Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-11-09
ELECTION RETURNS
BY FREDERIC J. HASKIN.

Many thousand American citizens mad
deep interest in the returns from yes.
terday's balloting The average person
is interested only in the congressional
and gubernatorial races in the various
states. But there were thousands of can
didates for other offices-county treas
urers. county clerks, supervisors, road
commissioners, overseers of the poor,
magistrates, constables, and to each of
them his ownsrace was of more heart in
terest than the race between Dix and
Stimsop or the fight for control of the
House in the SixtS-second Congress. No
one has undertaken to count how many
candidates there are for Office in the
off year in American politics. but they
have counted them in a presidential year,
and it is upward of 100000, leaving out
the approximately 100000 school officials
who are directly or indirectly elected on
that day. In other words, nearly a mil
lion candidates high and low, have their
political fate decided in the great quad
rennial reckoning, in which the people are
for once the actual rulers of the nation.
Possibly a fourth as many were up for
election yesterday.
While the eliminating event OF Ameri-
can politics is election night in presi-
Dental years, a grow
Mid. Term Fight ing interest has been
manifested in the
AVA OoA6ASSS' midterm congressional
fights. The unusual crowds which gath
cred last night around the places where
election returns were given out testify to
the fact that the returns this year have
N, 70 than
formerly. The promptness with which
the returns came in is but another illus
tration of how the world is moving for
ward. Only fifteen years ago it required
full day in some counties to know VINO
was elected on a county ticket In those
same counties the returns are now COM
plete two hours after the polls close. The
telephone and shorter ballots are re-
sponsible, but most of the credit belongs
to the telephone.
Every telegraph and telephone company
in the country lent itself to the public
last night for the transmission of the
returns. No one has attempted to esti-
mate the amount of business these in
stitutions carry over their wires on cleo
panies made special efforts to keep the
ships informed as to the progress Of the
count. Many a voyager, far out at sea.
kept in close touch with the drift or the
returns last night.
New York surpasses every other city in
the country in the size Of its election
night crowds, and also in the volume of
noise the crowds make when the re-
suits are known. When President Taft
was elected one Gotham reporter, in de-
spair of conveying an idea Of the amount
of noise to his out-of-town readers, finally
wrote: IF 400 lunatic asylums had turned
loose their entire list of inmates. and
the biggest band Of Comanches and
Apaches that ever gathered had been
to help them make weird
and uncanny noises. it still would have
been as but the soft sigh of a lovesick
maiden as compared with the noise that
started below newspaper row and swept
on uptown and across the Harlem"
So rapid has been the growth of facii-
ties of communication that the nation
now is able to know
Provision for election results in few
er. hours than it re-
CaA1y 1set"AAS' quired days two gen.
erations ago. We have got things down
to such fine point that the California,
Oregon and Washington citizen can know
before he quits voting how New York