AMERICAN POLITICS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 184, 4 July 1928, Page 7

AMERICAN POLITICS

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. WALL STREET’S ATTITUDE. PARAMOUNT EFFECT. (United Press Association—By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright.) (Australian Press Association.) NEW YORK, July 2. A message from St. Louis states that seventy-two hours after the Democratic Convention becomes past history, tangible evidence is available concerning the tendencies of the preelection campaign. Historically tire dominance of Tammany in the nation’s political affairs stands out .as one of the most amazing facts of the present generation. Tammany not only controls tho Democratic Party, but through its candidate has the courage even to declare that it is greater than the party. Mr Smith’s acceptance of its telegram indicates unmistakably that lie believes in the modification of the present prohibition system, although he will enforce the existing laws. There may be much that is nugatory in the outlook of Mr Smith, the Democratic Party, nominee for the presidency. but there is nothing that is noncommittal. Mr Smith thus takes on the indelible outline of a man who will force a trial of strength with his opponents in not only the opposition party, but his own, upon every question that in other circumstances might be left dormant. Thus tho impending post-convention campaign promises to take on all that pungent flavour of a conflict of personalties. Mr H. Hoover, the Republican Party nominee, is bv no means a machine politician. His very lack of political experience and intensely executive business mind, tinctured with impatience, promise to make him a most spirited opponent of Mr Smith. It will be a conflict of two trenchant persons. One more significant aspect enters the situation. Even the more lackadaisical observer knows that American politics are intensely practical. Tire party with the most money usually wins, all other things being equal. The Republicans hitherto have had the fullest coffers. In other words Wall Street has been behind the Republican nominees. T A recent statement by Mr John J--Raskob,. chairman of the finance committee of General Motors Corporation, one of tire greatest entities in the Morgan financial system, that it was wrong to suppose that Mr Smith was against business, 6eems to have changed the whole aspect of things. The question now is : Have the financial interests of America decided to switch their allegiance? The answer to this is of paramount importance. All during the pre-convention campaign the indications were that, no matter what happened, it would he a Republican year. There is now some doubt concerning the truth of this. Wall Street’s attitude in the. pre-elec-tion campaign will bear watching. The combination of a strong political figure, plus a non-committal tariff announcement in the platform, and the possibility of plenty, of election money may protluce an reversal as concerns the outcome of November 6. But the next ten weeks should produce more evidence justifying a positive conclusion. MR HOOVER ATTACKED. (Australian Press Association.) CHICAGO, July 2. Calling Mr Hoover, the “arch-enemy of a square deal for American Agriculture,” Mr George Peek, chairman of the executive committee of the North and Central States’ Agricultural Conference, stated with regard to the Republican agricultural policy: it England were directly prescribing the American agricultural policy she could hardly do better for England, because that policy means that the wheat we grow for export will be raised J ar for Canada and Australia, while the American farmers are starved out. Tho Tammany Society is a powerful political organisation which has its hoa-d----quarters at New York. It . was founded in 1789 as a secret social society, the aims at first being of a charitable nature, but quite early in its history it became political in its aims, and associated itself with wliat is now known as tho Democratic Party. It has at times been all powerful in the politics of New York City. In 1901 it received a severe shock when the whole of the “reform” candidates, who had advocated honesty in political matters, were elected in the New York local elections.