at home to-night," the busy man tells himself. The three men that do turn out are usually very vitally interested in the outcome of the election. They are the practical politicians and they never fail to vote; and because of this, the "slates" which they arran...