Trouble at the Top

Ever since 1932, the chief job of the Democratic Party's national chairman has been to keep Southern reactionaries and the New Dealers from flying at each other's throats. Genial, hustling Jim Farley managed it with expert finesse; genial, phlegmatic Ed Flynn almost let it go by default.

Last week it appeared that Ed Flynn, who has long wanted to resign, would be eased into an ambassadorship (perhaps to Ecuador) and that Franklin Roosevelt had decided on quiet, balding Postmaster General Frank Comerford Walker to head the national committee. Franklin Roosevelt's decision would have to be formulated into a command, for neither Frank Walker nor any other Democrat wanted the job. (A Washington story had it that two men, both previously mentioned for the position, had agreed between themselves that each would attempt to persuade Franklin Roosevelt from asking the other to assume the chairmanship.)

But hard-working Frank Walker, who put up $10,000 for Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 campaign, has never yet refused a Roosevelt request.

The new chairman's job would be grinding. Fortnight ago new threats against New Deal leadership again cropped up. Alabama's Governor Frank M. Dixon, champion of "white supremacy," called for a secession of Southern Democrats. In Omaha, Democratic leaders of nine Midwestern States organized a "united farm front"--without consulting top party chiefs. Onetime Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring, one of the few top officials ever fired by Franklin Roosevelt, sounded off for a new "agrarian party."

So long as Franklin Roosevelt remains the Democrats' most superlative vote getter, the threats of the Dixons and Woodrings are not as ominous as they sound. But Franklin Roosevelt's task of holding the party together is not so easy as it was in the happy, honeymooning days of the early New Deal.

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