National Affairs: Keynoter Bowers

At their Jackson day dinner last January (TIME, Jan. 23) in Washington, nationally important Democrats sat transported by the oratory of a mild-mannered gentleman from Manhattan. Some of them had read his most famed book, Jefferson and Hamilton. Some of them were in the habit of reading the editorials he writes for the New York Evening World. But few of them had realized what a whacking fine speaker he is. Last week, when nationally important Democrats met again in Washington, they elected the mild-mannered Manhattanite—Orator Claude Ger-nade Bowers, native of Indiana—to make the party's keynote speech at Houston next month.