Mr. Walker

The night that Nominee Smith denounced Whispering at Oklahoma City, Nominee Smith's slim, trig, glib little lieutenant, Mayor James John Walker of New York City, motored under the Hudson River to Newark, N. J. From the platform occupied four nights earlier by Nominee Hoover, came a speech in which Mayor Walker incorporated the following remarks:

"I don't feel like splurging the Republican candidate with the responsibility for the whispering, bigoted campaign that is carried on in contradiction to the Declaration of Independence, but there are men in this country who would refuse to be President if they got it with that kind of a vote. . . .'

"Mr. Hoover calls Prohibition a 'noble experiment'. . . .* I am compelled to ask, 'When is the experiment going to start?' Not long since I had a communication from a very distinguished employee of the Department of Justice on this very subject ... I can't think of anything more noble to do with this noble experiment than to start in the City of Washington and see how far you can get."

"Where does he [Nominee Hoover] compare, if you will--and I dare challenge itin his Americanism with Alfred E. Smith? . . . When Mr. Hoover cast his first American vote, after his many years in the Orient, in Australia and other places, Alfred E. Smith was Governor of New York. From 1902 to 1912, Mr. Hoover's official address was London, England. I don't propose to criticize him for that, nor do I propose to forget Mr. Hoover's great humanitarian work during the War. But at the same time Governor Smith was engaged in humanitarian work of equal importance in the State of New York. . . .

"Grover Cleveland did not gain his experience for the Presidency in the Orient, but as Governor of the Empire State; Woodrow Wilson did not gain his experience for the Presidency in the Orient, but as the Governor of New Jersey; and Calvin Coolidge did not become proficient in the ways of American government in the Orient, but as Governor of the State of Massachusetts."

Said the arch-Democratic New York World, naming Mayor Walker by name: "This appeal to the narrowest and most ignorant and debased type of patriotic prejudice is as contemptible, and might under certain circumstances become just as sinister, as the appeal to religious prejudice."

*Mr. Walker's error. Mr. Hoover called Prohibition "a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose."