Chapter IX: Act I: used, my stuff depended a great deal on what had happened that (3)

When Jimmy Cox was Nominated the band played, “Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot.” Jimmy Cox is a mighty fine man, But I don’t know of any quicker way in the World to be forgotten in this Country than to be defeated for President. A Man can leave the Country and people will always remember that he went some place. But if he is defeated for President they can’t remember that he ever did anything.

Smith’s Demonstration lasted one hour and a Half. McAdoo’s almost as long. But most of them just managed to last through a verse and one chorus by the Band.

Matthews of New Jersey nominated Gov. Silzer also of New Jersey. He made a plea for him on the ground that he came from the same state that President Wilson did. That don’t mean anything. Look I come from the same state that Harry Sinclair did. Yet I couldn’t find an Oil Well without a search warrant.

His principal plea for Silzer was on the Highways of New Jersey. So if people west of the Mississippi and down south want a President who will keep the Roads of New Jersey up in good shape you can’t do better than have him.

A guy from Utah talked so long and loud that all of us couldn’t see how it could be anybody in the world he was nominating but Brigham Young that Matchless Father. But at the finish he crossed by saying he was seconding McAdoo’s nomination.

You could never tell until one got through who he was going to name. They would pull the name last. That would be the only surprise they had.

Quinn of Minnesota throwed the biggest scare into the Convention. He praised his man so high that everybody in the hall knew it couldn’t be anybody but La Follette but he fooled us all by seconding Smith. In his talk he never spoke of anything east of St. Paul and in Smith’s travels he has never been west of Syracuse. So you see for yourself how hard it was to follow who they were going to name.

IN THE MIDST OF A 7 YEAR HITCH

IN THE MIDST OF A 7 YEAR HITCH

Well, I guess you heard about my Presidential Boom. You know every calamity in the World befell the Democrats while they were here in session the last couple of years. First they started in nominating. The entire first week was taken up with that. They nominated so many Democrats that if it had kept up another day they would have had to go over into the Republican Column. They talked their Delegates and audience to death the first week. No wonder they couldn’t agree there was no two Delegates that could remember the same Candidate.

Well, it ran along week after week and the longer it ran the more confused the Delegates got. They began to get this Convention mixed up with the San Francisco one, because it had been so long since they left home, why, both Conventions seemed about the same distance off. One Delegation got to voting for Cox thinking it was ’Frisco. The Chairman had no more than got that straightened out and explained to them that this was an entirely different year when what does my Native State of Oklahoma do! They woke up the Chairman of their Delegation right quick one day to answer Roll Call and he blurts out, “Oklahoma votes 20 for Robert L. Owen.” Well, the chairman had to explain to them that this was not 1920, and that Mr. Owen was not a Candidate, he was only a Delegate. The Missouri Delegation, when they could not get any two to agree, voted for two days for Champ Clark, until Telegrams commenced to pour in telling them of his demise.

Nebraska voted for Bryan, and got sore when the rest of the Convention thought it was W. J. They said it was a Son or a Brother or something of his. Mississippi and Louisiana started voting for my old friend Pat Harrison and Pat’s Bottle run out, and they found an old Hoffman House Hotel Register, and from that on they just voted for the names on it.

Alabama was the only State that you could absolutely depend on. It seems that years ago Alabama sent a Delegation to some Convention instructed for a Candidate and that when they got there they sold out and voted for another. So they have passed a Law that any time they send a troup away again that they were going to vote for the man they told them to until the Candidate’s body had been duly pronounced dead by the Home Coroner. Well, that knocked any chance of profit out of this trip as far as Alabama was concerned.

La Follette, out in Cleveland, wrote a Platform, held a Convention, nominated himself, and went home. All this happened during the time they were polling the Illinois Delegation here at this Convention.

Women Delegates started in with Bobbed Hair and wound up by being able to sit on it. One Woman sent back home for her washing machine. The Arkansas Delegation started in whittling up the Board floor and whittled their way from the Back of the Hall up to the Speaker’s Platform. There was so many shavings under their Chairs that if a fire had ever broken out in the building, between these shavings and the long Whiskers, why, there would never in the World have been a way to stop it. There was one old long bearded Man from Utah, that when the voting on the Klan got close shook 4 Delegates with half a vote each out from under his Whiskers and decided the issue right there.

All the members of the National Committees had Gold Badges to start in with. The thing had only gone along a few weeks when they commenced to turn green and finally you couldn’t tell whether it was a Badge or a Shamrock.

It’s too bad because all the Delegates here will lose their votes when they go home this Fall. The law plainly states that you must have been a resident of the State for the last 6 months. If they were not thoughtful to register when they come to New York, they will lose their votes entirely.

Lots of the Delegates also had Wives who were Delegates, and this has been the longest time they ever spent together in their lives. I bet you will never see another Man go on a Delegation to a Democratic Convention when his Wife is on one. South Carolina has no Divorces, so of course this Convention gave all their members a chance to get out of the State, claim a residence of 6 months, and be divorced before they get home.

Now, mind you, as I pen these lines this thing is still going on. It’s Monday morning of the third week. I don’t know now who they will nominate. In fact people have lost interest. If they ever do nominate somebody some of the Papers may carry it and you may know it by the time you read this, but I doubt if he will even be nominated by then. If he is, it will be too late to get his name on the Ballot by November, as the racing Forms have already gone to press for the November Classic. I am certainly glad that La Follette entered. That will give Coolidge somebody to run against, anyway.

If they don’t hurry up they will be the only Party in the World that ever nominated a Candidate and got him defeated on the same day.

In number of Population the Convention is holding its own. The deaths from old age among the Delegates is about offset by the Birthrate. Personally I think that the Candidates who will finally be nominated will be born in this Convention.

I have been writing a daily account for the Papers for this seven years’ Hitch. I took it for so much for the job. If I had signed by the word I would be able now to walk by and hiss Rockefeller.

In 1860, the Almanac says, a Democratic Convention was moved from Charleston to Baltimore. There is nobody here in this Convention to verify it, so I doubt if it ever happened. But, anyway, they talked for two Days about moving this one, on account of it being held here in New York where one of the Candidates lives. Well, they got to figuring and there was no Town they could take it to that didn’t have a Candidate who lived there.

Of course their thoughts naturally turned to Claremore, Oklahoma, the best Town between Foyil and Catoosa in Oklahoma. Then when Arizona showed such splendid judgment in putting me in nomination, why of course we couldn’t go there on account of the Galleries there being biased in favor of my nomination. Then they figured they might just as well stay here. Everybody had got used to the place, and if they moved them they would just have to get used to sleeping in strange chairs again, and maybe by a different seating arrangement they might be sleeping next to some one they didn’t even know. It meant really a lot of trouble, anyway, opening up new credit accounts and getting used to a different Climate.

I want the Democrats to just pass this election by without getting beat and then center all their forces on 1928. Cal. will be ineligible then, unless they may pass a Constitutional amendment to elect a President for life--and he is so lucky they are just liable to do it. But if he is out, the Republicans will have to get a new man too. Then it will be an even break.

But go ahead with this Convention and pick him now. In fact I would pick out three or four to run in rotation in 1928, ’32, ’36, and so on, because you will never get Democratic Delegates to give up the best part of their lives by attending another one of these things. If they are wise today down there they will pick Jackie Coogan, for President and Baby Peggy for Vice President.

“WILL ROGERS JR.” REPORTS THE CONVENTION FOR HIS FATHER, WORN OUT BY LONG SERVICE

(_Mr. Rogers’ articles on the Convention attracted more attention than perhaps any other humorous political articles. This one, in particular, brought him comments from all over the country._--THE PUBLISHERS.)

“WILL ROGERS JR.” REPORTS THE CONVENTION FOR HIS FATHER, WORN OUT BY LONG SERVICE

Will Rogers Jr. attended the convention to take up the duties of reporter to replace his venerable old father.

By WILL ROGERS JR.

Papa called us all in last night and made his last will and testament, he called it. He said he had carried his work on just as long as he could and he realized that he was unable, on account of his old age, to go further with it. He put in the will that I being the oldest was to take up his life’s work, that of reporting the Democratic National Convention.

He herded us all and told us of how he had given all the best years of his life to this and out of respect to his name and memory that we children should carry on. And that our children were to do likewise and that we should raise them to always know that their mission through life would be to keep reporting the progress of the Democratic National Convention at New York. And it was in the will that if we didn’t we would forfeit any claim to any royalties that might still be coming due from books that he had written on the early life of the convention.

Mama wants to send him to the Old Men and Old Women’s Home for Survivors of this Convention, but he won’t go. Poor Mama is worried about him. He won’t talk rational. He just keeps saying, “Alabama” and “for what purpose does the gentleman arise,” and “if we can’t elect our candidate we will see that you don’t get yours” and “unfit” and “release.” We don’t know what it all means.

Now, Mr. Editor, I am only a little boy and I am not much of a reporter, but Papa told us we didn’t have to be very good; that all we must practice was endurance. But you will, Mr. Editor, please take my story, won’t you for Mama’s sake, for she knew how poor Papa hated to give up and how proud he will be if I can only keep his life’s work going?

Mama got our Dad’s old press badge and patched it up so it would stick together and I went down today. The hall was full of all those feeble people and it looked kinder like a church; everybody was sleeping. All but one man, who was standing and reading aloud out of a geography the names of States that are situated in the Western Hemisphere and that don’t belong to Canada.

Papa had given me an old worn and torn paper with a list on it that he had used to mark off the numbers on when this convention started. He told me to always keep it for comparisons. Also that a museum had tried to buy it from him. I go to school and our teacher had told us what a wonderful country this is we live in, and how it had stuck so well together and, sure enough, when this man kept reading these names and figures, why, on Dad’s old paper were a lot of the same ones.

I kept waiting for him to call out the name “Wisconsin” that Dad had, but this fellow didn’t have it on his, and according to Dad’s old paper we at that time had California and anybody knows that Japan has owned California for years. On Dad’s old paper they still had the Philippine Islands, which is now Japan’s Naval Base. But as for the candidates, the names were just the same. None of them had dropped out. Their sons were carrying on their father’s life work too, trying to hold what votes they had. Saulsbury Jr. had six. Underwood Jr. had a few more than what was on Dad’s paper, as the State of Alabama had more population and had naturally increased its number of delegates.

An old man sat by me and I got to talking to him and he seemed to want to be friendly and talk of his early life. He said his name was Coogan. “Jackie Coogan,” I think he said, and that he used to be in some old fashioned things called moving pictures, and that he could remember as a child when this started that men used to be wakened up and have to call out the numbers when their States were called. But now they have little phonographs and every time a State is called, why the phonograph says “Two and nine eighths for Smith Jr. and one and sixty-five fifths for McAdoo Jr.” and so on.

A man has a hammer and he couldn’t keep them awake with it any longer so they adjourned, and the attendants wheeled them all out. It was only about three o’clock in the afternoon and they were to be back again at nine. I went home to tell Pop what had happened and to write my story. He said, “It’s looking better, son; they are adjourning earlier and starting later. Maybe the miracle will happen,” and his old eyes began to gleam as he seemed to vision the end of his glorious dream.

Then I told him very enthusiastically, “Oh, yes, Pop, it looks great because a man with a family name of Brennan got up, and one named Cramer, and said they would adjourn and hold a conference of leaders and would have something to report by tonight.”

Well, I wish you could have seen my poor old Dad. He went into spasms. He pulled his hair. He raved. None of us could do anything with him. He had been all right before I had mentioned this leader and conference business. He then said:

“Son, those same men’s fathers started holding those conferences forty years ago. Going to report something to the convention tonight? That is exactly what is the matter with this convention now, it’s those conferences. If they had let the delegates confer instead of the leaders, why, your poor old father could have spent a life of usefulness instead of one listening to a man read off numbers, which we all knew better than he did.

“Son, if it’s the Taggarts and Rockwells and Macks and Cramers and all of them that are conferring, you will die, like your poor old father, right at your post, listening for something to happen.”

So please, Mr. Editor, take this story, and tomorrow, when I come home to dear old Dad, I will make him feel good. I won’t tell him they are going to hold another conference.

ROPING A CRITIC

ROPING A CRITIC

Prologue--These critics have been interviewing Actors (and us other people that appear on the stage) for years. And none of the interviews have ever been right, cause they never told the truth. Course they couldn’t tell the truth about a lot of us, if they had he would have put us out of business. But they tried to be so kind to us and tell all the noble deeds that at the finish we had lost more friends than we had gained by the interview.

Now there is nothing interesting in an Actor but his act and you can get it at the box office price. This season you won’t even have to form in line. If you can get a party of three to go with you you can get a rate.

But I figured there was something interesting about a Critic. Why, there are scientists that spend a life time studying a Toad.

Now, I might not find out as much as these Toad experts but I am going to look one of these Critics over at short range for about an hour--as Actors have got plenty of time--we are not bowing much nowadays.

So I picked out the Male of the Species as they are not as venomous as the females. I picked out Ashton Stevens, principally on account of him being frail of statue and because I had seen his name one time on an Ash Can for endorsing a Wintergarden Show.