Cause and Effect

Two fiery crosses burned in Montana as Nominee Smith passed through, yet Montana's Senator Walsh, too, is a Roman Catholic. . . . Montana's Senator Burton Kendall Wheeler, number-two-man of the Progressive (LaFollette) ticket in 1924, travelled with the Nominee on the train, energetic, cordial. . . . Some Montana Indians replaced the Brown Derby with eagle feathers and named the wearer Chief Leading Star. They daubed his face with warpaint. . . . . . . The Sioux of North Dakota produced another headdress and the Happy Warrior became Chief Charging Hawk Leading Star Alfred Emanuel Governor Smith, Sachem of St. Tammany's Society. ... He played checkers with an Irishman in the Veterans' Hospital near Fort Snelling, Minn. He won. . . . He complained: "I can't fight hard enough! I want to fight but how can I fight when my opponent [Nominee Hoover] won't fight?" ... It was also the week of that classic political utterance: "Nothing embarrasses me!" . . . Louis W. Hill, Board Chairman of the Great Northern Railroad and son of its founder, the late, great James J. Hill, jumped for joy and led cheers on the Smith platform in St. Paul. . . . Senator Shipstead, the duck-hunting dentist, the Farmer Laborite, was friendly--and then reported "hurt," "alienated." . . . Milwaukee went wild over the prospect of hearing its beer signs creak again. . . . Nominee Smith went on home.

So many conflicting reports reached the Smith special on its way East that only the Cause could be kept clearly in mind. The cause was: to win the progressive vote that LaFollette got in 1924. The effect that the Nominee had made in Middle America was inscrutably scrambled.

There was, to begin with, hollow-cheeked, insurgent Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska, where the trip started. He it is who is supposed to guard the Progressive mantle of the late, great LaFollette. The Omaha speech on farm relief received a nod of Norris approval. Of the Denver waterpower speech, Senator Norris said: "... Great! . . . We're up against the greatest monopoly, the greatest attempt at control of great resources, ever undertaken since the days of Jesus Christ!" The Omaha World-Herald, daily newspaper of the Brown Derby's advisor, onetime Senator Gilbert M. Hitchcock of Nebraska, had a "scoop" to the effect that Senator Norris would jump unequivocally for Smith, with a nationwide radio hookup for the occasion.

In North Dakota, Walter Haddock, the Non-Partisan who became Governor last month when Republican Governor Arthur Gustav Sorlie died, received Nominee Smith at Bismarck (the capital), shook the Smith hand, rode on the Smith Special. But he would only say that 80% of the North Dakota farmers were for Smith and that he (Maddock) was for the farmers. Friends said Governor Maddock was being careful for Nominee Smith's sake because he, too, is a Roman Catholic. Others said: "Maddock is out for himself only."

An emphatic writer for the arch-Democratic New York World had announced, on "final" authority, that the G. O. P. had "virtually abandoned all hope" of Wisconsin and the Dakotas. Now came Clinton W. Gilbert, seasoned correspondent for the Republican New York Evening Post, with an eye-witness report that Minnesota was "in the balance." Party lines are almost invisible in the Northwest but Correspondent Gilbert thought he could perceive underlying reasons: the low price of wheat, the absence of the religious and social-eligibility issues; the wetness of the cities; Smith's popularity; race feeling; the G. O. P.'s opposition to Senator Shipstead, who seeks re-election as a Farmer-Laborite; the Democrats' shrewdness in withdrawing their candidate for Senator, to give Senator Shipstead a clear field. "The Swedes and Norwegians," explained Correspondent Gilbert, "have been 'Yon-Yonsoned' into a state of mind in which they are ready to vote for Al Smith as a person on whom the original-stock American looks down." Senator Shipstead, pet of the "Yon-Yonson" voters, appeared with the Nominee in St. Paul but did not commit himself. The report that he was "hurt" followed the Nominee's neglect to mention what the Senator had done to get a Federal barge service on Minnesota's end of the Mississippi River.

The St. Paul speech was informal. Farm relief and inland waterways were but two of many subjects it touched. Other subjects:

"... To my way of thinking it is not sufficient for the President of the United States to communicate his views in writing to Congress and now and then make one or two strictly formal speeches on some set subject before some select chamber of commerce or board of trade. I conceive it to be his duty to talk to the American people and to talk to them in the plain ordinary, everyday language that everybody understands. In other words, give them the 'low-down.' Let them in on the ground floor, so that they will know what is going on in Washington.

"It seems to me that during the last two Republican administrations, in the absence of this necessary leadership, there has been what we might call a hidden control. There seems to be somebody pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

"And that hidden control has been entirely successful in shaping the policies of the Administration, so that any private program is not interfered with. . . .

"Roosevelt and Wilson both spoke to the people. Roosevelt particularly. He was anything in the world but silent.

"And he had a way of pointing them out to the people and naming them. He would say 'That's the fellow; keep your eye on him.' . . .

"I take my hat off to no man in this country in my respect and reverence for our immigrant population. I was born in the Port of New York and a large part of it came through that port. It is a matter of history and nobody has safely denied it, that the great immigrant population of this country did its full share to build it up, and certainly the great Scandinavian and German immigration to the Northwest was a powerful factor in the upbuilding of this section of the country. . . ."

This last was aimed openly at the heads of the Germans and Scandinavians whose vote decides the electoral votes of Nebraska, the Dakotas and Wisconsin as well as Minnesota.

At Milwaukee, the Nominee accepted the Willebrandtine view of Prohibition as a "moral issue." "The question," he said, "is what is the best thing to do about it. . . ."

"As a matter of fact, we have never had prohibition. We have the amendment, and we have the Volstead act, but with it we have liquor and I venture the suggestion tonight that there is more liquor in the country today than before the passage of the amendment. Why? Because a great many citizens acquired the habit of storing away a supply for future time in the cellar."

He defended his view that Prohibition has been bad for young people, with quotations from pastors and university presidents. Then he flayed "the record," with special reference to G. O. P. enforcement methods in his own New York as exposed by Chester P. Mills, onetime Federal enforcement officer for the Manhattan area. "Prohibition ... the new political pork barrel. . . ."

"What about the City of Washington. ... is that dry? . . . One-third of the police force of that city of Washington in one single year were up before the officials on charges of being intoxicated while on duty. . .

"Why, there is liquor in the Capitol . . . a waiter was walking across the floor of the Senate restaurant and he dropped a bottle of Scotch whisky. . . .

"Well, what is the Republican answer to all this? ... A quotation from George Washington, another one from Abraham Lincoln and, at the bottom of the two quotations, a promise to enforce it--and not only to enforce it but to vigorously enforce it.

"Now, there is no truth in that platform plank, there is no candor in it; it has not even got the essence of common everyday honesty and it was never intended to have it.

". . . Let us see, what does the candidate say about it? ... He does not say how to 'work it out constructively.' . . . Thereafter he speaks about an investigation. He is going to investigate it again.

"There it is, 1,700 closely printed pages of testimony, only two years old, dealing with the whole subject. . . . There is no investigation needed. Everybody in Washington knows all about it. . . ."

Then the Smith program was repeated: 1) A "scientific" redefinition of the word "intoxicating" in the Amendment; 2) modification of the alcoholic percentage fixed by the Volstead Act; 3) amendment of the Amendment to return the whole liquor question to the States.

The nine States that Nominee Smith courted on his first campaign tour--listed in the order of their likelihood for him: Montana, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado--have 63 electoral votes. Added to the nucleus of the Solid South and New York, upon which the Smith candidacy is predicated--the total would be 222 if his courtship has been 100% effective. Before the most optimistic of the Smith managers lay the problem of how to acquire 44 more electoral votes from the following possibilities:

"Border" "Wet East"

Maryland 8 Massachusetts18

Delaware 3 New Jersey 14

Kentucky 13 Rhode Island 5

Tennessee 12 Connecticut 7

Missouri 18

54 44