National Affairs: Speech No. 4

Nominee Hoover made some history. He was the first G. O. P. nominee for President ever seen in Tennessee. He stood on a platform in a mountain meadow at Elizabethton and, in the fourth main speech of his campaign proper, addressed the whole South. He implied that he was neither an orator nor a humorist nor particularly a politician. He spoke as a Westerner, as a member of an administration whose record he thought was good, as a champion of the Home, as one who wants to “abolish poverty.”

Elizabethton is in one of the most strongly Republican counties in the South. Besides the local enthusiasts and the doubtful Democrats, throngs from both parties had made the pilgrimage, coming even from Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia and Kentucky to hear and see.

Motoring to Elizabethton from the rail-road station at Childress, the Nominee’s motorcade was delayed by street-jaming crowds. Factory whistles droned. Bands played “California, Here I Come” and “Dixie.” Bombs burst in midair. The cheering was continuous. There was no heckling.

Before the Nominee reached the platform, the radio announcer called for and obtained loud cheers from the audience, by States.

Tennessee’s senior Senator, the loquacious, blarneying Hon. Kenneth D. McKellar.

He began with a rehearsal of Tennes¬see’s pioneer times, telling how his great-great- grandfather started West from that region. He rehearsed the industrial prog¬ress of the so-called New South within the seven and one-half years of the pres¬ent Administration, citing increases in crops, automobiles, telephones, life insurrance, etc. etc., and reminding the South that the Commerce Department’s southern branch offices had been increased from three in 1920 to 29 now. He said he was sure the South would agree that a change in the Government’s policies “can bring only distress and disaster.”

He asked the South to be sportsman¬ like in the election, to omit “personal bit¬terness.” He cited the political fights of the brother-governors of Tennessee—Alfred A. Taylor, Republican, under whose patriarchal auspices he was introduced, and the late Robert Taylor, Democrat— as illustrating the spirit in which he hoped the national election will be decided.

He again drew his picture of the Gov¬ernment as an organism of extreme complexity, intricacy, delicacy.

He again talked about the U. S. home. “It vibrates through every hope of the future. . . . From the homes of America amust emanate that purity of inspiration only as a result of which we can succeed in self-government.”

He said: “The purpose of the tariff is not to balance the books of business corporations, but to safeguard the family budget. … It has become the funda¬mental safeguard of the American work¬man and the American farmer . . . A retreat to the Underwood tariff scheduless on farm produce would ruin millions of our farmers todayo.”

He talked about the Republican-proposed Federal Farm Board. “This is not a theoretical formula. It is a business aproposition designed to make farming more profitable. No such far-reaching and specific proposal has ever been made by a political party on behalf of any indus¬try in our history.”

He said: “I do not favor any increase in immigration. . . . We must humanize the laws, but only within the present quotas.”

He said: “The purpose of the Eighteenth Amendment is to protect the American home. … I wish to see it suc¬ceed.”

Other excerpts: “We must maintain our navy and our army in such fashion thatt we shall have complete defense of our homes from even the fear of foreign invasion,.

“I believe in the merit system of the civil service and I believe further thatat appointive offices must be filled by those who deserve the confidence and respect of the communities they serve.” (This was taken to refer to Negro postmasters.)

“Democracy . . . can assure the connservation of our governmentally controlled natural resources. . . . There are local instances where the Government must enter the business field as a byyproduct of some great major purpose such as improvement in navigation, flood control, scientific research or national defense.” (This was the nearest the speech came to mentioning Water Power.)

Towards the end came the Hoover speech about Main Street, with special reference to that famed thoroughfare’s co-operation during the Mississippi flood. Said the Nominee: “I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life, the stature and character of our people. More particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national charracter. . . .

“… I do not wish to disparage the usefulness of Broadway, Pennsylvania Avenue, or State Street, but it is from Main Street and its countryside that the creative energies of the nation must be replenished and restored.”