As to the older voters, I reach them, too. No, I don't send them
campaign literature. That's rot. People can get all the political stuff
they want to read-and a good deal more, too-in the papers. Who
reads speeches, nowadays, anyhow? It's bad enough to listen to
them. You ain't goin' to gain any votes by stuffin' the letter boxes
with campaign documents. Like as not you'll lose votes for there's
nothin' a man hates more than to hear the letter carrier ring his bell
and go to the letter box ex pectin' to find a letter he was lookin'
for, and find only a lot of printed politics. I met a man this very
mornin' who told me he voted the Democratic State ticket last year
just because the Republicans kept crammin' his letter box with
campaign documents.

What tells in holdin' your grip on your district is to go right down
among the poor families and help them in the different ways they
need help. I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire in
Ninth, Tenth, or Eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the
day or night, I'm usually there with some of my election district
captains as soon as the fire engines. If a family is burned out I don't
ask whether they are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer
them to the Charity Organization Society, which would investigate
their case in a month or two and decide they were worthy of help
about the time they are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for
them, buy clothes for them if their clothes were burned up, and fix
them up till they get things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's
politics, too-mighty good politics. Who can tell how many votes
one of these fires bring me? The poor are the most grateful people
in the world, and, let me tell you, they have more friends in their
neighborhoods than the rich have in theirs.