Booms

Mr. Reed. The thinly-populated Southwest echoed all week with the slow, formidable voice of Candidate Reed. Partly to overshadow Candidate Smith, partly to get credit for a party service, partly because he revels in smoldering oratory, Candidate Reed stuck close to his stock speech on G. O. P. "boodlers" and misdeeds, seasoned with a few peppercorns for Tammany Hall. At Dallas, he specially flayed Secretary Mellon. At Tulsa, his special text was Oil, his chief target the Tariff. At Topeka he fell upon President Coolidge and snarled: "Without hesitation I declare that the stratum of the Republican party which has for the past eight years controlled the government is the most corrupt, the most venal and the most vicious body of men by which this nation has ever been afflicted."* At Denver it was "the snoopers and spies . . . like the lice of Egypt"--an anti-Prohibition speech (Denver being wet). The League of Nations took a lashing, too, as the Angel of Vengeance passed on to Albuquerque. Here he said: "I expect someone to say that 'Reed is merely destructive; he wants to destroy existing conditions.' Of course! Every time you want to change anything you must alter or destroy existing conditions." Then he set up the Republican "crooks, grafters and scoundrels" again and once more flailed them down. Large audiences attend him everywhere. Everywhere he was applauded by the Hearst press, which admires President Coolidge and wants Secretary Mellon to succeed him, but whose owner is Candidate Smith's implacable foe.

Mr. Lowden last week began the open season for saying "another county heard from" in its original context. Candidate Lowden heard from the 99 counties of Iowa and cornered a fat majority of 1,443 delegates chosen by cornland Republicans for the state convention.

Mr. Hoover. Candidate Hoover answered the Borah questionnaire on Prohibition by calling the latter "a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose" which he does not favor repealing and which, "of course," he stands for enforcing vigorously, sincerely. "It must be worked out constructively," said Candidate Hoover, leaving public information about where it was. Clarence Darrow, cynic lawyer, tried to illuminate by announcing, in Cincinnati: "I don't think Hoover is any drier than I am. I ought to know. I have had a drink with him."

Candidate Hoover went before the Senate Commerce Committee and said that flood control, too, requires "a constructive solution." He sided with the Administration for the principle of the states sharing the cost. He neatly, almost scornfully, eluded further quizzing by saying that the facts of the Mississippi Basin's condition were not all known yet, and by declining to criticize "my colleagues in the Government." Senator Willis, who had blustered so about how he would drag out the Hoover opinions at this hearing, sat silent and brooding while Senator Hawes put most of the questions.

The chief change in the pre-convention situation took place in Massachusetts, one of the Big Three (the others are Pennsylvania, New York) whose Republican bosses want uninstructed delegations with which to control the Convention. In Massachusetts, Governor Alvin Tufts ("Peter Bond") Fuller revolted against Boss William Morgan Butler, refused to be an instructed delegate and told the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company that "the next President of the United States will be Herbert Hoover or Alfred E. Smith."

"No! no! no!" shouted the ancients and honorables.

"I'm not asking you: I'm telling you!" Governor Fuller shouted back. When he said: "If the Republicans put over some candidate nominated in a back room at 2 o'clock in the morning and the Democrats nominate Al Smith, I believe Smith will be elected. . . ."

"No! no! no!"

"Well, if you don't like that one, see what you think of the next one," continued the Governor. "If the Democrats do not nominate Al Smith they had better disband or else reorganize the party as a free trade council of the Ku Klux Klan with Tom Heflin as head Kleagle."*

Governor Fuller said: "If it has done you as much good to listen as it has me to deliver this, you're all feeling elegant right now." He was full of vim, having just returned from a Packard motor trip through Florida with golf at the stops. He was bustling about Massachusetts at a great rate, telling how the colleges should be run/- getting after his Attorney-General for what looked like scalawaggery,** and booming other men so generously that in a speech to a large bevy of clubwomen he slipped into an absurdity. "I would like," he said, "to place before you for consideration the ticket of Hoover and Lindbergh."

As every one knows, the Vice President of the United States must be 35 years old and Hero Lindbergh is only 26. Not without concern lest the Governor's Hooverism might upset the plans of more professional politicians, the Springfield Republican croaked: "Governor Fuller may try again. The list of potential candidates is not exhausted with his Lindbergh flop. He might fill the breach himself. With Lindbergh out, who but Fuller could insure victory?"

*In Topeka, Candidate Reed reverted to Lawyer Reed when local lawyers told him how "thrilled" they had been by the $100,000 fee he was reported to have gotten for defending Henry Ford in the Sapiro libel case. "All I want to say about that case," replied Lawyer Reed, "is that, whatever the amount of that fee, it was not big enough to pay me for a client lying down after I had won my case."

*In reply, Alabama's Heflin, who mortally hates and fears the Roman Pope, erupted in the Senate with characteristically bad taste: "Alabama's Roman Catholic priest wrote this speech and this Romanized, purseproud, millionaire Governor of Massachusetts spoke it! The answer, in my opinion, is found in the fact that Governor Fuller's wife is a Roman Catholic!"

/-He advocated the return and retention of compulsory chapel.

**Attorney-General Arthur K. Reading of Massachusetts admitted having taken a $25,000 retainer from the Decimo Club, Inc. (cooperative buying organization) while in office.