After All is Said

Monday, Nov. 12, 1928
Article Tools
Print
Reprints
Sphere
RSS

During the campaign, certain newspapers achieved certain types of fame:

Related Articles

New York Herald Tribune, arch-Republican, surpassed all recent metropolitan precedents in the rabid partisanship of its headlines.

New York World, arch-Democratic, was so close to the Happy Warrior that it was accused of telling him what to say and how to run his campaign.

Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, both outspokenly Wet, under the same ownership, supported Hoover and Smith, respectively. But the Chicago Tribune sensationally denounced the Ku Klux Klan and the Anti-Saloon League as "twin calamities" in the Hoover campaign (see p. 9).

The Scripps-Howard newspapers (26) clung to Hoover, though he frowned upon some of their policies and ignored their demand to oust Dr. Work.

The Fellowship Forum, a National Weekly Newspaper Devoted to the Fraternal Interpretation of the World's Current Events, achieved more fame than it ever had before and, in percentage, it won more circulation and showed a greater increase in gross revenue than any other U. S. publication. From the publisher's standpoint, it won the campaign. "Fraternal" means that The Fellowship Forum is the organ of the Ku Klux Klan and all those who believe that the Pope and Al Smith want to hang 100% Protestant-American babies from the trees on the White House lawn. The Fellowship Forum boasts that its "million readers are a unit against Al Smith because he is wet and they are ardent prohibitionists, but were he dry, most of them would oppose him on religious grounds."

Regularly during the campaign, The Fellowship Forum devoted eight out of its ten pages to violent, blatant and inaccurate attacks on Al Smith, the Pope and rum —by story, headline, editorial, cartoon and readers' forum. The doings and speeches of Mrs. Willebrandt, Rev. John Roach Straton, Senator Heflin and many a minor bigot were faithfully reported. The technique in handling campaign trends was to ballyhoo a Hoover landslide: for example, "Smith to be Most Badly Defeated Candidate Ever Running for Presidency." Then there was standard stuff: "Drunk Negro Boosting Smith," "Kissing Pope's Ring Insult to Flag," "Tirades on Religion and Liquor by Smith in West Turn Voters in Disgust." But, here and there, The Fellowship Forum would say something nice; one week, on the Women's Page, was a glowing sketch of Mrs. Herbert Hoover. One of the owners of The Fellowship Forum was aboard the Hoover special train on the Tennessee trip. Another owner is the Republican nominee for Governor in Virginia.

How many thousands of dollars The Fellowship Forum collected during the campaign to carry on its work will never be precisely known. Its drive was unceasing. One week before Election Day, Editor James S. Vance sent through the mails a "final appeal" for funds. Many of the letters were despatched to northern Republicans with Park Avenue addresses. "I want financial help," wrote Editor Vance, "that will enable me to single shot Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Arkansas and Texas, and turn a probability into a certainty."