Evening star., 1936-05-03
By CARLISLE BARGERON.

as a result, have come to be in almost
as great demand as professors.
Including the publicity agents In the
multiple New Deal agencies, there are
more than 100 men here now employed
in the propaganda phase Of the busi-
ness of re-electing or defeating Mr..
Roosevelt. This does not include the
publicity set-ups Of the Federal Hous-
ing Administration, designed primar-
lily to get people to take advantage Of
its home modernlzation or home
financing program. or that OF the
Treasury, which is trying to get people
to buy Baby Bonds. 1t relates to those
whose activities bear directly upon Mr..
Roosevelt's political fortunes.
Not the least of these Is the far
flung organization of Col. Lawrence
Westbrook. assistant administrator Of
w. P. A. His organization, aside from
its local staff, which is maintaining a
discreet silence, is spread over all the
country. Within it originates such
creative work as the red. white and
blue w. P. A. signs which have come
to adorn the public parks, the schools.
the libraries and even the golf courses.
W.P. A. Workers Followed Flood.
1t Is this organization which made
sure that as soon as the food waters
receded recently the w p. A. workers
were on hand to remove the mud from
the stricken homes and help repair and
repaint them. This personal service"
L. thu Anenoir nf thA
Republicans. Following the food epi-
sode a prominent Republican here re-
ceived a letter from a lieutenant IN
New England. He wrote, in effect:
II throw up the sponge. The
waters had no sooner gone down here
than w. P. A. workers were all over
the place restoring the homes and
the streets and the people who bene-
fited are saying 1t was certainly nice
of Mr.. Roosevelt to stay in Washing
ton and have this work done.
Attention here, however, focuses on
the men whose business 1t Is to hit
the front pages of the newspapers:
Charlie Nicholson. William c. Muir
ply. jr., and Ted Huntley. Of the
Democratic National Committee. the
Liberty League, the Republican Ma
tional Committee. respectively.
They, too,, have their staffs to
food the country with pamphlets
and other political literature. But it
is also their business to hit the front
pages Of the metropolitan newspapers.
Careers Most Romantic.
Here is a creative work. OF all
the careers that are fashioned in
Washington it has the greatest po-
tentialities and is the most romantic.
The effort these men put into a piece
for the metropolitan papers, the
anguish they 60 through until they
see whether it clicks, tand then II it
clicks, whether the reaction will be
good or bad. can only be compared to
the state of mind of a playwright
on the first night his work is pro-
duced.
They are real artists, or at least
they are supposed to be. Their work,
to be effective, calls for imagination.
Ordinarily the production Of
front page story by these fellows
works this way: He get a whale Of
to the point where he can visualize
the headline. Then he considers
which Senator ought to spring the
story, because the story must be
sponsored by big names.
Not infrequently, when the Senator
or other sponsor has performed to the
idea mans delight, the masterpiece of
effort will become lost in an unex-
pected avalanche of news. In this
case the idea man simply accepts it
as the liabilities of his game and sets
out to create another one.
Sometimes They 90 Astray.
Then. occasionally, the ideas 60
wrong There was striking instance
of this last week, although this par
ticular masterpiece came from the
Chicago office Of the Republican Ma
tional Committee. A lot of cans of
dog food, bearing the notation, Fit
for human consumption, were COL
lected and sent to Senator Dickinson,
together with a speech charging that
the New Deal had got the people
down to eating dog food. As the
Washington experts see it, this work
one thing, none of the fellows here
would try to put over dog food
story and, again, the Chicago fellow
not only wrote the speech, but also
the story as he would have liked to
see it appear in the newspapers. It
described graphically how the Sena-
tors sat spellbound while the Senator
made his Sensational" disclosure and
how, at its conclusion, he dramatically
exhibited the cans of dog food.
BY the time Dickinson got around
to making this speech, several New
Deal Senators had copies of the
story" They were not sitting SPELL
bound when he made his Sensational"
disclosure, but they did come tumbling
out Of the cloak room like ants.
And when Dickinson concluded they
pointed out in high glee that he had
failed to exhibit the dog food. Where
upon Dickinson exclaimed he had 1t
Al AAAo OAiASC. f1IlQ IIUul LI1efc On LlllIlSo
seemed to go from bad to worse.
Although the Republican committee
here was in no wise responsible for
this, its heart ached, because it Is
having its publicity troubles as it is.
Nicholson Went Wrong, Too.
1t received q little balm for its
wounds a couple of days later when
Nicholson ran across the fact that
three Of the Republicans recently
acquired professors had, In 1880,
signed the petition Of 1000 economists
to Hoover, importuning him to veto
the Hawley-Smoot tariff. Nicholson
selected, of all people, Senator Pat
Harrison to sponsor a razzing state
ment on this. He had Harrison say
ing he was certainly glad the Repub-
licans had learned the error of their
ways on the tariff, because the Haw-
ley-Smoot tariff had certainly wrecked