Political Notes

Attorney General Daugherty called newspapermen about him for the first regular press conference at his Department in eleven months.

Mr. Daugherty, whose deep personal affection for President Harding covered a period of nearly 30 years, had been invited to address the Harding memorial meeting in Manhattan on Nov. 2, Mr. Harding's birthday. Said he, none too steadily: " I couldn't go to such a meeting and say anything . . . Some time, probably after I leave this office, I am going to write the story of Warren G. Harding. I have a mass of material--letters, documents, records --which I will use or turn over to whomever may be given the task of getting them into shape."

F. W. Wile, able Washington correspondent for many newspapers, had from Mr. Daugherty the secret of his physical " comeback " after a breakdown which was aggravated seriously by the death of Mr. Harding:

"Go to bed between nine and ten o'clock, if possible. Rise at 6:30 in the morning. Take orange juice and coffee; then a little exercise. Shave and dress and take a walk. Breakfast at 8:30 and get to work at 9. Whenever you feel tired, close your eyes for five minutes and you will feel as refreshed as from a good night's sleep. Don't worry."

In Marion's Probate Court, appraiser's filed a report putting the total value of President Harding estate, exclusive of the Harding Publishing Co., at $486,565.64.

In the War Department Office of Brigadier General Charles E. Sawyer, White House physician, the trustees of the Harding Memorial Association held their organization meeting.

Officers were elected: Calvin Coolidge, Honorary President; John Hays Hammond and John Barton Payne, First and Second Vice Presidents; George B. Christian, Jr., Secretary; Andrew J. Mellon, Treasurer.

The program:

1) A nation-wide campaign for $3,000,000.

2) Erection of a mausoleum and construction of a memorial park in Marion.

3) Purchase and maintenance of the Harding home in Marion.

4) Erection nearby the home of a building to house Hardingiana.

5) Endowment of a chair of political science in some state university, probably Ohio State (Columbus).

On Nov. 1, representatives of the 3,000,000 Masons in the U. S. will lay the cornerstone of what is to be their Order's greatest edifice--a George Washington National Memorial on Shooters Hill, a link in the Arlington Ridge overlooking the capital. The monument will be 200 feet high, rising in a series of towers surrounded by columns, over an atrium 70 by 100 feet.

A Memorial Chapel to General Robert E. Lee will shortly command the campus of Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Va. The Daughters of the Confederacy, donors, last week pronounced their gift " the tribute of Southern womanhood to the South's ideal hero."

Senator Copeland, the physician who recenty arrived in national politics from the State of New York, is preparing a resolution requesting President Coolidge to call an international economic conference. The Administration wants no conference while France is in her present mood. But Democrats believe that the farmers are eager for a conference that will stabilize European finance. A union of Democrats and the Farm Bloc on this proposal might easily embarrass the Administration.

Dr. Copeland has no high opinion of his colleagues. In Manhattan he addressed a Y. M. C. A. audience on Human Welfare in Government. Said he: "I don't see why anybody ever goes to see Congress. It doesn't do any good. The members never do anything except draw their pay."

John Philip Hill is a well-dressed Congressman from Maryland, socially inclined. There has been some very small talk about ejecting him from Congress on the grounds that he has deliberately violated the Volstead Act. Congressman Hill picked up this small talk and hurled it home with the following remark: "If the Drys throw me out of Congress, they will make me the first Wet President of the United States."

Dante Pierce is the publisher of the Iowa Homestead, one of the great farm journals of that state. He will be the next Secretary of Agriculture, if the custom of appointing editors of Iowa farm journals* does not stale. Dante Pierce had much to do with putting Smith Wildman Brookhart into the Senate.

About the time Senator Brookhart was describing the painful poverty of Iowa farmers, Publisher Pierce sent a solicitor to Chicago and New York to renew advertising contracts. " Ah," said the advertisers, " if the farmers of Iowa are broke, it will not pay to advertise in your paper!" Senator Brookhart, reported as strong as ever, is up for re-election next year, but Publisher Pierce is said to be not so enthusiastic.

* Secretary Wallace has been editor of Creamery Gazette, Farm and Dairy, Wallace's Farmer. Ex-Secretary Meredith (under President Wilson) has published the Farmer's Tribune (Des Moines) and started Successful Farming.