POLITICAL NOTES: Purge’s Progress

The Head of the Democratic Party spent most of last week being President of the U. S., but not without firing two more hot shots into two more State primary contests. To newshawks clustered around his White House desk he vehemently read, and adopted as his own words, an editorial from the rip-snortingly New Dealish New York Post entitled “Why the President Interferes.”* This explained: “These primaries will determine to a large extent the makeup of the next Congress. And that, in turn, will determine whether or not the President can keep his campaign promises to the people. . . .

There is nothing for the President to do—as the responsible head of the New Deal —but to publicly repudiate those who have betrayed the New Deal in the past and will again.”

The traitors now proscribed by the Post and Mr. Roosevelt were Senator Millard Evelyn Tydings of Maryland and Representative John Joseph O’Connor of New York. Their names brought to four the list of eminent Democrats along the eastern seaboard publicly consigned to purgatory by the President’s Purge. The others: Senators Smith of South Carolina and George of Georgia. To slap the latter further down, the White House last week caused RFC to oust, “for political activities,” Senator George’s stanch supporter. Edgar B. Dunlap, counsel to RFC’s Atlanta office.*

¶ U. S. District Attorney Lawrence Sabyllia Camp, the Roosevelt candidate set up to purge Senator George, attacks his adversary as a tool of Georgia’s utility and railroad companies, a stooge of northern Republicans. Last week this last charge was made more awful when James W. Arnold. Republican National Committeeman from Georgia, urged all Georgia Republicans to jump into the Democratic primary for Senator George and “save this country.” There is no Republican candidate for the Senate this year, and 36.942 Republicans (12% of the electorate) voted in Georgia in 1936.

¶ In Manhattan. Purgee O’Connor, chairman of the potent House Rules Committee, made frantic efforts to get the Republicans to back him against the White House candidate, one James H. Fay, deputy internal revenue collector. The Republicans decided he savored too strongly of Tammany Hall, last week named their own primary candidate: Allen Welsh Dulles, 45, lawyer, onetime (1916-26) State Department underling.

¶ In Maryland last fortnight, Postmaster Harry A. Coy, 35. of Havre de Grace, hometown of Senator Tydings, was kicked out of office in apparent reprisal for his support of Senator Tydings. Last week a thoroughgoing purge of other Tydings friends on the Federal payrolls in Maryland was in full sway. Past Postmaster Coy drove his car out to the Susquehanna River bank, put a bullet through his brain.

¶ Cartoonist Richard Q. Yardley of the Baltimore Sun pictured Franklin Roosevelt as an Edgar Bergen with a whole lapful of Charlie McCarthy Senators all shouting “Yes!” and “Lil Davey” Lewis (Representative David Lewis, backed by the White House against Senator Tydings) climbing up to join them (see cut).

¶ Idaho’s Senator Pope (New Dealer), beaten for renomination by Representative D. Worth Clark and a last-minute blizzard of religious pamphlets, appeared in Hyde Park last week seeking Administration backing to run as an independent in November. Seeking the same thing: Representative-reject Maury Maverick of San Antonio, Texas.

¶ TVA’s new Chairman Harcourt A. Morgan last week visited his native Ontario, inspected that province’s public power system, got a new idea for his own underprivileged valley: electrically operated cold-storage plants where farmers can store their produce before selling it.

¶ Cartoonist Jack Knox of the Memphis Commercial Appeal expressed some Southerners’ feelings about “the nation’s No. 1 economic problem.” He showed Uncle Sam stepping on his own toes, exclaiming: Oh! Oh! Something is wrong with my right foot!” (see cut).

¶ President Patrick Henry Callahan of Louisville Varnish Co., a Democratic letter-writer almost as assiduous as National Chairman Jim Farley, wrote the latter saying: “. . . Get busy on some sort of a plan to get the Roosevelt philosophy to the traveling men and salesmen of the country.” Most of Louisville Varnish’s sales men, said Colonel Callahan, had become infected by the anti-Roosevelt feeling they encounter everywhere among their customers. “This ” . . reactionary line of thinking is thrown into our salesmen five or six times every day and it is having its effect. . . . Salesmen, as you know, do a great deal of talking themselves and if properly handled they can be of a great deal of help to the Party.”

¶ Governor Blanton Winship of hot Puerto Rico had cards printed for tourists visiting his palace: “Gentlemen are requested to wear coats and neckties. Ladies are asked to wear skirts rather than shorts or slacks. Thank you.”

*Author: Max Ways, ace editorial writer for Publisher David Stern’s Philadelphia Record.

*On August 1, Chairman Jesse Jones admonished all RFC employes to abstain from active politics, except voting. Presumably exempted: Special RFC Counsel Tommy Corcoran, top political cowboy for the White House, who does his campaigning not among voters but among politicians.