Cool & Damp

Batteries of teletype machines, set up in Chicago's Congress Hotel last week in preparation for the 20th Republican National Convention, warmed up with this test message: NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THE PARTY.

To the aid of their party, more than 2,000 delegates and alternates trooped into the city. Most of them wearied their feet on the hard floors of hotel lobbies, whispered unimportances, made use of Democratic Mayor Anton Joseph Cermak's free baseball and theatre tickets, waited to do their bosses' bidding when the convention got underway at the Stadium.

Unlike the last time the party invaded Chicago to nominate Warren Gamaliel Harding after a midnight meeting in the Blackstone Hotel, there were no bustling headquarters of rival aspirants for candidacy. Onetime Senator Joseph I. France of Maryland kept a lone vigil with a pair of stenographers in a suite at the Congress, ridiculously hopeful of a boon which the party leaders downstairs on the mezzanine floor had not the slightest intention of bestowing upon him. Marshall Field & Co. displayed a collection of small elephants. Loop district street lights were decorated with the party symbol on bunting. But throughout the length & breadth of the city there was not to be found a single Republican badge, button, sign or slogan urging the selection of anyone for office. Colyumnist Heywood Broun reported: "Herbert Clark Hoover is the forgotten man."

Vice President. An early arrival in the city was Mrs. Edward Everett ("Dolly") Gann, looking slightly less plump than usual. As to her brother Charles Curtis' chances of being renominated for the Vice Presidency, she "had not a single doubt." Neither had Secretary of the Treasury Mills, a delegate from New York, who appeared on the scene with the word of the White House on his lips. But ruddy little Chief Counsel James Francis Burke of the national committee, who claimed seniority over anyone at the gathering because he went to the 1892 Minneapolis convention the week after he was graduated from the University of Wisconsin, thought otherwise. "Don't bet against Dawes," he warned. "Watch Friday's papers."

Day before, Counsel Burke had been playing golf with Lawyer Silas Strawn. Mr. Strawn's law partner Ralph Shaw had as his house guest New York's one-time Senator James Wadsworth. The name of Wadworth, too, was to be put before the convention for Vice Presidential consideration. There was also the chance that Vice Presidential lightning might flash over the Philippines and hit Theodore Roosevelt in Manila. It might also nip Secretary of War Patrick Jay Hurley as he sat in seclusion in Chicago and framed the river & harbor development plan for his party's platform.

Women. With considerably more elation than was evidenced by the male delegates and alternates, 600 of whom canceled their hotel and seat reservations. Republican ladies trooped to their third convention. They raised their party's vocal tone, but those to whom attention was paid were chiefly the wives or relatives of well-known men. Mrs. George Horace Lorimer, wife of the Saturday Evening Post's editor, was alternate for sick Boss William S. Vare of Philadelphia, "hero" of the 1928 nomination of Herbert Hoover; Mrs. Ellis A. Yost, sister-in-law of Michigan's football coach, directed the women's division of the national committee; Sarah Schuyler Butler was a New York delegate with her father Dr. Nicholas Murray ("Miraculous") Butler; even Ruth Hanna McCormick, born to politics, came as the bride of onetime Congressman Albert Gallatin Simms of New Mexico. Mesdames F. Trubee Davison, Walter Evans Edge, James Wadsworth, Bertrand Hollis Snell chiefly came to have fun.

Absentees. The continued session of Congress and a general lack of interest kept many a familiar G. O. Politician away from Chicago. Senators Borah. Watson and Smoot, prime figures at Kansas City in 1928, were absent. Andrew William Mellon was at his London post. Claudius Huston who led the Hoover "Boy Scouts" four years ago> could not be found around the Stadium. Allan Hoover, a spectator at his father's first nomination, missed his renomination.

Movements as well as people were absent. There was no Revolt of the Farmers such as led to the withdrawal of Frank Orren Lowden in 1928. There was no Economic Insurgency. There were no "Allies" banded against the leading candidate. Chicago was calm, composed, conservative, deadly dull.

Contest. Politically as well as meteorologically the pre-convention atmosphere was cool and damp.

What ardor was present resulted from the contested seating of blocs of delegates from South Carolina headed by Joseph ("Tieless Joe") Tolbert and from Mississippi under Negro Perry W. Howard. Postmaster General Brown, President Hoover's political organizer, had been working to weed out these national committeemen ever since the administration promised to "clean up the G. O. P. south" in 1929. But after a ballot behind closed doors the national committee voted to seat Messrs. Tolbert and Howard, first sign of Old Guard recalcitrance to White House suasion.

Caught crunching his way through the packed Congress mezzanine, grizzled Mr. Tolbert was asked by a reporter why he never wore a cravat. "I still have to find a reason for wearing a tie," he snorted, adding pridefully: "My collar is as empty as a Democrat's promises."

Wet & Dry, Duller but more important than the seating bicker were the sidelights of the Wet v. Dry struggle. Many of Chicago's saloons had been closed or had closed voluntarily for the duration of the convention, but the dampness of anti-Prohibition agitation was rife.

Chairman James R. Garfield of the resolutions committee arrived from Washington to be besieged immediately by a swarm of newshawks. In the room at the Congress where his father received the choice which made him the 20th President, Chairman Garfield neatly dodged all reference to the President's Prohibition platform desire with an agility such as he once used when Secretary of the Interior in the Roosevelt "tennis Cabinet." He could not "speak for the President," but could speak for "responsible Republicans." He hurriedly added that Mr. Hoover was a responsible Republican.

A mass-meeting of Allied Drys in an uptown church brought a turnout of 187.

A mass-meeting of Wets in the Coliseum, where national conventions used to be held, rallied 15,000.

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