London Evening Advertiser
- SIX SENATE SEATS ARE LOST BY G.O.P.; HOLD IS WEAKENED
- SHIPPING TIED UP BY GALES ON LAKES
- Two Spotters Get Long Ride But Nothing On the Driver
This London, Ontario evening paper of 3 November 1926 reported the U.S. midterm results in a storm-at-sea metaphor: the Republicans lost six Senate seats and some of their House margin, party chairman William Butler fell to David I. Walsh in Massachusetts, and Senator Wadsworth was 'buried' under Al Smith's New York landslide. A weather item said a northwest gale halted shipping out of Cleveland, leaving three boats at anchor outside the breakwater, while Lake Ontario was spared. A local fragment told of two liquor 'spotters' who took a long taxi ride, said they wanted no booze after all, and were charged $25 for the trip back to London.
This reading translates three excerpts from the front page. The election story and the spotters story begin mid-sentence, and the spotters fragment has clipped words ('a all', 't them', 'dri'), which are kept as printed. The lead story on motorist J. V. Huddart's manslaughter charge and the Nickle/Ferguson rum-import story are left out because the OCR gives only their headlines and broken pieces of text. The edges of the scan are slightly cut off. No source was found on the specific vessels in the gale or on how Ontario's spotters operated, so the commentary does not cover those topics.
Translation
SIX SENATE SEATS ARE LOST BY G.O.P.; HOLD IS WEAKENED
rocked the Republican brig yesterday washed away most of the party's majority in the Senate, reduced its margin in the House of Representatives and still was giving a scare today to some of the crew of stalwarts. Senator Butler of Massachusetts, the Republican national chairman, succumbed to a surging billow of votes for former Senator David I. Walsh. Senator Wadsworth of New York was buried under the landslide that returned Al Smith to the governor's chair at Albany by a quarter of a million plurality.
SHIPPING TIED UP BY GALES ON LAKES
Navigation out of Cleveland on Lake Erie was completely tied up for some time. Three boats anchored outside the breakwater unable to make the harbor because of the high seas. Lake Ontario was apparently overlooked by the nor'-wester, no reports of damage through the high wind being received here.
Two Spotters Get Long Ride But Nothing On the Driver
they didn't want their booze a all and told the driver to t them back to London. On arrival at the hotel the dri demanded $25 as taxi fare.
Context
Six seats or seven: what the Republicans actually lost in Congress
The headline's figure of six Senate seats and the figure of seven found in other tallies both hold, because they count differently. The 1926 midterm record says the Republicans lost six Senate seats to the Democrats but kept their majority; its note explains that Democrats picked up six seats in the regularly scheduled elections and one more in special elections. That is why the Senate election tally records the Republican majority reduced by seven seats. Writing the day after the vote, the paper said the storm 'washed away most of the party's majority', and the Senate tally bears that out: the Republicans went from 56 seats before the election to 49 after it, against 46 for the Democrats, so they kept control of the Senate with a much thinner margin. They also kept control of the House, where the same record shows them losing nine seats to the Democrats while keeping their majority.
Why William Butler's defeat by David Walsh stood out
William M. Butler held his Senate seat by appointment, not by election. On 13 November 1924 Massachusetts Governor Channing Cox appointed Butler, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, to the seat left vacant by the death of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and the November 1926 special election decided who would serve the rest of Lodge's term. When Butler launched his campaign, most of the speakers tied it to President Calvin Coolidge's re-election prospects, and Butler was a close Coolidge ally. Former Democratic senator David I. Walsh defeated him. The paper's image of the national chairman 'succumbing to a surging billow of votes' therefore described more than one lost seat: it was the defeat of the party's top organizer and one of the President's closest political partners.
How Senator Wadsworth lost New York
The paper put Wadsworth's defeat down to the landslide that re-elected Al Smith as governor. The recorded Senate result shows Democrat Robert F. Wagner winning with 46.5 percent against Wadsworth's 42.4 percent, while Franklin W. Cristman, running as an independent Republican, took 8.2 percent. Cristman's share was roughly twice Wagner's 4.1-point margin, so a split in the Republican vote helped defeat Wadsworth as well as the Democratic tide led by Smith.
Ontario's liquor law on the eve of the 'temperance election'
The taxi story about liquor 'spotters' belongs to the enforcement of the Ontario Temperance Act, which the provincial legislature passed unanimously in 1916 and which banned the sale of alcohol. By 1926 the law was under heavy pressure. One historian judged it 'too drastic for the average citizen and not harsh enough to stop the large bootleggers', and the temperance side had won the 1924 referendum only narrowly. When this page was printed, Ontario was four weeks from its 1 December 1926 general election, which was fought mainly over Premier Howard Ferguson's plan to replace prohibition with government-run liquor sales. Ferguson's attorney general, William Folger Nickle, had resigned from cabinet on principle over the plan; that dispute is the background to the Nickle/Ferguson rum-import story elsewhere on the page. Ferguson's Conservatives won, and in 1927 the Liquor Control Act overturned prohibition under the Temperance Act. A pair of spotters taken on a long, fruitless and expensive cab ride is a small local example of the enforcement problems the historian describes.
Original
SIX SENATE SEATS ARE LOST BY G.O.P.; HOLD IS WEAKENED
rocked the Republican brig yesterday washed away most of the party's majority in the Senate, reduced its margin in the House of Representatives and still was giving a scare today to some of the crew of stalwarts. Senator Butler of Massachusetts, the Republican national chairman, succumbed to a surging billow of votes for former Senator David I. Walsh. Senator Wadsworth of New York was buried under the landslide that returned Al Smith to the governor's chair at Albany by a quarter of a million plurality.
SHIPPING TIED UP BY GALES ON LAKES
Navigation out of Cleveland on Lake Erie was completely tied up for some time. Three boats anchored outside the breakwater unable to make the harbor because of the high seas. Lake Ontario was apparently overlooked by the nor ' - wester, no reports of damage through the high wind being received here.
Two Spotters Get Long Ride But Nothing On the Driver
they didn't want their booze a all and told the driver to t them back to London. On arrival at the hotel the dri demanded $ 25 as taxi fare.
Source: Holding institution