The Big Noise

Last week the U. S. heard a great noise. It was the sum of many voices: the burnished periods of Franklin Roosevelt (see p. 11); the hoarse, earnest voice of Wendell Willkie (see p. 12); the tragic solemnity of John L. Lewis (see p. 18); the twanging, drawling, rasping, dry voice of the U. S. in campaign conversation:

> Said Jim Farley, who gave up his Democratic National Chairmanship rather than work for a Third Term: "I shall vote the straight Democratic ticket on Nov. 5 and I urge the members of my party to do likewise."

> U. S. Attorney General Robert H. Jackson: "[I] have done all [I can] to stop the increasing concentration in this country of great aggregations of other people's money in the hands of lawless, irresponsible and ruthless men like Wendell Willkie."

> U. S. Solicitor General Francis Biddle: "Of course, Hitler wants Roosevelt defeated."

> G. O. P.'s Vice-Presidential Nominee Charles L. McNary: "We have something better. . . ."

> Mr. Roosevelt's Henry Agard Wallace: "No farm-minded Republican can go up against the buzz saw of the national leadership of the Republican Party . . . without . . . deciding to become a Democrat."

> New York City's Mayor LaGuardia: "Mr. Willkie's utterances ... as far as I have quoted . . . [contain] a total of six different positions on foreign policy, nine contradictions . . . regarding the New Deal's policies and legislation, three contradictions on ... power, and one contradiction each regarding the control of monopolies, Government ownership, Argentine beef, and the Third Term."

> Columnist Westbrook Pegler: "I submit that Fiorello LaGuardia has been the worst mucker on the New Deal team."

> Irvin S. Cobb, a Democratic humorist who is serious about Willkie: "I'm getting just a little bit tired of voting for a family, even though it's such a busy, literary, military, oratorical, insurance-selling, financially successful family. I am, this year, going to try the experiment of voting for a man."

> Negro Champion Joe Louis: "I think Willkie will give us a square deal. Roosevelt had two terms . . . didn't give us an anti-lynching law."

> Dressed up as Uncle Sam, Horace Woodward, of Arlington, Va., mounted and coaxed his steed into Bull Run, switched horses in midstream with Ann Hedrick, just to show it could be done.

> Recently Senator Theodore ("The Man") Bilbo of Mississippi asserted that Wendell Willkie's father had once lived in Columbus, Miss, under an assumed name: "John Stover." Last week indignant Willkie Democrats of Mississippi offered to give $1,000 to the Red Cross if anyone could prove it. At Columbus, 80-year-old Historian E. R. Hopkins cracked: "Senator Bilbo says a lot of things besides his prayers."

> In New Jersey, howls of Democratic anguish rose when Republican Superintendent of Elections William Sewell published the names of 48,000 in Hague's Hudson County who he declared were no longer eligible to vote. Early this week only 2,600 of the 48,000 had appeared to try to prove that they should be restored to good standing. Of these 2,600, election officials had investigated 2,300, had reinstated only 240. To the courts 300 to 400 went with their squawks. With Hudson County's Democratic plurality (about 168,000) cut down, Republicans had a little more faint hope of carrying New Jersey.

> Seven Philadelphia clergymen denounced as "religious intolerance" a widespread city billboard campaign of posters stating: "Save Your Church! Dictators Hate Religion! Vote Straight Republican Ticket!"

> To New York City's 135,000 relief families, Federal Surplus Commodities Corp. distributed $870,000 worth of free food, beyond ordinary cash relief--$200,000 more than this month last year. To pork-loving Harlem last month went thousands of hams, pork chops. Last week each Harlem family on relief got: 4 Ib. raisins, 5 Ib. potatoes, 5 Ib. pears, 4 Ib. rice; mattresses, sheets, towels, etc. A random check of the Harlem handout line disclosed: all voting for Roosevelt.

> AAA chiefs denied the charge that more benefit checks than usual had been sent to U. S. farmers this year. Fact : total checks for August, September. October were $20,000,000 less than in 1939. Undenied: the charge that payments this year were made earlier.

> WPA chiefs denied the charge that pre-election work-relief rolls had been padded. Fact: seasonal increase was less than in 1939.

> Franklin Roosevelt lost some Western cattle ranchers' votes, made them mad as roped mustangs, by vetoing the McCarran Bill proposing to make interstate transportation of stolen livestock a Federal offense. What chiefly irked livestock men was the President's opinion that cattle rustling was only "petty larceny." Red-faced ranchmen agreed with the Denver Post: ". . . Showed again that he doesn't care a rap about the livestock industry "

> Pretty, brunette Mrs. Charles Poletti, wife of New York's Lieutenant Governor, went politicooing for President Roosevelt at Manhattan's stony financial crossroads (Broad & Wall Streets). Mounting a chair on the sacred sidewalk in front of J. P. Morgan & Co., Mrs. Poletti began with a mention of the President. A roar of boos almost blew her off the chair, and in jig-time 2,000 Wall Streeters were hilariously heckling her. Mrs. Poletti heckled right back.

> Circulated in Birmingham, Ala. was a mimeographed political sheet declaiming that Willkie has "a sister who is married to a, German naval officer in Berlin. . . . Are we going to stand idly by and permit a German to become President of our country?" Two sisters has Wendell Willkie: Miss Julia, a maiden lady who is employed as a chemist in Ontario; and Mrs. Paul E. Pihl, whose husband, a Commander in the U. S. Navy (who graduated No. 13 from the Naval Academy in 1920), is now on duty as U. S. assistant naval attache in Berlin.

> Democratic bolters to Willkie last week included: Samuel Levy, twice president of Manhattan Borough ; George L. Berry, former U. S. Senator and president of the International Printing Pressmen & Assistants' Union; Orville H. Bullitt, brother of Ambassador William C.

> Republican bolter to Roosevelt : Mrs. Marion Pollard Burrows, "lifelong Republican from the State of Vermont and a first cousin of former President Calvin Coolidge."

> Credited with being the largest single contributor to the Associated Willkie Clubs was blonde & buxom Betty Winsor, wife of Philadelphia Socialite Curtin Winsor, ex-wife of Elliott ("I Want To Be a Captain") Roosevelt. Said Mrs. Winsor: "I am still devoted to Mrs. Roosevelt."

> Jewish voters had the deepest misgivings, the greatest anxieties as to what the outcome of the election might mean to them. Of 200 prominent Jewish leaders polled by the Republican National Committee by week's end, four had replied that they would vote for Roosevelt; 60 said they would vote for Willkie, 40 said that they would too, but did not want to proclaim it from the housetops. Among the 60: Benjamin Buttenwieser, member of Kuhn, Loeb; Lessing J. Rosenwald, former chairman of the board, Sears, Roebuck & Co.; Roger W. Straus, co-chairman of the National Conference of Jews and Christians.

> Most observers expected the State-by-State Republican vote to be larger than it has been since 1928, although few expected the solid South to crack. Last week Southern-born George A. Sloan, former president of the Cotton-Textile Institute, wrote a letter to Southern editors and friends: "Let your inner conviction on the third term speak and vote for Wendell L. Willkie in the restoration of national unity and spirit."

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