Smith 1; Roosevelt 154

In 1928 Alfred Emanuel Smith got 450,259 votes in Wisconsin. Last week in the same State he won his first and only pledged delegate so far to this year's national convention. To gain the nomination he had to get 769 more. The 25 other Wisconsin votes went to Franklin Delano Roosevelt whose convention strength was thereby upped to 154.* Surprising was the size of the Democratic primary vote in a State where for years the party has been an empty shell. In the 1924 election Nominee Davis got 68,115 Wisconsin votes; last week 225,000 voters participated in the Democratic free-for-all. C. As the guest of Lucky Strike cigaret's radio hour, Governor Roosevelt last week broadcast to the nation his first political speech as a Presidential candidate. Excerpts: "The present condition of our national affairs is too serious to be viewed through partisan eyes for partisan purposes. . . . Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo because he forgot his infantry. The present Administration in Washington has either forgotten or it does not want to remember the infantry of our economic army. These unhappy times call for plans . . . that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid. . . . No nation can long endure half bankrupt. . . . One of the essential parts of a national program of restoration must be to restore purchasing power to the farming half of the country. . . . The $2,000,000,000 fund which President Hoover and the Congress have put at the disposal of the big banks, the railroads and the corporations is not for the homeowner. . . . An objective of government should be to provide at least as much assistance to the little fellow as it is now giving to the large banks and corporations. . . . Such objectives . . . seem beyond the concern of a national administration which can think in terms only of the top of the social and economic structure. They have sought temporary relief from the top down rather than permanent relief from the bottom up, have failed to plan ahead in a comprehensive way." Greatly did this speech dismay that good public friend of Governor Roosevelt's, the arch-Democratic New York Times, which declared: "Why the Governor should feel it necessary to say things which, coming from another, would be called demagogic claptrap, it is hard to understand. He does not need to go out and beat the bushes for votes. If he must speak, he ought to make sure of his facts first and then deal with them in a way not to cause his supporters to blush. . . . His speech was of a sort to make his friends sorry and the judicious grieve." P: To friends in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and California who wondered precisely where he stood in the party's pre-convention contest, Mr. Smith wrote: "I will accept the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. I certainly welcome the support of my friends and will be very happy to stand solidly with them." When the same supporters informed him that word was going around that he himself was not "available" because of his religion and that his candidacy was only a "stalking horse" for Governor Roosevelt, Mr. Smith retorted: "I resent any whispering campaign that I am working in the interest of another candidate. That is false and would be a betrayal of my friends. I thank you especially for the way in which you have dealt with the un-American and unDemocratic propaganda issued for the purpose of interfering with the success of my friends and supporters."

* Alaska, 6; Washington, 16; New Hampshire, 8; Minnesota, 24; North Dakota, 9; Georgia, 28; Iowa, 26; Maine, 12.

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