Fiddlers Who?

Chicago--June 14.

Good Republicans throughout the land tucked that place and that date away in their minds last week for 1932 reference.

There and then would their party convene to renominate Herbert Clark Hoover for the Presidency./- The Republican National Committee, 100 members strong, so determined during its two-day meeting in the ballroom atop the New Willard in Washington. Down upon its sessions looked an enormous picture of the President ten years younger than reality.

The selection of Chicago as next year's Republican convention city smacked of a public auction. When Philadelphia. Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland withdrew for lack of bidding cash. Atlantic City alone contested the sale. From Chicago had come a citizens delegation headed by Democrat Edward Nash Hurley, Wartime chairman of the Shipping Board, and Col. Robert Isham ("Secret Six") Randolph of the Chicago Association of Commerce. They offered the G. O. P. the city's new indoor Stadium for its meetings, promised reduced railroad fares and moderate hotel rates. Of most importance, they waved a certified check for $150,000 as Chicago's cash bid for the convention.

The indoor stadium, not to be confused with Soldier Field, occupies a full city block on West Madison Street, two miles from the "Loop." Its seating capacity is 25,000. Its organ, strong as 25 brass bands, smashes electric light bulbs by its vibration when played fortissimo. Delegates will not have to sweat disgustingly in their shirtsleeves, because the huge building is equipped with an airicing machine to maintain 70DEG.

The committee raised the total number of delegates to 1,154 which was 64 more than the 1928 figure. As a bonus for going Republican Texas got 23 additional votes; Virginia, ten; North Carolina, eight; Florida, six; Tennessee, five. Because they had gone for the Brown Derby in 1928, Massachusetts and Rhode Island each had five delegates snipped off their Republican convention strength. Big delegate gainers due to reapportionment of Congressmen based on 1930 census: California, 18; Michigan, 8; New York, 7. Big losers: Missouri, 6; Iowa, 4; Pennsylvania, 4. Republican headquarters is hard pressed for operating cash. Wet Republicans are withholding their money from a Dry party. Community chests have taken funds that would otherwise go to party politics. Industrial disappointment with the Tariff to bring back good times has frozen much Republican revenue. To bring in enough money to keep national headquarters solvent until the June convention, the committee last week named a special cash-collecting board headed by Philadelphia Banker Jay Cooke.

No national committee meeting would be complete without its speechmaking. Last week's was no exception. But most of the addresses were pitched on a defensive note. Plainly the party leaders felt as depressed as the Depression itself. Privately they grumbled about the difficulty of "putting Hoover over" with the voters. Old Guardsmen champed their cigars in sullen silence as Chairman Simeon Davison Fess, looking old and worried, "keynoted" thus:

"An intelligent public opinion must be formed . . . to assist in convincing the disaffected that the President is not responsible for the spots on the sun, the storms at sea, the droughts on land. . . . Our business is to place Mr. Hoover in the minds of the public where his stupendous efforts and brilliant leadership justify. . . ." Followed much sloppy metaphor concerning ships in sloppy seas.

Not until jaunty Patrick Jay Hurley, his handsome chin jutting out aggressively, jumped to the rostrum and began an oldfashioned, rip-snorting speech to the committee was the atmosphere of gloom and defeatism dispelled from the Willard ballroom. The ardent, youthful Secretary of War who may some day be President himself brought the Old Guard shouting and cheering to its feet with his slashing, dashing attacks on Democracy. Many of his words were not new, for he had delivered almost the same speech in New York last month (TIME, Nov. 30).* But into them he put a vitality and enthusiasm that went far to revive the G. O. P.'s sagging spirits. Excerpts:

"I'm a partisan. . . . The only brain throb the Democrats have had is to try to put this country on the dole. . . . The Democratic party owes much to the great Jefferson, the gallant Jackson, the courageous Cleveland, the brilliant Wilson, Al Smith, Jouett Shouse and Will Rogers. But I don't believe the party has ever owed anyone as much as it now owes John J. Raskob.* [Loud laughter]. . . . Debt cancellation? The only reason we haven't canceled the debt long ago is because a Republican Administration wouldn't let the Democrats do it. . . . We became entangled in this situation to a great extent through unnecessary loans made by Democrats to everybody in Europe who wanted money. ... If Herbert Hoover were living at Palo Alto now as a private citizen he would be drafted by the President to handle the Depression. . . . The President has now sent Congress a sound economic program. The Democrats have neither accepted nor rejected that program. They have no program of their own. They're probably waiting to get all the President's ideas to use in an attempt to set up one. We hear Democrats mumbling a lot about 'fiddling while Rome burns,' but the President's program is before Congress and if there's any fiddling being done during the conflagration, Congress is doing it."

When the committee called on him at the White House, President Hoover declared that he was encouraged by the party's solidarity. Then with a wry little smile, he added: "But I don't know whether I should thank you for your promise to keep me here another four years or not."

The Democratic National Committee does not hold its Washington meeting until Jan. 8. Unable to restrain himself until then Mississippi's Senator Pat Harrison jested about Chairman Fess's plan to "sell Hoover to the country" while other Democrats loudly doubted if the President could be "given away."

/- Ten of the 20 Republican National Conventions have been held in Chicago. Years & nominees: 1860, Lincoln; 1868, Grant: 1880, Garfield; 1884, Elaine: 1888, Harrison; 1904, Roosevelt; 1908, Taft; 1912, Taft; 1916, Hughes; 1920, Harding.

* Bryan rehearsed his "Cross of Gold" speech amid Nebraska's barns and byways long before he delivered it in all its polished perfection at the Chicago convention of 1896.

*A reference to the underwriting of the Democratic deficit by the national chairman.

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