Invite them to the club meeting, then see to it that an invitation comes by mail.

Ask her if she would like to have some one come to watch the kids while she goes to vote. Ask her if she would like to have an automobile sent to take her to the polls. Even if she says this isn't necessary, follow it up on election day. If she has not voted as yet a couple of hours before the polls close, send a car for her anyway. Continue the interview as long as she is interested.

Discuss issues if she wants to and listen respectfully to what she has to say. Don't argue with her views. Let the points of difference pass and bear down on the respects in which you agree with her. As soon as she shows signs of restlessness, after two minutes or thirty minutes, get out promptly.

Record everything you have learned on a 3 x 5 file card, noting the action to be taken, before you ring the next doorbell.

You have almost certainly obtained one, and probably two or three, brand-new votes for the whole ticket. If it is a primary campaign your chances of swelling the total for your favorite candidates are even better.

With good luck you may have added a member to your local club, a member who may later do some precinct work herself. That remains to be seen. Gold is where you find it. Her husband may turn out to be one of those commendable individuals who will reach down in his pocket for a five spot to help pay for printing or hall rent, even if he won't do precinct work. He may own a filling station, or be a barber, or be in any of the many trades or professions which lend themselves to political contact work.

All this remains to be determined. Probably all you've gotten is a pair of new votes, but that is not to be sneered at. The Great Wall of China was built of individual bricks. In any case all that you have learned is recorded on the file card - including the dog Snuffy's name. When you send her the invitation by mail, to attend a club meeting, write on the printed form or typed letter, in long hand: "Does Snuffy still speak to strangers?"

Here is another doorbell. Behind it (it says here on the precinct list) should be Mrs. Grassroots, her son and daughter-in-law.

And so they are. They own their own home and haven't moved. They are on your side already; the record shows that they habitually vote even in the primaries. Your job is too easy; you might as well not have bothered.

Don't be too sure. Out of three votes, even with conscientious citizens, at least one will probably fail to show up for the primaries unless you follow up and, possibly, provide transportation. Furthermore you have a chance to win new club members and find new precinct workers. New club members, new precinct workers, are behind those closed doors. You must ring the doorbells.

We have covered all the important types, though you will encounter infinite variety in the types. You will encounter crackpots, and lonely people who will talk to you endlessly, and serious people who welcome a chance to exchange views. You will find some who will sit you down and ply you with cake and coffee and others who are obviously suspicious of you. Once in a long, long time you will encounter outright rudeness and it will leave you shaken, sick at heart, and reluctant ever to risk another rebuff.

Don't let it drive you home. Smoke a cigarette. Walk up to the corner drug store, buy a malted milk, and look at some comic strips. Then go back and tackle the next doorbell. The chances are that the person behind it will be as friendly as a puppy. Most Americans are.

You will find out a lot about your fellow citizens and what you find out will usually increase your faith in democracy and make you proud to be an American and a member of the human race. It will warm you up inside and give you new confidence about the future.

Why is a political club? I have already stated that elections are won in the precincts, not in clubs. Political clubs are hard to keep alive and require constant attention; why should you bother?

The political club is the organization of the doorbell pushers. It is the means by which you get them together and keep them together. It provides the necessary minimum of loose organization necessary to any cooperative enterprise.

But it does more than that. It is your principal means of keeping up morale among the volunteers. Field work in politics can be a lonely business; after a day or even an evening of punching doorbells you may feel that nobody cares but yourself, to hell with it, let the country go to the dogs, why should you knock yourself out-it isn't appreciated.

Then you need the company of other politicos, citizen. You need shop talk from others who have been through the same mill. You need to listen to how they are tackling things down in the twelfth ward and what the chances appear to be. You need to hear the ever hopeful comments of the old timers and the optimistic predictions of the campaign managers.

You'll listen to gossip about what the governor told Joe Shortterm in a secret conference last Wednesday and just what Joe thinks of the governor. You'll hear that Dr. Toplofty has decided to run for Congress in the third district and you will agree that that stuffed shirt doesn't stand a chance unless he quits spending all his time speaking in front of organizations made up of other stuffed shirts just like himself.

You'll stay up a little later than you should and drink a little more coffee than you should and you'll buy two tickets to the Fourth of July dance. Next day you will feel like punching some more doorbells. It doesn't look quite so hopeless. After all, your district has a more favorable registration than the twelfth ward and Jack Sidewalk seemed to be fairly confident that the party could carry the twelfth.

You'll go to the dance. You may not dance more than three or four dances, but it seems you had a swell time.

You picked up a couple of ideas from the chairman of the Westside Club and heard two wonderful pieces of scandal about, respectively, the street commission and Senator Shortchange.

In addition to building morale and acting as a clearing house for political information the club performs the serious function of acting as a school and a seminar in government. The candidates speak before the club and are there subjected to questioning and searching examination impossible at the public rallies. No candidate nor office holder, up to and including the level of governor, can afford to refuse a summons to appear before a club. If circumstances interfere, he will be apologetic about it and try to arrange another date.

This fact gives you a chance to know intimately the men who run our government. In a country as large as ours this is a most valuable opportunity and one of which most people appear to be unaware. If you avail yourself of it, the mysterious and remote processes of your government will become as familiar and personal as the ministrations of your family physician.

The club is also the work shop of democracy. It conducts much the same business and under much the same rules as does our Congress - with this difference: The club conducts such business frequently in advance of the Congress. Many a bill has been submitted, and passed, in the sacred halls of Congress because some private citizen, a tailor, or a grocery man, or a school teacher, first submitted that bill as a resolution before some small and amateurish political club.

The political club is in fact part of our government, although an unofficial part. New ideas are tried out in it, debated, referred to committee, modified, and made ready for the public arena, just as plays are sent to Atlantic City for a try out.

How to Form a Political Club: just one person is necessary to a successful political club. He (or she) is usually the secretary, though he may be the chairman, the treasurer, a member of the membership committee, chairman of the program committee, or not even an officeholder. Whatever the title this person is the de facto executive secretary through willingness and energy.