DEMOCRATS: Homing Roosevelt

Jersey City, Newark, Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Mineola, again Manhattan, Poughkeepsie and finally Hyde Park, to vote and wait for returns was the circuit on which Franklin Delano Roosevelt wound up his four-month campaign last week. In each he smiled his ear-to-ear smile, waved his long arms, made brief inconsequential speeches that added no last-minute proposition to the issues. Frank Hague, New Jersey’s boss, proudly exhibited the candidate to thundering thousands. Thirty-five hundred Republicans-for-Roosevelt heard him, along with Owen D. Young, from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. Arm-in-arm with Al Smith he marched out before Boss John H. (“For Success”) McCooey’s cheering cohorts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. After lunching in the Bronx he ferried the East River for his one & only appearance on Long Island. The campaign’s grand finale came Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. About the Governor, Boss John Francis Curry bunched all Tammany’s local candidates. Judged by the applause of 21,000 Democrats, Al Smith was the evening’s favorite. For an old-fashioned flaying of the G. 0. P. he took as his text: ”Give an account of the stewardship, for now thou canst be steward no longer.” The Smith speech was liberally sprinkled with: “Listen to this—it’s a hot tamale! . . . Let’s look at the record. . . . Then what happened? . . . Now get this!” Governor Roosevelt concluded his last major address: “The millions of unchronicled heroes who, by self-denial and patience, have carried this nation through this economic crisis, must give us new hope. We can and will bring to the problem of the individual the maturity of a united effort of a nation come of age. America, mature in its powers, united in its purpose, high in its faith can come and will come to better days.” Since he flew to Chicago in early July to accept the nomination, Governor Roosevelt has stumped 17,000 miles—a record. His campaign was spirited, ingratiating, comparatively decent and free from bad errors on which G. 0. Partisans waited in vain to pounce. He had been careful not to promise too much. His travels had effectively silenced Republican talk that he was a crippled weakling who could not stand the White House strain.

No Democrat ever finished a campaign feeling more confident of his election to the Presidency than the party’s 1932 nominee.