"It Was Republicans. . . ."

The Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria (Manhattan) was dressed one night this week with smilax, gladiolas, palms and fine napery, as it is almost nightly for conventions of furriers, bankers and the like. Guests were a national collection of Republicans assembled by the New York political club of that name to pay off its debts (at $25 a plate) and perform an act (hooked up to the nation by radio for two hours) called "Victory Through Unity." All the newly-elected Republican Governors and Senators were to have taken part. Other Lincoln's Birthday engagements at home detained several eligibles, but the Grand Ballroom resounded with self-congratulation and party hope, and plenty of Republican renascents held forth. They were toastmastered by Illinois' heroic young C. Wayland ("Curley") Brooks, unsuccessful candidate for Governor in 1936, who looks and sounds just like Crooner Harry Richman. Blushful in his bows, but silent because he was still engaged in his second prosecution of Tammany's Jimmy Hines (which may keep his name alive this year) was New York's slim black fox, District Attorney Tom Dewey, currently the G.O.P.'s leading candidate for Presidential nomination in 1940.*

Herbert Clark Hoover, hands in pockets, stomach to the fore, obviously loving his chance, warned the coming generation that the New Deal had mortgaged it. "It was Republicans," the nation's one living ex-President reiterated, who wrought reforms before Franklin Roosevelt, and would again. The "oxygen of opposition," he said, would save the people from their "rendezvous with debt."

National Republican Chairman John Hamilton, looking more than ever like a freshwater sea lion, barked: "It's fun to win i"

South Dakota's steel-grey new Governor Bushfield warned Franklin Roosevelt that the U. S. frontier is not in France, that the West hates war.

Plain, long-nosed, sandy-haired young Governor Ray Baldwin of Connecticut, who has a grand bass voice and reintroduced "frugality" to the U. S. vocabulary last month, made the statement of the evening. Said he: "There is no substitute for a good job in private industry."

*By last month's FORTUNE poll.

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