Booms

Coolidge Neighbor. Many a U. S. citizen has treasured in his memory the swearing-in of Calvin Coolidge as President of the U. S.* Newspapers and feature writers united in picturing the scene--the simple Vermont farmhouse, the President's father administering the oath, the old-fashioned lamp whose rays illumined the occasion. Like later pictures of Mr. Coolidge cutting hay with a scythe, it was a demonstration of democracy in the high places, of a President's kinship with his people.

Yet both the swearing-in and the scything were last week termed methods of self-exploitation. Elbowing through a roomful of Tammany leaders at the 14th St. Wigwam, Nelson P. Cook, a little, old, white-haired neighbor of Calvin Coolidge during the President's Vermont days, told Tarn-many Leader George W. Olvany that he was against the President, wished to organize a Smith boom. He said that the famed kerosene lamp was obsolete, had been purchased at wholesale in 1867. He asked why President Coolidge scythed hay when he might well have used a mowing machine. Terming himself an "agricultural expert," he may have felt that Vermont farm life had been represented as unduly primitive. He said that many another old neighbor shared his opposition to four more years of Calvin Coolidge.

Olvany on Woollen. To Mr. Olvany last week came also Evans Woollen, potent Indianapolis banker, last fortnight (TIME, May 16) advanced as Democratic Indiana's presidential choice. It was suggested that Mr. Woollen came to see Mr. Olvany concerning the Tammany attitude toward his boom. Said Mr. Olvany: "I found Mr. Woollen a fine and upstanding Democrat but we did not discuss politics."

Brennan on Woollen. Commenting on the Woollen candidacy last week, George E. Brennan, Illinois Democratic boss, supporter of Governor Smith, said: "Tom Taggart always has his water buckets out in case it should rain."

Roosevelt on Smith. In 1924. Franklin D. Roosevelt, on crutches as result of an attack of infantile-paralysis, pleaded for party unity to warring factions of the Democratic party in convention assembled at Madison Square Garden.

Last week Mr. Roosevelt, who still walked with the aid of a cane, discussed a six months' tour of the South, undertaken, he said, in the interests of "party unity." But Mr. Roosevelt, who was the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 1920, is generally regarded as the unofficial manager of Governor Smith's unofficial campaign for the presidential nomination.

Said Mr. Roosevelt: "I found among them [Southern Democratic leaders] a growing conviction that Governor Smith was the man with the best chance of winning. While the leaders haven't come out for him for the nomination, they will support him, in my opinion, once he is nominated. . . ."

Though some anti-Smith Democrats have attempted to start a Franklin D. Roosevelt movement, Mr. Roosevelt muffled this boom by announcing that he would not permit his name to come before the 1928 nominating convention, was with Governor Smith to stay.

In 1912. The ghost of the 1912 Wilson-Taft-Roosevelt presidential campaign-flitted last week about Washington, cast a spectral eye at the White House itself. One 1912 issue was "No Third Term for Roosevelt"; one 1928 issue may be "No Third Term for Coolidge." Last week Michael J. O'Shea of Worcester, Mass., said that in 1912 he had canvassed prominent Republicans to secure signatures to an anti-third term petition. Of the many signing, said Mr. O'Shea, one was State Senator Calvin Coolidge. Mr. O'Shea added that the signatures were made in duplicate, that one copy went to Washington, that he retained the other. Thus he claimed to possess President Coolidge's signature to a no-third-term manifesto, said he would produce it "at the proper time."

Searchers among old U. S. Senate files discovered a petition presented to the Senate in 1912. This petition had been circulated by the National Anti-Third Term League, an anti-Roosevelt by-product of the 1912 campaign. It bore only the signature of the late Senator Henry W. Blair, then president of the Anti-Third Term League. Since a petition with only one signer presumably would not have been presented, the inference was that the other signatures were not preserved.

There remained a further source of information. Washington correspondents, attending one of the bi-weekly White House conferences, submitted their usual sheaf of written questions, most of them devoted to the O'Shea statement. Going through the bundle of queries, the successor to the White House Spokesman* answered one concerning the appointment of certain judges, one concerning the progress of flood relief, one concerning a treaty with Panama which settled the matter of competition between Panama merchants and U. S. Government stores in the Canal strip. He then bade the correspondents farewell.

* At 2:47 a. m., the morning of Aug. 3, 1923.

* Since the passing of the Spokesman (TIME, May 9) correspondents have reported conferences under such headings as "It was said at the White House," "It was reported at the White House," "It was emphasized at the White House," "The information vouchsafed was that," etc.