Down in No'th Ca'lina, which some unkind person once called a valley of self-consciousness between two mountains of conceit (Virginia and South Carolina), they appreciate a politician. When Jim Farley stopped off at Charlotte's Southern Railway station one day last week, the mayor gave Democratic Chairman Farley the city's key, Charlotte's postmen gave Postmaster General Farley a leather traveling bag and the Elks gave Elk Farley a hat which unfortunately proved to be a couple of sizes too small for his bald head.
That night, at the Robert E. Lee Hotel in Winston-Salem, Jim Farley gave the people of No'th Ca'lina and the nation something to talk about—his first personal political speech since he left the New York State Legislature 17 years ago. Jim Farley's 7¼-size hat was in the ring. But which ring? Was Jim Farley a candidate for the Presidency, the Vice-Presidency, or what?
Jim Farley is as practical a politician as ever whispered. He is also a Roman Catholic. Dopesters guessed that Jim would gladly yield the Presidency to 68-year-old Cordell Hull, but would dearly love to be Vice President. And Jim's friends think the No. 2 job is not beyond a Catholic's reach. But Jim Farley knows that no man ever got the Vice-Presidency by running for it. So Jim's first campaign speech sounded as if he was shooting for the moon and hoping to hit at least the broad side of the barn: "
I have been collecting material for some time to undertake a speech giving expression to my views from a national standpoint on the subject of Industry and Agriculture. ... I have seen my fellow countrymen in every business occupation and profession. ... I have heard their story. ... I hope I am not too bold in saying that I have become acquainted, in part at least, with their intimate needs and problems."
On Industry Farley was as temperate as a zephyr, roared like a sucking dove: "I have no sympathy with the theory that government and industry are naturally arrayed in hostile camps."
Farley on Agriculture wanted more "basic research" (i.e., new inventions), to absorb more agricultural workers: "In the decade just preceding the high days of 1929 seventeen million young people between 15 and 30 years of age left the farms and found employment in the towns. But for the past ten years rural population has been damming up in rural districts." He also boosted a basic crop: "We should never forget that rural districts constitute the great breeding ground of America. Yet the farmer today has lost the market for his greatest of all crops —his baby crop."
One thing Jim said sounded ominously like a threat that he might, under certain conditions, "take a walk": "If at any time I am confronted with the issue of the welfare of my Party, on the one hand, or the welfare of my country on the other, that issue has already been decided. I love my country better than I love the Democratic Party." This kind of talk sounded very different from the Jim Farley who said of Franklin Roosevelt three years ago: "While the breath in my body lingers, I will try to assist him in all he does." From Washington came stories that Jim had been saying he—and not the President—would control New York's 1940 delegation.