Show Boat

STATES & CITIES

Some 20 little towns on the Illinois, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers were the scenes of a strange visitation last week. With a hoot--toot, toot! the steamboat Cape Girardeau appeared, swung a wide circle on the muddy waters and churned its broad nose upstream against the slippery chocolate bank. Whereupon a brass band aboard the Cape Girardeau let go full blast. And the voice of a choking giant began to croak through amplifiers: "--Good roads--used to peddle milk in Kankakee--in his own ward he got 700 votes against but 25 for his distinguished opponents--your support for the Republican ticket--cross in the circle at the top --don't change doctors in the midst of an illness!"

In Illinois such an exhibition could mean but one thing. William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson was on the loose again. Kicked out of Chicago's mayoralty last year. Big Bill the Builder, brassiest showman out of show business, had taken the stump once more. No candidate himself, he was urging the re-election of twotime (1921-29) Governor Lennington Small. the character who was indicted, tried and made to disgorge withheld interest on State funds in 1925. On his ten-day showboat cruise "to inspect waterways." Big Bill had brought along the top of the State Republican ticket, the candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and treasurer. He and they stood in line on deck to shake hands with the muddy-footed electorate. Filing awkwardly past, the electorate was then shoved onto a government barge towed alongside, encouraged to dance to phonograph music. At Alton there was a small charge for drinking water.

The man whom Candidate Small is opposing is Henry Homer (ne Levy), an able Jewish judge from Chicago. Years ago his mother legally changed his name to hers when she divorced his father. On behalf of his snaggle-toothed partisan Small, Big Bill proceeded to give Judge Horner a forensic log-ride. Downstate rural clodhoppers gawped, snickered and nodded approvingly when he shouted: "My friends, I don't have to tell you that Levys don't eat hogs. If Horner is elected, hog prices are bound to drop. Furthermore, Jews run pawnshops, and the first thing Horner will do if he gets to Springfield is open a pawnshop. He was put up by Tony Cermak [Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago, who turned Thompson out of office] to get the Jewish vote, and he's trying to get the Catholic vote, too. by sending his children to a Catholic parochial school!"*

In the primary, onetime Mayor Thompson had employed "stooges" in rabbinical dress to ridicule Judge Homer's racial origin.

*Candidate Horner is wifeless, childless.

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