After All is Said

During the campaign, certain newspapers achieved certain types of fame:

New York Herald Tribune, arch-Republican, surpassed all recent metropolitan precedents in the rabid partisanship of its headlines.

New York World, arch-Democratic, was so close to the Happy Warrior that it was accused of telling him what to say and how to run his campaign.

Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, both outspokenly Wet, under the same ownership, supported Hoover and Smith, respectively. But the Chicago Tribune sensationally denounced the Ku Klux Klan and the Anti-Saloon League as "twin calamities" in the Hoover campaign (see p. 9).

The Scripps-Howard newspapers (26) clung to Hoover, though he frowned upon some of their policies and ignored their demand to oust Dr. Work.

The Fellowship Forum, a National Weekly Newspaper Devoted to the Fraternal Interpretation of the World's Current Events, achieved more fame than it ever had before and, in percentage, it won more circulation and showed a greater increase in gross revenue than any other U. S. publication. From the publisher's standpoint, it won the campaign. "Fraternal" means that The Fellowship Forum is the organ of the Ku Klux Klan and all those who believe that the Pope and Al Smith want to hang 100% Protestant-American babies from the trees on the White House lawn. The Fellowship Forum boasts that its "million readers are a unit against Al Smith because he is wet and they are ardent prohibitionists, but were he dry, most of them would oppose him on religious grounds."

Regularly during the campaign, The Fellowship Forum devoted eight out of its ten pages to violent, blatant and inaccurate attacks on Al Smith, the Pope and rum --by story, headline, editorial, cartoon and readers' forum. The doings and speeches of Mrs. Willebrandt, Rev. John Roach Straton, Senator Heflin and many a minor bigot were faithfully reported. The technique in handling campaign trends was to ballyhoo a Hoover landslide: for example, "Smith to be Most Badly Defeated Candidate Ever Running for Presidency." Then there was standard stuff: "Drunk Negro Boosting Smith," "Kissing Pope's Ring Insult to Flag," "Tirades on Religion and Liquor by Smith in West Turn Voters in Disgust." But, here and there, The Fellowship Forum would say something nice; one week, on the Women's Page, was a glowing sketch of Mrs. Herbert Hoover. One of the owners of The Fellowship Forum was aboard the Hoover special train on the Tennessee trip. Another owner is the Republican nominee for Governor in Virginia.

How many thousands of dollars The Fellowship Forum collected during the campaign to carry on its work will never be precisely known. Its drive was unceasing. One week before Election Day, Editor James S. Vance sent through the mails a "final appeal" for funds. Many of the letters were despatched to northern Republicans with Park Avenue addresses. "I want financial help," wrote Editor Vance, "that will enable me to single shot Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Arkansas and Texas, and turn a probability into a certainty."

The pledge card said: "Recognizing the tremendous importance of your final appeal for assistance in defeating the Roman Catholic Clerical Party* and to burst up the solid south, as a solemn rebuke to Rome's meddling in our political affairs, and to show the world that America stands firmly against RUM AND ROMANISM, I RUSH TO YOU the sum of $...., with my earnest prayer. . . ."

The campaign having closed and the advertisers of quack cures and medicines in The Fellowship Forum having reported tidy profits, the paper will doubtless continue in the even tenor of its oldtime ways, running such stories as "POPE CAUGHT RED-HANDED."

In the Doric columns of the New York Times, in the tabloid New York Daily News and in many another U. S. daily, during the last fortnight of the campaign, was spread an eye-arresting advertisement. Half of it was an olla-podrida of press clippings, some of them from The Fellowship Forum. Specimens:

SMITH'S CHURCH TEACHES THAT YOUR PROTESTANT WIFE IS A CONCUBINE AND YOUR PROTESTANT BABY A BASTARD*

THE POPE CONVERTED THE VATICAN INTO A HOUSE OF ILL FAME/-

LET IN THE LIGHT--OPEN THE NUNNERIES AND SAVE THE GIRLS

TO MURDER PROTESTANTS AND DESTROY AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS THE OATH BINDING ROMAN CATHOLICS There was also a poem, entitled "Alcohol Smith's Platform," of which this verse was typical:

The ignorant wop and the gangster, too,

Are the trash I expect to carry me through,

And when I land in the White House chair

They can all be damned for all I care.

Extended across the advertisement was the gigantic headline: IS THIS GOOD AMERICANISM? GET THE FACTS--LEARN THE TRUTH. It was difficult to tell at first glance whether the advertisement was pro-or anti-Catholic. Caught eyes read on. The explanation: "Many sections of our country, particularly where there are few Catholics, are being flooded with millions and millions of pieces of literature of the type exhibited here. . . .' Then there were quotations from the U. S. Constitution, William Jennings Bryan, President Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt on the subject of religious liberty. The entire advertisement was the work of the Calvert Associates, publishers of The Commonweal, liberal Catholic weekly.

The Calvert Associates were chartered in 1922 under the New York State laws as an educational society. Their leader is Michael Williams, convert to Roman Catholicism, editor of The Commonweal. Profits made by the Calvert Associates from the sale of their books, etc., are applied to the promotion of religious liberty, more specifically to the dissemination of honest information regarding the Church of Rome. Among its directors are many famed non-Catholics, such as Maj. Gen. Robert Lee Bullard (retired), Architect Ralph Adams Cram, Nicholas Murray Butler, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Louis Wiley, Gen. Lincoln Clark Andrews. Also there is Rev. T. Lawrason Riggs, smart Catholic chaplain of New Haven, Conn.** The name of the organization is in loving memory of George Calvert, founder of Maryland Free State. Better than any other Catholic organization it has reached non-Catholics. But its GOOD AMERICANISM advertisement was criticized for using bad taste to combat bad taste.

*No such Party exists.

*The New York Times blacked out the words CONCUBINE and BASTARD.

/-With illustration, showing a reclining cleric receiving a cup from an unladylike woman.

**It was once said of Father Riggs by William Lyon Phelps: "I had a young man in my class. His name was T. Lawrason Riggs. In college he couldn't decide whether to write musical comedies or join the Catholic clergy. He has done both and we're hoping some day he'll be Pope."