Conference No. 21

Ever since President Roosevelt called the first Governors' Conference at the White House in 1908 to discuss protection of national resources, state executives have been meeting periodically to discuss their executive duties, to eschew all controversial matters, to have a sociable time. This year's Conference, held last week by 22 Governors assembled in New London, Conn., bubbled with unusual excitement when Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York injected into it a letter on Prohibition which he had obtained from no less a personage than George Woodward Wickersham, chairman of President Hoover's National Commission on Law Enforcement and Observance.

When they assembled, their agenda looked politically nonexplosive. Gov. Roosevelt of New York was down for a talk on "Cooperation of Governors on Crime Problems." Maine's Gov. William Tudor Gardiner was to speak on "Employment of Prisoners," Carolina's Gov. Oliver Max Gardner on "Youthful Prisoners," Virginia's Gov. Harry Flood Byrd on "The Segregation Plan of Taxation" and North Dakota's Gov. George F. Shafer on "The Gasoline Tax." It looked like poor pickings for newsmen assigned to cover the conference.

Gov. Roosevelt's speech was tame until he quoted Commissioner Wickersham:

"Thus far the Federal Government has borne the brunt of [Dry] enforcement. It seems to me the Governors' Conference might well consider approaching the Federal Government on some feasible proposal to share this burden. If the National Government were to attend to preventing importation, manufacture and shipment in interstate commerce of intoxicants, the State undertaking the internal police regulations to prevent sales, saloons, speakeasies and so forth, national and state, laws might be modified so as to become reasonably enforceable and one great source of demoralizing and pecuniarily profitable crime removed. . . ."

The significance of this proposal lay in the fact that until then the Hoover Law Enforcement Commission had studiously avoided specific mention of Prohibition as a crime problem. How did Gov. Roosevelt get such a message? Was it meant for public use? Gov. Roosevelt explained that he had written to Mr. Wickersham, asked for some ideas. Responding in longhand from Bar Harbor, Me., Mr. Wickersham had explained: "I have no stenographer with me but I feel that your letter calls for the most helpful reply I can give and I hope that what I have written may suggest something of value in preparation of your address." Gov. Roosevelt said he felt no restriction had been imposed against the letter's publication. In Washington Chairman Wickersham refused to see newsmen, to answer their questions of whether or not he intended his letter for publication.

Thick and fast flew the questions at New London. Was Commissioner Wickersham demanding that all States give more material assistance to the U. S. on enforcement? Or did he hint at local option, with each State free to deal with Prohibition as local sentiment dictated? The words "modify" and "reasonably enforcible" caused Dry Governors to bristle with hostility.

West Virginia's Conley said: "We don't need modification."

Utah's Dern: "Logical . . . but is it practical?"

North Carolina's Gardner: "Unfortunate . . . The last election showed the sentiment of the people."

Missouri's Caulfield: "Mr. Wickersham had no business making such a premature and ill-advised announcement. . . . The usefulness of President Hoover's commission has been seriously harmed."

Reed of Kansas: "Untimely."

Gov. Roosevelt, who had carefully avoided Prohibition in his own speech, characterized the Wickersham proposal as "speculative" and moved across the ballroom to take a seat among the Dry Southern Governors. Observers got the impression that, as a Presidential candidate for 1932, he had already commenced to "play safe" on this issue.*

The Conference was almost disrupted when Dry Governors attempted to overturn its do-nothing tradition and have resolutions adopted calling for more law enforcement, more support of President Hoover. South Carolina's Gov. John Gardiner Richards offered such a resolution. So did Virginia's Governor Byrd and North Carolina's Governor Gardner. What the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina in private was not recorded but their public attitudes emphatically tended toward lengthening the historic interval between libations.

The Governor of South Carolina, after a speech by Maryland's Albert Cabell Ritchie, who was the sole Wet spokesman present, arose and thundered Bryan-esquely:

"I come from a State that rocked me in its cradle of States' rights and I stand for States' rights but the question of States' rights is not involved here. It is in the Constitution. ... I come from the great Democratic State of South Carolina but . . . the Republican party has given us a great President and I believe he is going down in history as one of the greatest Presidents [because] he stands for civic righteousness and enforcement of the law. ... I want to make this statement fearlessly while I stand on my feet: The great South, the great West and the great women of America* are for Prohibition and we shall have passed from the scene--I hope we shall not be forgotten--when Prohibition will still be here. . . ."

In the end, the Conference smothered the controversy, adopted no resolution at all. But as the discussions passed on to other topics, the Governor of North Carolina, talking on special treatment for youthful criminals, found opportunity to show himself more subtle than his thunderous neighbor, with this allusion: "The tendency of American reformers is almost never to teach, to educate public opinion, to convince gradually the citizenry of the value of reform, but is to secure the passage of prohibitory legislation and then leave it to the Government to carry out the reformers' ideas. . . . We go in strongly for 'noble experiments' and while I suppose that no one would pretend that we really want to be good, we are nevertheless anxious that the world should understand that we approve of goodness in others. . . ."

Oliver Max Gardner, at 47, is North Carolina's youngest Governor. Cottonmill owner, lawyer, farmer, he plays a left-handed game of golf, is fondly called "Max" by most Tarheel voters. At North Carolina State College he was a famed football player. Twenty years in Democratic politics, grey-haired, handsome, easy-mannered, he was elected last year without turning Hoovercratic to please bitter little old Senator Simmons.

Eyes for coincidence noted more than a similarity of names between the young athletic Governor of North Carolina and young athletic Governor of Maine. William Tudor Gardiner of Gardiner, Me., aged 37, was a Harvard tackle 15 years ago. During the War he spent 22 months in the Army, advanced from private to first lieutenant. He entered the State House of Representatives in 1921, became its speaker. His chief pastime: hunting bear, moose, deer in his Maine woods.

* Governor Roosevelt was "definitely disturbed" by "hot weather stories" about his presidential candidacy. Later in the week he issued a statement which the politically-wise took none too seriously: "I am not a candidate for President .... Purely speculative and wholly false insinuations about any consideration which I am giving to national candidacy. . . . This [Governorship of New York] is a man's-sized job which takes all my time."

* Governor & Mrs. Richards have nine daughters.