Before the Flood

The carpenters were still pounding, the painters still painting, the sign saying "This Is A WPA Job" was still on" the sidewalk in front of Cleveland's Public Hall, when the preliminaries of the Republican National Convention got under way. For Republicans were in such a hurry last week that they overflowed Cleveland long before their convention began. More eager than animals to get aboard the Ark before the Flood, politicians came in, not two by two, but ten by ten.

Euclid Avenue was filled with old familiar faces, some of whom Cleveland had not seen since 1924 when her new Public Hall needed no WPA renovation and Calvin Coolidge was nominated. C. Bascom Slemp from Virginia, David A. Reed from Pennsylvania, Ralph E. Williams from Oregon, Walter F. Brown from nearby Toledo, Jim Watson over the border from Indiana, Charles G. Dawes from Chicago, came trooping in. So did the Elephant's ladies, Alice Longworth from Cincinnati, Ruth Hanna [McCormick] Simms, now from New Mexico, Ruth Baker Pratt from New York. Crowds seethed in hotel lobbies. Fat men sweated in hotel rooms. Newshawks scuffled after rumors. Whiskey went down and fines went up.

Onetime Senator George Higgins Moses from New Hampshire rushed about making statements to stir up enthusiasm for Candidate Frank Knox. Bald-domed Carl Bachmann from West Virginia bustled for Candidate Borah. But the spotlight burned steadily on the sleek, curly head of young John Hamilton, manager for Alf Landon. Perched on the back of an overstuffed chair in Cleveland's old-fashioned Hollenden Hotel, Hamilton had the Press basking at his feet as he announced that Landon would have over 300--no--over 400 votes, perhaps a majority (502 votes) on the first ballot.

Through a fantastic pre-convention week Hamilton drove a bandwagon. Nothing was news unless it bore the name of Landon. A majority of Pennsylvania delegates would plump for Landon. All the Old Guard politicians were conspiring in vain to ''Stop Landon." Indiana's State Convention picked its delegates, tagged them Landon. Emporia's sage, beaming William Allen White, and troops of Kansans roamed the streets wearing yellow sunflowers inscribed "Landon." The Texas delegation came out, all over again, for Landon.

A trio of crooners began to sing Oh! Susanna, but the words were :

Our Ship of State is on the Rocks And soon it will be sunk. It has no pilot at the wheel But regimented Bunk. It wanders to the right and left, It flounders all around. It needs a Captain on the Bridge Whose reckoning is sound. London, Oh! Landon, will lead to Victory, With the dear old Constitution And it's good enough for me.*

To Republicans eager to lick the New Deal, any bandwagon was a terrible temp tation. The angry, selfish old men of the political sea could not control their follow ers. Charles D. Hilles, boss of New York Republicanism, arrived, for the first time in years, without his delegation in his vest pocket. Fortnight ago one of Mr. Hilles' four delegates-at-large, Mrs. Robert Low Bacon, brisk wife of swank Long Island's Congressman "Bob" Bacon, announced that the women vice chairmen of most of New York's Republican county committees were for Landon and that New York's nominating votes must go to him Or Else. Mr. Hilles maintained a pained silence while newshawks counted almost a majority of New York's 90 delegates, with Hilles' consent or without, for Landon. J. Henry Roraback, boss of Connecticut, appeared in Cleveland with the news that before entraining he had conceded Connecticut to Landon. "It's all over," said Boss Roraback.

New Faces. To seasoned political correspondents who have watched hard-eyed, cigar-chewing Old Guardsmen from Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio run Republican conventions for years, the pre-convention scene's most striking aspect was the upsurge of new Midwestern faces. Roly-poly Editor William Allen White of the Emporia, Kas. Gazette and broad-beamed Managing Editor Roy Roberts of the Kansas City Star headed the contingent of Kansas journalists and political amateurs who buzzed importantly around Landon headquarters. Mostly men in their 40's who had brought their homebody wives along, they were frankly delighted at finding themselves the centre of convention interest after all the years in which Eastern Old Guardsmen had treated Kansans like country cousins. Whether Alf Landon became President or not, the Convention of 1936 would be memorable as marking a radical shift in the Republican centre of gravity. "This is one convention," keynoted Landon's curly-headed Hamilton, "where there will be no smoke- filled room nomination."

Coalition. Publisher Paul Block had been pushing it for months. It had bobbed up repeatedly in political chitchat. But the proposal for a 1936 coalition ticket did not really boom until the arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune plumped for it in a front-page editorial last week. Democrats actually suggested for the Republican Vice Presidential nomination were Virginia's Senator Byrd, Massachusetts' onetime Governor Joseph B. Ely, Newton D. Baker, Lewis W. Douglas. "The liquidation of the New Deal," cried the Herald Tribune, "calls for a permanent alliance of all who would keep America American."

Significant was the fact that this proposal, which at any previous GOP pre-convention gathering would have been dismissed as raving lunacy, was dismissed in Cleveland last week as merely unstrategic and impractical. Cracked Scripps-Howard's Raymond Clapper: "Republicans won't win this election by operating a comfort station for anti-New Deal Democrats."

Amendment. Another idea to excite the conventioneers also began in an editorial. Two days after the Supreme Court denied New York's right to set minimum wages for women workers (TiME, June 8), William Allen White came out in his Emporia Gazette for a platform plank favoring a constitutional amendment to overcome that ban. Clarioned he: "The Supreme Court has honestly even if tragically called our attention to the need of a power in government which now obviously is restricted. That need is the issue of the hour. The Republican convention must not sidestep it. ... The Republican Party must not let the Democrats fire the first shot in the new battle for human freedom."

At this breath-taking proposal to steal a march on the New Deal, Manager Hamilton snapped: "Mr. White will have one vote out of the 18 from Kansas. Nobody is authorized to speak for Landon but Landon himself." Nonetheless Editor White was named Kansas' member of the convention's Resolutions Committee, thereby became wielder of the Landon pen in the writing of the platform. Constitution-loving Candidate Borah denounced the amendment proposal as a "matter of political expediency." But it remained a prime subject of convention talk, especially after Herbert Hoover paused at Ogden, Utah, on his way to Cleveland, announced that he was for it.

"Stop Landon/-- CandidateVandenberg took the spotlight one day by announcing in Washington that he would refuse the Vice Presidential nomination, thereby killing Kansas' hopes of a Landon-Vandenberg ticket. Two days later the Michigan Senator arrived in Cleveland, primed to add his bit to the dying "Stop Landon" movement. Oldtime Senator Moses, manager for Candidate Knox, spluttered angrily about Landon attempts to stampede "a deliberative assembly" and "frighten" delegates by extravagant claims of strength. By radio the New Hampshire Old Guardsman boomed: "This is a crisis and it must be treated as such. It must be dealt with as a matter of principle." Chimed Candidate Vandenberg: "I'm not interested in bandwagons. I'm interested in principles. This is not a circus. It is a crusade. ... I feel most emphatically that we are at a crisis and that the Republican Party should resolve itself into a political Salvation Army to come to the rescue. . . ."

Into this idealistic atmosphere plunged Candidate Borah, expected by "Stop Landon" men to be the spearhead of their attack. With great emphasis on his Principles, the Senator from Idaho declared that he was first & foremost interested in the platform, refused to join a cabal against any candidate. To him the identity of the nominee was and always had been a matter of secondary importance. "I think," boomed he, "we should have a clarion call in our platform so that the average man in the street may not find it hard to read and know what it means."

Issue-- As observers waited for outlines of the coming campaign to emerge from this week's doings at Cleveland, of two things they could last week feel certain: 1) no amount of clarioning about Crises and Crusades could obscure the fact that the central issue of the election would be Franklin D. Roosevelt, personally. 2) The direction pointed by the Republican leadership would not be opposite to Franklin Roosevelt's direction but almost parallel to it. These factors would make for a campaign of personalities and fine distinctions, a campaign of mighty mudslinging, immense oratorical confusion and an out come expressive of anything but a clear mandate from the People for the political and economic advancement of the U. S.

*Original words: I came from Alabama Wid my banjo on my knee, I'm g'wan to Louisiana My true love for to see, It rained all night the day I left, The weather it was dry, The sun so hot I froze to death; Susanna, don't you cry. Oh! Susanna, Oh, don't you cry for me, I've come from Alabama, Wid my banjo on my knee.

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