Phelps-Pratt

Politics makes strange, not only bedfellows, but antagonists.

In Manhattan this week, Republican voters in the Congressional district which contains most that is interesting on the wealthiest U. S. island--i.e., it contains the glittering end of Park Avenue and the staccato sectors of Fifth Avenue and Broadway--were asked to choose, for G. O. P. Congressional nominee, between

1) Phelps Phelps--sometimes-written "Phelps! Phelps!"

2) (Mrs.) Ruth Sears Baker Pratt, wealthy widow, mother of many, vivacious, ambitious.

Mr. Phelps is put first because he is a New York Assemblyman and thereby the political senior of Mrs. Pratt, who is only a New York City Alderman (albeit the first New York woman alderman in history). He is also put first because he drew top place on the ballot, after performing a "luck rite." Just before the drawing, he rushed out of the Board of Elections office and touched a Negro on the shoulder.

Mrs. Pratt, still pretty, always alert, is the despair of facetious Mayor Walker, who calls her "Ruth" and "so charming" when she asks him pertinent questions. She considers him amusing, yes, but a feather-and-glue obstruction to the serious party reforms she thinks Manhattan needs. Her boys go to Groton and Harvard. Her husband's father founded Pratt (Fine & Applied Arts) Institute in Brooklyn after helping to found Standard Oil. Her husband was the Pratt who jotted the memorandum which revealed "Andy" Mellon (Secretary of the Treasury Andrew William Mellon) as one of those who were invited by Will Hays to take over some of the Liberty Bonds which Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair gave to the Harding-Republican deficit.

Like most New Yorkers, she is for modifying Prohibition. She is "sporting" and hearty. She has said: "Politics seems to me to be like a game of college football," and, "When I play tennis and lose, I make it a point to get to the net first to congratulate my opponent." She is so charming that James A. O'Gorman Jr., the smooth, young, curly-haired, Princeton-educated son-of-the-system whom she defeated for the Council, took her to lunch the day after she beat him. Debating against Mr. Phelps last week she cried: "I am not running on my looks, my age, possessions or sex. I ask no chivalry."

Getting nominated for Congress--and elected--is different from Aldermanic campaigns in Manhattan. Mrs. Pratt's opponent, Phelps Phelps, is experienced and determined. Politics is a passion with him. He is a sort of Republican Tammanyite who spends all but a fragment of the $70,000 per annum or so which his father left him, on presents for his precinct voters--milk, Christmas stockings, coal, Easter eggs.

Phelps Phelps began petting the voters before he was through college (Yale, Williams). He dances at all functions--motormen's, modists', the Social Register's. His grandfather, the late William Walter Phelps, was (1889-93) U. S. Ambassador to Germany.* The grandson is an ambassador of the sidewalks to the agronomists and small-towners at Albany--fat-faced, loud, generous, shrewd, a smoker of cigars at every waking moment. He professes not even to afford a motorcar in which to battle Matron Pratt.

Democratic though Manhattan usually is, the Phelps-Pratt contest was not wholly academic. The seat in Congress which each hoped to win is held at present by one William Cohen, shrewd Tammanyite, but formerly it belonged to Ogden Livingston Mills, now Under-Secretary of the Treasury. Mrs. Pratt vaunts no ambitions beyond representing the People in the Lower House--and living in official Washington. Mr. Phelps hopes, after serving in the House, to be Manhattan's, and perhaps New York State's, great and potent Republican Boss.

*Thereby hangs an explanation. Phelps Phelps was originally named Phelps von Rottenburg. His father was a Count von Rottenburg whom his mother met and married while living in Germany with her ambassadorial father. Came the War, and a divorce. Names were changed and Phelps von Rottenburg had no choice but Phelps Phelps.