Incantations

The magic number of this year's Democratic national convention is 770--the two-thirds majority of delegates required to nominate for the Presidency. Last week political incantations began to fill the air, the primary elections began. It was the real start of the 1932 campaign and on the full-jawed face of New York's ambitious Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a set smile of wizardly confidence. He already had 22 of those 770 delegates.*

Alfred Emanuel Smith, though he had said he was no active candidate, waved his four-year-old Brown Derby vigorously at his enchanted friends. Plain, blunt John Nance Garner stuck ostentatiously to his Speakership. Governor William Henry ("Alfalfa Bill") Murray with Oklahoma's 22 votes in his pocket stumped the Mid-West with violence and passion. Maryland's Governor Albert Cabell Ritchie charmed well-bred audiences while hoping for a convention deadlock to make him the lucky compromise candidate. Newton Diehl Baker went about his private business as if he had never heard of the Presidency.

P: New Hampshire Democrats, first to hold their primary, were divided into two camps only--Roosevelt and Smith. No other aspirant bothered to enter a slate of delegates. On primary day only one out of four Democrats who had voted for the Brown Derby in 1928 turned out to express a presidential preference, and of these only one in three still favored the man they had tried to put in the White House four years ago. Governor Roosevelt's clean sweep upped to 30 his total toward the magic number.

P: Minnesota Democrats were loud and disorderly when they convened at St. Paul. Roosevelt partisans were in 4-to-1 command over Smith supporters. Political opponents tussled around a microphone. The presiding officer wrecked a table gaveling for order. The stuffy air resounded with hisses and catcalls. When the Minnesota delegation had been instructed to cast its 24 votes for Governor Roosevelt, the disgruntled Smith minority bolted, held a rump session of its own, voted to send a Smith delegation to Chicago anyway. Total Roosevelt strength for the week: 54.

P: Ten more nomination votes were at stake this week in North Dakota's primary where Governor Roosevelt was pitted against Governor Murray. Governor Roosevelt, backed by North Dakota's Democratic organization, made farmers liberal political promises about refinancing their debts at lower interest rates. Governor Murray stumped the State in person, drew large and enthusiastic crowds. ("Why worry about a mint julep when we haven't got the money to buy one.") Last week Governor Murray also filed as a presidential candidate in Ohio and West Virginia.

P: The "Stop Roosevelt" movement last week focused on Massachusetts (36 votes). Fortnight ago Mr. Smith, despite his earlier statement that he would not contest for another nomination, allowed his name to go in for the primary. April 26. Boston's Mayor Curley, hot for Roosevelt, began hectoring the Brown Derby with telegraphic demands that, since New Hampshire had repudiated him, he withdraw from Massachusetts. Mr. Smith wired back that he did not consider the use of his name in the primary at odds with his no-candidate statement. Mayor Curley thereupon telegraphed Mr. Smith that he was "glad," published the correspondence in the Press and took to the air with a broad intimation that the Brown Derby was out of the race. Boiling mad, Mr. Smith flashed back: "You are trying to put me in a false light with my friends in Massachusetts. . . . I welcome their support. . . . I battled hard for the principles they stand for and I am ready to do so again. . . . Your telegram seems to me a bit tricky. . . ." Retorted Boston's Mayor: "In the words of the poet, 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!'" When a complete slate of Smith delegates, headed by Governor Ely and Senator Walsh, was put into the field, it became plain as a pikestaff that the Brown Derby was in the campaign up to its ears, that its intention was to corner enough convention votes to keep Governor Roosevelt from conjuring 770.

P: Also on April 26 Pennsylvania holds a primary. Pennsylvania has 76 votes. Last week Roosevelt men declared that their candidate would get 40 of them without a contest, probably 50, possibly 60. Smith men insisted that the Brown Derby would carry most of the State and a majority of the delegation. In Massachusetts and Pennsylvania the "Stop Roosevelt" movement will succeed or fall flat.

P: Last week in California William Gibbs McAdoo, onetime Secretary of the Treasury, filed his name at the head of a primary slate of delegates pledged to the candidacy of Speaker Garner.

P: On March 1 the national Democracy had $140,489 cash in its treasury against debts of $786,116. Biggest item: $125,000 from the "sale" of the National Convention to Chicago. Also announced last week was the fact that the "victory drive" to clean up the 1928 deficit had netted $550,000 in cash and pledges from 45,817 Democrats.

P: Last week's odds on the Democratic presidential nomination: Roosevelt, 1-to-2; Garner, 1-to-4 1/2; Smith, 1-to-5 1/2; Ritchie, 1-to-6; Baker, 1-to-6; Young, 1-to-20.

* Alaska, 6; Washington, 16.

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