Farley Wins

It was the eve of one of the bitterest New York Democratic Conventions in memory. Delegates from all over the State milled through Brooklyn's Hotel St. George, checking in, registering, spilling over into nearby bars and grills. Late into the night they went for the big steaks and big gossip at the tables in Joe's Restaurant, Gage and Tollner's, Grogan's. They were waiting for the word.

Across the East River, in Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel, the party's leaders met behind closed doors in urgent conference. The table, set for 30, was decorated with gladioli. The food was good, the occasion momentous. Out of such small, private, convention-eve dinners had come the name of every Democratic candidate for Governor since 1921: Alfred E. Smith, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman.

This time there was no harmony, no happy chitchat. Big Jim Farley, who had never come away from such a dinner the loser, was dead set on Attorney General John J. ("Jack") Bennett. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President and leader of the Democratic Party, was dead set on Senator James M. Mead. Farley had the votes--promised by men who never yet broke a promise to Big Jim. The White House had the influence, the pressure, the big stick that local politicos hate to stand against.

No one gave an inch. The plates were cleared away, the men lit cigars. For nearly four hours they argued. Big Jim and his cohorts held their ground. So did Franklin Roosevelt's men: short, swart Governor Lehman; smooth, tough National Chairman Ed Flynn, a bumbling upstate leader named Terence J. McManus.

Finally Governor Lehman played his last desperate trump against Jim Farley's majority of votes. He had a letter from Franklin Roosevelt suggesting a way out: Mead and Bennett would both withdraw, a dark horse would be named, party harmony would be saved. Why not?

Big Jim Farley, who teethed on such offers, knew that such a peace was the peace of political death for him. He shook his head. The dinner broke up. Now it was up to delegates, pulled one way by loyalty to Big Jim, pushed another by White House pressure.

The convention opened in the St. George's white-walled, flag-draped ballroom. Up stepped Governor Lehman to make the keynote speech. There was only milk-mild applause at his mention of President Roosevelt. But when Jim Farley stepped to the microphone he got an ovation. So did his good friend, Boss Frank V. Kelly of Brooklyn, who could win the fight for Farley by holding his 193 delegates fast.

Farley had the votes--could he keep them? The convention adjourned for jockeying. Mead's backers worked furiously; to all who went to their suite, they invoked the power and prestige of the White House.

But Big Jim worked too, plodding up & down the hotel corridors, talking to his men. He wanted no explanations; he just wanted to know if their word was still good.

The delegates looked at Jim Farley and thought of the man in the White House.

The Big Day. At 11 o'clock next morning, the delegates began to file back into the convention hall in a welter of excitement and rumor. The meeting was 45 minutes late starting; the leaders were all gathered behind the speaker's platform; nobody knew what was going on but everybody knew something was.

Finally Governor Lehman called the meeting to order. There were routine speeches. Governor Lehman looked at his watch; it was now two minutes until aging Senator Robert F. Wagner, prime New Dealer, would place Mead's name in nomination.

Governor Lehman ducked behind the platform, leaned over Jim Farley's chair, pleaded for a last-minute compromise. Jim Farley shook his head. The Governor shrugged. The fight was on.

Near the end of his speech, Senator Wagner launched a rhetorical question: "With our country in danger, I submit there is only one question before us and it is this: Who in Albany can do most to help us dispel that danger and restore us to security?"

This was a sad mistake for the Mead forces. Up welled a great shout: "Bennett!" The cries for Mead were drowned. A few delegates with Mead banners tried to parade, found themselves embarrassingly alone.

Farley Still Had the Votes. The air-conditioning fizzled; the ballroom became an oven; delegates shed coats, opened collars. Jim Farley, seeking comfort, had an outside freight elevator drawn up to an open door behind the platform. There he sat on a gilded ballroom chair, fanning himself with a newspaper. Henchmen and enemies walked over, whispered, walked away.

Bennett was placed in nomination: friendly delegates raised the roof with cheers, paraded for ten minutes through the narrow aisles.

The hour of voting drew close. Mead's backers put on the last ounce of pressure. There was a sudden scurry among the potent men behind the platform; Jim Farley rushed up to the stage, button holed Governor Lehman, took him back to the hotel kitchen. There, away from the turmoil, they conferred for ten minutes. Farley bustled into more conferences, with his friend Frank Kelly, with his enemy Ed Flynn. For the first time, Big Jim looked worried.

The White House-Mead forces had won a point: all delegates must stand up to answer the roll call individually, to put their votes on the record. Henceforth it would be history how they had stood in the fight between Farley and Roosevelt. Now Jim Farley's men would face the final, complete test of loyalty.

Voting was slow. Albany County gave 32 votes to Mead: no surprise. Allegany was next with three for Bennett: no surprise. But when the roll call reached Erie County, the Bennett forces cheered: they picked up 14 votes out of 58 in Mead's own bailiwick. When Kelly's Brooklyn held solidly for Bennett, it was all over. Final count: Bennett 623, Mead 393.

Jim Farley was once again the supreme Democratic boss of New York (and its 94 delegates to national conventions). Farley's Bennett might lose in November. Certainly he faced a stiff fight with aggressive Republican Thomas Dewey (see p. 22). But after the nomination, Jim Farley received more handshakes than Bennett himself. And from all parts of the country telegrams of congratulations from Democratic leaders poured in to the man who had licked Franklin Roosevelt.

Term IV?

Sometime within the next 22 months, Franklin Delano Roosevelt must make a decision. The signs and rumors are that he has already made up his mind: that Franklin Roosevelt, first U.S. President in history to break the Third Term tradition, will be a candidate in 1944 for Term IV.

One portent came last week, when the President fought with his onetime friend Jim Farley for control of New York's 94 delegates to the Democratic National Convention (see p. 20), Another, perhaps more significant, had passed unnoticed except by the close observers: into an office in the new wing of the White House, as one of the "anonymous assistants," had moved swarthy, soft-voiced David K. Niles, political tipster and fixer extraordinary, a smooth operator who wangled $500,000 from the United Mine Workers for the 1936 Democratic war chest and who was undercover man for the New Deal janizariat in many a quiet operation during the 1940 campaign. Niles's presence close to the President has a plain meaning: Mr. Roosevelt needs an able watcher --to keep a finger on all important political developments, large & small.

Enemies of the President criticized him for playing politics; he and his friends denied it. But the facts were clear, requiring neither criticism nor wishing away. If the President had not yet made the great decision about 1944, he had at least made the small one: he was not yet ready to abdicate control of the Democratic Party. And as U.S. politics go, the leader who does not keep a finger in, who does not lay the groundwork of delegates and local organizations and friendly candidates, soon finds himself deposed without a struggle. In this sense, the political situation in the Second Kansas or Third New York district is as important to the President as the political situations in other countries.

Public Opinion did not yet cry out either for or against Term IV. The citizens had not yet faced it. Did the citizenry really want to read "My Day" until 1948; did they really want Franklin Roosevelt for six more years? But Americans now were more interested in watching their President's war progress, his successes and failures. Would he prove to be a great war leader? Would the war last until 1944's election? The answers to those questions might conclusively settle the possibility of Term IV one way or another.

The chance to decide the question of the Third Term, or Term IV, on the ground of political principle had already gone once by default. The chance had come in 1940, but it had slipped by the boards, obscured by the rush of the war abroad. In that somber, critical campaign autumn the Third Term issue had been a great issue but not dominant. The campaign had been fought out over the pro & con of New Deal v. private initiative, of Roosevelt the man v. Willkie the man, of Roosevelt the veteran in foreign affairs v. Willkie the intelligent novice. The echoes of the 1940 debate were nearly forgotten. Forgotten, too, were the eloquent 1928 words of Great Liberal George Norris:

"The first time wrong is done and the precedent established, it may be done by a good man with the best of intentions; but the precedent is established, and in future years that precedent will be used by the demagogue and the rascal to perform his tricks and to fool the public. . . . [Permitting a President unlimited tenure] would mean--not perhaps in my lifetime, or it may be not in the lifetime of anyone here--but it would mean ultimately the establishment in this country of a monarchy upon the ruins of our present republican form of government."

If Franklin Roosevelt's health is still good in 1944, he will have just as good reasons for running for Term IV as he had for running for Term III. Today, all crystal gazing aside, the leading candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1944--with no one even remotely second--is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The ALPmen

New York's little American Labor Party, given the cut direct by Jim Farley's Democrats (see above), were not merely miffed but mad. For months they had attacked Farley and his candidate, John Bennett, as threats to labor and to Roosevelt. Pinkos had tried to smear Bennett as a Fascist by labeling him pro-Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

ALPmen had been certain Farley would be defeated somehow by Roosevelt, the man who had made the party's continued existence possible. PM, the tabloid which often voices A.L.P. opinions, was so sure Roosevelt would win that it ran a gleeful headline: FARLEY: RINGMASTER WITHOUT A SHOW.

Supporting Bennett, symbol of a Roosevelt defeat, was unthinkable for them.

"Beat Bennett" became the battle cry--and this the A.L.P. might well do by splitting the Democratic vote, thus letting the G.O.P.'s unthinkable Tom Dewey win.

Now the ALPmen began to scrabble about for a candidate. Desperately they proposed Rex Tugwell, Adolf Berle, Wendell Willkie, Fiorello LaGuardia and Dorothy Thompson. None, of course, was "available." A.L.P. finally settled on moonfaced, bespectacled Dean Alfange, 44, lawyer, author and onetime unsuccessful Tammany candidate for Congress. Although his was the only name presented to the convention, politically unknown Dean Alfange said what pleased him most was that the convention was "free and un-bossed." He identified himself as a New Deal Democrat.

In 1938, when Democrat Herbert H. Lehman got a narrow 64,000 plurality for Governor over Republican Thomas E. Dewey, 419,000 of Lehman's 2,391,000 votes were cast by the A.L.P. Since that time the A.L.P. has claimed to hold the balance of power in New York politics. November's election will put its claim to a real test.

The GOPsters

With fanfare but without fuss New York Republicans picked youngish (40) shoebrush-mustached Thomas E. Dewey this week to run for Governor. They applauded Keynoter Joe R. Hanley: "It is high time that this nation realizes that you cannot win this war with business as usual, strikes as usual, pleasures as usual and happiness as usual." Then happily, enthusiastically they turned to the pleasures of Saratoga Springs--where their convention was held--thronged its race track, filled its bars four-deep, paraded and played all through the night.

Candidate Dewey apparently foreswore Presidential ambitions for 1944. Said he: "For my part, let me say right now, that I shall devote the next four years exclusively to the people of New York State."

So lusty, gusty was the meeting in the jampacked upstate resort, so great the display of optimism over G.O.P. chances of carrying the State ticket for the first time in two decades that leaders had to caution delegates against overconfidence.

But the GOPsters were gay, uncankered with cares, not gnawed with doubts. "Dewey!" they shouted and went home happy.

"A Mighty Man Is He"

The village smith of Landgrove, Vt. (pop. 64) is Samuel Robinson Ogden, 46, Swarthmore graduate, architect, World War I veteran, former legislator, author of a book on gardening (How to Grow Food for Your Family) and schoolteacher. He is also a colorful character and the insurgent candidate for the Republican nomination for his State's lone seat in the House.

For nine years Vermonters have worried along with white-topped, square-jawed Congressman Charles Plumley. Farmers disliked him because he lined up with the Midwestern farm bloc to keep up the price of grain, needed for Vermont dairy farms. Workers mumbled at his Red-baiting, labor-hating speeches. Still others decried his lack of taste: he once remarked it was good the Dionne quintuplets did not live in the U.S., for the AAA would rule that two should be plowed under. But hardly anyone ever challenged Charles Plumley at the polls; and Vermont always re-elected him.

Fortnight ago a small group of farmers, applegrowers, storekeepers and newspapermen met in Rutland to air their Plumley grievances. Result: Sam Ogden decided to run.

Rugged, sharp-nosed Sam Ogden gave up a profitable insurance business in Elizabeth, N.J. in 1929 to move to Landgrove. With his own vision and his own hands he helped build it into a summer resort, a winter mecca for skiers. He helped improve streets and schools; in the Legislature he worked for forest and wildlife conservation. And he learned how to talk to the Vermont people.

As rugged in speech as in action, he said of his candidacy: "In order that the forms of representative government be preserved, it is imperative that this election be contested. The record of the incumbent demands that the people have an opportunity to protest against it. I will make no specific promises to any who support me. I will assume, if elected, that I am to act in the best interests of my country and my State, and for no groups thereof."

This message he took this week around Vermont, speaking extempore to his fellow citizens like the old Colonials at town meetings.

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