REPUBLICANS: The South Reacts

Twelve years ago the South rose in hotheaded revolt, sent its voters to the polls, and knocked over a political tradition which had stood firm for half a century. Democratic since the last Yankee administrator went home in 1877, the South in

1928 split clean in two, gave six of its twelve States to the Republican Party. Herbert Hoover that year won 72 electoral votes in the South, Al Smith 64. Engineer Hoover won 1,957,000 popular votes, Catholic Smith 1,985,000.

Last week, remembering 1928's upheaval and having heard that it might be repeated, Republican Nominee Wendell Willkie announced that he would try to break the Solid South again in 1940. Too soon it was to judge the practical force of Willkie sentiment stirring in the South. But there were seeds of a revolt against entrenched politics. To Wendell Willkie went hundreds of telegrams from Southern Democrats (see p. 14). In Richmond, Charleston, Atlanta, in Texas, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, Willkie clubs sprang up overnight, formed by lifelong Democrats to back a Republican candidate.

Pope's Shadow. New Dealers were inclined last week to shrug away these straws. They pointed out that unlike Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt is no Roman Catholic. But, although fiery crosses crackling on lonely hilltops, and red-faced spellbinders warning that the Pope was on his way to the White House played their part in the 1928 election, other things helped to defeat Smith: many a Southern voter turned thumbs down on liquor, on Tammany, on Manhattan's East Side, on New York City domination in general. The States that went for Hoover in 1928 were not the politically naïve backwoods regions that might have been expected to fear the Pope's shadow. They were North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas—which have their share of hillbillies but also, politically and industrially, harbor many of the South's most sophisticated areas.

This year Republicans base their hopes not on a single explosive issue, but on a change in the political complexion of the entire U. S., including the South, accomplished by no less a magician than Franklin Roosevelt himself.

How Solid? The South as a political unit (see map) consists of the eleven Southern States which seceded in 1860-61 to form the Confederacy; and Oklahoma, which became a State in 1907, has generally voted with its Democratic neighbors, Texas and Arkansas. Kentucky likes to think of itself as a Southern State; so do Missouri, Maryland, Delaware. But most Southerners and politicians regard these four as border States, likely to blow North or South with the winds.