National Affairs: The Garner Week

One evening last week Speaker John Nance Garner nervously paced the roof garden of the Washington Hotel, in which he makes his home. He had just released his Texas and California delegates at the Chicago convention to throw the Presidential nomination to Governor Roosevelt in return for the Vice-Presidential nomination. Alfred Emanuel Smith had tried to talk with him over long distance but the Speaker had refused to take the call. As he walked up & down alone, his cigar made a nasturtium-colored spot in the darkness.

“Mr.Speaker,” asked a voice at his elbow, “you’ve gone toRoosevelt?”

“That’s right, son.” The Speaker recognizeda newshawk from the New York Times. “I’m a little older than you are, son, and politics is funny.”

Beyond the black outline of the Treasury, the White House gleamed in the night. Speaker Garner lighted a fresh cigar. It was too dark to see the expression in his eyes. Soon he went downstairs to bed. At 11 p. m. when Governor Roosevelt was nominated, the Speaker got up to send him a telegram of congratulation, rolled back to sleep immediately.

The next afternoon Speaker Garner, snappish and irritable, found a hideaway from newsmen in Representative Warren’s office at the Capitol. There he sat behind an open door for four hours, listened by radio to his own nomination. He told news cameramen he felt “too bad” to pose for them.

Speaker Garner, aged 62, has found presiding over the House more strenuous and tiring than he had expected. According to his friends, he took the Vice-Presidential nomination in the hope of shifting to the comparatively easy job of ruling the unruly Senate. If elected, he will be the second man (first: Schuyler Colfax) in U. S. history who has presided over both the branches of Congress.