The New Road

Wiping the dust of 1923 off their feet, the aspirants for the Presidency in 1925 stepped last week upon the untrodden road of 1924. The party was surprisingly small.

First there was Calvin Coolidge. His followers announced definitely for the first time that he would be nominated on the first ballot at the Republican Convention in Cleveland next June-- and gave reasons why. In the Convention there will be 1,109 delegates, and 555 votes will nominate. Asserting that they have eliminated from consideration every state whose delegation may possibly go against the President, his followers counted 597 delegates in his favor.

The states which they list as certain in the Coolidge column are: EAST: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia; SOUTH: Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas; CENTRAL: Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan; WEST: Kansas, Utah. Total: 24 states, just half the Union.

There are a number of these to which Hiram Johnson supporters would vigorously contest the Coolidge claim. There are a number of states on the list whose adherence to Coolidge must certainly be qualified. Pennsylvania, for example, can be conceded to Coolidge unquestionably, only if Governor Pinchot does not become a contender, but his recent reticence, the longer it continues, renders that possibility less and less likely. Ohio can be certain for Coolidge only if factional strife within the state organization does not break out anew. Michigan, too, it must be remembered, went for Johnson in 1920. To compensate for these and similar weaknesses in the list, it seems certain that Coolidge will gather a number of delegates from various states now considered doubtful. But unless a decided change in the tide sets in, a prediction of nearly 600 votes for Coolidge on the first ballot does not seem greatly excessive.

Hiram Johnson, the only other active Republican candidate for the Republican nomination who stepped over the boundary line from 1923 to 1924, is apparently badly handicapped. His supporters make no small point of the fact that most of the "certain" Coolidge states are from the East and the "patronage bought" South.

Johnson is apparently undismayed by the great start which Coolidge has taken from him. To the less partisan observers it seems that Johnson's chances depend on a "break." What prospects are there of such a break? An issue in Congress may provide it--but that is unpredictable. The only other major possibility now apparent is a soft coal strike next spring. The soft coal miners' wage contract will expire. A strike is likely. On Jan. 22 a convention of the United Mine Workers at Indianapolis will formulate their demands. If there should be a prolonged strike, it might seriously damage the Administration. To force a settlement distasteful to the public or to the 160,000 miners in the pivotal states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois would be even more unfortunate. In such a contingency a candidate differing from the President --Mr. Johnson, in fact--might profit materially.

The third candidate, this time a Democrat, to emerge in 1924 is Senator Underwood of Alabama. By comparison he treads softly. He has a moderate foothold in the delegates of the South with which to go to the Democratic Convention and do his fighting there. It seems probable that he will go as an anti-bonusite (he is expected to vote against overriding the President's veto) and not irreconcilably dry. In both respects he will be in sufficient contrast to the other leading Democratic candidate.

None of the candidates wiped his feet on the doormat of New Year's Eve, with more gusto than William G. McAdoo. The old jingle made on him four years ago still rings with startling poignancy:

The Who, pre-eminently Who

Is William Gibbs, the McAdoo. . . .

He's always up and McAdooing;

From Sun to Star and Star to Sun

His work is never McAdone.

Always up, always precipitating himself abruptly into issues and situations, McAdoo is letting no herbage spring up under his feet. Hardly had Secretary Mellon's tax plan been announced, when he sprang up with the cry of "Bonus first." No one has been permitted to doubt for an instant that he is a staunch Dry, nor to question that he regards the railroad question as abominably managed by the Administration.

His list of prospective 'delegates to the Democratic Convention is about as long as that of Mr. Coolidge for the Republican Convention--but his prospect of an early nomination is much less because a two-thirds vote (730 votes) is required to nominate by the Democrats.

Strangely enough, in the estimation of one of the ablest political correspondents in the country, Mark Sullivan, McAdoo was responsible for Henry Ford's declaration in favor of Coolidge. There was a little personal matter to begin with. Many years ago --during the War--McAdoo would not, or accidentally did not give an interview to Ford's "General Secretary" and Mr. Ford took offense. Besides that matter, Ford apparently does not like McAdoo's headlong procedure.

Sullivan commented:

"Ford doesn't like McAdoo and doesn't want to see him in the White House. And yet, curiously enough, one of the main purposes each has had in wanting power is the same with both men. Ford thinks the railroads are badly managed and badly operated, and financed more in the interest of the financiers than in the interest of the stockholders or the public. And Ford, thinking this, would like to try his own hand at running the railroad show.

"And yet, although both men have the same issue and the same purpose, each apparently distrusts the other's capacity to achieve that purpose in the best way. Certainly Ford distrusts McAdoo, and one can readily infer that McAdoo distrusts Ford."

So, according to this view, believing that his own candidacy on a third ticket might improve the chances of McAdoo, Ford withdrew his pretentions and backed Coolidge. It may be; stranger things have happened.