Raskob et Al.

After greeting Nominee Robinson in Albany, and with him patting "the donk" (baby, Houston, newborn jackass foal) Nominee Smith went to Manhattan to see after the new political machinery of the Democracy. He knew what he wanted.

The session at the Hotel Biltmore was long and late (3 a. m.). Present were Nominee Robinson, Nominator Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Tammanyites George W. Olvany, Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, James A. Foley and Joseph Tumulty; also Senators Hawes of Missouri and Harrison of Mississippi. Nominee Smith was there, too. When they went to bed they all knew what they wanted.

Funds. In view of what was coming, the first announcement at next morning's meeting of the National Democratic Committee was not particularly significant. Jesse Holman Jones, retiring Director of Finance and "angel" of the Democracy the past four years, reported that the $84,000 Houston convention was all paid for and that a balance of some $200,000 remained for campaign expenses.

Elections. The committee then listened to Josiah Marvel, a swarthy, elderly country gentleman from Delaware. Mr. Marvel said that Delaware offered to the Democracy a manager who could think the way average Americans think from trolley conductors to potent capitalists. He nominated John Jacob Raskob of Delaware for chairman of the committee. Mr. Raskob was unanimously elected. The committee elected other officers as follows:

Vice Chairmen--Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City, a shrewd local boss (not without aspersions on his political reputation); Governor Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia, industrious, patrician; Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming, onetime (1025-27) Governor; onetime (1907-21) U. S. Representative Scott Ferris of Oklahoma, farmers' friend; Florence Gardiner Farley of Kansas, famed suffragette.

Treasurer--onetime (1913-17) Ambassador-to-Germany James Watson Gerard of Manhattan, brilliant opportunist (re-elected).

Secretary--Charles A. Greathouse of Indiana (re-elected).

Chairman of Finance--Herbert H. Lehman of Manhattan, Jewish banker, long time friend of Nominee Smith. This appointment was an outcropping' of one of the richest veins in the Brown Derby's field of political resources. Potent Jews seem to be preponderantly Democratic this year. Many of them were Woodrow Wilson's friends. They include Bernard Mannes Baruch, Jesse Isidore Straus,* Louis Marshal, Julius Rosenwald, Otto Hermann Kahn, Philadelphia's Gimbels.

Advisory Chairman--Peter Gollet Gerry, the wealthy well-born Harvard-bred hound-riding U. S. Senator from Rhode Island who upset traditional Republican calculations in his state as a young man (1916--he is now 48) and has since continued popular with his state's large labor vote.

The Raskob appointment merits historical recitation.

After the first quarter of the century the Democratic party was awakened by its metropolitan members to the realization that politics had become Big Business and Big Business politics in the U. S. Long before Gov. Smith's nomination it was known that he would refashion the popular concept of his party, perhaps by a preelection indication of outstanding businessmen whom he would ask to help him conduct the government if he were elected (TIME, March 12).

The largest U. S. industry at the time was the automotive. The largest automotive company was the General Motors Corporation. It chanced that a high official of General Motors--the chairman of the Finance Committee--was also potent in the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Co.--was a friend of Governor Smith's. He was not a friend of long standing. It was a comparatively short time ago that Governor Smith first became conscious of John Jacob Raskob through a correspondence they had on Prohibition. From another General Motors man, Governor Smith discovered that his letter-writing friend was of Irish and Alsatian blood, a Roman Catholic and perhaps the most potent of all General Motors potentates.

Their friendship, though sudden, was natural. Raskob is an up-from-the-bottom man like Smith. In 1898 he was a $5-per-week stenographer in Lockport, N. Y. In 1900 he had pushed on to be the $1,000-per-annum secretary of Pierre du Pont, who was then running a traction company in Lorain, Ohio. In 1902 Mr. du Pont took Secretary Raskob to Wilmington, Del., to help as assistant treasurer with the prospering du Pont explosives enterprise. In 1913 Mr. Raskob began buying General Motors stock and pestering his employer to do likewise. Chance brought them control of the company. Mr. Raskob has charted its prodigious finances since 1918, besides supplying much brainwork for the vast du Pont concern proper. Over his desk in Manhattan hangs the original Raskob prophecy that General Motors was to be colossal. "Optimism; with its advantages," is the title. In 1923 Mr. Raskob inspired the famed General Motors stock-pool among General Motors executives, in which 80 men are said to have become millionaires, some of them starting with only $25,000.

In 1906 Mr. Raskob married Helena Springer Green of an old Delaware family. She has borne him twelve children (the second of whom, a son, was killed last fortnight in an auto crash). His instincts as a family man have undoubtedly had more to do with his and Governor Smith's friendship than their common faith, Roman Catholicism. The latter, however, is a colorful fact of Mr. Raskob's life. Once he received a cable from the Papal Secretary of State at Rome asking him to contribute to a large church project. He subscribed the whole amount. He gave $500,000 to the Wilmington Diocese and promised as much more when $500,000 should be raised by other subscriptions.

It is to his feelings as a father that Mr. Raskob ascribes his antipathy for Prohibition. Last spring he became a director of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (TIME, May 7).

Last month he harped on the evils to youth of bootleg drinking (TIME, June 11). Last week he continued in the same vein, declaring that Prohibition was a national issue, saying that Nominee Hoover's talk about the "nobility" of the law* was "all wet." He promised to help "relieve the country of the damnable affliction."

Mr. Raskob is a short, well-built man of gentle, clean-cut countenance. His favorite sport is sailing. His business responsibilities do not seem to burden him. In accepting his post he said: "I am not a politician and have never been affiliated with any party. . . . This undoubtedly has been the position of many citizens in all walks of life. . . . There come times in the life of a nation when men not in politics feel called upon to take an active instead of a passive interest in government. My belief that such a time is at hand accounts for my willingness to accept. . . .

"In our business life today we succeed ... by having better goods to sell than our competitors. There is every reason why the Democratic party should follow this constructive business policy in this campaign. ..."

* President of R. H. Macy & Co. His younger brother, Herbert N. Straus, Macy's secretary and treasurer, was last week appointed New York state treasurer of Hooverism (see page 6).

*Like many another publicist, Mr. Raskob did not recall Nominee Hoover's phrase exactly. Mr. Hoover expressed what the New York Herald-Tribune (Republican) has called a "laboratory attitude." He said that Prohibition is "a great . . . experiment, noble in motive. . . ."