Campaign Notes

Ida M. Tarbell, erstwhile Carrie Nation of petroleum, announced that she would vote for Coolidge. Almost immediately twelve ladies (Harriet Stanton Blatch, Rita Lydig, etc.) asked her by letter to recant and vote for LaFollette.

Miss Tarbell received this note with a broken left arm. She had broken it when she tripped over a curbstone two days before on her way to hear John W. Davis speak in Manhattan. Heroically she sat through the speech without medical attention. But when the letter arrived, she had the arm in a sling, She sent a reply:

"I read between its courteous lines your feeling that I have recanted my former progressive notions, am a turncoat and a renegade. . . .

"Your letter says in substance--and I agree--that the first step to cleaner government and to economic emancipation is beating down special privileges. But what are special privileges? One must know one when he sees it. I have sometimes doubted whether your great leader, Mr. LaFollette, does. . . .

"It isn't the honesty of Air. LaFollette and these workers and farmers that I question. It is their thinking. . . ."

Brookhart's Bolt. For some days, Republicans in Iowa heard sappers. They sat tight in their trenches and waited for the explosion of the mine. They knew that part of the earth under their feet was unsteady. Last week, the explosion came--and the Republicans counterattacked to make the best of what was for them a bad business.

The Republicans knew that Senator Brookhart of Iowa was one of them in name only. He was thoroughly in sympathy with most of the LaFollette policies. But so far in the campaign he had elected to sit on the fence. They waited for him to come out for LaFollette. Instead, he came out against Dawes and then Coolidge.

The Event. He indicted the former in a letter to Chairman Butler of the Republican National Committee:

"Charles G. Dawes has wrecked the Republican campaign, and especially in the Northwest. He started out like a bold-faced 'plutogog'; but his discourtesy and ungentlemanly language quickly reduced him, in his own vocabulary, to a mere 'pewit plutogog'."

He went on to refer to Mr. Dawes' "sulphurated hydrogen bank record," to his "secret purpose of destroying the constitutional rights of labor," to his "sinister designs." He said that Mr. Dawes was "an insult to the whole laboring world," "the emphatic representative of the profiteering class." He added that Mr. Dawes' "advertised financial ability is only a bluff" and that his "most dangerous and offensive act in this campaign is his insult to the cooperative movement in agriculture." He ended:

"For these reasons, I desire to request that the National Republican Committee take steps to secure the resignation of Mr. Dawes as Republican candidate for Vice President. In his stead, there should be elected a farm bloc candidate --not an imitation farm bloc-er, but one of the fighting type, like Senator Norris of Nebraska, in whom the farmers have the utmost confidence.

"Very sincerely, (Signed) "SMITH W. BROOKHART.''

Three days later, Senator Brookhart delivered a speech at Emmetsburg, Iowa, in which the President was the

target:

"I have never had a thought of leaving the Party. My whole soul is wrapped up in the principles of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kenyon.* On the other hand, I will fight with all my strength that false and corrupt conception that crept into the Party under the leadership of Hanna, Penrose and Newberry.

"I, therefore, desire to review my record and my relation to the President, who is the machine Republican candidate for reelection. . .

"I was against Newberryism the President was for it.

"I was against the ship subsidy; the President supported it. ...

"I belong to the farm bloc. The President belongs to the Wall Street bloc" . . . etc., etc.

The same day, the Republican State Committee, in session all day, issued a formal statement:

"The Republican Party in Iowa, without a dissenting vote, instructed its delegates to the National Convention to vote for Calvin Coolidge and made his instruction a part of their platform.

"Every candidate for office on the Republican ticket entered into the primary campaign and filed as a Republican after the Iowa convention had been instructed for President Coolidge.

"We, as the representatives of the Republican Party in Iowa elected through the medium of the primary, submit to the Republican voters of the State that the repudiation of the Republican nominees by Senator Brookhart is a repudiation of and a bolt from the Republican Party. . .

"On any issue of honesty, integrity and interest in the welfare of all the people, we are proud to stand on the life and record of Calvin Coolidge against the attacks of any man."

The Significance. Senator Brookhart's personal strength in Iowa is well known. He carried, late last Spring, the Republican primary for renomination to the Senate by a large majority. He is expected to be reflected by a large majority. His friction with the regular Republicans is expected to hurt the Republican chances in Iowa. It seems strange, therefore, that he was read out of the Party; while Senator LaFollette, an open revolter for many years, still remains a nominal Republican. The answer to this apparently illogical situation is that Senator LaFollette long ago captured the Republican organization in Wisconsin. Naturally, the state organization would not then break with him; and the National organization could not turn out LaFollette without practically giving up its entire organization in the state. The situation in Iowa has been different. Mr. Brookhart has always been more or less of an outsider to the state organization. It countenanced him, but never stomached him. Now it need no longer do either.

Belle Case LaFollette, wife of the Senator, having made two campaign speeches for her husband, one at Montain Lake Park, Md., the other at Manhattan, was in a fair way to blossom into a full-fledged campaigning orator. It was decided that she should not accompany the Senator on his tour, and the party managers were reported as offering her employment during his absence.

Mrs. William McMillen Adams, nee Davis, has taken her place in her father's battle line. Thousands of letters have been sent out over her signature, it is reported. She was told that 3,700,000 young women would cast their first ballot this fall, and she murmured:

"Any urging I would do in favor of the Davis-Bryan ticket, of course, would be based upon my own recollections and my knowledge of my father. I can't imagine that the opinions of myself--once the quiet, awkward small girl who received a salary of 25 cents a month to make his bed every morning--have any real bearing on the present political events. My father was then to me the same omnipotent authority, the final court of justice, that he remains in my mind today. I believe he would make a good President, because I have never had occasion to question his decisions or to doubt his wisdom and justice.",

Clinton W. Gilbert, famed correspondent, wrote a comparison of party headquarters in Chicago:

"Those of the Republican party, scattered over three floors of the

Wrigley building, look like an ordinary business office.

"Republican headquarters look fairly busy but not rushed. They are not the clubby places national headquarters usually are. The boys don't drop in in large numbers.

"Mr. Butler is caviare to the politician.

"Those of the Democrats are up one flight in the front of the Auditorium hotel. Four years ago, the Western headquarters of the Republicans were in this place. Hiram Johnson had the same rooms at the time of the 1920 convention.

"Of course, these are not the main headquarters of the party, but correspondents traveling through here make no allowance for this fact.

"I am sure those headquarters will cost the Democrats many votes. The great empty anteroom, about 75 ft. long by 25 ft. wide, with only one lone boy at the entrance, one telephone operator and never more than one visitor waiting on a sofa, has the same moral effect as staging a mass meeting of six persons in Madison Square Garden."

"The Progressives are on the fourth floor of the Morrison Hotel. For some reason, radicals always hold their gatherings at this hotel. The Farmer-Labor party got its start in this hotel.

"The LaFollette headquarters are all rush and enthusiasm. They extend through many rooms on one floor in the Morrison. Typewriters click furiously.

"Most of the workers are probably volunteers. They are as busy and as serious as the dollar-a-year boys used to be when they were running the War from Washington."

Charles E. Hughes, campaign speaker, cut loose at Cincinnati on behalf of the Republicans:

"Whatever may be the subject of campaign speeches, there is really only one issue in this campaign and that is, 'Shall the administration of Calvin Coolidge be continued?'

"There are no dividends for honest men in sweeping denunciations. This lesson should be taken to heart by our Democratic friends."

William J. Bryan, campaigning for his brother and Mr. Davis, issued through the Democratic National Committee a comparison of candidates:

"Progressives are not lacking in common sense; they are quite as intelligent as the reactionaries. In fact, the presumption of intelligence is on their side, because a man must be informed before he can protest against an existing wrong and propose a remedy.. Anyone can submit to injustice without having any information on the subject at all; in fact, the less information he has, the less liable he is to protest. . . .

"The Democratic Party, under the leadership of John W. Davis, burns the bridges behind it; while the Republican Party, under the leadership of President Coolidge, 'burns the bridges before it. The Democrats will not turn backward; the Coolidge Republicans will not go forward."

*William S. Kenyon is a onetime U. S. Senator from Iowa, now a Judge of the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals.