To Run for President

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 394, 30 June 1928, Page 9

To Run for President

DEMOCRATS CHOOSE SMITH A Romantic Career FISH-BOY TO GOVERNOR OF STATE PORTY years ago Alfred Smith was making his living as an errand-boy in a fish market; to ■ his name goes abroad through the world as the man the great Democratic Party has chosen, to contest the Presidency of the United States.

Mi - . Smith, who is Governor of New York State, has had a very romantic career. The son of very poor Irish people, he knew a childhod of great poverty. There was a time when his English and his pronunciation were democratic rather than scholarly, but he has got over that, and can now make a fine speech, clear in thought and cultured in language. But Governor Smith is a man of deed rather than diction, and his education has been sometimes underestimated. He went to a parochial school nntil he was 15 years old which is about the extent of schooling which Washington had, and more than Jackson or Lincoln had. He won a medal for public speaking in competition with boys from all the other parochial schools in the city. Some fears which have been intimated need not be taken too seriously. There is no prospect that, If he should be elected President, Smith would declare any new national “policy” as to the double negative or the propriety of using plural subjects with singular verbs.

For a long time, Governor Smith was associated with the great Democratic organisation in New York known as Tammany. Tammany does not recommend itself to many people outside New York; it has been too much associated with the search for office, and in a past which is now getting remote there were suspicions of office being corruptly bought and corruptly sold.

But in spite of his close identification with political life, nobody has ever breathed a charge of personal corruption against him. Let the man describe himself: —“I come from the old-fashioned kind of stock that never lets anybody put anything over on him It is known to everybody in the State of New York from Montauk Point to Niagara Falls that I am no cooing dove, and what is more I never will be. Everything I ever got in the world I had to fight for. I did not have it handed to me on a gold platter.’*

UNANIMOUS CHOICE DECISION OF DEMOCRATS ROBINSON FOR VICE-PRESIDENCY (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian Press Association.) Reed 9.5 a.m. HOUSTON (Texas), .Friday. At the Democratic Convention, the Prohibition Association of the Southern States presented a petition protesting against the nomination of any “wet” candidate. The first ballot was then taken. Mr. Smith secured 726 votes, or seven short of the required majority. However, the Ohio delegates threw in their support, which gave Mr. Smith 44 more votes and secured his nomination. Other States followed Ohio’s lead, and ultimately the convention made the choice of Mr. Smith unanimous. With the change-over of the State votes there were several fights in which the police took part. The announcement of Mr. Smith’s total vote resulted in wild enthusiasm. Four bands played. 35,000 people shouted, and as many small devices were used for making a noise. With the Vice-Presidency nomination of Senator Joseph T. Robinson (Arkansas), a virtual certainty, the perspiring Democrats, however, were hardly ready to pass over the opportunity for hot-weather oratory. Dozens of persons were put into nomination in speeches lasting half an hour or more- The place litei-ally dripped with felicitous eulogies of most inconsequential and unknown political figures. It seemed obvious that not by bread did the Democrats live, but by oratory. Mrs. Nellie Ross, ex-Governor of Wyoming, was among those Dominated. But when the flow of speeches ended, Senator Robinson’s nomination was routine and perfunctory. He received 1,032 votes in the first ballot, and the convention did not even bother to make it unanimous. Everybody was gazing home, moist and fagged but satisfied now that the conventiou was ovei’. The convention received a telegram from Governor Smith accepting the nomination and the platform, but leiterating his belief that the States alone are able to secure real temperance and respect for law. “The present conditions relative to pi-ohibition are unsatisfactory to the great mass of the American people, he added.

PLATFORM ADOPTED PROHIBITION ENFORCEMENT The Platform Committee submitted the following programme: A denunciation of the Republicans for their failure to enforce the prohibition law and a promise of an honest effort to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment and all other provisions of the Constitution and all the laws enacted pursuant to it. This was the strongest expression on the prohibition question ever adopted by the Democrats. Other planks were: An endorsement of the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill; a denunciation of the alleged corruption of the Republicans; and an equitable distribution of the tariff burden among all sections of the community. In regard to foreign policy the programme endorsed the proposal to on tlaw war, but demanded freedom from entangling political allianpes with foreign nations. One plank condemned the Republicans for their failure to enforce a limitations of armaments and alleged that there is now a race between the nations in the building of unlimited weapons of destruction. Other planks were: Non-interfer-ence with elections or other internal political affairs of any foreign nation, including Mexico, Nicaragua and all the other Latin-American countries, and immediate independence for the Philippines. Labour planks defended collective bargaining and favoured restrictive immigration. THE OPPOSING CAMP REPUBLICAN OPTIMISM (Australian Press Association.) WASHINGTON, Friday. The Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Hubert Work, who was recently elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, says Mr. H. C. Hoover’s campaign for the Presidential election will not be marked by a great expenditure of money. The Secretary to the Treasurj', Mr. A. W. Mellon, says ho thinks Mr. Hoover’s chances of election are brighter. The Democrats, he says, lack a genuine issue upon which they can appeal for the nation’s support. He considers that the present prosperity of the country and the contentment of the people as a whole augur ■ well for the election of Republicans as | President and Vice-President.