THE PRESIDENCY: Opener

For the first time since his speech of acceptance in August, Herbert Hoover stepped briefly outside his role of President of the U. S. last week to become a Republican nominee actively seeking reelection. In Washington with Mrs. Hoover and his usual retinue he boarded a Pennsylvania R. R. special train, all spick & span with new paint. It looked like rain. Two raincoats were put aboard his private car for rear platform appearances. Ahead of the special ran a pilot locomotive over rails carefully inspected a few hours before, over switches spiked down hard. In his car Candidate Hoover touched up his first full-length stump speech which was to open his campaign at Des Moines.

Des Moines awaited him with mixed emotions. Republican leaders had carefully picked a large audience from all over Iowa to hear his address. Possible hecklers had been weeded out. Milo Reno, farm strike leader, was to stage a protest parade by his discontented followers. Washington earlier in the week had heard ugly stones of “half a dozen rotten eggs” to be apportioned to each marcher but both Democrats and Republicans insisted the President would be subjected to no discourtesy. Some G. 0. P. strategists thought a Hoover speech in Republican Iowa would be wasted effort but last week the state-wide straw poll of the Des Moines Register & Tribune stood 45,509 votes for Roosevelt, 27,981 for Hoover.

¶Last spring President Hoover asked Crooner Rudy Vallée for a “good song.” Last month Poet Christopher Morley revealed that what the President thought the country needed was a “great poem.” Last week President Hoover had sent greetings to oldtime Funnymen Weber & Fields on their Golden Jubilee, telling them that what the country needed was “a resoundingly good new joke.” ¶Roscoe Conkling Simmons. Chicago Negro who seconded the Hoover renomination in June, led to the White House 150 representatives of the “Republican Joint National Planning Committee to Get out the Negro Vote,” spread them out on the south lawn. President Hoover appeared on the White House portico. “Oh, Mr. President.” declared Roscoe Conkling Simmons, “distress has overtaken us. We come to you in our heaviest hour. Some few have gone so far as to say you do not believe in human equality. We have been told our party has deserted the old faith. Speak. Mr. President, speak!” An emotional murmur ran through the black crowd. President Hoover spoke: “The friendship of our part)’ for the American Negro has endured unchanged for 70 years. . . . Our party will not abandon or depart from its traditional duty toward the American Negro. ‘ Then President Hoover shook hands with his fellow Republicans, was photographed with them. ¶While President Hoover was laying the cornerstone for’ the new Post Office Department building on Pennsylvania Avenue, one Edward Wells, war veteran, yelled “hurrah for Roosevelt!CPolice clapped Veteran Wells in jail, said he was drunk.