Boomlets

It was a desultory week in Candidates' Row. No candidate made a real move and only one made a statement worth noting.

Charles Curtis, the Indian-blooded Kansan, accepted Senator Borah's invitation to proclaim himself no friend of the palefaces' firewater (see p. 9).

Enthusiastic Kansans, including Gov. Ben S. Paulen, foregathered in Manhattan to hail "the Noble Injun."

Herbert Clark Hoover kept quiet as a turtle and let friends explain in his behalf the fact, dug up by busy nobodies, that he and Mrs. Lou Henry Hoover, both Quakers, were married by a Catholic priest. The occasion, in 1899, required haste because Mr. Hoover had to sail from California next day for China. The Rev. Raymon Maria Mestries, Monterey mission priest, was no gladder than they that he had a dispensation to marry Protes- tants.

Dan Moody, 34-year-old Governor of Texas, said he was no candidate for Vice President despite kind friends.

Jesse Holman Jones, wealthy "angel" of the Democratic convention at Houston, was suggested as a ticket-mate for Alfred Emanuel Smith. Wits in Kansas said a Smith-Jones ticket "would enlist the support of the country's two largest families." Colyumist George Rothwell Brown of the Washington Post wrote: "If Jones of Texas is nominated . . . with Smith, we advise the Republican party to draft Mr. Cohen."

George William Norris, deep-eyed Utopian of the Senate, was formally entered as a favorite-son candidate by fellow Nebraskans. The chief effect will be to discourage the discouraged Lowdenites. In Wisconsin, Republicans of the La Follette stripe also declared for Senator Nor- ris, as scheduled.

James A. Reed, Missouri's smoldering Democrat, let his boom be taken "out in the open"--for the third or fourth time since early Autumn. "Another Andrew Jackson," was the cry. This time, friends of Alfred Emanuel Smith were not alarmed. Reed men, it was understood, were to organize delegations in States lack- ing "favorite sons." The probable result: having been instructed for a Wet, Reed delegates would, if and when his chances died at the convention, have only to exercise religious tolerance to swing to the other outstanding Wet, Candidate Smith. And Senator Reed is the author of the epigram: "Give me the radius of a man's intelligence and I will describe the circumference of his tolerance."

Though it far outboomed the Reed candidacy, the Smith candidacy was not yet avowed and authoritatively organized. The better the Reed machinery is built, the better it would serve Smith men when captured.