Reed Boom

Until last week, the one piece of presidential timber actually blazed by the Democrats was New York State's widespreading Irish oak, Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith. But when a Democratic State Committee finished its business in Missouri, Tuesday night, it had placed its mark on Missouri's tough-fibred, silver-topped sycamore, U. S. Senator James A. Reed.

The committee's resolution was something of a pardon as well as an endorsement. Ever since he "chawed" his cigars and hurled his epithets at the policies of Woodrow Wilson, Senator Reed has been regarded by Missouri Democrats as a renegade.

To signify that he accepted his reinstatement and endorsement with fit humility, Senator Reed mounted the platform at a fair in Sedalia, Mo., and, with never a mention of his own ambitions, intoned the political creed of a "rank-and-file" Democrat. The crowd, of course, caught Reed fever and again silver-tipped Senator Reed was acclaimed Missouri's candidate, promised a solid delegation.

When he writes for the American Mercury (and sometimes in his Senate fulminations), Senator Reed permits himself to perform feats of epigrammatic agility. "Give me the radius of a man's intelligence," he has written, "and I will describe the circumference of his tolerance." And, "The nobility of the mighty dead cannot be lessened by the puerility of the living." But the fair-day crowd at Sedalia, Mo., would not enjoy epigrams. What Senator Reed gave them last week was a good old-fashioned balloon ascension with oratorical sandbags dropping on Republican malefactors. Sedalia, Mo., pronounced it Senator Reed's best speech.

"The times are ripe, and rotten ripe, for a change," he trumpeted. "Let us rally our forces to the flag of the Constitution . . . inalienable rights of the citizen ... to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience . . . free speech, free press and peaceable assemblage ... the right of each citizen to regulate his own personal conduct," etc.

States' rights, "public plunderers," "special privileges," trusts which "despoil the people." The "majesty and security of the U. S." was mentioned. Prohibition was sideswiped with a reference to "snoopers and spies." Plans were advocated "to control and conserve our great inland waters, harness their power, develop the arid lands of the West, protect the great Valley States from inundation and place upon our mighty rivers and lakes argosies which will bear an immense commerce."

Then the sandbagging, prolonged and vigorous: "On March 4, 1921, Warren G. Harding was inaugurated. ... On that day corrupt and sinister financial conspiracies . . . took possession of the Government . . . bribes . . . scaly hands . . . conspirators. . . . "The first act of Coolidge was to approve the policies of the Harding Administration. . . . Coolidge continued at the head of the Department of Justice, Harry M. Daugherty, as vile an insect as ever crawled across the page of time. He consorted with criminals and took as his bedfellow a grafter and bribetaker [Jesse Smith], who afterwards suicided. . . . Coolidge never lifted a hand. He remained as mum and inactive as a Boston oyster stranded on the beach in the month of August. . . . "Coolidge to this day retains Andrew W. Mellon as Secretary of Treasury. When Mellon was appointed, the great financial interests no longer exercised a mere influence -- they moved in and took possession. . . ." etc.

The Significance. Senator Reed is, of course, as Wet as he is fiery. Between his politics and Governor Smith's the chief difference comes on Big Business, to which Governor Smith is geographically nearer. Senator Reed's assault at Sedalia was not merely upon crooked "interests" but upon trusts in general. He did not, however, mention that anathema of the bankers, farm relief. Unless Governor Smith declares himself as a Big Business man, delegates instructed for Senator Reed would, at convention, have only the dwindling barrier of Governor Smith's religion to hurdle, should the Reed candidacy prove less potent than the Smith, and the Reed motives prove truly party-pure.

Comment. These facts considered, it was surprising to see the Smith-smitten New York World, leading Democrat of the East, leap precipitously upon Senator Reed as follows:

"He is not a just man and therefore it is never certain whether his great gifts of cross-examination and invective will be employed to prosecute the guilty or to persecute those whose views he happens to dislike. He is a man of deep and reckless prejudices. No one surpasses him as a sincere upholder of those personal liberties which are guaranteed by the Constitution, and yet there are few men in public life who are more cruelly intolerant. He is perhaps the most effective opponent of organized bigotry in the country, and yet his own bigotry is at times almost venomous. He believes in freedom of opinion but has no respect for the opinions of others. His opponents are always idiots or rascals.

"He is a caveman in politics, with the caveman's virility, with the caveman's courage, with the caveman's violence and with the caveman's complete incapacity to realize that he might be wrong. For Senator Reed every argument is a quarrel, every quarrel is a fight, every fight is a massacre. . . ;

"Senator Reed has a very bright mind but a very badly equipped mind. When he strays away from his specialty, which is the prosecution of graft, he quickly betrays not only a pathetic ignorance of the facts but, what is worse, a lamentable inability to weight facts when they are presented to him."