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BIG

FROGS

BIG FROGS

BY HENRY F. PRINGLE

Author of

ALFRED E. SMITH : A Critical Study

Portraits by
BRY

MACY-MASIUS • THE VANGUARD PRESS

NEW YORK MCMXXVIII

COPYRIGHT 1928 BY MACY-MASIUS, INC.
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1928

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA

DEDICATED TO THE EDITORS, HERE LISTED

ALPHABETICALLY, WHOSE ASTONISHING

PERSPICACITY FIRST FOUND MERIT

IN SOME OF THESE SKETCHES

KATHERINE ANGELL, of the New Yorker

FRANCIS RUFUS BELLAMY, of the Outlook

CARL c. DICKEY, of World's Work
LEE F. HARTMAN, of Harper's Magazine
H. L. MENCKEN, of the American Mercury
HAHOLD ROSS, of the New Yorker
THOMAS B. WELLS, of Harper's Magazine

PARKHURST WHITNEY, of the Outlook

BIG FROGS

Ingenious Paradox

HERBERT HOOVER

9
A Mayor-at-Large

JIMMY WALKER
37

Ask Dr. C adman

THE REV. S. PARKES CABMAN
59

A Grand-Stand Judge

KENESAW MOUNTAIN LANDIS
73

His Masters' Voice

IVY LEDBETTER LEE

93

The Father of Physcultopathy

BERNARR MACFADDEN

117

Front Page Stuff

SAMUEL UNTERMYER
139

BIG FROGS

Wheels in His Head

FRANK HEDLEY

63

Up from Martyrdom

WILLIAM H. ANDERSON

173

Censor of Morals

WILL H. HAYS
193

The Janitor's Boy

EGBERT F. WAGNER

211

Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

SECRETARY OF THE NAVY CURTIS D. WILBUR

221

Chore Boy of the G.O.P.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JR.

239
The Genteel Crusader

JOHN S. SUMNER

257

BIG FROGS

Ar -A"''- •&- --Ar ' Ar iSr -A 'Ar *Ar Ar Ar

INGENIOUS PARADOX

A LITTLE MORE THAN TWO YEARS AGO, ON A NIGHT IN

May, Herbert Hoover addressed a dinner of the United
States Chamber of Commerce at Washington, D. C. I
was not present on this occasion, but I have listened to
the Republican Presidential nominee enough times to
visualize the scene. He occupied the seat of honor at
the Speakers' Table — slouched in it, to be exact — and
looked red and uncomfortable as the toastmaster intro-
duced him with ornate references to his services in Bel-
gium, his work as Food Administrator during the war,
his services in feeding the starving peoples of Europe
and the Near East and his great accomplishments in the
cabinets of Presidents Harding and Coolidge. Arising,
finally, to make the speech of the evening, Hoover
grinned in an embarrassed, small-boy fashion at his au-
dience, smoothed out the sheets of his manuscript and
began to read in a low, monotonous, almost inaudible
tone.

There are probably few such lamentably bad public
speakers in the United States as Mr. Herbert Hoover.
Certainly no other aspirant for the Presidency has been
so lacking in this important political gift. Before a
gathering of from a dozen to fifty people, it is true, he
does very well. He has even shown eloquence. But at
a formal dinner where hundreds are in front of him, or

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in a large hall, inhibitions seem to rise in his throat and
choke his vocal cords. One hand is kept in his pocket,
usually jingling some half dollars put there to ease his
nerves. He has not a single gesture. Years ago his
secretary placed, when it was possible, a high speaking
stand in front of him — in an effort to make him raise
his head. This has largely been futile. He reads with
his chin down against his shirt front, rapidly and quite
without expression.

So it must have been at the function of the Chamber
of Commerce in May of 1926. Those who had been lis-
tening applauded politely but without enthusiasm.
They had been made weary by a barrage of facts and
they went out into the warm spring night to tell them-
selves that Hoover was devoid of outward grace ; merely
an engineer with an excellent mind and great gifts as an
executive. The address of that night has since been
published in pamphlet form, however, and is now being
circulated to further his presidential boom. And it con-
tains, examination discloses, a line which would have
become a classic had it fallen from the lips of any other
man. Mr. Hoover was talking on "The Currents of
Development in American Business" and deploring
industrial waste caused by multiplicity of design,
uneconomical methods of distribution, destructive com-
petition. These wastes, he said, must be eliminated but
additional legislation was not the way to do it. Then
he said:

"You cannot catch an economic force with a police-

man."

Hoover is, himself, so impressed with this phrase that

10

Ingenious Paradox

he has repeated it verbatim in at least two other
speeches. It is, though, part of the paradox of the man
that he can utter a striking phrase in so prosaic, so unin-
spired and so mumbling a fashion that it is completely
lost on nine out of ten of his auditors. Lesser men in
public life engage press agents to write their speeches
and literary hacks to compose occasional magazine arti-
cles. They take their ideas from others and by the sweet
uses of oratory spread these broadcast, to their personal
glory. Hoover writes his own, with only infrequent as-
sistance from the publicity experts in the Department of
Commerce or from Mrs. Hoover. Then he delivers
them so badly that few people realize he is sometimes
capable of brilliance of expression. One address on
fishing, his only form of sport, was studded with epi-
grams that were almost smart-cracks. Its excellence so
impressed the editors of the Atlantic Monthly that they
reprinted it in full. Hoover wrote this without assist-
ance, but the style is so foreign to the public conception
of him that it is usually attributed to some ghost writer.
"You cannot catch an economic force with a police-
man"; in this, it seems to me, rests a complete philos-
ophy of government, or nearly so. One could not ask
for a phrase more indicative of the sort of chief execu-
tive Herbert Hoover might make (assuming that he
would live up to it). He might do so despite recent
genuflections toward expediency. It means that he
must oppose farm relief through subsidies, reorganiza-
tion of the coal industry by hysterical legislation, efforts
to adjust wage disputes by congressional debate. It is
a dangerous code for a politician, a fact of which

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Hoover must be increasingly aware as, with the years,
his yearning for the White House has caused him to be-
come increasingly politically minded. He has never,
happily for his future, expressed a corollary; that it is
equally difficult to regulate morals by constitutional
amendment. He enjoys, therefore, the support of the
drys.

The talent for giving birth to a phrase, nullified by
inability to sound it, is only part of the Hoover paradox.
There are other apparent contradictions which make
him to-day one of the most widely known and least
understood men in the United States. It is said of him,
for example, that he has genius for personal publicity.
It is whispered that releases from the Department of
Commerce speed daily to every newspaper office in the
land and that they invariably mention Hoover's name.
Yet, though the Presidency hangs upon it, he cannot
pose for a photograph without looking quite silly. On
a fishing trip in Florida last February he declined to
exhibit his morning's catch for camera men to snap.

Hoover preaches the gospel of standardization, but is
the author of a philosophical treatise on individualism.
He is a wealthy man, with an income estimated at from
$50,000 to $60,000 a year, and has small use for money.
He has a definite streak of vanity and insists upon be-
ing the leader of the band, but he flees when it is time
for him to take his bows. He is a kindly man, but so
sensitive to criticism that he recently countenanced the
discharge of a youthful newspaper reporter who had
misquoted him and misrepresented his policies. He ap-
pears to be a placid, almost bovine type when, in fact,

12

Ingenious Paradox

he is a bundle of nerves. Engaged in a conference, he
draws geometric designs or picks holes in a blotter with
the point of his pen. He sometimes paces up and down
by the hour.

Herbert Hoover has the engineer's horror of a hunch
and insists upon all available data when facing a prob-
lem. Yet, so his associates testify, he often reaches deci-
sions so swiftly that intuition can have been his only
guide. To most people he is profoundly dull as a con-
versationalist and seems ill-at-ease or bored. But to a
chosen few he will hold forth for hours on the adven-
tures that are the milestones of his life. In the minds of
most people he epitomizes independent, non-partisan
thinking. But his campaign for the Presidency is being
managed by old-line machine politicians and he is dem-
onstrating that he can dodge an issue with professional
ease. His own speeches reveal the extent to which he
is a mass of contradictions.

"I am not a party man," he said in 1920. "There are
about forty live issues in the country to-day in which I
am interested and before I can answer whether I am a
Democrat or a Republican I shall have to know how
each party stands on those issues."

"We have found ... we can give expression to the
will of the majority only through party organization,"
he said, six years later. "If we are to maintain and
promote these ideals we must maintain the two-party
government. And party government means organiza-
tion, it means loyalty, it means discipline, it means prin-
ciples and it means courage and responsibility in gov-

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ernment. That is why I am a partisan member of my
party."

But on the latter occasion, no doubt, Mr. Hoover was
speaking with an eye on the White House.

II

The Hoover enigma fades, somewhat, through an ap-
preciation of two or three elementary facts about him.
He is abnormally shy, abnormally sensitive, filled with
an impassioned pride in his personal integrity, and ever
apprehensive that he may be made to appear ridiculous.
This last explains, perhaps, why he is not at his best
when addressing a large audience. It has kept him from
taking up golf, for he could not endure being a duffer
at the first tee. It is clearly the reason for his inability
to perfect himself in such primary political gifts as
back-slapping, free and easy conversation about noth-
ing in particular, and the utterance of "hokum". He
would resign from any office rather than wear chaps at
a rodeo as did the eminent New Englander he hopes to
succeed in office. On the Hoover campaign tours, there
can be no baby kissing, no flag-waving, no throaty sobs
for wounded veterans, no gold-star mothers on his plat-
forms.

He is forced these days to give innumerable inter-
views, but he receives newspaper men and other writers
without visible enthusiasm. During the eight years that
he has been at Washington, he has developed no inti-
mates among the correspondents. None calls him by his
first name. He rises awkwardly as a visitor is shown to
his desk, and extends his hand only halfway, in a hesi-

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Ingenious Paradox

tant fashion. His clasp is less than crushing. Then he
sits down and waits for questions. His answers are
given in a rapid, terse manner, and when he is finished
he simply stops. Other men would look up, smile, or
round out a phrase. Hoover is like a machine that has
run down. Another question starts him off again.

He stares at his shoes, or at the desk in front of him,
as he speaks, and because he looks down so much of the
time, the casual guest obtains only a hazy impression of
his appearance. He is, as a matter of fact, by no means
so boyish as his photographs indicate or as he seems from
a distance. His face is lined and his cheeks are less
puffy than might be supposed. His hair is growing
gray and is rather disordered. Hoover has little mag-
netism until some question that touches a hobby or a pet
theory comes up. Then a smile lights up his face. He
is more cordial, even affable. Such smiles are rare, how-
ever, and he unconsciously irritates some callers by an
air of omniscience regarding such mysteries as eco-
nomics, finance, and industrial efficiency. This is true
particularly when he is testifying before a Congres-
sional Committee. He then becomes curt and even
patronizing, and gives an impression that he has met
brainier men.

Hoover could talk about a variety of subjects had he
the gift of conversation. Unlike many technical men, he
reads voluminously outside of his own field. Detective
stories lull him to sleep almost nightly, and the book-
shops are combed for new ones. He deplores the fact
that most of them are so bad. At other times of the day
he is held by anything from memoirs to such current lit-

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erary sensations as "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", by
Thornton Wilder, and Andre Siegfried's "America
Comes of Age". On all such matters he is mute, how-
ever, except to those who have known him for years.
Even his devotion to fishing does not inspire him to con-
versation.

He labors, therefore, under the handicap of being
considered a cold and aloof individual. This is far from
the truth. Actually, he is easily brought to laughter or
to tears. Years ago his two small sons built a frog-pond
on the lawn of the Hoover home at Palo Alto, Califor-
nia. A peculiar whistle brought the frogs hopping from
all directions in the expectation of food. Hoover found
this vastly amusing, and would bring guest after guest
to watch the show. Invariably, he laughed much more
than did the guest. Recollections of amusing incidents
during the war still rock him with mirth. So, too, he is
easily distressed. Once, while in charge of the relief
work in Belgium, with the grim shadow of starvation
ever near, he chanced to pass one of the stations where
gaunt, hungry children were being fed from huge ket-
tles.

"Don't ever let me see one of those again", he told the
assistant who was with him. "I can't stand the sight."

Hoover's outstanding passion is the elimination of
waste. He touches on this in the course of nearly every
speech. He takes great pride in the degree to which
the Department of Commerce has persuaded business
men to abandon extraneous designs and sizes. He
glories in the fact that 200 committees are at work in
scores of industries, as a result of his evangelism, and

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Ingenious Paradox

claims that $200,000,000 is being saved annually by lum-
ber companies alone. He is confident that the saving is
passed on to the consumer.

Avoidance of waste and devotion to system have
grown, with the years, to a point where they are
Hoover's personal gospel. For many seasons — in the
winter as well as in the summer — he wore a certain type
of double-breasted, blue-serge suit. Traveling in all
parts of the world, he left measurements and specifica-
tions with tailors in many cities. When he needed a new
suit, he had but to telegraph the nearest one and a suit
was provided with the dispatch of a Ford car. Just
before the conflagration of war spread over Europe,
Hoover was living in London. Walking along the Em-
bankment with a friend one day, he was approached by
a beggar. Although in a hurry, he stopped, took out
a small notebook, and asked the man his name. As
they passed on, his friend asked him for an explanation.

"I always do that," Hoover answered. "It's impos-
sible to tell whether these men are really in distress, so I
have arranged with the Salvation Army to have cases
investigated for me. Probably half of the beggars
refuse to give me their names. Another quarter give
fictitious ones. Those who are really in need tell the
truth, and I find that the money I can spare goes much
farther in this way."

To a certain extent, this zeal against waste is socially
a handicap. Hoover is sometimes less than a perfect
dinner guest. Seated next to a lady whose life consists
of horses, bridge, and Debussy, he has very little to say,
and therefore says nothing. One such lady was finding

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conversation exceedingly difficult at a Washington func-
tion, when she recalled that Hoover believed in stand-
ardization. According to a story, which may be apoc-
ryphal, she remarked that buttons were the bane of
her existence. She had two small sons, she complained,
with infinite talent for bursting their buttons. The
maid who did the family sewing could rarely find re-
placements of the proper size. Why did not the De-
partment of Commerce take up buttons? Hoover
brightened visibly as he heard this. He is said to have
described a plan that would reduce button sizes to three.
He analyzed, in detail, the history and growth of the
button industry and even made it interesting.

Mr. Hoover's critics, even those who are friendly
ones, view his mania for standardization with misgiving.
They say that he would create a robot world in which
every one would live in fabricated houses, eat efficient
but tasteless food, and exercise on electric horses. They
recall with horror that Hoover once said "engineers
could construct waterfalls much more beautiful" than
the accidental ones provided by nature. Their fears are,
however, largely without foundation. As far as water-
falls are concerned, his record is clear; he has called for
preservation of Niagara because of the pleasure given
to couples on their honeymoon. Being an eminently
sane ir dividual, it has never entered his mind that men
and women would be better off if they wore similar
clothes. He has never protested against changes in
feminine fashions.

He has many times expressed his opposition to cen-
tralization of government authority, and is Jeff ersonian

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Ingenious Paradox

in his belief in states' rights, always excepting prohibi-
tion. His book on individualism, alone, is an adequate
answer to apprehensions that he seeks to standardize
America, but in one address he specifically replied to the
accusation as follows:

"From the savings made by greater efficiency in pro-
duction— that is, in the time we have saved from other
occupations — we have added the automobile and the
good road, the movies, the radio, and the phonograph
directly to the standard of living. We have increased
the diffusion of electric light, power, telephone, plumb-
ing, better housing, and a dozen other things.

"Some feel that in all this we are deadening the soul
of men by machine production and standardization. . . .
I may observe that the man who has a standard tele-
phone, a standard bathtub, a standard electric light, a
standard radio, and one and a half hours' more daily
leisure is more of a man and has a fuller life and more
individuality than he has without these tools for varying
his life".

And yet, within recent months, to the astonishment
of his friends, Hoover has abandoned his blue-serge
suits. He now owns a brown and a gray.

Ill

In its essence, Hoover's belief in individualism rests
on the hope that men and women may ultimately do
those things most pleasing to them. This, in turn, has
its foundation in the success of his own life. If he does
not achieve the Presidency, it will, perhaps, be the first
time he has been denied something he really wanted.

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And if, like most men, his outstanding desire was a
happy home, he has obtained it in full measure. Some-
times it has been in Petrograd, again in London,
Shanghai, Tientsin, Palo Alto, San Francisco, New
York, or Washington. But always it has been an ideal
one. He married his first love, in 1899, and to-day the
years rest lightly on the slim shoulders of Mrs. Hoover.
They have two sons, one still at Stanford University,
and the other a recent graduate of the Harvard School
of Business.

Hoover's life story has been told many times, and
from this, partly, comes the charge that he is expert in
obtaining personal publicity. The accusation is inaccu-
rate. He has, of course, used newspapers, magazines,
the radio, and motion pictures in connection with the
relief campaigns he has undertaken. But he has never
capitalized himself. On the contrary, his shyness and
reticence have made this impossible, and the man's work
is far better known than is the man. To a very large
extent, also, the countless articles written during the
past decade about Hoover have been a result of wide
acquaintance among writers, several dating from under-
graduate days at Stanford. Like the rest of his friends
and associates, these are almost fatuous in their admira-
tion. In only two cases, incidentally, has Hoover failed
to inspire undying loyalty in his subordinates. Far
from a demonstrative person, he rewarded work well
done with another job, and rarely said anything in
praise. But there are to-day in New York two or three
prominent business men who recall, incredibly pleased,
that they actually won commendation.

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Ingenious Paradox

"The Chief almost slapped me on the back once when
we were in Belgium together," one of these remembers.

Hoover's story, like that of so many prominent
Americans, has much of the inspirational in it. He was
brilliant, capable, and he worked hard. Success crowned
his efforts almost from the start. Beginning life as a
poor boy, he was on the road to wealth when most men
are still getting an allowance from home. By the time
he was twenty-five Hoover was internationally known
as an engineer. Men twice his age paid him large sums
for advice. To-day, one suspects, Hoover finds inspira-
tion in the story himself. He has been heard expressing
regret that his sons will not be forced to overcome pov-
erty ; but he does not carry this far enough to wish that
they had been required to work their way through col-
lege.

Attending Leland Stanford, Jr., University, the new
college of the West, he worked his way through. This,
he now feels, was misdirected energy, although unavoid-
able. It took him away from more important things,
chiefly literature. He gave all of his time to the hard
facts of an engineering course. Writing and composi-
tion proved to be exceptionally difficult, and he almost
lost his degree through inability to master the mysteries
of punctuation. Even now, commas and semi-colons
baffle him, and many an informal letter or memorandum
is lacking in this respect. He is often uncertain as to
the meaning of words, and he sometimes uses them
loosely. None of this is visible, however, in such
speeches as appear in print. The reason is that Mrs.
Hoover has edited them.

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Details of Hoover's life shed light on present charac-
teristics. Sensitiveness is, for instance, a common trait
among Quakers, and he is a member of that sect. He
was born in West Branch, Iowa, on August 10, 1874,
and had an older brother, who also became a mining en-
gineer, and a younger sister. The Hoovers were excel*-
lent stock, probably Dutch in origin; people who had
settled first in Maryland in the eighteenth century
and who had moved westward as the country grew
larger. His father was a blacksmith and an agent for
agricultural machinery and his mother a woman of rare
intellectual gifts. She was so inspired by her religion
that she was frequently "moved to speak" at the Quaker
Meeting House. In time she acquired a reputation as a
preacher and was in great demand at settlements near
West Branch. Thus, she earned small sums when her
husband died, six years after Herbert was born. Four
years later she, too, died, and the children were cared
for by relatives. An uncle decided to push farther west,
to Oregon, and Herbert went with him.

Contemporary photographs show that in appearance
the boy was brother to the man. At fourteen he had the
puffy cheeks and the chubby countenance that are the
delight of cartoonists to-day. Until he was about fifteen
he was an aimless youth, little interested in education
and after a few years in school, he started to work in an
office in Salem, Oregon. Then some friends of his uncle
interested him in geology and engineering, and he de-
termined to matriculate with the first class at Stanford,
opening its doors in the fall of 1891.

Hoover enjoyed himself at Stanford, and became so

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Ingenious Paradox

devoted to the institution that throughout his life he
maintained contacts with it and, when possible, lived
near the campus. From his undergraduate days there
grew an interest in education second only to his interest
in efficiency. His philosophy of American equality is
based on those undergraduate years. It is part "of the
claptrap of the French Revolution", he wrote in his book
on individualism, that men are "equal in ability, in char-
acter, in intelligence, in ambition". But the American
system gives equality of opportunity. The poor boy can
obtain an education identical to that of the wealthy
man's son. He can rise just as far. Hoover is partic-
ularly fond of dwelling upon this point and, in support
of it, he cites detailed statistics regarding attendance at
American educational institutions. No other nation, he
says, has made higher learning so accessible. And this
causes him to grow optimistic as he ponders on the fu-
ture of the United States.

Stanford was coeducational from the start, and in
Hoover's senior year a young girl entered to specialize
in geology. Hoover was the department's prize stu-
dent, and a mutual interest in Pleistocene deposits
brought them together. Lou Henry and Herbert
Hoover were engaged before he was graduated. When
he started on his first foreign assignment, to Australia,
a year or so afterwards, she waited for him to return,
because his employers believed the journey too arduous
for a woman. She did not permit this to happen again,
though, and when he became director-general of mining
for the Imperial Chinese Government, at the age of
twenty-six, she went with him. The Boxer Rebellion

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was but a detail of years spent in China, Borneo, Rus-
sia, on the Malay peninsula, and in London. As often
as possible, usually once a year, they returned to Cali-
fornia for a brief vacation.

Informality has been the rule in most of the numerous
homes maintained by the Hoovers. It is the rule in their
Washington home to-day. This is due to Mrs. Hoover's
belief that such details as the time of the dinner hour are
unimportant. At Red House in London, where they
lived for a record period of some five years, guests from
the other hemispheres drifted in as casually as though
from across the street. Mrs. Hoover is interested in
too many other things to bother overmuch with an estab-
lishment. Her dinners are invariably charming but
are, as some of her friends observe with amusement, "oc-
casionally disorganized". At tea, there is always a
chance that the cream will give out. No one knows,
until the last minute, just how many will be present,
and the cook, who worships her mistress, chronically
wears the expression of a martyred saint. But there is
always laughter and intelligent conversation at the
Hoover board, and Hoover himself frequently unbends
to recall days that have passed: days in which he per-
suaded devil doctors in China that mining was a sci-
ence impervious to superstitions, when he crossed blaz-
ing deserts and tropical swamps, when 150,000 men
were employed on properties controlled by himself and
his associates, when he fought the officialdom of Ger-
many and of the allied countries alike to save Belgium,
when he journeyed into the floodlands of the Mississippi
and saw ruin and destruction uncovered by receding

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Ingenious Paradox

waters. Those who have listened deny with vigor that
Herbert Hoover is lacking in conversational gifts.
They consider him virtually a Burton Holmes.

Well-grounded in her husband's profession, Mrs.
Hoover is far more skilled in the written word. It was
she who carried the heavier burden when, in 1906, they
decided to amuse themselves by translating into Eng-
lish a medieval work on metallurgy. This was ffDe Re
Metallica" written about 1550, by a Saxon named
Georg Agricola. Agricola had used Latin, and had
found that many sixteenth century metallurgical terms
had not existed when the language became static.
Therefore, he invented scores of words. The resulting
hodgepodge had baffled scholars, so Mr. and Mrs.
Hoover, such being their notion of recreation, decided
to make an English translation. The work was done —
as their preface points out — during ' 'night hours, week-
ends, and holidays", and took five years to complete. It
has no practical value, for Agricola has long been out of
date. It was, in short, a labor of companionship, and
the resulting book, a ponderous tome beautifully printed
and illustrated, was paid for by the translators. It is
to-day examined with curiosity by students, and is to be
found in technical libraries.

IV

Although universally known in his profession,
Hoover had hardly been heard of by the outside world
until the war. He was best known in Great Britain,
probably, and had been unofficially informed that if he
became a subject of the British Crown a peerage might

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eventually be given him. This story has been capital-
ized, in the eternal manner of politicians, by Hoover's
enemies. They are remarking that he is pro-British,
refer to him as " 'Erbert 'Oover" and are hoping that
the Irish citizenry will be moved to terrible wrath.
Hoover's friends admit that there was talk of a peerage,
and quote him as replying: "I'll be damned if I will give
up my American citizenship." It would probably have
been wiser to laugh at the story. Great Britain does
not, in the first place, casually offer titles to American
citizens, and the rumor of a peerage grant was obviously
unofficial. And Hoover, from all I can gather, is more
anti-British than pro-British. His fury over the British
rubber monopoly may be recalled. His attitude toward
debt reduction was no indication of love for England,
and his economic theories on the subject once brought
forth a devastating answer from Professor E. R. A.
Seligman of Columbia University.

The story of Hoover in the World War needs no
repetition. He fed Belgium, came back to the United
States and conserved food, and returned to Europe and
cared for starving millions in Germany, Russia, Ar-
menia, and Poland. It was during these services abroad
that he demonstrated that he had a temper. In De-
cember, 1918, he received word from an aide that two
German officials desired a conference with him. In-
formed of their names, he recalled that the pair had been
in Belgium during the war, and boiled over. He flatly
refused to see them.

"You can describe two and a half years of arrogance
toward ourselves and cruelty to the Belgians in any

26

Ingenious Paradox

language you may select," he said. "And tell the pair
personally to go to hell, with my compliments."

This particular incident leaked into print. But there
were many other occasions, noted only in the secret files
of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. Not long
after the invasion of Belgium, Hoover received word
that the Allies were no longer willing to have America
carry on her humane work. International law, they
said, required the enemy to feed a conquered population.
If they did so, there would be that much less food for
the Germans. The Commission must get out. Ger-
many retorted that international law provided nothing
of the sort, and it looked as though Belgium would
perish. Hoover rushed from one British Cabinet of-
ficial to another. Kitchener was still War Lord, and
explained the military point of view. England re-
gretted that war compelled this course. They admitted
that Belgium might starve, but there seemed to be no
way out.

Finally, Hoover went to Lloyd George, then Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer. He described the public re-
action in the United States to so brutal a policy. He
did so at length and with great heat.

"England said that she went into the war to save
Belgium," he said to Lloyd George. "America under-
stands this to be the purpose of the Allies. It would
be a cynical thing [he meant "ironical," but was ex-
cited] if, when victory comes, the people of Belgium are
dead from starvation."

Lloyd George at last looked up. Tears were in his
eyes.

27

Big Frogs

"You're right, you're right!" he agreed, and prom-
ised to use his influence with the Government.

V

For all that he dealt with flour, meat, and shipments
of fat, Hoover was a glamorous figure during the years
from 1914 to 1919. To millions in Europe, his presence
had meant life instead of death. He had matched his
wits against kings and premiers, diplomats and gen-
erals. He walked through the streets of Brussels ever
alert lest some demonstrative citizen attempt to thank
him for what he had done. He would have been deluged
with decorations had it not been that he refused all ex-
cept the French Legion of Honor and a gracious one,
"Honorary Citizen and Friend of the Belgian Nation",
created solely for him by King Albert.

At home, Hoover's name became a household term.
He had persuaded the housewives of the nation to con-
serve food by pointing out that in this way they could
assist in winning the war. He worked then, as he does
now in his efforts to end industrial waste, through co-
operation instead of through legislation, and postponed
as long as possible all restrictive laws. His one mistake
in policy seems to have been a suggestion that subur-
banites could relieve the pork shortage, and to this end
he started a "Buy a Pig" movement.

"A properly cared for pig," said an official Food
Administration statement, "is no more unsanitary than
a dog."

Dwellers in Suburbia did not take to the idea, how-
ever, and it was abandoned.

28 v

Ingenious Paradox

After his service in post-war Europe, Hoover came
home again, this time to remain. He had remarked that
he had learned how to make money, and was no longer
interested in the process. He had withdrawn from his
mining enterprises in 1914, sacrificing a potential for-
tune in doing so, and was now vaguely anxious to enter
public life. Knowing Europe and its intrigues better
than did most men, he deplored portions of the Treaty
of Versailles, and saw in the League of Nations the only
path to peace.

But the Hoover of 1919 was, as some one then said
of him, like "a wearer of the Congressional Medal of
Honor". Knowing nothing of politics, and with no
friends among the influential of either party, there was
danger that the war years would remain the high point
of his life and that, although still a young man, he would
never again find similar opportunities to do good.
Probably he realized this and was, himself, half afraid
that he might, figuratively speaking, spend the rest of
his days spinning yarns around a cracker barrel.

I am not offering the theory that, in 1919, Hoover felt
that he must have the Presidency. He was very tired.
He knew that occupancy of the White House had
broken Wilson's health. Moreover, as a mining en-
gineer, he surveyed the whole business of politics with
both doubt and disapproval. Politicians had long been
merely impedimenta in the path of things he wanted
to do. They interposed objections to engineering proj-
ects. They gave in to hallucinations that gold or silver
or lead could be dug from the earth, by legislative fiat.
They were notoriously inaccurate in their predictions

29

Big Frogs

as to the outcome of a political campaign. Their very
trade was so filled with human equations as to be
anathema to the scientific mind.

Hoover's friends, knowing equally little about poli-
tics, started his ill-fated boom for President. They did
not care whether he was a Republican or a Democrat
and Hoover did not know; he had rarely been in the
United States long enough to vote. His sole asset as an
aspirant for nomination by either party was great popu-
lar strength. While various newspapers were sounding
his praises, the politicians plotted to get rid of him.
Hoover, meanwhile, was meditating on the faults and
virtues of each party, and was issuing statements that
he was "not a party man". William Jennings Bryan
denounced him for the Democrats. The late Boies Pen-
rose said in a shocked voice that Hoover had insulted the
G. O. P. in 1918, when he had appealed to the nation to
elect a Democratic Congress and thereby give Wilson
support for the peace negotiations and the League of
Nations.

The Republican convention was to be held first, and
had Hoover kept quiet it is possible that he would have
been nominated simply because of the fear that the
Democrats might take him. There is a legend that Pen-
rose sent emissaries to pose as independents and urge
him to declare himself a Republican. He was assured,
as were his friends, that his popular strength was certain
to bring the nomination. This story may not be true.
But, in the end, having repeated his assertions that
neither party was ideal, Hoover said that he was a Re-
publican and would accept a call from that party alone.

30

Ingenious Paradox

The Old Guard snickered and greased the machinery
that resulted in the selection of Warren G. Harding in
a hotel room filled with perspiring men and cigar smoke.

In late June, 1920, Hoover issued a statement re-
questing support for Harding and pronouncing his
platform "constructive and progressive". He had
learned a bitter lesson. When his name had been placed
in nomination there had been a burst of applause from
the galleries. But the delegates had smiled grimly, and
he had received only five and one-half votes. The mem-
ory of that pittance still burns.

It is easy to explain Hoover's acceptance of a post
in Harding's Cabinet by saying, as his opponents will
do, that he wished to remain in the political picture.
Undoubtedly, there is an element of truth in this. It is
not unfair to Hoover to say that for eight years he has
been at least a passive candidate for President. Those
friends who labored for him in 1920 continued their ac-
tivities undismayed. On the other hand, the Depart-
ment of Commerce was not a very attractive post. Its
secretary is the stepchild of an Administration. No one
has risen from this new Cabinet post to political glory,
and it should be remembered that Hoover was sincerely
anxious to give the rest of his life to some form of pub-
lic service.

It would seem only just, also, to acknowledge that he
has administered the office with success beyond the hopes
of his most devoted admirers. He has simplified its
machinery, has vastly extended its influence, and has
brought it to the front rank. He has wrestled with the
great and increasingly important problems of water

31

Big- Frogs

power, finance, coal, industrial efficiency, foreign trade,
and transportation, and has carried them nearer to so-
lution. He has been, as some one rather meanly said of
him, "Secretary of the Department of Commerce and
undersecretary of all other departments". He has been
the trouble man of two Administrations and, as such,
has been called upon to wrestle with coal strikes, Muscle
Shoals, Boulder Dam, radio regulation, the debt settle-
ments, and floods.

VI

Obviously, the Hoover of 1928 is a different man
from the Hoover of 1918, and there are many, no doubt,
who feel that all the differences are not for the best.
Some are recalling that in February, 1920, he said that
he could not vote with a party that "sought to reestab-
lish control of the government for profit and privilege".
Against this, they are wondering how he endured a seat
at the Harding Cabinet table. One suspects that
Hoover must look back on those days as a man waking
from a nightmare.

He no longer calls for a League of Nations to end
war. His voice is no longer heard in defense of a World
Court. While his supporters battled in the Ohio and
Indiana primaries, he hid behind the fiction that he is
not actively a candidate and that silence is his religion.
He answered Senator Borah's questionnaire on prohibi-
tion, it is true, but he did it in so canny a way that both
the wets and the drys profess to be pleased.

He was evasive when he appeared before a Senate
committee to testify on the Mississippi flood program,

32

Ingenious Paradox

and adroitly declined to commit himself on whether the
Federal Government should pay the whole cost of
relief. Only last summer, he believed that a special ses-
sion of Congress should be called to deal with flood con-
trol, and the sufferers of the Mississippi valley felt
confident that he would work vigorously in their behalf.
Now they are protesting that they have been betrayed
for expediency's sake. Hoover was afraid, it seems,
that what he recommended might clash with the nebu-
lous opinions held by President Coolidge. He had al-
ready pledged himself to carry forward "the principles
of the Republican party and the great objectives of
President Coolidge's policies". After the nomination,
he notified the G. O. P. convention that he would stand
on the party platform, a platform which evaded most
of the issues of the day. The man widely believed to
know nothing of politics has learned, if anything, too
much. One has only to recall that his choice for Chair-
man of the Republican Committee was Dr. Hubert
Work, a member of Mr. Coolidge's Cabinet and once
an assistant to Elder Hays in the Post Office Depart-
ment.

But that Hoover has not entirely transformed him-
self is proved by the fact that his nomination was ex-
ceedingly distasteful to the machine leaders. They are
flocking to his banner, publicly at least, and are sound-
ing his praises. Many will knife him at the first oppor-
tunity, however. The politicians do not yet trust him,
and in this there is hope. He is still suspected of being
an independent man and "the boys" fear that, once in
the White House, he will again become too independent

33

Big Frogs

for them. And it can definitely be stated that he was
desperately unhappy in the Harding Cabinet. Hoover
is not a fool. He knew that all was not well. He was
depressed and morose, and daily on the point of resign-
ing. Here, I think, the philosophy of an engineer
halted him. Because conditions are dirty is no reason
to quit a job. There was real work to be done in the
Department of Commerce — work that would stop short
in the event of his withdrawal. He had given his word
that he would carry it through. So Hoover hung on,
sick at heart, but believing that the evil would soon be
ended. Hope that he could still be President was a
secondary influence.

Hoover now runs for office for the first time in his
life. And in this, as in other ways, his career is in
marked contrast to that of Alfred E. Smith who cam-
paigns against him. Al Smith has been in public life
continuously since 1904, save for two years. He began
his long period of service as a Tammany Hall politician,
whose sole interest was the welfare of the organization
that had bred him. Regularity was his religion. To-
day, however, he has grown independent. He has great
administrative gifts. His knowledge of the science of
government is detailed and thorough. The change in
him has been that he has grown less politically minded,
and has taken on characteristics that qualify him for
nomination by his party. Such, at all events, is my
personal belief.

Hoover, on the contrary, had to develop some of the
talents that Smith possessed to excess. He no longer
deludes himself with amateurish theories that popularity

34

Ingenious Paradox

is easily transformed into votes at a national convention.
It is not inconsistent with a practical engineering mind
that he is now "a partisan member of my party". En-
gineers exist to get things done. Hoover can achieve
his White House objective only by playing the game
according to the rules. The time for change is later on.

Thus Americans are being treated to an entertaining
spectacle. The two candidates are men of unusual cali-
ber. On the one hand, the voters see Al Smith, who has
emerged from Tammany domination to a point where
independence is his wisest political course. On the
other, they see Herbert Hoover, who once did not know
whether he was Republican or Democratic, suppressing
his independence and obeying the mandates of party
manipulators.

Those who knew Hoover in the past, and who now
deplore his actions, should take courage. Men are never
at their best in the political arena. The fundamental
virtues in Herbert Hoover are doubtless unchanged.
He is still an executive virtually without equal. He is a
glutton for work. He understands Europe and its
problems. He is particularly talented in those en-
gineering problems, such as water power and transpor-
tation, that must be solved on a national scale within the
next few years. His gifts can never be applied to them
unless, for the moment, he bows to expediency.

35

A M A V O R - A T - L A R G E

THE HONORABLE JAMES J. WALKER, MAYOR OF THE CITY

of New York for the past three years, has now com-
pleted three-fourths of his term in that exalted office.
His administration has been expensive beyond any other
on record and has been marked by an unprecedented
irresponsibility on the part of its chief executive. But
it has also been replete with good, clean fun. And the
Honorable Jimmy has particularly distinguished him-
self as the best traveled elected official in the history of
the town. A Tammany Democrat, a Catholic and a
Wet, he has, nevertheless, been summoned to Atlanta,
Georgia, to unveil the statue of General Lee on the side
of Stone Mountain. He has caroused at a New Orleans
Mardi Gras, sunned himself on the torrid sands of the
Florida coast and on the shores of the Mediterranean,
and has visited, with a strangely mixed entourage,
Havana, London, Paris, Dublin, Berlin, Munich,
Home, and Venice. He has been constantly feted, dined
and wined; on his 1927 European junket to such an
extent that indigestion overtook him and he returned
vowing melancholy (and temporary) allegiance to the
Eighteenth Amendment. No Kentucky derby of re-
cent years has been complete without him, no important
prize fight eludes him. He has been entertained by
ambassadors, lord mayors, premiers, the nobility and

37

Big Frogs

the lesser royalty. Crowds comparable only to those
that greet a Lindbergh or a Prince of Wales have lined
the streets through which he has been driven.

Jimmy Walker's wise-cracks, to the utterance of
which he is more devoted than to almost anything else,
have been edited into pointless Oxonian English by
puzzled British journalists. They have been laboriously
translated, with an equally meaningless result, into
Gaelic, German, Spanish, and Italian. He has carried
to the Caribbean, Europe and the British Isles the
notion that Americans are, if slightly erratic and in-
variably late for their appointments, a charming, youth-
ful and sophisticated race with a neat faculty for turning
a pretty phrase. Our foreign cousins are unaware, of
course, that Jimmy is as much of a phenomenon in his
own city as he is abroad. They do not know that his
fellow-townsmen shake their heads as they marvel at
his gay ways and his disinclination toward work, that
they wonder whether this musical comedy mayor has
yet accomplished anything at the City Hall; and cheer
lustily whenever he makes a speech.

When the Honorable Jimmy was inaugurated in
January of 1926, startled but in no way disconcerted by
the turn of fate that caused him to succeed the dreary
Hylan, there were frequent predictions that within a
year the cares of office would have dimmed his sunny
nature. The prophets said that no man could operate
a civic machine costing $1,300,000 a day without
abandoning his night clubs, first nights, baseball games
and prize fights. He would shortly grow reserved and
dignified, they set forth, and would make long and dull

38

A Mayor-at-Large

addresses instead of short speeches studded with quips
from the latest Broadway show. Jimmy might start
his term as "The Jazz Mayor", but the whine of the
saxophone and the rattle of the traps would soon be
stilled. However, none of this has occurred, possibly
because he is content to let the civic machine operate
by itself. If Mayor Walker has changed perceptibly
from the dashing figure who led the Tammany Demo-
crats in the State Senate, that fact is hidden from the
most meticulous observers. He finds time for all of
his former diversions. Not long ago, attending a first
night, he scrambled up on the stage at the invitation of
the comedian and took part in the show. He has at-
tempted to write a song for another musical comedy.
He manages, in brief, to have his job and his fun, too.
And as yet instances of public disapproval are but
sporadic: occasional editorials (which he does not read)
warning him that time flies, that important problems
still await solution, and that he must be more indus-
trious. Even the editorial writers join in the general
acclaim when he returns from some journey and hail
him as "Ambassador Walker", "New York's Super-
Salesman", "Manhattan's Good-Will Delegate".

If Will Rogers is justly called America's "Congress-
man-at-Large", Jimmy Walker must be accorded the
title of "Mayor-at-Large". No former occupant of
New York's City Hall has been so widely known, so
frequently photographed, so often a figure in the news
reels. No other has greeted so many visitors at his
office, visitors ranging from Paul Whiteman to an
envoy of the Pope. It is an exceptional day when there

39

Big Frogs

is not a brass band in front of the City Hall, an honor
guard of police, a shining limousine, and a (more or
less) distinguished visitor being given the freedom of
the city by a slender mayor wearing spats that are a
shade lighter in color than the mode demands. Jimmy
is the first American city official whose roamings are
first page news in all parts of the country. Hundreds
of cable dispatches reported his opinions, always en-
thusiastically favorable, regarding the cities that he
visited on his latest grand tour. He has become more
than merely the Mayor of New York. He has assumed
national, even international, proportions. Secretaries
of Chambers of Commerce and Rotary Clubs through-
out the country rejoice that he inspires friendly senti-
ments toward the United States and assure themselves
that exports are certain to boom. I quote from the
Boston Transcript, normally somewhat aloof about
New York, as typical of the reaction outside of Man-
hattan to the reports of Mayor Jimmy's travels:

"He is extremely well liked wherever he goes, and
at this time, when even International Peace delegates
have to be protected in Holland by mounted police, it
is certainly a good thing to have abroad for a little while
an American public functionary with whom everybody
falls in love. Mayor Walker might well be considered
for the diplomatic service after his term of office of
Mayor of New York has expired. Of course he is a
Democrat, and the Democrats may never agree on a
Presidential candidate who can be elected, but the diplo-
matic service is gradually acquiring a divorce from

40

A Mayor-at-Large

party politics, and any party might well be glad to get
'Jimmy' Walker".

II

Save for such undemocratic incidentals as heredity,
birth and breeding, there are striking similarities be-
tween the present Mayor of New York and that other
renowned globe trotter, the Prince of Wales. Both
have an ear for music and an eye for that type of enter-
tainment inspired by the woes of the tired business
man. Jimmy, in learning the Charleston a year or so
ago, struck his knee against a table and for a fortnight
limped to his office with a cane; while the newspapers
explained that he had been hurt at home, "hurrying to
answer the telephone". The Prince, in mastering the
same dance, incurred the displeasure of the Queen.
Both, unless the gossip regarding England's darling is
unfounded, have an active distaste for reading.

The parallel cannot, unfortunately, be extended to
their respective jobs. The Prince of Wales serves his
country best, no doubt, by exhibiting his charm as
widely as possible. His public duties are numerous, but
they are chiefly ceremonial in nature. Certainly he
need not concern himself, in any official capacity, with
England's tax rate, with the payment of interest on
her loans, or with the mysteries of her government. The
utmost he is expected to do, and this only because he
will one day be King, is to affect a polite interest in
these matters. But the Mayor of New York, unhap-
pily, is surrounded by what Jimmy Walker, about to
take office in 1926, mournfully termed "the headaches

41

Big Frogs

of the City Hall". These are not dispelled by spread-
ing goodwill on foreign soil, by making affable after-
dinner speeches, by handing out keys to the city in
bunches, by learning the latest dance steps, by preserv-
ing a reputation for keen enjoyment of life.

The Mayor of New York is the responsible head of a
corporation with a budget, for 1928, of $512,500,000.
It has thousands of employees, is engaged in innu-
merable activities and should pay dividends, in the form
of better government, to the 6,000,000 people who pay
taxes either directly or in the form of rent. Very few
of the nation's industrial leaders control annual ex-
penditures even remotely comparable to those of New
York City. Nearly all of them work feverishly in an
effort to reduce expenditures, increase dividends, and
devise more scientific operating methods. Were they
to spend their nights on Broadway or devote any ap-
preciable amount of their time to travel, they would, I
suspect, swiftly find themselves retired by irate boards
of directors.

Campaigning for the mayoralty in the fall of 1925,
Jimmy demonstrated that he was fully cognizant of
the dimensions of the position to which he aspired.
Many huge problems awaited solution, he said. Among
the most pressing he listed new subways, additional
schools, street traffic relief, rehabilitation of public hos-
pitals and proper disposal of garbage and sewage. He
criticized his predecessor, Mr. Hylan, for failing to
have attended to these crying needs. With the help
of his fellow citizens, he promised, he would do so. Not
only that, he declared in several addresses, but he would

42

A Mayor-at-Large

attempt a complete reorganization of the city govern-
ment. This was archaic, expensive and unscientific.
There were many unnecessary departments and these he
proposed to eliminate.

It is, of course, unfair to call any American candi-
date to account for promises made before taking office.
Ordinarily they are forgotten as soon as Election Day
has passed. And the wonder is, perhaps, not that
Jimmy has done as little as he has, but that he has done
as much. Despite his attacks of wanderlust and his
devotion to pleasure, he has been making definite prog-
ress with those projects which touch a side of him that
is deeply sentimental. He is profoundly stirred when
he thinks of the hardships of the poor and so, after visit-
ing a city psychopathic ward and finding it "unfit for
dogs", he forced an appropriation of $16,000,000 for
public hospitals. Similarly motivated, he insisted that
$1,000,000 be spent to improve Central Park and
evolved a plan, of dubious economic worth, whereby the
city is to assist in the construction of decent tenements.
But these matters, important as each may be in itself,
are mere trifles in contrast to problems regarding which
he seems to be completely lost. He is continuing to
build a subway, started by the Hylan administration,
without knowing how it is to be operated or financed.
He clings, for obvious political reasons, to the five-cent
fare, although it is hardly possible that this will be
sufficient to support any new subways. Schools are
being built, but thousands of children are still without
proper accommodations. Virtually nothing has been
done to relieve traffic congestion and nothing at all to

43

Big Frogs

clear up pollution of beaches caused by the dumping of
garbage at sea.

Jimmy was wary enough, even during his campaign,
to avoid predictions that he would reduce the cost of the
city government. In 1925 the annual budget was $440,-
000,000. During 1926, his first year, few increases
were permitted, but for 1927 the total was approxi-
mately $477,000,000. This year a record budget of
$512,500,000 will set another high record. New York
has grown, of course, and Jimmy is not to blame for
the added expense that this brings. But were he less
of an organization Tammany politician, and willing to
attend to the details of his work, he could probably
slash off several hundred thousand dollars. In almost
every city department there is a degree of waste. The
total of the salaries paid annually to political appointees
is appalling. These, however, are problems that require
detailed research into schedules of previous years and
prolonged investigations into the efficiency of depart-
ment heads. They are exactly the type of "headache"
that Jimmy avoids. Besides, he has no time for them.

It is still, although three years have elapsed, too early
to know whether he will effect any of his plans for re-
organization of the city departments. Soon after he was
inaugurated various earnest gentlemen came to his of-
fice with plans for civic betterment. They had ideas
concerning every branch of the government. Jimmy
listened with cordiality to all of their plans, pledged his
cooperation, and later, in a burst of inspiration, an-
nounced the formation of a huge advisory committee.
On this he placed nearly all of those who had made

44

A Mayor-at-Large

suggestions and a great many others in addition. He
asked them to study every angle of the problem and to
report to him in detail. He would then draft a pro-
gram.

As the third year of his term ends, the committee is
still studying. Now and then a member complains that
slight cooperation is being received from the City Hall.

Ill

Surely the gods have thus far smiled on this youth-
ful-appearing man who is so important an official of
New York. It is not to be wondered that he is a happy
spirit, for throughout his days he has been able to
achieve what he has desired. Had this been money in
great store, Jimmy Walker would, I think, have been
able to amass a fortune. But money, to him, is entirely
unimportant, a commodity made to be spent and utterly
useless in the bank. At a restaurant dinner he is the
first to reach for the check. He delights in the role
of impromptu host, particularly when he is on vacation,
and has been seen in Paris cafes inviting strangers to
partake of his hospitality. On his present salary of
$25,000 a year he is getting along fairly well. But I
doubt that he is saving a nickel. For years he was
invariably broke, and always had friends anxious to
lend him more money than he could possibly use.

Jimmy was born — one is startled to realize that it
was forty-seven years ago — in the political district
known as the Ninth Ward in Manhattan. The ward
boundaries have long been forgotten, but the district
included most of Greenwich Village, then a staid and

45

Big Frogs

respectable residential section of old houses with small
gardens at their doorways. The new immigration had
not reached its flood in the 'eighties, and the majority
of the residents were Irish-Catholics. Among them
was William H. Walker, an immigrant, for a time a
Tammany member of the State Assembly, a prosperous
lumber dealer by vocation and the father of a future
mayor. Jim Walker — it was not until he entered poli-
tics that he was called "Jimmy" — knew no hardships in
his boyhood. He went to private school, talked his way
out of fights with bulkier lads, and exhibited, at a tender
age, an inclination to remain out at night. He often
incurred parental wrath by stealing over to a vaudeville
house on Union Square and remaining, enthralled, as
the performance was repeated until midnight. He
shone as a debater at school and studied, if casually,
enough to qualify for law school. In 1912 he was ad-
mitted to the bar.

Many things, though, had occurred before he became
a lawyer. Influenced, probably, by the melodies he had
heard on Union Square, he began to write lyrics during
his twenties. One of these, that immortal waltz ballad
"Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?"
survived to be dinned in his ears constantly. He has
heard it, in the years of his greatness, played by orphan
asylum, military, police, street cleaning and fire depart-
ment bands. Only during the mayoralty primaries in
1925 did he betray regret that he had written it. In
an unguarded moment he remarked that it was not
much worse than most campaign songs. But would the

46

A Mayor-at-Large

voters love him in November as they were shouting that
they did before the balloting began?

A political career was inevitable for a youth of Jimmy
Walker's heredity and talents and in 1910 he was sent to
the lower house of the Legislature there to find, among
his Tammany colleagues, Alfred E. Smith, a veteran
of six sessions, and Robert F. Wagner, a serious-
minded young German from the Yorkville section on
the East Side of Manhattan. Before long the three
were known as the particular favorites of Boss Murphy
of Tammany, were denounced annually by the Better
Element and were annually reflected with increased
majorities. While Smith became, in 1918, Governor
of the state and Wagner went to the Supreme Court
and later to the United States Senate, Jimmy flourished
in the Legislature. He was promoted to the State Sen-
ate after five years and eventually became the leader
of his party. In that role he fought many of the battles
that added to the prestige of Al Smith.

The fifteen years that Jimmy spent in the legislature
left an indelible mark on his character. Although an
executive in name, he still is primarily a parliamen-
tarian. Conferences bore him and his schedule of ap-
pointments is in complete confusion before his day at
the City Hall has well started. It is only when he is
presiding at some meeting that he is really happy.
He can then play the role that he loved back in the
old days. People are present to laugh at his wise-
cracks, to applaud the celerity with which he keeps
things moving, to marvel at his ready answers to all
arguments offered by the side to which he is opposed.

47

Big Frogs

During his Albany years he had few real competitors
when a debate was in progress. His sarcasm was the
despair of his fellow members. And he never was dull.
When he was scheduled to speak the galleries were
crowded and applause was almost continuous as he
walked swiftly up and down the broad center aisle of
the Assembly chamber; a slim, excited figure with his
dark hair in disorder, dressed like a Broadway actor,
relishing the laughter that his sallies earned. Jimmy
often knew more about the bill under discussion than
any one else on the floor, particularly about those hidden
diableries that are the delight of the smart politician.
But he had, it was probable, barely glanced at the meas-
ure until a half hour before the debate began.

IV

One is tempted to the conclusion, in pondering the
Honorable Jimmy, that he thinks from the top of his
mind, that he is wholly surface. He is not unlike those
irritating youths, found on every college campus, who
rarely open their books and yet sail through their ex-
aminations with distinction. Inevitably, he is often
bluffing and once in a great while he is caught at it.
Late last fall he was presiding at a public hearing on
the budget. Taxpayers appeared to debate some of
the items and to protest against the manner in which
their money was being squandered. As at all such
meetings, Jimmy was in his element. He had a pleas-
ant joke for one appellant, a witty saying for another,
thinly veiled bunk for a third, and apparently righteous
indignation for a department head who sought a greatly

48

A Mayor-at-Large

increased appropriation. During a momentary lull in
the merriment an elderly lady asked that $3,400 be pro-
vided for a "dietitian to supervise the lunches for chil-
dren in the city schools".

"One dietitian for all of the hundreds of thousands
of school children?" asked His Honor in surprise, re-
flecting on the indigestion that had resulted from his
banquets abroad. "Why, I've visited twenty of the best
dietitians in town since I got back and they can't tell
me yet what I can eat. How can one dietitian examine
all those children? It's absurd."

The lady looked troubled and attempted to explain
what she meant. But Jimmy had no time for explana-
tions from others. He held forth on the subject for
several minutes and revealed that he had not the slight-
est notion of the duties of a dietitian.

It is just this sort of thing that causes apprehension
in the minds of Mayor Walker's friends. They are
aware that he leans heavily on his assistants (and on
the leaders of Tammany Hall) and often makes their
advice the sole basis for his decisions. Many of the
matters on which he is required to pass are extremely
complicated and the possibility always exists that he
will be misled. A mistake in the wording of some con-
tract might cost the city millions of dollars and further
discredit Tammany for years to come. It is an open
secret that Al Smith, whose influence brought him the
nomination, is irritated by Jimmy's long absences from
the City Hall and by his chronic inability to be on time
at any appointment. He is in disagreement, also, with
some of the Walker Administration's policies. Publicly,

49

Big Frogs

of course, Al and Jimmy are as cordially in harmony
as ever. The Governor remarks, when an opportunity
is offered, that Walker is the best mayor since the dawn
of time. Jimmy proclaims loudly that Smith is a
leader second only to Washington, Lincoln, and Charles
F. Murphy.

Several factors will, it is hoped, combine to save
Jimmy Walker from disaster. Despite his apparent
superficiality he has undoubted ability to master the
fundamentals of government. He knew, within a few
months after taking office, as much as the diligent
Hylan had been able to accumulate in years of grinding
toil. His most valuable protective gift is a cynicism
born of years in political life, a conviction that most of
those who journey to the City Hall, ostensibly in be-
half of worthy projects, are looking out for themselves.
Those cities of the Old World he has graced with his
visits picture him as the Sophisticated New Yorker
without equal. But even more than this he is the sophis-
ticated politician. There are few tricks in this ques-
tionable trade that he does not know, although there
are many that he refuses to practice. He is ever on
the alert, as long as it does not keep him too long at his
desk, for dirty work. And when, as in 1928, the dirty
work becomes known, he is tremendous in his wrath.

A large part of the city government is, moreover,
automatic in its operation. Most of Jimmy's appoint-
ments, in some cases under pressure from Al Smith,
have been somewhat above the average. He can safely
leave many details to his department heads. At all
events, Jimmy is not, himself, worried in the least about

50

A Mayor-at-Large

the future. He continues to arrive at his office at noon,
to leave it early in the day on the slightest provocation,
to be late for every appointment and every meeting.
Almost never, in fact, is he on time for anything. He
keeps scores of people waiting for hours, but escapes the
indignation he justly deserves to have heaped upon his
head.

"Late as usual," he grins cheerfully when he at last
arrives. And somehow stored-up anger dissolves in his
presence.

After eight years of Hylan, a gentleman with a
desperately serious nature, Jimmy Walker was at first
acceptable merely because he was so different. His
speeches were brief and to the point. Instead of view-
ing every caller at the City Hall with suspicion, as a
probable spy from Wall Street, he gave orders that all
were to be treated with courtesy. He installed at the
outer door of his office a police lieutenant whose man-
ners would do credit to a head waiter. It is not to be
wondered that he began his term with a degree of good
will that extended even to the Republican newspapers.
But that he still enjoys no small measure of this is a
political paradox.

For the Honorable Jimmy, skilled in the art of poli-
tics though he is, does nearly everything that he should
not do according to the established code. Sailing for
Europe last summer, he occupied a suite on the Beren-
garia identical to the one once graced by that excessively
well known celebrity, the Queen of Rumania. For days

51

Big Frogs

the newspapers had been filled with descriptions of his
wardrobe; how he was equipped with twenty-five dress
shirts, a galaxy of vests, a dozen suits, an assortment of
hats and innumerable canes. He admitted, to the ac-
companiment of some shuddering at Tammany Hall,
that he was taking along a valet. He let it be known
that he would be entertained by scores of important
persons abroad and rashly said that he hoped to drop
in on the King and Queen of England. Fortunately,
in view of the frenzy of indignation such a call might
have aroused in the breasts of Irish voters, their
Majesties were not in London at the time of his visit.
By all known precedents these elaborate details
should have brought protests from the proletariat. But
nothing of the sort happened. Just why no one minded
is a little difficult to explain. I suspect, however, that
for all his sartorial elegance, Jimmy never gives the im-
pression that his top hats are high hat. His clothes have
never lost their Broadway flavor. He wears spats, but
he does so as does Al Jolson rather than after the
manner of a Union League Club swell. He holds his
public, also, by his willingness to give forth exactly the
brand of sentimental bromides that he surveys with
cynical amusement when they come from others. At-
tending a mass-meeting of school children, he insisted
that their songs were "the sweetest I have ever heard".
Just before going abroad he addressed a gathering of
newsboys and said that he loved his city "more than any-
thing else in the world unless it be my country and my
God". He assured them that he sailed laden with the
responsibilities of "a public servant", and not a mere

52

A Mayor-at-Large

tourist as he had been on a voyage some years before.

"When I rode through a park on my previous trip,"
he said, "it was just a park, nothing more. Now it must
be a piece of ground full of trees and leaves that I will
compare minutely with Central Park."

Similarly, in Berlin, London, Paris, and most of the
other cities that he visited, he persuaded the American
correspondents to cable home long accounts of how
diligently he was studying transit, hospitalization, traf-
fic, and sewage disposal. An occasional newspaper
reader in this country must have deplored that this
industrious "public servant" had found it impossible to
take a vacation, after all, but had become involved in
civic problems wherever he had gone. Returning in
September, Jimmy revealed that he was "a better
mayor" because of his wanderings. Almost every mo-
ment not occupied with official receptions, he said, had
been devoted to urban puzzles.

On the whole, Jimmy's foreign excursion was highly
successful. The applause reached its highest point in
Paris, where he tore himself from his studies long
enough to visit the Montmartre nightly and where he
publicly denounced expatriate Americans who, after a
year of residence, acquire a foreign accent and look with
contempt on their native land. He presented a check
to Madame Nungesser and entranced those present by
joining in the Gallic outburst of weeping.

Having received an invitation to attend the American
Legion jollification, Jimmy had an official excuse for
visiting Paris. But his popularity with the veterans
caused, it is rumored, the one unpleasant feature of his

53

Big* Frogs

trip. It is said that the cheers with which he was greeted
when reviewing a parade proved frightfully irritating
to several underlings of the American embassy. These
gentlemen, acting on their own initiative, expressed
fears that demonstrations in behalf of a Tammany Hall
mayor might be distasteful to the officials at Washing-
ton to whom they owed their jobs. So they placed
Jimmy as far back in the reviewing stand as they dared.
Gossip regarding their resentment, when this scheme
did not work and he still stole the show, was all over
Paris before he sailed for home. It had been reported
for several days that he was to be initiated into the
Legion of Honor and when, mysteriously, this rather
commonplace ceremony did not take place, it was whis-
pered that the young men of the embassy were respon-
sible. Finally back in New York, Jimmy permitted
stories to circulate that he had been shadowed while
abroad. The inference drawn from these tales by his
friends was that the G.O.P. had hoped to catch him
drinking champagne in some Montmartre den, to broad-
cast that scandal, and to injure Al Smith's presidential
boom by revealing the true nature of his fellow Demo-
crat. This naive plan, if it existed at all outside of
Jimmy's imagination, produced exactly nothing.

It was in Berlin that he caused the most widespread
astonishment. The solid burghers of that city looked
with awe at his youth and interspersed their cries of
"hodi!" with ones of "kolossal!" as he rode down Unter
den Linden. Being Germans, they were used to well-
upholstered public officials, weighty men of great sub-
stance with flowing beards or, at the least, impressive

54

A Mayor-at-Large

mustaches. Jimmy seemed ridiculously immature. In
Germany, as everywhere else, the New York executive
remarked that each city he chanced to be in at the mo-
ment was the greatest he had seen. Berlin was "de-
lightful and the cleanest of cities". In Rome, he said
that Italy was "an earthly Paradise" and that he was
shaken by admiration for the "genius and nobility of
Mussolini". He found Venice "absolutely ideal".
Reaching Paris, he declared a little plaintively that
"here they know how to live and let live". And he
charmed the French to distraction by his reply when
he was asked how he managed to understand what they
were saying, as he seemed to do, although he knew no
French.

"It's not hard to understand the French people," he
said, "if you have an ear for music."

"He has," remarked Le Matin, following this gal-
lantry, "a most attractive personality. By the move-
ments of his body he interprets what is in his heart.
That is to say, he speaks with his eyes, his nose, his
arms and his whole chest."

The Mayor of New York indulged, of course, his
flair for wise-cracks. Adopting the idea, apparently,
that if it got a laugh at one function it would go well at
the next, he said a half a dozen times that "this meal is
the best I have yet drunk". Speaking to Americans,
he called them "fellow-refugees from the Eighteenth
Amendment". Baden-Baden, he suggested, was so
lovely a town that it should have been called "good and
gooder". Shown some ancient plate in a London mu-
seum, he said that one gold bowl would "be perfect if

55

Big Frogs

filled with cocktails". Nor could he, despite the frantic
efforts of his staff, be on time anywhere. Italy, France,
and even Germany took no notice of this delinquency.
It was Ireland, the land of his fathers, that expressed
irritation. One Belfast editor called him "New York's
slow-motion mayor". Another said that his song should
be "I'll Meet You in December if You Arrange for
May".

For the moment, his yearnings for travel satiated and
the subway tangle increasingly involved, Jimmy is in
town and is more or less occupied with the troubles of
the City Hall. During the year that remains of his
term these will grow in number and intensity. He de-
clared, from time to time, that he would not seek another
term, that he was through with public life. But when a
lower court announced a seven-cent fare, he said, like
Hylan, that he would not desert the people. He will,
after all, have very little to say about whether he runs
again or not. If Tammany Hall needs him to lead a
ticket, he will obey its command. The prospect that
alarms him most is the possibility of an order to run
for Governor. This might mean living in a somber
executive mansion one hundred and fifty miles from the
city he loves.

Meanwhile he adds in great measure to the hilarity of
the town. He makes New York, in yet another way,
unique among the cities on this planet. No other has
ever had a mayor even remotely like Jimmy, and prob-
ably would decline to have. He has youth, charm and
humor. He finds that life is pleasant only as long as
one does not analyze it too closely. Far from a sim-

56

A Mayor-at-Large

pering optimist, he attempts to find a bright side and
would "rather laugh than cry".

"I like the company of my fellow beings," he has said.
"I like the theater and I am devoted to sports."

And New York, laughing with him far oftener than
at him, continues to like Jimmy Walker. The citizens
of the metropolis are, apparently, entirely satisfied that
he dances, and are willing to pay the piper in the
annual budget.

ASK DR CABMAN

IN NEARLY EVERY CITY IN THE LAND, AS THE MOST

casual reading of its newspapers will demonstrate, there
is at least one clergyman who is a hustler and a publicist
in addition to being the shepherd of his flock. He is
well known to the local reporters, sends advance copies
of his sermons to the city editors, and makes himself
heard on the questions of the day. He belongs to im-
portant civic committees, attends the luncheons of the
principal service club, and assists the Chamber of Com-
merce in welcoming distinguished guests.

. In days that have passed, when the pace of life was
more gentle, the clergyman was a man who had drawn
apart from earthly things. He visited the poor and
comforted the sick and the dying. He grew a little
vague when confronted with such problems as a new
mortgage or a new roof for the vestry, and turned these
matters over to his deacons. The church was a house
of refuge, a place for contemplation, the sheltered abode
of the spiritual. In time, however, it became apparent
that a new age demanded new things. In the smaller
villages religion remained static, but in the cities the
clergy reached out for more up-to-date ways of spread-
ing their versions of the word of God. They built mag-
nificent new churches, sometimes with hotels or office
buildings above them, and raised funds by the go-getter

59

Big- Frogs

methods of Liberty Loan drives. They turned to the
press and the radio, because their audiences were
dwindling. They became authorities on petting parties,
crime, bootlegging and divorce. They hired the public
relations counsel.

An outstanding figure among the new-style ministers
is the Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, pastor of the Cen-
tral Congregational Church of Brooklyn and President
of the Federal Council of Churches in America. The
Rev. Dr. Cadman still believes, as he often makes clear,
that woman's place is in the home, that motherhood is
her only true calling, that birth control is sinful, that
prohibition is a great moral experiment certain to suc-
ceed if given half a chance, that children should be
spanked. But in spreading his gospel he uses media
born of modernism. He addresses countless millions
each Sunday by radio, and each day writes a syndicated
newspaper article similar in form, although not always
in content, to the Dorothy Dix forums on love. His
correspondence is comparable to that of a mail-order
house executive; and every morning, in his study, he
dictates for hours to his secretaries. He answers almost
any question, whether on religion, politics, business, mili-
tary affairs, literature, or domestic entanglements.
When bigger audiences are available through additional
miracles of science, Dr. Cadman will address them.
When more questions are asked, Dr. Cadman will an-
swer them. His name is known, from coast to coast, in
every household that reads newspapers or twirls the
knobs of a radio set. In many of them it is synonymous
with omniscience.

60

Ask Dr. Cadman

The catholicity of Dr. Cadman's knowledge is
equaled only by the size of his audiences. For the past
two years he has been presiding over a column published
in the New York Herald Tribune and syndicated to
eighty other newspapers throughout the country with a
total circulation of more than ten million readers a day.
Among the questions he has answered without hesita-
tion are: What is the soul? How can I keep my wife
from bobbing her hair? What are the evidences of high
civilization? What is your conception of hell? Who
was the foremost military genius in the British armies
in the World War? What is success?

Dr. Cadman rarely qualifies his answers, although he
frequently resorts to generalities; nor does he shrink
from prophecy and mystic interpretation.

"Is there any chance," asked one thirsty newspaper
reader, "that the Eighteenth Amendment will be re-
pealed?"

"Not the slightest," was the brisk and brief retort.

"Russia will remain a liability for another century at
least," he ruled on another occasion.

"Why," asked a troubled baseball fan, "did Walter
Johnson lose the last game of the World Series?"

"It is not part of God's plan," said Dr. Cadman,
"that one champion shall win all the time."

It will be a relief to many, considering the vastness
of this divine's influence, to know that he upholds the
rigid sanctity of marriage, just as he says "Emphati-
cally not", when asked whether he approves of birth
control. This was demonstrated when a reader of his
articles set forth that she and her husband were

61

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desperately unhappy together, but that under the laws
of New York State neither could obtain a divorce.
Was it "not a sacrilege for a couple to remain married
when they have no love for each other?"

"No cohabitation is a sacrilege," he replied, "as long
as it is sanctioned by Church and State and by the right
behavior of the parties cohabiting."

Once in a while, of course, he has to resort to nimble
footwork in answering questions that are highly de-
batable. A reader once wanted to know whether Dr.
Cadman would "sit down to a course dinner with Ne-
groes". Instead of turning to his Bible, he recalled the
luncheon given by a President of the United States to
Booker T. Washington.

"I would. Theodore Roosevelt did. What is good
enough for him is good enough for you."

II

Dr. Cadman demonstrates his mental agility most
vividly on Sunday afternoons, when he addresses his
"radio audience". For years prior to the invention of
broadcasting he had lectured to the Men's Conference
of the Bedford Avenue Branch of the Young Men's
Christian Association in Brooklyn. He had assisted
thousands of young men to solve their spiritual, tem-
poral, even their business problems. Four years ago
radio was called to the aid of religion, and now a net-
work of broadcasting stations carries Dr. Cadman's
pleasantly sonorous voice to at least half the nation's
population. Radio enthusiasts as far west as Iowa, in
most of the cities of eastern Canada, along the greater

62

Ask Dr. Cadman

portion of the Atlantic seaboard, and as far in the in-
land South as Kentucky can hear him if they choose.
It has been estimated that from five million to seven mil-
lion actually tune in each Sunday. This figure is, of
course, merely guesswork; there is no way of knowing
how many of those who own radio sets decline to worship
at the feet of this twentieth-century oracle. That the in-
visible congregation is very large is demonstrated,
though, by the letters that Dr. Cadman and the
Y.M.C.A. receive. Sometimes there are as many as
two thousand in a single week. They come from villages
and cities, and even from sailors who have listened in
while at sea. Most of them are from comparatively poor
people, for it is well known that the wicked upper classes
play golf on Sunday. The late Judge Elbert H. Gary,
of the United States Steel Corporation, was, however,
an enthusiastic Cadman fan, I am told.

Any one who has listened to the broadcasting of Dr.
Cadman's Y.M.C.A. forum is necessarily somewhat
awed by the celerity with which he answers the questions
put to him at the end of his half -hour sermon. It seems
obvious that they must have been shown to hirn in ad-
vance, and that he has been able to scurry to an encyclo-
pedia and a Biblical concordance. Although he at-
tempts to limit his Sunday questions, these days, to
spiritual matters, it is not always considered wise for
him to do so. Consequently, the range is very wide and
within recent months has included: What will be the
nature of the resurrected body? What should an alien
do when he arrives in this country? Why is America so

63

Big- Frogs

unpopular abroad? Who is more thrifty, the Hebrew
or the Scotchman?

The truth is, inquiry develops, that the chief attrac-
tion of Dr. Cadman's performance is his ability to an-
swer questions with, as the Y.M.C.A. program puts
it, "Gatling-gun rapidity". Only when a matter of
policy is involved does he see the puzzlers ahead of time.
A committee goes over the hundreds received and, after
picking out those that are too silly (there are few of
them) or that have been answered before, places several
in front of him.

"How," asked one astonished worshiper after a serv-
ice, "are you able to answer all these questions so swiftly
and so surely?"

"Habit, I suppose," replied Dr. Cadman.

His friends have pointed out that he has rare ability
"to think on his feet" and that he has unusual confidence
in himself. He does not, in other words, face the micro-
phone with any apprehension that he will be given a
question beyond his range of knowledge.

Ill

Plump, elderly, with gray hair and with eyes that
look out with complacency from behind his glasses, the
Rev. Dr. Cadman might serve as a pattern for the well-
fed, prosperous, authoritative, and successful city
clergyman. Here is a man very certain of salvation,
very certain of his creeds, very sure of his scholarship,
very confident that he speaks with official sanction. It
is wholly fantastic, as he stands on the platform of the
Y.M.C.A. auditorium, that his voice is being wafted

Ask Dr. Cadman

on ether waves to millions and that other millions turn
daily to their newspapers for his counsel. For Dr.
Cadman is no Aimee Semple McPherson, and certainly
no Billy Sunday. A believer in personal evangelism,
he is not a go-getting evangelist. Nor is he a really
great pulpit orator. Like all ministers, he is, naturally,
something of an actor. He knows the value of phrasing,
of climax, of emotional appeal. He permits his voice to
rise and fall and to crash in crescendo, but he is always
dignified and always a little restrained ; and only rarely
does an "Amen" break from the lips of that fraction
of his congregation which attends his services in person,
and not through vacuum tubes and B batteries.

Dr. Cadman looks back on life and finds it excellent.
Few, no doubt, have better right, for he rose from pov-
erty to an eminence where he is certainly the most
widely heard, and probably the best paid, Congrega-
tional minister on earth. He was born in Shropshire,
England, in 1864, the son of a Methodist minister. As
a boy he sometimes worked in a neighborhood coal mine,
and learned thereby the worth of honest toil. He was
early destined to the ministry, and in 1889 was gradu-
ated from London University. In 1890 he came to
America, the opportunities for religious advancement
in this new land being comparable to those in commer-
cial lines, and he was, almost from the day that he
landed, marked by his Methodist bishop as a coming
man. His first flock was in Millbrook, New York, and
after that he was, for a brief time, detailed to Yonkers,
New York. But the Church does not permit its par-
ticularly talented to waste themselves on rural folk, so

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Big- Frogs

in 1895 he was told to reorganize a number of dwin-
dling parishes in downtown Manhattan. Within six
years he had added 1,600 members to their congrega-
tions.

In 1901 Dr. Cadman was called to the Central Con-
gregational Church in Brooklyn, and accepted the sum-
mons, although a Methodist. During the years that
have passed he has rejected many offers, among them
the presidency of that stronghold of Methodism, Wes-
leyan University. A few years ago a London church
asked for his services, also without result. His friends
pointed out that he had become a citizen of the United
States as soon as the law had made it possible, and that
he would not return, except as a friendly visitor, to the
land of his nativity. Now, along with the late Henry
Ward Beecher and the Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, he
ranks as one of the really inspired preachers which
Brooklyn seems to produce more easily than any other
part of New York City. His flock showed its apprecia-
tion in 1923 by raising his pay to $12,000 a year, and
in 1926 by giving him a purse of $25,000 — $1,000 for
every year of service.

During the first years of his career Dr. Cadman won
a reputation for advanced thought, and even in 1901,
when he went to Brooklyn, had been widely quoted as a
believer in the abolition of creeds. In a hundred years,
he has said, "there'll be no denominations and there'll
be more Christianity". As a young minister, too, there
were traces of pacifism in his make-up ; in 1896 he said
that to make war with Spain over Cuba would be crim-
inal. In 1908 he criticized Theodore Roosevelt for

66

Ask Dr. Cadman

wanting a large Army and Navy. But with the out-
break of hostilities in Europe he began, together with
most of his brothers of the cloth, to see that God was on
the side of the Allies and to change his views regarding
militarism. To learn what war was actually like he
became chaplain of the Twenty-third Regiment of the
New York National Guard, and lost fifteen pounds
serving on the Mexican border. Regarding war, he
said, at about that time :

"It is not the worst of evils. The gilded youth of
Broadway is typical of a much greater evil. This war
is purging the nations. They will be better for it. It
is sweeping away the trivial and frivolous and revealing
the deep and serious".

Returning from Texas, Chaplain Cadman remarked
that universal military training was "splendid". At one
of his Y. M. C. A. conferences he was asked what should
be done pending possible war with the Kaiser, whose
acts he had already described as those of "a devil in-
carnate".

"Prepare! Prepare! Prepare!" he boomed.

So great was his fervor that he even forgot his friend-
liness toward other creeds and his dreams of a universal
Church. The Lutheran Church in Germany, he ex-
plained, was not "the Bride of Christ", but "the para-
mour of Kaiserism". After America had entered the
struggle he blessed its cause as "that of Christ". Then
he added :

"If religion means to us what it did to Christ, that is,
a cross of blood, then the soldiers and sailors are the

67

Big- Frogs

most religious men we have among us. Shed blood has
always brought man nearest to God. 'Greater love
has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his
country.' '

A millionaire friend, Dr. Cadman went on, had ex-
pressed doubt about the wisdom of the war. Asked what
he would do if he found a "burglar attacking his wife",
the pacifist had replied that he "would try to stop him
without hurting him".

"What," demanded the pastor, "can you do with a
God-forsaken ass like that?"

IV

The doctor recovered his balance in time. By 1926
he was opposing military service in the schools, and
was in that year barred from the Commencement exer-
cises of the patriotic New York Military Academy at
Cornwall after he had been asked to make an address.
So angry did the die-hard militarists become at their
former brother-in-arms that one Sunday afternoon they
stormed his Y. M. C. A. forum and hissed until the
police reserves ejected them. Dr. Cadman's shifting
views on militarism have, in fact, constituted one of the
few inconsistencies in his career as a publicist.

He belongs to that ever-increasing group of clergy-
men, in New York and elsewhere, who know the sweet
uses of publicity, who never say "No" to a reporter, who
are always willing to be quoted on the question of the
day. Dr. Cadman has, at one time or another, been
interviewed on the League of Nations, the greatness of

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Ask Dr. Cadman

President Coolidge, the potentially equal greatness of
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the adoption of Mary Spas by
the once prominent Edward W. Browning, and the ex-
perimental murder of Leopold and Loeb. He was
among the patriots who rushed to the defense of George
Washington when Rupert Hughes published the first
of his volumes on the Father of his Country. In this
case Dr. Cadman evolved a somewhat novel method of
literary criticism, saying:

"Above all, Washington was sane, sober, and self-
controlled. One look at his face and then at that of
Mr. Hughes should convince any one that the pup
looked at the King — and not like him."

Within recent months Dr. Cadman has been given an-
other opportunity for service. He has become Chair-
man of the "Religious Book of the Month Club", an
organization which guarantees to provide its members
with a truly godly book each month. It did not make
the mistake of endorsing Mr. Paxton Hibben's biog-
raphy of Beecher.

Dr. Cadman prides himself on his standing as a
"liberal-conservative", but there are some things that
he cannot accept. One was "Elmer Gantry". Another
is what he conceives to be the philosophy of H. L.
Mencken and "his ghoulish crew". He feels that college
students are in grave peril from exposure to Mr.
Mencken's prejudices. The conservative side of his na-
ture was emphasized also, when some one asked him
about the modern girl with her improper clothing,

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dubious morals, and other peculiarities. He felt that
reports of her sins had been exaggerated, but confessed
a preference for the girl of the Victorian era:

"She knew the advantages of a retiring modesty.
Far from wasting her sweetness on the desert air, she
inspired the desire to cherish and protect in the hearts
of many admirers, and in time became an excellent
mother of excellent children.

"After all is said and done, there is no business in the
world half so fine as running a home. . . . Women in
business are all right, but don't let them forget, in the
rush and whirl of commerce, that their chief function is
to bear and raise children who will prove a credit to their
wise and loving discipline".

It may appear, from all this, that Dr. Cadman falls
short in spirituality. But this, I am sure, is more ap-
parent than real, and he makes up for it, at all events,
in quantities of horse sense. When the accounts are
balanced, he will, beyond question, receive as much
credit for his tremendous energy and industry as any
cleric in history. For he is, I think, a symptom of an
age in which men turn from mysticism and demand in-
formation. They ask a "yes or no" form of answer to
their questions of the soul and the hereafter, and they
insist that the ecclesiastical witness must answer
promptly and with conviction or be held in general
contempt.

A collection of Dr. Cadman's lectures published in
1924 made it clear that he is often troubled by thoughts
that men are denying their God and that religion be-

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Ask Dr. Cadman

comes less vital as the years pass. He is a conspicuous
example of the minister who applies worldly inventions
to the purposes of the Church, but I should do him a
grave injustice were I to give the impression that he
believes, as do some among the newer clergy, that Ro-
tary, and service, and the radio can take the place of
worship in houses dedicated to God. He declines to
speak over the radio at an hour when services are being
held. He insists that church-going is essential to real
religion.

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A GRAND - STAND JUDGE

THE BATTLE OF KENESAW MOUNTAIN, ACCORDING TO

Rhodes' history of the Civil War period, is generally
considered by military experts to have been the one
blunder in the drive of General Sherman from Chatta-
nooga to Atlanta. The engagement took place on the
morning of June 27, 1864, and was a foolhardy and
futile attempt to storm the mountain where the strongly
entrenched Confederate forces were blocking the march
through Georgia. Sherman was thrown back, lost
three thousand men, and later explained that it had been
a "moral victory". Eventually, of course, Kenesaw
Mountain was taken by a flank movement and the
Union commander continued on through Atlanta and to
the sea.

The unfortunate battle of June twenty- seventh has
been but lightly touched upon by many Northern his-
torians. It might actually by now be entirely forgotten
had not one of the participants been Dr. Abraham H.
Landis, an assistant surgeon in the Thirty-fifth Ohio
Volunteer Infantry. Doctor Landis, while performing
an amputation on the battlefield, was struck by a
twelve-pound cannon ball, luckily almost spent. About
two years later he limped out of a hospital and went to
his home at Millville, Ohio. There, in due time, he
became the father of a son — his sixth child, but entitled

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to distinction for being the first since the War. After a
heated family debate the soldier-surgeon named him
Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Thus was the blunder of
General Sherman immortalized.

It is inconceivable — artistically, at least — that an in-
fant christened to commemorate a battle should become
anything but a singular, even fantastic, figure in Ameri-
can life. And it is one of the rare perfections of reality
that now, after sixty years, the face of Kenesaw Moun-
tain Landis is almost as familiar to the public as that of
Charlie Chaplin. Its angular contours, topped by a
shock of hair as white as the locks of David Belasco,
are seldom absent for long from the rotogravure sec-
tions or the tabloids. For the last eight years Judge
Landis has been High Commissioner of Baseball with
autocratic powers over recalcitrant ball teams, managers,
and players. He hands down decisions upon such mat-
ters as the ethics of the spitball, barnstorming trips by
Babe Ruth, and the degree to which umpires are in peril
if soda pop is sold to the sporting public in glass bottles.

Landis first put on the black robes of judicial office
when, in 1905, he was appointed to the bench of the
United States District Court at Chicago. Two years
later he gained national and even international fame by
fining the Standard Oil Company of Indiana $29,240,-
000 for accepting freight rebates. In all the seventeen
years he was on the bench, although a few carping
critics say he waited eagerly for the opportunity, Landis
was never able to duplicate this magnificent judicial de-
cision. It landed him on the front pages for days and
formed a background for everything he was destined to

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A Grand-Stand Judge

do or say. Eventually, the higher courts found that he
had made a number of reversible errors, and the Stand-
ard Oil never paid a nickel for its sins.

The courts were destined, from that time on, to re-
verse him with startling frequency; so much so that he
once struck back at the Circuit Court of Appeals for
the Northern District of Illinois by calling it the "De-
partment of Chemistry and Microscopy". But now
those unhappy days are over. As Czar of Baseball at
$65,000 a year, his word is final. Ball players shift
their chewing tobacco nervously when Judge Landis
casts his piercing eye in their direction. There is no ap-
peal from what he says, and he can fine them any sum
they happen to have, suspend them indefinitely from
the joys and profits of the diamond, or hurl them into
the oblivion of working for a living.

During the years of his judgeship in Chicago Landis
became a symbol to the general public for all that was
good and noble, honest and wise. It did not matter
that his decisions were so often reversed; somehow the
reversals were seldom given prominence in the news-
papers. Few residents of the city that sprawls by Lake
Michigan listened to grumbling by a few members of
the Bar that Landis was not learned in the law, that he
wasted time in court, often treated them with scant re-
spect, and invariably played to the gallery. He grew
gradually to be an object of local civic pride — like the
stockyards. Visitors to the city were taken to see him
in action on the bench, and rarely missed a performance
long to be remembered. Somehow, when Landis turned
the crank, the mill of justice never failed to produce

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some dazed unfortunate who had stolen a few postage
stamps, a wealthy bootlegger, or a bankrupt whose wife,
seated in the courtroom, was covered with jewelry. It
was then that he blandly ignored the law in the interest
of what he conceived to be justice. The postal thief
quite likely would be set free or fined one cent. The
bootlegger — for Landis was an ardent prohibitionist —
went summarily to jail for the maximum term. The
bankrupt's wife was stripped of her baubles in court in
behalf of her husband's creditors.

"My, my! Such a very hard case for me to decide,"
the Judge drawled one morning as a youth, charged
with having stolen a parcel-post package, stood in front
of him. Near the boy was a young woman carrying an
infant.

"Here's a boy who admits stealing a package of
jewelry out of the parcel post," the Court continued.
"And here," looking at the young woman, "here's his
little wife, just recently a mother and heartsick over
the troubles of her husband! What is the right thing
for me to do?"

Judge Landis leaned half over the bench and rested
his white head on his hands in meditation. Profound
silence held the courtroom, broken only by the ticking
of a clock on the wall, an ancient timepiece brought
from the Judge's boyhood home. The reporters waited
expectantly; it was a typical Landis opportunity.
Some minutes passed. Then the Judge straightened up
and stuck out his jaw,

"Son!" he said. "You go on back home. Take your
little wife and your baby and go home! In one month

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A Grand -Stand Judge

come back and tell me how you're getting along. I'll
not have that child the child of a convict!"

It was while feminine visitors were drying their eyes
after some such touching scene that Landis would re-
lieve the tension with what he considered humor. Un-
fortunately, the judicial sense of humor was hardly
subtle. When a prisoner had been sentenced to jail and
was in the hands of a burly marshal, the Judge would
order that official to "take him up to Mabel's room" —
meaning the detention pen. He liked to sentence minor
offenders to "sit in the back row of the courtroom for
six hours and repent". He delighted in the exchange of
heavy-handed jokes with attendants, attorneys, and re-
porters.

It was partly in love of practical joking, but also
partly a hang-over from his furious war patriotism, that
prompted Landis on many occasions to make inquiry
regarding the war records of those appearing before
him. In 1919, on one of these quests for truth, he de-
manded the military histories of several attorneys who
happened to be wearing wrist watches. These, it was
his belief, should be reserved for men in uniform or ex-
soldiers. The offending lawyers, upon being cross-
examined, admitted that they had served their country
from behind the lines.

Judge Landis looked stern. "Enter an order," he
told the clerk, "requiring all attorneys wearing wrist
watches to notify you what branch of the service they
represent."

The newspaper men present grinned at the discon-
certed legal lights and dashed out to their typewriters.

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But the Judge's quip, published all over the country,
fell somewhat flat. A United States Senator even arose
from his seat at the Capitol to denounce it as "a clumsy
joke".

"Don't it beat the devil," mused Landis when he
heard of the rebuke, "what some Senators will do to
pass the time?"

As Booth could dominate a stage, so Landis for years
dominated the stuffy courtroom in Chicago. For foot-
lights, he had the desk lamp on his bench, so placed that
when he thrust forward his shaggy head the sharp
angles of his face were cut in silhouette against the
gleam. Men stopped to listen when his drawling, back-
country voice broke in to question a witness, when he
assumed the role — as fancy moved him — of prosecutor
or defense counsel or technical expert. Sometimes he
would lunge far out, shaking a gaunt finger and twist-
ing his face into a fearful contortion. It was thus that
he interrogated some evasive unfortunate whom he sus-
pected of perjury and reduced the man to a nervous
wreck.

When Landis presided as Judge of the Federal
Court he was the star of his show. His name appeared
in larger type than that of any other performer. A
curtain seemed slowly to rise as court was convened.
The district attorney, the expensive lawyer, and the
prisoner at the bar all stepped hastily into the wings,
for the star wished to tread the boards alone. An ex-
cellent actor of the old school, Judge Landis had one
vast advantage over all other actors — every performance
was for him a first night. The critics were always in

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A Grand-Stand Judge

their seats at the press table. Greatest blessing of all,
delirious dream of the dramatic profession, they were
invariably friendly critics, for otherwise they faced jail
for contempt of court.

"His career," wrote Heywood Broun profoundly of
Landis some years ago, "typifies the heights to which
dramatic talent may carry a man in America if only he
has the foresight not to go on the stage."

II

Except for the shrewd wisdom assuring his subcon-
scious of the publicity value of the histrionic, Kenesaw
Mountain Landis has lived by emotion rather than rea-
son in almost everything he has done. The distinction
is important, for by any rule of reason his life has been
a confused tangle of notions, prejudices, enthusiasms,
and contradictions. In his early years he was a Demo-
crat, because by being so he could serve a politician who
had been his father's commanding officer in the Civil
War. Having later joined the machine Republicans
of Illinois, he eventually shifted his allegiance to the
Bull Moose rebels — not because he was much of a Pro-
gressive, but because Roosevelt's furious protestations
appealed to him. Emotion — a factor not recognized in
law and therefore a leading cause of his frequent re-
versals by the higher courts — sat with him on the bench
in Chicago.

After a decade or so, it would seem, the emotional
outlook had become a habit beyond control. On the
bench, for instance, Landis' salary was only $7,500 a
year and, in common with the rest of the honest federal

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judges, he had constantly been worried by financial
problems. It is no secret that the offer in 1920 of
$50,000 from organized baseball was alluring chiefly
from a pecuniary point of view. If it had not been
for the salary attached to the position of Supreme Um-
pire it is almost certain that he would have declined
the job. In accepting it, however, he said little about
this feature but rejoiced publicly that through his act
the small boys of the nation would be able to keep stead-
fast their faith in the great national game.

While considering the proposition, he later explained,
he attended a ball game with his son, Reed G. Landis.
Together father and son grew sentimental. Reed
pleaded with his father to accept so that "the old game"
might not be taken away from "the millions of little
kids made happy by baseball".

"I had been thinking about the game in that light for
forty years," concluded the Judge, "and I expect to
think of it in that light forty years more. The money
means little when the spirit of the game is thought of."

Ill

Born on November 20, 1866, the boy named Kene-
saw Mountain grew up according to the approved pat-
tern for youths destined to greatness in America. His
father, again a country doctor after the glories of war,
was having difficulty collecting enough bills to feed and
educate his large family. "Kennie" attended the public
schools of Logansport, Indiana, where his family had
moved soon after he was born. Before school he de-
livered papers and after hours did odd jobs. In the

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A Grand-Stand Judge

summer he worked on nearby farms. For a time he
was a reporter for the local newspaper and first came
into contact with the legal process when he mastered
the mysteries of shorthand and qualified as a court
stenographer. The trade of lawyer appealed to him
and in 1891 he was graduated from the Union College
Law School of Chicago.

It was in those years that the United States was be-
ginning to feel its oats as a world power. It was anxious
to convince the rest of creation that it was no longer a
frontier country, with Indians ready to swoop down on
Manhattan from Yonkers, but almost civilized. It
failed to appreciate Rudyard Kipling's fascinated en-
thusiasm for the new nation, as later expressed in his
"American Notes", because the English visitor had pre-
sumed to hold his breath and pray fervently when cross-
ing some of the rickety railroad trestles in the West.
The United States, then, was slightly arrogant toward
its South American neighbors and was expressing its
ego in a highly developed jingo streak. The youthful
Landis lived in the official midst of all this, serving as
personal aide to Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham
in the second administration of Grover Cleveland.
Gresham had been Colonel of the regiment in which
Landis pere had fought and bled.

The Department of State, the young aide found, took
itself very seriously. Its underlings referred to it as
the "Foreign Office", wore cutaways when there was the
slightest excuse, and talked down their noses to the
clerks of the Post Office, the Army, and the Navy
bureaucracies. Fresh from the Middle West, Landis

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typified an entirely opposite school of American thought
— that which professed to believe that virtue lay in being
poorly dressed, in near illiteracy, and honest poverty.
He was given considerable authority by Secretary
Gresham, and proceeded to make life miserable for the
exquisites of the "Foreign Office" by shuffling around
in baggy trousers and an ancient hat. He was a plain
man whose very lack of ostentation was ostentatious.
Sometime afterwards it was said of him that, "he tried
to treat a rich man with all the respect that he did a
poor one". The period marked the budding of the actor
that Landis was destined to become, but he was not
yet skilled in the art and he overplayed the role. He
even uttered homely bromides about the benefits of
hard work.

"Necessity," he is said to have been fond of declaring,
"is a great teacher."

A year or so later President Cleveland offered him
the post of Minister to Venezuela; but Landis had no
intention of playing to so obscure and distant an audi-
ence. He went back to Chicago and resumed the prac-
tice of law with moderate success. Meanwhile a young
veteran of the Spanish-American war, Colonel Theo-
dore Roosevelt, had been making a name for himself by
a liberalism that was little short of startling. Landis
was building up his practice when Roosevelt, supposed
to have been safely shelved in the Vice-Presidency, be-
came President through the assassination of McKinley.
The Chicago lawyer was soon a devoted follower of the
man who had a gift for the dramatic greater even than
his own. Soon after taking office, it is related, Presi-

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A Grand-Stand Judge

dent Roosevelt went to Chicago and was accorded the
usual enthusiastic reception in the streets. As the presi-
dential carriage rolled down Michigan Avenue, the story
goes on, a young man, whose hair was already beginning
to whiten, rushed out from the crowd and waved an
American flag in front of the Chief Executive. In
1905 this demonstrative spectator was appointed by the
President to the federal bench in Chicago.

No one suggests, of course, that there is any connec-
tion between the two incidents. Landis was elevated to
the office in the routine way, through the indorsement of
the Illinois Republican organization. Certainly Roose-
velt, when he signed the appointment, did not recall the
excited pedestrian who had jumped up and down with
a flag in the streets of Chicago. It was not long, how-
ever, before Judge Landis brought himself very forcibly
to the attention of the White House. In April of 1907,
acting under orders from Roosevelt, the Attorney Gen-
eral brought action against the Standard Oil Company
of Indiana for accepting rebates from the Chicago and
Alton Railway. The case was called for trial in the
United States District Court in Chicago, and Landis,
only forty-one years old and one of the youngest judges
on the bench, presided. In a few days the New York
newspapers were rushing their staff men to cover the
sessions, for the Court had demanded the appearance of
John D. Rockefeller and other notable oil men. The
Rockefeller attorneys protested in vain that their
client had no knowledge of the affairs of the Indiana
company. In due time Rockefeller went on the stand,
and the Government made every effort to prove that

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the company on trial was controlled in New York.

In August the jury found for conviction. Judge
Landis took several days to deliberate on the size of the
fine to be imposed and then staggered the financial
world by announcing, while the crowds in the courtroom
applauded, the sum of $29,240,000. It was the largest
fine in history. The next day, known throughout the
country, Landis was hailed as the judge without fear.
The New York World called his decision "a great event
in American political and financial history". He was
stopped in the streets of Chicago to be congratulated
and was praised as Roosevelt's greatest ally in the "Big
Stick" campaign against the trusts. All this delighted
him, but he expressed indignation when it was suggested
that he run for President.

"To think that I would accept political preferment as
a reward for what I have done on the bench," he said,
"is to impeach my integrity as a judge and my honor

as a man."

In July of 1908 the Circuit Court of Appeals, in a
decision which took Landis severely to task, revoked
the $29,240,000 penalty and ordered a new trial for
the Standard Oil. It was never held. The nation had
been rocked by the panic of the fall of 1907, and Roose-
velt was soon to go out of office.

IV

During the decade that followed Judge Landis was
comparatively quiet. His hair grew snow-white and his
reputation for wisdom increased accordingly. The
Standard Oil fine was still remembered, but for the most

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part his flourishes in the courtroom were chiefly of
local interest, and the press associations mentioned him
less and less. With the entrance of the United States
into the World War in 1917 he again flashed into na-
tional prominence, however. He began to typify a
country mad with patriotism, and once again his reason-
ing powers were submerged by waves of emotion. Few
men have been as zealous in the suppression of minori-
ties, and his charges to juries were dangerously similar
to patriotic addresses.

But in time of war almost anything is possible, and
this fire-eater was permitted to sit in judgment upon
men charged with disloyalty and conspiracy against the
Government. Even if Judge Landis had been the es-
sence of keen, cold intellect instead of a bundle of emo-
tions, it is doubtful whether he could have been im-
partial. For one thing, his cherished son was flying with
the A. E. F. in France, and he lived in constant dread
of a telegram announcing that the boy had been killed.

The first wartime defendants to be tried before him
were several score of stupid and confused members of
the I. W. W. forces, gathered in by energetic agents of
the Department of Justice. Even Landis felt sorry for
some of them, admitted them to bail, and did what he
could to make their lot easier. He felt that, at the worst,
they were ineffectual and rather absurd. But he did not
protest, in the name of justice, when a brass band that
was whooping up the citizenry for the Liberty Loan
blared unceasingly under the rotunda of the Post Office
Building where his courtroom was located. Sometimes
the patriotic music was so loud that witnesses could

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scarcely be heard. The chances of men on trial for sedi-
tion were slim indeed under such conditions. And upon
the inevitable verdicts of guilty, Judge Landis sent the
bewildered defendants to Leavenworth Prison for maxi-
mum terms. If he had a measure of contemptuous sym-
pathy for the Wobblies, he hated and even feared the
Socialists, more intelligent and, therefore, dangerous.
When Congressman Victor L. Berger and four other
leaders of the National Socialist party were so unfortu-
nate as to be tried before him on similar charges, Judge
Landis found it difficult to maintain even a wartime
semblance of justice in the proceedings. After these
defendants, too, had been convicted he imposed ten-to
twenty-year terms in prison — again the largest penal-
ties possible under the law.

"It was my great disappointment," he said in an ad-
dress before the American Legion some months after-
ward, "to give Berger only twenty years in Leaven-
worth. I believe the law should have enabled me to
have had Berger lined up against a wall and shot."

Most of the I. W. W. defendants and all of the five
Socialists were later liberated by the higher courts. In
the latter trial Landis was specifically held to have been
prejudiced against the accused men.

It should, perhaps, be said in his behalf that he was
no worse than the majority of his fellow citizens and
certainly not the only jurist in the United States who
did his bit from the bench to help the boys in France.
The people of Chicago approved heartily of his conduct,
and by Armistice Day he had become a sort of Windy
City Solomon. A kindly man, except when torn by

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patriotism, he could not refuse to listen in chambers to
the private quarrels of citizens who came to him. And
it is to his credit that by doing so he prevented many a
long and expensive lawsuit. These activities as arbiter
were, incidentally, excellent preparation for the work
he was destined shortly to do in saving from destruction
the game of baseball.

Judge Landis had first come into contact with base-
ball officially when the independent Federal League
sought in 1916 to bring action under the Sherman anti-
trust law against the existing big leagues. Landis heard
the case and dismissed the action, remarking in his
opinion that the "Court's expert knowledge of baseball,
obtained by more than thirty years of observation of
the game," convinced him that the suit would have been
"if not destructive, at least vitally injurious to the
game".

Landis' claim that he had long been a student of base-
ball was no mere boast. For years, aside from fishing,
it had been his favorite hobby. He had often been
photographed attending crucial games. In 1920 the
faith of the nation in the game was shattered when it
developed that the World Series of the year before had
been a fraud and that a half dozen players had been led
astray by the gambling interests. There had been
rumors, before, that all was not well, but this was the
first irrefutable proof of dishonesty. The outcry was
agonized and long. Editorial writers took cognizance
of the gravity of the situation. Sporting writers
throughout the country demanded that something be
done.

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Eventually even the baseball magnates were dis-
turbed, since it seemed as though the gate receipts might
fall off. Finally some one suggested that a Czar of
Baseball, with complete control over every department
of the industry, be appointed. William Howard Taft
was nominated and then "Big Bill" Edwards, famous as
a Princeton sportsman. But the baseball owners re-
acted most favorably to the name of Kenesaw Mountain
Landis. They had come into contact with him during
the Federal League litigation. They recalled the
Standard Oil fine and his talent for publicity. They
knew of his great reputation for wisdom and honesty.
So they offered him the job at $50,000 a year, promised
to do without question whatever he ordered, and told
him to reestablish the game.

It is an open secret that they wished him to remain
on the bench, knowing Federal Judge Landis to be
more impressive than Landis, former Judge. For two
years he held both jobs, despite a flood of criticism from
Congress, the press, and the American Bar Association.
Then, after even impeachment had been discussed, he
resigned from the bench with the explanation that he
had not the time for his numerous duties.

In his private life Judge Landis has many of the
characteristics of the small-town squire. As a judge
he loved to be recognized in the street and congratulated
for some decision. He still likes to be called upon to
attend banquets, sit at the speakers' tables and make an
address. He has recently taken up golf, another outlet

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A Grand-Stand Judge

for profanity — in which art he is said to be more pro-
fuse than original.

Judge Landis makes no secret of his eccentricities, nor
does he object to being photographed in weird poses,
such as eating "hot dogs" in the grand stand or yelping
for home runs. He has always been enough of a pub-
licist to know that a good story about him is worth
columns of dignified editorial praise. One of the stories
he enjoys telling upon himself, which may prove that
the incident never happened, concerns a slippery night
when he was bound for the opera with Mrs. Landis.
The pavements outside of the opera house were very
treacherous and the Judge was exceedingly apprehen-
sive that his wife might fall. Just as she got out of the
cab he warned her, but a second too late. He lunged
for her arm and with difficulty held her up.

"Look out, darling!" he burst out in exasperation.
"You'll break your goddam neck!"

He thoroughly relished his job as judge of the federal
court; more, probably, than he does his present more
lucrative one. Now he presides over meetings that are
customarily held behind doors. Then he ruled in the
open and gloried in the bowing and scraping of those
summoned to his courtroom. He liked to strut through
the corridors in his robes of office, to march into the
dingy restaurant and have the waitress scream: "Swiss
on rye and milk the cow for the government!" while all
the other lunchers stopped eating to watch.

When, in 1922, he resigned from the bench, his last
day in court provided an outlet for a sentimental orgy
unparalleled in the annals of the judiciary or the stage.

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He almost wept as the spectators stood for the last time
while he pulled his gown about him and court was ad-
journed at the end of the day. Back in his chambers,
he held a reception. Old attendants, clerks and stenog-
raphers who had served him for seventeen years came
in to tell him what a great man he was. The newspaper
men detailed to the courthouse called in a body and
handed him a testimonial done on parchment. Most of
them suspected that he was nine-tenths hokum. Many,
having first seen him as cub reporters, had learned from
him their first lesson in disillusionment. But all were
fond of him and wished him well now that he was to de-
vote all of his time to baseball. Judge Landis looked at
them and then around his chambers. Workmen were
carting out his personal possessions, among them the
propellers of his son's wartime airplane. It was then
that his mask dropped away.

"Oh, Hell!" he burst out. "What can I say to you
fellows? These people come in and say I'm a great man.
But I know you fellows made me. You printed stuff
about me and that's the reason I've got a fifty-thousand-
dollar job now. I don't kid myself."

On the whole he has been successful as the first of
the American Romanoffs. Most of the sporting writers
are his ardent supporters. He was reflected for an-
other seven-year term two years ago and his salary was
boosted to $65,000 despite grumbling from some of the
magnates that he had been more of an autocrat than
any one had intended. The Judge has been subjected
to considerable unfavorable criticism since his pay was
raised. This arose from his precipitate action, shortly

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A Grand -Stand Judge

afterwards, in making public apparently uncorroborated
charges against Cobb and Speaker, two revered figures
of baseball who had retired from the game some months
previous. Many fans said that Landis should have
waited for proof; some went as far as to insinuate that
he had been less than judicial. An editorial in the
World remarked that— "the 'Czar' who is paid $65,000
a year to keep baseball 'clean' has only succeeded in
smearing it up with muck". But all of this, it is likely,
will be forgotten and the Judge will return to high favor
when Babe Ruth starts hitting home runs in the spring.

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HIS MASTERS' VOICE

BACK IN THE OCCASIONALLY LAMENTED DAYS WHEN THE

Democratic party still spurned the tainted gold of Wall
Street for the honest coppers of humble folk, and Calvin
Coolidge was but the strong and silent city solicitor of
Northampton, a press agent was a gentleman who wore
a checked suit, patent-leather shoes, possibly spats, a
brown derby and yellow gloves. He breezed into town
ten days ahead of the circus or the ten-twent'-thirt' show,
bought the editor a few drinks, told an unprintable
story or two, and received, in due time, a column of free
puff.

Ivy Ledbetter Lee, who writes blurbs about the ac-
tivities of such great American institutions as John D.
Rockefeller (Senior and Junior), the Standard Oil
Company, Charles M. Schwab, the Bethlehem Steel
Company, the Pennsylvania Railroad — and others
which he declines to divulge — is quite another type.
Gone are the yellow gloves, the derby and the gaudy
suit. Mr. Lee dresses with the conservatism of any
well-to-do American. His hobby is cathedrals, a taste
acquired like that for olives, since at first they bored
him. He is said to be one of the few men in New York
who can keep millionaires cooling their heels in his ante-
room. Diligent skeptics report, however, that they have
seldom seen millionaires engaged in that lugubrious
occupation.

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Big- Frogs

In the current edition of "Who's Who in America"
thirty lines are devoted to Mr. Lee. He is also listed,
unlike the gayly dressed pioneers of his profession, in
the Social Register. He is a member of the best, the
most worthwhile clubs. Among them are the Univer-
sity, the Princeton and the Metropolitan of New York,
the Rittenhouse of Philadelphia and the Travelers' of
London. But he rarely visits the New York News-
paper Club, to which he also belongs, and where lesser
press-agents outnumber reporters in a proportion of
three to one. His town house is at 4 East Sixty-sixth
street, just two blocks from the exact social center of
New York, as determined by scientists in the employ of
the Social Register Association: it is in Sixty-eighth
street, a few doors east of the Park. Miss Alice Lee,
his daughter, was presented at the Court of St. James
a year or so ago.

Mr. Lee has a suite of offices at 111 Broadway, a
brief stroll from Wall street, the Bankers' Club and the
other lairs of the big money boys. When Mr. Rocke-
feller, Jr., offers the unappreciative Egyptians a mu-
seum or the liberal Baptists a church, one of Mr. Lee's
secretaries at once telephones all the city editors in
New York. He also notifies the Associated Press, the
United Press and the other news associations. A state-
ment, the secretary reveals, will be issued at 4 o'clock.
At the designated hour, more or less promptly, a dozen
reporters arrive. They are received cordially and
handed typewritten statements. Are there any ques-
tions? If so, Mr. Lee answers them diplomatically.
He expresses regret that Mr. Rockefeller is out of town,

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His Masters' Voice

but says that any inquiries will be called to his attention.
The reporters stuff the handouts into their pockets, one
or two of them protesting sotto voce against the role of
messenger boy, and leave. Mr. Lee has told them no
funny stories, and offered them no drinks. But he will,
that afternoon and the next morning, receive his column
or two of free space.

Ivy Ledbetter Lee, however, is not and never has
been what the world considers a press agent. The most
confirmed realist would call him, at the least, a pub-
licity agent. He prefers, himself, to be termed a public
relations counsel and he believes his work to be con-
nected, if vaguely, with the public good. His contribu-
tion to civilization is that, as Mr. Arthur Brisbane once
put it, "he interprets his client to the public and the
public to his client". It is twenty years now since, see-
ing no future in newspaper work, he convinced the
Pennsylvania Railroad that its locomotives would run
more smoothly, its employees would be more contented
and larger dividends would be earned if its activities
were properly interpreted to the public. Those were the
days when threats of government ownership were begin-
ning to disturb the sleep of railroad presidents as they
tossed in their private cars. Bitterly, but belatedly, they
were beginning to deplore the unfortunate frankness of
the public-be-damned theory of railroad operation. Mr.
Lee suggested to them that he could do much for them
in the line of constructive work.

Moreover, he added, it also lay in his power to explain
the mind of the public to the railroad. What Mr. Lee
meant by this was that he could explain the nature and

95

Big Frogs

peculiarities of the newspapers. As the century began,
newspapers were very much of a mystery to Big Busi-
ness. Either they were harmless and polite, the type
that the New York Herald Tribune is to-day, or they
had the scent of bloodhounds and the disposition of pub-
lic executioners. The World was one of this second
class. Big Business, to be safe, avoided all newspapers.
It fled, panting and heavily, from their reporters.

On one occasion the late J. P. Morgan was returning
from Europe. His trip had been solely for pleasure
and he was out of touch with the financial situation.
Had he been more sophisticated in matters of publicity,
he would have chatted pleasantly, being careful to say
nothing, to the ship-news men. But Mr. Morgan was
taking no chances. He barricaded himself in his state-
room, and after a time the ship-news reporters aban-
doned the chase.

But among the writers who had boarded the vessel at
Quarantine was a veteran Herald man assigned to the
specific task of interviewing Mr. Morgan. After the
financier had retired to his cabin the veteran slipped a
card under the door. Presently Mr. Morgan poked out
his head. He declared, with some heat, that he had
told the ship-news men that he had nothing to say.
Nothing!

"I was not with the ship-news men," said the Herald
representative quietly. "If you don't wish to talk it
is quite satisfactory to me. I was assigned to see you
and I sent in my card to make certain. Good day!"

The door opened more widely. Mr. Morgan emerged,
apparently astonished that a reporter could also be a

96

His Masters' Voice

gentleman. For several minutes, then, he conversed
affably. To-morrow, he said, he would again be con-
versant with affairs and would be glad to see a man from
the Herald. The two shook hands. A slightly dazed
financier again retired.

It was this state of mind, this combination of con-
tempt for reporters and terror of newspapers, that fur-
nished fertile soil for the growth of Mr. Lee and his imi-
tators. The talents of the publicity agent are many.
Not the least amazing, to the innocent business man, is
his ability to predict the manner in which a speech or a
public statement will be featured in the newspapers.
He can forecast with uncanny accuracy whether it will
get on the front pages and what the editorial comment
will be. He can even guess at the size of the headlines.
This clairvoyance is possessed, of course, by any good
newspaper copy reader.

But of even greater importance are his services dur-
ing that journalistic atrocity, the mass interview.
Sooner or later every public figure must face it. When
it is necessary, Mr. Lee is present to hold the hand of
his client. A formal statement is prepared in advance.
The reporters are presented to the great man about to
be interviewed, not as hungry sensation-hunters but as
gentlemen — even as equals. But the mass interview re-
mains a silly institution, for when any large group be-
gins to hurl questions the net result is bound to be very
little information. Some jackass from the tabloids in-
variably asks Joseph Conrad for his wife's favorite
recipe, the Prince of Wales whether he still deserts his
mounts, and the Crown Prince of Sweden whether he

97

Big Frogs

believes in Swedish massage. The efforts of the more
intelligent newspaper men present are buried under the
avalanche of imbecility. If the interview is aboard ship
the photographers crowd up and snap twenty-eight
shots apiece.

During all this confusion the public relations counsel
is calm, smooth and efficient. He coughs when an em-
barrassing question is asked and his client smiles po-
litely, regretting that some matters, really, are confi-
dential. When the barrage of tabloid idiocy begins he
turns it off with a joke or two. After the ceremony
is over the reporters find that they have little to print
but the statement handed them at the beginning of the
session. This prepared statement, crudely called
"canned", is to the press agent what gasoline is to a
filling-station. By means of it he can place the desired
emphasis on what his client is saying. It enables him
to capitalize the laziness which newspaper men share
with the rest of the human race. His story assured, the
reporter is reluctant to exert his mind by asking unfor-
tunate questions.

One afternoon a year or so ago the city editor of a
New York morning paper received word that a state-
ment was to be issued at the offices of Ivy L. Lee and
Associates. He despatched one of his bright young
men. In an hour or two the reporter returned. Was
it, the city editor wanted to know, a good story? What
was it all about?

"Oh!" said the seeker after news, hauling a sheet of
flimsy out of his pocket and handing it over. "I don't
know. I haven't read it yet."

His Masters' Voice

II

A decade or so after the Civil War there lived in the
small village of Cedartown, Georgia, a Methodist
clergyman by the name of James Wideman Lee. He
seems to have been a gentleman of unusual talents, a
preacher of a distinction seldom found under the hot
sun of the Cracker State. Although not of the sainted
Virginia Lees, both he and his wife, who had been
Eufala Ledbetter, came of excellent stock. When, in
1877, a first son was born to them, they named him Ivy,
after the clergyman's uncle. The Rev. Mr. Lee pros-
pered in his work for the Lord. In due time he became
pastor of Trinity Church in Atlanta, the largest and
most influential Methodist establishment in the South.
For a time, also, he had a parish in St. Louis.

Young Ivy Lee attended the schools in Atlanta and
St. Louis and then was sent to Emory College at Ox-
ford, Ga., his father's alma mater. Emory was then a
small, more or less educational, institution of the
Methodist persuasion, favored by ministers for their
sons. Since those days it has prospered under the
patronage of Asa G. Candler, the Coca Cola King.
Now it is Emory University, has an endowment of well
over $1,000,000 and is located in the outskirts of At-
lanta. Ivy remained at Emory for but two years. The
Rev. Mr. Lee was eager to have him study in the North,
and so, for his junior and senior years, he was at Prince-
ton.

Ivy had a happy boyhood. The walls of his father's

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Big- Frogs

home were lined with books, and the son was encouraged
to cherish and know them. Atlanta had not yet been
stirred by Rotary, and no Chamber of Commerce sought
noisily to make it the metropolis of the South. It was
still content to slumber through the long Summers, its
streets fragrant with the honeysuckle that climbed the
fences of its old houses. Not far from the Lee rectory
lived a shy old gentleman named Joel Chandler Harris.
He had been, in happier pre-war days, a plantation
neighbor to the Lees. Ivy often, as a boy and a young
man, visited the home of Mr. Harris. In 1908, already
rising in his chosen profession of public relations expert,
he found time to return to Atlanta and write a book
which was a labor of love. It was "Memories of Uncle
Remus." Only a small edition was published, for pri-
vate circulation among the friends of the old gentleman.

Members of the Georgia Lee family, pointing with
pride to the career of their most eminent member, recall
that Pastor Lee had a habit of reading newspapers with
great care, of making voluminous clippings, and of send-
ing them to people he believed might be interested. He
was also, it is said, a very energetic correspondent.
He wrote to his friends on every conceivable subject.
He expressed in his letters his own opinions and asked
for their opinions in return. In his later years he went
abroad and during the course of the journey wrote at
least one letter to every single member of his congrega-
tion.

Thus, the Lee family explains, Ivy inherited his taste
for spreading ideas broadcast. And thus, too, he in-

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His Masters' Voice

herited his taste for an extensive correspondence. But
instead of letters written in the courtly handwriting of
the old school, his modern epistles are in many cases in
printed form and sent out by the thousand. Instead of
going to the members of a country congregation they
go to business and civic leaders, to editors and govern-
ment officials, and to all other men who control public
thought or who are possible clients. And the news-
paper clippings, once cut by hand, are now assembled
on a printed sheet headed "Information" and mailed
from time to time from the offices of Ivy L. Lee and
Associates.

The Ivy Lee clip-sheet "may be used as desired by
those who receive it", according to an announcement
that always appears in the upper right-hand corner.
Newspaper editors, seeking filler material, are among
those particularly welcome to it. By a strange coinci-
dence many of the items concern corporations and indi-
viduals who are clients of Mr. Lee. The Bethlehem
Steel Company is mentioned in one issue. F. Edson
White, president of Armour & Company, is also quoted.
In another issue Charlie Schwab, for whom Mr. Lee
writes speeches, has a paragraph devoted to him. In
still another issue the Copper and Brass Research Asso-
ciation expresses optimism about copper. One week's
clip-sheet points out that the miners, refusing to arbi-
trate, were responsible for a hard coal strike. "Carriers
in Better Favor With the Public" is the heading on
another article — and then it is recalled that Mr. Lee
works also for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

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Big Frogs

III

The young man destined to become publicly the voice
of many great corporations (and secretly the voice of
perhaps as many more) was in 1898 graduated from
Princeton as a bachelor of arts. So excellent was his
standing that he was awarded a small scholarship. With
it he sought further learning and for that purpose went
to Harvard. There, for several months, he studied law.
But his funds did not last, and soon he was found on
Park Row, a cub reporter on the New York Journal,
then a morning paper. Probably it is just as well that
he did not go further in Blackstone. At all events, he
now has small use for the legal mind, believing, as he
once said, that "whenever a lawyer starts to talk to the
public, he shuts out the light".

Mr. Lee advises his clients to avoid legal obscurities.
He urged, in a recent address, the use by public utilities
companies and others of language that the people could
understand, and he held up Billy Sunday as a model.
What Mr. Sunday "has done for religion", he said,
would be an excellent thing for the railroads to attempt
for business. "Billy Sunday," he continued, "speaks
the language of the man who rides on the trolley-car,
who chews gum and who spits tobacco juice. The
people know Billy Sunday and he knows them. He
goes to the heart of a subject."

Ivy was a competent but not a brilliant reporter. He
left the Journal, after a time, and worked successively
on the Times and the World. The stars of his day re-
port that he did not, at least not often, get really big

102

His Masters' Voice

stories to handle. But he had one characteristic that
few of them possessed. Most of them despised the
prominent men whose virtues and vices were first page
stuff, but not Ivy. The energy of the stars began to
wane, their facility of expression to die. They drifted
out into other professions or remained to rot on copy
desks. Ivy, meanwhile, was cultivating acquaintances.
He never failed to impress his personality and his
talents upon the consciousness of the great and good
men he met in gathering news.

By 1903, five years out of college, he found progress
in journalism too slow. With uncommon vision he be-
gan to see the possibilities of press agentry as applied to
Big Business. Within the next few years, he became
spokesman for several corporations and began to dabble
in political publicity, though the latter was not to his lik-
ing. The years of his greatest growth were from 1906
to 1914. During them he went to work for the Penn-
sylvania Railroad. Despite an interruption during
which he traveled abroad for a Wall Street house, he
was, by 1914, an executive assistant on the staff of the
road. He was living in Philadelphia by that time and
looming large as an influential citizen. Public speaking
was one of his diversions — and also furnished him op-
portunities for spreading his ideas about salubrious pub-
licity. Many of his addresses he has since caused to
be published and they are illuminating documents.
In May, 1914, for instance, he warned a gathering of
railroad men that they were "in the midst of a swirling
flood of legislation and regulation". He deplored the
carelessness of certain officials in fighting the Full

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Big Frogs

Crew Law. If, he suggested, this obnoxious statute
were only called the Extra Crew Law the public would
swiftly grasp the unfair burden that it had placed upon
the railroads in the name, but falsely, of safety. He
deprecated, also, the custom of using the phrase "all the
traffic will bear" in discussing freight rates. "We can
never", he said in concluding the lesson, "be too careful
in the terms we use".

It was in this same year, 1914, that the younger Mr.
Rockefeller began to feel acutely uncomfortable under
the bludgeonings of public reviling. His father, who
had retired fifteen years before, had been protected by a
thicker skin. Mr. Rockefeller, Sr., had blandly ignored
the attack of the once militant Ida Tarbell, knowing,
perhaps, that he would live to see the day when she
would write a gushing eulogy of the late Judge Elbert
H. Gary. But Mr. Rockefeller, Sr., had turned his
affairs over to his serious and more sensitive son, and
was busy with golf and the collection of bright new
dimes for future distribution.

The immediate cause of Mr. Rockefeller, Jr.'s, dis-
comfort was the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company
strike. Ugly rumors were abroad concerning this dis-
pute. There were charges, later admitted to be true,
that the company in which Mr. Rockefeller, Jr., was a
director and in which the House of Rockefeller held
$24,000,000 in stocks and bonds had paid the wages of
the State militia, used to put down the strikers. Reports
from the field were that the latter were living in tents
and starving. The climax came when twenty were
killed at Ludlow, Col., in a brawl with armed guards.

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His Masters' Voice

All of this might not have disturbed the builder of
Standard Oil. But it troubled the more squeamish
John D., Jr. He sought advice from his friends. They
all recalled that "a young fellow with the Pennsylvania"
was doing some fine work. They knew about his ideas,
they said, because they received his form letters. Good,
sound, constructive ideas! It was thus that the House
of Rockefeller "took the public into its confidence".
Mr. Rockefeller, Jr., decided suddenly that publicity
paid. He described his change of heart during his testi-
mony, some months later, before the Commission on
Industrial Relations, of which Frank P. Walsh was
chairman. An investigation of the Colorado strike was
in progress.

"MR. ROCKEFELLER: When this situation developed
last year, finding that it was difficult to get the facts
before the public, I personally took pains to inquire who
could assist us in what I believed an important public
work. After careful inquiry I was told of Mr. Lee, and
asked him if he could undertake to assist the operators'
committee and ourselves in the matter of properly pre-
senting the facts in the situation."

Mr. Rockefeller testified that Mr. Lee, graciously
lent for a time by the Pennsylvania Railroad, had
been paid $1,000 a month for his services. The funds
came out of the pocket of Mr. Rockefeller, Sr., "as a
contribution to the general public situation". A day
or two after the testimony by his new employer, Mr.
Lee was also called as a witness. He said that Mr.
Rockefeller, Jr., had summoned him to discuss the evils
of the hour in May, 1914.

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Big Frogs

For several hours Mr. Lee answered questions re-
garding his services to the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company. He had suggested, he said, a policy of "ab-
solute frankness". The best way in which to educate
the public, he had told the operators, was to issue a
series of bulletins containing the facts of the situation
and mail them to a list of prominent people and to the
newspapers, particularly the newspapers. It was these
bulletins, written by Mr. Lee in Philadelphia but
mailed from Denver to make it appear that they were
the offspring of the operators, that later aroused un-
seemly curiosity on the part of the Commission on In-
dustrial Relations. They also prompted Mr. George
Creel — who later was to learn publicity methods on his
own account — to write an article for Harper's Weekly
in November, 1914. This he captioned "Poisoners of
Public Opinion" and in it he charged, with high wrath,
that the Colorado operators had "neither truth nor any
saving instinct of decency".

The coal barons, wrote Mr. Creel, had branded the
white-haired Mother Jones a bawdy-house keeper and
had caused the slander, through the kindness of a
friendly Congressman, to be inserted in the Congres-
sional Record. They had published a symposium pur-
porting to give the views of Colorado editors regarding
the strike. The editorial opinions, as set forth in this
bulletin, were definitely favorable to the companies and
hostile to the miners. Ultimately it developed, how-
ever, that but fourteen of the 331 editors in Colorado
had collaborated on the document and that these four-
teen molders of thought were employed by company

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His Masters' Voice

controlled newspapers. One fascinating bulletin as-
sembled by Mr. Lee described the wages paid to certain
of the strike leaders. Mother Jones, for example, was
declared to be receiving $42 a day for her agitating.
One F. J. Hayes was being paid $32,000 a year. Later,
before the Walsh Commission, Mr. Lee admitted that
in all this there was a slight error. Wages which ac-
tually covered a year had been made, in compiling the
statistics, to cover but nine weeks. Instead of $32,000,
Mr. Hayes had been paid only $4,052.92 annually.

Cross-examined on this miscalculation, Mr. Lee
swore that he deeply regretted it. Undoubtedly, he
confessed, it had tended to arouse criticism against their
leaders by the rank and file of the laboring men. The
error should have been corrected immediately, but had,
as a matter of fact, been allowed to stand for three
months. In January, after the miners had succumbed
to hunger and given up the struggle, a corrected bulle-
tin was sent out. Chairman Walsh asked a great many
questions about the bulletins, the manner in which they
were written and the source of the so-called facts that
they had contained. Mr. Lee's policy of "absolute
frankness" had consisted, Chairman Walsh brought out,
of disseminating propaganda containing anything and
everything that the coal operators in Denver wished the
public to believe. The official testimony is again rather
interesting :

CHAIRMAN WALSH: Mr. Rockefeller told you to be
sure to get the truth?
MR. LEE : Certainly.

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Big Frogs

Q. Just detail now what steps you took to ascertain
the facts before you wrote any of these articles. Give
all of the steps.

A. I had no opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to ascertain
the facts from my own point of view. It was their story
I was to assist in getting before the public.

Q. And therefore you did not question any fact that
was presented to you, any alleged fact, as to its au-
thenticity ?

A. Not when presented by Mr. Welborn [Jesse F.
Welborn, president of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Com-
pany] or one of his committee.

Q. Did you make any effort to secure the statements
of disinterested persons?

A. I did not.

Q. From the workers themselves or their representa-
tives ?

A. I did not.

By COMMISSIONER GARRETSON: Your mission was
that of the average publicity agent, was it not, to give
the truth as the man you were serving saw it? [Laugh-
ter].

MR. LEE : That would represent a characterization on
your part, Mr. Commissioner. I have tried to tell what
happened. As to your characterization, I don't know
that I can give an answer.

But all this is ancient history. The story is to be
found only in the musty and worm-eaten reports of the
Commission on Industrial Relations, which nobody ever
reads, and in that scurrilous volume by Upton Sinclair,
"The Brass Check", which no one in this great Republic
but Mr. Sinclair himself would undertake to publish.

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His Masters' Voice

IV

Meanwhile, Mr. Lee continues to prosper. Only re-
cently Ivy L. Lee and Associates increased their office
space. Gifted young men from the New York papers
are occasionally added to the staff. But Mr. Lee is
not easy to work for. He is nothing if not tempera-
mental. He flies into rages when a statement is pre-
pared without the proper finesse, when terms and
phrases are used carelessly. These rages are terrifying
but short lived. During them Mr. Lee proclaims loudly
that stupidity is the prevalent characteristic of man-
kind. He pounds upon his desk until the inkwells
rattle. But after a short while the storm is over, and
then, not infrequently, he begs forgiveness with tears
of contrition and Christian brotherhood in his eyes. All
that is lacking is the chirping finale of the William Tell
overture.

But the newspaper men summoned to his office when
an announcement is ready see none of this. To them,
Mr. Lee is always a cordial and affable gentleman. He
is smooth, but not oily. He never directs that a story
must be published in a certain way. He hands out the
canned statement, waits for questions, and then suavely
terminates the interview. What he offers for publica-
tion stands on its worth as news. He uses no personal
influence to get space, and boasts that he has not been
in a newspaper office four times during the past twenty
years.

Why is it then that this amiable gentleman, who pro-
vides so many good stories, is so generally disliked by

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Big Frogs

newspaper men? Chiefly, I suppose, it is because, like
all publicity men, he is a buffer. Not his least im-
portant function is to shield his clients. Every reporter
who has tried to see old John D., Sr., on his birthday
knows this. So does every man who has been assigned
to interview the son of the old man. Mr. Lee does not
like to admit that he is a buffer. In an address before
some teachers of journalism in 1924 he described how,
if he were an active newspaper man, he would deal with
press agents. He said that he would "insist upon seeing
any of the principals" that he wanted to see. He would
demand, he told the surprised pedagogues, "first-hand
access to any one I thought had any information". The
publicity man has "no right to be there" if he is "a
barrier against newspaper men getting to the source of
information".

At this point, however, Mr. Lee left the realm of
imagination and returned to real life. He pointed out
that reporters were not entitled to interviews about "any
question". This philosophy makes the press agent en-
tirely safe, for he himself is the judge as to whether the
question is proper or not. And his judgment is based,
not on the news value of what may result from the ques-
tion, but on the welfare of his client. In the case of the
Rockefeller family, it must be apparent, there are few
proper questions.

Nor is this "master of public relations counsel" any
too finicky about confidential matters between himself
and the reporters. When a story is destined for release
he makes every effort to have it appear simultaneously
in all the newspapers. On the afternoon of February

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His Masters' Voice

25, 1925 — the story is still being told in the city rooms —
the New York American received a tip that Abby
Rockefeller, the somewhat turbulent daughter of John
D. Rockefeller, Jr., was to be married to one David
Milton. The engagement, Mr. Hearst's informant
stated, was shortly to be announced.

This was obviously a story of the first rank. The en-
gagement of Miss Abby was, in itself, an international
matter. But Mr. Milton gave it an added flavor. He
was the comparatively impecunious young apprentice
attorney who had obtained, for Abby, a suspended sen-
tence when she had been nabbed for the second time by
an irreverent traffic patrolman. The city room of the
American buzzed at the prospect of an old-fashioned
beat: "Daughter of Oil King's Son to Wed Humble
Speed Case Benefactor."

The reporter assigned to determining the truth of the
rumor was a man who had already proved his ability,
even although he had not worked in New York for long.
He had never heard of Ivy Lee and went, naively, to the
Rockefeller home. Mrs. Rockefeller was having a re-
ception and could not see the reporter. But she sent a
servant with a message, scribbled on the back of a letter.
It suggested calling upon Mr. Lee at 111 Broadway.

The American's representative, journeying down-
town in a taxi-cab, chanced to look at the letter on which
Mrs. Rockefeller had written her message. To his sur-
prise he saw that it was from a friend of the family,
expressing delight that Abby was to be married to Mr.
Milton. This was confirmation enough — the Ameri-
can's beat was assured. But the reporter decided to do

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the decent thing and called on Mr. Lee. He told Mr.
Lee that the story already was confirmed and that it
was an American exclusive. But Mr. Lee, to the re-
porter's horror, said that beats were less than nothing
to him. Inasmuch as the fact of the engagement had
thus prematurely leaked out, all the newspapers would
be notified. At 8 o'clock, he said, a formal statement
would be given out at the Rockefeller home. The
American man's protests were in vain. The next morn-
ing the story appeared in all the papers instead of in
solitary splendor in the American.

The incident did Mr. Lee more harm than that
usually astute gentleman is, perhaps, aware. Ugly epi-
thets were applied to him along Park Row, and re-
porters with important rumors will in the future seek
authentication from every other possible source before
they see him. It affected in no way, however, his rela-
tions with the Rockefellers. Mr. Lee was on hand
again when Abby was united in matrimony, and pro-
vided alphabetized lists of the dignitaries who attended
the ceremony. He was present, also, when Abby sailed
on the Paris for her honeymoon in France. Again he
fraternized with the, this time, suspicious newspaper
writers. He told them, in man-to-man fashion, that the
bride and groom were extremely nervous. It would be
a graceful thing not to demand an interview. Mr. Lee
was thus busily performing his duties when Mr. and
Mrs. Rockefeller, Jr., boarded the vessel. Mr. Rocke-
feller, unconsciously brushing Mr. Lee aside, smiled
jovially, as befitted a man who had just seen his daugh-
ter safely married. Then he led the reporters to a cor-

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His Masters' Voice

ner of the deck. The bride and groom faced them, still
nervous.

"These gentlemen are your friends," he soothingly
told Mr. and Mrs. Milton. A short interview took
place. Every one was happy.

Again there was gossip in the city rooms. "He's slip-
ping/' some of the more outspoken said. "Didn't John
D., Jr., shove him aside when Abby was sailing?"

But that was nonsense. Ivy is not slipping. He is
in no danger. He can afford to smile (and does) about
foolish theorists who call him a menace, who say that
he tells but one side of a story, who growl that he and
his kind are breaking down the fine old spirit of better
days, when newspaper men went out like the Royal
Northwest Mounted and got their facts. Mr. Rocke-
feller, Mr. Schwab, the Standard Oil, the Pennsylvania
Railroad, the Bethlehem Steel Company, the Interbor-
ough Rapid Transit Company, the Eastern Presidents'
Conference, the Copper and Brass Research Associa-
tion— such are among his publicly known clients. He is
close to Otto H. Kahn and assists that eminent patron
of the arts from time to time. He is close, also, to
Armour & Company, to the Washburn-Crosby Com-
pany and to the national association to which most of
the manufacturers of cement belong. These he serves
in a general advisory capacity, largely with respect to
their paid advertising. His staff writes a market letter
for Dominick & Dominick, a stock exchange house.

Not all of his work is for financial gain. He often
volunteers his services for public causes. He took
charge of the publicity for the American Red Cross dur-

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ing the war and did not even receive his expenses.
When Bishop Manning, adopting Twentieth Century
methods to build a Twelfth Century cathedral, created a
large campaign committee, Mr. Lee was among those
on it. In this case, though, friction developed, and Mr.
Lee subsequently resigned.

It is his proud assertion that he never offers for free
publication material that belongs in the advertising
columns. In the light of this definite position, and in
view of his one-time connection with the cathedral cam-
paign, it is not out of place to examine a document dis-
tributed, about two years ago, by the Copper and Brass
Research Association. It will be recalled that this
organization is one of the more or less publicly acknowl-
edged clients of Mr. Lee.

The article in question was mailed to a large number
of newspapers as coming "From the Copper and Brass
Research Association". It contained photographs of
the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and of the choir
which sings in that edifice. The reading matter de-
scribed the beauties of the new church, "built to stand
for ages". And then:

"Its walls are of massive masonry, while the roofs and
other important metal parts, such as flashings, gutters
and downspouts are constructed of copper, a metal
whose worthiness has been proved by its centuries of
service on churches and cathedrals in England and on
the continent. Various water pipes are of brass"

It probably is not necessary to point out that the
italics were not provided by Mr. Ivy Ledbetter Lee.

114

THE FATHER OF
PHYSCULTOPATHY

BEING AN IDEALIST AT HEART, WITH WEALTH THAT IS

merely accidental, Mr. Bernarr Macfadden may some-
times ponder, like Plato, on the nature of the Perfect
State. Many years ago, at a time when he was less
sophisticated, he even attempted to bring a Utopia into
actual existence and selected a site in New Jersey. He
was, however, ahead of his time and the experiment was
wrecked when the natives protested against a radical
detail of the scheme: the wearing of bloomers by the
lady disciples. Now Mr. Macfadden proceeds more
slowly, content to build for the future by spreading his
ideas through Physical Culture, True Story Magazine,
six other equally novel periodicals and that astonishing
daily newspaper, the New York Evening Graphic.

Mr. Macfadden's editorial fecundity is so unusual —
he has been able to dictate a month's supply of news-
paper editorials before going to Europe — that it is not
too easy to sift and arrange those of his ideas which
relate to the New World awaiting its Messiah. But
from even a casual reading of his various journals one
concludes that the residents of the Perfect State would
be men and women of a physical perfection made ap-
parent by their lack of clothing. They would be de-
voted to fresh air and exercise, to periodic fasts, to the

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drinking of milk, to fresh vegetables and to meatless
menus of the type now offered by the Childs restau-
rants. The State's government would conduct daily
beauty contests, for men as well as for women, the laws
of eugenics would be applied to all marriages and doc-
tors advocating vaccination would be shot.

The most extraordinary feature of this Macfadden-
esque Eden, though, would be the devotion of its in-
habitants to vulgarity and bad taste. They would read,
in their Graphics, of the marital eccentricities of people
living in other worlds. They would gaze with glee upon
faked photographs (labeled composographs as a sop to
the Macfadden ideals of truth) depicting husbands in
pajamas shooting wives in their underwear, wives in
their underwear stabbing husbands in pajamas, mulatto
girls exposing their pigmentation to juries, prominent
New York realtors barking "Woof! Woof!" at young
girls, bandits being hanged. Their stomachs would be
so strong, no doubt due to their exemplary diet, that
they would relish revolting, and highly inaccurate, ac-
counts of men dying in the electric chair. Unsound in
mind, sound in body: — such, it would seem, would sum
up the followers of Macfadden.

Obviously this State of which he dreams leaves some-
thing to be desired as an explanation of the man. Read
such of his magazines as True Story, Dream World and
True Experiences and you conclude that no publisher
before him has so adroitly pandered to the servant girl,
bootblack, factory worker public. Examine the files of
the Graphic and you are aware that other tabloid
owners have been extremely conservative in cultivating

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The Father of Physcultopathy

the patronage of sex-starved, scandal-living, even per-
version-tainted people. But talk with the man, and
with those who have been his associates, and you are
forced to conclude that he has slight comprehension of
the real effect of his magazines and newspaper. The
Graphic is more than some of his subordinates can en-
dure and in the past several have protested; to be met
with wide-eyed astonishment that anything seems
wrong. One man rushed to his desk with a particularly
objectionable issue and thrust it in front of his face.
Macfadden looked up, puzzled and surprised.

"If you say it's bad, all right," he said, "but I don't
see what's the matter with it."

And yet whatever Macfadden's aesthetic blind spots,
however he may be an influence cheapening the public
taste, it can be said for him that he is sincere in his de-
votion to physical culture. Having proclaimed himself,
in "Who's Who in America", "The founder of Phys-
cultopathy, the science of healing by physical culture
methods," he often feels that he does not receive proper
credit and has been heard lamenting the nation's ingrati-
tude. Like all zealots he has carried his theories to ex-
tremes and has earned the hatred, which he returns with
enthusiasm, of the medical profession. Hardly a con-
vention of the American Medical Association fails to
consider a resolution viewing him with alarm. The
majority of doctors were, however, smugly grading the
efficacy of medicines by the vileness of their taste when,
in 1898, Macfadden published the first issue of Physical
Culture and began his onslaughts upon corsets, red-

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flannel underwear, too heavy eating and the peril-of-
night-air myth.

In time, perhaps, Macfadden will grow suspicious
that his newspaper is less than an ideal paper for the
home and may direct its editors to fumigate its pages.
He has recently offered the excuse that he seldom gives
the Graphic his personal attention. He assumes,
though, full responsibility for True Story and his other
magazines and actually believes them "forces for good".
Let any one attack them and he strikes back. To com-
pare them, as some have done, not without logic, with
the so-called "art" magazines containing non-athletic
nudes, enrages him. He thinks they spread to the
masses such noble principles as brotherly love, tolerance,
rectitude and forgiveness of one's neighbors' sex sins.
He is confident that his "true stories" are really true,
boasts of the staff of ministers which passes on all manu-
scripts and treasures 1,000 signed endorsements from
other clergymen. One of these — Mr. Macfadden has
published some of the more striking in pamphlet form —
reads :

"I think the True Story a great magazine. In fact,
anything that has the stamp of Bernarr Macfadden
upon it is helpful, elevating and of God".

But Macfadden is aware, such being the complexities
and contradictions that are part of him, that his maga-
zines ride close to the obscenity laws. He was once
sentenced to two years in jail for violating the postal
conceptions of decency, was saved only by the big heart
of President Taft, and no longer takes any chances.

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The Father of Physcultopathy

His attorney now reads all stories, after the ministers
have approved them, to make certain that the line of
safety has not been crossed.

II

Macfadden's passion for physical culture and an-
tipathy toward the medical profession are understand-
able enough in the light of the story of his life, a true
story no less bizarre than those in his magazines. Now
over sixty years old, he is a better specimen than most
men of his age. He can walk more rapidly and for
greater distances and can lift weights that would tax
the hearts of younger men. He still plays a fair game
of tennis, prefering to do so in his bare feet so that "a
magnetism in the earth" can enter his body. Only his
face, which is badly wrinkled, and his hair, growing
gray and appearing hardly as luxuriant as of yore, re-
veal his years. His body is muscular and lean, as he
gladly demonstrates by being photographed in the nude
in classical poses. These art studies are hung in pro-
fusion in the offices of the Macfadden Building on upper
Broadway and are often reproduced in Physical Cul-
ture.

As a boy, however, he was sickly; an heir to the
tuberculosis of which his mother had died when he was
eleven years old. His father had died when he was five.
He was born in drab poverty on a farm near Mill
Springs, Mo., in 1868 and before he was twelve had
been bound to a farmer in a distant part of the state.
He did not rate very high as an agricultural apprentice,
partly because of his lack of strength and partly be-

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cause he was troubled by a bad cough which sometimes
incapacitated him for days. He somehow heard that it
was the opinion of his mates on the farm that he would
not live for long and it is easy to imagine the impression
this made on his youthful mind. At night, dreams that
he was about to die disturbed his sleep. The doctors
to whom he hurried were not encouraging. Bernard A.
McFadden (he changed his name to Bernarr Macfadden
later on because it was more distinctive) did not give up,
however. While other boys were dreaming, after the
pattern of the American Success Story, of wealth and
fame, the youth threatened with consumption strove for
health. By the time he was eighteen or nineteen it had
come to him in a measure, not because of the skill of
doctors but because he had lived a life devoted to fresh
air, a sensible diet and exercise. This self -cure seemed a
miracle beyond equal, a striking justification for the-
ories then considered absurd. The boy McFadden took
pride in the jeers and the taunts of "health crank"
which greeted him when he sought to explain his
methods.

Farm work had been exceedingly distasteful and he
soon went to St. Louis where he obtained employment
in a wholesale grocery house and in a bank. To his
horror the cough returned, so he hurried back to the
farm and remained there until health was definitely his.
Then he began a year's vagabondage in which he
tramped from town to town and job to job, always
obeying the dicta of diet and health. Eventually he
became an athletic director at a small Missouri college,
was startled to find in its library scores of books on

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health and read all of them. His education had been
only fragmentary and the written word made a tre-
mendous impression on him. Increasingly eager to dis-
seminate his physical culture theories, he decided that
literature was the best means and wrote a novel which
he called "The Athlete's Conquest".

"It's simply terrible," he was assured by a St. Louis
publisher. "It's badly written, the grammar is all
wrong and the spelling is incorrect."

This was rather a shock and a blow to Bernard Mc-
Fadden's rapidly growing self-importance, but he was
forced to admit that the criticism was just and again
became an athletic instructor in order to study spelling,
rhetoric and grammar on the side. He rewrote the book
and eventually was successful in having it printed. In
the meanwhile he had definitely decided to make phys-
ical culture, the magic science which had saved his life,
his profession. For a time he ran a gymnasium in St.
Louis and called himself, upon advice from a friend who
had dabbled in Greek, a "Kinetherapist". A year or so
later he invented a pulley exercising machine and jour-
neyed to the Chicago's World Fair to sell and demon-
strate it. So far had he traveled along the road to
health since his boyhood that he was able to compete
in wrestling matches and enjoyed a wide reputation in
Illinois in the wriggling art.

He had not, though, forgotten the thrill of literary
composition and when about twenty-five years old de-
cided to blend gymnastics and writing in happy union.
He turned his face toward Boston, knowing that city to
be the cultural center of America, but got only as far as

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New York. There, with but $50 in his pocket, he
momentarily went to work as a rubber in a gymnasium
and also gave some health lectures through which he
received some pleasant, if slightly joshing, newspaper
publicity. He had been known for some time as "Pro-
fessor McFadden", the pedagogical title adopted by
pugilists and others who run gymnasia, and felt that he
needed a more distinctive name. The woods were full
of McFaddens.

"I have never attempted to conceal this," he explains.
"I called myself Bernarr Macfadden because the pic-
turesque appealed to me. I wanted something out of
the ordinary."

Macfadden — it is but courteous to use the amended
name — liked New York and abandoned his intention to
go to Boston. He acquired his own studio of health in
time and was taking fat men away from his former
employer and other competitors. One of these dropped
in, one morning, to his atelier to see how the new pro-
fessor was getting so much business and found half a
dozen rotund and perspiring gentlemen prancing, quite
naked, around a room and keeping toy balloons in the
air by means of their wheezy lungs. Professor Mac-
fadden smiled.

"I first blow the balloons up and then I toss them in
the air," he pointed out. "I order these fellows to keep
them in the air. It's great exercise. After a half hour
of it I give them a shower and rub-down."

His competitor was duly impressed.

"The balloons," Macfadden added, "cost only fifteen
cents a gross."

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The Father of Physcultopathy

His prosperity enabled him to exploit his pulley exer-
cising machine and he did this by means of brochures
describing its virtues. Later he added health messages
to these advertising pamphlets and in time, such being
so often the obscure beginnings of great things, Phys-
ical Culture Magazine took form. The first issues,
illustrated with photographs of Macfadden simulating
ancient statues, appeared in 1898 and a leading feature
was a serialized version of Macfadden's literary brain-
child, "The Athlete's Conquest".

The novel is not without interest in connection with
the story of Macfadden, for like nearly all first novels
it is, unless I am greatly mistaken, largely autobio-
graphical. It tells the story of "Harry Moore", a youth
who had once been sickly but had cured himself by
"natural methods". As the story opens he is a mag-
nificent specimen whose manly form is followed by shy,
yet tender and appreciative, glances of Victorian ladies.
Harry does a good deal of soliloquizing in the first
chapter and one is told of his devotion to exercise, vege-
tables and fresh air and that his friends call him a
"health crank". This disturbs him not at all, however,
and he would be entirely happy if only he could find,
object matrimony, a maiden whose figure had not been
distorted by the stays of the era. One day, as he walks
down the street, his eye falls upon a singularly beautiful
girl. Whereupon :

'Well, how strange! And what a beautiful thing she
is! She doesn't wear a corset! Heavens! She has the
features and figure of a goddess. I didn't think there
was a woman living who could affect me like that!' ex-

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claimed Harry with a long-drawn sigh as he remem-
bered how the sight of her face had affected him."

Ill

During the first years he was in New York, Mac-
fadden was one of the town freaks, good-naturedly
teased in the press very much as Urban Ledoux, the
"Mr. Zero" of the lower East Side, is teased to-day.
He opened "health-food" restaurants where meals were
served for a few cents, held beauty shows, clambered
into the glare of footlights and flexed his muscles. His
picture became familiar to newspaper readers, that of a
man with wire-like hair, a prominent nose and bulging
shoulders. By 1905, however, the industrious Anthony
Comstock was watching him with suspicion and caused
his arrest for displaying posters in connection with a
health rally at the Madison Square Garden, posters
portraying ladies and gentlemen in union suits and
which now would cause merriment at a convention of
the Epworth League. Macfadden escaped punishment
on this occasion and began what was to have been the
great experiment of his life, a Physical Culture City.
He acquired property near Spottswood, N. J., and
gathered about him a number of young men and women
who pledged themselves to the simple life. Unhappily,
the newspapers again indulged their sense of humor and
neighborhood conservatives were loud in their protests
when the girls appeared on the village streets not only
in bloomers but without stockings. Macfadden seems,
too, to have neglected the economic details of his colony
and after some months several of the faithful were com-

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The Father of Physcultopathy

plaining that they were not getting their money's
worth. The New York World published a realistic
story about their grievances and this so angered Mac-
fadden that he filed a $50,000 libel suit. A jury held,
however, that the reporter had told merely the truth.

It was in 1907, at a time when Physical Culture was
being printed in New Jersey, that Macfadden had his
really serious brush with the law. And on this occasion
he was, I think, wholly in the right. He ran a story
called "Growing to Manhood" which sought to inform
young men, in a less ambiguous way than was the in-
violate custom of the day, on the Facts of Life. It was
not a pretty story, but neither was it a vicious one and
its purpose was laudable. The postal authorities ruled,
however, that it transgressed the laws on decency and
an indictment followed. To every one's surprise Mac-
fadden was convicted and sentenced to two years in the
federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Macfadden was horri-
fied; jails were horrid places with little fresh air and
few green vegetables. He appealed to the higher
courts, but the conviction was affirmed. Then the
readers of Physical Culture rallied to his defense and
deluged the White House with appeals for clemency.
President Taf t remitted the prison sentence. The inci-
dent had shocked and depressed Macfadden and he has
since spent thousands of dollars in legal fees to guard
against another thrust into the dungeon's shadow.

The notoriety did not, though, injure the circulation
of Physical Culture. Thousands began to buy it in the
hope that it was really smutty. But the magazine's
great boom came with the World War. America, fac-

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ing the battlefield, began to ponder on physical fitness
and to read what Macfadden had to say on the subject.
By Armistice Day the circulation had jumped to 500,-
000 copies a month and scores of the readers were send-
ing letters describing their ailments. The publisher
read most of these personally, fascinated that so many
other people should be passing through crises similar
to his own. He was even more fascinated when some
of the testimonials departed from the subject of health
and described the details of true-life comedies, tragedies
and obscenities.

Then came the Great Idea. An inner voice told Mac-
fadden that thousands of other people also longed to
peer into lighted windows, that the conventional maga-
zine with its rigid requirement of "plausibility" as the
basis of fiction failed to satisfy, that personal confes-
sions would delight vast hordes never before tempted to
read anything. And so True Story Magazine came into
existence in 1919. It never occurred to Macfadden to
doubt any of the stories in the first few issues and in a
few years he realized that he had discovered a mine
wherein lay gold beyond his wildest dreams. The sales
soared from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 copies monthly.
To-day the True Story Group, consisting of True
Story, True Detective Mysteries, True Romances and
True Experiences, is eagerly purchased annually by
36,000,000 naive souls. Physical Culture, dean of the
Macfadden magazines, still remains at 500,000 a month,
but it is a very valuable property because of the par-
ticular class to which it appeals. No other is so ready
to answer the advertisements of those promising

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The Father of Physcultopathy

health, beauty, bulging muscles and cures for baldness.

Not long ago an associate editor of True Story
dropped into a barber shop near Columbus Circle for a
shave. To his surprise, the barber greeted him by
name.

"How did you know me?" he asked.

"Oh," said the man, "I've seen you up in the office.
I used to be on the editorial staff of True Story."

The incident explains the signal success of the publi-
cation and why none of the competitors which followed
it into the field has seriously encroached upon its circu-
lation. The editor of True Story has very little to say
about the material published. The stories are selected
by an ever-changing "editorial board" consisting of
barbers, shop-girls, plumbers and elevator men; men
and women, in brief, from the mental strata by which
the magazine is bought. As soon as one of them ac-
quires a professional viewpoint he is replaced by some
one else. The only question they ask themselves re-
garding a story is "Do I like it?" and those which
receive their commendation go into the magazine. All
the editor can do is to correct spelling and the more
atrocious grammatical errors. Literary style is for-
bidden. It is widely believed, except by the readers of
True Story, that the magazine is written by hacks at
two or three cents a word, that "I Was Only a Girl and
I Didn't Know" is really the work of an ex-newspaper
man with a cigarette between his lips and a bottle of
gin by his side. The serials, it is true, are written to
order. But most of the short stories are received in
response to prize contests and are, at most, whipped

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into shape by staff men. A smudged, pencil-written,
amateurish manuscript is greeted with cheers at the
Macfadden Building. Any professional writer is wel-
come to contribute, of course, but he is required to sign
an affidavit to the effect that his story is based on fact
and that the "people are real people", whatever that
may mean.

The motto of the magazine is "Truth is Stranger
than Fiction" and this adage was unexpectedly demon-
strated, to the acute distress of Mr. Macfadden and his
associates, when a thriller in the January, 1927, issue
resulted in libel suits totaling $500,000. Certainly the
case will become a classic in the annals of libel litigation
for it turned out that the author of a poignant yarn
called "The Revealing Kiss" had used the names of
eight men and women actually living in Scranton, Pa.,
and had attributed to them highly scandalous actions.
Macfadden was, of course, an innocent bystander in the
case, for the writer had evolved this as an ingenious and
malicious scheme to pay back an imagined grudge
against the Scrantonites. The publisher's attorneys, as
can be well imagined, are having their skill amply tested
in preparing a defense. Truth, as every newspaper
man knows, is the usual answer to charges of libel. In
this case, however — and surely the incident is one from
"Alice in Wonderland" — the plea must be exactly the
reverse ; that the story in True Story obviously was un-
true. The action is still pending, but the Macfadden
legal staff is determined that so embarrassing a suit
shall not again be filed and now all names, dates and
places are changed before stories are printed.

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The Father of Physcultopathy

IV

Bernarr Macfadden is not wholly inexplicable, it is
my contention, insofar as his physical culture enthusi-
asms are concerned. His magazines and his tabloid
daily are quite unbelievable, however, and some of the
details of his public and private life are, to put it mildly,
puzzling. One decides, upon gazing with awe at his
semi-nude photographs, that he is primarily an exhibi-
tionist, a sublimated classical dancer, an actor gone
astray. Then one notices that his clothes are baggy and
unkempt, that his shoes are old and unpolished and
that he takes not the slightest pride in his personal ap-
pearance. He is a modest enough person, if somewhat
self-conscious, who scorns the advantages and refine-
ments his wealth now makes possible. I am told that
he still sleeps on the floor, in a sleeping bag he has
owned for decades, because he is convinced that this is
good for his spine. His only extravagance seems to
be a new home at Englewood, N. J., and one or two
excellent motors. On the other hand he has no reticence
regarding things most men would prefer sheltered from
the public glare. Photographs of his daughters fre-
quently appear in his publications, occasionally with the
title "Macfaddenettes". They have been on the plat-
form when he has lectured and pointed to as excellent
specimens of young womanhood. The names of eight
of his nine children begin with "B" as does, by strange
coincidence, that of Bernarr Macfadden. He caused to
be printed in his newspaper last December reproduc-
tions of his personal Christmas card and under them

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cuts of those designed by Tuck of London for King
George and the Prince of Wales.

Like so many other big New Yorkers, he has recently
engaged a press agent. Having first considered en-
gaging Ivy Lee, he later turned to Edward L. Bernays,
only slightly less renowned in the public relations field.
Mr. Bernays has already pulled one big stunt; that of
persuading the amiable Mayor Walker to receive his
client at the City Hall. This historic event was duly
described in a full page in the Graphic while even the
other New York dailies carried a paragraph or two
about it. A similar feature printed at approximately
the same time told of a dinner given the physical cul-
turist by members of Parliament on the occasion of a
visit to London. This time the layout included pictures
of Daniel Webster and Bernarr Macfadden over a cap-
tion setting forth that these two were "among the few
Americans in history" to have been thus honored.

Macfadden was already nationally known as a writer
when he announced in 1924 that he intended to start a
daily newspaper. He had never attempted, it is true,
to repeat his early experiments as a novelist or to write
fiction, as such. Among his better known works are:
"How to Develop Muscular Power and Beauty", "The
Building of Vital Power", "New Hair Culture", "The
Encyclopedia of Physical Culture", "Manhood and
Marriage", "Vitality Supreme", "Strengthening Eyes",
"Making Old Bodies Young", "Womanhood and Mar-
riage", "Eating for Health and Strength", "The Truth
About Tobacco", "The Miracle of Milk", "Tooth
Troubles", "Physical Culture for Baby".

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The Father of Physcultopathy

Tabloid journalism, at first greeted with aloof amuse-
ment by the other newspapers, had proved a success in
New York when Macfadden revealed the principles of
his journal. It was, he said, to be no filthy, muck-
raking sheet but a very Galahad among newspapers
which would be welcomed in every home. It would seek
to end intolerance and work for the abolition of all
forms of government censorship, "the elimination of
graft and favoritism in politics and business", "direct
primaries for all elective officials" and (plank fourteen
in its platform) :

"Protection of commuters against the policy of rail-
roads that requires photographs and other inconvenient
methods of identification. Why should the whole public
be classed with convicts?"

But within a few weeks the Graphic had demon-
strated that both its proprietor's promise of "fit for the
home" and its masthead slogan "Nothing But the
Truth" were to be liberally interpreted. Among the
early headlines and features were: "Unmarried Mother
Publicly Shamed by Court Order", "I Did Not Marry
My Brother", "Stick to Women, They're Safer than
Horses", "My Life as Marta Fara, the Strong Woman,
Was a Fake and Torture", "Unwed Mother Unafraid
to Die". The newest tabloid plunged at once into a
circulation race with Hearst's Evening Journal and
with the other picture papers, by now so popular with
their public that although nominally morning editions
they sold well into the afternoon. With the Graphic's

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first anniversary, September 15, 1925, Macfadden con-
gratulated himself on the success of the year, saying:

"Sensational some of our news HAS been. Dramatic
has been its presentation. But it has always been true
to facts".

By the middle of the second year all restraint had been
abandoned. Knowingly or not, the Graphic was cater-
ing to a class other newspapers had ignored, those with
twisted mentalities the world calls perverts. "Tots Tor-
tured by Cult to Drive Out Devil", was one good, clean
story. " *Le's Be Lesbians' Urges Cult Woman" was
another. Others were "Three Women Lashed in Nude
Orgy" and "White Sweetie Exposes Secret of Alice
Kip's Weird Love Power." The last was a postlude to
the indecent public trial, featured by other newspapers
as well as the Graphic, in which the son of a well-known
New York family had sought to free himself from mar-
riage to a young woman of Negro blood.

And then appeared the eminent Edward W. Brown-
ing, a character created by the gods for tabloid editors
to play with. His early adoption of Mary Spas and his
discovery that she was not quite the tiny tot he had
supposed was the opening number. Then came his
marriage to "Peaches" Heenan and the famous suit for
annulment. Here the Graphic took part in the mad
competition for circulation, spread its odd composite
pictures on the front page daily and added, but only
temporarily, 250,000 readers. The antics of the
Graphic were more than many citizens could bear. A
number of municipalities prohibited its sale and John

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S. Sumner of the Society for the Suppression of Vice
started criminal proceedings. Even though the de-
parted Comstock must have been watching from
Heaven, the courts held that the Graphic had been
within the law. Prior to the court action Mr. Mac-
f adden had deprecated, in a signed editorial, tendencies
on the part of other journals to play up the case:

"To some newspapers a case of this kind is a glorious
opportunity. They feast upon its abnormal features.
They make it a drunken revelry of literary debauchery.
They twist and turn in every way to bring out its
lascivious character. And intelligent people who read
the lines — and between the lines — are disgusted beyond
words. The Graphic may have played up the case
while it was news. But it has never stooped to wallow
knee deep in the mire and filth that a certain phase of
the case represented".

It is impossible, obviously, to explain such an edi-
torial in the light of the Graphic's treatment of the
Browning case. Either Macfadden did not know what
had been published or he is the most abysmal hypocrite
since the beginning of time. I hold to the theory I have
expressed already; that his mind simply fails to discern
the ugly and the vulgar, that he actually did not appreci-
ate what his editors were doing. Let us be similarly
charitable regarding the nauseating stories of execu-
tions, the accounts of the last days of Ruth Snyder in
the death house at Sing Sing prison. Daily, for weeks
prior to the date of her execution, the Graphic published
what purported to be despatches from her cell setting

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forth her last conversations and actions, even her last
thoughts. It is worth noting, in view of the Graphic's
slogan, "Nothing But the Truth", that the law does
not permit interviews with the condemned, that prison
attendants are forbidden to discuss them, that the
Graphic's reporter never saw Mrs. Snyder, that his
stories were based, at the best, on hearsay. I conclude
this appreciation of Macfadden and his publications
with an editorial note following one of these fabrica-
tions, a note promising further details of a murderess
about to die and typical of the nature of the articles:

"Don't fail to read to-morrow's Graphic! An in-
stallment that thrills and stuns. A story that fairly
pierces the heart and reveals Ruth Snyder's last
thoughts on earth; that pulses the blood as it discloses
her final letters.

"Think of it! A woman's final thoughts just before
she is clutched in the deadly snare that sears and burns
and FRIES — and KILLS. Her very last words! Exclu-
sively in to-morrow's Graphic!"

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FRONT PAGE STUFF

LIFE BEING WH^VT IT IS IN THESE HURRIED TIMES, WHEN

all men run and few read more than the headlines, press
agents have become as necessary to the best people as
white-tiled bathrooms. Both Presidents of the nation
and presidents of corporations employ them. The so-
ciety pusher, arranging the first matrimonial voyage of
her lovely daughter, finds them indispensable. They
sing the praises, or mute the infamies, of baseball
players, visiting Queens, gamblers, bishops, publicists
and litterateurs. Jumbo the Elephant, if he were alive
to-day, would have a public relations counsel.

But Samuel Untermyer of New York, once legal
physician to Big Business but now its hated enemy, has
been landing on the front pages for almost forty years
quite unaided. His name has been in the headlines thou-
sands of times. There are probably more clippings
about him in the morgues of the New York newspapers
than about any other private citizen, so-called, save
Harry K. Thaw. Scandal has never touched him; ad-
verse criticism but rarely. The publicity that inundates
him never sours to notoriety. A millionaire many times
over, able to command enormous fees from such clients
as he still serves, he has been hailed in countless news
stories and scores of editorials as a defender of the poor
and oppressed. Within the past few years, perhaps,

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his fame has been narrowed and localized to a certain
extent. He is no longer quite the national figure that
he once was. But in his home town he continues to be
very much of a fellow and the city editors of the New
York papers assign their star reporters when Sam goes
into action.

Some men achieve fame by giving away large sums
of money and seeing that their fellow citizens are duly
informed. Others, particularly lawyers and clergymen,
become known because they are ready at any and all
times to express opinions on any and all subjects.
Every newspaper reporter has a private list of such
amiable gentlemen, and he calls upon them when his
managing editor instructs him to find out how the Best
Thought runs on some burning questions of the day.
But Mr. Untermyer is on none of these lists, nor does
he accept membership on silly public committees, or sit
on the dais at sillier banquets. The clippings, some now
yellow and crumbling, that form his history describe
simply a man of furious energy and tireless activity,
with great talents as a lawyer, and especially as a cross-
examiner. From the first he has given his own show.

Mr. Untermyer is now seventy years old. The leader
of relatively few causes, he has been through most of his
life what his enemies have called a persecutor and his
friends a prosecutor. He has attacked such holy insti-
tutions as the Stock Exchange, the House of Morgan,
the life insurance companies, the New York transit com-
panies and the real estate interests. He trusts, it would
seem, no one — particularly the intelligence of attorneys
associated with him. A Democrat, he has small faith in

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the honesty of Democrats or Republicans. He believes,
as he once told friends, that it "would be an excellent
thing to have a permanent snooping committee always
at work in New York City" because, once the back of
the investigator is turned, nearly all "officials are
crooked".

And yet, despite his undoubted ability and the un-
doubted worth of his accomplishments, there are few
men so cordially disliked as Sam. He is hated for a
number of reasons. He is dictatorial, a bitter critic,
and a slave-driver. He patronizes and attempts to
order around the newspaper men who print his stuff.
He knows his own brilliance and can conceive no reason
for concealing his knowledge of it. He believes that
most men are dull in comparison to himself and occa-
sionally he flatly says so. He thinks that his record
entitles him to the position, somehow never quite ac-
corded him by his profession, of stellar investigator of
the age, if not of all history. And he is inclined to be
disparaging when some other attorney launches into
the same high enterprise, thus hogging his own place
on the first page.

Some years ago, for instance, an investigation of the
always perplexing transit problem in New York was
under way. The Legislature had passed a fantastic
bill giving the city the right to purchase all of the ex-
isting subway, elevated and street-car lines. It did not
have the money, of course, nor had it the slightest pros-
pect of getting the millions needed. But public hearings
were duly held at which the value of the properties was
discussed at great length. The special counsel in charge

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was former Supreme Court Justice Clarence J. Shearn,
a man of great ability. He probed his way through the
verbose testimony of technical valuations experts. He
brought out the truth, or an approximation to it, re-
garding the real worth of various transit corporations.
And the papers unanimously applauded his work. But
Samuel Untermyer, down in his office in the Equitable
Building, read the accounts with doubt. He directed
the attention of a chance visitor to a long row of thick
volumes, the printed transcript of the celebrated Money
Trust investigation of 1912 for which he had been the
examiner.

"Shearn's doing pretty well," he said, "but it's a
complicated job. One needs training for an investiga-
tion of that sort."

II

It may or may not be true that other lawyers lack
Mr. Untermyer's genius for legal exploration. But
there is not the slightest doubt that he surpasses all
his contemporaries in the art of making the first page.
The secret of it is that he has an uncanny sense of
what is news. He has, like Roosevelt, all the instincts
of a trained newspaper man. He is aware that head-
lines leap out of clear-cut and novel sensations, out of
the development of new and startling facts, out of the
stirring up, as Kipling said, of an Awesome Stink. He
knows the value of suspense and climax. For weeks
on end, during a legislative investigation of the housing
situation in New York in 1920, he and his activities
occupied the most prominent position on page 1 of all

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the local newspapers. It was, during some of the hear-
ings, my privilege to report them for an afternoon
paper.

Mr. Untermyer rarely failed to draw from the wit-
ness on the stand some damaging statement in time for
the first edition. He rarely failed to provide another
lead for the early Wall Street run. And late in the
day he would invariably drag out something else that
was fresh and exciting, so that new headlines might
replace those of the morning and early afternoon, and
edify the crowds on their way home from work. He
proceeded swiftly and surely to each of his series of
climaxes. When one was about ready to break I used
to think — possibly it was only imagination — that he
would look over to the press-table to make certain that
we were on the job and knew that something was com-
ing. Sometimes, of course, a witness would prove dis-
appointing. It may have been that some associate
counsel had erred in the preliminaries. Or perhaps,
but more unusually, the witness was a facile and skill-
ful villain, a match for the most hard-boiled and search-
ing of interrogators. Thus once in a while Mr. Unter-
myer found himself, late in the afternoon, without a
new sensation for the morning newspaper men. But
even on these occasions he was never in the least dis-
turbed, for he could always fall back on the tried and
true expedient of making thunderous charges.

"This has gone far enough!" he would say, taking
off his tortoise-rim glasses and glaring with indignation
and horror at the slightly bewildered State senator who
happened to be presiding. "This witness is beyond

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question the most evasive that I, in my long experience
at the Bar, have ever encountered. It is fortunate that
his testimony is not needed. The evidence already
shows the true situation. I charge, Mr. Chairman, that
the interests he represents constitute one of the most
vicious, the most rigid and the most dastardly combina-
tions in the history of monopolies restraining trade! I
charge that they bleed the public for millions each
year!"

It is to be noted that Mr. Untermyer seldom makes
the charge that these criminalities have been actually
proved. There is usually at least a chance that no
criminal act has been shown and that nothing will ever
be done about it. But the gentlemen of the press know
that such statements before a legislative committee are
privileged and that libel suits cannot follow. So the
next morning the newspapers scream in headlines that
"Untermyer at Housing Probe Charges Combine;
Lays Millions Yearly Toll to New Trust".

There are few more entertaining ways of spending an
afternoon than listening to him conducting a case. He
belongs very definitely to the "Answer Yes or No!"
school of lawyers. He permits few explanatory an-
swers and when a witness reads a statement into the
record he promptly cross-examines on the basis of it.
There is, in short, no softness in him. Samuel Unter-
myer is a small man, almost dapper in his meticulous
attention to the details of dress ; but his size is forgotten
because of his great leonine head. Inevitably in his
buttonhole there is an orchid, grown under his personal
supervision at his country place. An underling carries

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several of these blooms to court in a damp paper bag, so
that he may change to a fresh one during the noon re-
cess. Always the center of the picture, he manages to
give the court, the jury and the spectators to under-
stand that every opposition witness is a master of eva-
sion and probably a perjurer. Beyond all cross-
examiners I have ever heard he knows where he is going.
His questions follow in swift series. The path to his
climax stretches straight ahead of him. All of this is
usually clear to the court, the jury and the disinter-
ested persons present, but through some magic he
always keeps the man on the stand from knowing what
it is all about. Consequently, that gentleman is trapped
almost infallibly into the very admissions that his pur-
suer is seeking.

One of the stage props that Mr. Untermyer uses most
frequently is his pair of shell-rimmed glasses. When a
witness is recalcitrant, he snatches them off so that,
ostensibly, he can better view the wretch. Actually,
Sam is able to see very little without his spectacles.
But the gesture is devastating.

Ill

It was toward the end of 1910, the close of the deso-
late decade that was the stepchild of the 90's, that the
career of Samuel Untermyer took form and shape and
caused him first to be known as something of a publicist.
He was already very wealthy, having been an extraor-
dinarily successful corporation attorney almost from
the date of his admission to the Bar in 1879. William
Howard Taft, it will be recalled, was then Chief Execu-

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tive of the nation, and rapidly losing the popularity
which his contagious chuckle and his fondness for
possum had brought him. The panic of 1907 was still
very fresh in the mind of the public, and it was becom-
ing apparent that many wealthy men had grown more
wealthy as a result of that grotesque hysteria. Down
at Princeton, N. J., a serious professor of history had
left his books to become Governor of New Jersey and
was talking about the necessity of revising the country's
banking system so that greater elasticity of credit would
be possible in time of stress.

Mr. Untermyer knew the trend of the times. Dur-
ing the months that followed the birth of 1910 he was
found making public addresses on the injustice suffered
by the poor under the yoke of the rich. He offered the
not entirely original thought that men may be born free
and equal but that life swiftly rectifies that error. In
April of that year he shocked his fellow attorneys by a
speech in which he intimated that the bandage across
the eyes of Justice had slipped and that she was guilty
of smiling, with a come hither glance, toward Big Busi-
ness. The opulent law-breaker, Mr. Untermyer said,
was well protected from the dangers and obscenities of
jail. The poor man, on the other hand, found the law
swift and terrible in its righteous vengeance :

"Nowhere in our social fabric is the discrimination
between the rich and the poor so emphasized to the
average citizen as at the bar of justice. Nowhere
should it be less. . . . Money secures the ablest and
most adroit counsel. . . . Evidence can be gathered
from every source. The poor must be content to forego
all these advantages".

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This was, of course, heresy in a lawyer. But the ad-
dress, and particularly that portion of it which called
for the creation of a Public Defender, was duly re-
corded in the press. During 1911 Mr. Untermyer con-
tinued to bite the hands that had fed him for so long.
He began to say nasty things about the trusts and com-
binations that were the pride of the G. O. P. and had
survived the loud talk and the Big Stick of Theodore
Roosevelt. The good-natured Taft had, of course, done
nothing to curb the powers of these octopuses. So Mr.
Untermyer found many to applaud when, in November
of 1911, he made a speech in which he intimated that
Steps Must be Taken. A month later he made one of
the first of the sweeping accusations that he was
destined to make at such frequent intervals during the
rest of his life. There was in existence, he charged, an
effective Money Trust, and through it the whole finan-
cial resources of the nation were controlled by a few
men. This was "likely to lead to an oligarchy more
despotic and more dangerous to industrial freedom than
anything civilization has yet known". He went on:

"There has been greater concentration of the Money
Power in the past five or ten years . . . than in the
preceding fifty years. The process of absorption is
likely to continue until a few groups absolutely domi-
nate the financial situation of the country. ... It has
come to pass that less than a dozen men in the City of
New York are for all practical purposes in control of
the direction of at last 75 per cent of the deposits of
the leading trust companies and banks in the city and
of allied institutions in various parts of the country".

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It was true talk, all too true. The newspapers began
to take notice. They failed to recall that Mr. Unter-
myer had been personal counsel to the notorious James
Hazen Hyde prior to the life insurance scandal, that
he had received huge fees from the brewing interests
and was popularly thought to have been paid $750,000
for arranging the merger of the Utah Copper and the
Consolidated Copper Companies. Meanwhile at Wash-
ington the politicians (as usual, a year or two late)
started to give attention to the matter. In October,
1912, fortified with Congressional authority, the House
Committee on Banking and Currency began an investi-
gation. Mr. Untermyer was chosen as chief counsel
and soon got control of the committee. The chairman
and theoretical leader was the Hon. Arsene P. Pujo, a
statesman from torrid Louisiana, but Mr. Pujo, al-
though Sam would have done so anyhow, agreed to let
the chief counsel run things. He started in with char-
acteristic vigor. He issued stupendous statements
from his New York office — statements so lengthy that
along Park Row it began to be said of him that he
couldn't turn around in less than two columns. Lengthy
as they were, however, these handouts were usually hot
enough to land on the front pages. The members of
the Pujo Committee, reading the headlines, gradually
became slightly peeved. They craved, naturally
enough, some of the glory. So some of them began a
movement to have the chief counsel shoved in the back-
ground, to fix his status as an employee. When he
heard about this he hopped a train to the capital. After
the ensuing uproar died away it was announced from

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the committee's rooms that Sam would be the boss.
The hearing began in due time and Mr. Untermyer
swiftly demonstrated his immense knowledge of high
finance and his extraordinary ability and merciless
diligence as an examiner. He had plenty of nerve.
He hurled questions at J. P. Morgan the Elder, at
George F. Baker, at Frank M. Vanderlip, at Henry
P. Davison and at A. Barton Hepburn with the same
hearty zest that an ordinary attorney would show in
bullying a precinct detective at a burglary trial. And
the admissions that he obtained from their reluctant and
haughty lips justified most of the accusations about a
Money Trust that he had been making. Nor did he
fail to set up for himself all the psychological advan-
tages possible: as always, he was strong on the impon-
derables. On December 18, 1912, for instance, the
elder Morgan was rudely summoned to Washington by
a subpoena which called for his appearance at 10 o'clock.
He had never before been subjected to the plebeian in-
dignities of the witness-stand, but he entered the com-
mittee-room, flanked by high priced counsel, at the
scheduled hour. The hearing had not yet started and
Mr. Untermyer was fiddling with some papers. He
greeted Mr. Morgan courteously and signaled to the
chairman that he was ready to begin. The great banker
half started from his chair, assuming that he was to be
questioned immediately. But he sank back, somewhat
foolish looking, as Mr. Untermyer called the name of a
perfectly obscure person. Thus Mr. Morgan, who had
not been kept waiting for decades, was forced to sit
still, quiet and docile, while Sam interrogated unimpor-

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tant witnesses for hours. He seethed furiously, being
seventy-five years old and entitled by the national mores
to great respect. By the time he was eventually called
to the stand, late in the afternoon, he was almost
apoplectic.

Nevertheless, Mr. Morgan did pretty well as a wit-
ness. He testified for the balance of that day and all
of the next. He could not conceive, he said, that there
was any peril in great power resting with such reputable
men as, at the time, were supposed to be in control of
the financial situation in New York. He admitted,
deprecatingly, his own tremendous puissance and gave
his views on such matters as credit, character as col-
lateral, and the Best Interests of the Nation. Sam kept
plugging away in an effort to draw specific answers
about monopoly and competition from him. Finally
he succeeded and the transcript shows the following:

BY MR. UNTERMEYER: You are opposed to competi-
tion, are you not?

MR. MORGAN: No, I do not mind competition.

Q. You would rather have combination?

A. I would rather have combination.

Q. You would rather have combination than com-
petition?

A. Yes.

Mr. Untermyer continued his probing for months.
Witness after witness of national and international
prominence appeared in answer to the Pujo Commit-
tee's subpoenas. He charged this and he charged that.
He demonstrated that outsiders had precious little

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chance of getting into American industry in a big way
unless the Morgan-Baker group was willing. He
showed that the Clearing House Association exercised,
without a vestige of governmental control, despotic
power over the banks of the nation. He forced from
the Hon. George B. Cortelyou, Secretary of the Treas-
ury under Roosevelt, an admission that he had hurried
to New York during the panic with $39,000,000 in gov-
ernment funds and that he had meekly deposited these
at the direction of Mr. Morgan in various banks, the
names of which he could not remember. Mr. Cortelyou
admitted that the funds might have been used for the
relief of Stock Exchange gamblers instead of to save
tottering banks. But like most other investigations,
the Pujo inquiry was largely ineffective. The Stock
Exchange is still its own master and the Clearing House
Association does about what it likes. The voice of
Morgan speaks from the grave and has much of its old
power.

But one thing appeared out of the countless ques-
tions and answers and the thousands of pages of testi-
mony of the Money Trust investigation. This was the
figure of Samuel Untermyer, clothed in a new dignity
and famous throughout the land. He had proved his
worth. He had become a shining defender of the Plain
People against the machinations of wealth and power.

IV

During the sessions of the Lockwood Housing Com-
mittee a few years ago it was Mr. Untermyer's custom
to receive some of his newspaper friends on Sunday at

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his glamorous country estate, "Greystone", just above
Yonkers. "Greystone", it is interesting to note, was
once the home of Samuel J. Tilden, one of the few early
American lawyers whose investigating genius was
comparable to that of Mr. Untermyer. It was he who
exposed the Tweed Ring of Tammany Hall and who,
as Governor of New York, had ever been hot on the
trail of graft and dishonesty in every form. Sam
bought the home from the Tilden estate in 1900 and
lavished $100,000 in money and far more in time and
affection in refurbishing the old place. The Sunday
visits of the newspaper men to his home were primarily,
of course, for the purpose of getting stories for Monday
morning. Sam never disappointed them in this respect
and occasionally, to some of those who had known him
the longest, revealed himself as a man of sentiment and
feeling who, if he was a tyrant in his office and a
berserker in court, loved in his home his flowers and
trees and narrow paths cushioned with fragrant pine
needles. "Greystone" faces the immense sweep of the
Hudson and its gardens rest on a slope that leads down
to the river. Except during the Winter they are
gorgeous and colorful. And when snow covers them
Mr. Untermyer leads his guests through greenhouses
where there are orchids of such wild beauty and in such
profusion that they would dazzle the eyes of even a
Park avenue blonde.

On a number of occasions, following the more sensa-
tional of his public services, Samuel Untermyer has
been talked of for public office. Not seriously, it is true.
The organizations of both parties have small use for a

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man who holds views as strenuous and individualistic as
does Sam or for one so likely to gallop off the reserva-
tion and start an investigation of the boys who placed
him in office. And Mr. Untermyer is too wise and prac-
tical a person to be interested in the futile support of
independent citizens who annually hold public meetings
at the Hotel Astor and designate, in the name of Better
Government, public figures for office. There is one job,
though, that Mr. Untermyer would like to have been
offered, and if a city administration had been intelligent
enough to tender it he might have accepted. Once, un-
der pledge that no mention of it would be made at that
time, he confided this ambition. He would like very
much, he said, to be New York Park Commissioner.
He was standing in his gardens at the moment and as
he spoke gestured toward the flowers.

"As Park Commissioner," he said, "I could make the
parks of New York really beautiful. They ought to be
planned out, like the parks of European cities. I've
made a study of the subject. If I were Commissioner
I'd be glad to spend a lot of my own money. It would
be a pleasant job, working among flowers—"

Mr. Untermyer does not spend his money carelessly.
On another occasion, walking through the grounds at
"Greystone", he pointed to a small stone fountain. As
he did so he grinned with naive delight.

"See that?" he demanded. "That used to be on John
D. Rockefeller's place at Tarrytown. The old man
didn't have any use for it; it didn't fit in. I offered him
$125 but he said it was worth $150. I stuck to my price,

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though, and he waited a year before finally coming
around."

It was not, of course, the $25 that interested him. It
was the principle of the thing; and the distinction of
getting the best of the dime-dispensing Mr. Rocke-
feller. Incidentally, although Mr. Untermyer rarely
gives away large sums of money, he is not stingy. He
pays his hired hands well, far above the market rates.
But he expects them to accomplish several times as
much work as do other employers. And he can, if he
chooses, boast that he asks none of them to labor more
furiously than he does himself. His life has been filled
with crowded hours and still is, if to a lesser degree.
Lately he has been allowing himself more leisure, and is
becoming increasingly fond of floating up and down
the tranquil rivers of Florida in his houseboat. It is
seldom now that he calls for the editions of the morning
papers, as he once did, at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Mr. Untermyer was born in 1858 in Lynchburg, Va.,
the son of a Jewish tobacco planter who had great faith
in the cause of the South. It is related that Isadore
Untermyer had invested heavily in Confederate bonds
as an outward sign of this faith and that the shock and
grief of the news of the surrender of Lee killed him.
In 1865, then, with Sam only seven years old, Mrs.
Untermyer was left penniless in a country devastated
by war. A woman of vigor, she promptly moved to
New York with her three sons. There young Unter-
myer was sent to public school and to the College of the

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Front Page Stuff

City of New York. He attended night sessions of the
Columbia Law School by working as an errand boy in
the daytime. He was admitted to the Bar in 1879 and
immediately started on his swift journey to fortune
and the front pages.

One of his first big cases was as counsel for a Phila-
delphia brewer whose partner had conspired with their
attorney to obtain $140,000 in beer profits. In those
more simple days the thought of a lawyer engaged in
conspiracy caused considerable excitement. Sam then
began his habit of winning cases, and, despite a costly
and more experienced battery of lawyers on the other
side, came through with $52,000 in damages. The case
aroused wide interest among other gentlemen engaged
in the manufacture of suds. Mr. Untermyer was re-
tained by a number of them within a short time and
even managed a divorce case for one of the beer barons.
One of his biggest jobs was arranging a deal whereby
an English syndicate bought up some breweries in the
United States for the purpose of distributing, to Eng-
lish investors who did not dream of the unhappy days of
Prohibition, some $80,000,000 in stock. By the end of
the 'nineties, Mr. Untermyer was one of the leading cor-
poration attorneys in America. He told Big Business
how things could be done. He saved $6,000,000 or so
for the bondholders of the United States Shipbuilding
Corporation, who confronted an elaborate, but so he con-
tended, phony reorganization plan. Meanwhile he
gained respectability. He became a member of the
Lotos, the Lawyers', the Manhattan, the Democratic

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and — who did not? — the Press clubs. He acquired a
yacht, his country place and a magnificent town house
on Fifth Avenue. And in 1900, the newspaper files
show, indignant citizens of Yonkers complained to the
police that he was exceeding the speed limit of eight
miles an hour by driving furiously to the railroad station
behind his team of horses. He denied the charge, in a
letter to the editors of the New York papers, and pro-
tested that he was a law-abiding citizen.

Between 1905 and 1907 he was very much interested
in showing prize collie dogs. One of his rivals was the
elder Morgan, who had been gaining relaxation in this
way for some years and was in the habit of carrying off
most of the blues. Competition between the two canine
fanciers became increasingly keen and it is possible that
it was not made more friendly by the fact that Mr.
Untermyer had angered Mr. Morgan by his criticism
of the shipbuilding trust. In February, 1907, both Mr.
Morgan and Mr. Untermyer were leaning over the ring
at the Madison Square Garden as the judges made their
final deliberations. Suddenly the financier's eyes
gleamed with satisfaction. His pup had -won! In
order to get down into the ring to pat his pet Mr.
Morgan had to pass the attorney. He did so hurriedly,
almost knocking Mr. Untermyer aside in his haste. It
was a bitter pill for Sam, but he was not yet licked.
He cabled to England for the best pedigreed collies to
be had. And in a few weeks his dogs had their day.
They cleaned up at the Boston show and Mr. Morgan
was left ignominiously biting his finger nails.

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VI

In a confidential mood Mr. Untermyer sometimes
admits that he derives considerable satisfaction from
reducing to absurdities the revered figures of the busi-
ness world.

"These fellows," he murmurs, thinking of some of
the very important gentlemen who have squirmed under
his cross-examination, "think no one can question what
they do. I like to show them they're wrong!"

The funny thing about it is that he becomes highly
indignant himself and completely huffy when some one
questions his own actions or judgment. In the offices
which he shares with his son in the Equitable Building
he permits no contradictions. He carries, figuratively,
a signed resignation in his vest pocket when he is counsel
for an investigating committee, and is ready to slap it
on the table in the event that any one insists upon a
course of which he does not approve. It is partly this
dictatorial note in his character that makes him so cor-
dially detested by many of those who have come into
contact with him. Once, for instance, he was in the
habit of ordering that his public statements be "printed
in full or not at all". For a time he actually got away
with this; until some of the more outspoken newspaper
men cured him by handing the statement back and de-
claring that they were willing to make no guarantees.
It has long been his custom to telephone city editors
when some mistake has appeared in a story about him
and demand corrections.

He has a savage sense of the humorous, as applied to

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other people, and slight ability to appreciate a joke on
himself. When he was very much in the limelight a
cartoonist made a drawing of him, accentuating the
Hebraic slant of his profile and the bushy nature of his
hair. Most public men are inclined to relish such cari-
catures and some time later this particular artist sent
the original of his drawing to Untermyer. Sam looked
at it without the vestige of a smile and turned abruptly
to some papers.

"I don't look that bad!" he grunted.

He was once actively interested in politics, despite
his refusal to consider public office for himself. He was
a delegate to a number of national conventions, and was
usually considerable of a nuisance to the political
geniuses who prefer to have conventions managed from
smoke-laden hotel rooms instead of from the floor. One
of the few times in his life that he has backed the wrong
horse was when he thought Williams Jennings Bryan a
man "whose sincerity and ability are conceded by the
fair-minded men of all parties". He was an enthusiastic
supporter of Woodrow Wilson, and labored with great
devotion for the man and the principles for which he
was fighting. He never, at least publicly, wholly made
up his mind about the Hon. John F. Hylan, one-time
mayor of New York. He worked for Hylan's election
in 1918, but three years later called him "a bumptious
vulgarian", "a political mountebank" and "a profaner
of synagogues". And then in 1923, despite these harsh
words, he wrote Mr. Hylan that he had been "the only
mayor in years with the courage to make a fight against
corporate greed".

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Front Page Stuff

Sam, it must be admitted, is once in a while muddle-
headed despite the clarity of his vision in the courtroom.
And there is in him, too, an unexpected softness that
sometimes betrays him. He was ruthless in sending the
late Brindell, the notorious labor grafter, to jail. And
yet, not long afterward, he petitioned Governor Smith to
parole the man because he had been told that his mother
was ill. He worships his children as he did his wife, a
Gentile, who died a few years ago. One son, Alvin, is
a lawyer and once wanted to go into politics. Mr.
Utermyer gave liberally of his money and time in two
unsuccessful attempts to satisfy his son's ambition. But
Alvin was defeated, first for the Legislature and later
for the Supreme Court.

"I have made enough money," said Mr. Utermyer at
about the time of the housing investigation. "More
would only bother me. Now I am going to help my
fellow men."

The cynical men who make newspapers and who heard
of this pointed out that many millionaires, late in life,
adopt this noble policy. "Writing obituaries", they
call it, and they said that Sam was desirous of favorable
notices on the day of his death. They were cruelly un-
just. Sam is little interested in post-mortem headlines.
He prefers that the pieces about him be printed while
he is alive and can still frame their wording and attempt
to dictate how they shall appear. The charge is unjust,
too, because he began his crusades against privilege and
unfair monopoly many years ago, when his expectation
of life was measured in decades. Now, seventy years
old, he has practiced law for forty-nine years. He has

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met and vanquished the leaders of the Bar during two
generations. He has probed into the hidden affairs of
banks, trust companies, life insurance companies, manu-
facturers, labor leaders, politicians, industrialists, finan-
ciers and all the conglomeration of affairs and men that
make America. No one has ever been able to tell, prob-
ably not even Sam himself, where one of his investiga-
tions was going to lead or upon whose toes it was likely
to tread. The only thing that Mr. Untermyer has
never investigated is an investigating committee. Pos-
sibly he will do this before he dies. No man could do
it better.

160

WHEELS IN HIS HEAD

FRANK HEDLEY, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF

that ever-present evil, the Interborough Rapid Transit
Company in New York City, causes despair in the
hearts of those among his associates who believe in that
modern traction corporation slogan, "The Public Be
Kidded".

"The much talked of patience and good nature of the
New Yorker," he remarked on one occasion as letters
of complaint piled up on his desk, "is good to read
about, but I have failed to discover any of it."

Similarly, when an investigator reported that con-
gestion on the subway was due to the stupidity of a pub-
lic which declined to ride in the end cars, he became
heavily sarcastic.

"The public to blame!" he snorted. "The public is
never to blame. You take it from me, the railroads are
to blame for everything."

Diplomacy is, in brief, not in the man. The average
politician believes that a lengthy investigation can solve
any problem, and therefore creates boards and com-
missions to remedy the transit tangle by the question
and answer method. Iledley, who is certain that only a
higher fare and more trains will do the job, resents the
frequency with which he is subpoenaed to make an office
holder's holiday. He becomes a cocky, facetious, irri-

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tating witness who refuses to hide his emotions.

"I will study the situation," he said during one of
these inquisitions, "and then do as I please."

Another time, on a cold December day, he was sum-
moned to the chambers of the Public Service Commis-
sion and asked for an explanation of why the cars in
the subway were not properly heated. Had enough
heat been turned on? Hedley, taking the stand, gazed
across the room in which the hearing was being con-
ducted and shivered in an exaggerated manner.

"Are you cold, Mr. Hedley?" asked one of the com-
missioners.

"If I kept my cars as cold as this room," he replied
brightly, "you'd have me up here in a jiffy."

All these traits, admirable even if annoying, are
natural to a man whose life has been spent doing, with
familiar precision, those things that most men know
nothing of. I have never heard of a locomotive engi-
neer, the master of an ocean liner, an aviator or even a
taxicab chauffeur who suffered from an inferiority com-
plex. These men belong to what William McFee called
the "race apart". They look down from on high upon
lesser men who ride on their trains and their ships. And
Frank Hedley, for all his title of "President and Gen-
eral Manager" and his salary of $75,000 a year, finds
his chief satisfaction in being the man who runs the
trains.

"Any fool," he told an intimate some years ago, "could
be the president of a railroad company. But the general
manager has to know something."

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Wheels in His Head

There are many corporation presidents who would
envy him. The excitements of Hedley's life do not
consist of bond issues, mergers, sinking funds, interest
rates and Equipment Trust 6 per cent Gold Certifi-
cates, Series A. These matters he leaves, in large meas-
ure, to James F. Quackenbush, the I.R.T.'s able gen-
eral counsel and real administrative head. Hedley, by
choice just as much as through inability to solve finan-
cial puzzles, is content to be the operating genius. Each
morning he finds on his desk detailed reports of the
delays and minor accidents of the day before. He is
versed in such mysteries as car-miles, power consump-
tion and peak loads. Like a fireman, he is likely to be
called from his home in Yonkers at any hour of the
night to go to the scene of some accident. He has
given strict orders that he is to be summoned for any
unusual event and was filled with wrath a year ago when
two subway stations were bombed and when he first
heard of it from his morning paper. Some one at the
I.R.T. offices had forgotten to telephone.

When there is a strike, a frequent occurrence due to
the Interborough's mid- Victorian labor policies, Hed-
ley remains on duty until far into the night. He per-
sonally supervises the hiring of strike-breakers. He
rushes out to the yards to watch new men being trained,
often assists in giving lessons and assures the recruits
that they will be protected from violence. Heavy snow-
falls are not the menace to transportation in New York
they once were, due partly to the miles of subways that
are not affected and partly to a device invented by

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Hedley which scrapes snow and ice from the third rails.
But when there is an unsually bad storm Hedley is,
again, on the job. In the days when he was in charge
of several surface lines he not infrequently rode the
plows with his men and gloried in the physical battle
against the storm. To-day, and he regrets it, the process
of digging out can be supervised from a desk. For
years Hedley was beyond question the most expert rapid
transit man in the United States. Lately, however,
President William S. Menden of the Brooklyn-Man-
hattan Transit Company, has developed rapidly and
now rates as an equal, at least.

Hedley learned at an early age to work with his
hands; hands that had inherited the skill of a long line
of railroad men. He was twenty years old when he
gathered his machinist's tools into his kit, left his home
at Maidstone, England, landed in Manhattan and in-
formed the foreman of the Erie Railroad's machine
shops in Jersey City that he was ready to start work
at $2.40 a day. He was the fourth Hedley to have
been attracted by the smoke, the oil and the steam of a
railroad roundhouse. His great grand-uncle, the most
famous of them, had built the "Puffing Billy" near
Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1813, and was one of the claim-
ants to the fame of George Stephenson, generally given
credit for the invention of the steam locomotive.

When Hedley arrived in New York from Maidstone
in 1881 he was no immigrant youth wondering whether
the land of his adoption would prove cordial, fearful
that he might have to dig ditches to keep from starva-

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Wheels in His Head

tion. Locomotives, he was aware, were much the same
the world over and he knew that the trade he had mas-
tered in England would be equally useful in this coun-
try. It was not long before he had left the Erie shops,
of his own volition, to go to the New York Central.
Then he transferred himself to the Manhattan Ele-
vated where rickety steam locomotives were being used
and where the frequency with which they broke down
made the opportunities for advancement greater. By
1888, a short seven years after arriving in America,
Hedley was in Chicago assisting in the construction of
that city's elevated system. He was held there to
operate the lines after their completion and in 1903,
already widely known as an authority on rapid transit,
he was summoned to New York to take charge of the
subway system, about to begin operation. During the
twenty-five years of his command the original subways
have been vastly expanded and the elevated lines added
to the I.R.T. system. Hedley has, in addition, operated
many of the street car lines during periods when they
were in receivership.

Traces of Frank Hedley's English middle-class hered-
ity remain. He has, for instance, the British working
man's talent for thoroughness, his spirit of independence,
his belief in the obligation to do a full day's work. But
he has, at the same time, a vast contempt for many of
the abstractions that make practical things possible, a
disinclination for reading, a measure of obstinacy
which makes life for his subordinates none too happy
and which causes men to call him "impossible to work

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with". His rugged self-complacency gives way to out-
spoken indignation when he feels that he is not appre-
ciated.

None of these, though, can be gleaned from his ap-
pearance as he sits behind his desk in the lower Broad-
way offices of the Interborough and directs a transpor-
tation system which, on its subways alone, furnished
rides for more than 800,000,000 passengers during the
fiscal year which ended on June 30, 1927. Much as
Hedley may take pride in his other talents, he looks
very like any other high-priced executive. He smokes
incessantly, favoring a mild cigar which he has made
to his order and which bears his name on its tissue-
paper wrapper. Now sixty-seven years old, he has
snow-white hair and white mustaches. He holds him-
self unusually well. His resemblance to William Ho-
henzollern is, in fact, striking. Picture the former All
Highest in a modern business office, examining reports,
answering telephones, being disagreeable to assistants,
and you have an excellent portrait of the head of the
I.R.T. He finds pardonable satisfaction in his appear-
ance and could not conceal his delight when, some years
ago, the name "Handsome Hedley" was applied to him
at a private dinner. It does not disturb him to know
that the public considers him a stubborn person. One
of the pictures in his inner office is a cartoon published
in one of the tabloids. The sketch portrays him with an
egg-shaped head and carried the caption "Hard-boiled
Hedley, the Ten Minute Egg".

Hedley's fascination in the operating problems of the
Interborough, as distinct from its financial troubles, is

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Wheels in His Head

demonstrated by the many inventions that he has per-
fected. Among them is a "time-recorder-coaster" device
whereby motormen are checked on the amount of cur-
rent used on a run and are rewarded when they coast
as much as possible. Others are the multiple doors now
installed in subway trains, a device that reduces the
danger of telescoping in collisions and that has been
adopted on railroads all over the world, a steel trolley
truck also universally in use, and the third rail ice-
scraper.

His most notorious brain-child is the horribly noisy
nickel-in-the-slot turnstile in which he takes great pride.
His inventions have saved millions for the I.R.T. and
without them the company would have gone into bank-
ruptcy. Although Hedley frequently laments the com-
pany's poverty, he has really enjoyed enforcing the
economies that this makes necessary and has, according
to his custom, been defiant when called to account for
them. A few years ago he was haled before the authori-
ties following complaints that subway cars were filthy.
Of course they were filthy, said the Interborough presi-
dent. The company could not afford, on a five cent
fare, to provide clean windows.

"I saw a car with clean windows to-day," he remarked,
"and when I got back to the office I raised hell to find
out who cleaned those windows and spent all that
money."

It would be impossible for a man of Hedley's type to
become a swivel chair operator. Each morning he
drives to the city from his Yonkers home, but dismisses
his car at an uptown subway station. Entering a train,

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Big- Frogs

he enjoys all the sensations of a great man traveling
incognito. He listens, with an inward grin, to the
growls of the mob when a train is delayed. Almost
never, he has said, does his expert eye fail to make note
of some minor operating imperfection. He is known to
many of his employees and warns them, in friendly
fashion, when they perform their duties improperly.
He persuades himself, as did the late Judge Gary, that
the working man is essentially faithful and is led astray
only when outsiders paint extravagant pictures of higher
wages and call for a strike. To protect them, the com-
pany hires spies who report on unfortunate tendencies
toward leaving the fold of the Interborough Brother-
hood, the company union. Hedley admits that the men
are underpaid and his heart bleeds for them. He can
do nothing, however, as long as the present niggardly
fare is in force.

It is difficult, these days, for Hedley to do as much
manual work as he desires. Only infrequently are
there inventions to be perfected. To satisfy his urge
for physical labor he bought, years ago, a farm near
Bridgeport, Conn. Except for a month in the winter
when he plays golf in Florida, he goes to the farm
every week-end. It is his sole recreation and it is, he
makes clear, "no gentleman's farm". He has a few
cows and horses and hundreds of chickens. Guests in-
vited for a week-end are sometimes disconcerted, when
they arrive, by having tools thrust into their hands and
being told to mend a fence or dig a ditch. Their host,
they find, is building an addition, repairing plumbing
or fiddling with a traction device in his workshop. Their

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Wheels in His Head

assistance is needed. Hedley Hall has no butlers and
few servants; visitors very often find themselves faced
with cleaning up after dinner.

"I make them work if I can," Hedley explains. "It's
good for them."

171

UP FROM MARTYRDOM

AT A RECENT LEGISLATIVE SESSION IN THE SOVEREIGN, IF

frequently muggy, State of Alabama an irreverent and
disrespectful law-maker arose to introduce a resolution.
The preamble of this State paper called attention to re-
cent utterances by the Hon. J. Thomas Heflin, Ala-
bama's senior United States Senator, in which that
militant and industrious Protestant had taken some
shots at Governor Al Smith of New York and Pope
Pius XI of Rome. The resolution went on :

WHEREAS the United States of America is in grave
danger of an attack by the Pope of Rome :

WHEREAS except for the valor, bravery and foresight
of that great and eminent leader and statesman, the
Hon. J. Thomas Heflin, this country would be defense-
less against such an attack;

WHEREAS the Hon. J. Thomas Heflin should be in a
position where he can defend the country in person
against the impending attack of the Pope; now be it

RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of Ala-
bama that the President of the United States be re-
quested to appoint the Hon. J. Thomas Heflin an ad-
miral in the navy and place him in command of the
battleship West Virginia, with orders to anchor at New
York harbor;

RESOLVED FURTHER that the new admiral be instructed

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upon the appearance of the Pope on the water, in the
air, under the sea or in fancy — to fire unceasingly for
a period of twelve hours with 16-inch shells loaded with
the most deadly verbosity at the command of the ad-
miral.

But this merry jest was received in ominous silence
except for a few gleeful editorials in newspapers with
wet, pro-Catholic sympathies. Mr. Heflin will continue
to do his heavy firing from the floor of the Senate
Chamber instead of on the bounding main. And it is
just as well, for New York and the rest of the nation
have already a stalwart defender in the person of the
Hon. William H. Anderson, late of the Anti-Saloon
League and now the dominant personality in the Ameri-
can Protestant Alliance. Mr. Anderson is, in fact, the
parent of this new bulwark against the conspiracies of
the Vatican. It was, he says, "conceived in prayer
through suffering" while he languished in Sing Sing
prison, "wrongfully convicted of a fake offense by Po-
litical Romanism" because of what he had "accomplished
against it". The organization was first christened the
American Prohibition Protestant Patriotic Protective
Alliance, or A.P.P.P.P.A., but this was shortened after
a few months to the snappier American Protestant Al-
liance. Offices have been opened at 500 Fifth Avenue,
New York, and subscriptions are beginning to pour
in. Mr. Anderson is again happy; making speeches,
issuing pamphlets and sending broadsides to the news-
papers, just as he did back in the happy days when
national prohibition was merely a dream of the ladies
of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

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Up from Martyrdom

Unlike Senator Heflin and the Ku Klux Klan, how-
ever, Mr. Anderson's new brotherhood is professedly
as tolerant as the pastor of a Unitarian Church. It
differs from the moribund American Protective Associa-
tion, whose initials were the same, in that it is "specif-
ically not anti-Catholic" but "pro-Protestant". It does
not, it is set forth, attack "the Roman Catholic eccle-
siastical establishment nor any church AS A CHURCH".
Its founder explains this seeming paradox as follows:

"The American Protestant Alliance believes that
there are many adherents of the Roman Catholic system
in America who, individually and personally, are sincere
Christians and genuine patriots, and who have no com-
prehension of all that Political Romanism is trying to
put over on their Protestant friends and neighbors —
and their country. The Alliance is not shooting at
them, and will not hit them, if they will refrain from
insisting on moving within range and into the line of
fire."

The test of whether a Catholic is contaminated by
Political Romanism is very simple, Mr. Anderson re-
veals. If he objects to the work of the Alliance, or
takes issue with its statements, it is safe to conclude
that the worst is true. By protesting he has shown him-
self in his true colors, a villain working for the election
of Al Smith, anxious to make America Catholic and
placing allegiance to the Pope ahead of allegiance to
Calvin Coolidge. The official definition of Political
Romanism as drafted by Mr. Anderson is :

". . . the system of cooperation between professing
adherents of the official Roman Catholic ecclesiastical

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Big Frogs

establishment which wrongfully invokes, usually
secretly, the spirit of religious conviction and church
loyalty to further, either directly or indirectly, any
Romanist purpose, usually more or less 'political' as
that word is generally understood in America by Ameri-

cans."

The schemes of the Political Romanists, Mr. Ander-
son further relates in the literature of the American
Protestant Alliance, ordinarily receive "at least tacit
approval from some clerical representative of that [the
ecclesiastical] establishment under the pretext that it
is for the benefit of the system". What Political Ro-
manism does has also been unearthed:

". . . [It] corrupts politics to perpetuate itself. It
has protected and still does where it thinks that it is safe,
gambling, prostitution and the liquor traffic — Hell's
Trinity — in return for graft, blackmail and votes. It
levies tribute on legitimate business that wishes special
privilege. It spends part of the money extorted from
legal and illegal business in helping the poor and
ignorant and vicious, to clinch their votes, thus main-
taining an all-the-year political organization.

"Through its notorious control of the police and less
understood 'influence' with the courts, all out of pro-
portion to numerical strength, it exploits crime and pro-
tects criminals to fatten on the proceeds. It seeks the
mental enslavement and consents and contributes to
the moral disintegration of the individual citizen that it
may rise through mental blight and spiritual wreck to
political domination and temporal power. Judged by
its fruits it is everywhere, and always, evil."

From this outburst, which sounds suspiciously like
a Republican conception of Tammany Hall (by

176

Up from Martyrdom

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.), Mr. Anderson continues with
the remark that certain aspects of Romanism are "more
diabolically clever, more insidiously sinister, more in-
tangibly menacing, than anything else known in the
world with the possible exception of some phases of
Oriental occultism and mysticism". Its "adroitness and
adeptness in secret mental manipulation" and in "un-
canny skill in crafty utilization of the power of sugges-
tion seem to exemplify the Black Art". "On the rare
occasions when it works in the open, Romanism is cruel
and ruthless." Nor is the Anderson indictment yet
complete. It "wishes America to be both drunk and
ignorant, because if America is sober, no large class of
its population will stay ignorant ; and if intelligent, even
those of alien birth or parentage will not stay drunk".
Its existence depends upon the liquor traffic and it knows
that the swiftest "way for it to ride into national political
domination is astride a beer keg, floating on what it be-
lieves to be a rising tide of rum rebellion, flying a flag
that mingles the red of alcohol anarchy with the black
of moral piracy". It seeks to make the Protestant
clergy appear ridiculous, through stage lampooning.
It has "disproportionate representation in, and grip
upon, the Army and Navy and the Diplomatic Corps"
and in many States has "practically absolute" control
of the entire judiciary "including judges who are pro-
fessedly Protestant". Romanism's influence in local
elections is horrible to contemplate and it forces public
utility companies to employ an undue number of its
followers by "its use of its secret blackmailing power

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(threat of reduced rates, tax troubles, compulsion of
unnecessary safeguards, etc.)".

II

Nearly all of the above is quoted by permission from
"A Comprehensive Introductory Working Outline" of
the "Philosophy, Principles, Purpose, Policy and Pro-
gram" of the American Protestant Alliance under the
name of "William H. Anderson, LL.D., Founder and
General Secretary". The "outline" is a 48-page book-
let printed in microscopic type and containing 60,000
words. Most of it will seem, to those who go to the
labor of reading it, the most dreadful stuff ever uttered
by man. Those who do not know Anderson or the class
to which he makes his appeal will dismiss it as futile
nonsense. They will conclude, perhaps, that the man
cracked under the strain of his imprisonment and that
he is now seeking revenge in the belief that his recent
conviction for third degree forgery was the result of a
Catholic, anti-prohibition conspiracy. They will gather
that the perils set forth in so much detail and with such
wearisome repetition are hallucinations swirling through
the mind of a man made bitter by the knowledge that
he would never have been sent to prison had it not been
for his leadership of the dry crusade. They will dismiss
Anderson and his brain-child with a shrug and will
laugh at the ambitious program of the Alliance. This
provides not only that Cardinals, Archbishops, Monsi-
gnors and (if possible) priests, as well, be required by
constitutional amendment to choose between their jobs
and their citizenship, but also that lay Catholics be haled

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to the public square and forced to attest in writing their
disbelief in all temporal powers of the Church.

The fact is, of course, that Anderson's revelations con-
cerning the Pope and his hired hands will be received
with no small enthusiasm. He will speak, and will be
heard, in a thousand dismal, gloomy communities whose
only hope from a complete surrender to hopeless in-
feriority is continued screaming about a Nordic an-
cestry. He will be invited to barren, unpainted towns
on Long Island, in New Jersey and elsewhere, towns
whose virtues realtors have never sung and whose chance
of a boom is slight. He has already made a tour of the
Southern states where, to judge from newspaper clip-
pings, he has been warmly greeted. He has spoken,
within the year, at the Pillar of Fire Church in Brook-
lyn and at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in
Atlantic City. A recent address was made at the Ocean
City Tabernacle at Ocean City, N. J., and another, at a
Krusaders' picnic at Freeport, L. I. Many Protestant
clergymen, fearful that he is now in bad odor with the
Anti- Saloon League, are reluctant to give their endorse-
ment to his new cause. His pamphlets contain, how-
ever, brotherly messages from the Rev. Arthur M.
Young, pastor of the First Baptist Church at North
Syracuse, N. Y., from three gentlemen of the cloth of
Port Jefferson, N. Y. and from the Rev. Cymbrid
Hughes, District Superintendent for the Methodist
Episcopal Church at Portland, Me. His audiences are,
for the most part, the people who "live across- the tracks",
in the wrong part of town; who work in carpet factories
and cotton mills and whose lives are a grinding treadmill

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of toil. Already these citizens have been inflamed by
lurid tales of what will happen if Al Smith becomes
President. They have read in the Fellowship Forum,
the mouthpiece of the Klan and highly recommended
by Anderson, of the perils of Romanism. They have
bought, in some cases, a literary work entitled "In the
Pillory" advertised in that journal of opinion. This is
mailed "in a plain wrapper" for $1 and is guaranteed
to describe how "the Pope made it a practice to shut
himself in his apartment with scantily clad females".

Mr. Anderson feels justly encouraged at the response
to his appeals for funds and reports that contributions
are more generous than was at first the case with the
Anti-Saloon League. The financial plan of the Ameri-
can Protestant Alliance is, incidentally, both masterly
and slick and is, obviously, one of the features con-
ceived by him "in prayer". He has learned his lesson
and does not intend that district attorneys and grand
juries shall again pry into his account books. The sub-
scription blanks, "carefully worked out with the assist-
ance of competent legal counsel" as well as Divine
guidance, provide that all gifts are made "outright"
to Mary M. Odell, treasurer of the Alliance and the
faithful lieutenant of Mr. Anderson in his Anti- Saloon
days. In announcing his project in 1925, Anderson
gave a detailed explanation :

"This precaution is for the double purpose of defense
against any anti-Protestant official anywhere in the
country who may demand to inspect its books on the
basis of alleged complaint from some named or un-
named enemy alleging that the movement is not being

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conducted in accordance with its published purpose.

"Apparently such a plan offers the only protection
against the danger of a wet, anti-Protestant conspiracy
under the hypocritical profession of protecting dry
Protestant contributors, to wreck a movement under
pretense of saving it as soon as it becomes dangerously
effective.

"On this personal basis, so long as the dry Protestants
who contribute the money are satisfied with what is done
with it, the transaction is no affair of any wet, anti-
prohibition, snooping tool, whether public or private."

Ill

"A soldier who volunteers to enter the opposition lines
and blow up the enemy's fortifications," said Mr. An-
derson in March of 1924 as the gates of Sing Sing were
about to snap shut behind him, "runs supreme risk. . . .
I am, by fair analogy, prisoner of war in the hands of
the enemy. ... I am innocent of the alleged crime of
which a wet jury in a hostile atmosphere voted me
guilty."

For some time after his release nine months later,
he played the sad but not silent role of martyr for all
that it was worth. It is not unnatural that he did so.
The Anti- Saloon League of New York had awarded
his superintendent's job to another and had left him
at the mercy of his enemies. He was heavily in debt.
Nor had he, I think, received scrupulously fair treat-
ment from the newspapers. The charge against him,
technically so classified, had not been forgery as the
public understands that crime. He was found guilty
of having made a false entry in the League's books and

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that was done, so he claimed, to protect an employee.
He insisted, and as far as I know this has never been
disproved, that he did not profit by the transaction and
that the League did not lose even the price of a mug
of beer. But he decreed his own conviction when he
went on the stand during the trial and said that the
money involved had been a donation from a nebulous
"John T. King", whom he could not produce in court
and concerning whom he knew very little. This sounded,
as it was, fishy to the jury, who decided to rebuke him
by a verdict of guilty. The highest court in the state up-
held the legality of his conviction, but Anderson issued,
soon after leaving jail, a pamphlet called "Martyred for
Prohibition", in which he set forth "the outrageous in-
justice of the Tammany conviction of William H.
Anderson". All this has now, happily, changed. As
his American Protestant Alliance begins to grow he
denies that he wears the white robes of the falsely
accused :

"A marytr is a dead one, or at best one who is through.
I AM JUST STARTING. I consider what I have been
through a mere incident in the finest fight any Protes-
tant American in this generation ever had a chance to
make in the interests of a common humanity."

Certainly there is nothing dead or martyred about
Anderson's appearance to-day. He is cheerfully un-
concerned over the smallness and stuffiness of his offices
and cares not that the hosts of Protestantism are being
marshaled in a building on Fifth Avenue which houses
stocking shops, corsetieres and hairdressers. He is still

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the large, bulky figure that he was in 1915 when he
journeyed to Albany and challenged Al Smith to
cease his opposition to local option legislation. His hair
is just as black, or very nearly, as it was then. His
mustache is just as luxuriant. His eyes become just as
narrowed when he is crossed and glint with the same
fanaticism when he reflects on the glories of his cause.
The only sign of age is a growing flabbiness, apparent
in his face and his figure. His zeal, however, has not
grown flabby. This is no tolerant, good-natured, cigar-
smoking reformer, willing to take a drink in private as
proof of an innate he-man sportsmanship.

"I have never permitted liquor to touch my lips," he
declares with a vigor that forbids any questioning of
his purity.

There is no shading in this man, for all his prattle
about the distinctions between Political Romanism and
Catholicism. Those who disagree with him are wrong
and are damned, as damned as are the flock of Harry
Emerson Fosdick in the mind of John Roach Straton.
Al Smith, he insists, sent his famous reply to Charles C.
Marshall to the Vatican for revision. It made at least
two trips to Rome, he has been credibly informed. He
is not surprised or discouraged by a tendency on the
part of the New York newspapers to ignore the Ameri-
can Protestant Alliance.

"Every New York paper has a Catholic censor on
its copy desk," he has explained. "He is not officially
known as such, of course. But he does his work thor-
oughly. Even the New York Times has consistently
told untruths about me. It has said that I have been

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attacking the Catholic Church. This is not true and
they know that it is not true."

One is somehow refreshed that in an age when it is
fashionable to see both sides of every question and to
have opinions on nothing, that here is a man who de-
clines to depart from the principles that he learned in
the days of his youth. It would have been easier, quite
likely, for him to retire with his wound stripes after
his term in the jug, to settle down to a quiet law prac-
tice. He would probably have found plenty of clients
among the church people for whom he had labored so
long. But the inner fires of a man like Anderson can-
not be banked. Before him, in his office, is a picture of
the Christ. He conceives that his new calling is, like
prohibition, divine, that the Lord has called him again
to battle. Here is no lessening of the faith "in God
who has lifted me up till my soul can look down on the
hate and malice of those who have wronged me". And
despite all the bitterness in his heart he has been more
of a gentleman than the Assistant District Attorney
who sent him to Sing Sing and who, shown a state-
ment given out by Anderson as he left the prison, re-
marked :

"We are often attacked by ex-convicts."

IV

The leader of the hosts of aridity and Protestantism
was born in Carlinville, 111., in 1874. His father was a
country lawyer and his mother a devout Methodist, a
good woman who came close to making a profession
out of her religion and who taught her son that intoxi-

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eating drink was the root of all evil. He was a pre-
cocious youth, the records show, for at the age of ten
he was winning most of the ribbons offered by the
Carlinville W.C.T.U. for the best original tracts on
alcoholism. William went through the public schools
and attended Blackburn College, an institution of
higher learning in his home town. In 1896 he was
graduated from the University of Michigan and found
himself a full-fledged lawyer. He might have con-
tinued to practice in the wastes of Illinois, as he did
for two years in the office of his father, had it not been
for the convention of the newly-formed Anti- Saloon
League at Springfield. Anderson, a 32nd degree mem-
ber of the Epworth League, attended the gathering in
an official capacity and was deeply moved by an address
from the lips of Dr. Howard W. Russell, founder of
the Anti-Saloon League. Like the Apostle Paul, he
saw a great light.

"I was called into the work of the Anti- Saloon
League," he later declared, "by direct Divine sugges-
tion, as clearly as any man was ever called into the
regular gospel ministry."

Anderson was in his early twenties when he began
the battle that was to result in the legal execution of
John Barleycorn. By 1905 he was State superintendent
of the Illinois League and had caused 1,000 towns to
go dry by local option. After this he came to New
York as associate superintendent for that wet common-
wealth and soon had his courage further tested by being
sent to Maryland and placed in supreme command. The
Marylanders, while treating him with aloof courtesy,

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showed very little enthusiasm for his cause during the
seven years of his dictatorship. His dry bills were
usually defeated in both houses of the Legislature or, at
the least, in one. But he battled valiantly from his
headquarters in the charming city of Baltimore and
hurled his thunderbolts at all the officials who opposed
his holy work. Nor was his courage merely mental.
One irate citizen, who had been branded a "representa-
tive of the liquor interests", crashed into Anderson's
office with a black-snake whip and announced that he
was going to administer a beating. But the dry cru-
sader showed the physical strength of a godly man.
He wrenched the lash from his attacker, subdued him
and dragged him to the town jail, where he languished
for thirty days. For one local option hearing Anderson
packed eleven day coaches with followers and stormed
the capitol at Annapolis. His bills may not have passed,
but by the time he left in 1914 to take charge of the
work in New York he had succeeded in annoying, al-
though not converting, the citizens of Maryland. Their
wet sympathies were undoubtedly due to a Catholic
ancestry; the Roman Church has ever been reluctant
to admit that alcohol is contrary to the will of God.

Bill Anderson was soon a familiar figure, cordially
detested and greatly feared, in the cloakrooms and cor-
ridors of the dismal building that is the State Capitol
at Albany, N. Y. He found the politicians of both
parties suffering from vague terrors of what the Metho-
dists, Presbyterians and Baptists might do to them if
they fought local option bills, and lost no time in taking
advantage of these apprehensions. The Republicans

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trembled the more, naturally, because of their strength
in the rural districts where the churches were more
powerful than in the cities. The Tammany legislative
bloc was openly hostile. Among those who opposed the
Anti- Saloon League were Al Smith, Jimmy Walker,
who has since become Manhattan's ambassador to Lon-
don, Paris, Berlin and Rome, and Robert F. Wagner,
now elevated to the United States Senate. Anderson
has never forgiven Smith for his obstructive tactics in
those days and the memory of them gives added strength
to his determination that so fiendish a Political Roman-
ist must, at all costs, be barred from the White House.
Reports of Anderson's activities in Maryland had
preceded him to Albany where he was known as a hard
fighter, an abusive adversary and a dry campaigner
with a decided flair for personal publicity. His first
Stunt was to force the introduction of a bill requiring
that all booze bottles be labeled with a skull and cross-
bones and with the legend, "This preparation contains
alcohol, which is a habit-forming, irritant, narcotic
poison". The bill was smothered by an outraged legis-
lative committee, as Anderson had been perfectly well
aware that it would be. His motive, and in this he was
successful, was self-advertising. The politicians became
even more frightened than previously and most of the
churchmen who supported the Anti-Saloon League
voiced satisfaction that so radical an enthusiast had
arrived in New York to do battle with the liquor inter-
ests. Regarding sporadic criticisms that he was lacking
in dignity, Anderson said :

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"I do not object to dignity provided it does not get in
the way; but results are the acid test of any policy. I
would rather have a lop-eared, splay-footed, flea-bitten
mule and a dump cart that would deliver the goods than
a pneumatic-tired benzine buggy that would cough and
die on the first hill. I never have time to use language
for the purpose of concealing thought."

He cared nothing for political parties and attacked
Republicans as vigorously as Democrats when they
declined to obey him. One of his first public statements
branded the late William Barnes, boss of the New York
G.O.P., as the leader of "the liquor end of the Republi-
can Party". He has engaged in newspaper duels with
the present Theodore Roosevelt and with that eminent
Republican's father. On January 29, 1919, he re-
ceived the long-awaited reward for his labors. On that
day, with Jimmy Walker denouncing him in the State
Senate as "the most drunken man in the state, drunk
with the power that he exercises over the Republican
Party", he witnessed the ratification by New York of
the Eighteenth Amendment. Smith, elected Governor
for his first term, mourned that "the Republican major-
ity in the legislature has denied the people the right to
speak for themselves". Al had favored a referendum
on the subject.

Mr. Anderson offers, in the prospectus of his Ameri-
can Protestant Alliance, a definite and elaborate pro-
gram for scotching the Romanist enemies of civilized
America. The first great objective is the passage of a

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so-called "American Citizenship Amendment" to the
Federal Constitution. He admits that this is not an
original idea and points out that in 1810 Congress sub-
mitted the following proposal to the states :

"If any citizen of the United States shall accept,
claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honor or
shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain
any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind
whatever from any Emperor, King, Prince or foreign
power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the
United States and shall be incapable of holding any of-
fice of trust or profit under them or either of them."

At the time of its inception, Mr. Anderson explained,
twelve of the then seventeen states had given their ap-
proval. This was just one under the number necessary
for ratification. The founder of the American Protes-
tant Alliance insists that the amendment is to-day alive
and valid and that the states which have ratified can-
not rescind their endorsement. He proposes to press
at once for ratification in enough other states to bring
the total to thirty-six. He is confident that "every
Romanist Cardinal, Archbishop, Bishop, Monsignor,
and perhaps every priest, and all the Knights of St.
Gregory and other Papal nobility, will come under the
terms of this amendment". Once it has been passed they
must choose between their citizenship and their "title
or office granted by a foreign power".

Like all of the high purposes of the Alliance, this is
held to be in no possible manner anti- Catholic. The
amendment will apply, Mr. Anderson claims, equally to

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Romanists, Protestants, Jews, Atheists and Free Think-
ers. Every veteran of the A.E.F. saluted on both
cheeks by a bewhiskered French general and awarded a
ribbon for valor must choose between that bauble and
the right of citizenship. It is possible, however, that in
the case of such heroes as Col. Charles A. Lindbergh an
exception will be made in the enabling act which must be
passed by Congress. It is also possible that Protestants,
Jews, Atheists, Free Thinkers and soldiers will be
exempted.

"At all events," Mr. Anderson believes, "Lindbergh
and the others will gladly give up their trinkets for the
sake of the country."

The second part of the Alliance's national program
is directed against aliens and, like the first, will be
greeted with cheers at rallies of the Ku Klux Klan. It
provides for another amendment which will eliminate
aliens in apportioning Congressional districts and this,
Mr. Anderson estimates, will result in a reduction "of
perhaps twenty-five Congressmen largely, if not ex-
clusively, from Political Romanist strongholds". It
will also cut down the anti-Nordic representations in the
Electoral College and at national conventions. In New
York City, Mr. Anderson promises, from six to eight
Congressmen, all of them controlled by "Political Ro-
manist Tammany", will be done away with.

The third great idea, an outgrowth of the first section
of the program, is thie passage of an "Anti- Allegiance"
amendment. This will decree that any person who pro-
fesses, admits or retains allegiance "to any foreign or-
ganization, institution or power" claiming jurisdiction

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Up from Martyrdom

in any matter within the jurisdiction of the United
States or any of the States, "shall cease to be a citizen".
Catholics may, however, continue to enjoy the theo-
retical privileges of citizenship by repudiating "in writ-
ing, under oath, as a matter of public record, any
political aspirations or claims of temporal power by
any such institution".

Anderson is not, he insists, working with the Klan,
except insofar as that organization of brave men is in
harmony with the plans of the American Protestant
Alliance. He does not intend to fight "corrupt political
organizations merely because they are corrupt and
vicious". He asks cooperation from the Protestant
churches of America, but declines to permit dictation
from them. Still terribly hurt because the Anti-Saloon
League deserted him after he had gone to jail, he is
willing to assist in the enforcement of prohibition be-
cause of the connection between liquor and Romanism.

Astonishing beyond all else about this man is his
belief that his program of amendments and anti-
Catholic legislation is perfectly practical and will, in
time, be achieved. Scorn of his fellow men means
nothing to him. Abuse is music in his ears. That he is
sincere is not open to serious question, for he views
himself as the Lord's anointed and knows that not
infrequently a militant soldier is ordered to fight, at
first, in solitary splendor.

191

CENSOR OF MORALS

ft ft ft ft ft ft ft ft ft. ft ft ft

THE STORY OF HOW WILL HAYS BECAME CZAR OF THE

Silver Screen — Official Fixer, if you like, for the motion
picture industry — is so replete with sentiment that it
might well be told in scenario form. The prospect of at
least $100,000 a year did not, we are told, lure Mr. Hays
from the Harding Cabinet. Nor did he, as some have
unkindly hinted, take the job to boost his own Presi-
dential aspirations. He was motivated by higher things
and became head of the Motion Picture Producers and
Distributors of America, Inc., because he could not re-
sist an opportunity for Doing Good.

It was late in 1921 that a number of movie magnates
waited upon Mr. Hays, then Postmaster General of the
United States, to tell him their tale of woe. All was not
well in the motion picture industry, they said sadly.
It did not appear to have the confidence of the public.
Every one was hurling malediction upon it. Unless
something was done, and that very quickly, ruin might
overwhelm the producers and a great art and educational
force might be lost to mankind. Would not Mr. Hays
use his great gifts to save the Silent Drama?

But Mr. Hays, it is said, was not greatly interested.
He replied that he was not inclined to accept their offer
but that he would think it over. And then, a few weeks
later, he journeyed to his home at Sullivan, Indiana,

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for the Christmas holidays. While he was there, such
being the subtle ways of Providence, an incident oc-
curred which led him to change his mind. But let the
story be told in his own words, as officially on file in the
archives of his organization :

"It was Christmas time and I took with me some cow-
boy suits for my boy, Bill, then aged six, and his two
cousins, aged five and eight. But did they begin playing
Wild West as I anticipated they would ? They did not.
They immediately began to act the latest Bill Hart
movie they had seen.

"A new vision of the motion pictures came to me. I
saw them not only from the viewpoint of men who have
millions of dollars invested, but from the viewpoint of
the fathers and mothers in America who have millions
of children invested".

It was thus, shaken by emotion and a lust for service,
that Mr. Hays took the job; at a salary of $100,000 a
year. His purpose, he said in an inaugural statement
in March of 1922, was that of "attaining and maintain-
ing, for the motion picture industry, a high educational,
moral and business plane". The watchwords, he said,
were "Confidence and Cooperation". There must be a
"coalesced industry". He proposed "to make a happy
family of the motion picture people and their patrons".
There must be "Confidence and Cooperation between
the industry and the public".

"I thank God," he said, "that the day has passed in
this country when any one can sell a gold brick to the
people."

"Above all," he added, "is our duty to the youth. We

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Censor of Morals

must have toward that sacred thing, the mind of a child,
toward that clean and virgin thing, that unmarked slate
—we must have toward that the same sense of re-
sponsibility, the same care about the impression made
upon it, that the best teacher or the best clergyman, the
most inspired teacher of youth, would have."

Before nine months had passed Mr. Hays consented
to reinstatement for Fatty Arbuckle, whose pictures had
been withdrawn following his connection with the death
of a young girl. It had been the movie colony's nastiest
scandal. But the new dictator remarked that Ar-
buckle's conduct had been "exemplary" for eight months
and that forgiveness was given "in the spirit of Christ-
mas". The public had not yet learned to appreciate
its supervisor of morals, however, and a howl of protest
arose. Club women and ministers, later to be soothed
to tranquillity by honeyed phrases from the lips of TVill
Hays, held mass meetings and drew up petitions. Even
Mr. Hays' Committee on Public Relations, just brought
into being, turned against him and Arbuckle was forced
to remain in obscurity.

Hays has enormous influence, although he denies this
and says that embargoes against plays and books are
enforced solely through "cooperation", regarding what
appears on the screen. He supervises, in this way, the
morals not only of millions of Americans but of people
in nearly every other part of the world. And he is, as
far as I am able to learn, very little interested in the
motion picture itself, in books, in plays, in any other
form of art or near-art. The producers for whom he is
spokesman receive, as far as he is concerned, slight en-

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couragement in their occasional, but sometimes amaz-
ingly successful, attempts to produce pictures that are
really worth while. I doubt that Hays has ever pon-
dered the vast possibilities inherent in motion pictures.
He is quite untouched by such matters for they are not,
as he sees it, part of his job.

His zeal in barring extreme salaciousness is based on
the universal motion picture terror of further censorship,
federal or state. He was hired — hokum aside — to block
additional government supervision, to tame radical
spirits among the producers, to prevent trade practices
which cause expensive litigation, to use his influence as
an important politician of the party in power, to utter
all manner of bromidic bunk and thereby quiet the
nerves of a public beginning to view the industry with
alarm. It was also his job, it is whispered along Broad-
way, to prevent the Actors' Equity Association from
organizing motion picture actors and extras.

Will Hays has done all these things and has earned,
thereby, the frantic gratitude of his employers. It
cannot be denied, of course, that his position to-day is
less Olympian than before a Senate committee asked
so many embarrassing questions concerning the dona-
tions of Harry F. Sinclair. His shining face was miss-
ing when the G.O.P. gathered at Kansas City. Even
the New York Herald Tribune has editorially remarked
that Hays' "evasion of the law and the truth has been
deplorable". Under the caption, "The Man Who
Tamed Hollywood", the Detroit News recently pub-
lished a cartoon showing a short-skirted flapper labeled
"The Movies" and a battered replica of Will Hays.

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Censor of Morals

His coat is torn, his collar awry. His hat is a wreck.

"Well, Mr. Hays," the pert young woman is re-
marking, "they must have thrown quite a rough party
in Hollywood."

But no matter how much he may be criticized Mr.
Hays will continue, beyond much doubt, to be Czar of
the Movies and official arbiter of screen morals. His
new contract, increasing his annual compensation to
$150,000, was negotiated only two years ago and runs
to 1936. It is signed, or so the story goes, not only by
the officers of the Motion Picture Producers and Dis-
tributors of America, Inc., but also by many of the im-
portant movie magnates as individuals. Each, therefore,
is personally liable.

It is possible, of course, that Mr. Hays may find it
more difficult in the future to talk unendingly about
"Confidence and Cooperation". The public-at-large
may be slightly less inclined to listen to his speeches on
the purely altruistic purposes of the industry, on its
honor and noble aims. Although no word of it ever
reaches the newspapers, a few producers in the Hays
organization are resentful of his methods and it is pos-
sible that one of these will defy his embargoes against
salaciousness. His work may, in brief, be complicated
by new difficulties. But Will Hays will remain the
slightly soiled dress shirt of the industry.

II

Will Hays is explainable only in light of the fact that
he was born of the Indiana political system; a system
bitter in its practicality, bitter in its competition and

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hostilities and smooth in its well-oiled (the phrase has
no reference to Teapot Dome) efficiency. The fairies
who hovered over the cradle of the infant Will endowed
him with vast energy, sharpness and a capacity, unusual
even among those destined for the political game, for
underestimating the public intelligence. He was born
in Sullivan, Indiana, on November 5, 1879 and is, like
so many former residents of the state, a professional
Hoosierite. He goes back to Sullivan frequently, al-
though, it is said, rural life bores him to tears and he
yearns for the fascinations of Manhattan throughout
his visits. Hays pere was a lawyer and both the sons,
christened William Harrison and Hinkle, were destined
for the law. Will, as our hero prefers to be known, was
sent to Wabash College at Crawfordsville, known
locally as "The Athens of Indiana" because of the
scholarship which ran riot there. It was a sound, God-
fearing Presbyterian school and four years within its
classic halls deepened in Will Hays an innate churchly
bent. Despite his varied activities he has been a faithful
member of the Presbyterian Church and some years
ago was elevated to the rank of elder by the brethren in
Sullivan. His prominence as a Presbyterian has not
impaired his usefulness to the motion picture industry.
On the contrary, it basked in reflected good-will when
Hays managed a Presbyterian pension fund campaign
and received columns of publicity. He was even more
successful in obtaining money for his church than he
had been in getting funds, from Sinclair and others, for
the Republican Party.

The political life of Will Hays started when he at-

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tained his majority in 1900. He was admitted to the
Bar in that year and served as precinct committeeman
for the Republican organization of Sullivan. During
the next decade, having formed a law partnership with
his brother, he held various state and county political
posts and from 1910 to 1913 was city attorney for his
home town. In 1914 he became state chairman and in
1918, so swift was his rise, chairman of the Republican
National Committee. In that capacity he campaigned
actively for the election of a Republican Congress to
confound the growing and perilous internationalism of
Woodrow Wilson. His energy was tremendous. He
spent fifty-nine consecutive nights on Pullman cars and
his fame as a go-getting and exceedingly smart young
hustler spread far and wide.

The dreadful bilge which Hays can utter as head of
the movies is no more dreadful than that of his stumping
days. He has always shown, whether he realizes it or
not, vast contempt for the public intelligence. The
G.O.P., later to be known as the Grand Oil Party, saw
in 1919 that victory was fairly certain to rest on its
banners in the approaching presidential campaign. And
Will Hays was soon holding forth on the "revived
spirit of fervent Americanism which is the glorified re-
sult of our experience of fire and blood". He sounded,
too, a new slogan of Republicanism: "Live and Help
Live". This was followed out to the letter in the years
that followed — but with dubious judgment regarding
those aided. Among other glowing statements made by
Hays in 1919 and 1920 were:

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"With a vision of the country's mission and with the
highest sense of justice for all men, Republicans will
keep their eyes always ahead, but will keep their feet
always on solid ground."

* * # *

"If a political party does not stand for those things
which will bear the severest scrutiny, it is not entitled
to success and will not endure."

* * * *

"There is no zone of twilight in politics or public
affairs. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and the same
strict standards of morals, equity and justice must ob-
tain as in any private business or professional matter."

* * • *

"We fight for the faith of the fathers of our Republic
— for the perpetual freedom of the sons and daughters
of America. This election far transcends any partisan
affair. There will be new glory for the Stars and Stripes
on the morning of November 3."

* * * *

"The supreme motive of the Republican party is hon-
est, unselfish, patriotic and intelligent effort to promote
and safeguard the best interest of the Republic and its
citizens."

* * * *

"I know nothing of subterfuge in politics."

* * * *

I have, however, no desire to embarrass Mr. Hays by
quoting further from his idealistic speeches. The pre-
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dicament in which he found himself last spring was due,
primarily, to a mistake he had made in organizing the
financial details of the 1920 campaign. And this, like
everything else which has motivated him, was done with
the Best Intentions. He announced that no contribu-
tion of "more than $1,000 would be accepted", and that
all checks larger than this would be returned. Mr. Hays
resented, he made it clear, insinuations that the G.O.P.
campaign chests were normally filled by representatives
of Big Business seeking favors. He proposed to show
that the widow's mite was just as acceptable. It has
since been revealed, of course, that Albert D. Lasker,
later made chairman of the Shipping Board by Presi-
dent Harding, was successful in forcing a $25,000 gift
— "made in cash because politicians seem to prefer it
that way" — down the throats of the committee. This
contribution did not, strangely enough, appear on the
party books and came to light only through Senator
Walsh's questioning. Many G.O.P. supporters, may,
however, have taken the $1,000 limitation seriously. At
all events there was a whacking deficit after Mr. Hard-
ing had moved into the White House.

Ill

It was inevitable that Mr. Hays should be chosen for
Harding's cabinet, there to sit in splendor with Messrs.
Fall, Denby and Daugherty. And it was eminently
fitting that his post should be that of Postmaster Gen-
eral. No other cabinet member needs political training
as does this one and Hays was a huge success. He
pulled wires in the old Indiana manner. He transferred

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the phrases of his campaign speeches to the work of the
Post Office Department and scurried around impressing
business men with his great ability as an executive. He
did, in fact, speed up the post office service and a grate-
ful nation applauded. The movie barons were among
those stunned by his genius and so he escaped from the
cabinet before the oil scandals broke.

Nothing, I am sure, could have been further from
the thoughts of Will Hays in 1923 than politics. As
President of the Motion Picture Producers and Dis-
tributors of America, Inc. he was engaged in reforming
Hollywood and in perfecting plans whereby the
churches, the press, the schools and all other factors of
American life were to give their support. He had taken
magnificent offices on Fifth Avenue and was an inspir-
ing picture of a snappy executive. Discreet secretaries
surrounded him. The stenographers and other lady
employees seemed to have been imported from Holly-
wood, so beautiful were they. Etchings on the walls
added to the restful and refined atmosphere of the re-
ception rooms. Hays added, month by month, to his
reputation as a "human dynamo". Visitors calling upon
him were constantly impressed by his nonchalant in-
structions to "get Mr. Lasky at Hollywood for me,
please". He was a long-distance telephone addict and a
call to Chicago or the Pacific Coast meant no more to
him than one to Brooklyn by a resident of Manhattan.

Mr. Hays was not, though, a man to shrink from re-
sponsibility. Happily Doing Good, he listened when
Republican leaders came and lugubriously reminded him
that a large deficit still existed on the party books. One

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Censor of Morals

or two crude fellows were nasty enough to point out that
it was all his fault ; that he had conceived the silly notion
of announcing the $1,000 limitation and had spent en-
tirely too much money when it had been obvious that
Harding would win even on the smallest of budgets.
Thus aroused, Will Hays went to his friend, Harry
F. Sinclair. Knowing nothing of the oil leases at the
time, he had consented to receive $260,000 from the
capitalist.

This was not, however, the story told by Mr. Hays
when, in 1924, the Senate committee first got on the
trail of gifts by Sinclair. He then said it was grotesque
to imagine that Sinclair could have given a large sum.
Ridiculous! The "most he could possibly have given"
was $75,000. Four years afterwards the trail of oil
became more clear. Again Hays was called to Wash-
ington and this time he admitted that Sinclair had turned
over $260,000 in Liberty Bonds. How, asked Mr.
Walsh, did he reconcile this admission with the earlier
one that only $75,000 had been given? Well, said the
dress shirt of the movies, he had not been asked about
bonds. But had not the original $75,000 also been in
bonds? Well, yes, but only that much of the $260,000
total had been a gift. The rest was merely a loan.

The details of how Hays used the Sinclair bonds to
force contributions from Secretary of the Treasury
Mellon and from others have been told and retold. The
story will be the theme of Democratic campaign ora-
tions for years to come. Stripped of its many complexi-
ties, the scheme was to give or offer blocks of Sinclair
bonds to prominent men and receive, in return, the

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equivalent in cash. This enabled the Republican Com-
mittee to keep its books clear of excessive Sinclair dona-
tions, which might look queer in the light of the Teapot
Dome scandal. The story is not yet complete and
doubtless, as additional leads develop, Hays will again
be summoned. The plan is certainly interesting, at all
events, for those who desire to understand Will Hays.
One recalls his windy statements to the effect that "right
is right, wrong is wrong", "I know nothing of subter-
fuge in politics", "if a political party does not stand for
those things which will bear the closest scrutiny, it is not
entitled to success". And Mr. Hays sent all those in the
hearing room into guffaws of laughter when, in the
course of his testimony before the Senate committee, he
said to Senator Walsh :
"Let's not get technical."

IV

Nothing of all this, it will be recalled, had come to
light when Mr. Hays was summoned from the Post
Office Department in 1922 to inject respectability into
the movies. I do not question, of course, that three small
boys and their cowboy suits persuaded Mr. Hays, as I
outlined at the beginning of this appeciation, to take the
job. But there are, too, other fascinating details behind
the negotiations and these are set forth by Mr. Terry
Ramsaye in his scholarly work on the history of motion
pictures, "A Million and One Nights". The book was
written without the cooperation of the Motion Picture
Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. and it is
said that Mr. Hays believes the attitude of Mr. Ramsaye

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Censor of Morals

was none too friendly. The facu; have not, however,
been contradicted.

The connection of Will Hays with the silver screen
really dates from 1919. As Republican National Chair-
man he was looking ahead to 1920 and was anxious to
see that the G.O.P. presidential candidate, whoever he
might be, received fair treatment in the news reels.
Thus engaged, he met an old buddy, Charles C. Petti-
john. Mr. Pettijohn, although a Democrat and
former henchman of Tom Taggart, had long been a
friend of Hays. They had breathed the pure, sweet,
new-mown-hay fragrant air of Indiana together. Pet-
tijohn had been an Indianapolis attorney and politician.
He had later come East to act as counsel for several
motion picture producers and he assisted his fellow
Hoosierite in meeting the important ones. The pro-
ducers, Mr. Ramsaye relates, were very much impressed
by the Republican chairman. Particularly was this true
after he had swept Mr. Harding into office — and they
pleaded with him to get into their game. But Hays
was going to Washington and declined.

Then came the Arbuckle case and other unpleasant
incidents. Federal censorship loomed closer and the
producers decided that they needed a Landis, whose
reputation for honesty had white-washed the baseball
industry. At this point, Mr. Ramsaye declares, Petti-
john whispered that Hays was the man for the job.
The producers felt that he was, indeed. He was a
cabinet officer and knew all manner of telephone num-
bers in Washington. He moved among the Great. So
thev offered $100,000 a year and pledged that they

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would bow their necks to his imperious will. Hays took
office in March of 1922 and Mr. Petti John joined the
organization as Chief Aide.

The energetic Hoosierite at once began battle against
state censorship. He is credited, having been assisted
by Petti John, with having blocked supervision in the
state of Massachusetts. Those agitating for federal
control seemed to lose interest in their battle. While
so engaged, Hays also informed the producers that they
must, as the phrase is, "clean house". Some were in-
clined, he told them, to step beyond the bounds of pro-
priety. This must stop! It is this role as supervisor
of morals which gives Hays, it is my theory, greatest
importance. Censorship does not exist as such, of
course, in his organization. Purity of the screen is
achieved through what is known as "the Hays formula".
Under this any producer must send any questionable
book, play or story offered him to Mr. Hays. If the
Czar or his assistants believe that the public good de-
mands suppression it is barred. Notice to that effect
is sent to all the members of the Motion Picture Pro-
ducers and Distributors of America, Inc. who comprise
about 90 per cent of the industry and who control not
only nearly all production but, through the theaters
owned, much of the exhibition of films as well.

More than 200 plays and books, Mr. Hays has
boasted, have been forbidden through the smooth opera-
tion of the formula. The purpose of his organization is
to "prevent the prevalent type of book and play from
becoming the prevalent type of motion picture". In
line with this a long list of Don'ts and Be Carefuls have

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Censor of Morals

been drafted for the guidance of producers. Were all
of these followed to the letter not a single picture could
be released. They are, of course, violated constantly.
The Don'ts include "Pointed" profanity (including
Gawd, Hell and many other terms). Actors are for-
bidden even to speak these terms while before the
camera; it is always possible that lip readers will be in
the audience. Other don'ts specify "licentious nudity",
"white slavery", "miscegenation" and "ridicule of the
clergy".

The list of subjects regarding which producers must
"be careful" is all-embracing. One of the most im-
portant is an injunction against showing violations of
the prohibition law unless the plot of the story makes
this essential. Mr. Hays has made a personal plea in
behalf of this canon. Others in the list are "sympathy
for criminals", "arson", "sedition", "the institution of
marriage", "excessive or lustful kissing". Too, the Czar
is a firm believer that the motion picture "spreads good-
will for America" and he frowns upon scenarios in
which any other nation is slighted.

Within the last year, particularly since the Sinclair
developments, producers have been vastly excited over
the production of "Sadie Thompson" by Miss Gloria
Swanson. This is the short story on which Mr. Somer-
set Maugham's play, "Rain", was based. When it
became know that Miss Swanson was to produce "Sadie
Thompson" there were frantic demands to be told how
permission had been obtained from the Czar. The
Broadway version, emphatically denied by spokesmen
for Mr. Hays, is that Miss Swanson chanced to be seated

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next to the movie over-lord at a luncheon. Would
he object, she is said to have asked, to a movie based
on a story by Mr. Maugham? It was called "Sadie
Thompson". Mr. Hays said he had no objection.
Why should he have? "Will you make that official in
the morning?" Miss Swanson went on.

"It's official now," Hays is said to have answered in
the presence of several other guests.

So widespread is the acceptance of this legend that
other producers are said to be pondering similar experi-
ments. "Sadie Thompson" has turned out to be a great
financial success. Such proscribed and bawdy plays
and books as Michael Arlen's "Green Hat" and Miss
Kennedy's "Constant Nymph" may soon appear. Sid-
ney Howard's play, "They Knew What They Wanted",
has been shown in a Broadway theater within the last
week or so although, it is said, it had been held on the
producers' shelves for months.

Refuting all this, the publicity men of the Motion
Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc.
point to a clause of the "Hays' formula". Under this
a forbidden book or play may be reconsidered after the
offensive scenes have been stricken out. But if pro-
duced it must be given another title. In confirmation
they show that the movie version of "Rain" was called
"Sadie Thompson". The minister of the play became a
social worker. So with "They Knew What They
Wanted"; the title was changed and the bootlegger be-
came an orange grower.

Mr. Hays believes all these rules and regulations en-
tirely just. Little interested, as I have suggested, in

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Censor of Morals

the drama or books or any other art, he sees the motion
picture as a vast industry. He often remarks that it
must "protect morons" likely to be influenced by what
they see in the theater. Meanwhile, he spreads friend-
ship and good-will. He constantly makes speeches and
these are reminiscent of those of his political days.
They are similarly filled with hokum. "The motion
picture," he once said, "is the epitome of civilization and
the quintessence of what we mean by America."

A large staff of assistants reads newspapers and mag-
azines with meticulous care. When an editor criticizes
the screen he is sent, in a very short time, a form letter
from Mr. Hays setting him straight. When one praises
the Silent Drama he receives a communication express-
ing gratitude. The Hays organization is the place
where all those with complaints or grievances or ideas
may come. None is turned away without a hearing.
Many are ushered into the presence of the Czar. Mr.
Hays is always willing to cooperate and always prom-
ises that Something Will Be Done.

That it takes him a long time to get around to it is
due, no doubt, to the fact that he is so very busy.

209

THE JANITOR'S BOY

AS IN THE CASE OF DR. ROYAL S. COPELAND, WHO WRITES

Health Hints for Mr. Hearst and is a United States
Senator on the side, the elevation of Robert F. Wagner
of New York was a political accident. He owes his
election in 1926 to the habitual popularity of Al Smith
and to the fact that Senator Jim Wadsworth made the
fatal error of thinking that his rural constituency votes
as it drinks. But unlike the case of Copeland the victory
of Senator Wagner was a happy accident. If it is true
that his cerebral processes are slow, it is also true that
he is thorough. He may be smirched with the taint of
Tammany Hall, but he has never played practical poli-
tics any more than was strictly necessary. He brings to
the upper house of Congress a high measure of intelli-
gence, a sympathy for the masses that does not sour to
demagoguery and a talent for hard work.

Patriotic Americans who rejoice in the great national
True Story, "Rags to Riches", have found satisfaction
in the knowledge that Wagner landed in this country
an eight-year-old immigrant boy from Germany. He
grew to young manhood the son of an East Side janitor
— not the lower East Side of pushcarts, kosher and
garlic, but the cleanly German one of lebkiichen and
leberwiirst in the northerly Yorkville section. Having
mastered the language of his new country Bob Wagner

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Big Frogs

studied law, and through industry and his deference to
the obligations of party politics he became in succession
Assemblyman, State Senator, Lieutenant-Governor and
Justice of the Supreme Court. To-day, save for a love
of partridge smothered in sauerkraut, a personal as well
as political regret that light wines and beer are no more,
and a devotion to the Wagnerian opera, all traces of his
Teutonic origin have vanished. He became a citizen, of
course, years before the late war to end wars. Now he
has been sworn into that awesome body, the Senate of
the United States, where, to paraphrase an old wise-
crack, the members cannot possibly be as wise as they
look. Since Wagner is of alien birth it is the highest
national office to which he can aspire and the new Sena-
tor from New York might have been forgiven, perhaps,
if in the flood of publicity which followed his election
he had uttered platitudes about the virtues of boyhood
work and how success ever follows in the wake of in-
dustry. Quite the contrary.

"I've had a lot of luck," he said. "I don't think it's
good for boys to work hard. At least, I know it didn't
do me any good." It may, perhaps, be the thought of
Gus, his older brother, that gives Wagner this reluc-
tance to offer the usual formulae. Gus is, now, just the
sort of obscure person that the Senator might be but
for certain factors not of his making. A few years ago
an attorney roamed the corridors of the Supreme Court
in the Bronx looking for Justice Wagner, then sitting
in that remote jurisdiction. He turned a corner and
came upon a short, stocky man with a sharp nose, gray-
ing hair and furrows around his eyes.

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The Janitor's Boy

"About that motion you signed, Judge — " he began.

"Oh, I'm not the Judge," came the answer in a voice
of decidedly Germanic flavor. "I'm just Gus Wagner,
his brother. I'm a court attendant. The Judge is on
the bench in Part III."

It was Gus Wagner who went down to Castle Garden
on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1886 to meet Bob, his
younger brother. And it was Gus who advanced the
necessary cash, from his wages as cook at the New York
Athletic Club, for incidental expenses at the College of
the City of New York, for tuition at the New York Law
School and for subsequent deficits of an embryo prac-
tice. In the years that followed Bob became prominent
while Gus could boast only a feebly reflected glory.
The brothers look amazingly alike. Not only are their
features similar but they have similar mannerisms — an
almost identical way of throwing back their heads when
they speak. Gus, though, somehow seems vague and
indefinite in outline beside his distinguished brother;
he might be the image of "The Judge" reflected from
the depths of an ancient mirror. Such is the difference
between life at $17,500 a year, the salary of a Justice of
the Supreme Court, and at $2,500, the wages of a court
attendant.

Primarily, of course, it was an instinct for personal
advancement that caused Bob to grow. Graduating
from law school at the turn of the century, he decided
upon a political career. Then, even more than now, it
was possible to fly to fame on winged words and Wagner
went in for oratory. His early orations were in the
22nd Assembly District in Yorkville, and described the

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greatness of the local leader, the greatness of the city
and the greatness of Tammany Hall — chiefly the last.
Building up a law practice at the same time, he was in
1905 sent to the Assembly. There he found a friend in
a young man with a nasal twang who, also, came from
Manhattan and was a Tammany regular. Five years
later another Wigwam legislator joined them and the
three, Al Smith, Bob Wagner and Jimmy Walker be-
came Three Musketeers for Charles F. Murphy, Boss
of the Wigwam.

It was typical of Wagner in those days, as of Tam-
many HalFs particular stars at all times, that he did
brilliant work, succeeded in having many good bills
passed, assisted in the passage of some bad ones, and
rarely questioned the authority of Fourteenth Street.
He supported labor and welfare legislation, popular
election of United States Senators and the federal in-
come tax amendment. He was the author of the first
state conservation act and did what he could to free
New York City from the domination of upstate Repub-
licans. He rarely opposed measures designed to "help
the boys".

In 1911, by this time having been advanced to the
State Senate, he was able to remark without a smile
that Murphy, "adhering to his long established policy,
has not attempted to influence the Legislature in any
way". The New York World printed this statement
with great glee and also the even more remarkable one
of Al Smith. "Mr. Murphy," said Al, "is no more
interested in the Legislature than any other good Demo-
crat."

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The Janitor's Boy

It was loyalty beyond all other virtues that Tammany
rewarded. Wagner became, with Smith, Jim Foley,
Walker, Jeremiah Mahoney (his law partner) and oth-
ers, one of "Murphy's young men". This meant they
were destined to go far in public life. Wagner was
swiftly made majority leader of the Senate, Lieutenant-
Governor upon the impeachment of Governor Sulzer,
and in 1918, a Justice of the Supreme Court. It is
greatly to his credit that when he was elected to the
bench he immediately suppressed any remaining ten-
dencies toward oratory that he may have had, so much
so that during his eight years of service he quite forgot
the art and was a sad disappointment when he cam-
paigned for Senator.

Wagner has lived for years in a six-room flat at
Eighty-sixth Street and Second Avenue and insists that
he does not mind the roar of the elevated past his win-
dows. So certain has he been that he would not desert
Yorkville that he has spent several thousand dollars
decorating the place, for which he pays a rental of
$1,100 a year. His household is now a rather lonely
one, for his wife died in 1919, and his son, Bob, seventeen
and his only child, is away for most of the year at the
Taft School. Wagner's tastes are simple. He plays
golf a good deal, not too well. He says that he likes to
walk over to Fifth Avenue and "sit in the park". He
goes to the Metropolitan Opera House once a week.

Most of his leisure is devoted to reading. In late
years Bob Wagner has not been a particularly social
person. It was his wife, Irish and a Roman Catholic,
gave the light touch of hospitality to the home.
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Big Frogs

Since her death he has buried himself in law books, in
biography and history. Originally a Lutheran, Wag-
ner's church affiliations were never very definite and
some Tammany men, forgetting his German origin, be-
lieved him a Catholic. He might have capitalized this
as a definite political asset, had he been so inclined, as
did the late Justice Wauhope Lynn.

Judge Lynn, known far and wide as "Warwhoop",
was an Ulsterite, a Protestant, a "Church Burner".
But he was also a Sachem of Tammany Hall and thereby
a man of liberal views. He was one of the spellbinders
of the local Democracy and his tolerance in ecclesiastical
matters enabled him to make frenzied orations, when
invited, at meetings of the Knights of Columbus and
other Catholic rallies. It was a bit of a shock to many
of his associates when eventually they put on their top
hats and black gloves to attend his funeral and found
that it was being held in a Presbyterian church.

It has been remarked that the duties of a Judge re-
quire "not the administration of justice but of the law".
Such a theory — and, on the whole, its accuracy can
hardly be questioned — made life difficult for Wagner,
but he succeeded in steering a middle course between de-
cisions based on a literal interpretation of the law and
those based on the merits of the individual case. He
studied the relevant cases with thoroughness and adapted
them, as best he could, to the particular matter before
him. As a judge, he was generally considered by the
legal profession to have been above the average, a con-
scientious and hard working member of the Bench.

A kindly man, it would have distressed him to preside

216

The Janitor's Boy

at criminal trials. He has imagination enough to view
with repugnance the duty of sentencing men to jail or
worse. Fortunately for his peace of mind, his contacts
with the criminal law were slight. The chief exception
was the time in 1923 when he was designated by Gover-
nor Smith for the trial of Walter S. Ward, who pleaded
self-defense and a blackmail plot for having killed an
obscure youth up near the Kensico watershed in West-
chester County. The trial was held in the marble court
house at White Plains, and I had never before seen a
judge give the absorbed, conscientious and painstaking
attention that Justice Wagner gave. He sat up most
of two nights preparing his charge to the jury.

When, at the end, the jury shambled in to report its
verdict the usual stern orders against a demonstration
were issued. But the finding that \Vard was innocent
brought the inevitable outburst of applause and Wagner
made no effort to suppress it. To some onlookers it
seemed as though a great weight had been lifted from
the Judge's shoulders.

It would, however, be not only unfair but inaccurate
to hint that the heart of the jurist ruled his head. The
records show that he was rarely reversed by the Appel-
late Division. Not long before he went to Washington
he was, himself, elevated to the Appellate Division.

Tammany Hall, aware of his increasing prestige, at
various times urged him to run for Governor and other
offices. He preferred, though, to remain on the bench.
In 1924 it was chiefly his religion that saved him from
succeeding Murphy : Tammany hesitates at having other
than a Catholic for its Boss. When the Hall dumped

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Big Frogs

Mayor Hylan and began to look for a candidate, Wag-
ner's name was again mentioned. This office, it is said,
appealed to him and he might have encouraged the
boom had he not heard that Jimmy Walker was even
more anxious for the nomination. When he learned of
this he promptly sailed for Europe and left the field
clear to Jimmy.

Chosen by his party for the United States Senate,
Wagner declared frankly that he was flattered and it
was because of this, and because he believed it a Demo-
cratic year, that he accepted the nomination. He did
not distinguish himself during the campaign, but Al
Smith's vote-getting talents and Wadsworth's perfidy
to the drys were enough to bring him victory. While
waiting to take his seat at Washington he labored hard
and long to master the various problems which he
would face. During the first session he did not show
any unusual merit but he worked hard and prayed for
the nomination and election of Smith. With Smith in
the White House, he would become one of the most
important men in Washington. And if his legislative
accomplishments were not great, Wagner demonstrated,
at least, that he did not propose to talk about anything
until he knew his subject. It was months before he
said anything at all. His silence was in marked con-
trast to the loquacity of his fellow Senators.

218

7

/

CHEERFUL UNCLE WILBUR

FOR SOME REASON, WHICH NO ONE SEEMS TO UNDER-

stand, the President of the United States usually has
difficulty in obtaining a Secretary of the Navy. Mr.
Coolidge, who hates picking cabinet officers almost as
much as wearing cowboy costumes, was forced in March
of 1924 to find a successor to Mr. Edwin Denby, whose
ill health made necessary his resignation from the dis-
integrating Harding Cabinet. One afternoon, at a ses-
sion with the newspaper correspondents, the President
admitted that he had been unsuccessful.

"You know a lot of big men," he said. "Give me
some names."

The correspondents, somewhat flattered, indiscreetly
printed stories to the effect that the President had asked
them to aid in this important task. Immediately,
throughout the country, newspaper owners and pub-
lishers began telegraphing their Washington men to
"put over" a prominent citizen from the home town.
Among those who did this was Harry Chandler, of the
Los Angeles Times. Why not, he demanded, Curtis D.
Wilbur, of California? Here was a tried and true Re-
publican from a State whose support was always wel-
come in Presidential years. He was Chief Justice of
the State Supreme Court, long active in public work, a
former leader of the Boy Scouts, the teacher of a huge

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Bible class, and, although this was not included among
the arguments for his appointment, the author of two
volumes of bedtime stories — one called "The Bear Fam-
ily at Home" and the other, a later work, "Johnny and
His Green Vest". He had lived, a fact pregnant with
meaning to those who know their California, in both
Los Angeles and San Francisco. He was, moreover, a
graduate of the Naval Academy. None of the other
correspondents had a candidate with such overwhelming
qualifications, and Coolidge wired Wilbur to come East.

"Who in Sam Hill," every one at Washington asked,
"is Curtis D. Wilbur?"

He was by no means unknown among the oldsters of
the Navy, however; and an occasional gold-braided ad-
miral with a swivel-chair job in the Navy Department
Building on B Street must have slapped his knee and
uttered a seagoing oath of pleasure. For here, he felt
certain, was a man with the "Navy point of view", who
would refrain from landlubberly questions about techni-
cal problems. He might, it was conceivable, even be
counted upon to block periodic impertinences in the
form of civilian inquiries and to appeal to the President
to stop Congressional investigations which might en-
danger the naval motto, "All's well".

Curtis Dwight Wilbur had been graduated from An-
napolis with the class of 1888. He had been hitch-kick
champion during his midshipman days, touching with
his toe a tambourine at the unprecedented height of nine
feet one inch. A tablet in the Academy gymnasium still
marks the spot where this historic event took place. He
had not, it is true, accepted a commission after gradua-

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Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

tion, but had headed for the West to become a lawyer.
His experience at sea had been limited to student cruises.
He had, though, kept up his Navy contacts and often
visited the fleet when it was in Pacific waters. His ar-
rival at Washington, it was happily predicted, would be
virtually a class reunion; for Admirals Charles F.
Hughes, S. S. Robison, Robert E. Coontz, and Edward
W. Eberle had been at Annapolis during the same years.
All were members of the High Command.
So Mr. Wilbur came to Washington.

II

Few men in public life, even among those who have
been members of a Presidential Cabinet, have been so
unfortunate in their formal and informal statements.
A well-meaning gentleman of unquestioned integrity,
Mr. Wilbur no sooner opens his mouth than something
occurs to demonstrate that he is speaking without ade-
quate knowledge, too hastily, upon misinformation, or
contrary to the policies of his chief, Calvin Coolidge.
He seems constantly to be in hot water, sometimes
through no fault of his own, and is repeatedly being lam-
basted by the editorial writers. Their criticisms hurt
rather than anger him, however, and he keeps on talking.

Meanwhile the United States Navy begins to ap-
proach in efficiency that of the Republic of Switzer-
land. Coolidge economy, which Mr. Wilbur has never
strenuously opposed, has reduced the personnel until
"it is seriously affecting the efficiency of the operations
of the United States Fleet". Several cruisers now in
service "are beyond their allotted span of years". The

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"necessity of reducing the expenditure of small-arms
ammunition . . . operated unfavorably against the
Scouting and Battle Fleets". About "60 per cent of
the destroyers have required repairs, either emergency
or routine," during the year. There is a "deficiency of
torpedoes". The "battleships have been maintained in
about the same material condition" as at the beginning
of 1926. Such are Mr. Wilbur's conclusions in his 1927
report. Hardly a submarine in the fleet, one might add,
is adequate in design or speed for war service.

And now Congress is being asked to spend $725,000,-
000 in five years for new ships and as much as $75,000,-
000 more for repairs. A nation still aroused over the
sinking of the S-4 is reminded that there have been
eighteen major naval accidents (not counting the loss of
the Shenandoah, which was a Navy dirigible) since Sep-
tember of 1923 — accidents that have cost 86 lives, total
destruction of twelve ships, and $20,000,000 to $30,000,-
000. Thirteen of the eighteen accidents, including all of
those mostly costly in human life, occurred during the
Wilbur regime. Only five vessels were lost during the
World War, and the Navy is learning that peace with
Coolidge and Wilbur in command is hell.

Government circles in Washington, whose credo is
that any Secretary of the Navy is certain to be amusing,
are constantly circulating the latest story regarding Mr.
Wilbur — and the anecdotes usually concern his most re-
cent speech, press release, or other uttered remark. The
most famous of all, one which has lost none of its popu-
larity through age, refers to an ill-fated trip to the
Pacific coast in the fall of 1924. Mr. Wilbur, having

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Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

been in office for but six months, was unaware of the
extent to which Mr. Coolidge's love for economy re-
coiled from naval appropriations. He was standing for
"a 100 per cent Navy, equal to that of any other Power,"
was highly elated over his appointment, and was ready to
give his views on almost anything.

There was therefore some cause for apprehension
when he arrived in San Francisco to make several
speeches. His first public address contained criticisms
of certain features of the Volstead Act, at the moment as
"sacred" to the Coolidge Administration as it now is to
Governor Alfred E. Smith, of New York. Within a
day or two Mr. Wilbur protested that he had been mis-
quoted. Then he appeared before the Chamber of Com-
merce and pointed out that the fleet had been shifted
from the Atlantic to the Pacific to take care of future
wars. He said, in part :

"America should be prepared to resist aggression and
interference with her internal affairs by any foreign
Power opposed to the methods and purposes of our
civilization. There are times when the language of
diplomacy must be spoken by tongues of steel. There
are times when the only arguments to which men will
listen are the arguments pronounced from the mouths
of guns. . . . There is nothing so cooling to a hot
temper as a piece of cold steel".

This was somewhat crude, and several newspapers in
Tokyo took editorial cognizance of what the American
Cabinet officer had said. President Coolidge, seated at
his desk in Washington, read the press clippings placed
before him. It was not, however, until he saw an ad-

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vance copy of a speech scheduled for Denver, Colorado,
that he became aroused, transformed from a cool and
silent statesman to a very mad little Yankee. Mr. Wil-
bur had planned to express approval of the League of
Nations and admiration for the work of President Wil-
son. And this with a Presidential campaign under way!

"Tell him to come home," Mr. Coolidge is supposed
to have growled. "Tell him to take an airplane."

The President, according to sophisticated Washing-
ton gossip, did not mean the airplane part literally. It
was said in sardonic jest. But a member of the execu-
tive staff telegraphed Mr. Wilbur that his presence in
Washington was imperative, and that the President had
ordered him thither at once. Whereupon the Secretary
of the Navy telephoned frantically all over California
for a plane, hopped into it, soared after the Overland
Limited, which had already left, and arrived, hot and
panting, in Washington. He explained to newspaper
men that he was needed on "urgent naval matters".

He was, however, kept waiting for several days before
being received at the White House, and good taste de-
mands that a veil be drawn over what took place. Mr.
Wilbur remained in Washington, at all events, until
Mr. Coolidge had been safely reflected, and from that
day his speeches have been in harmony with the philoso-
phies of the President.

In other respects, though, he has repeatedly been in
trouble. When "What Price Glory?" opened in New
York, he remarked that its language was no longer
typical of "a navy made clean" and was gently kidded
for his naivete. When the Shenandoah was wrecked

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Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

over Ohio, having been ordered to fly into thunder-
storms to boost State fairs and the Republican Party,
he flatly contradicted the widow of its commander, who
said that her husband had protested against the flight.
He had never seen, it turned out, letters in the files of
the Navy Department supporting Mrs. Lansdowne's
contention. When a naval arsenal in New Jersey was
struck by lightning, causing a score of deaths and
$80,000,000 in destruction, Mr. Wilbur insisted that
"all known precautions had been taken". He learned,
too late, that the commandant of the arsenal had com-
plained regarding lack of adequate safeguards. Sim-
ilarly, when two aviators flying to Honolulu believed
that they could not go on, the Secretary of the Navy
rebuked them for having annoyed the naval vessels in
the vicinity, and demanded to know why they had not
sent another radio canceling the call for assistance. He
was then informed, having managed to appear quite
silly, that the plane's wireless had gone dead immediately
after the S.O.S.

Some of Mr. Wilbur's misstatements are due to his
complete faith in the bureaucrats of the Navy Depart-
ment. Others are inspired by an optimism which is an
outstanding characteristic of the man and which causes
him to enlarge hopes into actualities. This is, inevitably,
dangerous for any executive, and occasionally leaves
Mr. Wilbur far out, as the saying is, on a limb. It was,
he insisted early in 1924, "preposterous" that the Navy
had fallen behind Great Britain and Japan in strength,
speed, or efficiency. A few months later he said that
$110,000,000 must be appropriated annually for twenty

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years if the 5-5-3 ratio established at the Limitation of
Armament Conference was to be maintained. His 1925
report to the President was, on the whole, sunnily cheer-
ful, despite the loss of the S-51 and the Shenandoah,
and in 1926 his chief complaint was regarding a reduced
personnel. I have attempted, already, to point out that
in his 1927 summation he shows fairly clearly that the
United States Navy is on the rocks because of Coolidge
economy. Yet he manages to say:

"During the year there have been no major casualties.
The morale of the Navy has been maintained at a high
plane."

This was published in the newspapers of December 11,
1927. A week later the S-4 lay at the bottom of the sea
off Proviricetown, Massachusetts, with forty men on
board. Seldom has the Nation waited in such agony as
when the divers learned, after twenty-four hours had
passed, that at least six were alive. Seldom has public
opinion been so unanimous that officialdom fussed and
fiddled and bungled while the men in that cold, steel
coffin hammered out piteous appeals to hurry. In the
end they died, these men who had been buried alive, and
the investigations to determine the responsibility were
long and wordy and settled little. Partly it was because
the gods of the weather brought mountainous seas. But
partly, too, it was because the Navy's salvage equipment
was inadequate. It is not the first time that men have
thus perished; only two years ago the S-51 went down
and thirty-six lives were lost. If the Navy learned any-
thing from the earlier disaster it has not been able to
show it.

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Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

Yet Mr. Wilbur and the High Command at Wash-
ington— the staff admirals, the experts, and the rest —
seem to be as incurably cheerful as ever. They glibly
counter suggestions that additional safety appliances
might have been installed. They intimate that it was
the dead men of the S-4, who no longer can speak, who
were at fault and that the naval inquiries will so de-
termine. Suggestions that the Navy should have proper
salvage vessels, that submarines should not operate in
shipping lanes, that tenders supposed to accompany
them should really do so — these suggestions made by
shocked civilians will "go through proper channels".
The submarine, after all, is built to fight and not to be
rescued, and the men who go under the sea in ships must
die from time to time. And certainly we of the High
Command, grown old and gray and possibly wise, have
the situation well in hand and everything is for the best.
But I grow bitter —

III

Not infrequently, when raised to the eminence of
Cabinet rank, men achieve inflated notions of their im-
portance. But Mr. Wilbur soon demonstrated that he
would remain just folks. No other high Government
official was so easy to approach, and during his first
conferences with the correspondents he was obviously
anxious to please. The newspaper men, calling for
their introductory visit, saw a tall, broad, elderly man
standing behind his desk looking at them from behind
his spectacles. He seemed a little self-conscious as they
filed in, a trifle over-eager. One of Wilbur's talents is,

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however, a facility in remembering names and faces, and
as the months passed he came to know most of the
writers. Gradually, too, he adopted an air not unlike
that of the superintendent of a Sunday school. He
joked with them, and seemed to be on the point of ex-
pressing pleasure that "so many bright faces" were
gathered before him. One afternoon he was holding
forth on technical details of the Navy's judicial system,
one of his hobbies. The correspondents were frankly
bored and one or two were getting sleepy.

"Do you understand what I am explaining?" he sud-
denly asked one reporter, whose eyes had a far-away
expression.

"No, Mr. Secretary, I'm frank to say I don't," was
the answer.

"Ah," murmured Wilbur, shaking his head in sorrow,
"I thought not."

Traces of his Bible-class days are present, too, when
some new correspondent attends a press conference.
Wilbur then goes out of his way to welcome the stranger,
to make him feel at home. He has been known to ap-
proach with outstretched hand, his eyes beaming cor-
diality.

"My name's Wilbur," he explains. "I don't believe
I have met you before."

Official Washington, hearing of this, snickered. It
burst into guffaws when it learned that Wilbur had been
a writer of bedtime stories and that in "The Bear Family
at Home" were descriptions of how "The Little-Bear-
Cub-That-Would-Not-Mind-His-Papa" got into diffi-
culties almost as great as the Little- Secretary-of-the-

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Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

Navy-Who-Would-Not-Mind-Mr. Coolidge. At one or
two small dinner parties, to which the Secretary of the
Navy had not been invited, enterprising hostesses read
selections from his literary works, a favorite passage
being Mr. Wilbur's graphic recital of a circus train
wreck in which "The Little Bear Cub Got Back into the
Woods Again":

"One night, after the wagons and the animals had all
been put on board the cars, the fireman rang the bell, and
the engineer started the train, and away it went,
whistling and coughing down the track. The animals
were so used to the train going rattle-te-bang, rattle-te-
bang, all night long, that they all went to sleep.

"While the animals and every one on the train, except
the engineer and the fireman, were asleep, the engineer
looked ahead and suddenly saw a big rock on the track.
He blew the whistle, 'Toot-toot,' to call the brakemen,
and the brakemen ran as fast as they could and began to
put on the brakes to stop the train, but the train came
nearer and nearer to the big rock.

"The poor engineer couldn't stop the train, and the
brakemen couldn't stop the train, so the engine ran into
the rock and was knocked off the track, and turned a
somersault and was smashed all to pieces, and all the
cars ran off the track into a ditch, so that the animals
got out of their cages and found they were free."

After he became Secretary of the Navy Mr. Wilbur
indiscreetly permitted syndication of his stories to the
newspapers. Rumors got about that he was still com-
posing them. The truth was that all the stories had been
written prior to his arrival in Washington. They are,
probably, about as good as any others of their type, and

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it was, I think, quite in line with Mr. Wilbur's nature
that he should have written them; he is devoted to chil-
dren and for decades has spun fairly tales to please
them. He was born in Boonesboro, a small Iowa village,
in 1867, attended the public schools there until his family
moved to North Dakota when he was fifteen, and went
to the Naval Academy quite by accident two years later.

"My father," he recalls, "was a lawyer who specialized
in real estate. I remember that he owned a small coal
mine and that my earliest ambition was to drive one of
the mules. But when I was about to graduate from high
school at Jamestown, North Dakota, three candidates
were suggested for Annapolis. The other two couldn't
go, so I accepted."

Despite his size and his hitch-kicking talents — he was
a strapping youth and to-day weighs about 230 pounds
— the youthful Wilbur was primarily a student, a con-
templative young man who graduated from Annapolis
third in his class. Few commissions were awarded in
those days, and this must have pleased him, for he had
decided to study law. Upon graduating in 1888, he
hurried to Los Angeles, where his parents, like so many
other lowans, had migrated. He taught school for a
year, working with his law books at night, and in 1890
was admitted to the bar.

Wilbur became in a short time one of the legal lights
of California, and rose from district attorney of Los
Angeles County to Judge of the Superior Court. Then
he was elevated to the Supreme Court, and eventually
became its Presiding Justice. Meanwhile, always inter-
ested in children, his avocation became their moral and

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Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

physical betterment. He revised the children's code, sat
as a judge of the Children's Court, organized the Boys'
Brigade, a semi-military organization, lectured at the
Y.M.C.A., and became the first chief of the Los Angeles
Boy Scouts. He lived in San Francisco while head of
the Supreme Court, and there taught a Bible class still
known as "Judge Wilbur's Public Welfare Class". The
first of his bedtime stories were written almost twenty
years ago, when his daughter and three sons were young-
sters.

Only partially did Mr. Wilbur fulfill the high hopes
of the American admiralty when it learned that one of
its own was coming to rule. The private office of the
Secretary of the Navy took on, it is true, a more nautical
appearance. Visitors are sometimes shown a photo-
graph of the Constellation, an old-time training ship,
and their attention is directed to a tiny speck far up in
the rigging.

"That's the Secretary of the Navy," Mr. Wilbur says
with pride. "I made my cruise on that ship while I was
at the Academy. I visited it a year or so ago, and would
have liked to climb up there again. But I was afraid
people might think I was trying to show off."

IV

All of this is pleasant. Members of the class of 1888
are gratified to see on the wall the warrant on which
Mr. Wilbur went to Annapolis occupying a position
of honor next to the formal document whereby Mr.
Coolidge made him Secretary of the Navy. One can
drop in to talk over the old days. It has developed, too,

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that few complaints regarding red tape are likely to
come from the Secretary; that he is inclined to bend a
sympathetic ear toward official excuses and alibis.

The Navy bureaucrats learned to their sorrow,
though, that Mr. Wilbur's early belief in the virtue of a
large Navy was not to endure. It turned out that his
policies were to be shaped, without exception, by the
Vermonter in the White House. Not even grave needs
of the service, equipment that was falling to pieces, a
dwindling personnel, obsolete vessels, could force him
to oppose the will of his chief. The new Secretary
proved, too, to be almost a Daniels with respect to drink-
ing and frowned upon the serving of cocktails at parties.
He has insisted upon courts martial for officers and
men, even for two elderly naval nurses, found with so
much as a quart of liquor in their possession. He has
approved dismissal of one or two Annapolis youths
guilty of intoxication, a painful duty, since he is deeply
attached to the young men of the Academy and lectures
before their Christian Association twice a year.

Men in public life are usually judged by what they
say, and not by what they do. Chiefly in this, I think,
lies the ignominy of Mr. Wilbur. He is not, perhaps,
any worse than some of those who held the post before
him. His mistakes are of the head, and not of the
heart. There is none in Washington to assail his hon-
esty, and, although a partisan Democratic Congressman
may brand him a "fuddy-duddy", the attitude of the
Republicans is that of the Western saloon-keeper who
posted this sign :

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Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

"Don't shoot the pianist. He is doing the best he
can."

In the things he has said, it is my point, Mr. Wilbur
has been in a class by himself. It is not only that he is
a bad politician — this might be a virtue in a man of force
willing to fight for his convictions. It is that he is so
naively simple. He says one thing which offends Mr.
Coolidge and many which offend common sense. When
the searchlight of public indignation swings toward the
Navy Department to pierce the fog of officialdom, he
remarks, as did the rescue forces to the dying men of
the S-4, that "everything possible is being done". And
so frequently Mr. Wilbur is merely ridiculous, as, for
instance, when the new Navy dirigible was being
christened. A resident of Los Angeles in former years,
and closely identified with that city, he explained the
real significance of the name:

"When the Prince of Peace was born in Bethlehem
the angels sang to men, 'Glory to God in the highest and
on earth peace, good will toward men.' In remem-
brance of this angel song I will name the ship Los
Angeles."

Within a few weeks Chambers of Commerce and
Rotary Clubs in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle
had filed protests.

Mr. Wilbur is not an old man. He has just turned
sixty. But the impression is inescapable to any one who
has talked with him and with those who know him well
that his view-point is that of the Elder Statesmen. He
is, I repeat, gentle and amiable. He is proud that

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1,000,000 lithographs of Old Ironsides have been sold
and that the ship will be saved. He loves the men who
were with him at Annapolis and who now, in some cases,
are his advisers. He believes with a deep conviction that
the Navy grows better year by year, in the enlisted
personnel's morality if not in fighting efficiency. In his
1927 report, the one in which he is forced to admit the
ravages of economy, he says that when the fleet was in
New York the superintendent of the subway "stated
that every sailor carried as a passenger had been a gen-
tleman". The Brooklyn Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation, he adds, reported that "75,000 visits had been
paid to it". Mr. Wilbur glories in his job and bends
his head in grief when demands are made that he resign.
He will not resign, for at heart he is sure that he has
done rather well, and he knows that Mr. Coolidge does
not propose again to go through the agony of finding
a, Cabinet member.

And, one feels, the Secretary of the Navy is a man
whose emotional boiling-point is high. The men of the
S-51 are dead, save three who were rescued. So are
most of those who rode into the West on the Shenan-
doah. Now their ghostly crews have been joined by the
forty sailors of the S-4. One cannot avoid the con-
clusion that Mr. Wilbur, deeply regretting these acci-
dents, believes that they are unavoidable. It is too bad
that they occurred, and letters expressing the sorrow of
the Navy Department have been sent to the bereaved
families. The High Command has said, however, that
everything possible was done. One remembers, in con-
templating Mr. Wilbur and his staff, that poem which

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Cheerful Uncle Wilbur

Mr. Kipling wrote when other men, also grown old,
were in command :

The lamp of our youth will be utterly out; but we shall

subsist on the smell of it,
And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands and suck

our gums and think well of it.
Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and

that is the perfectest Hell of it!

237

CHORE BOY OF
THE G. O. P.

A THEORY IS FREQUENTLY ADVANCED THAT THE POLITI-

cal future of Theodore Roosevelt, "the young Colonel",
as Al Smith rather nastily refers to him, lies entirely in
the past. It is said that "the fighting son of a fighting
sire", to quote a phrase evolved by campaign press
agents, has fought his last battle. He has proved, the
wise ones say, a wash-out, a dud, a flop. It no longer
profits him to cry "Bully! Delighted!" or to wave his
battered hat like a Rough Rider charging San Juan
Hill. The people have learned that the King is dead
and that there is no king.

Ten years ago, while the youthful Teddy was fighting
in France, the leaders of the party his father had nearly
wrecked dreamed dreams and saw visions. The Bull
Moose was dead. The havoc of its rampage had been
covered by the growth of several years. Crystal gazing,
the G.O.P. bosses saw vistas of young T.R. returning
from the war, T.R. bowing to demands that he enter
public life, T.R. in the State Assembly at Albany, as
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, as Governor of New
York, as Vice-President of the United States, as Presi-
dent! It was to be an almost line-for-line repetition
of his father's career.

For a time the program was smoothly followed. Col.
Roosevelt came back from the war, in which he had

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made an excellent record, and ran for the Assembly.
He was elected and reflected. Then President Harding
invited him to become Second Lord of the Admiralty
and Teddy confided to one or two friends that he seemed
to be a "man of destiny". The oil scandals, in which
T.R. played a part as innocent as it was thick-headed,
did not prevent his nomination as the Republican guber-
natorial candidate in 1924, and had any one but Alfred
E. Smith been his opponent he would have been elected.
He would have remained at Albany for two or three
terms until called to Washington by a grateful nation.
Instead, still the fighting son of a fighting sire, he was
forced to leave on an expedition to hunt the Ovis Poli,
the Ibex, the Goitered Gazelle and the Asiatic Wapiti
in the Himalayas. He returned with bulging bags, in
March of 1926, announcing that he was "fit for a fight
or a frolic" ; a candidate for almost anything. He still is.
But the young Colonel's prolonged banishment to
private life is the result of a peculiar situation in his
party and is not due to any widespread belief that he
has been found wanting. Since 1924, as a matter of
fact, there has been no office for which he could have
been logically nominated. He might, it is true, have
been run again for Governor in 1926. He would have
been game, no doubt, for another spanking from Al
Smith. Even the New York Republicans are aware,
however, that it is bad psychology to enter a defeated
candidate against his conqueror. The years from 1924
to the present have been, on the whole, extremely lean
for the party of refinement and culture in New York.
Some new federal appointment might, of course, have

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Chore Boy of the G.O.P.

been handed young Roosevelt as a means of keeping
him in the lime-light. But this charitable act is said to
have been blocked by Calvin Coolidge, who finds T.R.'s
vivacity somewhat irritating.

Any theory that Teddy is politically dead is based,
however, on a monstrous fallacy. Realism may have
reached the world of letters and the stage. It may even
be creeping slowly upon the motion picture. But the
art of politics is still untainted. For every person re-
pelled by bunk and blare and blah, ten are converted.
The man who makes the most noise is likely to receive
the most votes. Emotion and not reason marks the bal-
lots and pulls the levers of voting machines. Good taste
and intelligence are fearfully handicapped in the politi-
cal arena. And T.R., rarely suffering from them, is
still an asset to his party.

"Ah! There's a lovely little girl!'' he beamed from a
train platform while campaigning for Harding in 1920.
"You know, I have four children myself."

On another occasion he saw an old man with a G.A.R.
button on his coat.

"Hello!" he exclaimed, pointing to the tottering war-
rior. "You are a G.A.R. man! I see that glorious old
button. The issue is just the plain, old-fashioned Ameri-
canism that the men of the Grand Army of the Republic
fought for. Go to the polls and return a clean sweep
for Harding and Coolidge, the Republican Party,
America free and America first. Go to it now!"

"If bunk was electricity," growled Al Smith one
day, following some asinine statement, "the young Colo-
nel would be a power house."

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II

Unquestionably it was destiny which permitted Teddy
to achieve, as had his father, the rank of Lieutenant
Colonel; as a mere Major the resemblance would have
been vastly less marked. And it was destiny, too, which
called him to Washington as Assistant Secretary of the
Navy. There he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, who
had been Democratic nominee for Vice-President in the
recent campaign and of whom T.R. had remarked with
questionable taste :

"He is a maverick. He does not bear the brand of
our family."

Notified in March of 1921 that he had been appointed,
Teddy spontaneously burst out "Bully!" and volun-
teered that Edwin R. Denby, his new chief, was "a
princely fellow". He went to Washington determined
to make good. He was polite, affable, popular among
the younger Navy crowd. He was glad to do favors,
asked no indiscreet questions and signed, without read-
ing them, many of the letters placed before him. He
personally carried to the White House the executive
order which transferred the naval oil reserves from the
Navy to the Interior Department, and which was an
essential link in the Fall-Sinclair-Doheny conspiracy.
He signed a letter, later explained as "merely a formal
letter prepared in the Navy Department", suggesting
that the lease negotiations be kept secret. One morning
he found on his desk a message from Secretary of the
Interior Fall asking him to drop in to see him. Arriving,
he was told that poachers were preparing to sink wells

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Chore Boy of the G.O.P.

on the Teapot Dome reserve, just turned over to Harry
Sinclair. Would Mr. Roosevelt — Denby was away and
he was Acting Secretary — dispatch a few marines to
eject the villains threatening to steal some of Sinclair's
potential $100,000,000 in oil profits?

"Delighted," said Teddy, in effect. It never occurred
to him to ask why devil dogs should protect private
property or why Sinclair did not seek redress in the
courts. Filled with faith in Republican human nature,
no shadow of suspicion crossed his mind. Thus he was
again made the tool of the era of corruption.

But when, at last, rumors of what had really happened
began to penetrate, T.R. told what he knew. He sum-
moned his brother, Archie, who had been given a job
as vice-president of a Sinclair subsidiary, to do the
same. And if Teddy made an exhibition of himself on
the witness stand during the subsequent oil investiga-
tions he demonstrated, at least, that he had courage.
He did not, of course, know very much. Most of his
testimony demonstrated his lack of information regard-
ing what was going on and proved that, as Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, he had been duped by men
betraying their country. He may have convicted him-
self of stupidity but he cleared his name of the taint of
dishonesty. And when he resigned to run for Governor
he received a letter from President Coolidge stating that
"your activity and energy have served as an inspiration
to those who were associated with you in the conduct
of your office".

There were many who believed that the oil scandal
and the other unsavory details of the administration

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inherited by Coolidge would have their effect in 1924.
The mob, in which Democrats predominated, howled for
Fall's head, for Daugherty's, for Denby's, and even for
the innocent and well-meaning one of Col. Roosevelt.
The first three fell, one by one, but not that of T.R.
He had been exonerated of evil intent and he refused
to quit. It turned out, of course, that the voters were
not in the least disturbed by corruption in high office
and gave it overwhelming endorsement in the presiden-
tial campaign. Some of this may, perhaps, have been
pre-visioned in the astute mind of Alice Longworth,
daughter of a President, wife of the Speaker of the
House of Representatives and sister to Teddy. Cred-
ited with one of the keenest political minds in Washing-
ton, she is said to have persuaded James W. Wadsworth,
then senior United States Senator from New York,
that her brother would make an ideal nominee to run
against Al Smith.

I am not offering this, I hasten to add, as authentic.
It is, however, an interesting speculation because Mrs.
Longworth, at least, is a political realist. She knew
that her brother's war record would be a campaign
asset. She knew that her brother had no scruples about
capitalizing that asset. The G.O.P. was having its
biennial trouble finding a probable victim for Smith
and Roosevelt was willing to risk a licking. So he
was named.

"We Republicans," he said in one of his first speeches
(from the lips of any one else the address would be
suspected of satire), "have married decency and ideal-
ism. This is the secret of our success. Our heads may

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Chore Boy of the G.O.P.

be in the clouds, but our feet are on the ground. Demo-
crats use words to cloak their meaning and simply for
the purpose of capturing votes. We Republicans do
not."

Bands playing "Over There" and "It's a Hot Time
in the Old Time To-night", World War veterans, Span-
ish War veterans, Civil War veterans, gold star moth-
ers, red fire, parades, flags, bunting and a small, excited,
perspiring, dark-haired man making twenty to twenty-
five speeches a day; such was the exhibition given by
Theodore Roosevelt in 1924. Quantity instead of qual-
ity was ordered by his managers. He made one speech
again and again and again. When not recalling the
glories of the war, T.R. spoke of the glories of Calvin
Coolidge. State issues were largely avoided. But he
frequently charged Al Smith with extravagance and
then, wherever he went, promised that "we Republicans"
would build roads, bridges, hospitals, canals or what-
ever G.O.P. constituents wanted. Their cost would
have run into millions.

"By George, that's nice!" "We'll win, by gracious!"
"Fine! Bully! Delighted!" "I want to shake you by
the hand!"; these and many similar ejaculations poured
from his lips in a volume. He wore out a hat in five
days by snatching it from his head, crushing it in an
iron grip, waving it, whacking it against his hand for
emphasis. Again and again, from the back of his
train, he would lean over, grin and ask the brass band
on the platform, "Can you play 'Over There'?"

"There's no time to talk issues," he would say hap-
pily. "Just look me over and make up your minds if

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Big Frogs

I'm a regular fellow; then don't overlook me in Novem-
ber. I want to introduce Mrs. Roosevelt (seated be-
hind him on the observation car platform) , the real head
of my family. And I want to shake hands with some
of you."

Dreadful stuff? Bunk? Hokum? But it proved to
be enormously successful. Record crowds waited for
hours for the campaign special to stop for three min-
utes at some obscure tank town. They screamed them-
selves hoarse, jammed into lecture halls in larger towns,
carried torches and whooped it up, so universally, that
Teddy's astonished managers toyed with the theory
that their candidate was being mistaken for his father,
News of his death, they told each other, might not have
penetrated to some of the rural Republican strongholds.
Gradually, the young Colonel, at first worried and ner-
vous, grew confident. He no longer said, "If I am
elected", but "When I am elected". He promised
sweeping reforms at Albany and said he would "oppose
no bill of merit simply because it is advanced by a Demo-
crat". In the next breath, however, he admitted the
improbability that any Democrat would offer a meri-
torious bill.

Enthusiastic Republican reports from upstate reached
the ears of Al Smith's High Command. They saw that
the utter imbecility of T.R.'s speechmaking was proving
effective and was, by its very nature, difficult to answer.
Nervous, they beseeched Al to abandon his dignified,
for they were really that, dissertations on the state gov-
ernmental system. The thing to do, they said, was to

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Chore Boy of the G.O.P.

step on this yodeling upstart. He might win, they
warned Smith. Do something!

"No," said Al, "you're wrong. I'd win sympathy for
him if I went after him too hard. He's having a swell
time. The big bosses are telling him he's in, that it's all
over. They always do that. Pretty soon he'll make a
mistake and then I'll smash him."

The mistake came a few days later. Teddy, bubbling
over with good spirits, stopped at Hamilton, N.Y., the
home of Colgate University. A large number of under-
graduates had crowded around the train and T.R.
beamed at them in collegiate fashion.

"I hear you played a football game against Cornell
last Saturday," he began, not observing a slight chill
in the atmosphere. "It must have been — "

"It was against Nebraska," observed some youth.

"Oh, well," said Teddy, man-to-man fashion, "it was
a great game. I congrat — "

"We lost!" yelled several of the Colgate men in
unison. T.R. wheeled around and looked accusingly at
the campaign managers behind him.

"Who told me that?" he demanded.

The following week Smith spoke on "Who Told
Teddy That?" He traced his opponent's blunders in
the oil lease negotiations, cited his frequent misstate-
ments concerning the state government, the law, finances
and nearly everything else. At the end of each para-
graph Al would pause, grin his gold-toothed grin and
wipe the perspiration from his face.

"Who told Teddy that?" he demanded.

Smith was elected a few days later. The margin was

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close enough, however, to cause extreme distress to his
staff while the returns were coming in. The Roosevelt
ballyhoo had delighted the electorate and with 100,000
additional votes Teddy would have become Governor.
His campaign had been successful beyond any one's
dream and the gods had, it then seemed, deserted the
Man of Destiny only temporarily.

Ill

It is superfluous to point out that a young man start-
ing life as the eldest son of Theodore Roosevelt, particu-
larly when his name was the same, was certain to face
untold difficulties. The younger Theodore knew this;
at least in his earlier years. It must have been bad
advice on the part of professional politicians which
forced him, once in politics, to mimic his famous father.
Perhaps the whole thing was unconscious. Beyond
question, Teddy originally intended to avoid even the
suspicion of this and there is more than a touch of pathos
in a remark he made in 1910:

"I will always be known as the son of Theodore
Roeesevelt," he said, "and never as a person who means
only himself."

Like his father, Ted was none too strong as a boy.
He had to wear glasses and, again like his father, had
to fight boys who sneered and called him "Four-eyes".
He was born at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, L. I.,
in 1887, the oldest of the clan, and grew to manhood
partly in the glare of public life and partly amid the
quiet of Long Island. Historians may one day assail
the greatness of Theodore Roosevelt, the first, as Presi-

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Chore Boy of the G.O.P.

dent of the United States. But none, it is likely, will
question his greatness as a father. Fond of the out-
doors and knowing it as few men, Roosevelt was never
too busy to lead his brood along the streams and
through the woods near Oyster Bay. Alice went along
with the boys and swam, climbed and rode horse-back
with them. Their father told them about birds and
beasts and flowers on their excursions and toward dusk
a fire would be built and bacon cooked. Then would
come stories of San Juan Hill and ranching in the Far
West. The elder Roosevelt was a hero to his children.
A timid youth would have lived wretchedly as the son
of Roosevelt. But even though he was less than brawny,
physical fear never took hold of Theodore, Jr. He
loved horses, although his seat was none too good. He
liked athletics although, again, he rarely excelled in any
sport. At Groton he was a serious, rather awkward
youth, with hair that was usually in disorder and with
clothing none too neat. He was well liked by his mates
and an undercurrent of animal spirits occasionally mani-
fested itself in practical jokes. He was graduated from
Harvard in 1908, having finished the course in three
years and broken an assortment of bones in futile efforts
to play football. Two years later society editors were
thrown into a flutter of excitement by the announcement
that he was to marry Miss Eleanor Alexander of New
York City, the daughter of a prominent and wealthy
family. On the eve of his wedding Teddy personally
assured reporters that his bride did not "care a bit about
this suffrage foolishness".

The World War brought opportunity to T.R., Jr.,

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just as the Spanish War had done for his father. His
public career had not yet begun, however, and the son
did not agitate and pull wires for combat as his father,
then Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the McKinley
administration, had done. All the four Roosevelt sons
went to France and all added new luster to their name.
Quentin, the youngest, became an aviator and was killed
while Teddy, Archie and Kermit all were cited for gal-
lantry. Although West Point graduates served under
him, a situation about as difficult as any a reserve officer
could face, T.R. was popular as well as efficient. He
insisted on taking part in dangerous engagements and
was both wounded and gassed. He came home in March
of 1919 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

While still with the A.E.F. pressure had been brought
upon him to enter public life and he announced that he
would do so. He had every reason to be optimistic
about his future, for the war hysteria still ran high, but
he could not decide what office to seek. He spent some
months organizing the American Legion and might, had
he so chosen, have used that organization to further his
political aims. To his everlasting credit, he did not do
so. For a time he even fought obvious intentions of
the returning heroes to force a bonus grant. Teddy did,
however, talk wildly about certain features of the late
war. It had been won, he said, almost entirely by Re-
publicans. The Wilson administration had blocked their
efforts on every hand and had lulled the nation into a
false sense of security. The only guarantee of future
peace lay in universal military service on the French or
Swiss plan.

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Chore Boy of the G.O.P.

IV

The tragedy of Theodore Roosevelt, it seems to me,
lies in the fact that, in the realm of ideas, courage some-
times fails him. He might have led the cause against
prohibition, against greed on the part of returning vet-
erans, against the intolerance that was beginning to
sweep the land with new force. He believed, even
deeply, in the essential Tightness of all these causes. But
his protests were only feeble pipings against the storm.
He said that prohibition had been "unfairly passed",
but lived to suffer the humiliation of endorsement by the
Anti-Saloon League. He expressed opposition to the
bonus, but those veterans who viewed C.O.D. patriotism
with distaste found that he was not to be their leader.
And in the Socialist ouster at Albany, an issue made in
Heaven for a Roosevelt, he was on the right side only as
a follower.

Roosevelt entered politics by standing for the lower
house of the New York Legislature from Nassau
County. He won his first contest by a large majority
and in January of 1920 went to Albany feeling, as do
all first-term legislators, lonely and nervous. At night
he would gather newspaper correspondents, many of
whom had known his father, around him and would ask
for advice on bills under consideration. On the whole
he was well liked, being modest and unassuming.

In 1920 the United States was in a jumpy state.
The nation resounded to alarums that Bolshevism was
increasingly a menace. This was reflected at Albany
in a decision of the machine G.O.P. to invalidate the

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election of five Socialist assemblymen from New York
City. The men had been legally chosen by their con-
stituencies and as soon as he heard of it, Teddy joined in
the protest raised by liberals of both parties. There
were many at Albany who watched him eagerly during
those days. The Roosevelt name gave publicity value to
everything .he said. Here was an issue worthy of his
father. Would he assume command? They waited dur-
ing weary months of debating and heard T.R. make two
or three speeches opposing the ouster. He was enough
his father's son so that he did not bow to the machine.
But he was not good enough to serve as a leader for
liberalism and the Socialists were ejected.

This was Roosevelt's first failure. His career at
Albany proved totally without distinction and it was
during his second year that he resigned to become
Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Since his defeat by Al Smith in 1924 he has been
waiting, I have pointed out, for something to happen.
His second failure occurred, obviously, while at Wash-
ington. Again greatness was within arm's reach, for
had he known his job and been alert he could have
halted the oil lease negotiations. Had he done so he
could have demanded almost any office controlled by
the G.O.P. Undoubtedly his political stock has dropped
in the last few years. Hunting the Ovis Poli in Asia,
he had half-believed that he would return home to a
reception like those given his father coming back from
similar trips. Instead, the newspapers carried semi-
humorous stories about his exploits.

The most casual analysis of the record of Theodore

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Chore Boy of the G.O.P.

Roosevelt reveals that he was rushed along too swiftly.
He should have remained at Albany for several addi-
tional years and there learned the A.B.C.'s of the politi-
cal game. He was far from mature, politically, when
he went to Washington and was additionally handi-
capped, all the while, by comparisons to his father.
Roosevelt is still immature. Just turned forty, he still
has little conception of what it is all about. He turns
this way and that at the commands of party leaders.
In the fall of 1927, for example, the master minds of
the organization decided that Smith must again be at-
tacked on the ancient issue of Tammany corruption. It
had proved a boomerang in the past and it was almost
impossible for the leaders to find any one of importance
who would make the necessary speeches. Finally they
persuaded Teddy to do the trick.

"The red-light district," he screamed, "has crawled
to the very steps of the State Capitol. Democratic
leaders are under indictment. Tammany is still and
always will be the same sinister Tammany. The sooner
the state and nation realize this the better for both."

Immediately there were hoots of derision, in Republi-
can as well as Democratic newspapers. It was non-
sense, scores of editors pointed out, to attempt again to
link Al Smith with vice. The Republican leaders, leav-
ing Teddy to weather the storm alone, said he had
spoken without their approval. One or two let it be
known that they had attempted to head him off, but
without avail. But that his speech did not have official
endorsement is manifestly untrue. Within a fortnight
the organization was circulating printed copies of his

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Big Frogs

speech and was prayerfully hoping that they would be
effective in the Middle West and South. Soon after-
wards T.R. started on a speaking tour in Kansas and
in neighboring states and repeated all his original accu-
sations about vice. He was heard by thousands.

To his own people in the East T.R. became more
grotesque than ever. But the enthusiasm with which
his speeches in the West were received is an added indi-
cation that he is not yet politically dead. Again gossip
has it that he will be a candidate for something and that
he would add strength to the national ticket. One jour-
nal suggested that, as a Vice-Presidential nominee, he
would make an excellent running mate for "Hoover,
Lowden, Dawes or Curtis". But, alas, the G.O.P.
needed a man from the Middle West on the ticket with
Hoover. T.R. was present as a delegate, but that was
all. He has been forced again into momentary re-
tirement,

254

THE GENTEEL CRUSADER

ASSUMING, FOR THE MOMENT, THAT THE LATE MR. AN-

thony Comstock was correct in his belief that his labors
were for the Lord, now has his post-mortem reward and
carries on his gloomy work in behalf the Archangels —
assuming all this, it is very probable that he often looks
down from the casements of jasper to see how the New
York Society for the Suppression of Vice is getting
along without him. If so, very painful emotions must
shake his once rugged but now ghostly frame. For the
old, happy, glorious days of smut-hunting are no more,
at least in New York, and the Society, lacking his in-
spired leadership, is no longer the shining light for
righteousness that it once was. Having suppressed an
unworthy and earthly gratification over this flattering
fact, old Anthony must often shed a tear or two. Satan,
taking advantage of his absence, now controls the courts,
the police, the Legislature, the book and magazine pub-
lishers, the theatrical producers and the press. Season
by season the drama grows in wickedness. Only Florenz
Ziegfeld shows any sign whatever of returning to
Higher Things.

Viewing, from his glittering eminence, the work of
Mr. John S. Sumner, his heir and assign as head of the
Vice Society, Mr. Comstock must find much to praise,
but also, unhappily, much to condemn. On the credit

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Big Frogs

side Mr. Stimner seems earnest, hard-working and des-
perately sincere. He continues to receive modest but
fairly regular contributions from John D. Rockefeller,
Jr., the Colgate soap family, Monsignor Michael J. La-
velle, Thomas A. Edison and the usual run of highly
agitated elderly ladies. He reads industriously what he
suspects may be, from a legal though not literary stand-
point, "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent or dis-
gusting" books. He lobbies faithfully at Albany for
harsher and harsher laws. He cherishes his Christian
belief that the great majority of the American people
have no use for the salacious, and that, as he once said,
"youth is humorous but in a clean and whimsical way".
He affirms his faith in 100 per cent Americanism, pure
womanhood, the Y.M.C.A. and the domestic hearth.

Nevertheless, the founder of the Vice Society must
suspect, at times, that Mr. Sumner is a shade too refined
for his job. No longer, as in Anthony's own days, are
peddlers of inflammatory magazines seized by the scruffs
of their necks and bodily hurled into the jug. No longer
do the annual reports of the Society contain fascinating
articles with such titles as "Home Invaded", "Boy
Gamblers", "Children in Public Streets Assailed", "A
Mother's Appeal", "A St. Louis Scoundrel" and "A
Most Pathetic and Awful Case". Dignity and decorum
have been substituted for the strong arm and the throb-
bing human interest stories of Mr. Comstock. Mr.
Sumner meets the enemies of the Methodist ethic in a
dinner coat and in public debate instead of physical
combat. He strives hard to be good-natured. Words,
he is sure, can never hurt him. Under attack his smile is

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The Genteel Crusader

as genial, if as synthetic, as that of a Y.M.C.A. secre-
tary meeting a squad of doughboys returning uproari-
ously from a fancy house. He prides himself on being
a good fellow. For weeks on end, a few years ago, Hey-
wood Broun made remarks about him in the World.
When, after all this bombardment, Sumner answered
with an ingratiating letter, Broun could only say :

"Mr. Sumner belongs to the new and superefficient
school of Puritans. There ought to be a law providing
that whenever a Puritan is captured wearing other rai-
ment than the garb of his sect he shall be immediately
shot as a spy. Sumner is attempting to show, not with-
out skill, it seems to us, that he is not such a doleful fel-
low after all. All this is interesting but beside the point.
It makes no difference whether Mr. Sumner suppressed
'Jurgen' in blind fury or with bland good humor.
Levity about such things is wholly inappropriate. The
frivolity of modern Puritanism — what with Mr. Sum-
ner's little jokes, and Billy Sunday's slang and John
Roach Straton's handsprings — only serves to reveal the
fundamental wantonness of this philosophy of life."

But Mr. Sumner really is serious about his work, and
believes that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation
of New York. Certain other citizens of the town—
possibly, counting the preachers, 200 or 300 among the
6,000,000 — also believe in the Comstock Society, and a
few of them go so far as to admit it publicly. All the
rest of the New Yorkers appear to view the job of
literary garbage man with disgust. They wonder how
so amiable a fellow as Sumner can stand it year after
year, and thank their several gods that he has it, and not

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they themselves. Meanwhile, the decisions of various
New York courts continue to nibble away at the Corn-
stock Act. City Magistrates, some of them of foreign
birth and therefore ansethestic to American ideals, de-
cline to hold purveyors of "filth" for trial. Thus, Mr.
Sumner finds himself, despite his unflagging zeal, in the
unpleasant position of being unable to prohibit anything
short of the unexpurgated autobiography of Frank
Harris (which even the notoriously loose French can-
not stomach) or the lewd eccentricities, in English trans-
lation, of court life at the time of the Emperor Nero.
Phony "art" magazines are displayed on every news-
stand in the big town and pictures of naked women
flaunt him a dozen times a day. Cheap, smutty joke-
books and the cheaper jokes that the imitators of Ber-
narr Macfadden publish as magazines have large and
unimpeded circulations. Plain nudity, despite Mr.
Ziegfeld, continues to be the substitute for humor in
most Broadway musical comedies. No one would buy
"September Morn" in these degenerate days, and even
Bishop Manning declines to have anything to do with
Mr. Sumner's attempts to have the so-called Clean
Books Bill adopted by the State Legislature.

But despite all these set-backs the work of the Corn-
stock Society will undoubtedly continue, even if less ef-
fectively, much as it has for the fifty-three years of its
existence. Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues there
is an ancient brownstone building; it is not far distant
from the heart of Old Chelsea, one of the few remaining
parts of Manhattan where there are still front yards
with swinging gates and green grass. No. 215 West

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The Genteel Crusader

Twenty-second Street, now the headquarters of the
Society, was once a home where men lived and laughed
and probably drank rum. To-day its dim cellar is
crammed with the Society's unparalleled collection of
dirty books. It is from this bastile that Mr. Sumner
sets forth to fight for purity with, as the Rev. Harold L.
Bowlby of the Lord's Day Alliance puts it, "a shining
and flashing rapier". On a budget of but $10,000 or
$15,000 a year, he often goes out alone. But sometimes
the rapier is flashed by Charles J. Bamberger, a corpu-
lent gentleman who is the Special Agent of the Society.
Often a girl employee is sent out to do the dirty work.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Mr. Sumner
to conduct his own raids. He has appeared in public too
frequently and has indiscreetly permitted his photo-
graph to be published in the tabloids. A year or so ago
he was eager to obtain from the source of publication a
copy of one of the new and lurid "art" magazines. If it
could be done a really important conviction might fol-
low, instead of the usual two or three days' sentence of
a bewildered Greek newsdealer. Pulling his hat down
over his eyes, Mr. Sumner marched boldly into the office
of the publishing company. But unfortunately the edi-
tor happened to be in the outer office, and he knew the
crusader very well. So he cupped his hands and called
loudly to his staff, working inside.

"Hey!" he bellowed, "come out and take a look at
Sumner!"

The staff crowded up as the editor, with heavy sar-
casm, urged his visitor to stay for tea. Mr. Sumner,
handling himself very well, declined the invitation.

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Big- Frogs

"I wanted to purchase a copy of Art Lure" he said.

"We're awfully sorry, but we can't sell you one," re-
plied the editor.

"Ah!" said Mr. Sumner politely. "Some other day,
then. You win this time."

II

Mr. Sumner fell heir to the robes of old Anthony in
October of 1915, and for a number of years thereafter
seemed to be quite satisfied with the efficacy of the Corn-
stock Act (Penal Section 1141). As late as 1922 he
was quoted as declaring that "the sting is still in the
statute" and as giving public warning against "the risk
and danger of transgression". But this was before
Justice John Ford, of the New York Supreme Court,
caught his daughter reading "Women in Love", and
then found to his dismay that the statute did not pro-
vide for its instantaneous suppression. And it was be-
fore Magistrate Oberwager had ruled, after a diligent
research in the Public Library, that the Satyricon of
Petronius was a contribution to literature and human
knowledge. "Jurgen", in those innocent days, it will
be recalled, was banished from all law-abiding book-
shops.

But actually it was long before 1922 that the forces
of evil, eventually to be cloaked in the sanctity of the
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State
of New York, started their effort so to undermine Penal
Section 1141 that eventually, in the eyes of all crusaders,
it became worthless. Strangely enough, the cunning
agents of Hell used Mr. Sumner himself as the instru-

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ment of their work. More strangely still, among the
varied factors in the debacle were the ancient and dig-
nified publishing house of Harper & Brothers, the auto-
biography of a prostitute, and the loyalty of the Hon.
William Randolph Hearst to the then Mayor Hylan.
Now that Mr. Hylan has been forced back to private
life and Mr. Hearst is in retirement in California, it
looks very much as if Mr. Sumner had been rather
neatly made use of.

How the Harpers ever came to publish "Madeleine,
an Autobiography", will always be something of a mys-
tery. The volume made its appearance in 1919 and
was declared by the loose New York critics to be a dull
tome, reading "like a report of the Comstock Society".
The learned Boston Transcript treated it in the light of
a sociological document. It was supposed to tell the
story of a prostitute, and it so portrayed that life that
any Red Light Rose, after wading through it, must have
hailed a taxi and rushed to the nearest Y.W.C.A. Yet
in December of the year of publication, with "Made-
leine" moving very slowly in the book-stores, the Com-
stock Society arrested Clinton T. Brainard, president
of the Harper firm, for violating Section 1141 by pub-
lishing it. Mr. Brainard was appalled. He had never
read the book, he protested. It had been accepted and
published by the house while he was in Europe. He
promised that it would be withdrawn at once.

The arrest of Mr. Brainard and the fact that he had
been held in $500 bail for trial were treated briefly in
most of the New York papers. But in Mr. Hearst's
moral American the news crashed the first page, and in

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the highly flavored story there was the first clew to the
reason for the arrest. The American revealed that the
Harper executive was also secretary of the Extraordi-
nary Grand Jury which, at the time, was engaged in one
of the periodic investigations of the Hylan administra-
tion. The American, in righteous indignation, pointed
out that the very fellow who besmirched the pure name
of the heroic Hylan was now himself branded as a pub-
lisher of obscene literature, and hence a corrupter of
the young.

Mr. Sumner seems to have realized at once that he had
been roped into a highly dubious private feud. He
made it known that if the plates were destroyed he would
be happy to forget all further prosecution. But this
did not suit the indignant and vociferous Mr. Hearst in
the least. The following warning was published in his
paper next morning:

"One of the most amazing incidents of the hearing yes-
terday was when the complainant against Harper &
Brothers, John S. Sumner, chief special agent of the
New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, sought
to minimize the charge and to have it actually dismissed.
Turning to Magistrate Simpson, he said that Brainard
had promised to discontinue the sale of the book and had
agreed to destroy the plates at once, and that if this
was done he would feel satisfied to drop the matter."

Thus publicly exposed and challenged, Mr. Sumner
could do nothing but go on, even although chilled by a
premonition that in the end all would not be well with
him. The Hearst papers continued to whoop it up,

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never forgetting to mention that Brainard was a mem-
ber of the Grand Jury investigating the Hearst-con-
trolled city administration. Sumner, in a panic, finally
yielded to the uproar, and declared "Madeleine" to be
"one of the worst and most dangerous books that has
come to our attention in a long time". Los Angeles
and Boston, both of which cities are favored with Hearst
papers, also took action against it. The American as-
sured its virtuous readers that "the forces of decency are
rising all over the country against it". Brainard was
convicted and fined $1,000. The American's report
said in part:

"Clinton T. Brainard, secretary of the Extraordinary
Grand Jury, stepped from the Criminal Court cham-
bers, where he was investigating Mayor Hylan yester-
day, to go on trial himself in the Court of Special
Sessions. Five hours later he was found guilty of pub-
lishing, possessing and selling obscene literature and was
finger-printed like any other common law-breaker".

For the next year and a half Mr. Sumner must have
done a lot of cold sweating. For he knew that the
Brainard case was before the Appellate Division on ap-
peal and that he had not heard the last of it. Mean-
while "Madeleine" earned excellent money for the book-
leggers. On July 10, 1920, the higher court reversed
the Harper conviction in an opinion that spelled disaster
for the Comstocks. Said the court :

". . . no one can read this book and truthfully say
that it contains a single word or picture which tends to
excite lustful or lecherous desire. It contains the auto-
biography of a prostitute, but without the recital of any

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facts which come within the condemnation of the section
(1141) as thus interpreted.33

Mr. Sumner and his co-workers did not realize the
true significance of this decision for some time. Then
it dawned upon them that the Appellate Division had
added to the descriptive terms of the statute the pro-
vision (very difficult on proof) that books accused must
tend to excite "lustful or lecherous desire". Since then
Mr. Sumner has referred to the Harper case many times
and very sadly, and always in support of his demand
for more rigorous laws. Privately, he bitterly laments
that he was ever bullied by Mr. Hearst into carrying the
case through to a finish. The Appellate Division, he
has said (he is a lawyer himself), was wrong about the
law. But right or wrong, its decision rules in New
York. Nothing is now obscene there that is not actually
aphrodisiacal. This revolutionary qualification was
originally the notion of a Judge of the Court of Appeals
and was contained in a dissenting opinion. The Harper
ruling made the dissenting opinion a part of the law
of the State.

Ill

Among the unfair statements all too frequently made
by the libertines of the New York press regarding Mr.
Sumner is that he spends all his time nosing around in
the hope of finding nasty books. This hint that he really
enjoys smut breaks down the genial nature of the
crusader and makes him decidely huffy. He never
loses an opportunity to deny it. The Comstock Society,
he declares, begins action only after some irate citizen

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(such as Justice Ford) has made a complaint. It stands
in loco The People, who have not the time or dislike the
attendant notoriety. This may be so. But it is interest-
ing to note that "Jurgen" was barred from legal (but
not, of course, from illegal) sale for more than two years
because of the efforts of a Broadway press-agent to grab
a little free publicity. Early in 1919, the records show,
Walter Kingsley was public relations counsel for the
Palace Theater. Having read and enjoyed "Jurgen"
himself, he conceived the bright notion of writing a let-
ter to one of the papers revealing the fact that the
ladies of the ensemble at the Palace had all bought
copies of the book and that by means of it they had
invented a new indoor sport. This, said Mr. Kingsley,
consisted of finding and listing all the questionable pas-
sages that they could understand. Competition, among
them, he reported, was very keen. In furnishing this
morsel of information to the world Mr. Kingsley added
his gratuitous opinion that "Jurgen" was "a very
naughty book". He sent his letter to Hey wood Broun,
then on the Tribune. Mr. Broun thought it mildly
amusing and so printed it.

Then things began to happen. Some one, probably
in fun, sent the clipping to the Comstock Society.
Within a few days Mr. Sumner made a complaint. He
said the book was so obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, in-
decent and disgusting that he would not pollute the pure
air of the Magistrate's Court by reading it aloud. In-
stead, he obligingly furnished the page numbers of the
most juicy passages, that the magistrate might examine
them comfortably in his chambers. Within a few weeks

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the publishing house involved had been indicted, to-
gether with several of its executives, and copies of
"Jurgen" were being sold at as much as $30.

This suppression of a book that had been almost
universally praised created high excitement in the writ-
ing trade. Debates on the Comstock censorship began
to fill the Sunday papers. A Defense Committee was
organized to put Mr. Sumner down. But he stuck to
his guns, and even became somewhat cocky, for, al-
though the Harper case had been decided, he was not
yet fully aware how greatly his powers had been dimin-
ished. When some one asserted that "Jurgen", because
of its great artistic merit, should be exempt from all
censorship, he retorted that art had nothing to do with
the case. He even went further :

"This law (Penal Section 1141) does not make ex-
ceptions as to the publications of any particular class.
That is, it does not distinguish between the writings of
John Doe, who has no reputation, and those of Richard
Roe, who is a distinguished author ; nor have the courts,
in interpreting this law, permitted the intent of the au-
thor, expressed or implied, to influence them in their de-
cisions. If the language of the book is lewd, or if it is
suggestive of lewdness, it is a violation of the law, re-
gardless of the literary or artistic character of the pub-
lished matter. Some of the courts have held that writ-
ing of an obscene character was more dangerous when
couched in fine language than when set forth in crude
form, and this is undoubtedly true."

Few statements more beautifully revelatory of the
reformer run amok have ever been made. Mr. Sum-
ner's moral ego continued to expand. He boasted that

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The Genteel Crusader

"the greater the artist, the more important to suppress
him when he traverses the conventional standards".
And then he got another terrific wallop when Judge
Nott, of the Court of General Sessions, directed the
jury to acquit all the defendants. The Judge's de-
cision said :

"I have examined and read the book carefully. It is
based on medieval legends of Jurgen and is a highly
imaginative and fantastic tale. The most that can be
said of the book is that certain passages therein may be
considered suggestive in a veiled and subtle way, but
such suggestions are delicately conveyed and the whole
atmosphere of the story is of such an unreal and super-
natural nature that even these suggestions are free from
the evils accompanying suggestiveness in more realistic
works."

IV

"My ancestors," Mr. Sumner admits somewhat sheep-
ishly, for he has often been teased about it, "were
Puritans and this may have had something to do with
my vocation." It has recently developed, he adds, that
one of them was on the passenger list of the Mayflower.
His father was Rear Admiral George W. Sumner, of
the pre-Daniels United States Navy. Until he was
fourteen years old young Sumner lived in Washington.
Then his father was transferred to the Brooklyn Navy
Yard and he went to a high school in Brooklyn. Sumner
is now fifty years old and still lives in Brooklyn. Upon
his graduation from high school he became a runner for
Henry Clews & Company, the stock -brokers, and began
to work hard in the belief that industry and perseverance

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would inevitably lead him to success. He labored for
old Mr. Clews for ten years before he concluded that
they would not. Then, still a clerk and probably not
getting much more than $20 a week, he decided to study
law. So he attended New York University at night and
in 1904 was declared learned in the juristic art and mys-
tery. His idea was to make use of his knowledge of
Wall Street by specializing in stock and bond litigations.
But a few years after he was turned out one of his clients
told him that the Society for the Suppression of Vice
was looking for a successor to Comstock, and he was
easily persuaded to consecrate his life to the enforce-
ment of Section 1141. Just why he chose this work still
puzzles Mr. Sumner a little. He recalls that when he
was in high school obscene pictures were twice exhibited
to him and made a profound impression on his mind.
This may have had something to do with it, but he is
not certain. He had never, in his young manhood, he
says, given much thought or prayer to the work of the
vice hunters, nor had he, save when in high school, been
subjected to the contamination of dirty books.

Having made his choice, Mr. Sumner proceeded to
give his depressing job all the talents at his command.
Now, after ten years, his hair is getting a little gray and
he looks rather tired. Back of his chair in the offices of
the Society in West Twenty-second Street is a portait
of the immortal Comstock, with side whiskers bristling.
The painting furnishes a strange contrast to the mild
little man who carries on the work to-day. Mr. Sumner
does not get excited, except, occasionally, when he is in
court conducting a case. He dislikes the notion that he

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is a reformer. When he is asked how it is that he can
read so much filth without danger to his soul he says that
"if you read immoral books from the standpoint of de-
tecting illegalities, you are apt to be immune from con-
tagion". He does not have much time to read, though,
except professionally. He praises, as contributions to
American letters, the works of Mary Roberts Rinehart,
Irving Bacheller, Booth Tarkington and Winston
Churchill. He once said:

"The greatest play I ever saw was 'Robespierre', in
which Henry Irving appeared a good many years ago.
It was a thrilling story of the French Revolution. And
the one that impressed me most was a drama based on
Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities'. I have a real liking for
the theater, I find it most interesting when it is instruc-
tive. No, I don't insist on the happy ending. The
motion picture? It is one of my favorite diversions.
Again my taste is historical."

Mr. Sumner likes to travel, but has never been west of
Chicago. He has an idea that he would enjoy golf, but
there are few links within reach of his home in Brooklyn.
He enjoys, he says, to "talk things over". In high
school he was something of a debater. In 1918 the
Y.M.C.A., which is the parent of the Comstock Society,
sent him to France to guard the men of the A.E.F.
against the dangers of obscene literature, more deadly
than shot and shell. Eventually the Y abandoned this
idea and he was detailed to ordinary work with the
Eighty-second Division. He returned to the United
States to report that while there were individual cases
of loose living and wine-bibbing in the Army, on the

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whole it was moral. They "went over clean and wanted
to come back clean", he said.

All this was typical of the optimistic side of Mr. Sum-
Tier. He has protested that he thinks the "flapper's
paint is only skin deep" and says that he "is not greatly
worried about the future of American womanhood". As
far as boys are concerned, his belief is "that the conduct
and moral fiber of boys and young men is almost wholly
governed by the girls with whom they come into contact.
If the girls are lax the boys will be. If, on the other
hand, the girls demand respect they get it." A year or
so ago, speaking before the League for Public Discus-
sion, he affirmed his faith in these terms :

"Youth is not interested in social sores. Youth is not
blase, surfeited with the clean things of life, and seek-
ing excitement from that which is unclean and de-
generate. Youth looks out with clear and fearless eyes
from the summit of the delectable mountain and not
with fear and cringing from the slough of despond.
Youth laughs at mistakes and is not cast down. Youth
may be critical but refrains from pain-producing sar-
casm. Youth is humorous but in a clean and whimsical
way. And so in American literature we have a right to
demand joy and adventure, wholesome physique and
sane mentality, clear vision and buoyancy, genial criti-
cism and whimsical humor."

V

The brave and hard-boiled days of Anthony Corn-
stock, as I have said, are no more. During his lifetime
(according to Dr. Bowlby of the Lord's Day Alliance)
old Antonio collected the equivalent of sixty-one freight

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car loads of indecent literature. It was a lean year that
he did not travel from 10,000 to 14,000 miles in the
interests of chemical purity. He was always fighting
with some one. If it was not with the agents of evil, it
was with the District Attorney or the Post Office. One
of his historic battles was with Dr. W. S. Rainsford, the
liberal rector of St. George's Church. During this
action he wrote to Dr. Rainsford :

"I have felt the keen edge of the assassin's knife sev-
ering my flesh and veins. I have felt the hot blood of my
heart flow out over my body from wounds which I have
received. But I say to you, that there is nothing harder
to bear than the fact that you, a Christian minister of the
Gospel, are shooting darts at me from the vantage
ground of St. George's rectory."

No one, at least no preacher, shoots any darts at Mr.
Sumner. He works in complete harmony with the Dis-
trict Attorney and his very modest activities are highly
approved by that official. But year by year statistics
reveal that his agents are making fewer and fewer ar-
rests. This, Mr. Sumner says sadly, is due to the way
in which the teeth have been extracted from the Corn-
stock Act. The record for six years was :

Year

1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925

273

Arrests

Convictions

Percentage

or pleas

of conviction

of guilty

184

150

81%

120

94

78%

64

57

89%

34

19

55%

32

14

43%

41

21

51%

Big Frogs

On the whole, though, Mr. Sumner is not discouraged.
He believes that the pendulum has started to swing
away from the "extreme realism of three and four years
ago" and that writers are becoming less inclined than
they used to be to reveal the awful mysteries of sex.
He thinks that the dramatic producers of Broadway are
gradually learning that clean and wholesome plays are
what the public will, in the long run, support. But to
be on the safe side, he hurriedly adds, the Comstock
Act should be made more rigid, and so he plans again to
press at Albany his Clean Books Bill.

Spurred on by the indignant Justice Ford, Mr. Sum-
ner began his agitation for the measure early in 1923.
Thus far he has been licked three times in his efforts to
pass the bill, but he is a glutton for punishment and an-
nounces that he is not yet done. The Clean Books
Bill came nearest to passing on the occasion of his first
attempt. It was then that Mr. Sumner went to Albany
with the blessing of His Eminence, Patrick, Cardinal
Hayes, of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, whom,
incidentally, the Vice Head had occasionally assisted in
the enforcement of statutes against the circulation of
the hellish birth control information. Mr. Sumner was
an important witness before the Judiciary Committee of
the State Senate in April of 1923. He provided for the
delighted committee members reprints of absorbing sec-
tions from various books. The bill passed the Repub-
lican Assembly in that year and undoubtedly would
have become law had it not been for Governor Smith,
Jimmy Walker, now Mayor of New York but then

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The Genteel Crusader

majority leader of the Senate, and the Democratic ma-
jority of one in the upper house. Among the innova-
tions of the Clean Books Bill is a provision that action
against publications may be taken on the basis of a
single word or passage. The present law demands that
the book shall be judged as a whole. In his annual re-
ports Mr. Sumner continues to plead for this sanitary
legislation. Often, indeed, his reports contain very
little except these formal and restrained arguments in
behalf of stricter laws. It was not so in the good old
days.

Said Comstock himself in his 1898 report:

"Of the many awful and pathetic cases brought to our
attention perhaps the saddest and most pathetic of all
was when a lady in deep mourning called and told of the
death-bed confession made by her sister, eighteen years
of age, who just before she died told of having received
from the mails certain foul matters which had been sent
by a procuress in this city for her to read, and which was
followed up by her downfall, ruin and death. She told
of other girls who had first received similar matters by
mail and then had been ruined in the same manner.
This mourning sister in speaking of those who had been
the cause of the ruin of her younger sister said: 'They
have diamonds and money but may the curse be upon
them!"

Mr. Sumner would recoil in horror from any such
Drury Lane tragedy; if one came to his notice it is likely
that he would say nothing about it. Handicapped by
the law's defects, he continues to function as best he
can, with sad regret that he is not universally recog-

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nized for what he believes he is : a man whose instincts
for reform are tempered with a sweet reasonableness.
But now and then his gaze wanders wistfully toward
Boston, where an obscenity law is an obscenity law and
where even the bookseller cooperates in behalf of purity.

THE END

276