TISITORS to the Coolidge head

V

for most of who have heard

tion found two rather commonplace rooms next door to the Massachusetts headquarters and opposite the spacious parlor where a band and a glee club were playing and singing the praises of Senator Harding. A part of the time the rooms were fairly well filled with delegates from various States who had conceived an interest in the quiet, simple, old-fashioned Governor of Massachusetts and wanted to know more about him. But late in the week, when it seemed pretty certain that Coolidge could not win the Presidential nomination, the attendance at the headquarters thinned out noticeably. Sometimes the rooms were almost vacant, except for the few worn chairs and the wobbly desk and for one lone man who day and night stood at his post, keeping the home fires burning.

A man of medium-height and more than medium girth, with a round face and glasses covering his fine, earnest eyes; a man sixty-three years of age, whose physicians have more than once warned. him that he takes his life in his hands when he goes into a political campaignthroughout the long, grueling week he never wavered. Younger men who had come to do what they could for Coolidge grew tired and went to bed. Or they yielded to the lure of the convention hall and rode down to see the sessions. But he was never away. Through every single hour, from early morning to late at night, he was there, buttonholing any man who came within his reach and talking in his quiet, earnest way, as he has been talking for years, always about "the Gov'nor."

"Who is that man ?" a stranger asked, pointing to him.

"Oh, that's Stearns-Stearns, of Boston," another answered, as much as to say: "You must have heard of Stearns! Surely everybody who ever heard of Coolidge must have heard of Stearns !" And the answer was not far wrong;

NOTE. This article continues the series on The Presidential Campaign-Its Problems and Personalities."

heard of Stearns, they have heard from him. How many thousand letters he has written, how many thousand talks he has had with people of all sorts in the past ten years, not even he himself could estimate. But by those letters and those talks, and the faith behind them, he has played his big part in making an obscure member of the Massachusetts Legislature the nominee for the Vice-Presidency of the United States.

I imagine he may not be altogether pleased to find his name in print; and yet it seems to me his story ought to be written. It constitutes a brief and shining chapter in the rather drab records of political activity; it renews one's courage in the capacity of simple men for unselfish sacrifice. It is a classic of faith.

Frank W. Stearns is a dry-goods merchant in Boston, the owner of one of the city's principal department stores. He made a success and established a reputation for fair dealing and right ideals. He was a good citizen, I presume, as thousands of other men are; voting regularly and doing what he could for the success of the Republican ticket. He had heard of Coolidge as a fellow Amherst man, who was Mayor of Northampton and later a member of the State Legislature; but he had never met Coolidge. And the first contact between the two was a painful experience for Stearns.

THE AMHERST PIPE-LINE

He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College and Coolidge was Senator from the district in which Amherst lies. The College and the town. of Amherst had come to an agreement by which the College sewer system was to be connected with the town sewer system. Everything was settled, except that a special act of the Legislature was required to give the necessary legal authority. And Stearns sent his lawyer

with a fellow-trustee of Amherst to see Coolidge and arrange for the introduction of the measure.

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found the Senator in his office listened to them without a word of comment. He said neither "Yes" nor No," nor "I'm glad to meet you," nor Good-by." Neither of his callers had ever seen so curious a phenomenon; they left the office baffled and considerably hurt in their pride. And they reported to Stearns that they had no idea whether the measure would be introduced or not.

The Legislature was just about to adjourn, and no measure was introduced at that time. It turned out later that Coolidge, being familiar with the ways of leg. islatures, had known that nothing could be done at that session, and assumed doubtless that his visitors also knew. At the opening of the next session he took the matter up and, without consulting any of them, introduced the law and saw it t safely through. They did not write to thank him for what he had done; he did not write to say, "It gives me great pleasure to tell you, gentlemen, that your bill has passed; and now I hope you won't forget me when another election comes round." He had promised nothing, e but he had done all that they asked. And yet his way of doing it was so wholly contrary to all political procedure that it left them wondering-and interested in spite of themselves.

Later Stearns came to know Coolidge better; and later still he incorporated his business, turning the active management over to younger men and leaving himself free to give all his time to the task of promoting this strange, able, and altogether different young man.

Coolidge was no easy man to promote. He is made in his own peculiar mold, and the mold was broken after fashioning him. He simply cannot and will not conform. For weeks Stearns besought him to announce himself a candidate for the Lieutenant-Governorship. He would not say that he intended to do so, nor that he intended not to. His friends felt that precious time was being lost; other candidates were in the field, and were making the most of their early entry.

E

Still Coolidge was silent. He was Presient of the Senate at the time, and he elt that if he announced himself for nother office every move in the session would be given a political bias. His riends and opponents alike would seek o put a political interpretation on every uling; the normal business of the body would be delayed by the maneuvering of candidates for his position; and the the public interest would suffer because he had let his own personal interests be pushed to the fore.

On the day when the session adjourned a single paragraph in the papers announced that he would run for the Lieutenant-Governorship. But Stearns, who had been urging him so long to act, was as unprepared as every one else for the action when it came.

A SILENT CANDIDATE

Sometimes Coolidge would come to his office, light a stogie, open the paper, and sit for half an hour without a word. Then with a nod he would get up, put on his derby hat, and vanish again. Once he was a visitor for three days in Stearns's country house, and during all that time he addressed Stearns directly only once. Those silences were exceedingly painful at first; neither Stearns nor his family could understand them. They fairly They fairly ached in the effort to carry on what would ordinarily be a normal conversation. But gradually they learned to know their man, and ceased to make the effort. If Coolidge talked, they answered him; if he did not talk, they disregarded him as though he were merely a familiar bit of furniture. And through it all they And through it all they found their admiration for his character and capacity mounting steadily until it became a deep and consuming affection. "We have thought of the Governor," Stearns said to me one day, as though he were our own son. Years back, when Coolidge was merely President of the State Senate, Stearns began to talk about him as a future Presi-. dent of the United States. It became a recognized subject for jest at gatherings of Amherst alumni. "Here comes Frank Stearns. Well, Mr. Stearns, what's the latest news about the next Presi

dent?" And Mr. Stearns, always goodnatured, yet never losing any chance to spread his ospel, impressed us by his earnestness in spite of ourselves. Nor would he be satisfied until we too had would he be satisfied until we too had journeyed up to Boston to look at this look at this remarkable man and be convinced.

Six months ago Stearns gathered together a little group of Amherst men, and others, who shared his conviction that the Nation needed Calvin Coolidge much more than Coolidge needed any office; and this group conducted what is probably the most unique campaign in political history. All the members with one exception were amateurs. None of them wanted any appointment for himself, or sought reward of any sort. They were merely college men working for a fellow college man, inspired and heartened all the way through by the transcending faith of Frank Stearns.

WHY THE HOOVER BOOM FAILED

We think of politics as a pretty sordid business, and in many of its aspects it is sordid enough. But there is a side to politics which is too little dwelt upon-a vastly encouraging side. I rode out to the Convention with some of the sup porters of General Wood. There were old-line politicians among them who believed they had heard the rumble of a wagon; there were doubtless some expostmasters and men who hoped to be postmasters. postmasters. But the majority of them were business men who have never sought political preferment, and would be loth to accept it if it were offered to them. They had given their time and money because they believed the Nation needed Wood for President, and because they had a thoroughgoing loyalty and affection for the man.

Every political leader who is worthy of the name calls forth that sort of devotion from men; and every political campaign, no matter how bitterly fought, is in large measure a campaign of ideals. It is worth while for us to remember that fact, and to set it over against the discouraging phases of politics. There are many men in America who are giving time to politics with no selfish motive at all; the number of such men is increasing, and in the

further increase of their number lies our best hope for the future.

No other lesson of the Convention impressed me more than this that any organized effort by "good people" which springs into being just before a party convention and disintegrates immediately thereafter is doomed to inevitable disappointment. That was the trouble with the Hoover campaign. Behind it were some of the finest le in the Nation;

and those of them whom I happened to know were people who seldom attended a primary, who were blissfully ignorant of the name of the political leader in their district, and whose voting record was exceedingly spotty.

To all such citizens there is a useful lesson in the record of Frank Stearns. He is in politics, not merely at election time, but all the time. time, but all the time. The public business occupies a part of every single day with him, along with his own affairs. He wants nothing for himself. He has never, so far as I know, suggested an appointment to Governor Coolidge, nor volunteered advice about a public measure. He is interested only in the triumph of certain principles which, in his judgment, are embodied in the character of Calvin Coolidge. And he works for those principles, and for Coolidge, as regularly and as unrelentingly as any ward heeler works for a political advancement for himself.

IF A MILLION MEN

In a world where ingratitude is unpleasantly prominent, where selfishness seems so much to hold the center of the stage, a really unselfish spirit is as refreshing as an oasis in the desert. Frank Stearns is such a spirit. To meet him and to hear him talk of Coolidge is to feel inspired and heartened. One wonders what kind of a country this might be if a million business men would give to its affairs the same day-by-day thought and sacrifice that he has given. Faith can move mountains, we are told. Certainly it can move political conventions. It did move the Convention at Chicago in the nomination for Vice-President. And the faith that was working in them-though the delegates did not know it was the faith of Frank W. Stearns.

IC) Underwood & Underwood

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F I should begin this article by saying that I am one of the most important individuals in the United States, some reader might say I was conceited. So I will merely state that I had the chance and gave it up. When the war was over, there were two choices open to me. The first was to go back to the old farm in Kansas. I decided that digging furrows in the West was too much like digging trenches in France. I had heard of the other opening only the day before we were discharged. Up until that time I had thought little about the future. One of my "fellow-sufferers." told me that he intended to go back to Washing ton and work for Uncle Sam.

Good-night," I thought. "I have had enough of working for him!"

But after an hour's argument, I de cided to take the chance. It seemed that the President had issued an executive order giving the preference in all Government positions to discharged soldiers and sailors. I took a special Civil Service examination, and inside of a week I was housed in one of the "bomb-proof" offices I had so lately condemned.

Certain individuals are staying up nights, trying to figure out why the farmer boy leaves home. Let me cite my own experiences in Washington as an answer to their question.

When not compelled by circumstances to be otherwise, man is one of the laziest of God's creatures. And Washington at 7 A.M. has all the liveliness of a country churchyard. Every one in the Government departments goes to work at nine

BY LAWRENCE MCCONNELL

o'clock. At 4:30 in the afternoon the wheels cease to grind. Congress attempted to install an eight-hour day during the war, but President Wilson vetoed the measure. It is idle to argue that seven hours' work is not enough for an able-bodied person. It is nevertheless attractive to have seventeen hours of the day to do as one may please.

CALLS IT DISSIPATION

In my hours off duty there are many things that would have seemed strange and wonderful in my "little gray home in the West." It has been said that a cat may look at a king, and, though it is a question. whether the cat appreciates the view, there is no doubt that human beings like to haunt the abodes of the great. Here in Washington there is unlimited opportunity to engage in this form of dissipation. One can visit the Senate or House of Representatives any day of the session and hear speeches by men whose names are household words throughout America. I have the chance to see in the making the events that form the bulk of the news which is wired from Hoboken to the Land of the Movies and all the way between.

I happened to be in the Senate gallery one morning about 2 A.M., when Senator Lodge walked in from the east entrance, paused near his desk, and called out, "Mr. President." And when he read the

famous "round robin" of the Republican Senators protesting against the terms of the first Treaty of Peace I listened to words that were quoted around the

world. Could I have had the same privi lege back in Kansas? There the annual speech of a Congressman is enough to draw the folks for miles around. In Washington it takes four Congressmen and three Senators to draw an audience of a hundred persons, and then they must be of the opposite party, so that there is some chance of an enlivening discussion. The old law of supply and demand still operates.

Then there are the famous private cit izens, who are thicker than peas in a pod. During the last few months I have heard Mr. Taft discuss the Peace Treaty, Mr. Bryan argue for prohibition, and Billy Sunday deliver one of his old-time whirlwind speeches. I have heard Charles E. Hughes argue before the Supreme Court. I have listened to Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, Ballington Booth, Cardinal Gibbons, John Galsworthy, Philip Gibbs, Sothern and Marlowe, Helen Keller, and a host of others. It is just such a privilege as I had dreamed of in the days gone by. It is a privilege that was denied in the West. Wherefore I and thousands of others have been attracted as surely as moths are lured to a flame.

There is another reason for our walldering. Every normal human being has at some time a desire to do something The that will survive when he is gone. feeling is as natural and as universal as the fear of death. And we farmer boys have doubted whether there could be selfexpression in raising turnips. Some one will at once conjure up the name

Luther Burbank. But for

every

of

wizard