Ruths

It was an odd coincidence that the three outstanding new women office-seekers in the campaign were all named Ruth. All ran for Congress. All were widows, two were grandmothers. Two were able daughters of famed politicos. All three campaigned without emphasis on their sex. They were two Republicans and one Democrat, but all represented the new type of political woman. They were all ladies of greater wealth than previous women Congressmen have been. One's husband had been a Senator and his seat in the Senate was her ultimate goal. But none was a Representative's widow, as has usually been the case with Congresswomen.

Many a flat joke was made about the next Congress not being "Ruthless" and about this being the campaign of the four Ruths, since Baseballer George Herman ("Babe") Ruth was stumping for the Brown Derby (see p. 9). The three ladies were:

1) Ruth Bryan Owen of Florida, daughter of the late Great Commoner. She has her father's face and something of his frame. Modern conditions required her to substitute practical thinking for the passionate oratory that might have been her inherited forte. Long before the Smith tariff declaration at Louisville, she found it necessary to declare for Protection, which her father fought so long. Florida has changed since the Commoner first invested in its real estate and conducted prayer meetings there. Northern business men and methods opened a new field for northern political ideas and attitudes. Ruth Bryan Owen had to adapt herself and did so grudgingly. Besides the new Tariff ideas in her party, she balked at Tammany and the "grape juice" tradition of her family was affronted by the Smith wetness. She refused to let the National Committee use her photograph.

2) Ruth Baker Pratt of New York, widow of a Republican financier, campaigned with the experience of a society clubwoman who had come through the rough-and-tumble of big-city politics. Even Manhattan's "silk stocking" district has its seamy side. Mrs. Pratt encountered Tammany methods within her own party before securing her nomination. A somewhat amateurish city alderman, she was opposed for nomination by a highly professional State Assemblyman, Phelps Phelps. Her primary victory seemed due to her astute counsellors more than to her social appeal. The seat in Congress which she sought was held by one Tammanyite and defended by another, both Jews. A woman Socialist, Bertha Mailly, also ran. Mrs. Pratt was expected to win because "Broadway's Congressman" is normally Republican. She made a vigorous campaign, renouncing weekends in the country all summer and fall.

3) Ruth Hanna McCormick of Illinois, widow of Senator Medill McCormick, daughter of the late great Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Ohio, was, although not yet a grandmother, much further advanced in the political art than Bryan's and Manhattan's Ruths. She was to be the first woman Congressman-at-large, the nearest thing to being elected Senator, which no woman has ever been. Her statewide string of women's clubs is the largest political machine ever built up by a woman in the U. S. It causes no end of worry to Senator Deneen, whom Mrs. McCormick cordially dislikes and thoroughly scorns, against whom she will doubtless campaign when he seeks re-election two years hence, but who had to put up with her this year for party reasons. Forgetting her anti-Hoover crusade at Kansas City, she worked as hard for the National ticket as for herself. Blooded stock, intellectual journalists, Far Western spaces and cultivated seclusion are Mrs. McCormick's interests outside of politics.