Burnt Brand

The House is a sporting body. It loves a fight. And the House is a sportsmanlike body. It loves to see the biter bitten, especially after the biter has barked loudly and snapped from behind.

One day last week the galleries were crammed and many a Senator strolled over to what it pleases Senators (but not Representatives !) to call the "lower" chamber. For days beforehand, a speech had been advertised by the man who was going to make it. The subjects were to be Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce Hoover and Ohio politics. And the speaker was Charles Brand--Methodist, Mason, Moose, Eagle --who is now enjoying his second term as Representative of Ohio's seventh district (Urbana)./-

A few members of the House are such good sportsmen that, when what happened did happen they were really wrung with sympathy for bumptious Mr. Brand, after whose name in Who's Who appears the proud legend, "member of the Butter and Milk Commission under Herbert Hoover during the World War," but upon whose soul now rests the necessity of supporting the curious "boom" of his fellow Ohioan, Senator Willis. Never did a big butter-&-milk man undertake a braver job than attacking a once honored chief for the sake of a boss to whom he was now obligated. And never did a big butter-&-milk man have his job turn out a more gruesome botch than did "widely known" Mr. Brand's.**

Mr. Brand had come, not to praise Secretary Hoover, but to bury him. "I ask the President," he cried "to ask the resignation of Herbert Hoover ... !"

The reasons would have curdled blood--or milk. The Department of Commerce was "honeycombed with politics." The country had seen "an ex-city political boss [meaning Walter F. Brown of Toledo] picked up in Ohio and made Assistant Secretary of Commerce." This man was now running the Hoover campaign in Ohio. Therefore, "the campaign of Mr. Hoover for President is being paid for to a large extent out of the Treasury of the United States!"

But there was more. Agriculture, said Mr. Brand, was making a "gigantic struggle for equality." It must have a sympathetic President. And--mark well--"Mr. Hoover has been the supreme opponent of agricultural prosperity for the last ten years!"

He sold out the U. S. farmer to the English. He depressed wheat prices. He killed the McNary-Haugen bill. Besides he is ineligible for the Presidency. He would spell eight years of misery.

He would be opposed. Candidate Willis would oppose him. Candidates Lowden, Dawes, Curtis, Watson would oppose him. Ohio would oppose him. They would all oppose him. "All Republicans! ALL AMERICANS! ALL VOTERS! . . . Mr. Hoover will be defeated in Ohio!"

Charles Brand sat down looking shaken with the emotion of a vicarious victory. A great many people were clapping and cheering. A great many more were laughing, waiting. They saw what was coming --saw grave old Theodore Elijah Burton arising to rebutt.

Mr. Burton is neither a Moose nor an Eagle nor a big butter-&-milk man, but he has been a lawyer, economist, biographer, historian, professor; a U. S. Senator (1909-1915); a Favorite Son of Ohio (1916); and the present House is the twelfth one he has sat in from Ohio's twenty-first district (Cleveland). Mr. Burton is the man who counselled Candidate Hoover to take Ohio delegates away from Candidate Willis.

Mr. Burton is a deliberate gentleman. He began slowly, painstakingly. On his desk lay the speech he had to answer. Mr. Brand, in anticipation of triumph, had issued plentiful copies well in advance. Mr. Burton picked up Mr. Brand's points one by one--the exploded Hoover ineligibility myth, the charge that Mr. Hoover was once a Democrat, the exaggeration about Assistant Secretary Brown, the wheat-price falsehood, finally the allegation that Secretary Hoover had for ten years been agriculture's "supreme opponent."

Mr. Burton said: "On this subject, I wish to read a letter from a Congressman of whom I will only say at present that he is a prominent supporter of agricultural legislation in this House." And he read a letter (dated in 1925), written to Secretary Hoover, from a man who said: ". . . You have the ideas that will put agriculture on its feet and you have the confidence of the producers of the country of all kinds. . . .

"Although some of my friends have suggested my name to the President as Secretary of Agriculture, I am inclined to go to the President and urge your appointment. I don't know anybody who fits the place so well as you. . . .

"I am enclosing a copy of a letter I wrote the President a year ago, showing how strongly your ideas impress me. . . ."

Knowing Mr. Burton for a masterful orator, the House had long since sensed the climax and was roaring its delight. He had to stop several times, to be heard.

"Look and listen," said Mr. Burton. "Who wrote that letter? Charles Brand, a member of Congress from the seventh district of Ohio."

The galleries roared. Democrats jumped up and down with Republicans, transported at the patness of it. Mr. Brand sat stricken in his seat. Flabbergasted, he stammered, "What is the date of that?" Mr. Burton told him--and then read another three-year-old letter:

"Dear Secretary Hoover: I have your favor of the 22nd. I did see the President since I called on you and told him I thought he ought to insist on your accepting the position of Secretary of Agriculture.

"Very truly yours,

"Charles Brand"

It was such a terrific exposure of mean mediocrity and petty politics, of bootlicking followed by hamstringing, that Mr. Burton, kindly at heart, did not press his advantage further than the observation that Mr. Brand had been guilty of a "vicious" thing.

Mr. Brand left the House without a word. Later, to a sympathizer, he said lamely, "Way back there in 1925 I had hopes of making a friend of our chief opponent. That's a reasonable thing, isn't it?"

Persons who heard of it thought that such "reasonableness" shed yet more light on the Brand type of politician, if more were needed. But aside from branding Mr. Brand and his kind, the episode seemed to have a larger significance not because of its connection with the Presidential campaign, which is not properly a House affair, but because of the murk it dispelled from the whole atmosphere of Congressional farm relief. Burton v. Brand was declared one of the most significant debates this session.

*Not to be confused with Charles Hillyer Brand, able jurist, banker, philanthropist and U. S. Representative from Athens, Ga., nor with Charles John Brand, able botanist, economist and marketing expert of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

**Mr. Brand's paragraph in Who's Who says: 'Widely known for campaign against extravagance in highway building."