After the revolutions of 1848/1849 and the transformations of the 1860s, the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries constituted another key period in the politicization of the Bohemian lands. The differentiation of the political scene, the expansion of suffrage, the strengthening of Czech–German antagonism, and cultural struggles between clericals and liberals—all these developments politically activated the population, to an unprecedented degree, even those strata of the population that had previously remained largely untouched by politics, such as workers, small artisans, and peasants. This chapter situates events in the Moravian town of Zlín within this broader context. It seeks to explain this fundamental shift in communal politics and to show how developments in “high politics,” especially the 1907 Reichsrat elections and T. G. Masaryk’s candidacy, contributed to it. It demonstrates in what ways, after decades of stagnation, the ordinary inhabitants of Zlín managed to change the administration of public affairs to their advantage, overcoming the passive resistance of the conservative town notables. The chapter presents the events in Zlín as a model of the politicization of broader segments of the population, showing how electoral campaign practices during elections to the highest legislative bodies inspired political activism at the local, municipal level.