DEMOCRATS: $3,400 Vote

James Aloysius Farley last week transferred his base of operations from Washington to Manhattan, his job from part-time Postmaster General to full-time chairman of the Democratic National Committee (TIME, July 20). Three days before making this ectoplasmic shift for the duration of the campaign, he announced the appointment of Franklin D. Roosevelt’sgreat & good friend Frank Comerford Walker, onetime head of the dormant National Emergency Council and Democratic National Treasurer in 1932, as active chairman of the Democratic National Finance Committee.

The nominal head of that committee is Woodrow Wilson’s Ambassador to Germany, James Watson Gerard, who was relegated to an honorary chairmanship.

Since Mr. Gerard was already vacationing in Europe, this was not unexpected, but the news which followed indicated that Democrats might well have considered Mr. Gerard lacking in shrewdness to handle their finances in any but an honorary capacity.

As he went aboard the Rex, Mr. Gerard undertook to give President Roosevelt a parting boost by declaring that he had $20,000 to bet 2-to-1 on Roosevelt’s reelection, boasting that he could find no takers (TIME, July 27). If he thought that his offer would be safe because he was at sea, he was mistaken. Robert B. Greene, a Wall Street betting commissioner, in a radiogram to the Rex, took half the Democratic financier’s bet for a client. Next a Republican who votedfor Roosevelt in 1932, Le Grand Bouton Cannon of Tuxedo Park, N. Y., hastened to claim the other half of the Gerard bet on behalf of a syndicate of friends.

All was in readiness to clinch the wagers when Spotswood D. Bowers, Mr. Gerard’s law partner, suddenly recalled a New York law which denies felons, bribe-takers and those who bet on elections the right to vote. Obvious to all was the embarrassing probability that Democrat Gerard would, if he publicly bet his $20,000, be challenged at the polls on Nov. 3.

On the morning when Messrs. Greene and Cannon went to Mr. Gerard’s Manhattan office—Mr. Cannon wearing a large Republican sunflower in his buttonhole and accompanied by a guard carrying $5,000 in cash—Mr. Bowers was there to receive them with new instructions: Mr. Gerard had called his bets off. Said Partner Bowers: “You know how it is. A man in the heat of enthusiasm will often say something— well—er—ill-advised. Mr. Gerard undoubtedly feels as always about Roosevelt and would have made the bet, but he can’t afford to lose his vote. As a lawyer he shouldn’t have forgotten the law, but the human mind is fallible.” Far from downcast were Messrs. Greene and Cannon as they signed statements releasing Mr. Gerard from his bet, in return for $1,700 each of Mr. Gerard’s money by way of indemnity. Betting Commissioner Greene pocketed his profits, kept mum. Mr. Cannon presented his profits to the Republican campaign fund as he beamed: “This amounts to getting something for nothing and you can’t kick at that.” Asked whether he would place his bet against Roosevelt elsewhere, he emphatically repudiated the idea: “I wouldn’t sell my vote this year for any amount. I’ve waited three and a half years for my revenge.”