President-Reject

"I have brought back everything except my voice. The emotion of a moment like this is beyond expression. I can only thank you." The small, deep-lidded eyes of Herbert Clark Hoover glistened with welling tears. A sentimental man, it visibly moved him to be back in California in his big rambling mansion on the Stanford University campus. He had not heard any returns yet. It was midday. He was only trying to thank a group of neighbors and admirers who had come up the hill to pay their respects. He had come into the State during the night, been met in the morning at Sacramento by Governor Rolph, getting off his train at Oakland to ferry across San Francisco Bay amid a din of factory and boat whistles, roaring airplanes, booming guns on the Presidio. The sidewalks of Market Street were packed solidly with cheering populace as his cortege moved through. At the civic centre Herbert Hoover went up to a balcony and said: "I accept this welcome not as President of the United States but as a Californian returning to his home State."

This, like a short speech he had made at Sacramento, was of course a final plea for California votes. At Sacramento, with some bitterness, he had said: "There has been increasing untruth and misrepresentation in some of the Press of California, and particularly by the Press of William Randolph Hearst. One would have thought that the President of the United States coming from California was a monster. If Mr. Hearst represented the ideals and the character of California, he would have been President long ago." Toward dusk, in the big house on the Palo Alto hill, blackboards were set up, just as they had been one triumphant evening in 1928. On that occasion the happy guests and their gravely exalted host had watched the electoral votes of the nation pile up, up, up into the most colossal majority ever polled by a President-elect--444 for Hoover & Curtis to 87 for Smith &; Robinson. Now many of the same guests and a host deeply dejected but keeping a brave front, watched the slow pile-up of an electoral total even more colossal against Herbert Hoover. There was no mistaking the full significance of this landslide as one Republican State after another was set down in the Roosevelt column. Little Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont looked lonely, almost pathetic as big Massachusetts, which for a while looked Republican, swung over to the Democrats and mighty New York rolled up an 800,000 Roosevelt plurality. Pennsylvania, which the straw polls had shown Democratic, stood fast, as did little Delaware and Connecticut. But they were the only ones, an incredible total of only six States faithful to the man who carried 40 States four years ago. Before the eyes of the blackboard watchers the vote of all the rest of the country mounted up & up against Herbert Hoover--even New Jersey, even Michigan, even Ohio, even Postmaster General Brown's precinct in Ohio, even Charles Curtis' Kansas, even his own California, by a thumping plurality that was running close to 300,000 when, at 9:17 p. m., its native son acknowledged that the country had rejected him and telegraphed to his opponent. Herbert Hoover had likened his campaign to that of Lincoln in 1864. His defeat was the worst any President had had in a straight two-party campaign since that same year, when Lincoln beat General McClellan 212 to 21.

The President had not stayed long with his guests to watch the returns. As in 1928 he had withdrawn himself in triumph, now he withdrew in defeat to his study with his old friend and secretary, Ray Lyman Wilbur, his sons and secretary Richey. Just before 9 o'clock Richey said: "We have conceded nothing yet." Mrs. Hoover was preparing a buffet supper when Jack McDowell, Stanford's alumni secretary, came out and read the message of defeat. After a moment of silence, every one applauded, meaning to acclaim the loser's gallantry. Floodlights on the roof lighted the faces of several hundred Stanford students who now were massing around the house. "S I S S--B O O M--A H. . . . HOOVER!!" roared the students.

The President & Mrs. Hoover walked out through a French window to the terrace. "All I can do is thank you for this demonstration of fine loyalty," he said, and again there were tears in his eyes. "A very great man has been defeated," explained Everett Sanders, the political hack who, as chairman of the Republican National Committee, was beaten too. "The millions of votes that have been cast for him constitute not only a marvelous tribute to him but approval of his policies. . . . "Millions have hoped that a political change would better their economic condition. This vote has outnumbered the votes of those who did understand." Republican Trubee Davison, defeated for Lieutenant Governor of New York: "Well, I guess that's over the dam." In Chicago, Socialist Norman Thomas with no electoral votes but a popular vote expected to total perhaps 2,000,000: "Governor Roosevelt may find the mass protest vote more of a boon in getting him elected than in helping to face the years that lie ahead."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.