Senatorial Campaigns

In each state the Senatorial campaign is painted with its own peculiar colors, beer v. no beer, farmers v. urbanites, slush v. purity, etc.; but the sweeping question which buzzes nationally is: "Will the Democrats be able to capture control of the next Senate?" Even in the 69th Congress, the Democrats and the insurgent Republicans, whenever they united, could outvote the regular Republicans. But actually to control the Senate and be able to organize its committees, the Democrats must have at least 49 members. They now have 39, are not in danger of losing any, because the seven Democratic vacancies are all from Southern states which do not know how to cast Republican votes. Thus, the Democrats must topple the G.O.P. in ten states. In Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, the Democratic chances are good, in fact better than in any election since Wilsonian times. Assuming victories in these seven states, the Democrats would still need to win in three most important campaigns: In Iowa where Claude R. Porter, able Jeffersonian, faces Radical Smith Wildman Brookhart, the effervescent cure which regular Iowa Republicans have at last swallowed. In Masisachusetts where David Ignatius Walsh, onetime Governor and Senator,* beloved of the Irish of Boston, the most potent Democratic vote-getter in New England, clashes with Senator Butler, prosperous-looking business man, chairman of the Republican National Committee, beloved of President Coolidge and Frank W. Stearns. In Illinois where a most picturesque campaign is being acted by George E. ("Boss") Brennan, Wet and Democratic, and Frank L. Smith, public utility darling. A round-faced, Irish nine-year-old chortled on first looking into McGuffey's Second Reader. His little eyes bulged, his pudgy hands curiously, gleefully smudged the pages. Now, at 61, Democratic Senatorial Candidate George E. Brennan told the Illinois electorate about it, "a story I've never forgotten. "A mother, leaving her children alone for a few minutes, warned them not to stuff beans into their ears or noses. They'd never heard of the trick before. The minute the mother was out of sight they ran for the bean jar. "Human nature doesn't change. Our boys and girls are being ruined with the poison they sell for liquor nowadays. I know of things too terrible to tell--hip liquor at dances, lovers' lanes, roadhouses, increasing illegitimacy. And I have a daughter 16 years old." Illinoisans were amused, amazed, intrigued. "Boss" Brennan had jumped from the back room to the stump. What was he doing running for public office? All his life he had avoided it. Born in Cayuga County,* New York, in 1865, he earned his first dollar in a coal mine in Braidwood, 111. Miners probably decided that George Brennan would make a success of life when he lost a leg. A switchman was absent on a post-payday drunk. George, substituting, tried to uncouple two cars of a moving train. His foot became wedged in a frog and stayed there. He wears to this day a peg leg; loses 1 in. of his 5-ft.-6-in. stature. He then tried teaching school, found it dull; managed a baseball team, found it unremunerative; worked as clerk in the Secretary of State's office in Springfield (the only political office he has ever held). He had tasted political atmosphere and liked it. In Chicago he drank deeper under the guidance of "Boss" Roger Sullivan, became the heir apparent. "I can't say I deserved Roger Sullivan's mantle," said Brennan, "It just fell to me. . . . The job of boss was a big jackpot and I happened to be the only man around the table who had openers." "Boss" Brennan occasionally takes a little time off from poker, pinochle, politics, and business to read good books. It was in 1920 that this pinky-bald, bushy-eyebrowed, double- chinned, portly humorist first began to be a source of power and worry to the Democratic national party. At the San Francisco con vention he vexed William G. McAdoo, helped nominate James M. Cox and forced the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the ticket. People asked, "Who is this man Brennan who deals with mighty names?" They couldn't find his history in Who's Who (it's not there yet). Good Chicagoans pointed with pride to him when he carried a Democrat, William E. Dever, into the City Hall in 1922 over the wreckage of the grimy William Hale Thompson machine. Mayor Dever's record is "Boss" Brennan's most flourishing gesture. But he insists that politics is merely his avocation, along with shooting canvasbacks and sitting in on jackpots: "For me, politics is a sideline, a recreation. I make my living in business and have my fun in politics." He has always been essentially a business man. Once, instead of going around the world with his wife, he became Chicago agent for a fidelity insurance company. It was a good job. Now he employs 200 persons, and earns from $50,000 to $60,000 a year. Mr. Brennan likes to talk of his business career; it proves his independence, he says.

Businessman-Boss Brennan is getting mellow. He is playing his last big game, "betting his bossdom against a seat in the U. S. Senate that Illinois is sick of prohibition." The voters perk up their ears and open their eyes. Now they can see how this backroom worker of cigar stores and old saloons performs. He feeds their curiosity with garrulous anecdotes, he says little of economic significances,

*Mr. Walsh, elected to the Senate in 1918, was the first Democratic Senator from Massachusetts in 68 years, the fourth in the history of the state. *This county in the Finger Lakes district is the stamping ground of the famed progeny of two sisters (Jukes) and two Dutch backwoodsmen. Sixty percent of this hereditary strain are idiots, imbeciles, harlots, murderers, thieves, perverts, felons, loons, sots, paupers, maniacs, etc. The Jukes have cost the government $1,308,000 in 75 years. "Boss" Brennan is no Juke.