Thus, Mayor Stitt Wilson of Berkeley, California, has refused to comply with this custom of executing an undated resignation from office in advance of election, and the local organization has defended his action on the ground that the "Berkeley municipal charter, providing as it does for the initiative, referendum, and recall, there is no necessity for any official placing his resignation in the hands of the local," ignoring the fact that a handful of the least Socialistic of those who had voted for Mr. Wilson in cooeperation with his opponents could defeat a recall unanimously indorsed by the Socialist Party. According to this principle a mere majority in the Socialist Party would be helpless against a mayor who is allowed to make his appeal to the far more numerous non-Socialist and anti-Socialist public. As the custom of requiring signed resignations, by which alone the Socialist Party controls its members in public office, is not yet prescribed by the Party constitution, local and state organizations have a large measure of autonomy, and the Berkeley case was dropped until the next national convention (1912). But the action taken by the Socialists of Lima, Ohio, indicates that the Party will not allow itself to be destroyed in this manner. Mayor Shook, by his appointment to office of non-Socialists, and even of a prominent anti-Socialist, caused the local that elected him to present his signed resignation to the city council, which the latter body ignored at the mayor's request. The mayor was promptly expelled from the Party, and the Socialists of the country have almost unanimously approved the expulsion.[202] The comment of the _New York Call_ on this incident undoubtedly reflects the feeling of the majority of the Socialist Party:-- "Owing to the multiplicity of elections we must go through, owing to the peculiar division and subdivision of the administrative authority in this country, this is a thing we shall have to face with accumulating frequency. But that the Socialist Party is sound on the theories of what it is after, and on its own rights as an organization, are both demonstrated by the action taken by Local Lima. The members permanently expelled the traitor. Now let him go ahead and do what he can, personally gain what he can. He does it as a non-Socialist, as a man who is held up to contempt by every decent party member, and is probably held in the most absolute contempt by those who were able to seduce him with such ease. "At the present state of our development, it is easy for a plausible adventurer to take advantage of the Socialist movement and to use it to a certain point. Where such an adventurer falls down never to rise again, is when he tries 'to deliver the goods' to those whom he serves....