First Nomination

In a crude tented amphitheatre set among the Ozarks of Arkansas last week was made the first presidential nomination for 1932. Nominee of the Liberty Party was William Hope ("Coin") Harvey, So, half-blind veteran of the "free silver" era of politics. His nominators were half a thousand discouraged Republicans, disgruntled Democrats, disgusted Socialists, Populists and Independents who gathered from 25 States. Plain, thin-pursed men with faces stamped with sun and soil, most of them were in overalls or shirt sleeves. Theirs, they needed no realist to tell them, was a hopeless gesture against the two major parties but at least it was a gesture springing from strong political convictions that U. S. economics are today sadly out of gear.

William Hope Harvey was born in what is now Putnam County. West Virginia. He practiced law in Chicago, moved to Denver, mined silver, made money, listened to debates on the silver question. No economist, he published in 1894 a pamphlet called "Coin's Financial School," in which "Professor Coin" held a series of imaginary interviews with leading bankers, farmers, editors, on free silver coinage as a political cureall. "Professor Coin's" financial sophistries were made to defeat and convince all-comers. Within a year Harvey had sold 1,000,000 copies of his pamphlet to debt-ridden farmers who supposed the interviews to be authentic. "Coin's Financial School" created such a stir that parades were held in the East to combat its heterodox influence. It was upon this silver issue, as popularized by Harvey, that William Jennings Bryan was nominated and defeated for the Presidency in 1896. Harvey worshipped Bryan, stumped the Midwest for him, antagonized good Democratic audiences by going wildly off the silver track. So important had Harvey become that he was later made chairman of the Democratic Ways & Means Committee to collect money for the 1900 campaign. As a result of a quarrel before that election, he resigned and retired in disgust to the hamlet of Monte Ne, Ark. There in a modest little house, he became something of a hermit, puttering around among the hills, issuing dire predictions on the fate of the nation unless radical economic changes were made. A-summer resort he tried to start became an industrial college for Holy Rollers.

Two years of Depression brought "Coin" Harvey again to the fore with all his old remedies for relief. To his rococo amphitheatre rimmed around with huge signboards inscribed with his fiscal dogma, he summoned his followers, and announced: "Usury has its deadly grip on all governments. A new political party must come quickly into action or civilization itself will be lost. The people have awakened. The hour is at hand."

Delegates cheered. Spectators who had paid 25-c- admission looked puzzled. Some one started singing "The More We Get Together." Rain pattered down on the tent roof. After much debate the brand-new Liberty Party formed a national platform: 1) a five-year moratorium on all private debts, including mortgages; 2) free silver coinage at a 16-to-1 gold ratio; 3) government ownership of all banks; 4) government ownership of public utilities; 5) abolition of taxes; 6) unsecured paper currency. Out of the Liberty Party's platform was kept a "wild suggestion by a St. Louis statistician" that the Government, to end war, bribe the enemy to surrender. Each deserter would get $1,000. Moreover, the crew of a hostile battleship would be paid $6,000,000 to deliver it up to the U. S.

When Mr. Harvey intimated that he was too old to run for President, a great wrangle developed at the convention. Thereupon Mr. Harvey changed his mind, declared: "Rather than see the party fall into the hands of those who might disrupt it, I the nomination accept." Cheers echoed throughout the Ozark hills. For Vice President the Liberty Party nominated one Andrae Nardskog, 45, president of the Southwest Water League of California.

Near the convention stood the base of what Coin Harvey hopes some day will be his "pyramid to posterity"--an 85-ft. shaft above a hollow concrete block. Inside this chamber he proposes to deposit and seal up records and relics of the 20th Century, its literature and laws, its homely articles, its great machinery in miniature, to be opened aeons hence by archeologists searching for traces of a civilization which, Philosopher Harvey fears, will soon be lost.

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