Another weakness, from the politicians’ point of view, is a seeming incapacity to understand the need of organization in political work. It is not only incapacity to understand the need, but also ignorance of the way in which organization can be effected. It has been revealed in all of Mr. Cleveland’s campaigns. After his election as Governor of New York by a plurality of nearly two hundred thousand, his availability as a presidential candidate was recognized, and, later, was strengthened by the assurance that his messages while Mayor of Buffalo had brought him the respect and confidence of the independent element; yet Mr. Cleveland’s friends very soon discovered that if they were to bring about his nomination for President, it must be done through organization of which he was either ignorant or to which he would be indifferent. So Mr. Cleveland had almost no part in that splendid game of 1884. He knew almost nothing of those things which were being done for him. Mr. Manning and the others had taken him up at first because of his availability; but Mr. Manning soon discovered that a man might be available and still be as ignorant of the science of politics, as understood by those who make it a professional pursuit, as a child. After Mr. Cleveland became President, he sometimes drove his friends almost to distraction by his seeming incapacity to understand movements in the game of politics, which his friends suggested to him. A number of them went to him some time near the middle of his term as President, to set forth the political condition in New York State. They were men of long training and considerable achievement in politics. They had made successes both in New York City and New York State. They spoke to him with freedom--some of them with bluntness. They said to Mr. Cleveland that the then Governor of New York, Mr. Hill, was constructing with unusual cunning and consummate ability a political machine which might not be friendly, and was perhaps likely to be actively hostile, to him; and then, with much of detail, they showed Mr. Cleveland how he could break down such organization, utterly scatter it, and create and maintain in New York State one upon which he could rely with serenity. The merest tyro in politics can easily understand with what chagrin and astonishment these friends departed from his presence, because he did not seem to have been impressed in the slightest by their assertion that he was in political danger in New York State, and did not appear to comprehend the methods which they suggested by which the danger could be overcome.