Cards Dealt

To get the Hoover campaign rolling in the Midwest, Secretary of War Hurley, dapper and dashing, went to Columbus, Ohio last week to address the Republican State Convention. His speech, like Secretary Mills' in Boston fortnight ago, was a master text, hall-marked by the White House for lesser G. 0. Partisans to echo on the stump. Loud of voice, wide of gesture, Secretary Hurley demonstrated the approved party method of defending President Hoover and attacking Governor Roosevelt. Excerpts:

"Let us compare the vague, indefinite suggestions of the Democratic candidate with the definite, logical, all-inclusive, constructive, non-partisan reconstruction program of Herbert Hoover. . . . The Democratic party has no plans nor policies of its own. . . . There is a deadly parallel between 75% of its platform and the words and policies of the Hoover Administration. . . . The Governor [said] : 'I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people.' Just what is this new deal?

"Is he condemning the Wilson Administration for having given the Allied nations nearly all the money the American taxpayers owned and asking not even a definite promise to pay? Is he going to lift that burden his chieftain placed on American taxpayers? Is the new deal to be a dole . . . or some form of bureaucratic collectivism? . . . The Governor may be honestly trying to give us a new deal but he is dealing from the same old deck from which William Jennings Bryan gave the American people so many 'new deals'. . . . Beware, Governor! Mr. McAdoo, Mr. Hearst and Speaker Garner may have stacked the deck on you. . . .

"President Hoover fought . . . insisted . . . upheld . . . inaugurated . . . sponsored . . . stopped . . . conciliated . . . prevented . . . defeated . . . mobilized . . . directed . . . bolstered . . . extended . . . created. . . . But Depression has proved a stubborn foe. Like the multiple-headed Hydra, no sooner is one head chopped off when another grows out. [Hoover's] creating jobs did not solve the unemployment problem. His stopping immigration did not give every American a job. His banking reforms did not make every bank solvent. His farm measures did not pay off the debt on every farm. But [his] tactics saved the day. We have prevented disorders, riots, social upheavals. We have cared for the needy, we have averted panic and catastrophe. . . . The United States is tranquil, solvent and confident.

"With all its faults, the Government of the United States and its economic system have given more happiness to more people for a greater period of time than any other government that has ever existed."*

Like Secretary Mills in Boston, Secretary Hurley did not mention Prohibition and his party's Resubmission plank. These omissions were accepted as an indication that nationally the G. O. P. would soft-pedal this issue, at least until the President speaks out on it for himself.

But Prohibition was a hot question before the Ohio State Convention. After a lively floor fight during which a Repeal plank was rejected 708-to-130, the delegates endorsed the party's Chicago declaration. When David Sinton Ingalls, young nominee for Governor, declared for "repeal of all present Prohibition laws," Wets on the floor and in the galleries thundered: WE WANT BEER.

The Hurley speech touched off a short, sharp outburst of partisan oratory in the Senate. Exclaimed Arkansas' Senator Robinson, Democratic floor leader:

"Mills, Hurley and Hyde--the three musketeers of the Hoover Administration! . . . They scoff at this proposal for a new deal. Do these musketeers insist upon playing the game with marked cards?"

*A favorite Hurleyism, ghostwritten for him years ago in Oklahoma.

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