Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1909 — How a Platform is Built. [ARTICLE]

How a Platform is Built.

Building a platform at a political convention reminds one of the side show of a circus. While owing its existence to the main show it is separate and distinct from it, and you have to pay a separate price of admission. A good many folks who came to this convention had a chance to take in this side show, because it was held in the parlor of the biggest hotel and was of easy access for the crowds. There were several acts to the platform play, each act consuming almost an entire day. In the first act a procession of strange looking men appeared, each bearing a. plank, tapped on the door and were admitted singly. They left their planks all tagged and came out again. The next act is invisible to the audience. A low rumbling is heard at times from the stage and occasionally there is a loud noise as a heavy plank falls. The audience thrills as it grasps the momentous Importance of these sounds and what, they mean. • Some of the men who carried their own planks into the room now stand around and speculate as to whose plank it was that fell and strain their ’ears for some sound that will reassure them. It is like a scene on a stage, a la Belasco.

The third act is the longest act of all. The low rumble has now become a roar. All of the cast is now engaged. Some of the men who took planks into the room are taken in for the torture of seeing these planks, born amid so much travail, planed and chiselled and sawed up in their sight until little is left, or else broken up for kindling wood. There is a sudden call for typewriters, and a battery of them dashes up. Men appear in an anteroom, place something in one of these machines and stand around while the machine grinds out a brand new plank made of the remnants of several old ones. Amid increasing excitement these planks are all placed in a pile. Then comes the supreme moment. A committee of expert carpenters with skilled hands comes out of the main temple, approach this pile reverently, examine the marks on the different planks and begin building the platform. They must work quickly, for the hour is late. Some of the less expert carpenters stand about and watch the structure as it assumes shape, now and then looking at their watches. At last it is finished, picked up and borne into the inner temple. There is a moment of breathless excitement. Then.the doors of this temple swing open, the high priests walk out slowly as befits their station. The platform has been accepted. The nation has been saved. —New York Sun.