TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/28elect/28elect.008

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                                                                                November 5, 1928 

THE PRESIDENCY 

"Socialism!"



     Monster demonstrations for Smith along the Atlantic seaboard
were the most interesting topic of the week for Democrats. Did
those great crowds mean votes -- or curiosity? Was Demos what
Alexander Hamilton called it, "a great beast," or was it a
thinking creature of articulate enthusiasms?

     Republicans also pondered the Smith ovations, both as
campaign phenomena and with reference to a problem of their own.

What were Republicans to think of Nominee Hoover's cry of warning
against "State socialism" in his New York speech last fortnight?
Was that a sincere cry against a genuine danger? Or was it the
cry of a Hamiltonian sort of person who viewed the People with
alarm? Was it by any chance purely a vote-hunting cry? In any
case, was it a wise cry, politically?

     The nub of the Hoover speech was this: during the War, the
U.S. Government was centralized, given extraordinary powers over
U.S. business, viz., the operation of the railroads. After the
War, the extraordinary powers were withdrawn, control
decentralized. "There has been revived in this campaign, however,
a series of proposals which, if adopted, would be a long step
towards the abandonment of our American system and a surrender to
the destructive operation of governmental conduct of commercial
business. Because the country is faced with difficulty and doubt
over certain national problems -- that is, prohibition, farm
relief and electrical power -- our opponents propose that we must
thrust government a long way into the businesses which give rise
to these problems. In effect they abandon the tenets of their own
party and turn to State socialism. . . . We are confronted with a
huge program of government in business . . . based on principles
destructive of its (the "American system's") very foundations."

     The three Smith proposals to which Nominee Hoover referred
were in essence as follows:

     1) Liquor -- to give the States their choice between a) the
present Federal Prohibition or b) manufacture and sale of liquor,
not for private profit or public (saloon) consumption, but under
State administration, for home consumption

     2) Farm Relief -- Federal assistance in distributing
marketing costs over units of any crop in which a price-
depressing surplus occurs.

     3) Water Power -- Government development, ownership and
control of undevelopment, ownership and control of undeveloped
sites still in the Government's hands. The Smith proposal was
also understood to include Government operation of public power-
plants, if necessary, though this tenet had not been stressed in
expositions of the main thesis against long leases of public
power sites to privateers, and leases without adequate rate-
controlling and recapture clauses.

     Nominee Hoover had generalized from three proposals by
Nominee Smith in such a way as to represent his opponent as the
apostle of an entire political philosophy foreign to the U.S. In
doing so he had been indirect, impersonal, but purposeful. For
example, he had cited government operation of railroads, a
question not under debate. And he had quoted from the late great
Laborite Samuel Gompers to improve his general argument, without
explaining that the Gompers quotation had reference to Government
operation of railroads and that alone.

     These things about the "Socialism" speech made it sound like
just another political speech, and bad politics at that, because
Nominee Smith was left with an obvious retort. Moreover, as any
student of recent political history knew, many a member of
Nominee Hoover's own party stood with or near Nominee Smith on
the specific proposals described as "socialistic." Vice President
Dawes, for example, who had spoken just before Nominee Hoover
form the Manhattan platform, had long been an arch-proponent of
the principle involved in the Smith proposal for farm relief.
Charles Evans Hughes, at that moment westbound to speak for
Nominee Hoover in critical Missouri, had long been an arch-
proponent of the principle involved in the Smith proposal of
water power.

     Nominee Smith was not slow to pick up the "Socialist"
challenge. Speaking in Boston, he "called the roll" of eminent
Republicans past and present whom, he said, would have to be
classed as "Socialists" if he was one -- the late Theodore
Roosevelt. Mr. Hughes, Vice President Dawes, Nominee Curtis,
Frank Orren Lowden, Senator Borah, etc., etc. Nominee Smith
nailed the deceptive use of the Gompers quotation and kept his
whole reply on that political level. Instead of elaborating a
politico-economic theory, he simply said: "There is a very wide
difference between public ownership and public control of water
power sites, which in the first instance belong to the people
themselves, and the operation and ownership of a going business
(e.g., railroads). "He defended his Prohibition proposal only by
reiterating that it was oldtime Jeffersonian States-rights
doctrine. He mocked Nominee Hoover with his own acceptance-speech
phrase, "We shall use words to convey our meaning, not to hide
it." and dismissed the "Socialism" speech as "the cry of the
"special interests."

     Political effects of the exchange were immediate. The Hoover
speech undoubtedly solidified portions of the Business vote of
the U.S. It also hastened the pro-Smith declaration of
independent Senator George W. Norris, reputed controller of
Nebraska's electoral votes and a potent influence throughout the
restless Northwest. Senator Norris flatly opposed the Hoover
position on water power, which for Senator Norris is the
paramount issue. Senator Borah, one of Hooverism's most vigorous
campaigners, was forced to admit, "I disagree with Mr. Hoover on
the power question. If that were the only issue in this campaign.
I could not support him." Senator Borah said the paramount issues
were Prohibition and Farm Relief, of a different brand than
Smith's. He did not "bolt." Neither did Senator Johnson, loud-
spoken champion of a Federal water and power supply for Los
Angeles.

     The pro-Hoover Scripps-Howard chain-papers, which had
already disowned the Hoover position on water power, pointed
editorially to Senator Norris and exclaimed: "There is a man!"

     The pro-Hoover New York Journal (Hearst) defended Nominee
Smith from the "Socialist" charge. Hearst Cartoonist T.E. Powers
drew a cartoon called "Wall Street Socialists." An elephant with
whiskers an a silk hat scowled at a brown-derbied donkey and
said: "You're a Socialist!" The donkey retorted: "Me, a
Socialist? Oh! Charlie, won't you loan me your whiskers?"

     The elephant in the Powers cartoon was labeled "Hughes of
G.O.P." Charles Evans Hughes was Hooverism's spokesman to deal
with the Smith retort.

     Spokesman Hughes spoke in Buffalo and a subtler piece of
political pleading has seldom been heard. The Hughes presence,
dignity, prestige and good form are almost unique in U.S. public
life. Few other figures could have administered so impressively
the prefatory rebukes to the Brown Derby which Spokesman Hughes
uttered. He charged Nominee Smith with indulging in "cheap
ridicule," "diatribe," "absurd tirades." "He (Nominee Smith) has
stooped too low to conquer. . . . One's sense of fairness is
affronted," said Mr. Hughes. "He misrepresents the position of
Mr. Hoover and attempts to distort the meaning of Mr. Hoover's
fine presentation of the true liberalism. . . ."

     Mr. Hughes explained: "What Mr. Hoover meant by 'State
socialism' is plain enough. He used the term in its proper sense
as applied to the Bismarckian philosophy of the centralization of
government, dominating all the activities of the people. Whether
Governor Smith knows what the term 'State socialism' means or
not, he at once jumped for the martyr's crown."

     Mr. Hughes had little trouble showing that the Smith
proposal to put the States into the liquor business is, by
definition, State socialism. The occasion did not require
Spokesman Hughes to explain why taking private citizens out of
the liquor business, by Federal law, was not equally Bismarchian.

     Mr. Hughes sought to pinion Nominee Smith on Water Power by
inquiring why "Government operation" had been omitted from the
Boston speech. That was the test, he said, "Government operation"
would mean "State socialism." "Let Governor Smith clarify his
position. . . .Does Governor Smith contend that the Government
has the right, under the Constitution of the United States, to
engage in the power business, irrespective of flood control,
navigation, irrigation or scientific research or national
defense?"

     This last was the list of exceptions reserved by Nominee
Hoover to cover such "local instances," and vexed political
issues, as the Muscle Shoals project in Alabama and the Boulder
Dam project on the Colorado River.

     It was a keen political speech. Its most effective part by
far was that overtone of Republican formality. To his earlier
rebukes, Spokesman Hughes added : "The whole tone of Governor
Smith's campaign has been far below what the country had a right
to expect."