Travels with a Donkey

One evening last week an elderly, scholarly gentleman at the railroad station in New Haven. Conn, was extricating himself as goodnaturedly as he could from beneath a commodious piece of brown headgear which had been shoved down over his ears, not by a Hallowe'ening undergraduate but by a hearty, rough-voiced, middle-aged man whom he did not know very well except that the name was Alfred Emanuel ("Al") Smith. After Mr. Smith of New York left town, Dr. Wilbur Lucius Cross reflected that his political baptism in the name of the Brown Derby was by far the most exciting thing that had occurred to him since 1916, when he was appointed Dean of the Yale Graduate School, a position which he resigned (but not his editorship of the Yale Review) last summer upon being nominated for high public office.

Still more exciting to 68-year-old Dr. Cross was the news, a few evenings later, that his campaign against the one-man rule of Republican Boss John Roraback had been successful, that he was Connecticut's next Governor.

Having spent a thoughtful life among books (his tasks having included editing Ivanhoe and Travels with a Donkey), Dr. Cross was much better prepared to receive the shock, so pleasant to him, than were most other Connecticut citizens. Few of the scores of thousands of voters who poured forth to mark ballots for him had any real idea he could win from Boss Roraback's man, Lieut. Governor Ernest E. Rogers. In August the State had looked pretty Democratic -- especially the big cities like Bridgeport and New Haven and some of the little ones like Danbury. But by the opening of hunting season the Republican workers were telling each other, with even more confidence than after the Smith scare of 1928, that there was no crevice in the Wooden Nutmeg. The nippy dawn of Nov. 5 beheld a vast amount of head-scratching and shoulder-shrugging among Republican nutmeggers when they heard over their radios the first figure of its kind in years: a 3,000-vote majority for Travels with a Donkey.

Some other State choices:

New York. Not even Alfred Emanuel Smith ever rolled up so vast a lead-- more than 715.000 votes--as Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt had over Charles Henry Tuttle of the increasingly disorganized New York G. O. P. The figures increased the validity, if not the valence, of Governor Roosevelt's ambition to be No. 1 U. S. Democrat.

Pennsylvania. "Wholehearted" was perhaps not the word for the support which the Mellons gave Gifford Pinchot, though it accurately described the non-support he got from Philadelphia's Boss Vare and Railroader William Wallace Atterbury. For weeks it had seemed that John M. Hemphill, a Democrat-"Liberal" with Beer, Business and a little black toothbrush on his lips, would be the anointed one and make Pennsylvania history. Yet when Allegheny County's (the Mellons') votes were counted, there were 70,000 extra for Pinchot--the backlog of his 50,000 statewide majority--and Theodore Roosevelt's forester was returned to governorship.*

Ohio. With Wet Robert Johns Bulkley plowing and grinning the way, Dry George White, Princeton 1895, one-time Klondike prospector, three-time (1911-15, 1917-19) Congressman, recouped as Democratic Governor-elect some of the prestige he lost exactly ten years ago when he tried to make James M. Cox into a President.

Wisconsin. Nothing occurred to impede the foregone gubernatorial election of Philip Fox LaFollette, youngest and fieriest of his tribe.

Arizona. Oldtime Democrat George Wylie Paul Hunt was chosen Governor for the seventh time (missing only three terms) since Arizona became a State in 1911.

California. San Francisco's James ("Sunny Jim") Rolph was promoted from "perpetual" mayor to governor-elect by a thumping 2 to 1 majority over Democrat Milton K. Young (not to be confused with Republican Clement Calhoun Young, present Governor).

Idaho. The election of a Democratic Governor in the domain of Senator William Edgar Borah, independent Republican, was in the nature of a reaction under laboratory conditions -- unadorned evidence of the country's trend. The reagent's name: Ben Ross.

*His first term: 1923-27.

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