With election day less than six weeks off, the Democratic presidential campaign bowled into October more smoothly than any since 1916. The prospect of party victory, rarely brighter, supplied most of the motive power. Day after day on his western tour Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with speeches widely acclaimed as making sense, held the front pages of the nation. Close beside him at every turn could be seen the rosy bald spot of his astute manager, National Chairman James Aloysius Farley whose purpose, like that of a good boxer, is to keep the Republicans constantly on the defensive, force the fighting. William Gibbs McAdoo who pulled the Roosevelt nomination out of William Randolph Hearst's hat at Chicago ostentatiously joined the Governor's party as it entered California, planted himself close to the nominee as friend and counselor. Hovering in the California background were Publishers Hearst and Bernarr Macfadden whose newspaper and magazine support has notably helped Governor Roosevelt to reach his "forgotten man."*
Helpmates. The Roosevelt campaign was by no means being carried along by the nominee alone. Already on the stump or itching to take it was an assorted chorus of vociferous henchmen the like of which was nowhere to be seen on the G. 0. P. battlefront. That no Republican was alert enough to bunch these Democratic helpmates—by no means the cream of the party—and point with alarm to them as the ''men behind Roosevelt," was viewed as a reflection upon the intelligence of the Hoover managers.
Last week Boston's booming Mayor Curley was loudly debating issues with a onetime Republican Governor of Kentucky in Omaha while Kentucky's homespun Senator Barkley raced to Wheeling to open the West Virginia drive. From the American Legion Convention at Portland frock-coated Josephus Daniels orated his way eastward by easy stages. In last week's Satevepost the one-time Secretary of the Navy wrote glowingly of his wartime subordinate, "Franklin Roosevelt As I Know Him." Waashing-ton's chubby Senator Dill was all set to carry the Roosevelt power issue up & down the Pacific coast. As soon as he finished junketing through Indian reservations, Montana's vociferous Senator Wheeler would, as headquarters expressed it, "be available for a speaking tour." At McCook, Neb. sad-eyed Senator Norris, insurgent Republican, dabbed paint on his home while awaiting a visit from Governor Roosevelt in whose behalf he will later campaign from Ohio to California. In New Orleans curly-headed, loose-jawed, incredible Senator Huey Pierce ("Kingfish") Long champed impatiently to take to the hustings and raise his strident voice.