THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1912 AMERICAN ELECTIONEERING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10715, 21 September 1912, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1912 AMERICAN ELECTIONEERING.

Ju tactics, strategy, organisation, and methods, a wide gulf separates an American Presidential campaignfrom an English'- general election, remarks a writer in the London Times. The Englishman knows nothing of National, Congressional .. and State Committees, with their monster delegations and countless parades, of torchlight processions, fireworks display, "straw" votes, "wash" bets, and the like. An American mass meeting, again, is quite a different affair to an English one. In an American city special buildings often have to bo run up to -accommodate as many as 30,000 people. At such a meeting a speaker may receive a fee of 1000 dollars for a'.really "spell-binding" speech. To work up the feelings of the audience the greatest attention is paid to incidentals. For instance, every campaign manager who knows h:s business has a miniature Stars and Stiripes placed on overy seat, the walls decorated with the portraits of national heroes and the party candidates, and an orchestra in attendance.. Long before the meeting begins in earnest" IHe lalrge building resounds with national airs and the latest music-hall songs. The campaign poet has a vogue in America which is undreamt of in England. A striking feature of any such gathering is the absence of women. American women, says the correspondent of the Times, either owing to the disassoeiution of politics and society, the commercial character of most American questions, or to some other reason, participate in such matters hardly at all. Singing, cheering, flag-waving, relieve the monotony of waiting. Then there are the great national cries and counter-cries. "What's the matter with Roosevelt" . . "He' R all right." "Who was George Washington ?" and similar calls, thundered' out iu. unison by twenty thousand voices, .accompanied by the stamping nf forty thousand feet, have an extraordinary impressive effect. When the meeting is formally opened, howover, the audience- immediately quietens down, and listens attentively according to the custom of public life in America, which rulon that speakers

shall bo heard out without open dissent. Heckling of iill kinds at pubIk' meetings is regarded as bad form, :uid nn m:ittor how distasteful a speaker's views may bo to bis audience, he is politely listened to until the end. For this reason Americ. lias been termed the orator's paradise. For the orator is never disconcerted by interjections of "a voice" by brutal injunctions to "Shut up," or "Sit down," or by coughings, sluifflin.es, and cat-calls. Only, if the audience find him quite intolerable, they get «P and leave in a deliberate and orderly fashion. Tt is typical of the light Americans regard .interruptions so frequent at political meetings elsewhere, that rn IS9G some Yalo undergraduates who behaved noisily frt one of Mr Bryan's meetings were promptly sent down. the >rniv6rr- - ity authorities publicly <lpolotr''Mr.g to the Democratic candidate for the insult on the part of the students.