National Affairs: Internal Struggles

John W. Davis spent the week following his notification struggling with party organization in Manhattan and preparing his later speeches and his itinerary. At best, a national political campaign in America is but a temporary alliance of local units. The only permanent political organizations are the local ones. National party organizations give an appearance of permanence, but in reality partake rather of the nature of a loose federation which, to a certain degree, is brought into a closer union at election time.

It is an open secret at present that the Democratic National organization is weak, uncoordinated. Mr. Davis' selection of Clem Shaver of West Virginia as Chairman of the National Committee did nothing to improve this condition. Mr. Shaver is not only shy and inexperienced, but as yet he has failed to exhibit traces of the dynamic, directing energy which is necessary to knit the local organizations into a great unit for the purposes of a national campaign. Many of the local units are strong, but they remain largely uncoordinated. The difficult task of altering this condition, therefore, rests largely on the candidate himself. He has been overtaken by a host of necessary conferences, of campaign appointments, of arrangements for raising adequate campaign funds. His duties are doubled. He has Herculean labor ahead.

There is one respect in which his trouble is diminished. The Democrats are usually faced with more difficulties in raising campaign funds than are the Republicans. This is evidently going to be the case this year. In spite of the misfortune for Mr. Davis which has risen from the fact that he has been labeled "a lawyer of the big business interests," the fact remains that these same interests seem more inclined to contribute to the Coolidge than the Davis campaign chest. But a report came out of Washington that, at President Coolidge's orders, the Republicans are going to limit their campaign expense to 2½ or 3 million dollars. This is less than half the amount which the Republicans spent in 1920, and offers the Democrats an opportunity of coming nearer parity with their opponents in the matter of campaign funds than they have been in many years.