Evening Star
- MILK ATTACK PUTS SMITH AT BAY, BUT HE SEEMS WINNER
- My Impressions of America
- INDICTED DRY CHIEF SAYS MASON GOT $26,000 IN GRAFT
This Evening Star front page of October 29, 1926, carried three pieces tied to the politics and celebrity of that autumn's campaign season. G. Gould Lincoln reported from New York that Republican nominee Ogden Mills had made milk, rather than liquor, the talk of the governor's race against Al Smith, yet judged Smith the likely winner after a gloomy Republican convention troubled by dry defections. Queen Marie of Rumania opened a signed column on her first night in Washington, praising the station, recalling her welcome by Mr. Kellogg and his wife in the President's name, and complaining good-humouredly about the photographers' flashes. An Associated Press dispatch from Chicago reported that indicted former Illinois prohibition director Ralph W. Stone testified he paid $26,000 in graft over sacramental wine permits to dry state senator Lowell B. Mason, who faced re-election the following Tuesday.
Translation
MILK ATTACK PUTS SMITH AT BAY, BUT HE SEEMS WINNER
NEW YORK, October 29. - Milk, not booze, is the big talk in the hottest gubernatorial campaign New York has witnessed for a number of years. The Empire State just has to be wet one way or another. Following a Republican State convention, which left the G. O. P. shrouded in gloom, amid tales of all kinds of defection on the part of dry Republicans, Representative Ogden Mills, the party's nominee for governor, launched his milk attack against Gov. Al Smith, seeking his fourth term as governor. People began to sit up and take notice.
My Impressions of America
The first glimpse I got of Washington was in the night. My sister, the Grand Duchess Cyril, had told me of the beauty of this city. I was already immensely impressed by the magnificent station. It looked like a great festive hall. I admired the color of the stone. At the station we were received by the late Ambassador - to England, Mr. Kellogg, and his wife, in the name of the President. We were old friends, as we had met at Lord and Lady Astor's English home, Cliveden. Of course, as usual, we had to submit to our tyrants, the photographers, who flashed their lights at us with all the sounds of battle.
INDICTED DRY CHIEF SAYS MASON GOT $26,000 IN GRAFT
CHICAGO, October 29. - Ralph W. Stone, indicted former prohibition director for Illinois, today testified that he paid $26,000 in graft for approval of permits for withdrawal of sacramental wine to Lowell B. Mason, "dry" State Senator, who is a candidate for re-election next Tuesday.
Context
Ogden Mills's candidacy and the outcome of the 1926 governor's race
Ogden L. Mills, who launched the milk attack in Lincoln's report, was a Republican elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 17th Congressional District. The Republican state convention that met on September 28, 1926, at Madison Square Garden nominated him for governor. When New York voted on November 2, Smith won, with an official plurality reported at 247,478 votes; Mills's own biography records that he was defeated by Al Smith, the incumbent Democrat. Lincoln's judgment that Smith "seems winner" therefore proved correct. The election records give totals only, so they do not show whether the milk charges widened or narrowed Smith's margin; that link remains the reporter's framing of the campaign rather than a measured effect. Mills's defeat did not end his public career: in 1927 President Calvin Coolidge appointed him Under Secretary of the Treasury.
Dry defections and the Prohibition vote in New York
Lincoln writes that the Republican convention left the party in gloom amid tales of defection by dry Republicans. A New York Times headline of September 29, 1926, cited in the election record, summed up the convention as "58 Drys Balk at Senator; ...13 Votes Also Fail Mills." The senator in question was the incumbent James W. Wadsworth Jr., whom the same convention renominated. Dry discontent carried into the general election: the Prohibition Party made no nomination for U.S. Senator but campaigned for Franklin W. Cristman, and Wadsworth was defeated. The same ballot also carried a referendum to repeal Prohibition, which was accepted by a very large majority. That result gives concrete weight to Lincoln's quip that the Empire State "just has to be wet one way or another," and it explains why a Republican nominee might look for an issue other than liquor.
How sacramental wine permits worked and how they were abused
Stone's testimony concerns permits to withdraw wine for religious use. A Jewish Telegraphic Agency report of October 6, 1926, on a parallel investigation in New York shows how such permits operated: a rabbi stated the number of congregants needing sacramental wine and, once the application was granted, could withdraw one gallon a year for every adult in the congregation. In the same case Chester P. Mills, Prohibition Administrator for the New York district, stated in an affidavit that after he investigated the sacramental wine stores and denied them permits, withdrawals fell from over 1,000,000 gallons in May through September 1925 to slightly more than 6,000 in the same months of 1926. Those figures are an official's claim made in litigation, and they concern New York rather than Illinois. They nevertheless show how much wine could pass through the permit system, and why the power to approve withdrawals, the subject of the $26,000 Stone described, could carry a high price.
Lowell B. Mason's career after Stone's accusation
Lowell B. Mason, the "dry" state senator named by Stone, was a Republican first elected to the Illinois Senate in 1922, and he served there from 1923 to 1931. His tenure shows that he kept his seat after the November 1926 election that the dispatch says he was facing. The article reports the testimony of an indicted former official, not a finding against Mason, and the biographical record of Mason's later life shows a long public career rather than a fall: in 1945 President Harry S. Truman appointed him to the Federal Trade Commission.
Queen Marie's 1926 American tour
The author of "My Impressions of America" was Marie, queen consort of Romania since 1914 as the wife of King Ferdinand I. She had already acted abroad on her country's behalf: at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 she campaigned for international recognition of the enlarged Romania. In 1926 she undertook a diplomatic tour of the United States with her children Nicholas and Ileana. They were received enthusiastically and visited several cities before returning to Romania, where Marie found Ferdinand gravely ill; he died a few months later. The column's night arrival in Washington, with a welcome in the President's name and a barrage of photographers, is a scene from that tour told in the queen's own voice.
Original
MILK ATTACK PUTS SMITH AT BAY, BUT HE SEEMS WINNER
NEW YORK, October 29. - Milk, not booze, is the big talk in the hottest gubernatorial campaign New York has witnessed for a number of years. The Empire State just has to be wet one way or another. Following a Republican State convention, which left the G. O. P. shrouded in gloom, amid tales of all kinds of defection on the part of dry Republicans, Representative Ogden Mills, the party's nominee for governor, launched his milk attack against Gov. Al Smith, seeking his fourth term as governor. People began to sit up and take notice.
My Impressions of America
The first glimpse I got of Washington was in the night. My sister, the Grand Duchess Cyril, had told me of the beauty of this city. I was already immensely impressed by the magnificent station. It looked like a great festive hall. I admired the color of the stone. At the station we were received by the late Ambassador - to England, Mr. Kellogg, and his wife, in the name of the President. We were old friends, as we had met at Lord and Lady Astor's English home, Cliveden. Of course, as usual, we had to submit to our tyrants, the photographers, who flashed their lights at us with all the sounds of battle.
INDICTED DRY CHIEF SAYS MASON GOT $26,000 IN GRAFT
CHICAGO, October 29. - Ralph W. Stone, indicted former prohibition director for Illinois, today testified that he paid $ 26, 000 in graft for approval of permits for withdrawal of sacramental wine to Lowell B. Mason, " dry " State Senator, who is a candidate for re-election next Tuesday.
Source: Holding institution