Puddler Candidate

"I feel particularly qualified to represent this great Commonwealth. . . . I have acquired intimate knowledge of the problems of government. . . . I have been in daily touch with all questions affecting capital and labor . . . and have made hundreds of decisions of great importance to each. The success of my administration is best proven by my three successive appointments. . . I have never failed to advocate those things our people thought best for their prosperity and happiness. . . ."

In such language, last week, did James John Davis, Secretary of Labor, finally announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination as U. S. Senator from Pennsylvania in the May primary. No one was greatly startled by Mr. Davis's announcement. He had been publicly toying with the notion of running for the Senate for months. First he had revealed that "public pressure" for him as Senator was so insistent that he did not see how he could get out of being a candidate. Then he declared the "pressure" had veered, that the people of Pennsylvania wanted him for Governor. When he later announced that he would remain in the Hoover Cabinet for three more years at least, everybody supposed the "pressure" had measurably relaxed. Finally, last week, the definite announcement of his candidacy popped out, to make it appear as though irresistible "pressure" had once more been applied.

But still it was quite possible that Mr. Davis would remain in the Hoover Cabinet for years. He may be defeated in the primary. When asked if he would resign to make his campaign, he retorted: "Certainly not! Did Al Smith resign [as New York's Governor] when he ran for President?" Instead of picking a defeated candidate as his example Mr. Davis might with equal force have recalled, as winning presidential nominees, Democrat Thomas Woodrow Wilson, who remained Governor of New Jersey until three days before his inauguration as U. S. President, or Republican Warren Gamaliel Harding, who kept.his Senate seat for two months after the landslide that sent him to the White House. On the other hand, William Howard Taft resigned as Secretary of War, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, before they entered their presidential campaigns.

As part of his campaign, though before its formal announcement, Secretary Davis last fortnight handed out a fictitious interview between himself and an imaginary newsman. Excerpts:

Reporter: "Mr. Davis, those who oppose you are going to attack you because of your connection with the Loyal Order of Moose."

Secretary Davis: "The members of the Moose have nothing to hide. It is ... one of the country's foremost philanthropic and charitable societies."

Reporter: "They are saying that some of the Moose clubs are wet."

Secretary Davis: ". . . occasionally there may be a violation in one of the clubs. . . . But ... if found guilty the charter is taken away and the club is closed. The Moose is a law-abiding, charitable and benevolent organization."

Reporter: "They are also going to talk about your salary."

Secretary Davis: "I receive no salary from the Moose for my work as Chairman of the Board of Governors of Mooseheart, Ill. . . . However, Mr. Reporter, I do not expect to deal in these trivial things or in personalities or in casting any aspersions on any man's character."

For the Republican nomination Secretary Davis will oppose Senator Joseph Ridgway Grundy. He will get no support from his Cabinet colleague and fellow-Pennsylvanian, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew William Mellon, who favors Mr. Grundy's faction of the Pennsylvania G.0.P. But he will have the backing of Philadelphia's William Scott Vare, Senator-reject, whose seat Mr. Grundy now holds. When Mr. Vare withdrew as a senatorial candidate to support Mr. Davis, the Labor Secretary acknowledged the courtesy as follows: "I'm always grateful for the help of any good man." Candidate Davis makes much of the fact that he was once a Pennsylvania iron puddler. He likes to return to the Pittsburgh Mills periodically and, before well-focussed cameras, fiddle around the furnaces, get dirty, wash up with "the men" at their trough, shake hands with one and all, smile amiably and good-naturedly.

Pennsylvania Republican primaries are notoriously extravagant. Some two million dollars was spent by three Senate candidates in the 1926 contest which resulted in the Vare nomination and scandal. Nebraska's Senator Norris has already moved to keep the Grundy-Davis campaign expenditures under strictest scrutiny by a special Senate committee.

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