The daily Alaskan., 1917-02-12
ELECTIONS.
Many Great Events Decided by a
 Narrow Margin.
HISTORY MADE BY ONE VOTE.

| in the cities, counties ana states oL LUIS great nation, as well as in the nation at large itself. In the latter class the Tilden-Hayes contest was the most sensational In that memorable cleo ton the result turned upon the single vote of the fifteenth member of the electoral commission, who was chosen by four judges of the supreme court.
 Our history abounds with instances in which the course of events hes turn cd upon single votes, and some of them may be conveniently, selected 1 from the compilation made by Speaker Clark for one of his Chautauqua lee lures.
 General Jackson was elected major general of Tennessee militia by one majority. Without that one vote he could not have fought the battle of New Orleans, and politics would have been different for a quarter of a cen tury.
 Martin Van Buren won the presi- dency through his defeat by one vote on the confirmation of his nomination as minister to England.
 John c. Calhoun, as vice president cast the deciding vote which gave to Van Buren what Calhoun never got for himself, although his claims were not inferior.
 Edward Everett lost the governor ship of Massachusetts by one vote, and that took him out of the list of avail ables for the presidency. a-..t
 Thomas Fl. Benton was elected to the senate by a single vote. The loss of that one vote not only would have cost him his career of thirty years, but would have meant the loss to the senate of one of it's strongest and most famous members in a most trying era. One of the great characters of Ameri- can history might never have emerged from obscurity. ...-.-.-..
 Henry Clay cast the deciding vote in the constitutional convention which admitted Kentucky to the Union as slave state. If Kentucky had entered the Union as a free state 1t is hardly doubtful that Missouri would have done the same, and 1t is conceivable | that there might have been no Mis- sourI compromise, and perhaps even no war between the states.
 The Walker tariff passed the senate by a single vote. Taft lost the vote of Idaho through a tie in the precinct of Boise. If one more man had voted for Taft Roosevelt would have lost con- trol of the state.
 There Is at least one case in which a single vote was the entire election. At the primaries for the Prohibition nomi- nation for judge in Schuylkill county, Pa, one vote was cast. There being no other candidate or voter, Richard H. Koch was unanimously chosen. A miss Is said to be as good as mile, and under some conditions one vote is as good as million.
 On the other hand, majority of , 100000 may be worthless, as was ac- , tuaIy the case in Indiana. At the gen. eral election in November, 1900, a pro- posed amendment that ''the general as sembly shall by law prescribe what qualifications shall be necessary for admission to practice law to all courts of Justice" was submitted to the cleo tors.
 Nearly 100000 more votes were cast for the amendment than against 1t. But 1t did not receive a majority of the votes cast for presidential electors and governor. The supreme court held that 1t had not been carried by the con- stitutional majority required for the ratification of a proposed amendment That was a case where an actual ma jority at the polls lost in the courts. There would be no end to the prece' l dents regarding the value of a few votes If the search were extended to foreign history. One example will sui flee to show that the count of the votes is as important as the casting of them,
 In 1911 the Monis ministry fell in [, France because 1t was thought to be in a minority of fourteen, when in fact il had a majority of five. According tc the contemporary cablegram: The crisis arose over an interpolation s regarding the attitude of the government as to the chief command of the army In the event of war, and the official lst ! showed 23S votes against the government f l and 224 in favor.
 M Monis was still on sick bed as the result of an acci( (A and his colleagues . decided on resign, V Il.
 The curious fact has now been brought to light, however, that at the moment oi I the fateful division there was consider a | able confusion In regard to the votes fol , and against. ] 4 number of deputies announced that i. their names had appeared on the wrong division list. An official rectifcatlon was made, with the result that so far from ] having been defeated the government
 had the narrow majority mentioned above Though this discovery may be the : source of much personal satisfaction tc 3 the ex-premIer, 1t Is, of course, too late q to affect the fate of his ministry.
 These are cases merely of misadven ture in the working of the machinery
 of voting. The cases of malicious falsi flying of popular sentiment are too nu
 merous to record.-New York Times.
 Cause Not Cure.