REPUBLICANS: The South Reacts

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Democratic solidarity is a powerful tradition in the South, born in the time of Thomas Jefferson, when cotton was king, strengthened by Civil War and Reconstruction. But the South has never been completely solid. In 1920, to rebuke Woodrow Wilson for involving the U. S. in Europe's problems, Tennessee and Oklahoma went Republican. In all but four Southern States there are counties which are traditionally Republican. Winston County, Ala., actually seceded from the Confederacy in 1861, named itself the "Free State of Winston," furnished five companies of infantry for the Union Army. Except in 1900 (when Winston went for Bryan) and in 1932 (when Roosevelt carried the county by 1,006 votes to 1,005), it has been Republican ever since. Another rebellious Southern county was the "Free State of Jones," which seceded from Mississippi, later returned to the Democratic fold.

Southern Republicans are strongest in Tennessee (38 counties), North Carolina and Oklahoma (17 counties each). They would be stronger, except for Democratic gerrymandering of Congressional districts to keep down Republican representation in Washington. The eighth district of North Carolina, for instance, winds all over the middle part of the State to avoid Republican counties.

Sentiment. The South's most distinctive characteristic is a conservatism as ingrained as that of Republican Tories in the North.

Most Southerners, rich and poor, farmer and industrialist alike, frown on social experiment, mistrust unions, abhor any truck with Communists such as WPA has sometimes harbored. They don't like the New Deal's catering to the Negro vote in Pennsylvania, New York, other Northern States. They resent being called "the nation's No. i economic problem" as the President's National Emergency Council called the South two years ago.

The South has distrustfully watched Franklin Roosevelt lean closer year by year to such Yankee advisers as Rhode Island's Tommy Corcoran, Boston's Joe Kennedy, to social workers like Harry Hopkins. It watched him at Chicago last fortnight lean on the support of old-line party bosses like Frank Hague in New Jersey, Ed Kelly in Illinois, while many of its own Senators were out in the cold.

Wrote Scripps-Howard's Kansas-born Hugh Johnson last week: "In the President's Cabinet there are only two indubitable Democrats—Hull and Farley. There are now four Republicans—Stimson, Knox, Wallace and Ickes; two Socialists or something—Hopkins and Perkins; and a couple of no pronounced political parentage. . . . As for Jeffersonian policies . . . Mr. Roosevelt opposes every one. . . ."

Traces of potential Willkie sentiment began to appear in the press of the South. A Richmond Times-Dispatch poll showed Roosevelt strength in Virginia down to 59% from his 80% majority over Landon (which dropped to 68% on election day) in a similar tabulation in 1936. In Tennessee Scripps-Howard's potent Memphis Commercial Appeal came out for Willkie. So of course did the Knoxville Journal, only important Republican daily in the South.