National Affairs: Off The Sidewalks

In Nebraska: What the Governor of Nebraska said to the Governor of New York went into history: “I enjoyed your speech very much last night. It listened well over the radio.”

The Governor of New York thanked the Governor of Nebraska, reflected that the “raddio”* is indeed a marvelous thing, and sat down at the Governor of Nebraska’s desk.

A less light-hearted Democrat might have been overcome by the thought that he was sitting at the official heart of the State which gave William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner, to the Democracy. Nominee Smith of the Sidewalks was not overcome.

“Bring on your next bill and I’ll sign it,” he joked to Governor Adam McMullen.

It was his idea that Farm Relief should not be without some comic relief. At Omaha, he had again handled with gloves that troublesome symbol, the Equalization Fee. Without gloves he had man-handled the G. O. P.’s eight-year “solicitude and sympathy” for the farmer. If it had “listened well” to Republican Governor McMullen, Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith was content. He continued his inspection of the State capitol which the late, great Architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue of New York designed for Nebraska.

Passing through Nominee Curtis’s home state was great sport. The Brown Derby swept and waved at every platform pause. People said the crowd at Topeka was “as big as Bryan’s”; bigger, even, than Senator Curtis got when he went home a Nominee—but then, everyone in Topeka knows what Mr. Curtis looks like. The Brown Derby was something of a curiosity as well as an enthusiasm.

Between stations, the Nominee mingled freely with his newspaper entourage. He dictated, chatted, visited around, snoozed. An act earlier in the trip, just after leaving Chicago, had seemed characteristic of him. Mrs. Smith wanted something. The Nominee had strode, cigar in teeth, to the baggage car and himself teetered out a huge trunk for her to rummage in.

In Oklahoma: It was dark when the Smith special entered Oklahoma. Only a few wakeful members of the party saw, in the small hours of the morning, the thing burning in a black, empty field—a fiery cross.

In Oklahoma City, the restless tension of the packed streets was punctuated by pistol shots as a policeman shot down a pickpocket. When the special pulled in, there was yelling and tumult from the railroad station to the hotel. The Nominee shaved and received newsgatherers in his bathrobe.

It was a long day of conferences and conversations. The hotels teemed with men, money, moonshine, political and religious arguments. For an hour in the afternoon, the Nominee” stood bareheaded, smiling, bowing, smart-cracking, in an automobile that moved about town at a snail’s pace.

Half an hour before the Nominee’s arrival at the Coliseum, appeared the man who once called him “the deadliest foe of moral progress in America,” thin-lipped hot-eyed Parson John Roach Straton. There was some altercation, but Dr. Straton clutched his ticket. He had promised to behave. He was admitted and took a seat at the back of the platform. His presence intensified the Nominee’s grim earnestness. It was a real Moment in the campaign.

Much depended on the Nominee’s speech, he had been told. Only one of Oklahoma’s seven Democratic Representatives had come out for him. Only one Oklahoma newspaper of any size was unopposed. Governor Henry S. Johnston, oldtime McAdoodler, had declared himself only grudgingly.

Governor Johnston redeclared himself by introducing “the next President of the United States.” Then the Nominee went after Oklahoma and a lot of other territory. He said, in part:

“This is a rather unique campaign because of the apparent widespread attempt to distract the American people from the real issues and to fasten their minds on undemocratic and un-American secret propaganda. . . .

“I want to first direct my attention to the statement printed in the Congressional Record in the form of a letter from your own former Senator of this State* directed to Senator Simmons. [A voice: “He ain’t ours”* — laughter and applause.] “Well listen. That may be so, that may be so. But he has raised the issue and let us adopt him for tonight, no matter what we do with him tomorrow. … I challenge the truth and the honesty of his purpose. . . .

“My name was before the National Convention in Madison Square Garden. John W. Davis was nominated. The night that he was nominated I said to him, ‘What can I do for you? I am a Democrat. It makes no difference to me what took place in the convention, what can I do for you?’. . And he gave me the hardest task a man could give when he asked me to again run for Governor. Upon his urging I was nominated for the fourth time in 1924. Coolidge swept the State of New York by a plurality of 700,000, and the morning after election I was standing alone as the only Democrat elected. [ Applause.] â€

”One of the most insidious the most stupid, the most deliberate and the most willful of lies spread out in the propaganda is my attitude to the public school system. . . .

“You hear them talking about the cost of the government of the State of New York under Smith. Well, the Republican Press Bureau of the State Committee is the busiest lie foundry that this country ever produced. They can turn them out there as fast as an electrically-controlled neostyle can print the copy. And all summed up it is about as complete a shower of bunk as was ever poured out upon an intelligent people. . . .

“As I said before, all of this [the Smith gubernatorial record] was accomplished in spite of a hostile legislature, seeking every political advantage that they could—and how? By direct appeal to the people, by the plain, ordinary, homely everyday method of coming out and talking about it and being on the level. And, incidentally this country needs some of that kind of talk. . . .

“Now can you think of any man or any group of men gathered together in what they call the K. K. K., that profess to be 100 per cent American, and forget the great principle that Jefferson stood for, the equality of man? . . .

“Why, there is no greater mockery in this world today than the burning of the Cross, the emblem of faith, the emblem of salvation, the place upon which Christ himself made the great sacrifice for all of mankind, by these people who are spreading this propaganda while the Christ that they are supposed to adore, love and venerate, during all of his lifetime on earth taught the holy, sacred writ of brotherly love. . . .

“In certain sections of the country the little girls and boys are used as the vehicles for carrying false propaganda.

“Recently, in Iowa, two little girls came home to their father and said, ‘We are going to have another war.’ The father said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Why,’ they said, ‘we were told at school that President Wilson started the last war and if Governor Smith is elected he is going to start another war.’. . .

“Here’s one for you—listen to this: Ashland Avenue Baptist, printed in Lexington, Ky., on the front page of a church publication in a box of heavy black type: ‘Recently the papers published how Governor Smith came near to a serious accident driving fifty miles an hour down Broadway while intoxicated. He was driving the car himself practicing his wet gospel.’

“Now, everybody that knows me knows that I am unable to operate an automobile. I never tried it in my life, and, what is more, I am never going to try it; and the statement that I was running the car myself down Broadway at fifty miles an hour is just as absurd as the other part of it. …

“Of course, it is very fine for the Republican National Committee and the Republican Chairman to disown all this. It is very easy for them to say, ‘We disclaim knowledge of it and responsibility for it.’

“But I haven’t heard any of them disclaim responsibility for what Mrs. Wille-brandt said. She is a Deputy* Attorney General of the United States. She went before the Methodist Conference of Methodist preachers and said to them:

” ‘There are 600,000 of you Methodists in Ohio alone, enough to put this election over. Write to your people.’

“There is separation of Church and State for you! . . .

“Let me make myself perfectly clear. I do not want any Catholic in the United States of America to vote for me on the 6th of November because I am a Catholic.

“If any Catholic in this country believes that the welfare, the wellbeing, the prosperity, the growth and the expansion of the United States is best conserved and best promoted by the election of Mr. Hoover, I want him to vote for Hoover and not for me. . . .

“Now, instead of all this talk—and this is the last night I will devote to it—what should we be doing?

“We should be debating farm relief . . . water power . . . flood control. . . . Reorganization of the Government in Washington in the interest of economy and greater efficiency.

“Let this debate be held, and let us put down forever in this country this unAmerican, un-Christianlike doctrine that is finding its way into this campaign.”

It was hard to tell whether Nominee Smith’s Oklahoma City address had knocked any portion of his opposition to Smithereens. Correspondent Charles Michelson of the arch-Democratic New York World observed: “Nobody came up to the mourners’ bench to express contrition for his illiberal views and to promise to lead a better life.”

Detractor Straton spoke from the same platform the next night, called Tammany “organized political corruption,” “this miserable monstrosity,” “this hybrid impertinence,” and “double-dog dared” the Nominee to debate him.

Detractors Owen and Cannon (Bishop James Cannon Jr., Methodist-Episcopal Church, South) arranged to counteract the Smith speech, beginning at next week’s convention of the W. C. T. U. at Enid, Okla.

In Colorado. In Nebraska, the Nom inee had sounded like a professional vote-seeker. In Oklahoma he had sounded like a man outraged. Off the platform, how ever, he had said, and in Colorado he repeated, that neither Prohibition, nor Farm Relief, nor Intolerance was the paramount issue. “The big interlocking issue is the upbuilding and the prosperity of the country and the people.” In Denver he took up the “interlocked” subject of Water Power. This time he sounded like an expert with convictions and a program.

He explained what water power is, in one-syllable words. He reiterated his stand for conservation of public power resources through Federal, Inter-State or State, ownership and control. He held up Nominee Hoover’s brief water power statements as vague, inconclusive. He then proceeded to tie up the G. O. P. Nominee Hoover and power privateering in one big, compact bundle. His evidence consisted of Secretary of the Interior West’s longtime connection with power privateers; the longtime privateer connections of the new Republican leader in New York State, H. Edmund Machold; and three close associates of Nominee Hoover who had joined the Power Lobby at Washington, whose national privateering propaganda has been exposed by the Federal Trade Commission. He quoted Theodore Roosevelt’s warning that, “unless it is controlled, the history of the oil industry will be repeated in the hydraulic electric industry with results far more oppressive and disastrous for the people.” He repeated his stand for Federal construction if necessary, interState control if possible, public ownership and control in any case, of a dam and powerhouse at Boulder Canyon on the Colorado River to serve the seven Colorado Basin States. He reiterated his stand for Federal retention and operation of the Muscle Shoals plant on the Tennessee River and in doing so took open issue with “President Coolidge himself.”

His most provocative passage was when he pinioned Nominee Hoover’s speech on Boulder Dam, delivered in August at Los Angeles (TIME, Aug. 27). The omission from that speech of any expressed preference between public and private control—the core of a ten-year controversy—was studied. Nominee Smith hailed Nominee Hoover as follows:

“There is something on the track. There is something standing in the way of a clear-cut statement. … I will leave it to your imagination, but let me say this, putting it in as mild a way as I can, the Administration in Washington must, to some slight degree, have been in sympathy with the propaganda that was put out through this country by the joint committee [Power Lobby] of the National Electric Light Association.”

In Montana. Passing through Wyoming, the Brown Derby was greeted by Republican Governor Frank C. Emerson and gazed at (from a hotel window) by aged Republican Senator Francis E. Warren. Democratic Senator John B. Kendrick was off in the wilds, campaigning.

Thus the Nominee came to Montana, home state of U. S. Senator Thomas. J. Walsh, arch-flayer of things oily and scandalous. He lost one of the brown derbies, a gift to Mrs. George Rathburn of Billings. But he found inspiration from two sources. The first was an early-morning remark of Daughter Emily:

“Father, did you know that a few hours ago we passed almost within the shadow of Teapot Dome?”

“It has a long shadow,* Emily,” said the Nominee.

Second of inspirational sources was a recent Hooverism:

“A new generation must begin now to take over responsibility of the party and carry it out.”

Upon this inspiration, the Nominee both pondered and acted. At Helena, Mont., he fulminated, thus:

“The record of the last seven and a half years is as well-known to the Republican candidate for President as to any other man in the United States. Nobody will deny that. Mr. Hoover sat in the Cabinet for seven and a half years, yet I search in vain for any word from him of protest, of condemnation or of repudiation of this black chapter in his party’s history. On the contrary, in the face of that record, in his speech of acceptance he said:

‘ ‘The record of these seven and one half years constitutes a period of rare courage and leadership and constructive action. Never has a political party been able to look back upon a similar period with more satisfaction.’

“Would Mr. Hoover have the American people believe that in the light of the [oil scandal] disclosures I mentioned there was any rare courage, any leadership or any constructive action?

“Above all things, would he have the American people believe that a political party with that record in office could look upon it with satisfaction?. Does Mr. Hoover want the people to believe that he looks back with satisfaction upon that record? It will not satisfy the American people to have him pass that question on to the chairman of the Republican national committee; nobody can answer that but himself.”

*So pronounced by Nominee Smith. To some ears, some other Smith pronunciations are “foist” (first) “poisonally” (personally) “alcoholic content (alcoholic content) “comparable” (comparable). Nominee Hoover, as radio listeners have learned, seems to say “incomparable,” “prerequisite,” “pardner,” “ammilerate” (ameliorate). *Robert Latham Owen, onetime (1907-25) Senator, Smith bolter (TIME, Aug. 6).

†John William Davis last week contributed a “portrait” of Alfred Emanuel Smith to the New York World. Excerpts:

“Woodrow Wilson once said that ‘the eight horses that draw the triumphal chariot of every ruler and leader of free men are these:

“Force of character.

“Readiness of resources.

“Clearness of vision.

“Grasp of intellect.

“Courage of conviction.

“Earnestness of purpose.

“Instinct and

“Capacity for leadership.

“Governor Smith has them all.

“His four terms as Governor have been marked by an extraordinary series of achievements. . . .

“The effort to picture Gov. Smith as a tool of Tammany Hall is grotesque to those who have watched his conduct as the Chief Executive of this State. Mr. William Allen White’s attack on him as a legislator is no longer bait to catch gudgeons. . . .

“I understand the charge has been made in some quarters that the Democratic organization in the City and State of New York was not loyal to the national ticket in 1924. I do not wish this to be believed by any friends of mine. It is not true. . . .

“I personally urged him to permit himself to be renominated for the good of the party in the State and Nation. When he argued that those not familiar with the situation in the State might misunderstand it if his vote should outrun mine, I told him that there could be no room for misunderstanding on that subject, least of all on my part, and that what the Democratic Party would ask of him first of all, as of every candidate, was to carry the office for which he was nominated.”

*Mrs. Willebrandt’s title is Assistant U.S. Attorney General.

*The ranch of Albert Bacon Fall, Secretary of the Interior under Harding, at Three Rivers, N. M., which figured in the oil scandals, was under negotiation last week to be sold by Mr. Fall to Clay Mann, cattleman, for some $800,000.