Sidewalks of Chicago

Over the week-end and into the dawn of Election Day, the pulse of the nation quickened until it sounded like a machine-gun tattoo or a concentrated yip, yip, hooray.

Those who would have given their shirts to be on the sidewalks of New York, or in critical St. Louis, or in gaudy Los Angeles, were jumping rashly at conclusions. The only place, for which it was worth casting to the breeze a shirt, was Chicago, the most exciting city in the nation. This was not due merely to pineapples and racketeers. True, there were four bombings as the election approached, but they did not cause much damage and nobody bothered about them. They did not count. In Chicago an election means fun, excitement. Calliopes in the crowded Loop, red-fire in Grant Park, an almost continuous uproar in the Black Belt; 1,000 stump orators stumping, spouting, shouting on sidewalks, in public halls, in theatres, in real theatres where they have real plays. It is amazing that nobody has ever become excited about the sidewalks of Chicago, which last week were certainly the most excitable sidewalks in the world. They were more excitable, some said, than during last April's local elections in which the Thompson machine was broken and a laugh sent round the world.

In Chicago, even the ubiquitous art of stumping has a peculiar technique. For example, Anton J. Cermak, wet Democratic nominee for U. S. Senator, got up on the stage of the Garrick Theatre and produced a photostatic copy of a hospital chart, showing that his Republican opponent, Otis F. Glenn, had received treatment for delirium tremens in 1912. Then Mr. Cermak cried: "I have affidavits here that this man [Glenn], accompanied by Prohibition agents, visits stills and breweries, running illegally, and drinks so much that they have to carry him from there."

Thus Chicago, last week--up and away with a whoop and an "I WILL" boost--Harold Fowler McCormick for Smith, Julius Rosenwald for Hoover, William Hale Thompson for himself, and, as always, the bitterest possible fight for the post of State's Attorney.