National Affairs: Raskobism

One major result of last week’s Virginia election was to shake the hopes of Hoovercrats of holding 1928 gains in the south. Another result, no less significant, was the subsidence of “Raskobism” as an effective issue within the Democratic Party. “Raskobism” became more respectable, more reputable, than it had been since last November when some 160,000 voters in Virginia supported men who approved of John Jacob Raskob, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and intimate friend of Alfred Emanuel Smith.

As invented by anti-Smith Democrats, “Raskobism” contains the following ingredients: one part Roman Catholicism, one part wetness, one part political irregularity (Mr. Raskob used to be a Republican), one part big business. The religious and prohibition issues were not directly focused by the two dry Protestant candidates in Virginia. The stigma of political irregularity had been allayed by Mr. Raskob’s work for the Democracy in 1928; indeed, this stigma was transferred to the anti-Raskobians by their alliance with the Virginia Republicans in this year’s primary. But still in the hearts of oldtime Democrats may have rankled a suspicion of Mr. Raskob’s millions. Men who voted for William Jennings Bryan could not easily accustom themselves to the Wall Street aspect of the Raskobian democracy, savoring of the Cross of Gold, fat money bags and the stockmarket.

Potent in downing the horrid thought that through Smith and Raskob the Democracy had been led into the camp of Mammon, was the pleasant effect of party affluence itself. Even more potent was last summer’s disclosure that “Raskobism’s” loudest foe, Bishop James Cannon Jr., of the Methodist-Episcopal Church, South, was himself messily involved with a Manhattan bucket-shop (TIME, July 1). At a South Georgia Methodist conference last week the Rev. Bascom Anthony of Thomasville, got a resolution adopted to reduce the tenure of service of Methodist Bishops from life to four years. Cried Mr. Anthony: “The church occasionally elects a misfit as a Bishop. Without mentioning any names I’ll say we have one now. If he isn’t a straight out old-fashioned gambler, I wouldn’t know one if I met him on the road labeled with box car letters.”

But if Democrats were not inclined to criticize Mr. Raskob because of the stock market, Republicans were. Last fortnight in the Senate, Democratic Leader Robinson of Arkansas attributed in part the recent market crash to a flow of unduly optimistic statements from Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Andrew William Mellon. Defending the Republicans, Senator Robinson of Indiana rose to blame Mr. Raskob for the frenzy of speculation. He called Mr. Raskob a “plunger,” cited Mr. Raskob’s published faith in stocks, his plans for a workers’ investment trust, his null General Motors statement (TIME, Feb.11) as public inspirations to gambling, responsible for “veritably thousands of Americans plunging into the sea of specu-lation.”

Last week Mr. Raskob replied that the Robinson criticism was “false, vicious, wholly unwarranted and manifestly a political attack.” Said he: “I do not gamble in the stockmarket. I have always purchased stocks outright … in companies that I thought had an attractive future and have held them until such time as I thought they were selling for all they were worth.”

Last week in Manhattan occurred an event to which Republicans like Senator Robinson would, if they could, have liked to point as showing the Democratic tie-up with the stockmarket. James J. Riordan, president of the New York’s County Trust Co., close personal friend of Alfred Emanuel Smith, committed suicide with a revolver. For a whole day the news was suppressed lest a run on the County Trust develop. Ill health and mental derangement were given as the official reasons but stockmarket losses were suspected, admitted. Mr. Raskob was named acting chairman of the bank, which auditors quickly pronounced “in perfect condition.”