Town and Country

...Now that they have failed to saddle their proposal on the census bill, the anti-alien group have announced that they will seek to achieve their end by a constitutional amendment...

...The Census Bureau enables us to understand some of the reasons why they are...

...EHIND the political machinations in Virginia of Bishop James Cannon, jr., concrete expression is being given to a new philosophy of government which has been in a process of crystallization in the United States during the course of recent years...

...It means the giving of aid next year to Senator Heftin in Alabama and Senator Simmons in North Carolina against all comers...

...With the cleavage in thought and feeling between city and country growing wider, students of American politics will do well to watch later developments in this struggle between town and country...

...The growth of our big cities has been little short of phenomenal...

...The way a man stands may often depend on whether he has a city or a rural background...

...He examines the significance of antialien amendments to census and reapportionment bills, of urban increase at the expense of rural numerical preponderance, and of antagonistic "'philosophies" expressed in partizan and federal action...

...By a practical illustration he brought home the real significance of the move to exclude aliens from the count which determines how much representation a state shall have in the lower branch of Congress...

...The farmers wanted no city domination...

...That phrase epitomizes the conception of government on which the recalcitrant Democrats of Virginia hope to build a new party in the United States because they know that they are not alone in this belief...

...The participants on either side are not always conscious of the alignment...

...Representatives from the big cities are well down the list of members as ranked by seniority...

...New York headed the list with 1,6o9,I9o, followed by Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Illinois, California, New Jersey, Michigan, Ohio and Connecticut...

...Cooper of Wisconsin, the oldest member in point of service in the present House, hails from Racine...

...Haugen, the next senior, comes from the small town of Northwood, Iowa...

...The words of the poet Cowper echo a feeling that still measurably persists in our national life...

...For if they succeed in their venture, the big cities stand to lose a good deal of influence in national affairs...

...The increase in the urban percentage implies, of course, that the urban population has increased more rapidly than the rural...

...With all observers at the Roanoke meeting these people left no doubt about their sincerity...

...The Antisaloon League and its allies find their main strength in the villages and the small towns...

...Raskobism and Cannonism are terms used to describe the issues of the fight which has been precipitated by a coalition of the Republicans and anti-Smith Democrats in the Old Dominion, but those terms are generalities...

...Lyon in his address opening the convention of the Cannonites, "is to restrain the liberty of individuals...

...Time and again in their speeches they of[ered evidence that they feel themselves fired by the same patriotism as the colonial Virginia fathers...

...Fifty years ago agricultural and rural America was completely in control...

...William Moseley Brown, former psychology professor at Washington and Lee University, the Cannonites have an aggressive and youthful candidate...

...Population has been concentrated in a few centres to a degree which the fathers probably never dreamed of...

...Prohibition, the greatest domestic issue of our time, shows again the duel between the agrarian and urban elements in our country...

...The whole purpose of civilization and the only justification for governments," said Mr...

...Under the yardstick of the Census Bureau, a city is any incorporated community having a population of 2,5oo or more...

...tThe interests of the urban and country districts differ with the help of the western Republicans approved the alien exclusion amendment in the committee of the whole over the protests of Democrats from New York, Boston and Brooklyn, did not perhaps conceive themselves as spokesmen for the country, and as champions of its cause and ascendancy against the city, but that was precisely how they were acting...

...Farm relief legislation reveals another aspect of the duel between city and country...

...Alfred E. Smith, who led the fight for modification last year, was born in the heart of New York...

...Nor is their desire to carry their fight into other states an idle speculation, should they win this fall in Virginia...

...The alien population concentrates itself furthermore in the bigger cities...

...In 1881, the percentage of city dwellers was only 28.6, and this percentage had increased to 35.4 in x89o...

...Of course it is too early to make predictions, but in Dr...

...The fiery Jack Garner, of Texas, the minority floor leader, comes from Uvalde, Texas...

...Fear and jealousy of cities are not new phenomena...

...The census figures nevertheless indicate the broad trend...

...The alien exclusion proposal would do more than this...

...But the House struck out the Hoch, along with the Tinkham amendments, to cut down the representation of southern states which refused to carry out the provisions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the constitution...

...When Maine, for example, was set off from Massachusetts, the delegates to the convention of I8I 9 were thoroughly familiar with the proponderant influence of Boston in the politics of the Bay state...

...An explanation of the comparative lack of influence of the delegations from the big cities may be the fact that, other things being equal, a rural member finds it easier to remain in Congress than his city confrere...

...Bishop Cannon is the impelling force behind the insurgent movement in Virginia and he has adjusted his mind to the national horizon...

...What are the chances of a Cannon victory in Virginia...

...The fourteenth census, taken in 192o, revealed that for the first time in American history, the urban percentage of our population had crossed the half-way mark...

...The Weltanschauung of San Francisco is closer to New York or Chicago than it is to many a village in the great state of California...

...Why should town and country be at odds...

...So the new constitution carried a provision that no city, however great its population, could have more than a certain number of representatives in the state legislature...

...Speaker Longworth, to be sure, hails from Cincinnati, but Republican Leader Tilson, though representing the city of New Haven, was born and raised on a Tennessee farm, and the agrarian may claim that it was his early days on the farm that gave him the qualities of character and honesty which have elevated him to the Re356 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, 1929 publican floor leadership...

...4o in I9OO, and 45.8 in 19Io...

...God made the country, and man made the town...

...In the duel over the exclusion of aliens, the battle is one whose stakes may be measured in terms of the loss or gain of political power...

...These same observers last year said Herbert Hoover did not have...

...For is not the present division in the Democratic household at bottom a division between city and country...

...The townsman and the rustic do not make cheerful bedfellows, even if both do happen to be Democrats...

...Its sponsors mustered enough votes in both the Senate and House to indicate, as matters now stand, a preponderance of sentiment for the anti-alien proposal...

...Boston, I35,627, and so on...

...McKee has, we widely at many points...

...Detroit, I85,969...

...Brookfield, Ohio, was the birthplace of the late Wayne B. Wheeler, and a little Illinois village was the birthplace of Wesley Jones, author of the "five-and-ten law...

...Town and country have met as opponents on the national stage, and they will meet again...

...Of the forty odd members to whose words the House really lends its ear, and who therefore hold in their hands the keys to the bulk of the legislation, the country members are certainly not in the minority...

...The comparatively small band of out-andout wets by no means represents the full measure of wet sentiment in the lower chamber...

...If representation is ever made on the basis of the exclusion of aliens from the count, it will lessen the power of those states where immigrants most gather, that is, the states with large urban centres, and it will bring about a corresponding increase in agrarian influence in national affairs...

...Franklin Fort, from urban New Jersey...

...That would help to explain the backing which Chicago and other middle-western cities have given to farm relief legislation, through their members in Congress...

...The anti-alien amendment would have deprived a small group of states of about twenty members...

...It undoubtedly will mean opposition for some Democratic members of Congress who have not divorced themselves from the northern wing of the party...

...Now, for the first time in our history, the agrarian sections find their supremacy challenged...

...Madison Square Garden still brings back unpleasant memories to Democrats...

...States with half the population of the metropolitan area have a greater share in legislation than the entire delegation from New York City...

...The followinr paper deals with a similar struggle, which the author prefers to diagnose as a case of strained relations between town and country...

...They may be read in many of the pages of our national history...

...Who, we may ask, was President Hoover's principal hope for a safe and sane farm bill in the House Agriculture Committee, packed with farmers...

...Country folk have not altogether lost their suspicions of the city...

...Taking them as a whole the delegations from the big cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago do not seem to contribute the men of influence in the House which one might expect from the importance of these cities in the industrial and financial life of the country...

...The southern Democrats who rallied around Homer Hoch of Marion, Kansas, and St...

...The exact percentage in 192o was 51.4 percent as compared with 45.8 in I91o...

...For it would probably continue to give the country a clear margin of superiority in the House of Representatives for another generation, at least...

...So declared a member of the House when that body had the Hoch anti-alien amendment to the census and reapportionment bill under consideration...

...The 193 ~ census may be expected to show, as the first decade of urban numerical superiority draws to a close, a still further increase in urban population...

...Victory in the Virginia gubernatorial fight this year means, if anything is certain in politics, that the followers of Bishop Cannon, with him at their head, will take the field next year against Governor Albert C. Ritchie in Maryland or whoever may be his choice for a successor...

...The city-bred member of the House of Representatives is not without honor in that chamber, but his colleague from the country appears to be honored a little more...

...Philadelphia, 2Io,558...

...The stakes another day may be something else...

...The farm and the little red schoolhouse, they feel, are still nurseries of great characters...

...And seniority usually leads to posts of power and privilege...

...New York in I92o had 1,218,o74 aliens...

...The conflict may cut into a major political party...

...The cities send many a professed dry to Capitol Hill, but many of these, if they set down their real convictions, would be found in the camp of the wets...

...By and large the main nuclel of wet sentiment are found in the big cities, and the communities around them that absorb the ideas and trends of thought of their bigger neighbor...

...The two amendments were full of political dynamite, and the House eliminated both in order that it might get a reapportionment bill at this session...

...The Tammany Democrat and his colleagues in the big cities are not men of the same kidney with the Democrats born and bred in the smaller towns and villages of the Southland...

...The Census Bureau gives to the city a somewhat different definition than the man in the street, who thinks of it in terms of Broadway or Michigan Boulevard...

...Then comes Pou, on the Democratic side, of Smithfield, North Carolina, followed by Jack Garner...

...Yet he is of the cautious type and already has given evidence that he will resort to evasions whenever he thinks a vote may be captured or retained...

...The conflict between town and country cuts athwart sectional lines, recognizes no party fences, and is not exactly a declared and open war...

...Cleveland, I38,368...

...The farmers have had some city support for their demands from Congress, but that support came for the most part from centres whose prosperity was supposed to depend on playing ball with the big farmer population surrounding the cities...

...The city has a philosophy, a trend of thinking and an economic interest all its own, which must of necessity set it apart, on many issues, from the rural areas...

...Chicago, 382,ooo...

...A generation or so ago, urban centres were smaller in size, and even in the aggregate, their weight in the scale of national affairs was far overtopped by the agrarian communities...

...George Tucker of Lexington, Virginia, and think, brought together a formation.--The Editors...

...The republic which they founded was a rural republic--even Philadelphia and Boston were no better than towns...

...The advantage of numbers is now slipping from the country, and the exclusion of the seven million or more aliens in our population--most of them city dwellers --from the count which determines whether a state shall have ten, or only eight representatives, would, for the time being, stem the tide of population which is setting against rural America...

...354 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I929 TOWN AND COUNTRY By OLIVER McKEE, JR...

...THE BISHOP TAKES THE FIELD By FRANKLYN WALTMAN, JR...

...Wets in the House of Representatives hail for the most part from the bigger cities...

...Here again the agrarian has sought to bind the urban area to its chariot...

...The constituents of a rural congressman are apt to be fixtures, and he has therefore a better opportunity to gain that personal hold on his district which is so often denied to a representative from the big city whose population is in a constant state of flux...

...The contrast between the rates in growth for the two classes of population indeed has been very marked...

...They feel they are in a holy crusade to save the United States from its "baser passions...

...Strong in numbers, it could confidently count upon a preponderance of influence in the halls of Congress...

...As millions have been August 7, ~929 T H E C O M M O N W E A L 355 added to millions, the cities have developed not only a distinct economic interest, but a political and social individuality all their own...

...I[F ALIENS are excluded from the count upon which the representation of the different states in Congress depends, Manhattan Island below Fourteenth Street, a territory which probably controls a greater amount of wealth than any area of similar size in the world, Last week the conflict between native America and the melting pot was discussed in these pages...

...The I92o census tells us that there were 7,477,6o4 aliens in the United States in that year...

...For years he has manifested an interest in all kinds of movements and spent two years of his life as a Y. M. C. A. general secretary...

...Behind the cold, bare figures of the I9ZO census is the picture of a clash and conflict of interest between two protagonists, pretty evenly matched in strength...

...The issue of the campaign has been put into specific language by Frank Lyon, the temporary chairman of the insurgent convention held at Roanoke...

...Political observers in Virginia assert they cannot see how he can win...

...Of these, 5,645,3o 3 were found in ten states...

...Just thirty-five years old, he is distinctly of the go-getter type...

...Brown so far has spoken only in the vaguest generalities, endorsing Bishop Cannon's convention platform as well as the Republican platform...

...The democracy of the big cities of the North, with its A1 Smiths and Tammany Halls, is arrayed against the democracy of the South, a section of the country with a few large cities, and with no huge metropoli...

...The states which would lose are those with our big cities, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, cities with large alien populations...

...This movement, an expression, in part, of prejudice against the alien, has dramatically lifted the curtain upon the conflict in contemporary American politics between town and country, or as some would rather have it, between the rural and the urban areas...

...Few urban men can hold a district under control for so long a period as did the late Martin Madden of Illinois...

...great deal of interesting inmight well find itself with but a single spokesman in the House of Representatives...

...Cutting athwart sectional and party lines, these two antagonists have already engaged in half a dozen skirmishes ,on the battlefield of American politics...

...Between 19Io and I92o, the urban population jumped from 42,I66,I2O to 54,3o4,6o3, a rise of 28.8 percent, while the rural population increased from 49,8o6,I46 to 51,4o6,oi7, a jump of 3.2 percent...

...often indeed, those interests are diametrically opposed...