Politicules

Prodigious was the final ferment among citizens not directly responsible for conducting the campaign.

P: "I am not opposing Smith because of his religion," cried Bishop James Canon Jr. of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in an oration at a Washington theatre.

"You're a liar!" cried a voice.

Policemen stifled a riot.

P: In Maplewood, N. J., Muriel Bick. 2, sucked a Smith button into her throat. She lived. "Muriel remains a Smith supporter," said Mother Bick.

P: Mrs. E. W. Nash, "millionaire Omaha grandmother," octogenarian widow of the late President Nash of the American Smelting & Mining Co., had been campaigning for Smith throughout Nebraska all summer. Four days before election she entrained for Manhattan to be Governor Smith's guest and "get the full benefit of that thrill" on Election Day. Near Elgin, Ill., her traveling companion looked into Mrs. Nash's berth, found her dead. A sticklesome legal question arose: could Mrs. Nash's absentee vote be counted?

P: President Samuel Vauclain of Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, publicly asked: "Shall we turn over this magnificent Governmental structure to a showman [Governor Smith] to be President . . . ?"

P: Marcus Garvey, president-general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association ("back to Africa" movement; alleged membership, 4,000,000), who was deported by the U. S. last year, called from Quebec upon all his U. S. followers to vote for Smith.

P: A Dr. Edward O. Schaaf of Newark, N. J., Hooverite, was misquoted by the Republican National Committee and "in consequence" announced he would switch his vote to Smith. "I am thoroughly disgusted with the behavior of the Republican National Committee," said irate Dr. Schaaf.

P: President Henry Noble MacCracken of Vassar College announced over the radio that the Real Issue was the church in politics--Volsteadism and the Klan weakening Protestantism. Some Vassar graduates were indignant, some applauded.

P: In Easton, Pa., a Mrs. Francis Gillespie made known that she, her six sisters and three brothers, all children of the late Irish-born Daniel Timony, plus their husbands, wives and 14 children of voting age, would all vote for Smith (34 votes). Next day, a Mrs. Martha Griffiths of Williamstown, Pa., aged 87, announced 87 votes for Hoover--her eleven children, 32 grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren, 33 sons, daughters, grandsons-and granddaughters-in-law.

P: In California, a woman secured a divorce because her pro-Smith husband punched her Hooverish head.

P: Mrs. Henry Waters Taft, sister-in-law of the Chief Justice of the U. S., announced herself a Smith lady, collected campaign money in Manhattan. Some people remarked that on Feb. 7, 1912, Mrs. Taft became a Roman Catholic. Some people remarked that lately Mr. Chief Justice Taft's ten-year-old prognostications about what Prohibition would lead to, were republished (TIME, Oct. 15).

P: John McCormack, Irish-American tenor, returned from Ireland and announced he might sing "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Smith rally in Madison Square Garden, Manhattan, "provided, of course, that I'm wanted." Wanted, he sang.

P: Recording-Secretary Mrs. Jeanette C. Beach of the W. C. T. U. of New York tried to help Hoover carry that state by crying out: "You have the choice of voting for Herbert Hoover, friend of the people and hope of the dry cause, or for the other man, with alcoholized brain, who can't keep sober no matter how he tries. . . . Do you want this to be a land of the free and a home of the brave, or a land of the spree and the home of the knave?"