L.T. - SUNOCO. WEDl'iSSDAY. JULY 17. 1340. OOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: This afternoon I betook myself to the Convention Hall expecting to bring back complete information, all about the platform. We were supposed to have it read to us, debated, and adopted with a shout. But as I walked into the N.B.C. news room I was told I might just as well go back down town, that the Resolutions Committee was stillfighting. Only an hour ago I had word that a share in this hullaballoo was being taken by the President himself. The fight in the sub-committee, it was believed, had been decisive, an isolationist victory. That’s why we went out to the hall expecting to hear all about the platform. But the applecart was upset by Senator Pepper of Florida. All along he has been one of the loudest help-the-British champions, that made it tough because the leader of the isolationists is the wily, agile and pugnacious Burt Wheeler of Montana, backed by the equally pugnacious Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri. But here’s authentic and still later news. The fight is all over, the platform set. The inference is that the telephone call from President Roosevelt in the White House ironed out the disagreement. A foreign plank drafted which both have accepted, including a strong pledge against the sending of any armed forces to fight wars on foreign soil. So at eight o*clock tonight, Chicago Daylight Time, we shall begin hearing that platform. The compromise effected by the President makes it probable that there won!t be any wrangling on the floor of the convention. After that, the big scene, what French playwrights used to call the essent'.al scene the LEAD - 2 nominations. Keep your ears primed for fireworks. Jesse Jones . hile standing in the N.B.C. booth at the Convention this afternoon, chatting with my old friend H. V. Kaltenborn, vho alv/ays does such a splendid job on the air at times like this, a lady asked 'htr who he thought would be selected A A by the Convention^, for second place on the ticket with F.D.R. 7F "Jones", answered Kaltenborn, right off the bat. A little later at the Blackstone Hotel, I was talking to Jesse Jones of R.F.C. fame^ and I asked him: "How about it, are you going to get the nomination for the vice-presidency?" The tall, smiling, gray haired Texan replied in his tenor voice: "I am not a candidate." Then he added: "I guess that1s what every candidate says, isnft it?" When I asked if he had any convention headquarters, as candidates usually do -(Paul McNutt, by the way, has the most elegant and spacious headquarters of al]S- Jesse Jones I answered that he had no headquarters, merely a bed in which to flop at night, and he went on to say, ruefully, that he guessed he hadn*t spent enough time in b^d eitner. Jesse Jones - 2 Yet, today, on all sides you hear that Jesse Jones will be the man chosen to run with F.D.p. COPDF.LL HULL Yesterday v.e had a story about Secretary of State Hull. That Mr. Roosevelt had tried unsuccessfully to get him to take the nomination for vice-president. I have just had word aoout this straight from Secretary Hull: Yes, he did consult with Mr. Roosevelt, but, he had not made any promise to talk it over with his wife. Furthermore, he wanted to stay at the State Department, not because of any dissension, but simply because he feels that during the present crisis he can be more useful there than anywhere else, and that when he finishes his work i at the State Department he will step o ut of public life. 1 WILLXIE Ther^/s good deal 9 ^ speculatiojy^about the kind^l5? campa: we f re ^Ikely to and the ^^neral opinioi^ls - a slagyflfang affair, . ^ TP", bli/Stering and/bitter. A^huming, as everybody does,^that Presid tsevel^will run/- it will be sr smashing du^l between comoetent gLiraatiors, The President is/renowed as a In ging master a of giv^and take, an^/'.Vendell wyrt.kie is regarded quite able to handle himself in a tussle. Today, the Republican candidate spoke up with a few words on the subject of what kind of campaign it is likely to be. He said he hoped it would be rather nice and polite, fair and according to Hoyle, on a lofty intellectual plane, in fact. n3ut,” and also - A "however", the candidate added a decided note to reservation. "I am hoping," said he, "that this campaign will be conducted solely on the issues. If, however," he added, "the opposition decides to reduce it to a smear campaign, we will do our very best to take care of ourselves." The Willkie pronouncement concluded with these mild though ominous words: "In all my public discussions,Arecent years," slid he, "I have never made an unkind reference to any individual. rirrin£ this campaign 1 can follow the I am hoping," he "that during xms A ' 2--add Willkie same course," :.is tone seems to indicate heTs naturally a mild and peaceable fellow, but a demon when aroused. God [.less America. Kerens a curious convention side-light: At every session so far they have featured the same song, featured it until lots of people have gotten to the point where they would be quite happy if they thought they were never going to hear it again. And, it 4s a catchy, stirring sorrpr^ You all know it - if you have listened to the Republican and Democratic convention broadcasts. MGod Bless America.n That's it. Again today they sang it and sang it, led by a v/oman with a voice a little like Kate Smith. Monday night they started off the convention with it. Again, Tuesday night they had Harry Richmanf the.night club singer^ do it all over and lead the crowd{ and the same song twice this after- noon! So, I wondered why. And, I put the question to one of the Democratic notables on the speakers platform.lie tfaerr.ei 3 iLbi±cana=s<tm^ it isn't their songi'1 ^In Philadelphia I hear4 it once. But, this man informed me that the G.O.P. b intended to use it as a campaign song and he said the tta. answered frankly: "We are doing it becausaWe wrant to show God Bless America 2 Democrats were now trying to spike that by singing it them- A selves, on all occasions. FARLEY The future of Tim Parley seems to be a matter of contradiction today* ^rom Toledo we have word that the Postmaster Oeneral has tentatively accepted the offer that I mentioned last night - the job as Chairman of the Board of nillys-Overland Motors. He is to assume his new duties on August first, says the Toledo Dispatch, and will sret a hundred thousand dollars a year. As against that, herefs a statement by New York attorney Jeremiah Mahoney. He represents the Estate of the late Colonel Jake Huppert, the estate which owns the New York Yankee baseball club. Jeremiah Mohoney states that Jim Farley, upon resigning his position as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, will become President of the New York Yankees. This has been rumored for weeks. The Yankees are being sold, and Mahoney states that the contract of sale is in the hands of Postmaster Jim’s attorneys. They haven’t raised any questions, and the attorney for the Ruppert estate adds: "It looks as if the deal will go through within two weeks." The selling price is around four million doll'^s. Jim Farley to be­ come president of the team that Babe Ruth made famous. 2--add Farley. ies, there does seem to be some contradiction between the two stories - automobile company and baseball club. Yet it is possible to harmonize them. It might be that Postmaster Jim could take both jobs, and be at the same time Chairman of the Board of an automobile company and president of a baseball club. (end ) FARLEY One of the most interesting thing* that happened in Chi­ cago today was Jim Farleyfs press conference -- ±njtezesting because it's always interesting to see an expert doing his stuff. And when it comes to handling the press there isn*t a man in the countryj not even F.D.R. himself, who can do smoother work than Farley. There were some two hundred newspaper men in the room -- fat re­ porters and lean reporters, Stem* reporters from Democratic papers and from Republican organs, metropolitan reporters and reporters from the sticks, dudes sprinkling of cubs.' I felt at home in that crowd, here where I used to be a cub myself, covering murders and strikes and riots. But the individual who seemed most at home among the cream of American journalism was not one of the newspapermen but Jim Farley himself. He walked in five minutes late, which wqs most unusual, and that puhctuality of his has earned him a deal of gratitude. He apologized most sincerely, sat down and invited the questioners to shoot. All the veterans called him Jim and he replied in kind. It was noticeable that he always answered, even when he dueled a question, with an air of tin impeccable frankness. "I really don't know about that, George," FARLEY - 2 he would say, or: "Ask me that one later in the week. Bill." One fact he admitted candidly -- he no longer has anytidng to do with the running of this Convention. T,ItTs out of my hands, " he said and acknowledged that other people are in charge. That means, of course, Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes and Henry Wallace as representing the President and, naturally, the Chicago crowd of Mayor Ed Kelly and the Democratic machine leaders from the big cities - the Ke'lys of Chicago, Brooklyn and Philadelphia. It's the big city machines on which the Democratic leaders are relying tjiis year. Chicago today was rife with rumors that the galleries in the Stadium are to be jacked tonight oy the Chicago city bosses, packed with tough-lunged citizens all primed to howl down all the nominations except that of Mr. Roosevelt himself. Particularly, it is reported, would they try to drown out the eighty-two-year old Senator Carter Glass when he puts Jim Farley's name in nomination. Farley was asked about that and his reply gave fresh indication of his lack of control over the Convention. He said he hoped, mark you, "hoped " that nothing of the kind would happen. FATLEY - 3 It would, he explained, be resented all over the country and would i! peiII the success of the party in November. Then they asked him about the much mooted scheme of the leaders to steam-roller the other candidates — nominate Mr. Roosevelt by acclamation right off the bat and make any further nominations futile. JimTs verdict was that he couldn’t imagine anybody being so silly as that. After all, he reminded us, this is still a Democratic convention. Any American has a right to have his name presented for nomination and to have a respectful hearing. Then he added a remark characteristic of his unfailing fidelity and loyalty to his chief, even after all these days of humiliation. I am sure, declared Jim Farley, that the President would not want any Democratic right denied. So there we have an idea of the program for tonight. After the platform has been adopted the real show will begin, the show for which we here in Chicago have been waiting as well as all of you who listen in. The name of James A. Farley will positively be presented to the Convention by the venerated Carter Glass, an old lion of the party from ’way back. Farley according FAF a LEY - 4 to the rules is entitled to four seconders but, by his own wish, will have only two, Vice-President Garner also will be placed in nomination. Senator Wheeler of Montana, Senator fydings of Maryland who gripped that Maryland standard so firmly last night and wouldnTt let it be paraded round the hall, and others will also be nominated. I Am in a Daze, i evv moments ago I was standing downstairs in the Blackstone lobby waiting for an elevator and chatting with Gene lunney. Gene and I were discussing a ball game to be played this coming Saturday afternoon at my home on Quaker Hill near Pawling, New York, A ball game for the Red Cross, with the Nine Old Men pitted against Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his Oysters, of Oyster Bay. Gene was scheduled to pitch for my team, and I was telling Bill Corum, Damon Runyan, and Bugs Baer how Gene Tunney, instead of slipping is getting to be a better pitcher every year, and how he had slammed out two home runs in our last game. Presidential candidate Senator Bert Wheeler, of Montana, came along and from baseball we quickly turned to politics. The Senator asked me what I thought about everything here in Chicago, and I told him that I was in a daze, very much confused. And the dynamic Senator from the far west replied that I had nothing on him, and that it seemed to him nearly everybody in Chicago was in a daze. He went off, partly talking I am In a daze 2 to us and partly to himself, saying: "I have seen many conven­ tions by never a convention like thisl” I should think newspaper readers would also be in a daze, and confused. For instance, in Vice-Presidential candidate Republican Colonel Knox1 Chicago Daily News, I read these words today concerning last night’s convention session: "Then ensued such scenes of tumult and frenzied demonstrations seldom if ever witnessed in a national con­ vention, in this country." Well, I was there, and saw nothing to warrant such a description. The delegates did parade and shout and sing. But, they didn’t do it spontaneously and they didn’t do it with any gusto. I have talked this over with Democrats of all varieties tod y ond they oil agreed with me. And then, to add to the confusion, in reading over today’s papers here is what columnist Jay Franklin has to s8y: iiMr. Farley is one of the few really tragic spectacles in modern politics.... when he made his last bow as chairman of I Am in a Daze 3 the National Committee there was a demonstration fully seconds, while the organ thundered !Take Me Out OF The Ball Game’.” But in the adjoining column, Raymond Clapper says just the opposite, in these words: "The demonstrations of affection for Jim Farley are the high light of the convention." And, over on the next page. Old Iron Pants, General Johnson, after saying that Mr. Roosevelt will be nominated under Hitler like circumstances, where the only possible vote is "ja," adds: "One thing is no. guess, Jim Farley is the hero and idol of this f* ' ' *"■ — convention. ""^So, are you surprised when I say frankly that the whole' business has me in a daze. But, they tell us there is a chance the delegates will get around to the nominations tonight. So, by this time tomorrow evening it all may be as clear as crystal. In the meantime, let's switch back to New York, to someone who is not at all confused about the subject he has to discuss. I mean, Hugh James.