In Illinois

(See front cover)

Out of the jabberwocky that is politics in the State of Illinois there issued last week a frabjous thing that was supposed to spell R-e-f-o-r-m but which, upon closest inspection, would not come any closer to real sense than Roefmr or Mrrofe. The letters were all there. Popular sentiment had been convulsively aroused. But the newly upheaved anagram did not articulate intelligently.

The occasion for the upheaval was the Illinois primary election. Among the Democrats, nothing extraordinary happened. Their party was out of power and they quietly went to the polls to nominate candidates whom they scarcely hoped to elect next autumn unless Candidate Smith, for whom they meant the State's 58 uninstructed national delegates, can carry all before him.

Among the Republicans, it was a spectacular primary even for spectacular Illinois. It was the Republicans who tried to spell Reform. About 100,000 Democrats got excited and joined in the G. O. P. melee, confusing things more than ever. The Republican primary had the following results and implications:

Governor. Lennington Small, the Governor, was overwhelmingly defeated for renomination by Louis L. Emmerson, who had been Secretary of State, since 1916. Mr. Small's reputation had been thoroughly discredited. Trying to save himself he entered alliance with his oldtime enemy, Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson of Chicago. Mr. Emmerson ran as a champion of virtue--yet Mr. Emmerson was for years a Small henchman and it was he who passed the checks to some Missouri delegates in 1920, causing the scandal that deprived Frank Orren Lowden of that year's presidential nomination.

Senator. Frank Leslie Smith, the U. S. Senator-elect whom the U. S. Senate declared unseatable last winter, was thrust still farther aside by Otis F. Glenn, a young downstate lawyer. But Mr. Glenn's backer, hero of the great R-e-f-o-r-m movement, was thick-lensed U. S. Senator Charles Samuel Deneen, who, only a few months ago, was in league to get Smith seated. This shift was but one of the inconsistencies in Champion Deneen's campaign.

Chicago. In the city whose name has been a synonym for social war and political billingsgate, Champion Deneen warred upon Robert E. Crowe, the State's attorney of Leopold-Loeb fame and Mayor Thompson's entourage. Deneen and his candidate, Judge John A. Swanson, survived bombs exploded on their doorsteps and routed Crowe utterly. Mayor Thompson had vowed to resign if this happened but, of course, did not resign. The Small-Smith-Thompson-Crowe slogan, "America First," was as thoroughly exposed as the Ku Klux Klan. Libel suits and coroner's inquests were on Thompsonism's hands after the polls closed. But still the Thompson machine retained enough city patronage to make "America First" worth while until it is actually run out of town. Perhaps that will not happen before 1931, the next mayoral election. Meantime, more credit for Crowe's defeat was due to Judge Swanson himself, and to Chicago's loud-shouting newspapers, than to Champion Deneen.

Congressmen. The Congressional nominations of the G. O. P. in Illinois had four points of interest and here the jabberwockian confusion was at its height.

In the first place, Chairman Martin Barnaby Madden of the House Appropriations Committee was fighting to hold his seat from a Chicago district mostly populated by Negroes. With his long record, unusual ability and dignified conduct, silver-polled Mr. Madden had the sympathy and support of decent citizens. Yet he has inextricably affiliated with preposterous Mayor Thompson, whose war-cries ranged from "Crack King George on the snout!" to "To hell with the Tribune!" Political tickets being what they are in Chicago, Mr. Madden might well have been defeated together with Crowe. His opponent was William L. Dawson, a Negro backed by other Negroes who were sick of the Thompsonian bombast and wanted a Representative of their own race. But Congress did not lose its distinguished member. Mr. Madden won.

For two posts of Congressmen-at-large,* there were three candidates--the two present incumbents and a figure who moved through Illinois' electoral jungle like a creature from another land.

Of the present incumbents, one is Henry Riggs Rathbone, a statesman of the wet-lipped, silver-tongued variety, with a grandiloquent voice. Mr. Rathbone's parents were in President Lincoln's box at Ford's Theatre the night of the assassination. Mr. Rathbone has never permitted himself, or any one else, to forget this coincidence.

The other incumbent is adipose, leonine Richard Yates, onetime (1901-05) Governor of Illinois, an aging person whose chief distinction in the House was that his name alone began with "Y" (until this year, when Representative Tom A. Yon arrived from Florida).

Competing against these was Mrs. Ruth Hanna McCormick, daughter and wife of statesmen, society woman, mother, farmer, intellectual.

Mrs. McCormick is a high-strung person of taste and refinement. It was curious to see her thrown in with such figures as Small, Thompson and Deneen. Yet in with them she was. People who voted the Deneen ticket voted also for her. This was curious because Deneen is her sworn enemy, the enemy of her dead husband, Medill McCormick, whose Senate seat Deneen won in 1924, just before Mr. McCormick died. Deneen dislikes her, too, and fears her. She plans to fight him for the Senate seat in 1930.

Governor Small is also her enemy, her chosen enemy. Long ago she promised to overthrow him if no man could be found to do it. Yet in this primary, Small quietly helped her, figuring she would strengthen the Republican ticket he hoped to head next autumn. Mayor Thompson helped, too. Mrs. McCormick let them help. She learned party regularity long ago from her father, the late, sapient Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Ohio. And the law of party regularity is the law of the jungle: when the pack can help you hunt, do not be squeamish about the pack.

As far as actual, visible contacts went, however, Mrs. McCormick strove alone against the Messrs. Rathbone and Yates, with her own statewide chain of women's Republican clubs. When the returns came in, she was to be seen nowhere near the smoke-fouled headquarters of Small or Thompson. She had headquarters of her own in Chicago, full of fresh air, flowers, candy and lady friends. Her daughter, Katrina, helped answer the telephone. Her friend Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the "Princess Alice" of Rooseveltian days at the White House and now the wife of the Speaker of the House, helped add up returns and receive callers and made the victory photographs just twice as distinguished.

Mrs. McCormick beat out both her male competitors. Representative Rathbone stalked along some 90,000 votes behind her for the second of the two nominations-at-large.

"I am delighted, delighted . . ." said Mrs. McCormick. ". . . The greatest step forward by women politically. . . . My vote is a particular achievement because this is the first time a woman has been victorious in a statewide vote to fill a national position from an industrial State."*

Now, unless Democrats prevent, which is unlikely, Mrs. McCormick will be elected to Congress in November. She will undoubtedly make an active, vigorous member; for while the locations of her four residences--a ranch in Wyoming; a farm at little Byron, Ill..; a camp in Virginia; an ancient manor in Georgetown, well out of Washington--bespeak her inclination to "get away from it all," still she is far more the intense realist than the intellectual recluse. She sees no sex in statesmanship. She says she knows some women who are qualified right now for Cabinet positions. Some day, she says, a woman will be President of the U. S. Whether or not she can guess who it will be is not divulged.

* The Congressional districts of most states are anachronistic. Instead of redistricting themselves as their populations have grown, the States have been allowed, since the reapportionment of 1842, to elect new Representatives allotted to them "at large," i. e. by statewide instead of district vote. The present ratio of representation is one Representative to every 211,877 citizens. A congressman-at-large acquires a certain prestige from winning a statewide election; but, in Congress, he or she has no special position.

*Representatives Edith Nourse Rogers of industrial Massachusetts and Mary T. Norton of industrial New Jersey represent their home districts, are not Congressmen-at-large. At the New Jersey primary on May 15, a candidate for the Republican nomination for U. S. Senator will be Mrs. Lillian F. Feickert, forceful Dry.