Evening Star Newspaper, September 17, 1936, Page 9

Lewiston Has Strange Vote Mystery Recount in City Late to Report Might Aid White. BY DAVID LAWRENCE. ORTLAND, Me., September 17. —There ought to be a recount of the senatorial vote in Maine, not for the reasons suggested by Senator Guffey, Demo- erat, of Pennsylvania, but because a real recount probably would increase the majority of Senator White, Re- publican, to a point somewhere be- tween 5,000 and 10,000. Much more important than this is to scrutinize carefully the election processes in certain locali- ties in the State ©of Maine. What follows fn this dispatch is circumstantial, of course, but the Maine result in certain districts has raised suspi- cions in this elec- tion precisely as it did two years ago. When an electorate begins to be suspicious, the most healthful thing that can happen is to remove, if possible, the basis for any suspi- cion of irregularity. Early in the evening of Monday, as I was seated in the office of the gor News watching and tabulating on a pad the incoming returns, I noted that Senator White was getting an increasing lead. I remarked to one of the men standing near me—a well- informed Republican—that it looked | as if Mr. White was going to win. “Wait till you hear from Lewiston,” he said. “When will we hear from Lewis- | ton,” I asked. Always Late. “You won't hear until very late, be- cause they always hold up the vote there.” I wanted to know why they held up the vote in Lewiston, and nobody knew. But I was prepared for the wait. During the night hours county after county came in with its returns, but | none from certain wards in Lewis- | ton. Naturally, being a city with a! heavy vote, the returns would be large, but it is usually the country districts where the delay occurs in present-day elections, and not in the cities. Soon the returns were in from Au- | gusta, from Portland, from all the | cities, but no further word from Lew- | iston. We waited throughout the night. It | was close to 3:30 a.m. The Associated Press man in Portland was waiting, | too. He didn't dare write that Wal- | lace White was elected even though | on the face of the returns it was| plain that White had won. But the | Associated Press had not heard from the big wards in Lewiston. David Lawrence | NING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1936. News Behind the News Roosevelt-Knox Insurance Duel Ends in Confusion as Latter Spoils Play. BY PAUL MALLON. IRST news that President Roosevelt was calling & conference of life insurance leaders came as a tip from the last place you would look— aboard Gov. Landon's campaign train, rolling through New Eng- land. Almost simultaneously, the same tip was likewise flashed from the second most unbelicvable source—abourd Col. Frank Kmo2's campaign train, chugging through Montana. ‘The twin tips arrived here together and were presented immediately to the presidential secretary. He seemed to be blinded by the light. He hemmed, hawed, finally confirmed the information that, on the morrow, the President would meet the insurance men. That started as smart & fencing match as ever engaged an TRACT = opposing presidential and vice presidential candidate. It was staged so adroitly that, in the end, there seemed to be some public doubt whether it had ever been held. As near as the hidden dis- puted fragments can be pieced to- gether, here is the story: * % % ¥ Mr. Roosevelt's political asso- ciates thought Col. Knox made a serious political blunder in his Allentown speech when he said, “No life insurance policy is secure; no savings ac- count is safe.” They wanted to pounce on it in a bigger national way. Gov. Earle of Pennsylvania had threatened suit, but this did not attract much national attention., Something more was needed. A President could not answer a vice presidential candidate or, indeed, dignify him with notice. But more than one presidential associate saw what eflective rebuttal it would be jor Mr. Roosevelt to call the insurance people in and let them announce how very, very, safe insurance policies are. Luckily, there was some minor extraneous presidential business pend- ing with the insurance companies, the question of co-operating on land surveys and such things, which could easily have waited until after election. Confidential invitations were issued and all would have been well, except the Republicans found out about it. You can have only one guess as to where their information came from. Only two groups knew about it, the insurance leaders and the presidential coterie, ‘The Republican National Committee hastily purchased half an hour on the air for Col. Knox that night for what was generally expected in New Deal circles to be an apology. The talk’ was arranged too late in the day for announcement in any but late editions of the afternoon papers. but the Republicans are not the only ones who can find out things they are not supposed to hear. Many a top New Deal official, including the topmost, remained home all evening to hear the apology. They were disappointed. Knox, instead, reiterated and amplified his charge. He based it on the eco- nomic grounds of inflationary un- certainty. Every insurance policy holder will get dollar for dollar due, but nobody, he said, knew what the dollar would be worth. ‘This just about spoiled the pl: It put the accusation on the basis of an economic argument which has been advanced by many a well- known economist (and disputed by many another), The conference became a play without a plot. Both the President and the insurers announced that policies had increased $3,000,000.000 in the last three years, but every one agreed the figures had been published and probably were somewhat beside the point. The match probably will be referred to by as many persons as there are voters.: It will not be settled except by future history. Knox has behind him the anti-New Deal economists, who have long been contending that the growth of the Government debt and continuing deficits will injure Federal credit, and the eventual inflation from that cause or others will depreciate the dollar. The New Deal theory is that the debt can go much higher, that inflation can be avoided. ‘The surest answer was given by one of the insurance men, who said, “An insurance policy is as safe as a Government bond.” No one can con- test that deduction because the insurance companies are, next to the banks, the largest holders of the bonded Federal bag. (Copyright. 1936.) 'HE opinions of the writers on this page are their own, not Query Comes from Ohio. 1 Then came over the wires to Port- | land an inquiry from an Ohio news- | paper as to what was delaying the Lewiston returns and that it should be looked into at once. | But the Lewiston returns were still | help up. Finally around 4 o'clock | the Lewiston returns did come, Prior to this White had close to 10,000 lead, bu. just a couple of wards in! Lewiston cut his lead in half. | Lewiston is the home town of both | Benator White and Gov. Brann. It| 1s inconceivable that White was unable | in his own city to run at least on| the same footing as he did in other | cities of the State. But when the| Lewiston wards came in, the totals showed some strange ratios. In one! instance out of nearly 1,200 votes there were less than & 100 for White. | But even if the total vote of the' Lewiston wards that were held up had been counted 100 per cent .for Brann, the number would have been insufficient to offset White's u* -State | Jead. There was, of course, no wl,v1 to add any more votes in these wards ' than were actually registered. Such a limitation upon ‘“counting out"‘ White may have saved him from de- feat, if we assume that something | irregular did occur. Why were Lewiston returns held up this year| and also two vears ago? If the delay whicl. occurred two years ago is ex- planable, why did it happen again this time? Nowhere else in the State did they take as long to tally the re- turns. 1 Unusual Occurrence. But it is important in any “ecount | to check the list of registered voters | and see if they all visited the polls. ! In one of these Lewiston sections, I was told by a Portland man of! premingnce that two years ago there | were 100 per cent voting on the tally | lists which is to say the least unusual in populous centers. I don’t for a minute believe Brann, | who is a high grade man, had any| knowledge of or had anything to do with this. But where local bosses have everything to gain by a victory for a party ticket from which they benefit, all sorts of things sometimes happen when ballots are counted. One favorite method is to hold back re- turns till the very last to see just how many votes are needed and then extra ballots are inserted in the ballot boxes while the tally clerk may check off the names of persons on the regis- tration list who are know by him not to have voted at all. In reference to Lewiston in particu- necessarily The Star’s. Such opinions are presented in The Star’s effort to give all sides of questions of interest to its readers, although such opinions may be contradictory among themselves and directly opposed to The Star’s. lar, here is the vote on Monday for United States Senator and the same vote two years ago for United States Senator. ‘This year. (D.) Brann 10,123 (R.) White 2,936 (R.) Hale 2.163 It will be noted that Brann's majority is 7,187 as against Dubord’s majority of 7.067. Yet there is no doubt that Senator Hale is not as strong a vote getter in Lewiston as Senator White, whose home town is in that city. Why was the Democratic majority there just the same as two years ago, with a stronger Republican candidate in the field? Strange Coincidence. In the other cities of the State, ‘White got a higher percentage of the vote, even though his opponent beat him in those cities. It does seem a strange coincidence that the returns from Lewiston. which happened to show the lowest ratio for White, happened also, to have been held up till the early hours of the morning, even after the entire State had been tabulated. In Portland, whose total Two years ago. (D.) Dubord 9,230 Wy SAVE AT LIGGETTS” “’Henry’s salary is not what you'd call ample for the family’s needs. To make it stretch, we shop at Liggett's. You'd be surprised how much we save every month.” Maine’s Tide of Dubious Strength Time May Prove Too Short for Substantial G. O. P. Gain. BY MARK SULLIVAN, N THE old and comfortable days before statistics and graphs and charts had been elevated as gods of the machine and reduced hu- man beings to statistical digits—in that more easy-going time the rule about the Maine election used to be expressed as a rule of thumb. If in the September election Maine went Re- publican in a way that made Repub- licans cheerful, thereupon the Repub- licans became cheerful about the ap- proaching presidential election in the Nation. It was never a case of “as goes Main s0 goes the Nation"—that was never true. Maine in September must do more than merely go Republican. It must go Republican by a sizable majority. The question then is, what is a sizable majority? How much is much. To answer this question and reduce it to mathematical exactness a small library of computation has grown up in recent yeal A former Columbia University teach- er of sociology bas written a book % about election ba- rometers, along ; with a chapter 3 devoted to the * Maine election, a chapter almost as - esoteric as calcu- lus. Preceding this week's Maine election a busi- ness advisory service put out a pamphlet of in- # # :;’l’:': b:u‘tl R Mark Sallivan the outcome should be interpreted. This pamphlet seemed to indicate that the Republicans must get 62.7 per cent of the September vote in Maine in or- der to carry the Nation in November, That inference can hardly be correct. On several occasions the Republicans have got much less than 62.7 per cent of the Maine September vote for Gov- ernor but yet have carried the Nation in November. Qualified Victory. In this week’s Maine election for Governor the Republicans got about 56 per cent of the total vote. If that figure stood alone the Republicans could be cheerful. It would suggest a the Republicans having a slight advan- tage. But must we qualify the Repub- lican vote for Governor in Maine by the light of their vote for United States Senator? The Maine senatorial elec- tion was won by the Republicans, but {only by a narrow squeak—they got barely 50 per cent of the total vote. Perhaps a comforting way for Re- publicans to look at it is by comparison with the 1916 election. In the 1916 September election for Governor in Maine the Republicans got 54 per cent | of the total. Two months later, in No- vember, the Republicans lost the pres- margin. It was commonly said, and this was accurate enough, that the Re- | publicans lost the presidential election 7 e ON WHAT WE H fairly close presidential election, with | idential election in the Nation, but | lost it only by an extremely narrow | of 1916 through the loss of one State, California. This present year the Re- publicans got 56 per cent of the Maine vote for Governor. That is materially more than they got in 1916. They might reasonably infer that the rise from 54 per cent in 1916 to 56 per cent this year would carry the Republicans comfortably over the line of success in November. But this hope would be reduced if the vote for Senator be tak- en into account. Both Candidates Cheerful. Possibly we might go back to the old way and interpret the Maine outcome in terms of the degree of cheerfulness conferred on party leaders. Gov. Landon sends a strongly cheerful teie- gram of congratulations to Maine and reflects cheerfulness in his public ap- pearances. When Gov. Landon ap- pears cheerful, he is cheerful; he has not the subtlety that would enable him to simulate. But President Roose- velt is cheerful, too, 50 cheerful that he suggests he may not make a cam- paign tour in October. True, Mr. Roosevelt is a subtle person and also habitually optimistic. But I suspect Mr. Roosevelt's cheerfulness about the November election is genuine. Whether it is justified, only November will tell. One phenomenon is abundantly clear. Maine shows, and every other indication shows, that a very strong tide is running away from the Demo- crats in favor of the Republicans. ‘The question is whether this tide can in some six weeks go fast enough and far enough to elect a Republican President in November. G. 0. P. Peak in 1928. ‘We can summarize very briefly what has happened during the past eight years. In 1928 there was a Repub- lican high tide. In that year the electoral majority for Hoover was the highest either party had ever had in & two-party election, and the Repub- licans elected a large majority of Congress. That was the peak of the Republican tide. Immediately it be- gan to run in favor of the Democrats. By two years, by 1930, the Democrats elected a majority in the House of Representatives. In 1932 the Demo- cratic tide elected Mr. Roosevelt by an enormous electoral majority. For two years more the Democratic tide went higher. In 1934 the Democrats in- creased their majority in the House. November, 1934, was an all-time Dem- ocratic high. Almost at once the tide began to run away from them. It first ex- pressed itself in a by-election for a congressional seat in Rhode Island. There in August last year the Repub- licans reversed a 20,000 Democratic majority into a 13,000 Republican one. The change was recognized as spec- tacular. The new Republican tide showed {tself further in some local elections in November, 1935. shows itself very strongly indeed in the Maine election, where the Repub- licans win back the governorship, hold | the senatorship and win back two congressional seats. making the whole Maine delegation in Congress Repub- lican. Compared with 1934, this | week's Republican victory in Maine is | overwhelming. Yet the query remains. In the | Nation there was an all-time Demo- | cratic high tide in November, 1934. lican President this November? (Copyrisht, 1936.) — Land Cheap in 1813. Five shillings in 1813 bought 112 acres of land in what is now Logan County, W. Va. H. M. Booth, clean- ing out a vault in the old Guyan Val- ley Bank, found an ancient deed to provs it. It now | | Can the contrary tide get enough mo- | mentum in two years to elect a Repub- | votes were more than Lewiston's, the returns were sent in with fairly constant counting throughout the | night. There ought to be recount or an inquiry to determine why the Lewis- ton results were held up till the last minute. Even if the results do not in- crease the majority for Senator White, and they certainly do not seem likely to change the outcome otherwise, the | findings would make a good argument for the installation of voting machines Liggett's is famous for low prices. Not just on o handful of merchandise, to give us something to talk ecbout in our ads. But on every one of the thirty.odd thousand items we carry for your convenience. Occasionally we might be o cent or two higher on some one item. But we soon fix that! Here, too, you'll find the same sympathetic ottention everyone expects of a good neighbor. We've delivered prescriptions through the driving snow, and will do the same for you. We have the some friendly smile for the postage stamp customer as for the one who makes the biggest purchase of the day. We, the People New Deal Versus the Bank of England and Morgan’s Wall Street. BY JAY FRANKLIN, N HIS last- minute Portland speech before the Maine election, Gov. Landon accused President Roosevelt of risking the peace of the world by his “refusal to co-operate” at the World Economic Conference held at London in 1933. This is very interesting in the light of history. Recently, Frank Kent made a speech in somewhat similar vein, in the course of which he said that Roosevelt’s first three months were fine but that then something went sour. Kent is & member of the editorial staff of the Baltimore Sun. Take another angle—one of the early New Dealers was one Jimmy Warburg, author of the bitterly anti-Roosevelt “Hell-Bent for Election!” and “Still Hell-Bent!” Warburg, who is associated with a big inter- national banking family in New ‘York, went to the London Confer- ence and tried to work out an arrangement for monetary sta- bilization between England and America. President Rooseveit's July 3, 1833, telegram to the London Conference from the cruiser Indianapolis, anchored in Chesapeake Bay near the Naval Academy, is the only factor common to the triple attack by Landon, the Baltimore Sun and Jimmy Warburg. This was the telegram which refused to accept the gold standard stabilization plan as a “shibboleth of so-called international bankers” and asserted the financial independence of the American people from the Bank of England. After this, Warburg walked out on the New Deal. After this, British enthusiasm for Mr. Roosevelt also cooled rapidly and all the stooges of international banking in this country lifted up their heads and began sniping at the New Deal. It should be repeated that the sorr of stabilization the bankers and the British wanted was the sort which gave our farmers 5-cent cotton and 30-cent wheat under Hoover and which ravaged our industries with bankruptcy and unemgloyment for years. R What did Landon mean by his strange statement at Portland? Does the Republican ~andidate propose “if elected” to make our Government crawl back to Morgan's and to London and ask humbly for a return to the arrangement by which this country was drained of its goods, its credit and its gold, for 12 Republican years, when we let ourselves be talked into financing the most dangerous treaty of peace ever recorded in Europe's long and stormy history? Does Landon really feel that a refusal to accept international bank- ing control over the exchange value of our dollars was a warlike or dictatorial measure on the part of President Roosevelt? If so, the Repub- lican candidate has put himself on record as being in favor of farming out our economic sovereignty to the Bank of England and the Morgan firm. This column has already called attention to the dangers of the “sound money” and international stabilization hints in the Republican party platform. Landon, being an honest man, is apparently already :pes‘king for the record, so that no one can accuse him of springing a surprise— “if elected"—by & complete reversal of the New Deal’s policies on money and banking. The general public pays mo heed to these hints and nudges. It is much easier to get excited about “regimentation, “patronage,” “normalcy, “ecomomic royalists,” “dictatorship,” “Tories” and whatnot. Nevertheless. when all is said and done there is only one clear clue to our political life since March 4, . 1933. The New Deal represents the opening stage of a struggle between the American people’s Government and the private bankers—often foreign bankers—for financial con- trol over the citizens and resources and credit of the United States. The New Deal is that or it is | nothing. | Father Coughlin argues, with | much force, that it is not enough and that the “money changers” are back in the temple. Landon seems to be saying that it is already too much and that we ought to go back to the system of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. The voters may think, on election day, that they are voting for “the American way”’ or “the more abundant life” but what they will really be deciding is whether Wall Street or Washington is to run the country. (Copyright. 1936.) Pope Presents éhurch. Australian Motor Vehicles. Australia contains some 700.000 | cycles. of America by Pope Pius XI in 1922. Two-Cell FLASHLIGHT Complete With Batteries pice—. 39€ Electric PERCOLATOR Seven-Cup Size AC or DC Current Guaranteed 1.09 50c Dr. West's Toothbrush 19¢ CAFEX SALE PRICE_____. BOTH FOR: ... | Bryan. | Times, repudiated William Jennings Rome’s ancient Church of Santa | motor vehicles, including 75,000 motor | Susannah was presented the Catholics Headline Folk and What They Do Editorial Moguls of Old Days Have Counter- parts in Campaign. BY LEMUEL F. PARTON. URAT HALSTEAD, great Cine cinnati newspaper editor, wrote a million words a year for 40 years, and most of them packed a punch. His in- fluence was disinterested and pow- erful in national elections. Henry ‘Watterson of the Louisville Courier- Jpurnal, also prolific, backed Greeley in 1872, and said after the campaign that it had “narrowed the bloody chasm between North and South.” There were many other such heavy- hitters in the newspaper shops of those days. One hears that there are no more glants of personal journalism. The old lead pencil lancers are gone, but here and there is one who hammers out his own ideas on a typewriter Amid the yappant campaign uproar are the air-cooled words of Harvey W. Newbranch of the Omaha World- Herald and John Stewart Bryan of the Richmond News-Leader, along with an unnamed editorial writer of the Baltimore Sun. The Democratic World-Herald and the Sun switch to Landon, the latte tentatively, and the News-Leade sticks to Roosevelt. Looking throug a stack of exchanges, this writer find something like national acclaim o the detachment and integrity of the newspapers and editors. The rotund, bespectacled Mr. New branch, veteran one-finger typewrits virtuoso, is a shy, self-effacing ma who takes on clarity and assurance i putting his ideas on paper. He is oft~ compared to the late Frank I. Cot of the New York World in profession® attainments and in freedom from bo:. office angles. A native of Wymore, Nebr., he w: & newspaper “space” writer as an u dergraduate at the University of N braska. He picked up his newspap Jjob 37 years ago and five years lat was editor of the paper. He dislike | rubber-stamp journalism and insist that the first job of any editor is t provide an interesting running stor of his own town. In his early days, Ed Howe used t say the only thing a newspaper coul attack safely was the man-eatw shark. Mr. Newbranch challengc this axiom by swinging on anythir provocative or worthy of attentior He is known %s a newspaper man. newspaper man. The handsome John Stewart Bryar president of William and Mary Co lege, stems from a distinguished news: paper background. His father, Josep founder of the Richmonc Bryan at a time when such a stand seemed disastrous. Mr. Bryan is a | master of arts of the University of Virginia and holds a Harvard law de- gree. He, again, is an independent newspaper editor who would have found favor with such exemplars of journalistic “free enterprise” as Hal- stead, Watterson, Horace Greeley and the late Fremont Older. 8-Cup Size Glass Coffee hereafter. One thing is clear from all this: Maine's system of hand ballots ought to be revised. Permission is given by State authority to “assistants” to | enter the voting booths to help the | voters split their tickets. Voting machines would do away with the dangers in the hand-ballot system. 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