Significant Dancers

The mores in this Republic require that the 48 sovereign states at periodic intervals should produce a species of humans which the press heroically calls Standard Bearers. After one and one-third centuries of experiment the states have decided that only governors and senators qualify for such a title. The other representatives, judges, comptrollers, etc., important though they may be in the discharge of Democracy's functions, are merely part of the ticket and make the ballot look like part of the telephone directory. The Standard Bearers have no flags to wave, but their party gives them a "plat- form" ingeniously constructed of sagging, soft "planks." For at least a month the Standard Bearers are supposed to do a graceful jig on these planks. Then comes election day, and the panting dancers are either governors and senators, or lame ducks.

In New York State, populous, rich, these dancers are labeled "signifi-cant." So, last week, delegates and reporters scurried to Syracuse where the Democrats held their nominating convention-- and to Madison Square Garden in Manhattan where the Republicans assembled. Both parties had everything well oiled. Somebody opened the session with a prayer, somebody made a keynote speech, somebody produced the platform, somebody read it, almost everybody thought it was fine. On the second day the Standard Bearers were nominated, seconded many times, voted upon mechanically. So were the lesser lights on the tickets. People were happy, long-winded, subject to conventional cheering.

Everybody knew before the conventions exactly who would be nominated; newspapers had biographical sketches ready to release. The names of four able Standard Bearers forthwith flared across the headlines:

Alfred Emanuel Smith, thrice-elected Governor of New York, was nominated for the fifth-- time by the Democrats. Everybody knows "Smiling Al"--he who was born where the crazy, criss-cross shadows of Brooklyn Bridge meet the East Side of Manhattan. Young Alfred was by nature an actor and orator, by trade a seller of fishes in the Fulton Fish Market, when one day in 1896 "Big Tom" Foley, Tammany chieftain, noticed a political gleam in his eyes. Alfred progressed--clerk in the commissioner's office, legislator, speaker of the Assembly, governor, presidential aspirant. The lower East Side sang "The Sidewalks of New York"; mothers kissed smudgy-faced ragamuffins who wanted to be "Al" Smiths when they grew up. Now Governor Smith is running for a fourth term on an out-and-out Wet platform, and Wall Street is betting five to two that he will be elected. If he is, the Democrats in .1928 will again have to battle over the name of Alfred Emanuel Smith, beaming actor, militant Wet, popular Governor.

Robert Ferdinand Wagner, a Justice of the State Supreme Court, was nominated by the Democrats for U. S. Senator. Coming to the U. S. from Germany at the age of eight, he too like his running mate is a product of the lower East Side. He was a newsboy and bellhop before he made his way through the College of the City of New York and the New York Law School. Then he became a legislator and Lieutenant Governor before settling down to the more serious business of the bench. Justice Wagner has the hard eyes of the law--he has never been the smiling politician for whom the bands blare and the calliopes toot. Nevertheless he is considered the ablest man the New York Democrats have nominated for U. S. Senator in more than a quarter of a century.

James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr., twice-elected U. S. Senator, wa.s renominated by the Republicans. He had sprung from a line of landed gentry in the lush farms of Genesee Valley. At Yale he played on the baseball team; at Lake Sunapee, N. H., he married Alice Hay, daughter of famed Secretary of State John Hay. In fact, young Mr. Wadsworth did so much so quickly that he became known as "the boy politician." At 37 he entered the Senate as successor to Elihu Root, and has been there ever since. Mr. Root recently said: "Wadsworth is worth his weight in gold."+ Senator Wadsworth is a good, solid, regular Republican on practically all questions except Prohibition. On this he is militant Wet and hence one of the bad boys of the G. O. P. New York Republicans could not make the platform Wet enough for him, so this autumn he has to be content with an evasive plank which urges the voters "to express themselves" on the Prohibition issue. In spite of the fact that some upstate Republican Drys are rallying round one Franklin W. Cristman of Herkimer County, Senator Wadsworth is favored to defeat Justice Wagner on election day.

Ogden Livingston Mills, Congressman from New York, was nominated for Governor by the Republicans. It is no ordinary man who goes valiantly into the polls to battle against grinning Governor Smith. Bustling Theodore Roosevelt tried it two years ago and fizzled. Nicholas Murray ("Miraculous") Butler, President of Columbia University, refused to be lured into a dance on any platform, particularly when he knew that the man from Fulton Fish Market would be giving a "hotsy-totsy" performance on the opposing planks.

But Mr. Mills is neither bustling nor miraculous--he is one of those shrewd aristocrats with an "un-common capacity for public life." He was born in Newport, R. I. He found that the world was fascinating, that he had a grandfather who had once done efficient digging in the California gold fields. At 23 he had mastered both letters and law at Harvard, and found himself in the famed Manhattan law firm of Stetson, Jennings & Russell.--

Now at 42 he is what one might call "well off"--a director of a half dozen corporations including those which make Shredded Wheat Biscuits and run the Santa Fe trains, the owner of a comfortable supply of bond coupons, the husband of a charming wife, and a thrice elected member of the U. S. House of Representatives. In the House there are two ways to attain fame. One either has to be a character like Wet Representative La Guardia who has spent all summer trying to be arrested, or Dry Representative Upshaw, who sees hellfire in every drink; or else be a leader like Speaker Nicholas Longworth or Representatives Burton, Garrett and Madden, who are known by "the boys." Representative Mills is distinctly in the leader category, because of his financial wisdom and his prominence in New York State.

So it is Mr. Mills whom Republicans expect to batter down the "Smiling Al" legend. At the convention Mr. Mills aimed his key-note speech at the extravagance of the Smith regime. Said he: "The Governor is a great politician and, like all artists supreme in their lines, he comes high. I venture to say, in fact, that if he is to preside over our destinies for another two years, the people of this State will come to realize that 'the Sidewalks of New York' is for them the most expensive tune ever written."

Of course, Mr. Mills might return from the opera some evening, take off his top hat and dress coat, roll up his sleeves, and write a song that would surge above the glamor of "The Sidewalks of New York." But down on the lower East Side the old grind organs still throb and Tammany Hall politicians light cigars, lean back in squeaky chairs, smile at one another, say: "He cannot dim the din."

--In New York, Connecticut, Idaho, and Utah the nominating convention is still used instead of the direct primary. --Mr. Smith's only defeat for the governorship came in 1920 when Judge Nathan L. Miller was elected in the Harding landslide by a majority of 74,000, even though Mr. Smith ran a million votes ahead of the Democratic national ticket. tStandard gold bullion is worth $223.20 per pound. --Recently reorganized under the name of Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Gardiner & Reed, with John W. Davis at its head. Its history dates back beyond the days when Grover Cleveland was a member--