"Chock"

Last week the Roosevelt bandwagon, carrying no less than 231 pledged delegates, trundled into Massachusetts. There for the first time its progress was halted. Governor Roosevelt had been warned to keep out of the primary in Massachusetts on the ground that the State was still as fiercely loyal to Alfred Emanuel Smith as it was four years ago. Governor Roosevelt was persuaded to enter by blustering, self-confident James Curley, Mayor of Boston. Mayor Curley thought he saw a chance to ride a presidential winner and thereby become No. 1 Democrat of his State. Besides, Col. Edward Mandell House, quiet little party strategist with a summer home at Manchester, had declared for the New York Governor, sponsored a luncheon last year in behalf of Candidate Roosevelt. To oppose Mayor Curley and manage a Smith primary campaign, forward came Governor Joseph Buell Ely and U. S. Senator David Ignatius Walsh.

In what was really his first serious fight for the nomination, Governor Roosevelt took a terrible beating in Massachusetts. He lost not only every single one of the State's 36 convention votes but also an incalculable amount of national prestige. The popular Smith margin was 3-to-1. Mayor Curley could not even carry his own Boston for Mr. Roosevelt. Where Senator Walsh topped the slate of Smith delegates-at-large with 153,303 votes, the Governor's son James was high man on the Roosevelt slate with only 56,480. Few observers had anticipated a Smith defeat but fewer had expected the bandwagon candidate to get such a downright drubbing.

After the primary, newshawks flocked to see Mr. Smith in his high Manhattan office, asked him what the vote meant. He explained: "It ought to put a chock under the bandwagon and stop people from jumping on it, on the theory there's nowhere else to go. Give what happened time to sink in and we'll see." While Massachusetts was voting last week, so was Pennsylvania--but with this difference: no Democratic nominee for President has carried Pennsylvania since the Civil War. Out of some 200,000 Democratic votes cast in a preference primary that bound no one, Governor Roosevelt ran about 15,000 ahead of Mr. Smith. As to the State's 76 convention votes, Smith forces claimed not less than 32, while Roosevelt men insisted their candidate would get around 60.

The failure of Governor Roosevelt to make a better showing in his first test of strength in the urban East caused sharpshooting Pundit Walter Lippmann to write in the New York Herald Tribune:

"The inherent weakness of Governor Roosevelt's candidacy has been made manifest to the country. . . . These results dispose completely of the Roosevelt propaganda that he is the idol of the masses. . . . Mr. Roosevelt's protestations of interest in the forgotten man have brought him just nowhere. . . . The real reason is that the people of the East know about Mr. Roosevelt and gradually have taken his measure. They just do not believe in him. They have detected something hollow in him, something synthetic, something pretended and calculated. . . ."

Brown Derby men last week produced figures to show that the 385 convention votes necessary to block a Roosevelt nomination on the first ballot were already in hand. Of these Mr. Smith was given no (Massachusetts 36, Connecticut 16, New Jersey 32, Rhode Island 10, Pennsylvania 16). A coalition of "favorite sons" supplied 254 more (Illinois for Lewis, 58; Maryland for Ritchie, 16; Missouri for Reed, 36; Oklahoma for Murray. 22; Ohio for White, 52; Texas for Garner, 46; Virginia for Byrd, 24). Strong Smith sentiment in New York's unpledged delegation of 94 votes was counted on to supply the final momentum to "stop Roosevelt."

Threatened for the first time, Candidate Roosevelt could draw comfort from Democratic history. If he can produce 577 votes out of 1,154 on the convention's first ballot, he can count himself as good as nominated. No Democratic aspirant who has mustered a majority on the first ballot has ever failed to secure later the two-thirds necessary to nominate.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.