The South-Splitters

Citizens of Birmingham, Ala., held a meeting some evenings ago to discuss politics. The discussion was opened by dragging in an effigy of Nominee Smith. "What shall we do with him?" cried the presiding officer.

"Lynch him!" yelled the citizens.

A man with a knife fell upon the dummy's throat and gashed it open. He then splattered a red fluid (mercurochrome) around the wound. The Birming-hamians howled for joy. Some fired revolver shots into the "corpse." Others kicked it, spit at it. Others got a rope, noosed it, dragged it around the hall for a hanging.

That, of course, was a Ku Klux Klan demonstration as well as a Southern demonstration. Nevertheless, its sheer, insensate violence made people wonder how serious was the likelihood of many Southern Democrats splitting away from their Northern brethren over Nominee Smith this autumn.

A fortnight ago reports and opinions conflicted. Nominee Robinson warned his party that there was an "organized effort" to beat the ticket in the South. An anti-Smith caucus was called among Texas Democrats. A "scratch Smith" movement was reported among North Carolina Democrats. To combat this sort of thing, regular Democrats threatened to keep "bolter books" and expel from the party any Democrat who abandoned the nominees.

Nominee Smith's reply to his colleague's warning was a decision to let well enough alone and not have any Southern campaign headquarters. To do otherwise, he thought, would be to admit and thus foster uncertainty about the South. Following this news, National Committeeman John S. Cohen of Georgia was reported to have laid aside his anti-Smith sentiments. And from North Carolina came word that the last really potent political boss against Smith--Senator Furnifold M. Simons--was going to "stand hitched" and perhaps even draw his weight.

Such was the state of affairs when Senator Fess of Ohio, a most optimistic Republican, said: "Governor Smith will undoubtedly carry the Solid South. We have a fighting chance in North Carolina but it is idle for us to talk about winning the electoral vote of any other Southern State."

But the largest-looming effort to split the South was yet to come, and did come, last week at Asheville,-N. C.--the "nonclerical" Dry conference called by Bishop James Cannon Jr. of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Dr. Arthur J. Barton. Georgia Baptist.

Bishop Cannon is a quiet, prosy, tenacious little Virginian, a son of the W. C. T. U. His name is a synonym for the militant, reforming, social-working element of the Methodist-Episcopal Church, South. He has long sought to reunite the northern and southern wings of his faith, which split over slavery in 1844. His lifelong ardor for Prohibition is explained, in his own words, as follows:

"When I was ten years old my mother took me to see the poor of the town of Salisbury, Md., for the first time. From then until I went to college she took me regularly on her visits to the homes of drunkards and sufferers. There were 12 saloons in Salisbury, and much poverty. When my mother organized the W. C. T. U. [in Salisbury] there were only two women. But it was a beginning, and they made the town dry. My mother never wore any jewelry except one pin, the gold-enameled pin of the white ribbon. When she died we put the pin on her dress, and I pledged myself to work for temperance."

Almost the antithesis and often the bland antagonist of Bishop Cannon is Bishop Warren Akin Candler of Atlanta, an M-E of the old school, a believer in the status quo, in worship before works, in conservatism. Bishop Candler is, of course, a Dry. His brother, the late Asa Griggs Candler, made a fortune giving the South a substitute for mint juleps and white mule. The substitute was "Coca Cola" and a far greater power for temperance it was --if you should ask Bishop Candler--than ten thousand sermons or revivals. Bishop Candler is for churchmen sticking to church matters and last week, just before Bishop Cannon's Asheville conference, he said so in a letter addressed to the Atlanta Journal but meant for consumption by Bishop Cannon and friends. "Offering no criticism of others," Bishop Candler said he proposed, for himself, to stick to Scriptural injunctions and church precedent of the past half-century. " 'Do not preach poli tics?" he quoted. "'YOU HAVE NO COMMISSION TO PREACH POLITICS.' "

But the Asheville conference was held just the same. Some 300 Dry, determined clergy and laymen attended. Bishop Cannon's colleague, Baptist Barton, a solid, ruddy gentleman, took the chair after Bishop Cannon had called the audience to order. It was announced that the conferees were to be officially known as "Anti-Smith Democrats." Republicans were not invited. The speech-making pictured Nominee Smith as a diabolical visitation upon the Democracy, of which it must and would be purged. The Anti-Smith Democrats promised to swing North Carolina and Florida out of the Solid South for Nominee Hoover. They predicted he would "probably" carry Georgia and Arkansas, and "possibly" Virginia and Texas. They said the border-states of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Oklahoma would surely be Anti-Smith. They planned mass meetings, advertised for funds, pledged themselves to elect Democratic Congressmen but to defeat the Democratic national ticket. Asked if the Anti-Smith Democrats would accept Republican moneys (see p. 6), Bishop Cannon said: "Certainly. I never look a gift horse in the mouth." They disguised their antipathy for Nominee Smith's Roman Catholicism in a "platform" attacking him only for:

1) His "repudiation of the Houston platform . . . shameless defiance ... insolently . . . political double dealing . . . moral suicide. . . ."

2) His wet record . . . "he repeatedly put his foot on the brass rail and blew the foam off the glass . . . horrible vice conditions . . . nullify . . . betrayal. . . ."

3) His "insulting, conscienceless" choice of John J. Raskob, wealthy Wet, for Democratic National Chairman . . . "faithless, immoral leadership. . . ."

4) His Tammany Hall connection . . . "double-faced political trickery . . . brazen effrontery . . . shameless betrayal . . . allied grafting groups . . . plunder and pillage. . . ."

They said: "Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Mississippi openly opposed the nomination of Governor Smith. . . ."

"Governor Smith was nominated by those sections of the country which rarely if ever are found in the Democratic column. . . .

"We cannot agree to become a party to the installation in the Executive Mansion of the United States of a man who has been . . . wet . . . and . . . Tammany-branded. . . ."

Noting that no Southern politicians of any potency were at Asheville, observers were little impressed with the likelihood of the Anti-Smith conference's actually having an effect on the electoral vote of the ten states of the Solid South, which have never yet gone Republican and are never likely to so long as Negroes are allowed to vote and hold office by the Republicans. More important to watch for were repercussions along the doubtful Border.