Vice Presidency

The morning after the night before (according to one story), Senator Borah was taking his ursine way through the Hotel Muehlebach lobby when he encountered tall Senator Smoot, who had sat up late discussing the vice presidency with other party wise men.

Senator Borah smiled his crinkly smile and asked: "Who's going to be nominated for Vice President?"

Senator Smoot wearily replied: "Cox of Massachusetts."-*

Then (so the story goes), Senator Borah's smile vanished. "What the hell is the matter with you?" he cried. "Have you all gone crazy? I don't know much about politics, but evidently I know a thousand times more than Hoover! What do you want to do, crucify us all in November?"

"Why, what's the trouble?" asked startled Senator Smoot.

"Trouble! None, excepting that nobody outside of Massachusetts ever heard of Cox. This convention has got to nominate Curtis and is going to nominate him or I shall know the reason why! Let me warn you now, Senator, you can tell the Hoover crowd that Curtis has got to be nominated to keep the western states in line and if anybody else is put up I shall go before the convention and present his name and make a fight for it, and I think I can put him across!"

"Oh, don't do that," said Senator Smoot. "Just hold off and I'll see about it."

Another more likely story is as follows: The party chieftains sat up late, all night in fact. They telephoned to Vice President Dawes in Evanston, Ill. He was most agreeable to running again if drafted. His chief proponent, Mrs. Ruth Hanna Mc-Cormick went to bed believing the matter was settled. She was awakened about 6 a. m. and asked to go back to Secretary Mellon's room. The conference had decided that Mr. Dawes had been too anti-administration. Who else would please Illinois? Senator Borah had put in his word for Curtis earlier. Channing Harris Cox of Massachusetts had been blocked by Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller, who wanted the nomination himself and would let no other Massachusetts man get ahead. The Curtis compromise resulted between 7 and 8 a. m. in a hotel room full of sleep-starved men.

Senator Curtis sat in his hotel room all morning answering telephone calls. Surprised delegation leaders were inquiring if it was true that he would consent to be the "tail of the ticket" after announcing he would be the head and nothing else. Senator Curtis reiterated that he would not consent. But the political prairies were afire.

When the convention went into session, Connecticut's John Quillin Tilson, Massachusetts' Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller, Michigan's Chase Salmon Osborn and Missouri's Governor Sam A. Baker were all placed in nomination. But up got Senator Borah, out boomed the great Borah voice, up jumped the Kansans in a repetition of their Curtis demonstration the night before. The four other nominees withdrew. The Curtis delegate-daughter, handsome Mrs. Leona Curtis Knight of Rhode Island, seconded her father in 17 words after a seconding speech by New Jersey's (Senator) Walter Evans Edge, who removed the last trace of competition.

The vote was Curtis, 1,052; with 13 for Vice President Dawes; two for Col. Hanford MacNider of Iowa, onetime (1925-28) Assistant Secretary of War. The only other man to receive a vote was Attorney General Herman L. Ekern of Wisconsin, with 19.

Before the Hoover nomination, but after it had been conceded, Candidate Curtis had said: "If some of the gentlemen from the East had had a little more backbone we might have had a ticket that the whole party would have been proud of. ... I would not give three whoops in hell for the man who only goes along with the tide. I wish . . . we would not have to listen to Vare of Philadelphia name the Republican nominee."

* Channing Harris Cox, onetime (1921-24) governor of Massachusetts.