Simplified Rules of Order. Before a meeting can conduct business it requires a quorum--the minimum number of members who must be present at the meeting before business can be legally transacted. The requirement of a quorum is a protection against unrepresentative action in the name of the association by an unduly small number of people.
Extra credit: Sandburg volunteered for the U.S. Army and served in Puerto Rico (but did not see combat) during the Spanish-American War of 1898... Sandburg was married to Lillian Steichen, sister to the photographer Edward Steichen, from 1908 until his death in 1967...
A few years later he married Fraulein Loisinger, an actress, and assumed the style of Count Hartenau (February 6, 1889). In one of the literary and fashionable circles of Berlin he had met a Fraulein von Ddnniges, for whom he at once felt a passion, which was ardently reciprocated. In the heyday of his passion for Fraulein von DOnniges, his dream was to be enthroned as the president of the German republic with her seated at his side.