New Era, Cont.

One day last week Campbell Bascom Slemp, Virginia Republican, onetime Coolidge Secretary, strolled into the White House, conferred with President Hoover, strolled out again. Smiling wisely at expectant newsgatherers, he drove off to the Union Station, took a train for Richmond. That night a strange political alliance was born, a culmination of Virginia's "new era of humanity" (TIME, July 1).

A thousand or so Republican delegates crowded into Richmond's Shrine temple for a state convention. Mr. Slemp was still smiling wisely when he arose, proposed and had his fellow Republicans nominate a Democrat for Governor. The Democrat was Prof. William Moseley Brown of Washington and Lee University, already nominated by the anti-Smith-Raskob wing of his own party (TIME, July, 1). Regular Republicans and the Democrats who had followed Bishop James Cannon Jr. out of their party at Roanoke last fortnight thus coalesced against the regular Democratic state organization. The band played "Dixie." A platform was adopted without the bother of reading it. Mr. Slemp, exalted, cried: "I am in the presence of the dominant party of Virginia. Nationally there is no Democratic party. . . . They won't even sit down to dinner together. The Old Dominion joined the Union in 1928. I haven't gotten over it yet, I'm so happy! Now I don't like to conduct a losing campaign and I'm not going to. There is always a way if you know how. I know nothing about political science but the science of politics is different."

With Prof. Brown nominated, the Republicans proceeded to clinch the alliance by naming R. Walter Dickenson, an old-line Republican, for Lieutenant Governor. The anti-Smith Democrats were expected to adhere to this candidacy immediately, having left the second place on their ticket open for that purpose.

Many an oldtime Southern Republican wondered how the Slemp trick would work. Virginia Republicans normally muster 75,000 or more votes. The runaway Democrats of 1928 numbered only some 40,000 votes. In the new alliance the majority accepted the minority's major candidate.

Mr. Slemp's visit to the White House bore fruit when President Hoover telegraphed the Richmond convention that its action "added proof of the purpose of the people of your great State to rise and remain above the level of single party control in local government," and that it would "prove an inspiration to other States throughout the South to do likewise."