POLITICAL NOTES: Robbed

Observers who may have wondered where Senator Borah puts his mighty mane when he goes to bed, on the pillow or sticking out over the edge, learned at least one thing about his sleeping habits last week. When sleeping in a strange place, Senator Borah puts his pocketbook under his pillow.

That, at least, is where he put it last week when he slept at a hotel in Lincoln, Neb. In the morning, the pocketbook was still there but Senator Borah’s money, some $400, was gone. Gone too was some $300 which Senator Borah’s secretary Sam Jones, had left in the pockets of his clothes. A just man, Senator Borah said: “I want it understood that we attach no responsibility for the loss to the State of Nebraska nor to the welcoming committee.”

Senator Borah collected some $7,000 last spring towards repaying the “tainted” money ($160,000) contributed by Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair to the G. O. P. deficit of 1924. But the present G. O. P. would have none of the Senator’s “conscience” money. Had any one been robbed but honest Senator Borah, to whom two wrongs could never make a right, some one might have suggested last week that, to restore the theft at Lincoln, an “equalization fee” should be alotted from the “conscience” fund.

Senator Borah’s ursine figure and mighty voice have lately been seen and heard by great and demonstrative masses of the electorate. He it was who put a firm quietus upon the “farm revolt” at the Kansas City convention. He it is who is reckoned as Nominee Hoover’s most formidable stump spokesman. A fortnight ago he appeared in Minneapolis on the heels of Nominee Smith. Some 14,000 loudly cheering persons jammed into an auditorium to hear him pound at the Brown Derby’s position on the Lakes-to-Sea waterway and the farm problem. He also defended the Hoover reputation from the low-wheat-price-fixing charge and the Oil Scandals.

“It requires less brains to run a campaign on personalities,” boomed one of the largest personalities in the campaign.

Maine Reasons

Maine has gone. But not as Maine goes goall Mainiacs. In the fishing village of Friendship, Me. (near Rockland), for example, there is considerable animus towards both the Presidential candidates. “That Al Smith” would soon have the Pope of Rome prancing around in the White House, say the Friendship folk. As for Mr. Hoover, he is the man who took all our bread and sugar away during the War and “et” it himself. “Just look how fat he is,” say the Friendship housewives. Mrs. Abbie Simmons Fernald won’t have even a Hoover vacuum cleaner in her house.

George Hughie, the leading philosopher of Friendship, put the whole thing in one of his characteristic nutshells last week. Said he: “I hain’t a-goin’ to vote fer neither one. I wouldn’t vote fer that cereal man. An’ if it takes two Smith brothers ter make a package o’ cough drops, ‘taint likely one’s goin’ to do much to run th’ country.”

In Brown-Derbyland

“I want to be the first to predict your nomination for the Presidency in 1932.”

So telegraphed a most unusually premature or prophetic admirer* to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, congratulating him on his Democratic nomination for Governor of New York (TIME, Oct. 8).

It was either ironic or foolish in the extreme to predict the ultimate eclipse of Nominee Smith by the man who is still trying, perhaps harder than any one else, to make him a lasting national figure. The Roosevelt nomination did, however, seem almost certain to make national political history of some kind.

Should Nominee Smith fail to carry his own state he would not only stand no chance of election this year, but he would probably be politically dead, especially to himself. What the Roosevelt nomination meant, to the Brown Derby, how the local “situation” stood, was bound to become as familiar to the national electorate as many a broader phase of the national campaign. It was this:

New York is divided into an expansive Republican “upstate” and a congested Democratic “downstate.” In no one of his four successful campaigns for Governor did Alfred E. Smith ever carry more than 13 of the 57 counties outside of New York City. This year it has been variously estimated that he would have to meet Nominee Hoover at the New York City line with a plurality of 400,000 to 600,000 votes, to save his State’s 45 electoral votes.

Despite Nominee Roosevelt’s protestations to the contrary, the compelling logic of his nomination, the one paramount purpose, was this: Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the man, the only conceivable man, who might appreciably strengthen Nominee Smith “upstate.”

If Smith carries New York with Roosevelt’s help, history may go one way. If Roosevelt wins (nearly every one concedes that he should win) and Smith loses, then some of history’s advance chapters may need recasting.

Dutchess County, where Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in 1882, is very much “upstate,” just south of Albany. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is a fifth cousin of the late Theodore Roosevelt and he married Theodore Roosevelt’s niece, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. He is, conspicuously, the man that Theodore Roosevelt the younger never became. Tall, with a chiselled countenance, blue eyes, curling light hair, he has exercised a vigorous public spirit ever since, as editor of the Harvard Crimson, he demanded and demanded and obtained fire escapes for Harvard’s dormitories. He went into the New York Senate in 1910 after practicing law for a while in Manhattan. President Wilson made him Assistant Secretary of the Navy and asked him, in 1918, to run for Governor of New York. The War was on and Mr. Roosevelt felt he was needed abroad. He suggested Alfred E. Smith. The rest is well-known — how the Harvard graduate proposed the Tammany graduate for President of the U. S. in 1920; how the Harvard graduate was himself nominated for Vice President of the U. S., but lost; how he again proposed the Tammany graduate in 1924, and finally saw him nominated in 1928.

The crippled condition of Mr. Roosevelt’s legs, about which there was so much talk last week, resulted from an attack of infantile paralysis in 1921. Mr. Roosevelt had been swimming (his favorite sport) in the icy water off Campobello, N. B. In the 89° waters of Warm Springs, Ga., he found healing. Last spring he got off his crutches (TIME, March 5). In another two years, his doctors said, he might go without braces and canes — if he stayed at Warm Springs. If he did not stay, he would risk being crippled for life.

Nominee Smith knew all this. To the first pleas that he run for Governor, Mr. Roosevelt declined by saying: “. . . I feel that I owe it to my family and myself. . . . I know you will understand.” After Nominee Smith had persuaded him to put friend and party before self and family, Republican newspapers grew bitter about Nominee Smith’s “sacrifice.” They said it was “incredibly callous,” “cruelly selfish.” They singled out Nominee Smith’s phrase, “A governor does not have to be an acrobat,” and called it Tammany ruthlessness.

Whether Smith was ruthless or Roosevelt selfless, or both, will doubtless be debated for years to come. Mr. Roosevelt’s version of his change of mind was this: “I am amazed to hear that efforts are being made to make it appear that I have been ‘sacrificed’. . . . Let me set this matter straight at once. I was not dragooned … I was drafted . . . New York must not lose its proud position as the State which leads in efficiency and democracy … I am in this fight not to win personal honor, but for the carrying forward of the policies of Governor Smith.”

Mrs. Roosevelt said she had not influenced her husband’s decision. She seemed pleased, proud. She said she would carry on with her national women’s organization at Democratic headquarters and with her school teaching. At Miss Marian Dickerman’s private school for girls, in Manhattan, Mrs. Roosevelt lectures on literature, history, drama, daily from 9 to 11 a.m. Perhaps she would make a few speeches for Mr. Roosevelt later on. But, she said, he would be well able to speak for himself as he spoke last week, in Manchester and Columbus, Ga., and at Cleveland, for Nominee Smith.

In his Cleveland speech Mr. Roosevelt neatly summarized the presidential campaign: “The question is: are you for or against Governor Alfred E. Smith? And it is a very rare occurrence for anybody to say: are you for or against Secretary Hoover?”

The pro-Hoover New York Telegram (Scripps-Howard) and New York Evening Sun both declared for the Roosevelt candidacy. The Republican Candidate is a pleasant, able, little man named Albert Ottinger, Jew, Mason, and Elk, the present Attorney-General of New York. Mr. Ottinger, announced his campaign, frankly, as that of an office-seeker. “And why not?” he said. “I started as a house-to-house canvasser, a bell-ringer, a stair-climber. I know politics from the bottom. I do not pretend to be anything but a politician. Perhaps not as a politician of the Tammany order, but nevertheless as a man who made his first political speech at 21 and who has never ceased since in being interested in politics.”

Albert Ottinger was an Assistant Attorney-General of the U. S. in the Harding administration. None of the Daugherty scandals touched him, though he had to testify for his chief. His Federal work was chiefly in War Risk Insurance, labor, banking, health and customs laws. His New York record has been illumined by stock-fraud prosecutions.

Candidates for lieutenant-governor are usually even less important, relatively, than Vice-Presidential candidates. The New York Republicans nominated Charles C. Lockwood, a transit commissioner. The Democrats, to reclaim some of the Jewish vote seen going to Mr. Ottinger, chose Col. Herbert H. Lehman, finance director of the National Democratic Committee, Williams graduate, potent Manhattan investment banker, a director of the Studebaker Corp., Jewel Tea Co., the Van Raalte Co. (silk goods), Franklin Simon & Co., Abraham & Straus (department stores), the County Trust Co. (“Al Smith’s bank”).

Pitted for electors-at-large by the New York parties were George (“Kodak”) Eastman, Rochester Republican, and Mrs.

Irene Langhorne Gibson, Manhattan Democrat, wife of famed Artist Charles Dana Gibson.

Assured of the farthest-flung, if not the most significant, publicity on his victory or defeat, was the U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Alanson Bigelow Houghton of Corning, N. Y., nominated by the Republicans for the U. S. Senate. To English eyes, this nomination of the U, S. President’s number-one foreign emissary by the U. S. President’s dominant party, doubtless seemed inevitably victorious. To win, however, Ambassador Houghton is faced with the necessity of getting more votes than the Hon. Royal Samuel Copeland, M. D., New York’s present senior Senator. Dr. Copeland is one of those rare figures in U. S. politics who has cast his anchor hither and yon without losing headway. He was originally a Republican in Michigan. Defeated for Congress, he moved to New York, became dean of a medical college, wrote health hints for Publisher Hearst’s newspapers. He so impressed the whilom Mayor John F. Hylan that he got appointed Health Commissioner of New York City. Tammany let him run for Senator in a seemingly hopeless year, and he won. Five years ago, the whilom Senator Magnus Johnson of Minnesota, and the Hearst press, suggested Dr. Copeland for President. He took it seriously enough to distribute Copeland buttons during the deadlock of the Democratic convention in 1924. When nothing happened, he was content to go back, with his perpetual red carnation proud as ever in his buttonhole and his greying pompadour drooping no whit to the Senate, where he now confidently expects to stay. Whether Ambassador Houghton will merely serve to “dress up” the Hoover ticket in New York, or whether he will get more votes than Tammany’s ambassadorial Copeland, it is hard to say. It is doubtful that either will greatly affect the Presidential election.

Ducks

Now is the time when huntsmen oil their shotguns and go a-gunning for wild ducks. Now, too, is a time when Congressmen oil their tongues and try to escape being “lame ducks” when Congress sits after the election. This conjunction of times was a happy one for the duckhunters of Barnegat Bay, N. J., and for Representative Harold G. Hoffman. The hunters spoke to Mr. Hoffman, who smiled and spoke to Lieut. Commander H. V. Wiley of the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, who bowed (figuratively) and spoke to his naval aviators, who said nothing but proceeded to obey a new order, viz.: the Navy’s aircraft shall not fly over the duck-shooting sectors of Barnegat during the duck-shooting season. To do so scares the ducks, which are scared enough already.

A great naval duckhunter is Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Douglas Robinson, who likes to have a Navy plane carry and fetch him between Washington and the salt marshes during the duck season. The new Barnegat order is not likely to disturb Duckhunter Robinson, nor any other Washington dignitary. From Washington one does not go northeast to shoot the wary—and slightly fishy—birds of Barnegat. One either goes due east, to the swarming Chesapeake ; or southeast, to the Rappahannock, York and James estuaries, to the drowsy Virginia Capes, to Currituck (where the luxurious blinds are con crete and have cookstoves), or to Stumpy Point, Swanquarter or Cedar Island on placid Pamlico Sound.

Fish Fans

It was a squat old boat on which Mayor William Hale (“Big Bill”) Thompson and his cronies used to gather, eat fish, drink other things, discuss how to run Chicago, how to BOOST Chicago. They called it the Fish Fans’ Club, because somebody caught a fish there once. Recently, the boat sprang a leak and squatted down in five feet of water. Also the club had $23,000 in debts which it was unable to meet, so it squatted down into defunction. Last week the furnishings of the club went under the hammer of Auctioneer Samuel L. Winternitz.* A picture of “Our Mayor in Action” brought an original bid of 10¢, finally went for $2 to Charles H. Weber, Democratic member of the state legislature, who also bought a stuffed fox. The auction netted a total of $1,800.

Hold-Offs

Foolish the army which fires all its ammunition at the beginning of a battle. Wise the political party which saves up until the eve of election some important announcements, testimonials, recruits. Last week, William Gibbs McAdoo, unreconciled Wilsonian Democrat, commended the prize offered by Motor-maker William Crapo Durant for a plan to enforce Prohibition. Everyone knew, of course, that Mr. McAdoo is as dry as a cactus. The question was: did this minor McAdoodling portend a major McAdoodle, an out-and-out repudiation of the Brown Derby? Perhaps, and perhaps there are other hold-offs, more or less strategically arranged by the two parties. Will Senator Norris plump for Smith in his nationwide hookup? What of Wisconsin’s young La Follette: is he pro-Smith or just anti-Hoover? Cyrus McCormick, great-named oldtime Chicago Democrat, has not yet spoken. It is known, now, where Col. Lindbergh stands (pro-Hoover) and Bridegroom Tunney (pro-Smith). But where are the John Davison Rockefellers? Who gets Scarface Al Capone? Is Aimee Semple McPherson on the side of salvation and, if so, which side is that?

Renaissance in Richmond

(See front cover)

Last week, Virginia, “the old dominion,” contributed to the contemporary scene a revival from its best days, its long-ago, pre-war (Civil War) days. Virginia revived its oldtime Governor’s Ball in the Grays’ Armory at Richmond. Everything was done, including smilax, minuets and no admission for whippersnappers until after the grand march, to make the affair savor of a vanishing grand manner.

Lady Astor, who used to be Nancy Langhorne of Virginia, came over from England for the occasion. There was more than social color in her visit. Lady Astor, as every one knows, is a politician. She was England’s first lady of Parliament. Her sister, Irene Langhorne (Mrs. Charles Dana) Gibson, has been striving to reinstate the Democracy through the instrumentality of the Brown Derby, bold modern symbol of the Jefferson ethos. Though she was far too discreet to lend herself overtly to the Smith campaign, Lady Astor became part and parcel of one of the strangest Presidential years in U. S. history—as her astute sister had doubtless planned she should. There were no speech-makings, no obvious handshakings, yet the overtone was unmistakable—Lady Astor home for a visit while her sister worked for “Al” Smith’s election.

The reason the Astor-Smith relation seemed so strange was, of course, that Politics and Society have long been divorced in the U. S. It is not yet so in England, nor in Virginia. Although she says “Amer-r-rican” like a dowager duchess, Lady Astor was every bit as politic as a national committeewoman or an assistant attorney-general. She drove about her native state admiring the improvements and nodding to all the people her friends hoped would be Democratic voters. She was politic with a very fat traveling salesman who rescued her with his flivver when her car broke down. She was politic with John Davison Rockefeller Jr., to whom she was introduced at Williamsburg.

Mr. Rockefeller was there inspecting his costly, patriotic enterprise of restoring all the old buildings to the appearance they had when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington in nearby Yorktown. The visiting celebrity greeted the fabulous benefactor with a nice mixture of thanks, congratulations and vivacity; she suggested one change in the plans, which Mr. Rockefeller promptly adopted. She hoped she would see him at the Governor’s Ball. But some other necessity in his vast philanthropic domain recalled Mr. Rockefeller to New York. Lady Astor moved on through the State, marvelling that she had never seen that section of it before. Richmond, where she used to live, is only 40 miles from Williamsburg. But, she explained, “there were no roads in those days.”

The gentleman largely responsible for Virginia’s new roads is another exemplar of the way politics can keep its breeding, and again Lady Astor’s remark was a neat compliment. The road-builder was her host and distant relative, Governor Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia.

Governor Byrd’s widest claim to fame is his brotherhood with Richard Evelyn Byrd, famed flyer over far poles. Richmond’s politico-social renaissance received scarcely a decimal fraction of the nationa publicity attending Commander Byrd’: preparations to depart for the South Pole from Los Angeles—preparations which obliged the unsocial-seeming explorer to absent himself from a fete in his honor.

There are poles and polls. To Harry Flood Byrd, a first son, fell the almost feudal duty and honor of taking over Richard Evelyn Byrd Sr.’s position in Virginia politics. The father co-bossed the State with Representative Harry (“Hal”) Flood, famed in Wilsonian days as chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The roads which Lady Astor so admired are but one of many testimonials to the business-likeness with which Governor Byrd has handled his heritage.

Business-likeness is not notably a Byrd trait, though William Byrd II (1674-1744), who outshines his father as founder of the line, had the sagacity to marry two heiresses. Harry Flood Byrd started being businesslike at the age of 14, when he gave up school to take over his father’s bankrupt Winchester Star. The Star has paid from then till now. So have another, larger Byrd-paper, the Harrisonburg News-Record, and the 1,500-acre Byrd apple orchards.

When Governor Byrd took over the State in 1926, there was a deficit of $1,368,000. This became a surplus of $2,596.181. Governor Elbert Lee Trinkle (1922-26) had opened the way for a gasoline tax, and for reorganization of the governmental machinery. So vigorously has Governor Byrd carried on these beginnings that a contemplated bond issue has been avoided and Virginia has been said to have a “Mussolini.” In supporting the Smith candidacy against the assault of Bishop James Cannon Jr. and Virginia’s dry bourgeoisie, he has demanded a vote of confidence in the Byrd record.

No Governor may succeed himself in Virginia. The Byrd regime ends in 1930. The Byrd influence will not end, however. In managing his State machine, Governor Byrd has the aid of his other younger brother, third of the famed “Tom, Dick and Harry” trio, Thomas Boiling Byrd, who is also in politics. He also has the aid, now, of elements which were unfavorable to him when he ran for office, viz. Senator Carter Glass and Publisher John Stewart Bryan of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Above all he has the aid of that cohesive spirit of aristocracy-in-democracy, which, despite his flair for mixing with chambers of commerce and booming the shipping facilities of Hampton Roads, he has helped to revive in Virginia politics. This spirit was visible at the Governor’s Ball, not only in the presence of all the F. F. V.’s, Woodrow Wilson’s widow and President Alderman of the University of Virginia, but also in the presence of all Virginia’s onetime Governors who are yet alive. The affair, most brilliant of Virginia’s social year, was given under the auspices of the Virginia League of Women Voters. In what State besides Virginia is the League of Women Voters really synonymous with Society?

Vital

1) How many U. S. cities have one million or more population?

2) What are the twelve largest cities, in proper order?

3) Which is growing faster, New York or Chicago?

4) About how large are the following: Denver, Dubuque, Duluth, New Orleans, Newark, New Haven?

These, and many other vital-statistical questions, were answered by the 1928 estimates published last week by the U. S. Census Bureau (Dept. of Commerce).

To the first question, the answer was: “Five.”

To the second question the answer was:

New York 6,017,500

Chicago 3,157,400

Philadelphia 2,064,200

Detroit 1,378,900

Cleveland 1,010,300

St. Louis 848,100

Baltimore 830,400

Boston 799,200

Pittsburgh 673,800

San Francisco 585,300

Buffalo 555,800

Washington 552,000

Milwaukee 544,200

Los Angeles was doubtless depressed to learn that “unusual conditions” (rapid growth) had prevented estimating its mass. In 1920, Los Angeles had 576,673 inhabitants and is said to have almost doubled since, to have outstripped Cleveland for the proud title of Fifth City.

Bostonians were doubtless not surprised to learn that their old city had been passed in size by thriving Baltimore and St. Louis. But “Greater Boston” (including suburbs) soon announced it was about 2,000,000 people big.

The answer to the third question is: Chicago is growing nearly twice as fast as New York. It has gained more than 400,000 since 1920, while New York gained 234,144.

To the fourth question, the answers are:

Denver 294,200

Dubuque 42.300

Duluth 116,800

New Orleans 429,400

Newark 473.600

New Haven 187,900

*Not to be confused with Dr. Milton C. Winternitz, dean of the Yale School of Medicine.