Evening star., 1928-10-14
BY WILLIAM HARD.

Hoover has the edge, but Smith has
a strong fighting chance. That is the
sum of the situation at this week end
in the presidential campaign.
The Republican party-relatively to
| l924-has suffered great losses In the
Irish vote, in the negro vote and in the
vote OF the foreign Language" groups
| It also has suffered great losses In a
group which is not important numer-
ically, but which Is highly important
group is the intelligentsia, as repre-
sented by the faculties of colleges, the
practitioners of modernistic literature
and the illuminated antagonists OF
American "bigotry'' and "Babbittry.
Smith Is going to carry "the intelli-
| gentsia" by big margin
| ContrariWise, the Republican party
| relatively to l924-has made great gains
out OF the. development of woman suf-
| frage and out of the revival of anti
! toreignisnl A majority Of women have
| picked HooYer out to. be a special enemy
| to the saloon and a special humani-
tartan savior Of the home and Of chill
dren. Hoover speakers from numerous
States are meanwhile reporting here to
the, effect that nothing raises such
| storms Of applause from their crowds
as general promiScuous attack upon
immigration.
Many immigrant voters thereupon re-
act into q still stronger regard for
Smith.
In fact, from a certain fundamental
point of view, the basic positive con-
f1ict in this campaign might be ex-
pressed as follows:
immigration fights for Smith Woman
suffrage fights for Hoover.
without the confidence felt in Smith
by the mass of recent immigrant voters
in our large cities, his cause would be
hopeless These voters are mostly wet
They are mostly Catholic. Beneath
those facts, however, there is an even
deeper fact. For vast multitude of
such voters Smith Is symbol of
emancipation from social and political
inferiority, He is deliverer. In and
through him there may be triumph for
the immigrant who wants with all his
heart to, prove that he, too, Is an
American, That social urge is at the
very marrow OF the strength OF the
Smith movement.
Against 1t rises the alarmed native"
who notes that these immigrants are
mostly wet and Catholic, In addition
to being foreign" and who thereupon
embraces prohibition and Professionalism
not necessarily as the marks of his per-
sonal conduct, but as the badges of
his "nativism" and "Americanism. Z"
Such sentiments are swaying millions
OF voters, both men and women, but
they come TO their peak OF power among
women. With whom party ties are
lighter and instincts are stronger.
Fear of the return Of the saloon and
Of penniless pay days tends to make
some converts to Hoover even among
the wives and daughters of urban vets.
In the end, then, from any angle Gf
analysis the one force that can and
does give final battle to the party
strength of Smith In the South and
to his East Side" strength in the cities
Of the North is. the force let loose by
the woman-suffrage amendment to the
Federal Constitution.
In the presence Of these tremendous
and terrific social thunders and light.
nings the two national political cam
paign organizations have behaved for
the most part as II they were either
bewildered or stupefied by the tempest,
The Republicans have lost the bulk
of their old-time negro vote In the
North by fatuously confiding their col
ored division" to the care and control
/ of intellectual negroes who are not In
! any way the actual political leaders Of
their race This disregard for the
actual leaders has aroused against the
| Republicans formidable negro revolt.
| The Democrats meanwhile. with equal
| fatuousress. have concentrated the con-
troll of their party into the hands of a
! little knot of New Workers who are
often eminent for intellect or eminent
| G,.k xyIN 81.
personalities the manifest brand of the
metropolis. This neglect of the claims
of the second-rank cities and of the
countryside rebounds against the Demo-
Gratis in further charges to the effect
that they now represent only primarily
our most urbaniZed regions
Neither political national organiza-
ton this year has elected the slightest
| breath of spontaneous approval from
our technical professional political be-
| holders
The campaign is reminiscent of the
German student story which says that
at the top of things there is the cavalry
officer, and then there is nothing, and
then there is nothing, and then there
Is the infantry ofiicer,
In this campaign at the top there
are two Of the most extraordinary char
acters in all American history Smith
and Hoover and then there Is virtually
nothing. and then there Is virtually
nothing, and then there is the mass oil
voters guiding themselves by those
characters and by the correspondence
between those characters and the
deepest emotions of their hearts anc
souls
Hoover has the advantage of position
because he Is grounded primarily or
the established while Smith Is engaged
strategically in trying to upraise thu
new.
Hoover seems well on his way toWarc