REPUBLICANS: I Accept

By 10:30 o’clock one morning last week in Topeka, Kans. holidaying farm families in seersucker suits and bright cotton dresses had spread their coats and picnic baskets on the State House lawn, camped down to make a day of it. Pictures of Governor Alf M. Landon stared from almost every wall and window throughout the capital. The day was a scorcher—104° in the shade. When the big parade, a medley of history and politics, moved off at 4 p. m., sweating, good-natured people with artificial sunflowers on their chests were packed 20 deep along Topeka’s broad main street (Kansas Avenue). Though estimates of their number varied from 60,000 to 200,000, everybody agreed that the biggest crowd in Topeka’s history had turned out for Topeka’s biggest day.

It was supper time when the parade ended. For people who had not brought their own food or could not wedge into jampacked hotels and restaurants, the Baptist church was selling ice cream and soft drinks on its lawn, baked ham dinners in the basement. The State House square began filling up early. The huge, shirt-sleeved crowd sang, chatted, fanned itself under floodlights.

A great roar went up when Governor Landon, sturdy and grave in acream-colored suit and five minutes behind his radio schedule, emerged from a flag-decked State House door with Mrs. Landon, Daughter Peggy Anne, Father John Manuel, Mother-in-law Cobb, Republican Chairman John Hamilton and Representative Bertrand Snell of New York. Chairman Hamilton introduced Notifier Snell, who went through a ten-minute oration without ever saying in so many words that the Republican Party had nominated Alf Landon for President of the U. S. Then came the moment for which thoughtful citizens had been waiting eagerly since that event occurred at Cleveland exactly six weeks before.

Because the views and record of a Presidential nominee are ordinarily well known in advance, the speech which he makes at the vestigial rite of his notification is commonly of no more significance than any other campaign address. But last week the nation, which had hardly heard of Alf Landon a year ago, still had only the vaguest notion of his political ideas. Before his nomination he had confined his speeches and statements to generalities, dodged specific commitments by refusing to “write the Republican platform in advance.” Since his nomination he had staved off questions with ”read my acceptance speech.” Now, at last, he was to speak out plainly and concretely, reveal his convictions and program, lay down the lines of the Republican Presidential campaign.

Sixteen hundred miles away, on the Presidential yacht Sewanna, anchored off the coast of Nova Scotia, Franklin Roosevelt sat close to his radio. So, with hardly less interest, sat citizens throughout the land. For ten minutes the yelling, hat-waving crowd in Topeka would not let the nominee speak. Then in a voice as flat as a Kansas prairie, Alf Landon began the most important speech of his career. Twanged he:

“I accept the nomination of the Republican Party for the Presidency of the United States. . . .

“The 1936 platform of the Republican Party has my complete adherence. . . . There is not time to lay our whole program before you tonight; I can touch only upon a few phases of it. The others I hope to discuss with you in detail as the campaign progresses. . . .

“I intend to approach the issues fairly, as I see them, without rancor or passion. If we are to go forward permanently, it must be with a united nation—not with a people torn by appeals to prejudice and divided by class feeling. . . .”

Recovery. “No people can make headway where great numbers are supported in idleness. There is no future on the relief rolls. . . .

“Judged by the things that make us a nation of happy families, the New Deal has fallen far short of success. The proof of this is in the record. The record shows that in 1933 the primary need was jobs for the unemployed. The record shows that in 1936 the primary need still is jobs for the unemployed.

“The time has come to stop fumbling with recovery. . . .

“The country is ripe for recovery. . . . One of the signs of the ending of past depressions was the launching of new business ventures. … In the present depression this . . . has not yet appeared. . . . Why? Because the small business man, the working man who would like to become his own boss—the average American —has hesitated to start out for himself. He lacks confidence in the soundness of Federal policy; he is afraid of what may come next.

“We must dispel his fear, restore his confidence and place our reliance once more in the initiative, intelligence and courage of these makers of jobs and opportunities. . . .

“We must be freed from incessant governmental intimidation and hostility. We must be freed from excessive expenditures and crippling taxation. We must be freed from the effects of an arbitrary anduncertain monetary policy. And through a vigorous enforcement of the anti-trust laws we must be freed from private monopolistic control. . . .”

Relief. “Let me emphasize that, while we propose to follow a policy of economy in government expenditures, those who need relief will get it. We will not take our economies out of the allotments to the unemployed. We will take them out of the hides of the political exploiters. . . .”

Social Security. “We shall amend the Social Security Act to make it workable. . . . But it must be kept in mind that the security of all of us depends on the good management of our common affairs. . . .”

Finance. “Mounting debts and increasing taxes constitute a threat to all of these aims. . . . While spending billions of dollars of borrowed money may create a temporary appearance of prosperity, we and our children, as taxpayers, have yet to pay the bill. For every single dollar spent we will pay back two dollars! . . .

“Our party holds nothing to be of more urgent importance than putting our financial house in order. . . .”

Farmers. “We shall establish effective soil-conservation and erosion-controlpolicies in connection with a national land-use and flood-prevention program—and keep it all out of politics. . . . Some of our farmers, dependent in part upon foreign markets, suffer from disadvantages arising from world disorder. Until these disadvantages are eliminated we propose to pay cash benefits. . . .”

Labor. “The right of labor to organize means to me the right of employes to join any type of union they prefer, whether it covers their plant, their craft or their industry. . . . Under all circumstances, so states the Republican platform, employes are to be free from interference from any source, which means, as I read it, entire freedom from coercion or intimidation by the employer, any fellow-employe or any other person. . . .” Foreign Relations. “Justice and peace. . . .”

Liberty. “This is the most important question now before us: Shall we continue to delegate more and more power to the Chief Executive or do we desire to preserve the American form of government? . . .

“It is not my belief that the Constitution is above change. . . . But change must come by and through the people and not by usurpation. . . .

“A free competitive system is necessary to a free government. Neither political nor civil liberty long survives the loss of economic liberty. Each and all of these liberties, with the precious human rights which they involve, must be preserved intact and inviolate.”

The Future. “If I am elected Chief Executive of this nation, I propose to restore our Government to an efficient as well as constitutional basis. . . .

“In common with all my countrymen, I look forward to the America that is to be. It should be a nation in which the old wrong things are going out and the new right things are coming in. It should be a land in which equal opportunity shall prevail and special privilege shall have no place. . . . God grant us, one and all, the strength and the wisdom to do our part in bringing these things to pass.”