f less than a hundred in each and lose one, being therein
in a minority of a thousand; with the result that, with fewer votes than
were cast for its opponents, it will have a clear majority of nine in
the eleven seats. This is of course well understood.

But in an American general or presidential election, this anomaly is
immensely aggravated by the fact that the electoral unit is not a city
or a borough but a whole County or State. The various States have a
voice in proportion to their population, but that vote is cast as a
unit. A majority of ten votes in New York carries the entire
thirty-seven votes of that State, while a majority of one thousand in
Montana only counts three. There are forty-six States in the Republic,
but the thirteen most populous possess more than half the votes, and a
presidential candidate who received the votes of those thirteen, though
each was won by only the narrowest majority, would be elected over an
antagonist who carried the other thirty-three States, though in each of
the thirty-three his majority might be overwhelming. Bearing this in
mind, we see at once what immense importance may, in a doubtful
election, attach to the control of a single populous State.

If in an English election, similarly conducted, the country was known to
be so equally divided that the vote of Warwickshire, with, perhaps,
twenty votes, would certainly decide the issue, the man who could
control Warwickshire would practically control the country. We have seen
further, however, that the man who controls Warwickshire will probably
be the man who controls Birmingham. He may be the Mayor of Birmingham,
or, more likely, the chairman (or "boss") of the municipal machine who
nominated and elected the Mayor and whose puppet the Mayor practically
is. It then becomes evident that the man who can sway the politics of
the nation is not merely the man who controls the single County of
Warwickshire, but the man who, inside that County, controls the single
city.

To go a step below that again, the control of the city may depend
entirely on the control of a given ward in the city. That ward may
contain a very large labouring vote, by reason of the existence of a
number of big factories within its limits. Unless that labouring vote
can be polled for the Liberal party, the ward will not go Liberal, and
without it the city will be lost. The loss of the city involves the loss
of the County, and the loss of the County means the lo