Unrumpled Traveler

The difference between James Aloysius Farley and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as politicians is precisely the difference between Jack Kearns and Jack Dempsey as prize-ring professionals. Without Manager Kearns to steer him, get him matches, plan his career, World's Champion Dempsey might have been just another pug. When Jim Farley crossed the continent to attend the Elks convention in Seattle eight years ago, Frank Roosevelt was just another Governor. When Jim Farley crossed again in 1936, it was to help his champion defend his title. When he started out once more last week in his non-rumpling alpaca traveling suit, Jim Farley was looking to see who could next be champion.

Most of the political columnists said: "This time Jim will be selling himself." Jim himself said: "Three years ago I was out doing what I could for Roosevelt. Now I am in the stamp business."*

Left out of account by observers who figured that Jim Farley's sole object was to line up convention delegates for himself is the fact that in politics--his profession--he is as hard-headed a man as there is alive. He is an automaton of political finesse, a tireless, viceless performer of the right word & deed at the right time for political effect. As such he is most interested in backing a candidate who will win nomination and election in 1940. If that candidate is James Aloysius Farley, that will suit him fine. If it is Franklin Roosevelt or some other, Jim Farley will accommodate himself. Meanwhile letting a boomlet for himself get under way will not loosen his hold on the party machinery.

As a candidate for President, Jim Farley has one big liability: to the U. S. he is the personification of patronage and cheap politics in the New Deal. He has also one great asset: his personal hold on the party machinery, seven years of camaraderie with the politicians who will control votes in the next Democratic convention.

As a means of overcoming his liability he has a record of overt loyalty to the New Deal. Never in public has he spoken anything but praise of the great idol of the people, Franklin Roosevelt. But those who do not love the New Deal's economic experiments do not need to be told that he is more conservative than the New Deal. He thus has a foot in both camps, Roosevelt and anti-Roosevelt. If by playing old-fashioned politics with his cards close to his necktie a man can become President in 1940, Jim Farley is the man to do it. Already he has begun.

The self-effacing Farley boomlet began last month with a speech by him at Lynchburg, Va., home of irrevocably anti-Roosevelt old Carter Glass. Mr. Farley there swore fealty once more to Franklin Roosevelt, saluted his humanitarian aims, kept silence regarding the President's economic surrealism. Same week in Albany, Jim Farley's friends moved to tie up for him the New York delegation to the 1940 Democratic National Convention.

Reconciling his innate conservatism with his oft-repeated fervor for Surrealist Roosevelt is no chore for Jim Farley. He simply says, "Why, I was always a liberal." But he is aware that his conservatism is as well-advertised as his Roman Catholicism, of which it is part & parcel.

With him on his trip Jim Farley took along his personal and party publicist, Eddie Roddan, and anotherkey man in the national Democratic machine: Treasurer Oliver Adams Quayle Jr. Everywhere he saw and handshook all manner of men & women--railroad workers, col- lege boys, lady Democrats, postal em-ployes--but especially Democratic county chairmen, the machine's roller bearings. He made safe, resounding speeches on salutary topics:

>In Cleveland (to trainmen): "Labor has ever fought to promote the moral, spiritual and cultural welfare of the people."

>In Columbus (to lady Democrats): "It does not make any difference who the Republicans nominate, nor for that matter who the Democrats pick, it will be a Democratic victory."

>In St. Louis (to postmasters): "Postal revenues . . . broke all records last year.

. . . When that condition exists everybody knows we are getting along all right in America."

> In Des Moines (to postmasters): "Everything we do should be calculated to assist and encourage private enterprise." Crossing Missouri, Jim Farley listened closely to what people had to say about Democrat Lloyd C. Stark, fair-haired reform Governor. He was careful to avoid Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City, upon whom Governor Stark sicked Attorney-General Murphy and got him indicted (TIME, April 17). In Kansas, which went Republican last year, Jim Farley got right down to the grassroots, motored from Salina to Topeka with stops at a dozen towns. Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona were on his course, then California, where he may encounter one ambitious Democrat who can be nominated only over Jim Farley's dead body: Paul Vories McNutt, High Commissioner of the Philippines, who sailed for home last week to start his campaign.

* Out of Washington last week toward the New York World's Fair (thence to New England) rolled a roadshow long promised to stamp collectors by Jim Farley: a three-ton truck fitted up as a philatelic museum, displaying 535 varieties, representing every U. S. stamp. Announced value was $1,000,000, although the displays are unused, unsalable, imperforate proofs from original plates. Visitors to the truck can buy a 10-c- history of U. S. philately, current and commemorative stamps. Hot off a tiny press, they get blue souvenir stickers of the White House portico where Philatelist Roosevelt last week dedicated Jim Farley's truck.

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