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Before that happened, Senator Barkley's only claim to national fame was as the keynoter of the 1932 and 1936 Democratic conventions. Before 1932 he was just a member of the Democratic minority in the Senate who had spellbound his colleagues on Drought in 1930. As a member of the House he had helped foster the Prohibition Amendment and the Volstead Act. He had been a paid speaker for the Anti-Saloon League, but in 1928, when drink returned to popularity, he stumped for Al Smith, later helped write the 21st (Repeal) Amendment. Now he even takes a toddy himself. Labor knows him as one of its early champions, but he voted for coal and oil tariffs before the New Deal made Business unfashionable.
Alben Barkley was a tobacco farmer's son, a field worker until he was old enough to go to Marvin College at Clinton. He later put himself through Emory College (Georgia) and the University of Virginia Law School. He got his first job in the law office of Paducah's Judge W. S. Bishop whom Paducah's Irvin Cobb immortalized as "Judge Priest." Slow of mind and body, but powerful and persistent, in his career from there up to Majority Leader he had only two lucky breaks: he voted to seat Franklin Roosevelt as a delegate to the 1920 Democratic convention; and the late Joe Robinson picked him as his lieutenant-leader when the New Deal seized the Senate in 1933.
"Dear Alben" could not be more faithful, but he is not nimble. Almost his first act as Majority Leader was to let New York's Wagner introduce the time-wasting anti-lynching bill, abhorrent to Southerners. When he was invited to speak to Washington's gay Alfalfa Club (dining) he asked Pat Harrison how long he should talk. An old hand, Pat Harrison said: "Well . . . about an hour and a half." Alben Barkley suspected nothing until, after an hour, the Alfalfans applauded when he said, "And in conclusion. . . ." As befits his plodding nature his favorite song is Wagon Wheels.
Colt. The saga of "Happy" Chandler has been vividly before the Kentucky electorate for the past eight years. By heart the voters know how he was born to poor parents in Corydon, how his mother left his father in 1902 when Happy was four,* how he sold newspapers and did odd jobs while getting through high school. A 170-pounder, 5 ft. 10½ in., compact and fast on his feet, enormously cheerful and energetic, he arrived at Lexington to enter Transylvania College with "a red sweater, a $5 bill and a smile." He got a job in a laundry, played football, basketball and baseball (captain), charmed the campus by his grin and his singing.
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling was his theme song then, and they called him '"Irish." For one year he was in the S. A. T. C., on the strength of which he has been active ever since in the American Legion. He spent one term at Harvard Law School until his money ran out, finished his law course in 1924 at the University of Kentucky, taking 16 examinations in two days and getting record high marks. He coached athletics at Versailles High School and Centre College, also played summer professional baseball (pitcher) in Canada. He married pretty Mildred Watkins, a singing teacher in the Versailles School, and now has four children: Marcella, 16; Mimi, 12; Albert Benjamin Jr., 8 ; Joseph Daniel, 4.