Twenty years ago last week a tall, hard-working Democrat of 38 was in the midst of a speechmaking campaign throughout the U. S. No vast crowds attended his meetings, no swarms of reporters hung on his words. The atmosphere was heavy with the powerful speeches of William Borah and Henry Cabot Lodge, and only a fitful flickering came from the Democratic Presidential nominee, James Cox of Ohio. The illness of Woodrow Wilson filled Washington with rumors; war-sickened citizens wanted above all to get back to normal. Nobody paid much attention to the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate. He defended the League of Nations to an apathetic audience. No one then knew—since the radio was not then a political force—that his was the peerless radio voice of the future. The regular Democratic organizations had little money. The great bosses—Tom Taggart of Indiana, Charles Murphy of Tammany—knew that defeat was in the air. The local politicians hoped only to save something from the impending ruin. Arrangements were perfunctory. The candidate, with no expectation of victory, worked on toward the day when the ticket of Cox and Roosevelt would carry eleven States, get 127 electoral and 9,147,353 popular votes.
Shortly before midnight one night last week the ten-car Presidential Special, bearing President Roosevelt, some 25 newspapermen, 20 cameramen and photographers, about 40 members of the Presidential party, roared out of Washington northwestward along the Potomac. There had been nothing like it in 1920. Franklin Roosevelt was off on his non-political defense inspection tour of the important political States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Wendell Willkie had passed the week before. No estimates agreed on the number that turned out to cheer the President; but there were millions. No commentators agreed on the political advantage to the President of the trip; but it was great. There were innumerable signs of the aid to Democratic candidates carried by the power and prestige of the Presidency—"Senator Joe" Guffey put on a show of making up with Pennsylvania's Democratic National Committeeman David Lawrence by appearing with him on the train; hard-pressed Congressional Candidate Dow Harter received the Presidential blessing by appearing before his voters on the rear platform at Akron.