Cross v. Boss

At Eastern Point last week the Connecticut Democracy, long a minority in State politics, convened to make nominations for the November election. From Homer Stille Cummings, onetime chairman of the Democratic National Committee, down to the youngest of the 1,000 delegates at the Griswold Hotel, the party representatives had one antagonist in mind: big-bodied, hard-eyed John Henry Roraback, Republican National Committeeman, for 18 years Connecticut's firm-fisted G. O. P. Boss, president of Connecticut Light & Power Co. To break Boss Roraback's grip, the Democrats at Eastern Point informally decided to put up for Governor no hard-boiled political veteran of the same kidney but rather a gentle academic man who had never before stood for public office. He was ruddy-cheeked, white-haired Wilbur Lucius ("Uncle Toby") Cross, 68, long-time professor of English literature at Yale, dean emeritus of Yale's Graduate School, scholarly editor of the Yale Review, author of textbooks on the English novel.

Aware of his probable selection on the morrow, Dean Cross went peacefully to bed after serving notice on party leaders that he would not accept their nomination unless he were given a free hand to reorganize the static Democratic State Committee by turning out its chairman James

J. Walsh, its secretary A. Sidney Lynch, and naming their successors. At 4 a. m. friends of Messrs. Walsh & Lynch burst into Dean Cross's bedroom. He confronted them in a suit of wrinkled blue pajamas. Roughly they told him he could "go to hell" with his dictation to the State Committee. In equally strong language he reiterated his determination to make a fresh start in the party's organization. In that first serious political encounter of his life, Dean Cross proved his mettle, forced his opponents after much wrangling to yield.

Next morning Dean Cross received the Democratic Gubernatorial nomination by acclamation. He was cheered as a "providential candidate" to lead his party out of the wilderness of perpetual defeat. Representative of a new political order, Dean Cross fired the delegates with a new enthusiasm when, in his speech of acceptance, he said:

"... I owe my career to the social and educational institutions of the State, up from the red schoolhouse on the country hillside, through the public highschool, and on to a university founded by the colonists far back of the first days of the Republic. As a poor return for these benefits I stand ready in the present crisis to give to my fellow-citizens such services as they may ask of me provided nothing is asked beyond my abilities. . . .

"The political situation in the State is known to everybody who can read or see. . . . The prime characteristic of the Republican Dictator . . . seems to be astuteness. ... It is charged that he makes Governors; and when he becomes tired of one whom he has made he makes another, better suited to his purpose; that all the other State offices . . . are in his keeping; that he owns the Public Service Commission; that he dictates all appointments which have any bearing upon his own interests; that he controls the General Assembly. . . . "The duties of a Governor are becoming every year more and more complex, owing to the rapid changes in social ideas. A large part of his work is above politics. . . . The immediate aim is to free society of its major ills so that life on this earth may be made happier by the mitigation of fear. Often the means proposed for accomplishing the end prove by experience to be wrong. But out of the mass of these endeavors will be gradually built a new and a better world. . . .

"Prohibition under the 18th Amendment and the law enacted by Congress for its enforcement has . . . collapsed. You cannot reform a nation by sending respectable citizens, as fast as the courts can act, to jail or prison for doing what they and their ancestors for generations have regarded as a matter of private concern. . . . The Democratic Party of Connecticut stands for the repeal. . . . Action is imperative if the people of the United States are to be kept from degenerating into a nation of gin-drinkers. . . ."

Nominee Cross's first act to prove his political mastery was to have Patrick Brett O'Sullivan, onetime Congressman, named chairman of the State Committee and Joseph H. Tone, secretary. Promising the Republicans "a whale of a fight," he hurried back to his Yale Review office at New Haven, prepared for an old-fashioned "cracker barrel" campaign.

Meanwhile Boss Roraback was preoccupied with picking a Republican gubernatorial nominee to oppose Dean Cross. For all the accusations that he selfishly dictates party affairs with an eye cocked on his public utility holdings, he is reputed an honest Boss who enjoys wide respect and who will not stoop to downright crookedness to gain his ends. Last week as Connecticut Republicans were about to convene at Hartford, Boss Roraback settled on Lieut. Governor Ernest Elias Rogers as the man he would make Governor over the opposition of Dean Cross.

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