Pinchot v. G. O. P.

Gifford Pinchot, Republican nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania, last week lost a large chunk of political support but none of his oldtime Rooseveltian capacity for denunciation. Charles B. Hall and Samuel Salus, potent members of the Philadelphia G. O. P. machine under Boss William Scott Vare, repudiated him to support John M. Hemphill, the Democratic Nominee. Mr. Pinchot exploded: "They're gangsters first and Republicans as a matter of convenience afterwards. . . . Hall . . . stands for everything decent voters despise and hate. His support is always a liability."

The Pennsylvania Railroad also chuffed over to the Democratic Nominee. Its president, William Wallace Atterbury, re-signed as the State's Republican National Committeeman because he refused to support Nominee Pinchot. Again exploded Nominee Pinchot: "My demand that Atterbury . . . either perform or resign has borne fruit. . . . Atterbury has been using the employes of the Pennsylvania Railroad on time paid for with its money to do his political bidding, to the serious cost of the stockholders of the road. . . . It is an outrageous abuse of the interests of the railroad. . . . His treachery to the party which honored him has made the issue crystal clear."

The Republican split against Nominee Pinchot continued to widen when 47 of Philadelphia's 48 G. O. P. ward leaders came out for Nominee Hemphill. In Pittsburgh 25 potent businessmen, including Board Chairman Andrew Wells Robertson of Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., President George Stewart Davison of Gulf Refining Co. and President Arthur Luther Humphrey of Westinghouse Air Brake Co., joined political forces with Board Chairman Samuel Mathews Vauclain of Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia to defeat Nominee Pinchot.

Three sound explanations existed for this Republican breach which seriously unsettled the certainty that Pennsylvania, as it has done for the last 39 years, would elect a Republican governor in November. They were: 1) longstanding hostility be tween Nominee Pinchot and Boss Vare, whose candidate for governor Mr. Pincho' defeated in the primary; 2) the Wet appeal of Nominee Hemphill in Republican urban districts; 3) the apprehension of Big Business at Nominee Pinchot's "radical" program of industrial and utility regulation.

Pennsylvania tycoons, normally Republican, considered Nominee Hemphill "right" on this all-important economic issue. Because the liberal party had also given Mr. Hemphill its gubernatorial nomination, disaffected Republicans could, with a clear political conscience, support him as an independent rather than as a Democrat.

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