Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-06-19
MONEY WASTED IN POLITICS
By DR.. Frank Crane

While the country is shocked over the enor-
nous sums expended in the business of getting
somebody nominated and elected president of
the United States few of us understand how to
interpret the fact.
The real explanation is that it means the
high cost of partisanship.
1t means that the process of picking rulers
by means of political parties is about the most
wasteful method conceivable.
Our election is practically war. We wish
it So. We love fight To the Anglo-Saxon
mind no process of reaching a conclusion is SO
satisfactory as a scrap.
You may select the honor graduate of a
school by written examination, the superin-
tendent of your factory by his record, wife
for her good looks or ability to cook, and a
salesman by his success in bringing home the
bacon, but when you undertake to choose a
president you must model your procedure upon
dog fight or horse race Or war.
And war is waste Competition is waste
Contention is waste.
Nobody but the chief statistician in hell can
compute the horrific waste of the late war,
wherein the nations were trying to determine
which was 1T by smuggling; nor the waste of
life and money in the bitter struggle between
organized labor and capital. Yet precisely this
is the method of party politics. 1t is a system
by which we get not per cent results from
the energy expended.
1t is estimated that before either conven-
ton was held, as shown by the testimony be-
fore the senate investigating committee, some
two or three million dollars was spent in ad-
vancing the interests of the several candidates.
Before the election is over, in all probability,
SIS 100000 or $3O,oooooO will have been spent.
This does not 60 for bribing. Comparatively
little of it is spent for corrupting voters.
Neither is big business trying to buy up the
government Most of such talk is due to our
malicious delight in scandal.
What becomes of the money, then?
1t is simply wasted in sheer, fatuouS nom
sensical machinery. No one who has not seen
the political machine at work can imagine the
stupendous pow-wow over doing nothing;
First, there aresextensive offices rented, cam
paign headquarters, with laHge clerical staff,
typewriters, monographs dictaphones, tele-
phones, and what not. ReamS of stationery is
printed, most of which is pilifesed A num-
Der of managers are employed who fly about
the country at $40 day and expenses and
report" stuff that can be found in any news
paper Literary men are hired to write SaharaS
of articles and prepare folders. Foolish and
useless full-page advertisements are inserted IN
publications. And SO on and so on.
There is no business known among human
beings where more is spent and nothing is got
than the business of running a political party.
For, when it's all over, what has been &C,
cornplished' Nothing! The people are not
corrupted nor IOOleu lney VOte as tIey pleaoC'
They get their information from the daily press,
which goes along anyhow and which no party
has succeeded in permanently substituting.
Briefly, at least four-fifths of the money
spent in elections in the United States is
wasted. 1t is not stolen. 1t does not get any
body anything. 1t is poured out to a lot of
campaign workers who excel all the busy work
ers of the world in hustling activity that does
not amount to a hill of beans.
But it's great game!
copyright, 1920, by Frank Crane.)