Caboose Campaign

Illinois politics, intraparty and interparty, divide between industrial wet Chicago and agricultural dry Down-State, win Down-State votes, to defeat Senator Charles Samuel Deneen for the Republican senatorial nomination in next April's primary election, Congresswoman Ruth Hanna McCormick, Mark Hanna's daughter, widow of Senator Medill McCormick, set out last week none too confident of success.

First thing against her in her southern campaign was the weather. Dense fog, icy roads kept many from her meetings in Mattoon After, leaving a tiny audience at Olney, she found that the flooding Wabash had made her motor useless, had stopped railway passenger service to Newton, her next stop. She borrowed a section handcar, started off over the rails. Overtaken by a freight train, she and her party hustled the handcar off the tracks clambered into the caboose, huddled around a small wood-stove with the conductor and brakeman until they trundled into Newton.

In southern Illinois, Mrs. McCormick found husbandmen, after lean years, interested chiefly in farm relief and the tariff not in the League of Nations or the World Court. She spoke of a compromise tariff helpful to farmer and industrialist alike. What made Mrs. McCormick glum was the discovery of a widespread prejudice against a woman in the Senate. Added this was the covert opposition of many Illinois women to her because of what they considered her politically autocratic manner. Said she: "I hope nobody will vote for me simply "because I am a woman or vote against me solely because I am a woman."

But if Mrs. McCormick felt glum at the prospects, she was not going to admit it to the husbandmen who listened to her speeches nor to the representatives of the press who plied her with questions. She told one and all that her campaigning so far had been "perfectly delightful." After a speech at Carmi, she remarked: "I have spoken to an average of 1,200 persons since I started at Shelbyville last Monday and the reception has been extraordinary." Many of the "1,200" had plowed through deep snow in below zero weather to hear her speak.

Mrs. McCormick, it was conceded, had a less than even chance to defeat Senator Deneen. Chicago, with its machine, probably would go Deneen. Down-State might go McCormick unless Newton Jenkins, third candidate, managed to split the vote. The Chicago Tribune ("World's Greatest Newspaper"), part-owned by Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick, brother-in-law of the candidate, had not committed itself beyond regretting the lack of a wet candidate. Should a wet Democrat arise, the Tribune might support him. Should he not, and should Mrs. McCormick be nominated, it might support her, although, as she has most carefully pointed out, no Tribune stock belongs to her. Even so, Chicagoans were surprised at the coolness of Brother-in-law Robert's potent paper toward Sister-in-law Ruth's candidacy.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.