Battle of the Atlantic

One million people, by the coldest reckoning, and in all probability many more saw or tried to see Nominee Smith in New England last week. Some of those who tried were carried away in ambulances. . . .

There were crowds and there was noise when the Brown Derby's train, coming from Albany, stopped at Springfield. Editor Waldo Cook, 63, of the Springfield Republican, said he had never seen anything like it in all his many and much observing years. At Worcester, the people and the noise were again one flesh. But at Boston, the people and the noise were such a People and such a Noise as no ecstasy had ever before sublimated. Journalistically recordable fact was of little importance, save as the finite is important in the infinite. Recorded fact was as follows:

Nominee Smith, Mrs. Smith and daughter Emily Warner stepped off the train at South Station at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Policemen, three lines deep, and ropes failed to hold the burden of the mass. Wanting to touch, to say something to the Smith family, the People charged, milled, shoved, yelled. Scarcely heard were the screams of two girls whose bodies were bent back sharply over the ropes. Mrs. Smith became separated from her husband. He refused to take another step until she was restored to his side. An officer found her; she was white with fright. Finally, the Smiths reached an automobile. The Brown Derby began to wave salutations. As far as his dazzling blue eyes could see, was the People--on roofs and on streets. It took an hour for the Smith automobile to travel 20 blocks. For safety the motor had to be shut off; the People pushed the car. An old man in a robe stood on a truck at Scollay Square; he held aloft a sign saying: "Diogenes looking for Hoover Prosperity." The air was full of a thousand Smiths and not a few O'Briens; they were on pages of torn-up telephone books. It was getting dark. The Smith mounted a bandstand on Boston Common. Noise. Ambulances. Later were found upon the Common purses, women's hats, beaded bags, and 17 shoes. The Smith went to the Hotel Statler to eat, dress and think over his speech. The crowd, hungry, waited.

Three halls, jammed as they had never been jammed before, received the Happy Warrior that night. First, he went to Mechanics and Symphony Halls, where 17.000 people risked limb, if not life, for two smiles and two dozen words by the Nominee, and for a long wait until his speech came in over the radio from the Boston Arena. It was after 9 o'clock when he reached the Arena, stuffy and emotionally boiling with 19,000 persons, where no more than 15,000 persons had ever been able to get in together before. Mrs. Francis B. Sayre (whom President Wilson gave in marriage from the White House) had spoken.-- So had Senator David Ignatius Walsh, rocking the building with the announcement that Senator Norris had come out for Nominee Smith (see p. 16). The cheering on the appearance of the Happy Warrior was the peak of the New England trip, perhaps the peak of his campaign. When it was stilled, Mrs. Sayre quoted what Woodrow Wilson said of Alfred Emanuel Smith. Another outburst. Then the Nominee spoke: ". . . We shall use words to convey our meaning--if the orators in the gallery will only just subside shall use words to convey our meaning, not to hide it. . . ."

After Nominee Smith had finished his speech (see p. 14), the crowds stayed to hear the "Sidewalks of New York" and ''Sweet Adeline." It was a big evening. Mrs. Smith cried softly that night in the Hotel Statler.

Next morning, the Smith family left Boston after the Happy Warrior had told Senator Walsh: "Only God knows what is in store for me in the future, but I want to put this on record before I leave the confines of Boston--that I never shall forget to the end of my life the reception given me by the people of Massachusetts. . . . "/-

Boston had been big-town gloria in excelsis! But now the Derby was skimming out into the chill dew of New England's rural Republicanism. There were fears lest it emerge bedraggled. So the Smith Special hurried until it reached Blackstone, one of Massachusetts' most safely Democratic cities. There "safe" throngs throated the governor as he embarked on an experiment shrewd in motive. He would leave his train and motor to Providence, R. I., through the mill towns of the Blackstone Valley which are traditionally Republican, French-Canadian, wet and Roman Catholic. Let the human test-tubes boil!

No factory whistles shrilled at the Brown Derby's approach as it passed nor as it vanished. Mill owners had turned their steam on for Candidate Hoover, had (See p. 15) kept every whistle at full toot so long as he was in hearing. Now mill hands left their piece work, ran to big windows and yelled, forced numerous mills to shut down from five minutes to an hour.

Woonsocket, Manville, Albion. As the Derby waved wide and high, cheers swelled. Berkeley, Valley Falls. All along the roads, school children and mill wives shrilled "Hello, Al! Hello, Al!" Central Falls and Pawtucket, hulloos and shrieks -- then Providence.

More than a rack of test-tubes -- a retort! Seething humanity smothered the Derby. Confetti and torn telephone books snowed. A placard and its prancing bearers proclaimed: "Remember November sixth -- beer!" The swarms of children grew prodigious. Cautioningly, anxiously now the Derby waved. One child run down would cost thousands of votes, perhaps millions. Yet swarming imps were every where, all yelling and grinning, a few tying to the Derby's car tin cans which other imps snatched off, pummeling the tin-cantiers.

Not only children but such massed myriads of adults turned out that even New York's arch-Republican Herald Trib une was obliged to report:

"Probably the greatest demonstrations ever accorded a Democratic presidential candidate in normally Republican southern New England attended Gov. Smith's pas sage."

Derby folk thought the peak of the day came when it skimmed across another state line to rock-ribbed Republican Hartford, Conn. Here five miles of packed humans jammed the streets, through which police fought a slow way for the Candidate's car. And at no point did the crowds thin or taper off--as happened in Chicago.

Pandemonium dinned from incessantly sounded motor horns, blared from brass band, split the welkin with shrieks of "Al! Al! We're for you, Al!" While Mrs. Smith beamed and threw kisses by the hearty handful, the Governor seemed to grow at last almost awed with the frenzied multitudes. Like a magician's wand his small brown hat seemed literally to conjure cheers. He was supremely happy, but perhaps amazed.

At New Haven, where the Smith Special briefly halted, hundreds broke police lines, swarmed over the railroad tracks, stopped all other trains. From the high trestled station at Bridgeport the Derby waved above a packed sea of thousands. Red torches flared. Nearing Manhattan at 11:30 p.m., the special was cheered as it coasted through the Republican town of Mt. Vernon by 2,000 people who had been on the platform since 9 p.m. The Candidate had not been scheduled to stop, didn't stop. From Grand Central Station a double line of policemen elbowed and pummeled back the people, forming a lane to the Biltmore Hotel.

There, after a demonstration such as only Bryan, Roosevelt and Wilson have evoked in recent years, Alfred Emanuel Smith sought bed, perhaps to dream of crowds and mobs and multitudes: THE PEOPLE.

What are "the people," anyway? Are their cheers like the illimitable lapping laughter of the sea--cruel, meaningless and vain? Gloria in excelsis! Perhaps glory is a ripple on the human sea. Wherever the hero appears the ripple rises mightily around him, spreads, widens, dissipates and soon subsides. Or perhaps the voice of the mob speaks truest, having no restraint or fear.

When ten or fifty thousand souls suspire in unanimous awesome shouts of "Al!" or "Hoover!" or "rah! rah!" is that or is it not a mighty fraction of the VOICE OF GOD? Or was Alexander Hamilton sneering close to the truth when he exclaimed "Your people, sir, is a great beast!"

Perhaps such thoughts did not perplex the matter-of-fact brain under the Derby, yet when Manhattan correspondents gathered at the Biltmore next morning, Gov. Smith looked baffled when asked how the people's cheers made him feel. He said: "It gives a fellow a kind of feeling of satisfaction and a feeling of reward when you see so many thousand people stand for hours in a crowd just to wave their hands at you. It looks like there is something in the air.

"It was certainly very encouraging. It cannot be that these people cheer the way they do and then vote the other way. I could not understand that!"

On skimmed the Derby--to Pennsylvania, where no Democratic presidential candidate has seriously campaigned since Bryan in 1896. Camden, N. J., was cool; but Philadelphia acclaimed. Throngs, a carnival of ticker-tape, speculators hawking tickets to the Smith rally--unauthorized and illegally, of course. Finally an audience of 13,000 which assembled three hours before the Candidate was expected incessantly cheered his speech and booed with ferocity every reference to Pennsylvania's traditional Republicanism.

Well-poised, the Candidate did not rashly claim Pennsylvania but did declare that Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut are "all right," and that "the tide has turned!" In Manhattan, betting odds dropped from 5 to 1 against the Derby to 3 1/2 to 1. Prudent, the Candidate rested for a day at Claymont, Del., with Mr. and Mrs. John J. Raskob and eleven children. Then, unbedraggled, crisp and confident, the "bronzer"-- trooped buoyantly on.

Arriving in Baltimore, Governor Smith joined a motorcade which slowly wended its way along Cathedral street, which was lined on both sides with ten-deep crowds, with a preponderance of women.

*She had spoken tersely, beginning as follows: 'To my mind, there are three fundamental issues in this campaign, each going to the very heart of our government itself.

"The first is party responsibility. When a party by vote of the people goes into office, it assumes responsibility for all and everything its accredited officers do or have not done. . . . A vote for the Republican Party indorses its record of crimes. . . .

"The second is intolerance. Every one of your ancestors and mine came to this country because they believed that here was equal opportunity and religious tolerance, that any boy of brains and integrity could rise as high as his own talents would permit. . . .

"The third issue I call 'silence.' There can be no democracy without free discussion of the people's problems, no representative government unless the people know what the candidate stands for and the candidate knows what the people want. . . ."

/-Democratic and Republican newspapers, almost without exception, said that the Smith reception had far surpassed Lindbergh's. The most emotional story was despatched by Robert Barry of the New York Evening World. The Boston Herald contributed a new version of an old jingle:

Alas for the City of Boston.' Her exclusiveness now is a myth:

The Lowells are walking with Hoover, The Cabots are strolling with Smith. --Smithsynonym for "Brown Derby."