Grand Finale

Like two dogs who feel they have an urgent appointment with a rabbit, the two major party candidates for President last week coursed hither and yon, frantically nosing crisscross tracks which to their nostrils had a delicious odor of election. Every time the scent turned and twisted, the two hounds raised their heads and bayed for the delectation of the countryside. Alf Landon's course, starting from Philadelphia, doubled back to Pittsburgh, veered to Newark. N. J., swept into Manhattan (where at the old-fashioned Murray Hill Hotel he met Al Smith for the first time), dashed out to Oyster Bay, L. I., home of Widow Edith Carow Roosevelt, paused for an hour at Madison Square Garden, suddenly sped south to Charleston, W. Va., finally started on a long lope home to Kansas with one major stop, at St. Louis.

Franklin Roosevelt, equally active, sped from Washington to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor (see p. 27), made a triumphal 30-mi. tour of the city, swung back through Wilkes-Barre and other Pennsylvania towns, to Camden, N. J., Wilmington and Washington, only to start again, reinvade Brooklyn, have his hour upon the platform in Madison Square Garden, and finally go home up the Hudson.

All this spendthrift energy produced, beside mob cheers and showers of torn paper, just two addenda to the history of the campaign of 1936. One was the emergence of the Social Security Act as a prime issue. Capitalizing their belated discovery that the 1% tax on wages which goes into effect next January to begin a sinking fund of some $40,000,000,000 for workers' annuities was a vote getter for Republicans (TIME, Nov. 2), Governor Landon and his cohorts hammered it home, while Franklin Roosevelt & friends cried "Shame," "Falsehood," "Coercion."

In campaign language it quickly boiled down to a simple matter of contradiction. Said Republicans: "Wage earners, you will pay and pay in taxes taken out of your pay envelopes, in taxes added to the things you buy--and when you are very old, you will have an I. O. U. which the U. S. Government may make good if it is still solvent." Said Democrats: "Workers, you will get something for nothing. The boss will have to pay much more than you do, and when you grow old, we will pay it to you."

The second addition to the campaign was Alf Landon's final effort to pin down Franklin Roosevelt on his intention of reviving or of not reviving NRA. Either stand would have cost the New Deal votes. At Madison Square Garden, twenty cheering thousands helped Alf Landon drive home his oft-repeated challenge. At the same place two nights later Franklin Roosevelt had twenty other cheering thousands to applaud his indignant denial of the charge that his intentions are unknown.

On the Saturday before election, they made their last big speeches, leaving only afterthoughts and last appeals for their election-eve broadcasts. In Madison Square Garden, flanked by his mother, wife and daughter, Franklin Roosevelt poured out his heartfelt bitterness at those who resented his efforts to uplift the U. S.: "We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. . . .

"Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.

"I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master."

Ten minutes later he amended this, adding: "Aside from [the attack on the Social Security Tax] I prefer to remember this campaign not as bitter but only as hard-fought. There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. . . .

Peace on earth, good will toward men-- Democracy must cling to that message."

A few moments later in St. Louis' Municipal Auditorium, Alfred M. Landon took the platform, accompanied for the first time in the campaign by his wife and his daughter. The crowd shouted in frenzy. "Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen," he began. Not a word was audible above the hubbub. Long-suffering as Caspar Milquetoast, he repeated his salutation ten or a dozen times before the crowd permitted him to be heard. Then, halting frequently, with eyes often searching anxiously for his place in his manuscript, Alf Landon read the closing speech of his campaign, not a much better orator than he began it. But the crowd which his oratory could not sway continued to cheer for they had come like most Alf Landon crowds because they liked the big sign that hung in the Auditorium. Its letters spelled out, "You Can Believe Landon," but it was no compliment to the Republican Nominee. It expressed the crowd's opinion of Franklin Roosevelt. For peace and good will to men, both parties were content to wait until after election.

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