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the Nineteenth Amendment. Yet prohibition, regarded in the East as a more fundamental assault on states' rights and Jeffersonian personal liberty, found the South enthusiastic and aggressive in its behalf; again a negro problem reflex.

Southern Democracy has always had a strong evangelical Protestant tinge. Our States boast of a larger percentage of pure-bred Anglo-Saxons than any other; a great share of these, motivated emotionally more than rationally, have been a fertile field for sectarian enthusiasms and prejudices. Politicians accept this fact, with its corollary taboos.

Economic problems, far from lacking, have not yet been translated into political activity, principally because of the Southern farmer's inability or unwillingness to attribute economic misfortune to legal inequality. There are signs of growing class consciousness-notably the coöperative cotton movement and the Muscle Shoals fight—which may cause us some day to imitate the Northwest's political hejira for agrarian relief. Dixie is gradually recovering from its long continued Bourbonic plague.

Quite different is the Democratic constituency and attitude throughout the West, where politics is of the present and not the past; where men join parties and vote for candidates because of economic interests, not furled banners or entombed sires. Democracy is peculiarly the champion of economic causes. Throughout the trans-Mississippi, with the exception of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, its basis is economics, not tradition.

Here

Through these States, the farmers, workers, and liberals are decidedly informed economically. Northwest

wheat-growers, Rocky Mountain miners, Coast State homesteaders, have wrought by the sweat of their brows; each season sees a struggle with a grim mother Nature and a foreboding law of supply and demand. The citizens of the West are quick to detect government inequalities and economic iniquities. They say what they want, and have the courage to seek it regardless of opposition or abuse.

The Western Democratic party is essentially progressive, almost radical. In Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Montana, Colorado, California, one finds Democratic backing for state farm loans, state gasolene sale at cost to consumers, government ownership of railroads, child-labor legislation, full facilities for farm coöperation, federal marketing supervision. Here one finds vigorous denunciation of government by injunction. The farmer is class conscious, labor is assertive and well supported.

Democrats of the West think little of states' rights, a great deal of people's rights. They are habitually opposed to corporation control of government. They are in tune with the social and economic spirit of the times, and reflect it in their views of Democratic principles, aims, and leadership.

The third Democratic facet is in the East. Here again one finds religious intolerance, dense masses of newly naturalized immigrant voters, and boss-ruled cities. Eastern farmers are principally Republican. Large cities, with their immigrant throngs, give rise to Democratic organizations such as Tammany Hall, the Boston "organization," the Illinois Cook County machine.

There are millions of Democrats in the Eastern States who are just as

good Democrats as any elsewhere in the country, and who often are as irritated at the boss control as are their allies of the West and South. However, they do not furnish the party's leadership in the East, being generally helpless before the technically incomparable organization, down to the last precinct officered and directed by the city bosses, who are commonly charged with being tools of the corporate interests.

If the party in the South is idealistic, traditional, individual, national, the party in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Ohio, is local, commercial, boss-organized, boss-ridden. It is as highly industrialized as the region it inhabits.

Can the Democratic party, or any two of its three major divisions, ever be sufficiently in accord on fundamentals to unite on a liberal program of social and economic justice? Can two groups agree on a candidate virile enough to vitalize the issues? Is the party a mechanical mixture without chemical affinity, bound to separate when agitated?

The lack of thorough accord between the West and the South is not fundamentally incurable. Their economic and social interests are surprisingly similar. They are well united by their fundamental industry of agriculture. It joins them in opposition to industrial aggrandizement. It inclines both to moderate tariff policies. South and West cherish similar desires for better agricultural credit systems, improved marketing facilities, more adequate foreign trade relations. They are united against Wall Street, that mythical (yet very real) personification of the industrial East.

interests of agriculture and industry, underlying American politics for more than a century, exists to-day, undiminished, as a vital political force. On the side of industry are the aggregations of capital with control concentrated on the East; on that of agriculture, individualistic farmers of the South, and class-conscious grain-growers of the West. Labor, finding its own interests (good working conditions, adequate wages, and steady employment) best furthered by agrarian economics, generally casts its lot with agriculture.

The Democratic party as a virile political force can alone survive through the union of the South and the West. They are the natural Democratic allies. They offer the only feasible Democratic union.

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The party struggle, epitomized by the choice of the Presidential nominee, between the loosely connected West and South and the organized East, has been waged for at least four decades. In 1884, despite Tammany Hall, Grover Cleveland, Governor of New York, was victor. In both 1888 and 1892 he was again the nominee. Then was coined of Mr. Cleveland the famous phrase, "We love him for the enemies he has made," chief of whom was the Tammany tiger.

Since Mr. Cleveland's last term, the West has at times been triumphant within the party. The results were the three candidacies of Mr. Bryan, and the two Presidencies of Mr. Wilson. The East's victorious moments have been signalized by the mortification of Judge Parker, the repudiation of Governor Cox, and the crashing dis

This struggle between conflicting aster of Mr. Davis. These spokesmen

of the Eastern party are by no means personally responsible for their failures. They are genial men of indubitable ability.

When the party began to consider the selection of a 1924 standardbearer, 1920's dolorous diary was before it. But the one-third rule, trusted instrument of the wet-boss-Wall Street alliance, remained intact. This group incomparably prefers its own retention of party control, though this insures defeat at the polls, to the nomination of a progressive Democrat.

In December, 1923, when South Dakota formally proposed Mr. McAdoo for the Democratic nomination and he announced his candidacy, the wetboss-Wall Street alliance was already actively at work against him. It evaded joining the issue on prohibition, Tammany domination, or economic reform, but grasped every irrelevancy that arose. For several months it had sought vainly to make headway against the former secretary by use of the specious phrase, "He ruined the railroads." Then E. H. Doheny testified before the Senate Oil Committee, in February, 1924, that he had retained Mr. McAdoo's firm in a Mexican negotiation. The anti-McAdoo forces were jubilant. In the inflamed state of public opinion, following the disclosures of the Republican oil scandals, Mr. McAdoo's enemies felt that linking any individual with the alleged bribe-givers, even though in an entirely ethical professional relationship altogether foreign to the matter under investigation, would eliminate him from politics completely and finally.

To their surprise, county conventions in Missouri, and early primaries in Georgia, the Dakotas, California,

and other States, showed that the talk of "oil" had been futile. Mr. McAdoo came to the New York convention with far more instructed or committed delegates than any other aspirant. The injection of the Ku Klux Klan issue ensued as a last effort to block his nomination. His enemies deliberately decreed a political St. Bartholomew's Day.

George E. Brennan, Roger Sullivan's successor as Chicago political boss, had caused to be adopted at his Illinois state convention in April a platform omitting the "three little words." Two months later in New York he was the main insister for them.

After the convention, the Democratic National Committeeman of a Southern border State was talking with the Illinois "leader." "Why did you drag the Klan fight into the convention?" the committeman asked. "It almost killed the Democratic party!" "Yes, it did," Mr. Brennan replied. "But it was the only thing we had left to stop McAdoo, and, by God, it worked!"

The Klan fight in itself did not cause the deadlock. There were added certain "favorite sons," before each of whom Tammany successfully dangled the bait: "The Smith vote will come to you, if you stay in," and each of whom swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. Their votes plus the anti-Klan bloc totaled more than a third of the convention.

When Mr. McAdoo released his delegates, and Governor Smith withdrew, the convention had been in session two weeks. The delegates were exhausted, emotionally, emotionally, mentally, financially. Mr. Davis's choice then ensued, the result of exhaustion, not of deliberation. The nominee had not

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Immediately after Mr. Davis's nomination, spokesmen of the Western Progressive group waited upon him; the Tammany leaders did likewise. He was then presented with the necessity of a choice between trying to carry the East and trying to carry the West. Progressive Democrats told him that he had no chance in the East; but that he might make some headway in the West, if he would spend a good deal of time there, hammer Wall Street, and proclaim and emphasize a liberal attitude on railroad and farm questions.

Tammany told Mr. Davis his only chance was in the East. The tiger assured him that he could carry the pivotal Eastern States of New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Ohio. He took the Tammany advice. He never visited the Pacific coast. His trips elsewhere in the West were fleeting. Beginning with his acceptance speech, he went very easy on the railroad and allied questions. He departed from the party platform on the League of Nations and the Klan. His campaign was Tammanyized. He was badly defeated in the West because he deliberately neglected it.

Prior to June twentieth, few well informed Republicans privately claimed their party had much chance of victory. After the Klan fight at New York their sole care was to keep the election out of the House. They also rejoiced at being able to cleanse the party of Progressives without danger,

in contrast to 1912, when the price of house-cleaning was Mr. Wilson's election. This year they expected the election by default.

The Progressives, little disturbed at being ousted from the G. O. P. sanhedrim, cherished no hopes of electing Senator La Follette; their hopes of the election being thrown into Congress disappeared a month before November fourth. Their basic aim was to kill the Democratic party; they realized that under our constitutional plan of choosing a President, a two-party system was inescapable. Senator La Follette hoped his candidacy would wound the Democrats unto death, so that his Progressives could appropriate the carcass, and gormandize on the remains. He aimed his blows at joints in Democratic armor. The way he ignored the traditional second party was most irritating to the Democratic chiefs, almost as much as the Republican silent treatment of Mr. Davis.

The Democrats wanted to win. The party chiefs soon realized their sole chance lay through combination with the Progressives to prevent a Coolidge electoral majority. Mr. Davis's advisers hoped that, if this were effected, the Bryan bogy would frighten enough Republicans in the House to Mr. Davis to elect him. Governor Bryan's friends breathed fervent hopes that the House would be unable to select, and Governor Bryan, chosen vice-president by the Senate, would become on March fourth, the Acting President.

Mr. Shaver's aides sought informal reciprocal agreements with the Progressives and with Labor. The overtures arrived nowhere. The Progressives would not deal. Why, indeed, should they aid to elect a Democrat,

when their main aim was the death publicans secure solace in the West out

of the Democratic party?

The election enabled the Republicans to realize their fondest hopes. The election did not even go near the House; the cleansing process was complete and economical. The Progressives, not expecting victory, were not disappointed. They polled almost five million votes. They claim their intended homicide against the Democratic party has been successful; they feel it is grievously wounded, and cannot recover. Democratic aims failed entirely.

Republican claims of a blanket vote of confidence are not borne out across the Mississippi. In eight Western States, Davis and La Follette votes combined were greater than the Coolidge vote: Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Had the Democrats selected a nominee acceptable to the West, he would have carried these States at least. In six other Western States, notably California, Washington, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Colorado, the combined La Follette and Davis vote approached narrowly the Coolidge vote. In these, as well as in the first group, both Democrats and Progressives realized the improbability of defeating Mr. Coolidge. Votes against him, whosoever secured them, were protest votes. Had there been a Democratic candidate "with a chance" against Mr. Coolidge, undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of the Western stay-athomes would have voted for him; and many hundreds of thousands more who followed the line of least resistance by voting for Mr. Coolidge so as not to "waste their vote" would have voiced their real feelings. How can the Re

of a victory by default?

From a national point of view the results in the East were more disheartening than in the West. Even in the States of Tammany assurances to Mr. Davis, in which hitherto good Democratic machines had functioned, the Coolidge vote was far in excess of his and the La Follette votes combined. Mr. Davis did not receive a third of the total vote in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, or Illinois. The Democratic vote percentage of these States in recent elections is illuminating:

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The home precinct in Manhattan of Boss Murphy's successor went for Coolidge, just as the Murphy precinct went for Harding in 1920. Governor Smith, locally most popular, carried only three counties in his State. George Brennan's Cook County ticket, despite Mr. Davis's barn-storming, went down in smashing defeat. The Ohio Coolidge majority compared favorably with the Harding one in 1920. 1920. Nowhere in New England was the Davis vote even significant. He carried only one New Jersey county. He lost Maryland; his home State of West Virginia, and Indiana, in which all circumstances should have favored him. If this election proved nothing else, it demonstrated the utter impossibility as alinements are now fixed, of the Democratic party succeeding in the Northeastern States. The Solid North, as a formidable Republican bloc, has replaced the Democratic Solid South

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