To Houston

P: "Won't you come into my parlor?" said the Solid South to the Knowing North.

P: "YES," said the North--but it remained to be seen who would be eaten up.

When the Democratic National Committee chose Houston, Tex., last week for its 1928 convention city, it was really the choice of a solid North, calculating to coax an uncertain South. San Francisco, Detroit and Cleveland were eager bidders. Houston won, with a small auditorium and ominous late-June climate, for three reasons:

1) Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith of New York. It was impossible to persuade Southerners to nominate Governor Smith four years ago in the Manhattan madhouse. But Southerners are gentlemanly hosts. At and after the first national political convention to be held in the South since the Civil War, Southerners would not (the Smith men thought) discomfit their guests nor disrupt the party by refusing to honor the outstanding Northern candidate. . . Having voted for Houston, outstanding Smith men were placed on the committee of arrangements, including Norman E. Mack of New York, Frank Hague of New Jersey, Isadore Dockweiler of California, George E. Brennan of Illinois, Tom J. Spellacy of Connecticut.

2) Jesse Holman Jones. In Houston lives a ponderous, genial, whitehaired personage, know to Houstonians as a timber magnate who moved down from Dallas 20 years ago to open banks & bond houses, build hotels, publish the Houston Chronicle, etc., etc. He looks, acts and is one of the richest men in all rich Texas--Jesse Holman Jones. In Who's Who, Mr. Jones calls himself, "builder, financier." Among nationally experienced Democrats, he has come to be known as a politician, almost as well known as that other Texan, Col. Edward Mandell House of the Wilson regime.

About Mr. Jones there is an air of large, handsome magnanimity which Col. House never possessed. The House manner was too quiet not to be ulterior. If Mr. Jones wants to be another House, he conceals it beneath the air of a man who would under write the Democratic party as gladly as he would buy suits for a Boy Scout ball team.

Mr. Jones has been known outside of Texas at least since 1917, when he worked with the Red Cross in Washington and Paris. But not until 1924, when he stepped forward to bear the brunt of the $220,000 convention deficit, was his importance widely appreciated. They at once let him have charge of National Democratic finances and then, last week, when the 1928 convention was being noisily auctioned in the Mayflower Hotel at Washington, they let Mr. Jones have his way. He happily produced his own certified check for $200,000 as Houston's bid. It led on all five ballots.

3) Governor Dan Moody of Texas was the timely and deciding, if not a really serious, factor. He arrived late, after other bidders had tried to outdo Mr. Jones. Balloting was just about to start when in he burst--34 years old, red haired, grinning unofficially. Mr. Jones brought the committeemen to their feet with a superb gesture and Governor Dan Moody cried, "It is not only the people of Houston who invite you but also the people of Texas!"

Houston, Tex. Houston will be hot. Houston will be humid. On June 26, Houston mosquitoes will be hungry. At a National Democratic Convention, tempers run short even oftener than monies. The Moody-boosting for Vice President will probably die down next week as lightly as it sprang up last week after Governor Moody's appearance in Washington.

But Houston will never regret it. Come what may, the convention will be something for Houstonians to flaunt in their three-cornered rivalry with other Texas metropolitans--the bustling oil-&-cotton men of upland Dallas and the drawling men of San Antonio.

Nor will those Democrats regret it who can manage to get out of their own sections and see "what-all" there is in the biggest State of the Union. In Houston, named for General Sam Houston,* who amounts to a second George Washington for Texans, they will find a city almost as big as Denver or Louisville, bigger than Omaha or Atlanta, twice the size of Albany, four times the size of Mobile, with ocean steamers coming right up to it from Galveston Bay, 50 miles away, and 17 railroads heading in from all directions. Jesse Holman Jones's hotel, the Rice, will doubtless be headquarters. Smaller hotels such as the Lamar and Warwick, will take in overflow and there is an old custom in Texas, which Houstonians practice specially, of throwing open private homes when the city is host to some one.

Mayor Oscar Holcombe, when he heard the news last week, recalled that the American Bankers Association and the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World survived conventions in Houston. Jesse Holman Jones announced magnificently that a $100,000 "tabernacle," seating 25,000, would be built at once.

* Born in Virginia, raised in Tennessee, he was one of Andrew Jackson's lieutenants at fighting Indians. Tennessee sent him to Congress and elected him Governor in 1827. When his wife left him, he resigned as Governor and went to live with the Cherokees whom he had helped eject from the State. President Jackson sent him to Texas to make Indian treaties. Texans were at that point (1833) citizens of Mexico. Sam Houston helped draft their petition to the Mexican Congress to be separated from Coahuila as a Mexican State. The petition was refused. Independence was declared. Sam Houston was chosen Commander-in-chief of the Texan Army. On "San Jacinto Day" (April 21) Texans still celebrate the final victory of his 743 raw troopers over the 1600 soldiers of General Santa Anna on the banks of the San Jacinto River near the site where Houston City later rose. Sam Houston was the first and only president of the Republic of Texas (1836-1845). He was U. S. Senator from Texas from 1846 to 1859. Elected Governor, he refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy, was deposed.