GOPossibilities

(See front cover) As of last January, the re-election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in November 1936 and a repetition of the Republican routs of 1932-34 were considered sure.

As of last July, the question "Can Roosevelt be beaten in 1936?" began to blow about the country (TIME, Aug. 12). Pricking up its ears, the G. O. P. took to talking hopefully about such political imponderables as coalitions and defections which might defeat the Democratic President. As of last month, Republicans believed so strong a popular countercurrent had set in against Mr. Roosevelt that the New Deal could be beaten at the polls next year in a straight fight without any reshuffling of the major parties. Suddenly very much in order was discussion of who was to head the G. O. P.'s ticket in 1936. A spume of speculation sprayed out of the Press, falling glossily on three of Herbert Hoover's Cabinet members, half the Republican Senators, such celebrated outsiders as Henry Ford and Charles Augustus Lindbergh. But as of last week, and mak-ing full allowance for hell, high water and the eight months until the national convention, professional Republican politicians and influential amateurs who make it their business to be perceptive about these things were looking with greatest interest on three men. Only one was so far actively a candidate for the nomination. Only one held public office. Only one was a national figure. Respectively qualifying in these categories, they were: Publisher William Franklin Knox of Chicago; Governor Alfred Mossman Landon of Independence, Kans.; ex-President Herbert Clark Hoover of Palo Alto, Calif. Who is Frank Knox? is an inquiry which may be legitimately put by a nation which has for the past 60 days seen his name pop up over & over again in the newspapers with the tantalizingly brief apposition: "A leading candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1936."* Fact is, Frank Knox is known about in a number of places, but probably not completely anywhere. There are Rough Riders who recall him as that rather aggressive young man from Alma (Mich.) College who was invalided with sunstroke and dysentery after the second assault on Santiago. Certain oldsters at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich, may remember him as the boy reporter from Grand Rapids who in 1902 put up $1,500 as half the purchase price of the weekly Lake Superior Journal, set about reforming wide-open "Soo,"knocked out a saloonkeeper, had his window shattered by a bullet, departed ten years later after selling his expanded publishing properties for $50,000. New Hampshirites know him better. Attracted there in 1912 by Governor Robert Perkins Bass and other Progressive Republican friends, Publisher Knox and his "Soo" partner founded the Manchester Leader, later bought out the two opposition sheets. Today their Leader (evening) and Union (morning) cover New Hampshire like the dew. Boston remembers Frank Knox not because he was born there but because in 1927 Publisher William Randolph Hearst wooed him away from Manchester and an invalid, childless wife, put him in complete charge of his American and Advertiser. Chicago now knows Frank Knox best of all, although when he went there in 1931 to buy the Daily News, his sole sponsor was Charles Gates Dawes. Publisher Walter Strong of the News had just died. The News (circulation: 400,000) was and is not only one of the nation's half-dozen great papers but, in a city ringing with the blatancy of two Hearstpapers and Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick's equally strident Tribune it has a tradition of substantial usefulness which Chicago cannot afford to lose. Consequently, such News directors as President John Stuart of Quaker Oats, President Sewell Lee Avery of U. S. Gypsum and President George Eaton Scott of American Steel Foundries wanted to be very sure of the late Mr. Strong's successor. Plump, sandy-haired Frank Knox looked good to them. But what cinched the deal was a series of inquiries the News directors made among distinguished publishers from the late Adolph Ochs of the Times of New York to Harry Chandler of the Times of Los Angeles. Consensus: "If Frank Knox will buy the News,your problem is solved." Within two years, Publisher Knox had given the News an economical sweating, tried off much of its boom-time fat, paid its first common stock dividend. He had likewise become a Grade A business figure in a Grade A business town, golfing at Old Elm (men only), lunching at the Chicago Club in Room 100 (club-within-a-club), sitting with his peers in the bi-monthly conferences of the potent Commercial Club. Yet among his new Chicago friends, few comment on the Knox Presidential boom without observing that of course he is not an experienced politician. Which is an example of how elusive a man's record can be if he keeps moving fast and far enough. Just as Frank Knox's business life has been a pattern of settling in strange towns and making good, his political life follows a pattern, too. It begins with one victory, when he backed the right man for Governor of Michigan in 1910, won the Republican State Chairmanship for himself. It continues with a succession of defeats: as pre-convention Midwest campaign manager for Theodore Roosevelt in 1912; again as a Roosevelt man before the 1916 convention; as an important worker for Leonard Wood in 1920. Four years later Frank Knox ran for office for the first time as Republican candidate for Governor of New Hampshire, only to be nosed out by Lincolnesque John Gilbert Winant.

That was enough politics for Frank Knox until last autumn, when, in the absence of famed Adman Albert Davis Lasker, he was called upon to make a speech to raise Republican funds at an Old Elm dinner. Frank Knox, ineloquent but convincing, raised $75,000. He was called upon to repeat the trick in Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati. Some of his listeners began telling each other that Frank Knox would make a good nominee in 1936, and that made a good story for reporters covering the affairs. In a national poll of young Republicans and old Republican county chairmen and city leaders conducted last summer and again in a recent poll of precinct committeemen in Iowa, two men were overwhelmingly favored for the Presidential nomination. No. 2 man on each poll was Frank Knox. No. i man was William Edgar Borah. But Mr. Borah is a man more likely to get a Republican Presidential nomination when it does not mean anything than when it does. By continuing to go about making speeches, friends, contacts, Frank Knox has put himself far ahead of any potential rivals, has in the past 30 days begun to take his candidacy in dead earnest. When the time comes for him to set up a platform, Frank Knox, like all the other Republican candidates for the nomination, will perforce make one from what they consider Franklin Roosevelt's mistakes. To date he stands broadly for Economy and the Constitution. He advocates social justice without the New Deal, an agricultural export subsidy for the Farmers instead of AAA, collective bargaining for Labor without the coercion of the Wagner Bill. An old fox runs slowly, lest in his agitation his sweat leave a stronger trail for his pursuers. Somewhat on this principle, it was the pre-War fashion for aspirants to the Presidential nomination to proceed quietly in the early stages of the race. But if the highly successful premature activities of Mr. Hoover in 1927 and Mr. Roosevelt in 1931 have any significance, the fact that in October, 1935 Frank Knox is way ahead of his field augurs well for his chances in June, 1936. Who Is Alf Landon? Alfred Mossman Landon is favored for the nomination by the four Kansas Republican Congressmen, Senator Arthur Capper, onetime Vice President Charles Curtis and Alfred Mossman Landon. He has also just become the candidate of William Randolph Hearst, who fortnight ago lifted the Landon boomlet out of the Favorite Son class by declaring : "Surely Mr. Roosevelt can be defeated. ... I am confident that Governor Landon of Kansas could be elected on the Republican ticket. . . . "He has a fine war record. He has a clean business record. ... He is a sound and intelligent economist. He has balanced his State's budget. He has reduced taxation. ... He says that the trouble with the visionary gentlemen in Washington is that they have never had to meet a Saturday night payroll." The Hearst Universal Service promptly got behind Publisher Hearst's man, recalled Governor Landon's 25% reduction of State salaries in 1933, headlined: LANDON SAVES $100,000,000. "They are beating a path to the door of the Kansas Governor," cried Universal Service, "who has lifted the burden from his people. Financiers, economists, authors, writers and statesmen have poured into Topeka in endless procession. . . . Taxpayers from the Atlantic to the Pacific have besieged Landon with requests to come and tell 'how Kansas has done it.' "Landon says modestly: 'It was easy. We just decided to do it and we did it.' " The 48-year-old subject of these eulogies is also something of a nine-day wonder to the G. 0. P. directorate as well, for he was the only Republican elected to an office higher than Representative in both the New Deal landslides of 1932 and 1934. On the record, Governor Landon might claim to be currently the Party's ablest vote-getter. Governor Landon's chief distinction, that of being a Great Economizer, has already been developed into a legend of frugality by his friends. His miserly appearance, his proclivity for backing the athletic teams of his Alma Mater, the State University, with nickel bets, have helped win him the title of "Coolidge of the West." Landon backers noisily point out that Kansas has no State debt. Soft-pedaled is the fact that many a Kansan would have gone hungry in the past two years without the Federal Government's donation of $100,000,000 in relief funds (equal to the State's annual income).

The G. O. P. high command seems convinced that while the Eastern masses, receiving a comparatively piddling dole, can be easily won from the New Deal next year, the agricultural West, made happy with big AAA checks, can be captured only by a strong Western farmers' candidate. Mr. Landon is certainly a Westerner. And while his not inconsiderable fortune has been made as an independent oil producer, he owns half interest in a 7,360-acre farm near Chautauqua. Governor Landon has other hallmarks of eligibility. After a series of ups & downs, he seems to have his state's G. O. P. well in hand. He has acquired a Colonel House, one Lacey Haynes, manager of the Kansas bureau of the Kansas City Star, who is political pals with half the State and appears to be so full of secrets that he whispers most of the time. He likes football and baseball, is an Elk, has a wife who collects Westward Ho glass, three children. He gets along well with reporters, is never seen drinking anything stronger than Coca-Cola, although at college he belonged to Theta Nu Epsilon which was a highly secret order for the reason that it was dedicated to the consumption of keg beer, a practice then and now regarded in Kansas as wildest debauchery. The Governor has so far arranged it that no liquor bill has reached him from the Legislature, so that his alcoholic skirts are neutrally clean both in Kansas and the rest of the country. Nationally the Governor is not without potent connections. Last week he was visiting Oilman Frank Phillips on the Phillips ranch near Bartlesville, Okla. Another important friend is John Daniel Miller Hamilton, counsel for the Republican National Committee and organizer of the Grass Roots Conference, who was selected last month to set up the G. O. P.'s Western campaign headquarters in Chicago. Mr. Hearst. Mr. Landon's most voluble backer to date, the Governor has never met. True to the tradition of bashfulness expected of those who seek the nation's highest office, Governor Landon served notice that when he goes to address the Ohio Chamber of Commerce next month, it will not be to throw his battered hat in the ring, but to speak "only about Kansas." Speaking only about Kansas last week he said: "I am extremely flattered by the Presidential talk, but these are difficult times and I owe the people of Kansas a duty to stick by my guns in the State." What Is Herbert Hoover? In the Republican equation for 1936, Frank Knox is a potent known quantity. Alf Landon is a potential quantity. Herbert Hoover is Quantity X. Herbert Hoover may utterly lack human plasticity. But no one familiar with him ever denied that he has a keen mind and is capable of at least one passion, that of anger. Ever since he left the White House two years and seven months ago, he has been nursing a pair of first-string grudges: against the personality and policies of the man who defeated him and against those in his own party who regard him as a discredited liability. Last week came a golden opportunity to flay the former, assert his titular party leadership to the latter when Young Republicans from eleven Western States met 1,200 strong at the Scottish Rite Temple in Oakland, Calif. It was the 31st President's first strictly political speech since he left Washington. It was also the first formal forensic broadside of the Republican Presidential campaign. And Herbert Hoover rose to both occasions in sarcastic and, for him, spectacular fashion. Amid a loyal salvo of applause, he began: "This issue of America is not a battle of phrases, but a battle between straight and crooked thinking. ... I shall confine myself on this occasion to one hard practical subject-the fiscal policies of this Administration." The Herbert Hoover his listeners saw was not the grey-faced, discouraged oldster of 58 who drove down Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue and out of public life on March 4, 1933, but a vigorous figure of 61 with rosy cheeks filled out to their rotund par. The Hoover health had been restored solely by short morning walks near his Palo Alto home with his elkhounds "Weegie" and "Negri," by 45 min. drives up to San Francisco in his tan Buick touring car, Mr. Hoover at the wheel. The Hoover state of mind, while still definitely solemn, had been improved by the tranquillity of his surroundings, his gardens, the view from his window of the quiet Coast Range and placid San Francisco Bay. But Herbert Hoover had not returned to Palo Alto to dodder his days away. Like many another sentient Californian, he had felt the restrictions of the Golden State's isolation, and to keep in touch with the rest of the nation he had evolved a comprehensive, businesslike system which now keeps two stenographers and a pair of secretaries busy. Mrs. Dare Starck McMullin, an old friend of Mrs. Hoover, is the secretary who culls the Hoover mail. Secretary Paul Sexson, a handsome young Stanford graduate, goes through a dozen newspapers airmailed daily from the East and a sheaf of pertinent editorials which Hoover friends also airmail in from ail over the country. In addition, to keep the "Chief" posted on national and world affairs, the Stanford War Library, which Trustee Hoover helped to endow, is required to send in a daily report on the mutations of Fascism, Communism and the New Deal, all equally horrendous to Mr. Hoover. Furthermore, any member of the Stanford faculty who has returned from an Eastern trip may expect within a few hours an invitation to dine with the Hoovers that night. All this had put a fresh and formidable punch into Mr. Hoover's delivery, which was not lost upon the Western Republicans as he continued: "Under the New Deal the expenditures have been divided into 'Regular' expenditures and 'emergency' or 'Recovery' expenditures. These are new words for an old South American and European device of dividing the budget into 'Ordinary' and 'extraordinary' budgets. . . . The theory is that the next generation should pay for the emergencies of this generation. . . . "The expenditures are now running over $8,000,000,000 a year. The annual deficit is running nearly $3,500,000,000. . . . The unpaid government obligations which will fall upon the taxpayer at the end of the Roosevelt Administration will exceed $35,000,000,000. . . . Incidentally, out-side of recoverable loans, the Roosevelt Administration spending will exceed the Hoover Administration spending by from $14,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000. I always have difficulty trying to comprehend what $14,000,000,000 or even $3,500,000,000 really is. But I know that even $3,500,000,000 would buy me 90,000,000 suits of clothes.* At least that is about one suit for every mile between the earth and the sun. . . . "It is not overstatement to say that had the Republican principles of balancing the budget been accepted in 1931 and 1932, the final stone in the foundation of permanent recovery would have been laid three years ago instead of deferred for years hence. . . . "I may suggest that our opponents in 1932 would have received far less votes had they disclosed to the country their intention to increase the expenditures by $14,000,000,000 in four years; or had they disclosed that they would maintain a deficit of three and a half billions per annum; that they would increase the numbers of the government bureaucracy by 160,000 persons and create five thousand paid committees and commissions. They would have lost still more votes had they informed us that they would abandon the gold standard; that they would devalue the dollar by 41%; that they would repudiate government obligations; that they would seek to circumvent the Constitution; that they would attempt to socialize and regiment Americans. It is perhaps not an overstatement that on the now demonstrated principles of this Administration, they could not have won the election of 1932. ''But the wreckage of representative governments is strewn with broken promises. . . ." Amid an enthusiastic clattering of knives on plates, Speaker Hoover dashed off to entrain for another of his frequent trips to New York. For no high-powered insurance salesman keeps more constantly in touch with his connections than does Herbert Hoover. When at home, he some-times lunches in San Francisco with a circle of friends like Publisher George Cameron of the Chronicle or National Committeeman Mark Lawrence Requa, a Hoover crony since the Food Administration days and apparently Mr. Hoover's closest political adviser. To visit him at No. 623 Mirada Road, his unguarded, unmarked house on the side of Palo Alto's San Juan Hill, come much the same sort of people. The upper floor is the entrance floor, and there Mr. Hoover has his study-office, a gracious paneled room with easy chairs, a Laszlo portrait of his wife and access to the secretarial offices below. Recently the roster of visitors has expanded significantly. He took Frank Knox as his guest last summer to the Bohemian Grove Revels.* Expected soon at No. 623 Mirada Road is Governor Landon. Practically everybody in the Republican Party except Mr. Hoover has denied that he will be a candidate for renomination in 1936. But Mr. Hoover likes to run his mind over the patterns of U. S. history, and the notion of doing a Grover Cleveland must have often occurred pleasurably to a man who believes his unpopularity was the result of a great injustice of circumstance. Fact remains, Herbert Hoover still holds tight rein on all there is of the Republican organization. Until he declares he is out of the race, no other candidate can feel secure. Until he declares for some other candidate, none of them has a conclusive advantage over his competitors. Last month that witty vulgarian and apt wisecracker. Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, U. S. M. C. retired, told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention: "Of course Roosevelt will be reelected. Any man with five billion dollars to spend can be elected. Give me five billion dollars and I'll elect a Chinaman!" The Republican Party has no debt, which is more than the Democrats can say, but it does not have five billion dollars to spend. Perforce its candidate will not be a Chinaman. But so strong was resurgent Republican confidence running last week that G. O. Partisans felt sure that whoever does get the nomination would be getting no empty honor.

*To date no serious inquiry into the past and future of Frank Knox has been published. For the facts herewith, TIME is indebted to FORTUNE, which has prepared a full account of Mr. Knox which will be published in its November issue. *Inference: Herbert Hoover now gets his suits for $38.89 *The measure of a man's character at this two-week party is his ability to take any amount of merciless ribbing, and the onetime Chief Executive was generally conceded to have stood up very well when a tipsy Reveler leaned across a table and asked him: "Has anybody ever told you how much you look like that . Herbert Hoover?"

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