Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-06-28
HOUSTON PRESENTS.
STARTLING CHANGE
Smith Victory Seen as Com
pIete About Face Since
San Francisco, 1920.
Dispatch to The Star.


AL Smith for President represents as as
founding and complete about-face as
the history Of either of Americas two
great parties records.
Eight years ago the Governor Of New
York received a complimentary vote OF
90. that of his own delegation. at San
Francisco. -Four years ago, Madison
Square Garden was deadlocked against
Smith by as ferocious an opposition as
ever frustrated a candidates ambitions.
Today the same party, and In countless
cases the same Democratic leaders who
for eight years have stood stubbornly
athwart AL Smiths path to the presi-
dency, have accepted him as another
peerless one"-the man alone capable
Of bringing Democracy within even ear
shot of victory in 1925,
Observers had only to scan the coun-
tenance Of one platform dignitary at
Houston to grasp the magnitude of the
contrast Houston presents to New York,
1924. He was Joseph Patrick Tumulty,
Woodrow Wilson'S faithful adjutant.
This chronicler remembers Tumulty's
spirit of be1ligerent detection in Madi-
son Square Garden Vividly in the
writer's mind is a silhouette of Tumulty
leaving the platform with Daniel G..
Roper, chief McAdoo lieutenant. They
were shaking their fists at each other
and apparently ready to fly at each
others throat
1t was the spirit in which the con-
vention had proceeded and in which
1t was about to end. 1t personified
the undying hostility between the Smith
and McAdoo forces it meant that the
convention and the party we're honey
combed with violent antipathy to every
~, Id 1frrfAR In,
ticular, his wetness and his Tammany
affiliations.
Enemies Now Supporters.
No notwithstanding the term
broadly to include all the anti-Smith-
ties at Houston, are showing their teeth
to AIS cohorts now The governor does
not emerge from this convention with
enemies, but the startling contrast
presented Is that they are &C
cepting his victory as inevitable.
and, for the most part. win support
him in November. Support in innu-
merable cases will be half-hearted. 1t
will SAVIOR of that famous "sullen ac-
quiescence" in Calvin Coolidges re-
nomination in 1928. which Senator
George H. Moses, historic 1927 inter-
view foreshadowed as a certainty If the
While the bandwagon movement IN
Smiths direction was getting under
way at Houston, the writer talked to
Senator Cole l.. Blease of South Car
DINA, the Peck's bad boy of the Demo-
cratic party.
Blease is a typical Southern anti
Smith" fire-eater, II there is one. He
makes no bones of his displeasure that
the New Yorker Is the conventions
choice for President But Blease de-
clares unqualifiedly that Smith will get
not only the electoral vote of South
Carolina. but the rest of the solid South.
He advances as reason for that pre-
diction the fact that Dixie will not
flock to Smith because 1t loves him
more. but because it loves Herbert
Hoover less. If there are any Repub-
lican field marshals. like DR.. Hubert
Work, who are casting rowing eyes to-
ward the solid South. they may be
interested in what Senator Blease said
IF the Republicans at Kansas City
had put up anybody but Hoover" the
South Carolinian asserts, my State
would have voted for him against
Smith. We would have given our cleo
toral vote to Coolidge. Lowden. Curtis
or any other Republican. But when
those fellows nominated that pro-negro
candidate, Hoover, they settled it as
far as South Carolina is concerned.
We'd vote for any Democratic yellow
dog against Republican who believes
In putting negroes on a level of equal
ity with white men and women"
Double BarreIed Contrast.
Blease's blast refers to the so-called
anti-segregation" order in the Bureau
OF the Census branch of Hoover's De-
partment of Commerce. The startling
contrast incarnated by Houston Is dou-
ble-barreled. Essentially 1t is Smiths
domination and nomination which typ
ify 1t. But many hours before the New
Yorker was TO be Amounted the con-
vention's favorite son ii had given an
exhibition of Its temper. which showed
how far the Democratic party has trav-
eled in four years. That was when Sam
Houston Hall tumulted its approval of
Permanent Chairman RobinSon's asser-
ton that, true to the Jeffersonian sta
tute of religious liberty in Virginia, the
Democratic party would lever" hold that
a mans creed Is no test of his qualifica-
ton for public Office.
There were scuffles In three or four
on the convention floor. Probably no
one will ever get at the exact truth as
to whether this or that State started
Alabama, North Carolina, Florida, Ten
nessee, Georgia or Virginia--waS or was
not carried by force into the parade OF
standards formed while the convention
was seething with enthusiasm over
Robinson's declaration
Accounts vary widely as To which
State remained obdurate to the end and
refused to enter into the mad carnival
of demonstration. The consensus of
opinion, formed while the melee was
at its height, is that only Alabama and
Florida we're total abstainers from the
parade episode But even II there
were other Southern directors to Rob-
inson's religious-lib manifesto, they
would be only the exceptions that
proved the rule at Houston In that
frenzied hour. The rule was that the
convention went over. horse. foot and
dragon. In favor Of the tolerance pro-
gram. then and there laid down for a
great American political party, History
was made In that mad moment,
Convention observers are going away
from Houston convinced by the Robin
son affair and the Smith nomination
that the religious issue is not going to
be nearly SO potent and pernicious an
incident OF the 1923 campaign as was
once feared. II Is not destined TO
disappear entirely any more than all
vestige OF opposition to Smiths nomina-
ton vanished In the convention. But
few authorities now expect intolerance
and bigotry to play the roles which
many politicians in both parties suce
assigned them ~ w w