REPUBLICANS: Kansas Candidate

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Chief Landon whisper has been that he is in the toils of his old friend, Harry ("Teapot Dome") Sinclair, whom he knew as a fellow townsman in Independence, Kans., as a Kansas University fraternity brother, as a fellow oilman. Alf Landon says he has not even seen Harry Sinclair in at least six years, perhaps ten. No one has yet accused Candidate Landon of accumulating a campaign slush fund, a charge usually hurled about this time at any candidate who gets out in front in the race for the Presidential nomination. Last week his Kansas City Campaign Chairman Oscar Stauffer could not "remember offhand" who had supplied the biggest Landon campaign contribution to date: $2,500.

Because Kansas is traditionally Dry, many an Eastern toper loudly vows that he will vote for no Kansan who, as President, might favor a return to Prohibition. Alf Landon used to like a drink himself, but now he and his guests get nothing stronger than Coca-Cola. No fanatic on the liquor question, he says he accepts the 21st Amendment as the nation's will.

If Governor Landon is nominated at Cleveland, pious people who dislike the Roosevelt religious record will have a chance to vote for a Methodist who goes to church about as irregularly as the present President.

"Fox." Son of a well-to-do independent oil producer, Alf Landon belonged to Phi Gamma Delta at University of Kansas in 1904-08. Fraternity records show that he got the ice cream course eliminated from the house menu, tried and failed to have only one orchestra instead of two hired for the spring lawn party, outlawed gambling in the chapter house, opposed motions to install a stein rack and to discontinue "Dr. Wilbur's Bible lessons." No niggard, however, Alf Landon gave the fraternity a cuspidor. No "Christer," he downed his beer with other members of Theta Nu Epsilon, oldtime campus drinking society. In his one year of academic study and three years of law, Alf Landon's prime avocation was the workings of fraternity and campus politics, which he mastered so thoroughly that fellow students, nicknamed him "The Fox."

Back home in Independence, Alf Landon spent four years in a bank, then plunged into the oil business as an independent producer like his father. In that arduous and risky line—by enterprise, hard work, fair dealing and stiff bargaining—he made a fortune which is now estimated at from $250,000 to $2,000,000, invested chiefly in some 100 Kansas and Oklahoma wells he still owns. He also, in his comings & goings in search of oil, made friends all over Kansas. Shortly after his first wife died in 1918, Alf Landon volunteered for Army Service, was called in mid-September, commissioned a Lieutenant in the Chemical Warfare Division in October, month before the Armistice. Candidate Landon wears his American Legion button, does not talk much about his War record.

Available on request at Governor Landon's Kansas City headquarters are mimeographed copies of press puffs ballyhooing him as the Great Budget Balancer. Alf Landon is careful to say, however, that the credit for Kansas' fiscal soundness "Does not belong to any one political party or State administration."