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After Nominee Smith had finished his speech (see p. 14), the crowds stayed to hear the "Sidewalks of New York" and ''Sweet Adeline." It was a big evening. Mrs. Smith cried softly that night in the Hotel Statler.
Next morning, the Smith family left Boston after the Happy Warrior had told Senator Walsh: "Only God knows what is in store for me in the future, but I want to put this on record before I leave the confines of Boston—that I never shall forget to the end of my life the reception given me by the people of Massachusetts. . . . "†
Boston had been big-town gloria in excelsis! But now the Derby was skimming out into the chill dew of New England's rural Republicanism. There were fears lest it emerge bedraggled. So the Smith Special hurried until it reached Blackstone, one of Massachusetts' most safely Democratic cities. There "safe" throngs throated the governor as he embarked on an experiment shrewd in motive. He would leave his train and motor to Providence, R. I., through the mill towns of the Blackstone Valley which are traditionally Republican, French-Canadian, wet and Roman Catholic. Let the human test-tubes boil!
No factory whistles shrilled at the Brown Derby's approach as it passed nor as it vanished. Mill owners had turned their steam on for Candidate Hoover, had (See p. 15) kept every whistle at full toot so long as he was in hearing. Now mill hands left their piece work, ran to big windows and yelled, forced numerous mills to shut down from five minutes to an hour.
Woonsocket, Manville, Albion. As the Derby waved wide and high, cheers swelled. Berkeley, Valley Falls. All along the roads, school children and mill wives shrilled "Hello, Al! Hello, Al!" Central Falls and Pawtucket, hulloos and shrieks — then Providence.
More than a rack of test-tubes — a retort! Seething humanity smothered the Derby. Confetti and torn telephone books snowed. A placard and its prancing bearers proclaimed: "Remember November sixth — beer!" The swarms of children grew prodigious. Cautioningly, anxiously now the Derby waved. One child run down would cost thousands of votes, perhaps millions. Yet swarming imps were every where, all yelling and grinning, a few tying to the Derby's car tin cans which other imps snatched off, pummeling the tin-cantiers.
Not only children but such massed myriads of adults turned out that even New York's arch-Republican Herald Trib une was obliged to report:
"Probably the greatest demonstrations ever accorded a Democratic presidential candidate in normally Republican southern New England attended Gov. Smith's pas sage."
Derby folk thought the peak of the day came when it skimmed across another state line to rock-ribbed Republican Hartford, Conn. Here five miles of packed humans jammed the streets, through which police fought a slow way for the Candidate's car. And at no point did the crowds thin or taper off—as happened in Chicago.