How Solid a South?

In Florida's stucco State Capitol last week, the portrait of Andrew Jackson, the great American roughneck, looked down on a scene that would have delighted his old frontiersman's eyes. Assembled there was the Southeastern Governors' Conference. Ostensible subject: the South's perennial freight-rate problem. Actual subject: the political rebellion seething below the Mason Dixon line.

Most Southern Democratic leaders have liked the pork but not the principles of the New Deal. Now, with the political pendulum swinging away from those principles, and the pork scarce, they were prepared to speak their minds. In their minds were two questions : 1 ) How far were they prepared to carry their revolt? 2) How far would the rank-&-file Southern voters follow them?

Now up rose Georgia's young (36) Governor Ellis Gibbs Arnall, to say how far the rebellion of the leaders should go. Up-&-coming Governor Arnall campaigned last year as an all-out supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. Now he was restive. Said he: "I think the time has come for us to stand together politically. Soon we will be choosing our national leadership. Those who love the national Administration and those who hate it are all so confused among themselves that the influence of the South may well be the deciding factor in national politics. . . .

"It is time for discrimination against the South to be eradicated. I hope we can obtain something for our section and break down the shackles so long imposed on it. . . .

"The nearer we get to the convention, the more pressure will be put on us. So far as Georgia is concerned, we are going to go to those who offer us the most."

Third Party? Governor Arnall's political price-fixing was strong enough medicine for some delegates, but not for Louisiana's Governor Sam Jones. Said he:

"For 75 years there was good reason for the South to stick to the Democratic Party, because of the party's stand on States' rights, the tariff and race relations. These reasons are gone. There is no material difference in the treatment of the race problem by the Republican Party and the present Democratic Party. . . .

"I want somebody to do something. . . . If the job cannot be done by the party we have so long maintained in power, then it is time for us to do some constructive thinking. Each will have to follow his own light. . . ."

"Sad Sam" did not have to elaborate. He and Alabama's ex-Governor Frank Dixon, vociferous champion of States' rights and white supremacy, had joined for months in urging the South to secede from the New Deal and form a "Southern Democratic Party."

The Governors moved their session behind closed doors, to mull over their gripes, distrusts, hopes, ambitions. Before they went to dinner that night, they had made a solemn agreement: they would join forces, keep their ammunition dry, would make no commitments on a 1944 Presidential candidate until they had conferred again.

Uninvited Guest. When the delegates reconvened next morning they had a self-invited guest: Florida's 100% New Deal Senator Claude Pepper, good friend of Franklin Roosevelt. Unhappy Claude Pepper bustled down from Washington, raced to the speaker's rostrum, did his best to keep the South solid. For a full hour he pleaded and argued.

"The Republican Party has nothing it can offer the South as a reward for throwing ourselves into its camp, as Florida and other States did in 1928. I know of no reward the South got for that. . . . Undoubtedly, the Administration has been guilty of grievous errors, but I would rather trust the party of liberalism than wander afield. . . . The South's future lies in faithful fidelity to that party which still believes in liberalism as it did in the days of Thomas Jefferson. . . ."

The Governors listened, even applauded. But as soon as the speech was over they hauled Pepper into another closed session, started burning his ears. They emerged smiling for a pleasant ham and fried chicken lunch at the farm of Florida Comptroller J. M. Lee, then firmly hustled Pepper back for a personal frying. Not until 4 o'clock did Pepper get away, sweaty and wilted. With him he took the Governors' message to the White House: if Franklin Roosevelt wanted the South's support in 1944, he must talk turkey now.

Talk or Ballots? The only time the Solid South split was in 1928, when Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee voted against Democrat Al Smith on the issues of rum, religion and Tammany Hall. But after ten years of the New Deal the South may be cracking again. The cracks: > New Deal "meddling" with the Negro problem, which the South wants to solve in its own way and at its own chosen time. (Chief offender in Southern eyes: Eleanor Roosevelt.)

> New Deal labor legislation--anathema to the open-shop South.

>Farm policy and price control--which many a Southern farmer hates like the boll weevil.

> States' rights--a convenient term for resentments against bureaucracy, red tape, rationing forms, etc.

In the 1944 Democratic convention, the South will be solid only if it lines up unanimously against Franklin Roosevelt. It is full of potent politicos who would fight to the last ditch against Term IV or a hand-picked Roosevelt candidate.

The great unknown is whether the South's plain citizens think as their leaders do. If the rank & file are still solidly pro-Roosevelt, the rebellious noises of the leaders are only sound & fury. But if Southern citizens are losing faith in the President at anything like the rate of their leaders, the Fourth Term campaign is in for a harrowing time.

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