Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-04-20
THEN ALONG CAME RUTH
TO STUN POLITICIANS
%No Woman Can Do It," They Said of
Her Prospects of Winning
Illinois Primary.
Illinois Primary.

woods with them: every day when 1t is
possible to arrange 1t they ride together,
and every evening there are chapters in
book to read together or games TO
play. Then there are those merry
Christmases together on the farm at
Byron, Ill, and there are the Summer
weeks upon the farm or on the ranch
in Wyoming.
1t is at slight expense to her mater
nifty that this woman achieves her
public career.
And here again, as at so many other
points, it Is because Ruth Mccormick Is
willing to regard her intelligence as
something to be used for daily LIE.
That phenomenal capacity for organi-
cation for which she is so celebrated
was not to be applied-as it might have
been by a more theoretical mind-to
the creation of business or political
combinations alone. She uses 1t for the
organization of her daily life. A simple
secret by which to achieve so much.
Yet, If she has las her Illinois sue
cesses have demonstrated capacity
for political organization, she also mas
capacity for financial administration
as we'll. She is herself the admins
traitor of a considerable estate. She I'M
derstands the language of finance as
well as any man. She judges busi-
ness proposition in the cool terms OF
business and her Judgment Is steady.
When she takes over newspaper, as
she recently did In Rockford, ILL.,, she
gives it her personal attention. When
she takes over farm, as she did some
years ago in Byron, it is not that 1t may
be rich mans plaything, but that she
may demonstrate that scientific farm
ing can be made to pay.
Creative Imagination Analysed.
Whether it is in agriculture or in the
great game of journalism or in her
chosen profession of politics, she dis
plays creative imagination.
But she always held that magma
ton, brilliant as it is, by the rein Of
results-of practical sense.
Her realism is truly a part of her
truth-truth to something very deep in
her nature which she is incapable of
denying. She cannot commit spiritual
suicide, because she can always recog-
nize the knife ere 1t descends.
Some one said to her last Autumn,
when the stormy campaign was begin
ming to blacken upon the horizon and
people were predicting that no woman
could achieve a senatorial nomination
in so large a State as Illinois:
What will you do about the World
Court? There are an awful lot of peo-
pie who are in favor of it and under
these new arrangements they say they
have made you have a perfectly good
alibi If you want to soft pedal your
previous attitude"
She looked at the speaker long
time before she answered. Then she
said:
II know myself too welll I could
write speech that sounded well, but
If didn't say what ! meant, know
10 II irlNt nV.f 60
read It, and then all of a sudden some
thing deep down in me would get me
and I'd throw it away and say: This is
what started to say, but this is what
really mean! And I'd tell them thatr
Out of such human stuff as this does
true political leadership come. Out of
thiS-and out of the capacity to work
with other people.
Now, it is to me most interesting to
observe Mrs. McCormicks method Of
doing this last thing.
Strives to Lead, Not Control.
For, In action, she is the most i'm
personal of persons. She controls her
self. She does not seek to control but
to lead, others. She inspires them with
an instructive recognition of her ca
pacity, her directness, her leadership.
She thinks always in large terms.
She ignores the petty. She does not
seem to know it exists. She appeals not
to mems sympathies, but to their ad-
nliration. She achieves greatness be-
cause she herself Is great
remember with what shock /
heard her say when addressing a meet
ing Of Republican women of Pennsyl-
vania on the subject of the child labor
amendment which her husband had in
PRODUCED in the Senate, and in which
she was deeply interested, these words:
II am professional politician"
She had been among the first to rec
ognize that politics, public life, had be-
come in the United States not the nasty
business my high-brow friends had en-
couraged me to believe it was, nor even
secondary occupation for gentlemen
of leisure, but the finest career possible
for those who, like herself, could devote
to 1t their whole energy in the interest
OF their country and their fellows.
Politics Treated as Profession"
"Impersonal," said she was, lin ac-
ton" But impersonal only in this:
That treating politics as profession"
she can handle its multifarious aspects
with the imperSonality of the prbfes-
sional. And, in the midst Of 1t, she
YIELDS to herself the devotion of her
friends. gives in return her own devo-
ton with a singleness, a loyalty, a
thoughtfulneSs unsurpassed.
How can any woman do it?" I have
often heard people say of Mrs. McCor-
mick. How can she carry on?"
She can and does carry on partly
because of her sense of humor. To hear
her tell a story, to hear her giggle at
some one else's story is to hear the
laugh of the youngest spirit of mirth in
the world.
She can and does carry on partly be-
cause of her children and her fun with
them, partly because of her farm and
her ranch and her horses and her love
of her friends and her love of life itself
But most of all she does so because
her sound intelligence showed her that
| the career of politics was that for which
she was most fitted and that 1t can be
the most glorious profession In the
world.