National Affairs: To Houston

¶ "Won't you come into my parlor?" said the Solid South to the Knowing North.

¶ "YES," said the North—but it remained to be seen who would be eaten up.

When the Democratic National Committee chose Houston, Tex., last week for its 1928 convention city, it was really the choice of a solid North, calculating to coax an uncertain South. San Francisco, Detroit and Cleveland were eager bidders. Houston won, with a small auditorium and ominous late-June climate, for three reasons:

1) Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith of New York. It was impossible to persuade Southerners to nominate Governor Smith four years ago in the Manhattan madhouse. But Southerners are gentlemanly hosts. At and after the first national political convention to be held in the South since the Civil War, Southerners would not (the Smith men thought) discomfit their guests nor disrupt the party by refusing to honor the outstanding Northern candidate. . . Having voted for Houston, outstanding Smith men were placed on the committee of arrangements, including Norman E. Mack of New York, Frank Hague of New Jersey, Isadore Dockweiler of California, George E. Brennan of Illinois, Tom J. Spellacy of Connecticut.

2) Jesse Holman Jones. In Houston lives a ponderous, genial, whitehaired personage, know to Houstonians as a timber magnate who moved down from Dallas 20 years ago to open banks & bond houses, build hotels, publish the Houston Chronicle, etc., etc. He looks, acts and is one of the richest men in all rich Texas—Jesse Holman Jones. In Who's Who, Mr. Jones calls himself, "builder, financier." Among nationally experienced Democrats, he has come to be known as a politician, almost as well known as that other Texan, Col. Edward Mandell House of the Wilson regime.

About Mr. Jones there is an air of large, handsome magnanimity which Col. House never possessed. The House manner was too quiet not to be ulterior. If Mr. Jones wants to be another House, he conceals it beneath the air of a man who would under write the Democratic party as gladly as he would buy suits for a Boy Scout ball team.

Mr. Jones has been known outside of Texas at least since 1917, when he worked with the Red Cross in Washington and Paris. But not until 1924, when he stepped forward to bear the brunt of the $220,000 convention deficit, was his importance widely appreciated. They at once let him have charge of National Democratic finances and then, last week, when the 1928 convention was being noisily auctioned in the Mayflower Hotel at Washington, they let Mr. Jones have his way. He happily produced his own certified check for $200,000 as Houston's bid. It led on all five ballots.

3) Governor Dan Moody of Texas was the timely and deciding, if not a really serious, factor. He arrived late, after other bidders had tried to outdo Mr. Jones. Balloting was just about to start when in he burst—34 years old, red haired, grinning unofficially. Mr. Jones brought the committeemen to their feet with a superb gesture and Governor Dan Moody cried, "It is not only the people of Houston who invite you but also the people of Texas!"