G. O. P. Chairman?

During the Republican National Convention at Kansas City last year, Claudius Hart Huston, Chattanooga businessman, sat in a Muehlebach Hotel room, kept in touch with New York and Washington by long distance telephone, whispered important things to onetime Governor James Putnam Goodrich of Indiana, behaved in a manner which led many to suppose that he was putting over the Hoover nomination singlehanded, was preparing to direct the whole Hoover campaign. Such was not the case in 1928, but it may be in 1932. Last week, betting in the capital was 2-1 that this affable "whitecollar" politician from the South would become chairman of the Republican National Committee with the job of drivng the G.O.P. steamroller.

Mr. Huston, tall, lean, with slate-blue eyes and tight lips, claimed credit for first breaking the Solid South, because, with his help, Harding carried Tennessee in 1920. Under Secretary Hoover he served two years as an Assistant Secretary of Commerce. Firm friends they became, have remained to this day. Mr. Huston raised a half million dollars for the 1924 campaign, even more for 1928. In Tennessee he is, among other things, vice president of the Chattanooga Wheelbarrow Co.

Also, last week, it was suddenly discovered that Mrs. Alvin T. (Sally Aley) Hert, of Kentucky, vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, had submitted her resignation before the Inaugural. Mrs. Hert was Chairman Work's unsuccessful candidate for Secretary of the Interior.

At her Mackinac Island (Mich.) summer home Mrs. Hert was "hopeful" that the National Committee would pick Mrs. Worthington Scranton of Pennsylvania as her successor as No. 2 driver of the steamroller. Marion Marjorie Scranton, tall, stylish daughter-in-law of the family that founded and named Scranton, was once (in a nominating speech) called "God's greatest gift to mankind." She is attractive; she is dashing--too much so, according to conservative Pennsylvania politicians who gossiped critically about cigaret smoking and such like. But above all she is a "good politician," now stepping with cheerful speed from local to national fame.