Booms

Ritchie. It was 99 years ago that John Caldwell Calhoun, then Vice President of the U. S., wrote "The South Carolina Exposition," a political thesis which maintained that the Federal Government was usurping rights inherent to the individual states. Calhoun's protest was inspired by the high tariff law of 1828. Later the tariff problem was swallowed up in the secession issue and the state rights doctrine temporarily crumbled at Gettysburg and Appomattox Court House.

Last week in Chicago, in Kansas City, Mo., and in Omaha another Southerner once more raised the state rights banner, with Prohibition as the subject of his story. Touring the West in an unofficial but unmistakable preConvention campaign, Governor Albert C. Ritchie of Maryland warned his audiences against overcentralization of power. "This centralization of government into remote hands," said he, "chills the free play of the free impulses of a free people."

Applying the state sovereignty doctrine to Prohibition Governor Ritchie said: "My own view is that until the sentiment of the country enables a change in the 18th Amendment, we should turn the subject back to the states, so that each state, within constitutional limits, may settle it in accordance with the convictions and conscience of its own people, those communities that want Volsteadism being free to have it, but those that resent it being no longer forced into taking it."

Governor Ritchie spoke chiefly in Dry districts to audiences whose grandfathers for the most part once sang lustily their intention of hanging Jefferson Davis (another famed state rights advocate) to a sour apple tree.

At Omaha the "high spot" in his speech came when he said that "a man's religion ought never be a factor in his right to hold office." The crowd wildly cheered the reference to Alfred E. Smith. Observers agreed, however, that Governor Ritchie made an excellent personal impression upon both Generals and Privates of the Western Democratic army. They pointed out that Governor Ritchie's wetness is known but that Governor Smith's is notorious; that Governor Ritchie's nomination would raise no "Romanist" bugaboo; that though the Maryland Governor might bring to the Democratic convention only the Maryland delegation, he would none the less be in an excellent strategic position should a deadlock develop over Governor Smith's candidacy.

Heflin. Certain Southerners began a boomlet for Senator J. Thomas Heflin of Alabama. Mr. Heflin is the Senator who during the last session of Congress remarked : "A Catholic bullet brought Roosevelt down. . . . If I am murdered many Catholic priests will pay the penalty. . . ." Of him Senator William Cabell Bruce of Maryland said: "I am afraid he will never be still till he has worn his tongue down to his tonsils." Though Senator Heflin was reported to be "in a receptive mood" the movement was considered anti-Smith rather than pro-Heflin.

McAdoo Out? George W. Olvany, Tammany leader, reported that William G. McAdoo was out of the race for the 1928 Democratic nomination. Mr. Olvany said he received this information from a close friend of Mr. McAdoo. The name of the close friend was not given.

Hughes Out. A "provided-that-President-Coolidge-does-not-run" boom for Charles Evans Hughes was hushed when Mr. Hughes promptly announced that he was too old to be President, that he was for President Coolidge, first, last and all the time. Mr. Hughes is 65.

Lowden. Some 20,000 graduates of western and mid-western colleges received a letter from the Lowden-for-President Association of New York, Inc. The letter maintained that unless Frank Orren Lowden, onetime (1917-21) Governor of Illinois, is nominated, western and mid-western states will go Democratic in 1928. Mr. Lowden is a graduate of Iowa State University and of the Union College of Law, Chicago; holds honorary degrees from Knox College, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Colorado, etc.