Could not Lose

Arch Coleman is a quiet Quaker. Fifty-two and fair, he walks, hunts, fishes for diversion. He owned the City Coal Co. at Minneapolis until he was appointed postmaster there seven years ago. Last fortnight he thought he was going to move to Washington to sit in the House of Representatives. Last week he did find himself in Washington, sitting not at the Capitol in a mere Representative's seat but up in the Hoover sub-Cabinet. Helping hands at the White House had straightened out a bad political mess in his favor.

Walter Hughes Newton,* representing the Fifth (Minneapolis) Congressional District of Minnesota, resigned to become a Hoover secretary, to handle particularly post office patronage. A Republican primary was ordered. Mr. Coleman. good Newton friend that he was, resigned as Minneapolis postmaster to run in that primary. He had ample reason to believe he was the Administration's choice for nomination and election. Against him ran two other Republicans: Lieut. Gov. W. I. Nolan and onetime Yale footballer Walter William Heffelfinger (TIME June 3).

The nomination easily seemed to be Mr. Coleman's. But in Washington Secretary of State Stimson and House Leader Tilson, ardent Yale men both, became befuddled on their political dates. They mistook the Minnesota primary for the election. They wrote letters to Minneapolis endorsing their good old friend "Pudge" Heffelfinger. The Stimson-Tilson letters failed by a wide margin to nominate Candidate Heffelfinger. But they did switch enough votes to him from Candidate Coleman to permit Candidate Nolan to capture the nomination and the election which followed last week. It was a sorry business--the Administration's man being accidentally stepped on by potent members of the Administration.

But Hoover Secretary Newton proved to be a true and unfailing friend. Words from him on post office matters carry great weight at the White House. The Minnesota election was barely over before President Hoover appointed Also-Ran Coleman to be First Assistant Postmaster-General, second-in-command of the whole vast U. S. postal service. A friend of Statesman Stimson and Leader Tilson might not win, it seemed, but a friend of Secretary Newton simply could not lose.

Democrats hailed this Minnesota by-election, called it "significant." In a district where Democratic vote crops have been measly for years, the party's nominee ran within 4,000 votes of Candidate Nolan (23.336 to 19,755). Reason: "agricultural inequalities" in the proposed new tariff law.

*Last week Secretary Newton sped by air and rail from Washington to Minneapolis where his six-year-old son had been run over by a street car while riding a bicycle, had had a leg amputated.