National Affairs: Thompson s Crusade

Two private cars filled with propaganda rolled out of a Chicago terminal. They held bundles of pamphlets, screeching posters, loud bulletins ablaze with declaration. Also eight bead-eyed press agents and William Hale Thompson III, more commonly known for his bulk and his battering dominion over Chicago politics as “Big Bill.” They were going out among the people of the cities of Minneapolis, Omaha, Denver, Cheyenne, Ogden, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Emporia, Topeka, Kansas City. As early as Sept. 20, they would all (except the pamphlets, posters, bulletins) be back in Chicago to “superintend” the Tunney-Dempsey prize fight. In the interim Mayor Thompson planned to propel his hulking, ruddy figure into national politics by “preaching the doctrines of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. … I am standing now for what the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence stood for. What was good enough for them is good enough for me!” Specifically, and divested of glamor, that means: 1) No Geneva parley or League of Nations entanglement; 2) flood relief; 3) inland waterways; 4) farm relief. Mayor Thompson wants the West to know that his championship will go to the man who, red-blooded and foursquare, stands upon such a platform as candidate for the Presidency of the U. S. Some one of these planks, indeed, must lie close to the heart of practically every Western voter. But no one candidate has yet appeared to champion all four—except Mayor Thompson. From this circumstance some saw in his crusade a flourish preliminary to tossing the Thomp-son hat into the presidential ring. Despite President Coolidge’s adamant refusal to call a special session of Congress to deal with the flood emergency and his veto of the McNary-Haugen Bill (farm relief). Mayor Thompson hailed him as one of the greatest friends of the Mississippi Valley in the White House. Of onetime Governor Lowden he said: “There’s a man who says he wants to be President. He does not state any principles or stand four-square.” He added: “My grandfather put up the first $25,000 for Pullman to build his first sleep-ing-car in order that his daughter [Mrs. Lowden] could have $25,000,000 today.”

Also he said: “We [of the Mississippi Valley] produce the crops and have the people but New York and the East get all the ‘dough.’

1 don’t believe that you can have a busted farmer and a prosperous city man at the same time…. There’s something wrong when 1,000 banks out here in this bread basket of the nation ‘go busted’ in one year. I am not saying what form of farm relief the farmer should have, but he must have something!”