Stumpsters

None of the problems before us is greater than than the problems of the home and the children.--President Hoover.

President Hoover's splendid leadership and guidance have, prevented a panic-- Vice President Curtis.

We must put on a fighting campaign for the election of President Hoover--Calvin Coolidge.

With characteristic insight and vision Mr. Hoover has directed a foreign policy establishing new landmarks in all directions. --Secretary of State Stimson.

President Hoover has mastered the forces of destruction, laid the foundations for recovery, earned the right to complete the task of reconstruction--Secretary of the Treasury Mills.

I don't go in for predictions but I'll tell you Herbert Hoover and Charles Curtis are going to be re-elected--Republican National Chairman Sanders.

President Hoover's leadership is the strongest single force working against the Depression--Undersecretary of the Treasury Ballantine.

To displace President Hoover at this critical juncture would be a real calamity for the whole world--Mrs. Dolly Curtis Gann.

Had the President failed us, it is not too much to say there would not have been a bank open in America today--Kansas' Senator Capper.

In setting up his great reconstruction plan President Hoover has had one fundamental object in view and that is to protect from disaster the American home-- Secretary of War Hurley.

Our nation was fortunate enough to have as its commander-in-chief a man with sufficient breadth oj vision to direct vigorous and well-planned counter attacks at strategic points--Secretary of Commerce Chapin.

President Hoover's plans must be carried forward without interruption--Mrs. Thomas Alva Edison.

Such were last week's battle cries in the Republican national campaign as it crept into its final month. All G. 0. Partisans were saying approximately the same thing: "Hoover saved the country from wrack and ruin; give him a chance to finish the job." Such a defensive drive was difficult to make because the electorate, battered by hard times, seemed in no mood to be sweetly reasoned out of its grouch against the Administration. Most Republican managers, despite their required official optimism, admitted off the record that the party had on its hands an ominous, perhaps hopeless fight.

Foremost campaigner for the President was short, ruddy, big-nosed Ogden Livingston Mills. As Secretary of the Treasury he had lived, slept and slaved with the Hoover reconstruction program since its inception last year. Its details he knew by rote. On the stump he became its greatest expounder and expositor.

Before he left Washington last week to campaign to the Pacific Coast and back in the tracks of Governor Roosevelt, Secretary Mills was reminded of his failure to put the Hoover record across in Maine. He apologized: "I was in Maine five hours. Three of them were spent playing golf and the State went Democratic. I should have played more golf." A fact: due to stupidity at national G. 0. P. headquarters, no Hoover-Curtis posters reached Maine in time for the September election.

Michigan Republicans in Detroit heard Secretary Mills refer to "a new light in the east, the rising sun of a new day." At St. Louis he attacked Governor Roosevelt for "misrepresenting" President Hoover in his speeches, warned that this will be the most important election since 1864 (Lincoln's second). The Mills speeches were solid, earnest pieces of partisan rhetoric; they did not visibly arouse the electorate.

Vice President Curtis was conducting the same sort of smalltown, one-ring-circus tour as four years ago. As in 1928 he floored his audiences with oratorical extravagances, staggered them with tariff statistics, lost his temper when heckled. He had one standard speech for delivery everywhere. Excerpt: "After every great war hard times have followed. We have gone through many such periods, but our people have always come out and gone forward until today our nation is the leading nation of the world." Alone on the stump, the Vice President travelled from town to town in an ordinary Pullman instead of the private railroad car of 1928.

From West Virginia he headed into Oklahoma where he spoke at such places as Nash, Jet, Cherokee. Ponca City. At Pawhuska, Kaw Indians were joined by Osages and Pawnees in putting on war paint & feathers to welcome their fellow tribesman. Along the way were barbecues, stomp dances, W. C. T. U. receptions.

Secretary of War Hurley carried his campaign for the Hoover recovery program flamboyantly into Tennessee. At Johnson City he was heckled and booed because of his opposition to the Bonus, his treatment of the B. E. F. When a policeman started to oust the heckler, Secretary Hurley exclaimed: "Let him alone. Let him earn his money. Such demonstrations are prompted by reports of the American Legion convention broadcast by a Boston ward-heeling politician who never saw the inside of a U. S. uniform. . . .-- Yes, I'm opposed to the Bonus and I've got nerve enough to say so but Governor Roosevelt hasn't had the nerve to come out in the open on the question [see p. 9]."

An ulcerated tooth kept Secretary of Agriculture Hyde off the stump. After talking himself hoarse in Connecticut, Secretary of Labor Doak rested up at "Notre Nid" ("Our Nest"), his Potomac home, before invading West Virginia and Illinois. Alice Roosevelt Longworth was to make her single contribution to the Hoover campaign in the form of a speech at Indianapolis in mid-October. Calvin Coolidge, whose Hoover appeals have so far been only in writing, was scheduled to raise his voice for the party in Manhattan Oct. 11. Republican headquarters had 260 volunteer stumpsters of high & low degree to turn loose in the Mid-West. Four former presidents-general of the D. A. R. were about to go to work for the Hoover-Curtis ticket.

The man directly responsible for this G. 0. P. campaign was plump, easy-going National Chairman Everett Sanders. A small-bore Indiana politician, he appeared to his colleagues to be completely swamped by the magnitude of his job. Last week in Manhattan he beamed serious good cheer. "The campaign," he insisted, "is going along very well. We are in splendid condition. The country is Republican by several million votes. We have a good Republican President. . . . The tour of Governor Roosevelt through the West has tremendously helped the Republican party."

Such public talk was at violent odds with the private conversation of subordinate G. 0. Partisans who complained that headquarters was badly muddled, that the party was headed for sure defeat unless Chairman Sanders produced a last-minute miracle.*

More realistic in his outlook than Chairman Sanders was Samuel S. Koenig, New York City's Republican boss, who last week denied knowledge of a startling "deal" for Hoover votes in New York City (see p. 10). Said he: "President Hoover must lead his own campaign. That's the only way he can assure success. He must realize he's on the defensive. The efforts of his Cabinet are good but their effect is only local. . . . Mr. Roosevelt is making headway because he's in a one-sided contest with no one opposing him. He's been making a clever demagogic appeal and he's had things all his own way."

Polls. A Columbia University study of straw votes last month revealed that the most accurate presidential poll ever conducted was that of the Hearstpapers in 1928 when the Hoover election was predicted with an average error of only 5% of the popular vote in each State. This year's Hearst poll last week showed: Hoover 138,598; Roosevelt, 192,590.

The Columbia study found that the 1928 Literary Digest poll, though larger and more systematic, indicated only "average performance," with a tendency to over-predict Republican majorities. This was attributed to dominant republicanism in the Literary Digest's mailing list of telephone and automobile users.

Last week the Digest made this year's race seem nip & tuck when it announced 102,185 Roosevelt ballots in its straw vote to 100,323 for Hoover. It printed a portrait of Mr. Hoover on its cover. While it was releasing the figures quoted above, the Literary Digest had at press this week's issue (out Oct. 6) with reports from 20 states: Roosevelt, 404,992; Hoover 325.845. Of this Roosevelt total, only some 25,000 came from five Solid South States. The New York vote stood Roosevelt, 117,282; Hoover, 106,708. Governor Roosevelt was ahead 2-to-1 in California, well ahead in Ohio. Pennsylvania. Indiana. Illinois, Wisconsin, West Virginia. Colorado, Montana. President Hoover led only in New England and New Jersey. Office gossip said that next week's Digest totals are about 510,000 Roosevelt, 365,000 Hoover.

*Apparently a reference to Boston's Mayor Curley who attended the Legion convention, flayed the War Department for shooting down bonuseers "like dogs." Mayor Curley's record shows no War service.

*Last week Chairman Sanders found himself a defendant in a suit brought by the producer of a four-reel Hoover cinema entitled Master of Emergencies. The producer claimed the G. 0. P. committee had kept a negative of the film, was selling the picture at cut rates in violation of its contract. The court restrained distribution of Blaster of Emergencies.

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