THE CAMPAIGN: Alarums & Excursions

The progress of another week’s campaigning brought all candidates seven days nearer to the election.

¶ Calvin Coolidge sat tight and held his peace.

¶ Charles G. Dawes continued his tour from Duluth southward and westward through Minnesota, Iowa, Wyoming, Nebraska. He continued to hammer demagogery and the LaFollette proposal that Congress should have the power to override the Supreme Court. He exclaimed:

“If this is a man of straw, he has a pretty good punch. Don’t tell me that this is not an issue. It is the whole issue. If it succeeds, it means chaos. Let even there be the first intimation of success and see what it does to that confidence upon which all prosperity is based.”

¶ John W. Davis turned his attention to corralling the 45 electoral votes of New York. Following a speech at Albany, he went on to Syracuse and Buffalo. He attacked the “impotence” of the Administration’s foreign policy, the “failure” of the Administration to wipe out corruption, the protective tariff and the Ku Klux Klan. Then he retired for a brief rest on his estate at Long Island, only to set forth once more into the Middle West, first into Indiana, speaking at Richmond, Indianapolis, Lafayette, Terre Haute, Evansville. . . . He planned then to swing across Illinois to St. Louis, and return East by way of Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio.

At Indianapolis, he expounded the difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties:

“I should like to point out the difference of $2,000,000 in the profits that Doheny and Sinclair hoped for from their oil leases, which they never would have gotten under Democratic rule; a difference of $30,000,000 in the condition of the American farmer and the value of his holdings, a difference of $750,000,000 in the proposed ship subsidy; a difference of not less than $2,000,000,000 in excessive prices to consumers imposed by a Republican tariff; and a difference between wholesale and widespread corruption and administrative honesty.”

¶ Charles W. Bryan left home on his first real speaking tour of the campaign. He made six speeches in Kansas. He vouched that:

“Every measure passed during the eight years of Democratic reign was in in favor of placing man above the dollar, while every measure passed since that time has had for its purpose the placing of the dollar before the man.”

Then he swung into Oklahoma where, aside from getting stuck in the mud while driving in an automobile with Governor Trapp, he made speeches:

“You know “what has happened at Washington. I don’t have to outline in detail what has taken place there, but it has done more harm than all the farmers and wage earners in the United States would ever create. The brains of the Republican Party have been spilled all over the West with the junior Senator of Iowa [Brookhart] throwing not only the monkey wrench but the whole machine shop into the machinery.

“Why have these Progressive Republicans refused to support the Administration? Because the Republican Administration has almost destroyed agriculture and has refused to put into effect any measure for its relief.” T

hen he swept into Texas.

“Hurrah for Ma!” he echoed a voice in the crowd. “Texas is the place wherepopular Democratic majorities are produced.” He traveled then into New Mexico and Colorado, warning the voters: “This is no time to sit down!”

¶ Robert M. LaFollette plunged into the fray for the last and chief drive of his campaign. From Rochester, N. Y., where he set forth his program in detail, he swung south to Scranton where, on the basis of a report that the Republicans were trying to raise $600,000 for their campaign fund in Pennsylvania, he charged them with trying to raise a huge “corruption” or “slush” fund to buy the election.

Next he turned east to Newark, declaring that following the War: “The railroads, the banks, the Steel Trust, the Coal Trust, most of all, the Munition Trusts, laid their hands on the Government and the people and extorted from them such tribute as privilege for carrying forward the War. The Democratic Party lost its last vestige of democracy. The Republican Party lost its last semblance of freedom. Both the old parties became private things, palsied agencies of the popular will.”

Once more stepping into his Seven League boots, he went overnight to Detroit. He reiterated his charges about the Republican corruption fund.

At Cincinnati, he attacked the Administration’s foreign policy and promised if he was elected to inaugurate a foreign policy based on: 1) open diplomacy; 2) no profiteering in case of war; 3) paying for war out of current revenues so that there will be no after debt; 4) no annexation of territory; 5) referendum on declaring war; 6) cooperation of all nations to reduce all armaments to defensive proportions; 7) no dollar diplomacy.

At Chicago, scene of the Loeb-Leopold murder case, he challenged:

“You cannot convict a hundred million dollars in the United States.

“You cannot punish a millionaire as a poor man would be punished, no matter how revolting or inhuman his crime may be.

“I offer this challenge to all those who regard judges as the sole defenders of our liberties. Show me one case in which the courts have protected human rights; and I will show you 20 in which they have disregarded human rights to protect property.”

¶ Burton K. Wheeler toured down the Pacific Coast from Seattle, “showing up” Calvin Coolidge and Charles G. Dawes. He accused Coolidge as Governor of Massachusetts with having favored a bank whose head had subscribed $6,000 to his campaign, and Dawes of impropriety in regard to the Lorimer bank case. He inveighed:

“Will not some of the good Republican brethren, in the interest of the Republican Party and in order that the Constitution may be preserved, call upon the silent man in the White House to explain his connection with Max Mitchell’s crooked bank deal and Mitchell’s campaign contribution to the Coolidge Campaign Fund in violation of the laws of the State of Massachusetts and, if he does not explain his part in this transaction, ask the Republican Party to withdraw his name from the race?

“It probably is too late to do any good, for the people themselves will on Nov. 4, permanently retire both of these candidates from active service in the Republican ranks and thereby help to purify the once Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln.”