THIRD PARTIES: Merger of Malcontents

Merger of Malcontents

Stretched shoeless on his bed in a Chicago hotel one day last week, Dr. Francis E. (“The Plan”) Townsend received the Press, thoughtfully rejected a suggestion that he might be the next President of the U. S. “I wouldn’t be a candidate,” mused the 69-year-old onetime country doctor, “except on one condition—That I could unite the people and resign the day after election. As long as I’m able to wiggle, I’d like to be able to do a little dictating to the President, and I think I could do that better from outside than inside the White House.”

Turning to the brawny onetime preacher who had been his constant companion and counselor for weeks, the old man generously declared: “I’d like to see it go to some young man, like Gerald Smith.”

Votes & Dimes-Same day Dr. Townsend flew to Cleveland, and his followers by thousands began trooping in for the second Townsend National Convention. By bus, battered automobile and day coach they arrived from every corner of the land, biggest delegations coming from the Pacific Coast and nearby Ohio towns. Straight to headquarters at the Hotel Cleveland they went to plank down $2 each for credentials and badges, check their luggage, then set off to look for cheap rooms in boarding houses and tourist camps.

Mostly grey, simple and sixtyish, the

Townsend men held up their light wash pants with wide suspenders, wore no coats over their rumpled shirts; the women wore plain print dresses, outmoded hats, sensible shoes. At week’s end Cleveland merchants complained that they had bought record quantities of picture postcards, almost nothing else. But there were nearly 5,000 delegates—more than the Republican and Democratic convention delegates combined—and as many more visitors. If they were genuinely representative, they meant that there were millions of oldsters like them throughout the land, each with a vote, each with 10¢ per month for Townsend Club dues. On that assumption, the nation’s ablest rabble-rousers battled last week for their allegiance.

Messiah. Rapt and gleaming-eyed in Cleveland’s vast Public Hall sat the delegates when their beloved leader uprose on opening day to sound his keynote. To outsiders he might seem a dim. ineffectual visionary, but to them he was a genuine Messiah. With an artificial tan poppy in the lapel of his white coat. Dr. Townsend settled his long chin down on his high, stiff collar, glued his eyes on his manuscript, droned out a fierce denunciation of New Deal extravagance. Only when it came to a remedy did the author of the plan to have the Government give away

$2,000,000,000 per month depart from sound Republican doctrine. His cure was not to stop government spending, but to stop government borrowing. “In essence,” declared he, “the system we demand is this: Tax everybody on the amount of money that he spends. We are all spenders. We must buy or die. The more we have to spend, the more we will spend. Hence, those who spend most will pay the most in taxes for the maintenance of government.”

Not stopping to explain where the spending money was to come from, Dr. Townsend sat down amid rapturous cheers, whistles, yells, and ringing of cow bells by his convinced disciples.

Preacher. Up to the microphones broad-shouldered, coatless, clutching a Bible in his left hand, stepped the Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, claimant to the leadership of 6,000,000 Share-Our-Wealthers left him by the late Huey Long. Sweat streamed off his broad face, plastered his shirt against his barrel chest as he swung into his harangue. No mild economic creed was his but a rousing call to arms. Too long, he shouted, had the plain people of the U. S. let Wall Street and Tammany rule them.

“There are,” roared Preacher Smith. brandishing his Book, “enough good people who believe in the flag and the Bible to seize and control the Government of America! . . . We must make our choice in the presence of atheistic Communistic influences! It is Tammany or Independence Hall! It is the Russian primer or the Holy Bible! It is the Red Flag or the Stars and Stripes! It is Lenin or Lincoln —Stalin or Jefferson!”

Pop-eyed Townsendites, who had been whooping and hollering “Amen!”‘ all through the speech, climbed on their chairs, made their earlier cheers for Dr. Townsend sound like feeble piping. Magnanimously Preacher Smith beckoned Dr. Townsend to his side. Spotlights speared down, flash bulbs popped as the old doctor put his bony hand in the young preacher’s. In the press box, newshawks who had watched the pair in recent days, had seen Dr. Townsend consult Preacher Smith on every move, let him act as their joint spokesman, believed they were witnessing not a union but a usurpation.

Priest. Into the convention hall next morning strode another burly divine, not by a stage entrance but by the front door. As he marched up the long aisle Townsendites shrilled and roared. Some even leaned out to touch his coat as he passed. Last fortnight Rome buzzed with gossip of a telephone call which Detroit’s Father Charles E. Coughlin had made to the Vatican, belatedly asking permission to take part in the U. S. Presidential campaign. For a month the Political Priest had had a candidate in the field—North Dakota’s Representative William Lemke of the Union Party, named for Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice. Last week he turned up in Cleveland to snare Townsend votes for his man.

Beginning slowly and calmly in his luscious brogue, Father Coughlin assured the Townsendites that he had not come to persuade or dictate to them. He simply wanted to tell them a few things about the National Union. Bit by bit. rehearsing his familiar indictments of the Federal Reserve Banks and the “money changers.” he stepped up—as Adolf Hitler does—his speed and volume. By the time he reached President Roosevelt’s failure to keep his inaugural promise to drive the money changers from the temple, the Priest was sweating as freely as had Preacher Smith.

Suddenly there was a shocking pause as before 10,000 people Father Coughlin literally unfrocked himself. Stepping back from the microphones, he peeled off his black coat, ripped off his Roman collar, plucked out the collar button fastening his neckband. Back to the rostrum, a chunky man in dark pants and open shirt, he leaped to roar: “As far as the National Union is concerned, no candidate which is endorsed for Congress can campaign, go electioneering for, or support the great betrayer and liar, Franklin D. Roosevelt. . . .”

” YA-A-A-A-A-Y! YIPPE-E-E-E-E!” yelled frantic Townsendites at this rip-snorting attack on the man whom Dr. Townsend and Rev. Gerald Smith had assured them was their archenemy.

Father Coughlin was easier on “poor Mr. Landon, the creature of three newspaper editors.” The Republican nominee got off with “He doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.”

But the Priest’s voice rose again to fury when he cried: “I ask you to purge the man who claims to be a Democrat from the Democratic Party, and I mean Franklin Double-Crossing Roosevelt.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen.” continued the Priest, “you haven’t come here to endorse any political party. . . . The principles of the National Union, the principles of Dr. Townsend and the principles of Dr. Gerald Smith have been incorporated in the new Union Party. You are not asked to endorse it. Your beloved leader endorses them and how many of you will follow Dr. Townsend?”

The Townsendites stood up almost to a man. Gleefully Priest Coughlin wrapped his arm around Dr. Townsend’s narrow shoulders, poked Preacher Smith in the ribs, posed for group photographs, left the platform.

Red Indian, Time & again Dr. Townsend and the convention chairman had proclaimed that this was a ”day of free speech.” At the afternoon session another Smith, by name Corner, of Oklahoma, uprose to put that promise to a test. Chunky, jet-haired, high-cheekboned, Vice President Comer Smith of Old Age Revolving Pensions, Ltd. is a three-quarter Cherokee Indian. He is also a Democrat, having finished third last fortnight in Oklahoma’s Senatorial primary (TIME, July 20). He boasts that he can “out rabble-rouse either Coughlin or Gerald Smith.” Last week he began his address with a crack at both of them: “I promise not to take off my shirt or shoes, nor to bring out a Holy Book of God to make a demagogic speech.”

Preacher Smith, he declared, had been sent by the Liberty League to sow discord, and his pressagent, one George Maines, was in the pay of Hearst. Preacher Smith’s boasted 6,000.000 followers, declared he, were in the swamps of Louisiana, were not voters but bullfrogs. Both Preacher Smith and Priest Coughlin were trying to use Dr. Townsend for their own sinister purposes. As for Franklin Roosevelt, he, cried Gomer Smith, “is a churchgoing. Bible-reading. Godfearing, golden-hearted man who has saved the country from Communism.”

Impartial connoisseurs of eloquence, Townsendites who had that morning screeched their lungs out against Franklin Roosevelt, “the great liar and betrayer,” once more climbed on their chairs, screeched their lungs out for Franklin Roosevelt, “the golden-hearted” savior of his country. They were quickly shushed by Dr. Townsend, who trotted up to the rostrum, gently explained that “Poor Gomer” was simply feeling bad about his Oklahoma defeat. Announced the permanent chairman : “There will be no more free speech in this convention.”

Significance. No more significance than a circus would the Cleveland goings-on have had if 1936 were not a Presidential year, if polls and experienced observers did not forecast a close election. Because of these facts, the coalition of discontent welded last week when Pensioneer Townsend and Share-Our-Wealther Smith agreed to back Inflationist Lemke, go on a four-ring barnstorming tour with him and Inflationist Coughlin, aroused serious political speculation. Hardly the simplest-minded members of the Lemke-Coughlin-Smith-Townsend following could expect their votes to put North Dakota’s Lemke in the White House. What they might do. what their New Deal-hating leaders passionately hoped they would do, was to put Franklin Roosevelt out of it.

Most votes for William Lemke, it is generally agreed, will be votes which would otherwise have gone to Franklin Roosevelt. What worried Democrats last week was the possibility that the loss of even a few thousand votes might lose whole states to Nominee Roosevelt, swing them to Nominee Landon. A more remote chance was that Candidate Lemke might carry one or more states in the doubtful, discontented Northwest, prevent either major candidate from getting a majority of electoral votes, throw the Presidential election into the House of Representatives for the third time in U. S. history.*

Last week the newly-allied political guerrilla chieftains trotted out their candidate for the last act of the Townsend show. Rising just before sundown in Cleveland’s huge Municipal Stadium, freckle-faced, stubble-chinned William Lemke addressed himself not only to some 70,000 empty seats and 5,000 Townsendites, but to every malcontent in the land. For Townsendites, he plumped “100% for an old-age revolving pension.” For Coughlinites he cursed the “money changers,” called for $5,000,000,000 worth of greenbacks. And for any who might still cherish the memory of Huey Long, he promised as President to make every man a King.

* Others: 1801 (Jefferson-Burr), 1825 (Adams-Jackson).