Campaign Captains

(See front cover)

The late, goodnatured James William ("Jim") Good, winner of the West for Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover (who rewarded him with the portfolio of War), used to talk about votes in terms of bullfrogs. On the eve of the 1928 election he said he felt like the man who loaded his wagon with live bullfrogs and drove off to stock up his pond. From the noise in the wagon, the man was sure all the bullfrogs were still there all the way. But when he got to the pond, he found that all but two specially noisy frogs had jumped out. Good Jim Good's good moral was: Don't count your votes by the amount of noise they make before election day.

In charge of the 72nd Congressional election--all 435 Representatives and 35 of the 96 Senators** -- were no such historic phrasemakers as Jim Good. Chief of the Republican side was Ohio's professorial little Senator Simeon Davison Fess, chairman (faute de mieux) of the Republican National Committee. Chief of the Democratic side was Chairman John Jacob Raskob of the Democratic National Committee, very much offstage because of his Catholicism, Wetness and political naivete. While Chairman Fess went about making more or less perfunctory speeches, the actual work was done for the G. O. P. by plump, glossy-haired Robert Hendry Lucas, who was brought in in August from the Bureau of Internal Revenue to be national executive director. While Chairman Raskob lay low--except to provide money and to answer "Libelous!" last week to an attack on his personal financial behavior during and since the 1929 stock crash--the actual work of the Democrats was done by Jouett Shouse, 51, the horse-faced, horse-minded, Kentucky-born Kansas City lawyer who was called in to be national executive committee chairman in May, 1929.

Jouett Shouse was at the racetrack in Havre de Grace, Md. the day they called him to help the Democracy. He was there with his two daughters watching the horses run, laying bets, having fun. It was John Jacob Raskob on the telephone, calling from Manhattan. He had been hunting all over for Mr. Shouse and wanted him to come right up to town-- very important -- national duty -- great scheme in mind--must come. Jouett Shouse went up but it took Mr. Raskob two days to argue him into shouldering the task of electing a Democratic Congress in 1930. Jouett Shouse was making about $50,000 per year out of his law business. He was not breaking even at the race-tracks--few people do. There was no visible income attached to this big political job. Jouett Shouse did not see how he could afford to do it. But John Raskob showed him, persuaded him.

Words. Jouett Shouse went back to Washington, pulling pensively on his straight briar pipe, and straightaway hired the arch-Democratic New York World's able capital correspondent, Charles Michelson (brother of Physicist Albert Abraham Michelson of the University of Chicago). Mr. Michelson's title became Director of Publicity. He and Mr. Shouse laid down during the next 18 months one of the most sustained and effective political barrages ever known in the U. S. Steering clear of the farm issue, Prohibition and the Depression, they concentrated early on the Tariff revision, later on Unemployment, especially on President Hoover's inactivity in these matters. They put pointed speeches into the empty mouths of Democratic Senators. They couched their headquarters statements in language so unusually quotable that the jaded press paid unusual attention. They irritated the Administration to such a point that it was felt necessary for the Republican National Committee to hire James West, the Associated Press's Washington man, to compose prompt Republican retorts. President Hoover's trenchant little friend, Frank Kent of the Democratic Baltimore Sun, was inspired to write a piece in which the Messrs. Shouse and Michelson were accused of trying to "smear Hoover."

Dollars. Following up his word barrage. Mr. Shouse judiciously doled out dollars for campaign expenses in Congressional Districts where it might really do good. Chairman Raskob ($220.000 including loans), Bernard Mannes Baruch ($20,000 plus), and Pierre du Pont ($5,000 plus) were the main sources of supply. The Democracy had only $1 for every $5 the Republicans could spend. For despite the general reluctance to give money to the G. 0. P. when it was learned how Claudius Hart Huston had deposited party funds in his private stockmarket account, after Mr. Huston was ousted as G. O. P. Chairman, confidence was restored by G. O. P. Treasurer Joseph Randolph Nutt of Cleveland and more than $500,000 rolled in.

Issues. "There is no clear cut issue between the parties in this campaign," said Republican Director Lucas last week. "The thing that comes nearest being an issue is the protective tariff, and that question is more at issue within the Democratic party than it is between the Democratic party and the Republican party." Democratic Director Shouse had to agree. Unlike a presidential election, a Congressional election seldom has a unifying thought on either side. It is in fact a panorama of local contests to be won by local strata gems, promises, personalities. Prohibition and the Slump were most useful to Director Shouse as background for his national effort, but he dared not stress either subject -- Prohibition, because so much of the Democracy is moralistically Dry; the Slump, because no fairminded voter would really entertain the notion that the Hoover Administration was to blame. Therefore the Republican rallying cry: "Support the President!" went unchallenged save by a rather vague Democratic retort: "Let's have a change !"

Forecasts. Jouett Shouse would be prone to think of an election in terms of a horse race rather than a load of bull frogs. He knows that races are won and lost in the final stretch. Both ends of a horse are important -- the head that leads as they round the turn and the hind legs that make the driving finish. Watching his grand national entry round the turn in early October, Jouett Shouse put down his binoculars and announced that Democrats would take "at least 40" seats in the House from Republicans. To win the race, 53 seats were needed. Two weeks later Mr. Shouse thought he saw his entry's head showing out in front. "I unhesitatingly make the prediction that the House of Representatives will show a Democratic majority," he said. Last week as the racers clattered up to the judges' box, he cried: ". . . An increasing Democratic swing. . . . We will gain 72 additional seats. . . . A Democratic majority of 22 . . .!"

From his place in the grandstand Republican Director Lucas complacently declared at the finish: "I am confident of a normal Republican majority. . . ."

At election midnight, Mr. Shouse's smile had an air of finality.

Quids & Quos. As the ballots were counted and the results of their efforts became apparent, the Messrs. Shouse and Lucas did not have identical political prospects. Mr. Lucas was the lieutenant of a cause that had lost. He could be courtmartialed quietly. No one would blame him; he would simply be the victim of a state of change.

Pregnant with great things, however, was Mr. Shouse's position, for after Mr. Raskob's resignation--sure to come after the party's debts are cleared--the focal figure of the Democratic party would be the man who had last guided it to the polls. Even as Washington was jesting last month about "Shouse's House" (Publicist Michelson privately amended it to "Shouse's Souse House"), so might they soon be talking seriously about Shouse's choice for the White House. Before now he had been approached for advice by an aspirant for the Presidency--it happened to be a Republican--and the subsequent arrival of that gentleman at the White House was at least in part a testimonial to the Shouse sagacity. Also, it was Jouett Shouse, promoter, who sent the Republican National Convention to Kansas City two years ago. Tall, bespectacled, neatly dressed with the blue shirt, tight-pinned collar and bright necktie of a Midwestern business-&-sporting man, he knows his way around, and is known, extremely well. His closest political crony is Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi, one of the three leaders of the southern wing of the Democracy (Senators Glass of Virginia and Robinson of Arkansas are the other two). His forceful, often profane pronouncements carry the authority not only of an experienced political manager but of one who has fully experienced public office. He was in Congress four years (1915-19). President Wilson made him an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, where he reorganized the War Risk Insurance division.

In the still widely divided but greatly encouraged Democracy Mr. Shouse loomed last week as the most powerful non-candidate-for-office, the man who--with a continued decline of Republican sway in prospect--had the greatest chance of any Democrat of shaping U. S. history in the next two years.

**Maine's four Representatives were elected in September -- four Republicans. Also: one Republican Senator (Wallace Humphrey White Jr.).

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