means that instead of voting once for governor, or president, or congressman, and other elected officials, the people can vote twice-once for the candidates to represent their party on the ballot and later for one of these candidates to hold the office. Thus the people have the machinery and therefore the opportunity to choose the right kind of persons for mayor, president, senator, representative, etc.

7. Voting requires Preparation. But there is still something more to voting than going both to the primary and to the votingbooth knowing the right men and women to nominate in the primaries. Of all the tasks confronting the citizen this is one of the most important and most difficult. To elect a person to any office is to give him for a specified time great power for good or for harm. But to tell in advance who are the persons who will do good and not harm is not easy. One can learn this only in these ways:

1. Reading of the activities and speeches of the kind of men and women who are likely to be nominated.

2. Hearing them talk whenever possible.

3. Learning as much as possible about their earlier years—their education, how they achieved success, what kind of service they have voluntarily given their community.

4. Talking over the candidates with persons whose judgment is worth considering.

5. Comparing the campaign promises of the different candidates. In times of crisis in town, state, or nation, or when some change is greatly desired by the people, it will usually be wise to vote for the man who is definite and straightforward and sensible in his promises. Candidates who promise to "raise wages," "lower taxes," "get a full dinner pail for every wage-earner," or "put Smithville on the map," cannot, of course, be trusted, for it is not within the power of any one person to bring such things about.

6. Belonging to some league or good-government association which has committees who spend much time investigating candidates for office and giving their members the information they accumulate.

Constant mingling with large numbers of people will help a person to judge character and to learn the difference between

men who talk much and do little and those who say little but always get results. The public school is one of the early helps toward intelligent voting, because in school pupils begin at once to learn how to mingle with people and how to determine who are competent leaders. However, it is not merely being with people that is useful training. It is being constantly alert to study people, to get their opinions, and to discuss important matters with them. Those who differ widely from us in habits and ambitions will help elect mayors, governors, legislators, and thus help change the nation. It is therefore essential not only to discuss matters with our friends but to talk with persons whose work life, home life, and ambitions are very different from ours.

8. The Legal Requirements for Voting. To become a voter a person must be

I. Twenty-one years of age.

2. A native-born American or a naturalized citizen or one who has declared his intention to become a citizen.

3. Registered in the town or city in which he claims legal residence. In some states a literacy test is required for voting, in others only those who have paid a state and county tax can vote. It is evident that the privilege of voting is not given freely to anyone and everyone. In all states except one paupers, persons under legal guardianship, the insane, those convicted of certain crimes, may not vote.

All the voting that any one person can do in any one year would not take more than six hours of his time unless he happened to be a long distance away from his legal residence at voting time. Simple as it is, however, it requires elaborate machinery. The Federal Constitution specifies how and when elections for president, vice president, members of Congress, shall be conducted, the state constitutions how state elections shall be conducted, the city and town charters how the local elections shall take place. Congress and the state legislatures have passed laws dealing with such details as kind of ballots and fraudulent voting.

9. Voting is the Necessary First Step toward making and carrying out Laws. The purpose of voting is, of course, to provide for (1) the making of laws, (2) the carrying out of laws. To provide for the making of laws means electing men and women to serve in Congress, the state legislature, and in the local lawmaking body. To

provide for the carrying out of laws means electing certain officials to attend to certain definite tasks. Some of the elected officials have been given power to appoint other officials. Therefore in electing a president, for instance, the people are indirectly electing several thousand other officialsambassadors, consuls, cabinet heads, judges. In a state or community in which the people elect only a few officials and leave it to the governor, mayor, etc., to appoint most of the others, we say that the short ballot is used. Many voters believe that to hold one of

ficial responsible for the work of many officials results in better government than when responsibility is widely scattered. Governors and mayors are perhaps more often judged by their appointments than by any other executive act.

10. Voting to recall Officials. When once elected or appointed most officials serve until the term set by law has expired. But the president, governors, and mayors have power to remove

some of the officials whom they appoint. There is no uniform plan, however, and many officials can be removed only through impeachment (trial) proceedings by Congress or the state legislatures. Just how each official is to be chosen and whether he may be dismissed and how, has to be determined in laws passed by Congress and the state legislatures.

In some states the people have power not only to vote for officials but to vote to recall some of those whom they elect. In such states a group of voters can send a petition, with the proper number of signatures, to the governor or state legislature, requesting that a special election be called so that the people may decide by ballot whether a certain official shall continue in office. It is thought that officials who know that they may be removed in this way at any time will be less likely to abuse the privileges of their office.

11. Lawmaking is the Second Step in Making and Running the Machinery of Government. Many people think of laws only as restrictions. They do not understand that the "don'ts" are only a small part of the laws of the United States. Laws, like constitutions, are only agreements which the people make among themselves to do or not to do certain things, and since the American people are doers of things and makers of things most of their laws are helps to doing and making.

12. How Laws are made by Congress. It is no wonder, then, that the making of laws is one of the greatest industries of the United States. In four years' time sixty-five thousand laws were passed by Congress and the forty-eight states. The machinery by which this vast piece of work was accomplished was simple enough. The men who make the laws for the nation are divided into two parts-the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate numbers 96, two senators from each state; the House of Representatives in 1923 had 435 members, one for each congressional district in the United States. They meet in regular session the first week of each December, and in special session whenever summoned by the president. The presiding officer of the Senate is the vice president, of the House

the "Speaker," who is elected by the members of the House from their own number. The president appears in Congress only when he reads his annual message or on special occasions to urge a declaration of war or the passage of an important bill. When the members of Congress wish to consult him, they call at his offices in the White House.

Any proposed laws, except those dealing with revenue, can be introduced into either House (revenue bills can originate only in the House of Representatives), and at the opening of each session hundreds of bills are waiting for their trial in both Houses. Proposed laws, or bills, as they are usually called, are divided according to subjects, and are referred to committees which have charge of these subjects. In the Senate there are now about seventy committees and in the House sixty. Before any bill is discussed or even read in Congress, it has been thoroughly discussed and phrased in committee. Most bills never go farther than the committees, for so many thousands are every year submitted to Congress that to even read them aloud in open session would take more days than there are in the year.

Committees are therefore necessary; but to the citizen who visits the Capitol it is disappointing to find that many of the seats in the Senate and House of Representatives are empty, and the places look like a schoolroom at recess on a rainy day when a few pupils have stayed in afraid of the wet. Many congressmen are not even in the Capitol building during working hours, but will be found in the roomy Senate and House office buildings, which have been built close to the Capitol. Here in their private offices or in the committee rooms at the Capitol they are reading bills, discussing and revising them.

After a committee has decided which bills it will present, a list is made out (each bill being given a number), many thousands of copies of each bill with the lines numbered for use in discussion are printed, and in due time each bill is introduced. This introduction is about as simple as that which takes place when a person introduces one