Grand Old Party

(see front cover) One of the two oldtime political parties, between which there is not, yet is, a great difference, was about to nominate a man for the U. S. Presidency. The vortex of the event was in the Midwestern flatlands. The result would work no immediately perceptible change in the day-to-day life of millions and millions of citizens. The result would be a headline in the newspapers, a shout across-lots, a word by radio, to the vague majority.

Meantime, keyed to the vortices of Presidential elections are the individuals involved or hopeful of being involved. The experience of each Candidate persuades him that his unique self may be the historic medium of an intensely interested multitude. Or else he is like a steeplejack, undizzied by his altitude in public affairs and intent on mending the weathervane, or crowing as a weathercock.

Last week, a thickset, greying, busy-beaverish man sat in his big bare office at the U. S. Department of Commerce in

Washington, working at his work part of the time, listening the rest of the time to a new radio he had had installed to be sure of getting Kansas City clearly. At his home was another receiving set. He had worked all over the world at a man's work; given orders, reasoned objectively, sought no praise. Yet there he sat, listening for his friend, John McNab of Palo Alto, to make a speech about him; then for thunderous cheers, roll-calls of delegates, a flattering result.

In Kansas City, in a hotel, with the vortex only a few blocks away, a solid, grey, squire-like man from Illinois also waited for the result. He had been a State Governor and knew the surge of popular acclaim. "No man ever ran away from the presidency," he had said. He was hoping the farmers from his section of the land would insist upon the nomination coming to him. He thought he could win the trust of all the other kinds of men whose influence counted. Men had called him another Cincinnatus. He let his friends play up the farm idea and prepared to be called from the plow. . . . But he answered curtly the reporters who questioned him. Once, at the Kansas City railroad station, he gave a Hearst newshawk an ungentle shove and said: "You newspaper men will get along better with me if you wait until I have something to say."

Through Kansas City, early in the week, passed a more cheerful figure than either the Beaver Man or the Modern Cincinnatus. This one, swart, short, mustachioed, had played a different game from theirs, a waiting game. Redskin ancestors on his grandmother's side had doubtless played the same game often. Out hunting with other braves, a good plan had been to let the others stalk, and perhaps frighten, the deer, which then would come along the runway where an artful man sat ready. The Indian-blooded Senator from Kansas had seen the waiting game work well on race tracks, too. Riding as a jockey himself, he had watched two faster horses wear each other out, then whipped his own mount past them at the finish. Good nature and confidence are essentials in playing the waiting game and on his way to Topeka, where his watchful headquarters were to be, Candidate Curtis of Kansas said:

"That convention is going to nominate me. Everything indicates it. Hoover won't be nominated. Of that I am sure. Neither will Lowden, nor Dawes, nor Watson, nor Goff. It will develop that I will be the compromise and every one will be happy."

To small-eyed Senator Watson of Indiana, whose candidacy every one accepted much as a paunchy oldtimer is accepted in a golf championship, Candidate Curtis telephoned his approval when he heard how Watson was conniving to block Hoover. "Go to it, Jim," he called. "I'm with you!"

Before the balloting began, rumors raced from as far away as Cherbourg, France. There, something caused General John Joseph Pershing to race dramatically by motor to catch the S. S. Leviathan. Landing in New York, he refused curtly to discuss politics, seemed annoyed when Mayor Harry Mackay of Philadelphia told newsmen that when he lunched with him in Paris the day before the Leviathan sailed, the general had made no plans for returning to the U. S. The speed, the name, the talk that a Republican was needed to attract the Veterans' vote, combined to make some people suspect that General Pershing had been called from retirement to help make the U. S. safe for the G. O. P.

Other people got excited when Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow, home from smoothing out affairs of oil in Mexico, went for a ride on the Mayflower with President Coolidge.

Other preballot features of the Grand Old Party's grand old party included the following:

P: Publisher William Randolph Hearst released a carefully timed, personally signed editorial, pronouncing Hoover to be "unquestionably the strongest candidate from a mere political point of view" and one by whose nomination the G. O. P. "will strengthen itself for many years to come by aligning . . . elements of foreign descent with the party."

In the same editorial, Publisher Hearst took an indirect thrust at Candidate Smith, whose contempt for Publisher Hearst is well known. "Secretary Hoover is in no sense a demagogue," wrote Publisher Hearst. "He makes no claptrap appeal to public passion or prejudice. He has no tricks of expression or of attire to get himself into the newspapers." P:Mrs. Ruth Hanna McCormick, political Amazon from Illinois, gained fame as an orderer-around of oldtime politicians and as a publicist by getting the anti-Hooverites together and explaining to them that they must stop being Favorite Sons and Farmers' Friends for the moment if they wanted to block Hoover. She succeeded in getting Louis L. Emmerson, the Republican nominee for Governor of Illinois, recognized as a sort of spokesman for the anti-Hoover "allies"--Lowden, Watson, Goff, Curtis. Mrs. McCormick was careful to explain that the "allies" were not "bolters," "agitators," "Bolsheviks" or "radicals;" that they would support Hoover, of course, if and after he was nominated. But, she said, Hoover would be hard to "put over" in the "allies' " States. The "allies" wanted to win locally as well as nationally. The farm issue was vital. . . . The wily Curtis men would not commit themselves on the farm issue. Leader Hilles of New York would join no purely "and" movement. The anti-Administration tenor of the so-called Farmers' "crusade" became embarrassing to the proponents of the "vital issue." But Mrs. McCormick kept right on. "Hoover is done," she said. "That much is certain."

P: Dangling his legs from a table, sparing his voice because of a touch of asthma, Chairman (Senator) Reed Smoot of the Resolutions Committee would give no advance peeps at the Party's platform. But in Washington, before going to Kansas City and after conferences with Candidate Hoover, Idaho's bearlike Borah, another Resolutions Committee member, unveiled an entire platform of his own design, beginning with:

"1. Rigid enforcement of the Prohibition laws and no repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment." While they awaited the text of the platform actually adopted by the G. O. P., citizens amused themselves by reading a Prohibition plank, written for an equivocation prize (which it won) by a Mrs. Emily Stone Whiteley of Baltimore, and submitted by the Baltimore Sun to both parties:

"On the subject of Law Enforcement we desire to make our position perfectly clear. We believe that our precious heritage of liberty can be assured only by the strict enforcement of laws which are the concrete expression of the will of the people. We stand for the sanctity of the home. It is the poor man's castle, and it is the cradle of the Future of our nation. We hereby solemnly rededicate ourselves to the maintenance of the Constitution as a great charter of freedom established by our fathers which guarantees to the American people liberty in the highest sense under the sacred protection of law." P: While the star-studded blue ceiling was being hoisted into place in the convention hall, while the portrait of Calvin Coolidge was being set into place above the rostrum, while Kansas City was being plastered with G. O. P. nameographs in the shape of elephants and the red-fire and sparklers were distributed for parades, the National Committee got through its customary duty of settling the sordid squabbles of the Southern delegates. Most of the disputes were futile ones against Hooverism. The Hooverites saved all but two seats contested against them--Florida 9, Louisiana 10, Mississippi 12, Texas 26, Georgia 4, Tennessee 6, Kentucky 4. More instructive than the results were the hearings themselves. Following is an excerpt from the contest among the Texas factions. The speaker was William M. "Gooseneck Bill" McDonald, robust Negro, antiHooverite, who opposed claims made by National Committeeman Rentfro Banton Creager ("Red-headed Rooster of the Rio Grande").

Mr. McDonald: "Eighty-three of the 154 counties of the State contain all the Republican votes. The others is them prairie-dog counties. In them counties they have rattlesnakes and Democrats, but no Republicans. But these fellows [Creager et al.] have been high-molligatin' all over the State gettin' delegates for their convention. They gave every county, even those where not a single Republican vote is cast, representation in it." Committeeman Creager won this contest by explaining that the Texas law requires all counties to be represented.

"Make way for Secretary Mellon," cried a policeman, as the most significant person of the convention stepped from the train. Reporters swarmed about Mr. Mellon, asking him if he was going to the Hotel Muehlebach. He mumbled: "I--I--well, I think so. I think--well, I hope they have a room for me. I understand I'm to go there." With this shy little figure, apparently, rested Candidate Hoover's fate. From him, Bosses Butler of Massachusetts and Hilles of New York were prepared to 'take their cues. The anti-Hoover "allies" could not guess what effect their defeatist propaganda had had upon the Party's powerful patrician. "The only question is whether we haven't overdone it," said one Ally.