Hoover & Smith

Last week a memorable meeting came at last to pass. Alfred Emanuel Smith and Herbert Clark Hoover spent 25 minutes together in the J. C. Penney sun-parlor at Miami Beach, trading yarns, smoking long black cigars, laughing, being good fellows

Miami press-agents first tried to maneuver this meeting, but John J. Raskob snatched it from their greedy fingers. Eleven o'clock at Belle Isle was the hour. Smith skipped his breakfast to make it on time. With care he picked his Mtire--silk-faced cutaway, striped trousers, silk-topped patent leather button shoes, semi-formal overcoat with velvet collar. One hand picked up a cane; the other put a cigar in a mouth corner. The Brown Derby, above all, was set at an undefeated angle. Away streaked the baby-blue Rolls-Royce, minus any hooting police-escort. Cushioned snugly at Mr. Smith's 'elbows were Mr. Raskob and William L. Kenny, vacation playmates.

Bowed in by Mr. Penney's butler and by Lawrence Richey, Hoover secretary, the Democracy's battered candidate felt the friendly grip of the next President's soft hand. Mr. Hoover had not slicked up much. His coat was blue, his trousers white, his shoes blancoed. The large sun-room took them all in, doors closing behind. Outside, wind whipped rain against the glass and chopped up the waters of Biscayne Bay.

Mr. Hoover told Mr. Smith about a prize pig that was put aboard his campaign train. Mr. Smith replied that, about the same time, he had received an ancient, lusty-throated rooster from a trans-Mississippi admirer who insisted that it symbolized "unterrified Democracy."

Mr. Hoover was tempted to tell his favorite story, about a cow in China during the Boxer Rebellion. This cow belonged to the Hoovers and they cherished her because good rich milk WAS rare then and there. Some predatory Germans took the cow. Forth-went the Hoovers leading their cow's small calf through narrow streets, punching and-prodding it into a grief-stricken moo-oo-ooing. Mother cow, hidden behind walls, heard the call of her young and mooed back maternally. Out rushed the Germans--and took away the calf.

Smith laughed and stood up. "Mr. President," he said, "I wish you health, success and all the good luck in the world."

"Thank you, Governor," said Mr. Hoover.

For a rainy half hour R. L. McKenny, publisher of the Macon News, had waited there in his parked car to eye the wet Tammany candidate. Publisher McKenny's News was the largest and perhaps bitterest anti-Smith organ in Georgia. As the Smith car vanished, Publisher McKenny, who is a Kiwanian, a Methodist and a life-long prohibitionist, boasted:

"It was our people who fixed him. Down in Georgia . . . .we shot more holes in Smith and Tammany than anyone else."*

*As everyone knows, Georgia was one of the States which Nominee Smith did carry.