Profit & Loss

While President Hoover, back at his White House desk, strove to minimize the political significance of his 2,500-mi. Mid-West trip which ended last week, G. 0. Politicians who will conduct his campaign for re-election next year balanced up the trip's profit & loss. On his excursion the President behaved like a candidate, even if he did not talk like one. He took local Republican leaders aboard his special train for political hobnobbing. From the rear platform of his car he conversed easily with boys about dogs and fishing. He unbent to the point of making several extemporaneous speeches. He shook thousands of hands.

Yet the behavior of the Hoover crowds was not all the President's friends wished for. They were respectful but cool. They lifted their hats but not their voices. The silence of the Indianapolis street crowds, which were far smaller than advertised, prompted a local Republican to explain to correspondents that they were tired from long standing and waiting for the President. Remarked an irreverent newshawk: "Well, they're not standing on their hands, are they?"

At the Harding tomb in Marion spectators seemed far more interested in Calvin Coolidge than in President Hoover. They so pressed about him that he could not reach his own car and had to be driven away in a commandeered machine. Springfield was the most cordial to the President but even there there was no "whooping-it-up-for-Hoover," no lusty demonstrations, no hat-tossing. Careful planning by the Hoover bodyguard averted all unfriendly exhibitions throughout the trip. At Springfield 350 "hunger marchers" who planned to demonstrate before the President were kept off-stage under virtual arrest by the local police. Republicans comforted themselves with the thought that, as Alfred Emanuel Smith discovered in 1928, noisy receptions do not always mean big votes.

The President's Indianapolis speech did him the most political good. The Indiana editors present were primed for partisan ballyhoovering. Applause was clocked as follows:

The President's introduction 2 min. 30 sec.

Senator Watson 30 sec.

Governor Leslie 10 sec.

Prosperity 8 sec.

Avoidance of strikes 3 sec.

Immigration Restriction 12 sec.

U. S. v. foreign conditions 5 sec.

Against a dole 14 sec.

Farm Protection 6 sec.

20-Year Plan 12 sec.

Miscellaneous 1 min. 37 sec.

Total Applause 5 min. 47 sec.

Because it unburied old skeletons of Republican scandal, President Hoover's dedication of the Harding memorial was the most politically costly event of the whole trip. Though the President met the issue squarely by declaring that Harding had been betrayed by his trusted friends, nevertheless the malodorous names of Albert Bacon Fall and Harry Micajah Daugherty bobbed up to be linked in headlines with his own. Daugherty, a trustee of the Harding Memorial Association, was present at the Marion ceremony, sat behind the President. Later a controversy arose as to whether President Hoover had greeted with a handshake the man who as Attorney General was driven out of the same Cabinet in which he sat as Secretary of Commerce.

President Hoover's denunciation of those who had betrayed Harding ended Bribee Fall's hopes that he would be pardoned.

Even before he got back to Washington. President Hoover was publicly interrogated about his Harding speech by Senator Thomas James Walsh, relentless Teapot Dome inquisitor. With an eye cocked on politics, Senator Walsh said:

"That was an interesting bit of history introduced by President Hoover, namely the realization by Harding that he had been betrayed. . . . Intimations to that effect have frequently been made, but never by any one in a position to know as well as the President. . . . Of the faithlessness of which particular friend or friends did President Harding have knowl-edge--Fall, Daugherty, Forbes or Miller? If he had such knowledge, why did he not peremptorily dismiss them?

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