Roses & Roses

Last week women throughout the land began to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their enfranchisement. Candles were lighted, cakes cut, roses distributed, old feminist banners, buttons and propaganda dug up for historic display. The National League of Women Voters held a great banquet in Manhattan at which Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Honorary President of N. L. of W. V. and second only to the late great Susan Brownell Anthony as a feminist, flayed men voters with all her old vigor of presuffrage days.

Last week's celebrations had no significant connection with the calendar. The 19th Amendment was not proclaimed a part of the Constitution until Aug. 26, 1920, two days after ratification by the 36th state, Tennessee.*

Casting up a balance of what, besides the vote, the 19th Amendment has brought them, U. S. women had to admit the results were not large--yet. Thirteen women have been elected to the House of Representatives. Two states (Montana and Texas) have had women governors. One woman, the late Mrs. Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia, sat by honorary appointment for two days in the U. S. Senate. To state legislatures 149 women have been elected. One woman has sat in the President's sub-cabinet. No woman has been appointed to the U. S. judiciary proper, though one now sits on the U. S. Customs Court, another on the board of tax appeals.

But women throughout the land were watching with greatest interest last week a political campaign in Illinois which might well result in the election of the first woman to the U. S. Senate. On April 8, Illinois Republicans will vote for a Senatorial nominee. The two major candidates: Charles Samuel Deneen, the present Senator; and Ruth Hanna McCormick, relict of Senator Joseph Medill McCormick, daughter of the late great Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Ohio.

Never before had a woman made so serious a bid for a Senate seat. For weeks Mrs. McCormick has stumped the state through storm and snow. An expert campaigner with an inherited flair for politics, she had built up an organization of workers in every one of Illinois' 102 counties. She asked for the women's vote, but she could truthfully say she did not want it simply because she was a woman. No professional feminist is Mark Hanna's daughter, but that rare thing among women, a truly professional politician.

Last week she swung into Chicago for the final wind-up of her campaign. Observers pronounced her tactics a credit to her astute father's memory. She celebrated her soth birthday anniversary by receiving an enormous cake-model of the Senate wing of the U. S. Capitol.

Mrs. McCormick had a good personal reason for wanting to beat Senator Deneen. In the April 1924 primary he had defeated her husband for his renomination.

As in most contests between professionals, the formal issue of the Deneen-Mc-Cormick contest was one remote from the man-in-the-street, in this case U. S. entry into the World Court. Mrs. McCormick, like her isolationist husband before her, is against it. Senator Deneen is for it. As in most Illinois campaigns, there was mudslinging. Mrs. McCormick found her mud in Senator Deneen's friendship for Joseph ("Diamond") Esposito, Chicago underworldling.

White-haired, conventional Senator Deneen, ardent Y. M. C. A. worker that he is, was appealing to the ''better element" of the state, making "law-and-order"' his prime slogan. Esposito, his friend, once ran the Bella Napoli, was reputed in his day to be as monstrous a gangster as Alphonse ("Scarface") Capone. Senator Deneen stood as godfather for an Esposito child, partook of the Esposito baptismal feast, had himself photographed with the family. In March 1928, Esposito was shot down with 58 lead slugs in his head, according to Senator Deneen's count. The '"law-and-order" Senator attended the Esposito funeral, marched in the front rank.

Taunted by Mrs. McCormick to explain his friendship with such a character, Senator Deneen lately made a speech in a remote corner of the state in which he almost wept over Esposito's slaying, eulogized him as a fine and valiant citizen who had died in the "cause." To help prove what a splendid character he was, Senator Deneen cited the fact that 19,000 roses, costing $10,000, had been strewn along the ten-mile funeral route. Mrs. McCormick's secret stenographer took down that speech. Few are the Illinois voters who do not now know about Senator Deneen and his Friend Esposito. Commentators have nicknamed the contest "The War of the Roses."

But even the rose story was not enough to stir large numbers of voters. The outcome of next week's primary seemed to depend largely on organization strength. Mrs. McCormick had proved herself a remarkable statewide vote-getter in 1928 when she rolled up some 1,700,000 votes which elected her congressman-at-large. Now she has the support of potent elements of the regular state organization, including Percy B. McCullough, Chairman of the Republican State Committee, and Barney W. Snow, Chicago G. 0. P. leader.

The election, it was agreed, would be largely settled in Cook County, where Mrs. McCormick and Senator Deneen were last week campaigning nip & tuck.

*Three states--Maryland, Virginia, Alabama --rejected the amendment.

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