National Affairs: The Brown Derby

• Share

(2 of 6)

"By Gosh." Candidate Smith participated personally in Smith Week almost not at all. Leaving his brown derby in his hotel room at Biltmore, N. C., he wore a floppy felt hat and continued his golf. He said he had not changed his June plans: "When I said that I would not go to Houston, I meant it." Upon his fellow New Yorkers' action in presenting him to the nation he made no comment. Observers were thoroughly satisfied that he will exert himself to obtain the nomination no more overtly than he did last week in one action and two characteristic utterances :

He went into a barnyard, milked a cow, had himself photographed between two cows.

He received a letter from Charles W. Tillett, a political commentator of Charlotte, who wrote: "I have said many good things concerning you and I wish to determine, after seeing you, whether I can, like the Queen of Sheba, say the half has not been told, or whether I must repeat what Uncle Eph said to me the other day when I got after him about an extravagant statement he had made: 'Boss, I jest over-spoke myself.' " Candidate Smith wired back: "Will be delighted to see you . . . in the matter of Queen of Sheba versus Uncle Eph."

He received one Leonard H. Huff, hard bitten hillbilly, aged 92, who said: "I have been waiting four years to get a chance to vote for you." Candidate Smith replied: "By gosh, I hope you get the chance."

Leaving Asheville, the Candidate and his party moved up to Absecon, N. J., for more golf, more rest, less public politics.

The increasing prospect of any man's nomination distorts his image in the public eye. In the case of Candidate Smith, his enemies see him more and more as a subtle knave of Rum and Romanism wearing the stripes of Tammany. His friends, in turn, are prone to exalt him as a Galahad of the masses, dight in spotless, and stripeless, armor. Actually, of course, he is simply a 54-year-old up-from-the-bottom man whose profession has been politics, whose acquired technique is state-government, whose ambition is what he calls "the highest office in the world." In acquiring his technique he found that knowledge of his job was necessary to rise in his profession and that honesty was an unbeatable asset after rising. In contemplating his ambition he has perceived that a public man can no longer personally manipulate a great destiny. The nomination must be brought to a Destiny Man. He cannot go and get it.

Heredity, Environment. That Alfred Emanuel Smith rose from utter poverty and the shelter of a saloon is another current myth. His father, for whom he was named, was a New York trucker of whom little is known except that he worked hard and died young, when his son was 13. The mother, whose maiden name was Mulvehill and who also was born in New York, had seen to it that the boy went to a parochial school. At the father's death, he left school, having reached the eighth grade. Beside his mother he had a sister, two years his junior, to support. He earned $15 per week as a checker in the Fulton Fish Market. His mother covered umbrellas to help out. He checked fish for seven years, then worked in a Brooklyn pumping station.