Vare v. Mellon

Kansas City was plastered with posters asking: "Who but Hoover?" At an elevator near the Beaver Man's headquarters in the Baltimore Hotel, one of these posters was just above a larger sign--"HOOVER"--with an arrow pointing the way.

A few hours after the arrival of the Pennsylvania delegation, a wag altered the "b" in "but" on the poster and scratched out two letters of the big sign below. The change was slight, but now the signs posed one of the most intimate questions of the convention: "Who put Hoover OVER?"

After he was "over," Hoover's head quarters admitted the bold extent to which they had bluffed in their pre-convention claims about delegates. They admitted that the arrival of the big and baffling Pennsylvania delegation was like the night before Christmas. New York and Massachusetts would do as Pennsylvania did and that would decide matters. Discovering what Pennsylvania would do was like peeping up the chimney for Santa Claus. The figure whom the Hooverites first saw in the chimney, and whom a nettled press credited with being the real though surprising Santa Claus, was not the frosted patrician, the supposedly all-potent Secretary Mellon. It was sooty and corpulent William S. Vare, the Philadelphia boss whom the U. S. Senate has suspected of, and rejected for, corruption.

Secretary Mellon had descended from his train nervously, shyly, and hurried to shut himself in a hotel suite. He was clinging to his maxim, "There's luck in leisure." Also, obviously, he was under great pressure to draft President Coolidge if possible. He had learned, or accepted, nothing final before leaving Washington.* He still sought conference with other leaders before speaking.

Senator-suspect Vare, on the other hand, strutted down the station platform with his nose turned up even higher than usual, ready for business. A newsman asked him where Mr. Vare was.

"I am Senator Vare," replied the Senator-suspect.

It was after Mr. Vare heard that Secretary Mellon was still temporizing, that his red face flushed with impatience and importance. He issued a statement of his own which said: "The Republicans of Pennsylvania, in my judgment, are for Herbert Hoover. . . ."

In the Mellon suite conferences on drafting Coolidge continued to a negative conclusion. Next day, when Secretary Mellon endorsed Hoover at the Pennsylvania caucus and Boss Vare got a resolution passed alleging his right to a seat in the Senate,f newsmen snorted abusively that the Pittsburgh patrician's course had been dictated by the Philadelphia politician, that Secretary Mellon had been timid and vacillating, that his control of Pennsylvania was a myth, that Boss Vare was Boss indeed and that Hooverism had Boss Vare to thank for its deciding boost. As added evidence of the supremacy of Vare over Mellon, observers recalled that President William Wallace Atterbury of the Pennsylvania R. R., a Vare familiar, had been made National Committeeman from Pennsylvania instead of Senator Reed, the obedient Mellon man. For explanation of Vare animus toward Secretary Mellon it was recalled that George Wharton Pepper had the Mellon money behind him when he opposed Vare for the Senate in 1926, and that far more money was spent for Pepper than for Vare in the slushy campaign for which Vare was later rejected at the Capitol.

During the convention, Secretary Mellon and Boss Vare sat side by side in the front row. They chatted together, sometimes laughed together. Perhaps they were patching things up. Perhaps they really like one another. Perhaps the Vare-Mellon rivalry is a fiction. Perhaps there are simple explanations of what happened in Kansas City: that Boss Vare, a contractor, heartily admired Candidate Hoover, an engineer; that Secretary Mellon, a cautious financier, wanted to explore every contingency before shifting from the Coolidge investment to the Hoover; that Vare, a blunt creature, saw no sense in waiting longer; that Mellon, alive to subtleties, dreaded taking the final step before he had to. -

In any case, the Vare-Mellon episode and the publicity it received were unfortunate for Hooverism. One cartoonist portrayed Boss Vare boosting the Beaver Man up a tree to get the Presidential apple. On the seat of the Beaver Man's white trousers appeared the dirty print of a smudgy, pudgy hand. In any campaign of Hoover v. Smith, if Republicans point to Smith's rich backer, Contractor William Kenny, Democrats will point back at Hoover's friend, Contractor Vare. If Tammany Hall is viewed with alarm, so will be the notorious voting of tombstones, alley cats, children and dead men in the Vare wards of Philadelphia.

* The last conversation between President Coolidge and Secretary Mellon in Washington was reported to have been as follows:

Mellon: "Good morning, Mr. President. I am leaving for the convention and have come to say good bye."

Coolidge: "Good bye."

fPennsylvania tried to get the gist of this resolution incorporated in the G. O. P. Platform. It was thrown out.