Ex Machina

A five-month-old story last week reached a powerful climax in St. Louis. It began one day last November when ten Missouri Democratic leaders met in secret in a room in St. Louis' De Soto Hotel. Senator Bennett Champ Clark was there from Washington. Eight days before, a Republican, Forrest Donnell, had been elected Governor--in the midst of a Democratic sweep--by 3,613 votes. These politicians were practical men. They discussed a legislative investigation, on the issue of fraudulent ballots, that would prevent Forrest Donnell from taking office. Said a seasoned old country politician: "You will be the ones who are under the gun. You have a city election in the spring, while we country boys have two years to get over it."

The man up for re-election in the spring was there too: Bernard F. Dickmann, Mayor of St. Louis. Short, barrel-chested, hefty, son of a prosperous old St. Louis family, a Marine Corps sergeant in World War I, he was the popular boss of St. Louis' powerful, smooth-functioning Democratic machine. He took his job seriously. He had pushed through the ordinance that had at last solved St. Louis' smoke problem. Scandals (like the Post-Dispatch expose of 46,000 fraudulent registrations) had been lived down; splits had been sewed up. And Mayor Dickmann seemed much more like a reform mayor than a machine-made candidate.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch charged that the strategy by which Missouri's Democrats tried to prevent Governor Donnell from taking office had been worked out at the secret meeting in the De Soto Hotel. At any rate, the legislature refused to seat Donnell. The State's political life was thrown into unholy tumult for six weeks as Governor Stark's term expired and Democratic politicos refused to let Donnell's begin. Democratic Governor Stark demanded that Donnell be seated, the election contested afterwards. What part did Mayor Dickmann play? He stoutly denied any part in the plot to keep Governor Donnell out, but he did not protest.

The uproar over the Donnell raw deal was surprisingly loud, but politicians were generally unworried. Reformers usually make enough noise to soothe their consciences. But the roar grew louder; finally the State Supreme Court ruled in Donnell's favor. The legislature subsided. The vote at the Republican primary in St. Louis the next month was surprisingly large, but that, of course, was because there were four candidates fighting for the nomination. The Democratic primary vote was small, but that, of course, was because the renomination of Mayor Dickmann was in the bag. The Republicans picked a good man--William Dee Becker, 64, a St. Louis Court of Appeals judge for 24 years--but of course he didn't have a chance.

Election day came last week and the voters were out early--there were 330,845 votes cast, 79% of the registration, a record. It was a quiet election.

After dinner the returns began coming in. By 10 p.m. Judge Becker had a strong lead. By 11 the radio men had set up a microphone in a bedroom and were trying to get the Judge to make a statement. By midnight even the Judge admitted that he had won. The final count: Becker, 183,073; Dickmann, 147,336.

Boss Dickmann shook his head, blamed it on the Willkie "backwash" that had got Republicans so stirred up that they could not stop. But the Post-Dispatch saw a defeat for the Machine--the Machine that had registered voters who did not exist, had received payment for public service that it did not perform, and finally had tried to seat in the Governor's chair a man who had not been elected.

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