Tough Cooke

By last week Pennsylvania's Democrats were in a mess as involved as the composition of Philadelphia scrapple. But Pennsylvania's Democrats were used to it, and many a voter was resigned to a Republican victory in the autumn.

Only one job was at stake: the Senate seat now precariously held by Joseph F. Guffey, 64, the most forthright pap-grabber in Pennsylvania politics since the fabulous Boies Penrose. Two other Democrats wanted Mr. Guffey's job: Walter Adelbert Jones, oilman and chairman of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission; and onetime Pittsburgh Mayor Bill McNair, 59, political jack-in-the-box, author of the campaign's best crack: "Anyone with a clean shirt on can beat Guffey." Ex-Mayor McNair had no chance. Behind Walter Jones was David L. Lawrence, State Democratic chairman. Mr. Lawrence has been withdrawn from the political scene for four months, while undergoing two trials on charges of conspiracy to shake down State employes for slush funds, and political blackmail.

Acquitted again last week, Mr. Lawrence immediately denounced Mr. Guffey --the man who made him what he is today. Only phase of the mudslinging in which Democrats took much interest was: 1) the revelation that the middle initial "A" in Walter Jones's name stood for "Adelbert"; 2) the responding insinuation that the "F" in Joe Guffey's name stood for "Fauntleroy." (Mr. Guffey has long & stoutly maintained that the "F" stands for nothing.) As in many a State last week (see p. 18), the Democrats' mess was the Republicans' pottage. Happy and united were the Republicans. The man they had picked to take Joe Guffey's Senate seat was Jay Cooke IV, who, like Penrose, is what is known as a scion, also comes from Philadelphia's famed 8th Ward, and is the wealthy inheritor of not only a 1776 name but 1776 courage, proved in the Meuse-Argonne offensive.

Bald, a broker, great-grandson of the banker Jay Cooke who helped finance the Union in the Civil War, 43-year-old Mr. Cooke is unopposed in the G.O.P. primary.

He has a sense of humor, and the unqualified approval of two men who have none--Joseph Newton Pew Jr., vice president of Sun Oil Co., who has conducted a bitter, open-purse, one-family crusade against the New Deal for seven years, and thee-saying Quaker Joseph Ridgway Grundy, 77, proud since the turn of the century of his title as King of Lobbyists.

Under these auspices Jay Cooke went to the fray last week, represented in propaganda as a pipe-smoking, outdoor man. Impartial observers predicted that November would find Joe Guffey and the Pennsylvania Democrats much farther outdoors than astute Mr. Cooke.

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