Alarums and Excursions

THE CAMPAIGN

Alarums and Excursions

The progress of another week's campaigning brought all the candidates to the eve of the election.

P: Calvin Coolidge no longer kept his peace. He marched before the members of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington assembled, and with the aid of 23 broadcasting stations addressed the country at large as well as the Chamber men. All other U. S. radio stations Jiushed their voices for 45 minutes while Mr. Coolidge enlarged on his favorite topics of economy, reduced taxation, efficient government. He repeated his party's oft-cried warning against persons desiring Government ownership of railroads and subjugation of the Supreme Court. Said he: "The intelligence, the courage, the faith of the people will support America."

Standing on the south portico of the White House, Mr. Coolidge also spoke, politico-officially, to a delegation of business men representing 47 trades. This time he said: "This is a business country ... it wants a business Government."

Another officio-political utterance was drawn from Candidate Coolidge by the "Golden Rule Dinner" of the Near East Relief. He reminisced about the Administration's foreign policies, saying: "In our country are many exceedingly modest souls. Constantly they depreciate their own assumption that our country has done nothing for Europe, made no contribution to world welfare. ... I do not think that our country needs to assume any attitude of apology. . . . America is ready today, as always, to do its full share. It wants the peace of goodwill and of the Golden Rule."

Also, Mr. Coolidge mailed a long letter via Col. Hanford P. McNider, onetime head of the American Legion, "to the service men and women of America." Said he: "I appeal to you who in the past have proved worthy of all reliance."

P: Charles G. Dawes headed a general eastward migration of all the stump-touring candidates. Bundling together notes, pipes and baggage in Evanston, Ill., he boarded the Dawes Special. Across flat Indiana sped the train, through sleeping Ohio, over the Alleghenies as Pittsburghers were sitting down to breakfast. In Harrisburg, Pa., a Bishop went to the station to pay his respects, but was informed that the candidate was taking a siesta. Disappointed, the Bishop went away; but a few minutes later rail employes beheld General Dawes freshly arisen from his daybed, smoking on a brass-railed rear platform. Cheers followed the train as it pulled out for Philadelphia.

There the echoes in the Academy of Music crackled and rang with the staccato Dawes voice. "Where do you stand?" the voice demanded, . . . "on the rock of the Constitution and under the flag with Coolidge or on the shifting sands of Socialism?"

Back aboard the Special, the candidate recrossed Pennsylvania, spoke in Pittsburgh, in Washington, Pa., swung down into Wheeling, W. Va., for a mass-meeting, complete with parade and red fire; circled north again through Lancaster, Pa., to Wilmington, Del., where he announced: "The pinheads on the political committees have been advising me to preach one thing in one section of the country and another thing in another section. . . . Not so with the women in this campaign."

On to Newark to say this: "I blush for my sex when I think of some of the advice I have received from members of the National Republican Committee of my own sex." Also to reiterate "the shifting sands" alarum. Then a sleep in Montclair, N. J., at the C. A. Hanna home, and the candidate entered Manhattan, crossed to Brooklyn and spoke, slept at the Waldorf, motored to Albany.

P: John W. Davis put Tennessee behind him and rumbled into Kentucky. At Franklin, Bowling Green, Elizabethtown, he saluted throngs. In Louisville, the Horse Show pavilion at the State Fairgrounds was his forum. He was among friends and spoke genially, quietly, saving his fire for stormy Indiana, whither he repaired next day for a third time since the campaign opened. Vincennes, Princeton and Evansville were the stumps selected.

In Vincennes, Mr. Davis was at pains to scotch a rumor that he was kin to Henry Gassaway Davis, Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1904, and that he was a member of a family that had employed non-union labor in its West Virginia coal mines.

In Evansville, he referred to Secretary of War Weeks as "one of the two unmuzzled members of the Cabinet." (The other member evidently being Secretary of State Hughes, who had, up to that time, delivered three formal campaign speeches. Secretary Weeks had just made a speech in Manhattan.) Mr. Davis talked of "a housecleaning at Washington" if he should be elected; of "creeping paralysis" in the Republican system.

Soon after this, Newton D. Baker introduced Mr. Davis to an audience in Cleveland. The introduction and Mr. Davis' speech had to be curtailed in order to be broadcasted, as it was the night of Candidate Coolidge's speech and the air was to be "cleared" earlier than usual. But Mr. Davis, speaking from the very rostrum from which Candidate Coolidge was nominated in June, found time to denounce the tariff and the Republican record and to squelch a heckler who bawled out "What is your stand on the Ku Klux Klan?"

The second 6,000 mile tour was over. Journeying to Manhattan, Mr. Davis sank into the cushions of his motor car, was whisked off to his Locust Valley (L. I.) home. It was his intention to finish the campaign in and around Manhattan. Said he: "The Democratic Party will win the Presidential election."

P: No sooner had John W. Davis left Illinois than Charles W. Bryan entered it--his first trans-Mississippi appearance. But whereas Mr. Davis had gone chiefly to large towns, centres of capital and industry, Mr. Bryan visited the smaller farming and laboring communities. With Candidate LaFollette harrying north of him, Mr. Bryan devoted two days to scouring the southern part of the state in flag-decked automobiles. He stopped in Christopher, Benton, Fairfield, Mount Vernon (near his birthplace, Salem, where he is still known as "Jack" Bryan, a boyhood nickname). Winding up with a speech at Robinson, he then jumped over into Ohio, working through Norwalk and Middletown (home of James M. Cox--onetime Presidential candidate), and thus back into Indiana, the while Mr. Davis worked the other way, from west to east.

The end of the week found Mr. Bryan "tired but hopeful" after making seventeen speeches. He returned to Nebraska, nursing a cold, to swing around the home state once again.

P: The LaFollette whirlwind, out of which a loud voice spoke continually, swept into Illinois after wrenching at Republican and Democratic strongholds up and down the Mississippi Basin. "This campaign," said the candidate in Rock Island, "is between those who produce wealth and those who exploit wealth."

"These protected interests [sugar]," said the candidate at Peoria, "get five dollars for every dollar that goes into the Federal Treasury. . . , The President saves at the spigot and wastes at the bunghole . . . Cheese-paring policy."

Then the whirlwind gathered speed. It spun along the railroad tracks into Grand Rapids, Mich., and the voice said: "The issue in this election is between constructive men and destructive men."

It tore along the ties into Syracuse, N. Y., and the voice said: "We are determined that Wall Street shall not buy this election." Then it headed for Weehawken, N. J., Aiken, Md., Baltimore, Schenectady, Boston, Pittsburgh.

P: On the Kansas circuit, Burton K. Wheeler was rebuked. Leading Republicans* admonished him, brought it to his attention that politics was one thing while "merchandising half-baked scandal," "raking up unsupported allegations," "mudslinging," constituted quite another. "Very prettily said," retorted Mr. Wheeler; and continued his attacks on the Coolidge and Dawes pre-office records, through Caldwell, Wellington, Herington, McFarland, Topeka.

Factional strife among the Kansas Third Party leaders occupied his attention a moment then he was off for much-stumped Illinois, speaking in Chicago ("The Dawes' Plan means economic servitude for Germany!") and in Rockford ("Watch Washington for startling 'slush fund' disclosures!").

Meantime, LaFollette headquarters in Washington continued to issue "direct challenges," "defies," "prizes for evidence contradictory to this and that charge," all published under the direction of Candidate Wheeler.

* Among them, Henry J. Allen, Republican, onetime Kansas Governor, who owns and edits the Wichita Beacon.