POLITICAL NOTE: 100 Philosophers

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An eclectic list finally was published. There was a solid underpinning of businessmen, manufacturers, publishers, local Republican leaders. There were names pure & simple, like Hollywood's Cecil B. DeMille and 58-year-old Publisher E. P. Chase of the tiny Atlantic (Iowa) News-Telegraph, who won the 1934 Pulitzer Editorial Prize for a rustic blast about money. For crusty Republicans there were Mrs. Ogden Reid of the New York Herald Tribune and Prudential Life's Edward D. Duffield. For liberals there were such figures as onetime Immigration Commissioner Edward Corsi, nominated for the New York City Council with the support of the American Labor Party. For labor there were a few A. F. of L. leaders, among them Chicago's Judge Oscar Nelson. For farmers, most of whose leaders are practically committed to Franklin Roosevelt, there was a sprinkling of prosperous wheat growers, stock feeders, ranchers. By week's end only two of the nominees, Rochester, N. Y. Publisher Frank E. Gannett and Gifford Pinchot's lawyer brother Amos, had seen fit to decline.

A would-be master stroke, meant to unite in one man as many as possible of the strands that make up Republicanism in 1937, was the committee's choice for the program board's chairman. After hinting that he would be equally acceptable to Herbert Hoover and Alf M. Landon and that his eminence was such as to silence all partisan opposition, the committee announced his name—Glenn Frank.

Those who thought this was a fine choice declared that 50-year-old Glenn Frank was able, many-sided; would appeal to liberals as the eager village boy from Queen City, Mo. who won fame as a research assistant to Boston's late Merchant Edward A. Filene; would appeal to intellectuals as a onetime editor of Century magazine and president of the University of Wisconsin; would appeal to farmers as the present editor of a popular free-sheet Rural Progress. Those Republicans who disagreed said that dressy, snobbish, luxury-loving Glenn Frank was inherently too conservative for 1937, as he had proved too conservative for Wisconsin's La Follettes who ousted him from their university year ago (TIME, Jan. 18). Glenn Frank himself said he was gratified by the choice but asked a "few days" to consult his Rural Progress employers before formally accepting.