Cribbing

When he was in the White House, Calvin Coolidge was not above cribbing local color verbatim from the office encyclopedia for his minor speeches. Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt lifted his Thanksgiving Day proclamation for 1930 from the Protestant Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Last week careful readers of political addresses discovered what looked like another case of plagiarism.

On April 13 Alfred Emanuel Smith spoke at a Jefferson Day dinner in Washington. On April 18 Governor Roosevelt addressed Democrats at St. Paul. Mr. Smith and Governor Roosevelt are poles apart on some issues but on the Republican tariff their stand is apparently identical :'

SMITH ROOSEVELT The consequences of The consequences of the Hawley-Smoot bill the Hawley-Smoot bill have been tremendous, have been tremendous, with directly and both directly and indirectly. indirectly. Directly-- Directly, American American foreign trade Foreign trade has has been steadily dwin- been steadily dwindling. dling. . . . Indirectly Indirectly, the high --the high schedules schedules of the Hawley- of the Hawley-Smoot bill Smoot bill caused caused European European nations to nations to raise their raise their own tariff own tariff walls walls, and these walls not only against us but were raised not only against each other. against us but against each other.

Friends of the Brown Derby insisted Mr. Smith had dictated that section of his address himself. When Governor Roosevelt was shown the two sections, he laughingly remarked: "Merely a coincidence." The flowery allusiveness of the Roosevelt speech at St. Paul moved Heywood Broun, New York World-Telegram colyumist, last week to write: "The fighting Governor is going before the country on the proposition that Thomas Jefferson was a better man than Alexander Hamilton. . . . The fearless one will eventually come out against the extravagance of Grant's second administration. ... A primer for voters might well begin with the injunction 'Never trust a quoter.' ... I found:--'This reminds me of what Chesterton Keenly remarked. . . . Abraham Lincoln could say today. ... As Woodrow Wilson so wisely put it. ... I like Andrew Jackson's blunt statement that.' ... A careful tally reveals the following extracts: Woodrow Wilson, two; Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, two and G. K. Chesterton. . . . I should have added Patrick Henry. . . . I was minded to remark: 'Why don't you speak for yourself, Franklin?' "

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