Wooing the West

Franklin Roosevelt began his week beside the Hudson River, spent his midweek beside the Potomac River and before the week was out had crossed the South Platte River. Wherever he was, he was in the midst of his campaign for reelection. By accident or otherwise, his visitors at Hyde Park included leaders of groups which are giving him strong backing: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of Manhattan, Monsignor Stephen Connolly of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York* and A. F. of L.'s William Green, who publicly promised that 90% of Labor's votes would be cast for Roosevelt.

At Hyde Park Emil Hurja, the New Deal's No. i election dopester, worked out with Nominee Roosevelt a 5,000-mile campaign trip to cover as many doubtful states as possible. While they huddled over their maps and charts, red-headed Frank Murphy, High Commissioner to the Philippines and Democratic Nominee for Governor of Michigan, arrived. Not so happy are New Dealers in Michigan since Republican Senator Couzens took a drubbing in the primaries after announcing that he favored four more years of Roosevelt.

Therefore, Franklin Roosevelt decided on a major speech in Detroit to be made as he swings east this week.

Although three weeks ago the President planned to take no long campaign trip, because in the present state of international affairs he "did not want to be away from his desk for more than five days," after his study of the state of political affairs with Mr. Hurja his projected journey by last week had grown twice that long. To Washington he went for three days to clean up official business. But the three days dwindled to two.

One noon the great eleven-car campaign train, with the President's car Pioneer as caboose, pulled out of Washington. Aboard were nearly 100 persons, including the Nominee's wife, his Secretary of Agriculture, his private secretaries, Senators O'Mahoney, Wheeler, Pittman, newshawks and cameramen.

At Dubuque, Iowa next morning the President's stumping tour began in earnest.

To 10,000 who assembled in a drizzle at the railroad station, Nominee Roosevelt paid tribute to Senator Murphy, killed last summer in an automobile accident, later drove off on a 45-minute inspection of park buildings and rock gardens built by WPA.

Just before dusk he detrained in St. Paul, headed a parade of 75 cars through the city, through Minneapolis, back to St.

Paul, where beneath floodlights on the steps of the State Capitol he made his first prepared speech of the trip to a crowd of 35,000. There, like Secretary Hull two nights before (see p. 16), he defended the lowered tariffs of the reciprocal trade agreements: "Every American--city dweller and farmer alike--ought to fasten this home truth in his memory: When the nations of the world, including America, had jacked their tariffs to the highest point and enacted embargoes and imposed quotas--in those days farm prices throughout the world were at their lowest, and world trade had almost ceased to exist." It was after 8 p. m. when he returned to his train for a late dinner and his chief job of the day. Best applause during his speech had come when he referred to Minnesota's loss "of a virile and magnetic American leader, Floyd Olson . . . my friend for many years. I miss him greatly today." The death of Governor Olson, best Radical vote-getter in Minnesota, and the prospect that Unionist Nominee Lemke would poll a good many Minnesota votes, had admittedly injured Franklin Roosevelt's prospects in that State. To offset that loss New Dealers fortnight ago formed a coalition with Minnesota Farmer-Laborites and scratched the Democratic nominees for Senator and Governor off Minnesota's ballot. Many a good Democrat was thoroughly vexed at this expedient jettisoning of their local organization. In his car Nominee Roosevelt spent over an hour purring pleasantries at irate Democratic leaders.

First Nebraskan to board the Roosevelt Special next morning was Republican Senator George Norris (see p. 18). After the train crossed the Missouri river other Nebraskans clambered board, and shortly after noon the President stood with 10.000 Nebraskans around him on the plaza facing the State's $10,000.000 skyscraper Capitol at Lincoln. There he answered Nominee Landon's budget speech (see p.

17) by saying: "If somebody you trusted were to come to you and say, 'Look here, will you borrow $800 so as to get an increase in your annual income of $2,000,' would you do it or not? "Well, that is what happened to our national finances. All you have to do is to add a lot of zeros to those figures. We have borrowed a net of $8,000,000,000 more in these three and a half years and we have increased the national income over $22,000,000,000--and it is a pretty good investment." At Omaha that evening Martha Harris Hitchcock, widow of the late Senator Gilbert Hitchcock, who had been brought all the way from Washington, did her part.

To offset the influence of her late husband's newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald which is out for Alf Landon, Mrs.

Hitchcock introduced Nominee Roosevelt to a capacity crowd of 12,000 in Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum. There he made his major effort to win the farm vote. After two days' strenuous campaigning his silky voice was a little flat, and New Deal enthusiasts in his audience were so vociferous that many times he had to finish a sentence at the top of his lungs in order to be heard above their ill-timed cheers.

Tired or not, he drove home effectively his most effective argument, cash in the farmers' pockets: "By our Agricultural Adjustment Act, our monetary policy, our soil conservation program and our assistance to farm co-operatives we raised the farmers' net annual income by $3,500,000,000 to a sum three times what it was in 1932. . . .

"For the first time in many cruel years we are getting the problem of the business of farming well in hand. Do you now want to turn over that problem to the care of those who did nothing about it in the past? Do you want to turn it over to those who now make inconsistent, campaign-devised, half-baked promises which you and they know they cannot keep? "It has been said* that the Administration's farm program changes each year like new models of automobiles. I accept that simile. The automobile of today is the same kind of vehicle, in principle, as it was 20 years ago. But because the automobile manufacturer did not hesitate to pioneer--because he was willing to make yearly changes in his model--the nation now drives a car that is vastly improved....

"Good as it was for its day, we have passed beyond Model T farming." At Cheyenne, Wyo., next morning, Mrs.

Roosevelt was 52 years old. After opening her presents, including a fur neckpiece from her husband, she and the President went to church to hear a non-political sermon about Elijah. Afterward, in the only open seven-passenger car which local Democrats could borrow (it belonged to the family of Republican Senator Robert D. Carey's late brother Charles), they drove to Fort Francis E. Warren (formerly Fort D. A. Russell) to lunch with Brigadier Generals Herbert J. Brees and Charles F. Humphrey Jr. After visiting a CCC camp, a Department of Agriculture Experiment Station, the President returned to the Fort where to several thousand soldiers and civilians he praised Peace and Good Roads.

At Denver next day Nominee Roosevelt really warmed to his task of lauding the New Deal. Cried he from the west terrace of the Colorado Capitol: "When this Administration came in, its first act was to discover where the corner was and then to turn it. The turning involved action and the action was based on two obvious and simple methods of locomotion. First, by spending money to put people to work and, secondly, by lending money to stop people from going broke.

"When Republican leaders speak out here they proclaim their sympathy with all these Western projects and promise you more and more of them. When they speak to audiences in the East, they proclaim that they are going to cut governmental expenditures to the bone.

"There was an old Roman god named Janus. He faced both ways. He had two mouths. I need not explain that parable any further." Then believing the West wooed and won. Nominee Roosevelt boarded his train, started East to see if he could not stir up some trouble for Governor Alf Landon in Kansas.

*Dr. George Gallup's syndicated poll of public opinion last week reported thus on the U. S.

Church vote: Among Church members 51.3 out of every 100 votes are for Roosevelt as against 48.7 for Landon. Dutch Reformed, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Methodists all favored Landon over Roosevelt. Only three major sects favored Roosevelt: Jews, 82 for Roosevelt to 18 for Landon; Roman Catholics, 78 for Roosevelt to 22 for Landon; Baptists, 54 for Roosevelt to 46 for Landon. *By nominee Landon at Des Moines weeks ago.

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