Democratic menage The League of Nations issue had little effect. The newly achieved right of the women to vote did little to change the balance. Prohibition was no issue. Punishment of Wilson was the keynote. Union on Republican candidates was the slogan.

In the Senatorial contests the results were the same. In every case Republicans were elected. Where the radical forces had a separate candidate in the field, defeat was his portion. Where Non-Partisan League support went to Republicans, victory came as a matter of course.

Radicalism, whether avowedly Socialist or camouflaged as Townley NonPartisanism, was roundly defeated. The Northwest is moving away from its radical leaders. Townley was everywhere defeated. La Follette has lost his power in Wisconsin. Even Victor L. Berger, twice elected to Congress and twice denied a seat in that body, was this time snowed under by the Republican avalanche.

The Northwest has tasted Democracy and dislikes the taste. It has flirted with radicalism and recognizes its danger. It has gone back to the old fold, more unifiedly Republican than ever.

which was cast from the counties making up the western half of the State, on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. Debs's vote was negligible.

This is the largest plurality ever given any candidate for any office in the State of Washington, exceeding Roosevelt's 70,000 in 1904, although Roosevelt received a larger percentage of the vote. Four years ago Wilson carried Washington over Hughes by 16,180.

Roosevelt carried it in 1912 with 113,698, as against 86,840 for Wilson and 70,445 for Taft.

Washington State's remarkable "turnover" from a 16,000 Wilson plurality in 1916 to a 160,000 Harding plurality in 1920 is due most largely to profound discontent with the Wilson Administration.

The farmers were against him because he did not show as much concern in keeping the price of wheat where they could make a fair profit as he did in keeping the price of cotton where Southern planters could reap a huge profit; labor manifestly did not follow profit; labor manifestly did not follow Gompers's indorsement of the Wilson Administration, as the big vote given Christensen proves; the merchant did not like Federal interference with business; the ordinary citizen did not like the high cost of living; and altogether mistrust of the Wilsonian economic principles is believed to have caused Washington's reaction against continuing Democracy in power.

Voters of this State would cheerfully have accepted a League of Nations with proper reservations, but the League of Nations may not fairly be considered as having been an issue with voters here. Senator Harding's position was plainly understood as being not hostile to a friendly association of nations to prevent future wars. It was understood that he was against the Wilson League, but not against a League for world peace that will permit "America to go in under American ideals."

Prohibition had much influence, without doubt, for the voters here in great preponderance are entirely satisfied with the dry régime which was voted in

THE EBB AND FLOOD OF

1914. Washington was one of the pio neer States in banishing alcohol. However, the closeness of the Canadian border to the great cities of the State has complicated enforcement of its dry laws. A President who might not hold up the strict provisions of the Volstead Act is not wanted at the White House, as far as Washington's voters are concerned. The impression has been widespread that Cox would possibly be inclined to leniency; his Ohio record was well circularized over the State by AntiSaloon League advocates, and the voters also had not forgotten Bryan's epitaph: "The smell of the beer vats on his garments." The whisky ring of the State showed much concern for Cox. The largest single contributor to the National campaign of either party by any individual within this State was sent to Cox's New York headquarters by a former Spokane liquor dealer.

Women's suffrage did not enter into the contest in this State at all. Washington also ranks as one of the pioneer women's suffrage States, voting equal suffrage to women in 1910.

In 1916 the Progressive voters showed a marked defection to Wilson, but the last four years have taught them the fallacy of expecting any progressivism from Wilson, Burleson, Palmer, et al. The Progressives were all back with Harding, with isolated exceptions.

The interest of racial and alien groups was an inconsiderable factor. The alien population of this State is comparatively small.

Traditional party differences may be ignored in calculating the causes for Washington's landslide. The State has proved in the past that it is independent-thinking, politically. It turned to Harding because it believes he, a wellchosen Cabinet, and a Republican Congress can properly and honorably solve international problems and produce an Administration that will greatly ameliorate domestic conditions.

Senator Jones appears to have run fully up to Senator Harding, if he did not, in fact, exceed the Harding plurality over his Democratic rival. Senator

Jones has represented Washington at the National capital twenty-two years, and would probably have been reelected without the Republican landslide. It may be questioned if any of the issues affecting the Presidential contest added to or subtracted from Jones's vote.

VOTE-IT-STRAIGHT

INDEPENDENTS

MICHIGAN AND THE MIDDLE WEST SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE FROM ARTHUR W. STACE, OF THE GRAND RAPIDS "PRESS," TO THE OUTLOOK

M

ICHIGAN gave Harding a plurality of nearly half a million votes because of general dissatisfaction over existing governmental and economic. conditions. Platform issues had very little to do with it. Michigan undoubtedly would have gone strongly Republican had it voted early in June before either major party convention was held.

Indeed, Michigan may be said to have gone overwhelmingly Republican in spite of the party platform and in spite of the choice of Harding as nominee, for there was no real enthusiasm over the Chicago declaration of principles, while the selection of Harding as standard-bearer was a distinct disappointment. There was no manifest Harding sentiment in the State before the Convention, and scarcely any more during the campaign. Harding pictures in windows were so rare as to be novelties.

A year ago Michigan as a whole was strong for the League of Nations. Later interest waned and as a political issue it caused scarcely a ripple among the voters of the State. There is no doubt, however, that Republican explanations of the reservations made it easier for the many friends of the League to vote against it in President Wilson's referendum. They probably would have voted against it, anyway, for the League of Nations issue appeared to be a minor consideration with the mass of voters. They were ready to overlook the pleas

in its behalf in order to get the domestic governmental change, with its hoped-for betterment of general conditions affecting them more directly.

The record of the Wilson Administration was so interwoven in this that it was an outstanding cause for the Republican landslide. Party preference was responsible for its usual share of votes, but Michigan voters are yearly becoming more and more independent in their political thinking, and party preference was not a controlling factor at the polls.

The vote-it-straight sentiment was notably strong throughout the State, but it would be a mistake to say that this was due to deep-seated party preference of the old dyed-in-the-wool

type.

Nor did progressivism have much to do with the result. The progressive spirit is strong in Michigan, as was evinced in the memorable three-cornered election of eight years ago, when it gave Roosevelt a plurality over Taft. Michigan didn't regard Harding as progressive in thought or tendencies. That is why it was lukewarm toward his candidacy. It gave a Republican plurality of nearly half a million in spite of its knowledge of Harding's spite of its knowledge of Harding's reactionary affiliations.

Racial and alien groups were scarcely in evidence in the campaign in Michigan. The tariff and other stock party issues aroused practically no discussion among the voters themselves.

The women in casting their ballots apparently were moved by the same general reasons that caused the mass of the men to go Republican. There was no one issue that made them supporters of Harding. There was the broad and compelling desire for a change in the hope that the change would check Governmental waste and make for tax reductions.

This desire brought out a Republican flood in Michigan that not only gave Harding a big plurality but also swept into Congress a solid Republican delegation and into the State Legislature a solid Republican House and Senate.

One factor that contributed impress

ively to bringing out a big vote in Michigan was the proposed antiparochial school amendment to the State Constitution, which was defeated by a majority of more than 200,000. Interest in this issue was fully as keen as interest in the National election.

THE NATIONAL SWEEP AGAINST WILSONISM

THE EAST

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE FROM STATE SENATOR FREDERICK M. DAVENPORT, OF THE CHAIR OF CIVIL POLITY, HAMILTON COLLEGE, NEW YORK, TO THE OUTLOOK

(C) Prince, New York F. M. DAVENPORT

ow that it is all over, I am not able to see how essentially the East differs from the West, or, indeed, from a part of the South. It is all of a piece. Leaving out of account certain belated and backward parts of the South, politically and progressively speaking, the people of the country have rendered an overwhelming verdict against the Wilson Administration. The early years of President Wilson's first term were marked by the enactment of certain great and beneficial measures of advance which had already ripened in public opinion, and the country gratefully acknowledged the part which the President played in their passage. When gigantic new problems arose with the war, the Administration at Washington faltered and bungled. The President's mind, in grappling with the issues of the Great War, has seemed to the American people to reveal itself in the phase of the emotional idealist, without practical vision and without capacity for practical leadership into the difficult and the unknown. This the country felt at the same time that it gave the President credit for integrity of purpose and for deep desire to perform his duty as he saw it, even to

the tragic precipice of suffering and disillusionment.

But the record was so against the Administration that the wayfaring man had no need to err therein. At first the President held America back from her plain path at a time when every day of delay meant the needless sacrifice of American lives, through haste and waste in the final inadequate preparation. When the President had at last decided that the war did concern us, he urged upon our allies the impractical conclusion of a peace without victory. When the triumph came, again the President failed in leadership for America. When the veil of secret diplomacy was lifted, there was disclosed to the American people a league of political alliance which might keep the United States perpetually embroiled in South America, in Europe, throughout the world.

The American people compared all this with the common-sense leadership of John Hay and Elihu Root and Theodore Roosevelt, at a time when the modern foreign policy of America touched high-water mark in effectiveness and wisdom. By comparison the Wilson leadership seemed doctrinaire and visionary and theoretical and contrary to the National policies and ideals of America.

To be sure, the economic burdens growing out of the war figured powerfully and resentfully in their conclusion. They expected some waste through our tardy entrance into the war, but not such a stupid orgy of waste as appeared in great ineffective areas of effort. And since the conflict ended the American people have not been impressed at all with the quality of brain stuff that has been at work in Washington upon the problems of economic stabilization and reconstruction. Their hopes of a better order under a new Administration may not have been high, but they at least felt like the Kentucky mountaineer about whom young Teddy Roosevelt has been telling in his speeches, who went into a railway restaurant in the Kentucky mountains to get something to eat. And the waitress brought him the food and swished away again; and in the course of a quarter of an hour she swished back and said, "Will you have more tea or coffee?" And the mountaineer said: "Gal, if this yar stuff in this yar cup is tea, gimme coffee; but if it's coffee, gimme tea. I'm bound to have a change."

And that is about what there is to it-North, South, East, or West.

There are a few incidents in the eastern part of the country which are worthy of particular mention. The enormous majority for Harding in the State of New York of course had little

to do with the personality of Presi dential candidates. The separate National ballot gave this great State, and especially the great city of New York, the chance it was looking for to vent its vast resentment upon what it conceived as Wilsonism. And then, taking up a fresh ballot for State purposes, it almost cooled off enough to put the very magnetic and democratic and widely trusted Al Smith across for Governor again.

My judgment is that it would have been a mistake to do it, and that the electorate halted just in time, if for no other reason than that the experience of the last two years at Albany has shown the futility of having a Legisla ture of one party and an executive of another. Even with the best of intentions, the results for practical progress are very poor. Throughout the State of New York there are greatly increased taxes and expenditures and also wide spread demand for measures of advance for the farmers and industrial workers. The measures of advance can come only as fast as the State can properly administer them and pay for them. The new Governor-elect, Nathan L. Miller, is, to my mind, almost ideally fitted by his demonstrated ability and wide experience in practical affairs for the leadership of the commonwealth in the present juncture.

The farmers saved Miller in New York. The industrial workers in the cities pretty generally supported Smith. And hereby hangs a tale. The FarmerLabor party did not poll a large vote, but it is the most significant group in the electorate. In the great Eastern States, where farming is on the decline and the factory workers are arousing to better industrial relations, it behooves the Republican party, now so widely in power, to study both the farm and the factory and provide relief in time; the farm out of gratitude for what the countryside has contributed to Republican success, the factory out of regard for the safety of the party in a day when the electorate may be in a far less exuberant mood of decision; and both for the sake of the democratic unity and economic welfare of the Republic. Governor Smith's chief error in New York has been his failure to understand the psychology and the environment of the up-State farmer. This was shown in his attempt to force through a milk commission bill to fix the price of milk at the cow, and also in his veto of the Daylight Saving Repeal Bill, which ran counter to the habit and comfort and convenience of practically every farmer in the State.

The contests for the United States Senate are especially illuminating. Wadsworth in New York, Brandegee in Connecticut, Moses in New Hamp

shire, are returned with firmness against a strong minority opposition. Tradi tional progressivism did not avail, opposition to woman suffrage did not avail, the cry of Cox against the "Senatorial oligarchy" did not avail; the people were for these Senators because upon the matter which the elec torate regarded as fundamental these men were for America.

The racial prejudice-Irish and German and Italian-helps to account for the great Harding vote in New York City and in Boston. Prohibition was quite generally lost sight of, like woman suffrage, in the main decisions, although it was not simply the countryside but the dry countryside that pulled Miller through into the Governorship of New York.

The Socialists seem to have gained, but not so materially. Here again, in spite of the impulse given to Socialism by the futile and ineffective leadership against it at Albany last year during the regular and extraordinary sessions of the Legislature, the tidal drift to wards Republicanism and traditional Americanism held everything else in check-Socialism, prohibition, suffrage resentment, the tariff, all the rest.

Just to show, however, that independence is not a lost art, the electorate in New York insurged valiantly against the tidal drift in the case of Governor Smith, and the city of Ogdensburg turned somersaults of decision. In that community the electors, according to the most recent returns, chose Harding the Republican for President, picked Smith the Democrat for Governor, turned to Wood the Republican for Lieutenant-Governor, then back to Harriet May Mills the Democrat for Secretary of State, although here the contest was close and the figures may be reversed; then they chose the rest of the Republican State ticket, next a Democratic Mayor and a Republican Common Council, next a Democratie Recorder, and then a Republican Dis trict Attorney and a Republican As semblyman, and finally picked the Democratic State Senator; and, to cap the climax, two thousand wrote in the name of a woman for the School Board. If the infection of Ogdensburg spreads, the days of the leadership of a political machine are numbered.

The tumult and the shouting dies, and, alas! already feuds lift their heads between the lines of the despatches from Marion. Soon there will be quaking fears and aching hearts and disap pointed hopes where only yesterday was the universal exuberance of victory. And the Republican leadership will face, with what success doth not yet appear, the enormously difficult prob lems of the new age upon which we have entered.

TESTWARD and skyward from

The Outlook's windows poises Diana, Goddess of Hunting. Earthward from the slim beauty of her gallant figure lies Madison Square Garden, combining in its form and its presiding genius the religion of Ephesus and the architecture of Spain. Madison Square Garden, as most Americans know, is the great assembly hall of New York City, which has sheltered under its wide roof during its useful lifetime all manners of human activity. There Buffalo Bill pursued his lumbering bison; Barnum and Bailey and Forepaugh have used it for their tent. It has witnessed the birth of motordom and testified to the conquest of the air. It has been the home of creeds and the battleground of politics. It has heard Alexander Dowie and William Jennings Bryan. It has seen the election of a Negro President of Africa, and it has echoed to the voice of Theodore Roosevelt calling a nation to war.

Yes, Diana has had many tenants housed in the vast structure over which she presides, and now flaming posters on the walls of her home declare that it is again dedicated to an art and a profession which goes back in history far beyond recorded time-the art and profession of human combat as finally regimented by the late lamented Marquis of Queensberry.

After languishing for a number of years, boxing for decisions and purses has been legally restored in New York State and the Garden has been captured by a gentleman well and favorably known to the sporting world as "Tex Rickard," who is devoting its familiar hall to the promotion of prize-fighting and the filling of his own ample purse.

Since boxing has been legally restored to the metropolis and has chosen to take up its abode under The Outlook's windows, it seemed but a natural thing to pay it a call, an act to which Mr. Rickard manifested no observable objection and a privilege which he seemed willing to extend to an editor of The Outlook as freely as to any one else with the necessary cash for a ticket.

I am not an authority on what our French allies call le box. I do not even pretend to be able to sort out of a welter of blows the various steps which lead to the award of a close decision on points. I think I can tell when a man is knocked out. I can observe closely enough to know whether a boxer is being hit in the stomach or the jaw. I believe I can recognize a left hook when I see one started. I say when I see one started advisedly, for I once saw one started in my direction from the general

vicinity of a gentleman with a cauliflower ear, a nose which resembled in its general outline the course of the river Meander, and a leathery complexion which seemed to have been pounded loose from its substructure by a series of fistic controversies which might well have begun in the Roman Colosseum. This veteran of the ring was endeavoring to teach me the principles of selfdefense.

"Lead for my chin," he said, genially. I swung with all my force for the point indicated. He had made no attempt to guard his face, and the blow appeared to cause him some surprise.

"I meant lead for my chin like this," he tapped my own reflectively with his right. "I didn't mean hit it like " I saw a left hook started in my direction, and it was not until some time later that I learned that his sentence had been completed by the word "that." So I say advisedly that I think I can distinguish a left hookat least during the initial stages of its progress.

When I presented myself at the portal of Mr. Rickard's colosseum, I found that quite a few others had been before me and had gobbled up most of the available calling cards which Mr. Rickard requires from guests seeking his hospitable roof. Only a few priced (with war tax) at eleven dollars each remained. Evidently the art of boxing finds more willing or more opulent patrons than the art of Thespis. I confess that most of the patrons who surrounded me looked as though they

"WESTWARD AND SKYWARD FROM THE OUTLOOK'S WINDOWS POISES DIANA, GODDESS OF HUNTING. EARTHWARD FROM THE SLIM BEAUTY OF HER GALLANT FIGURE LIES MADISON SQUARE GARDEN"

would have to labor several hours even at modern union wages to acquire the necessary admission fee, but perhaps it is unsafe to judge the size of purses by the cut of coats in these enlightened days. And probably few of Mr. Rickard's guests ever felt called upon to waste their substance on first editions of Shelley or lessons in æsthetic dancing. I entered the Garden just before the preliminaries began. A babel of voices rose from the floor and floated down from the galleries. It was a wellbehaved crowd seeking its place in orderly fashion. It was a neighborly crowd exchanging appropriate repartee across vast spaces and greeting old acquaintances with back-slapping and shouts of "Ah, there, Bill."

I found my seat at last, located between a puffy-faced citizen and a keeneyed youth in a slouch hat who appeared to know the ancestry, past performances, and future prospects of all the evening's entertainers. I hesitated to enter into conversation with this gentleman lest my ignorance of the game prove mortifying, but I was soon assured as to his generosity of view-point, for every remark which I ventured drew forth an encouraging and invariable, "You said it, Bo." It was good to know that one had "said it," even if one was not entirely certain as to what one had said. A survey of my other neighbors disclosed an almost exclusively masculine gathering, though here and there a woman's face showed in the tobacco smoke. A red-headed gentleman whom I had mistaken for the Mayor of New York in search of information as to the proper method of conducting a meeting of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment proved, on closer examination, to have no such claim

to fame. Doubtless I was surrounded by many other worthies of the sporting by many other worthies of the sporting world, but, alas! I knew them not.

Promptly on the appointed moment the lights in the ceiling of the great hall grew dim. Beneath the second gallery a circle of light remained, gallery a circle of light remained, punctuated here and there by the red exit signals. Over the inclosure known as the "squared ring" a huge chandelier blossomed into light, a circular cloth cutting off its rays from most. of the assembled multitude. Later I was to discover that the figures in the truncated cone of illuminated smoke beneath the chandelier seemed strangely familiar to my eyes. I could not trace the familiarity to any recollection of an actual scene until suddenly I remembered a daring study of light and movement in the prize ring from the brush of George Bellows. As the hall darkened the babble of the crowd changed to a concerted roar a roar made up of vowel sounds which rose and fell like surf on the shore. The referee, a cat-footed gentleman in white, stepped into the ring. Two boxers in

gorgeous bathrobes took their places in opposite corners, surrounded by their rubbers and seconds. The referee fingered their bandaged hands in search of concealed horseshoes and dynamite. An announcer, who needed the voice of William A. Prendergast but who did not possess it, went through the time-honored practice of introducing all the distinguished gentlemen associated with this particular bout. A gong like the gong on a hurrying ambulance signaled for silence, and the two featherweights stepped forward. Shorn of their gorgeous apparel, the slender figures faced each other. The gong sounded again, and the fight was on.

It was a six-round.bout. A good deal of damage was done to the circumambient air but little to the contenders. The boxers appeared to tire more from their own exertions than from the effect of the blows which they exchanged. After each round they came back grinning for more. The blows appeared to be either short jabs without much force or wide swings which glanced harmlessly from the sweating bodies. Once, indeed, one of them slipped to the floor for a four-second count, but he climbed up again, ducked into a clinch, and appeared little worse for the punishment he had received.

My pudgy left-hand neighbor observed, feelingly: "I paid eleven dollars for this seat. What didja pay for yours? Eleven dollars? Ain't it rotten to pay such money to see such lemons?" I wondered how long his corpulent for in would withstand the pounding of even such lemons as these two striplings.

The ring cleared. A new set of contestants advanced. They were very earnest souls, but a bit erratic in their methods. There were body blows exchanged where the smack of glove and flesh was heavy enough to be heard far from the ring. At each such blow the roar of, the crowd swelled in exultation. It was plain that fighting rather than boxing met its deepest desires. The voice of a crowd is a strange and eloquent thing. You need not tell me that animals with but a single cry have any difficulty in expressing all of the basic emotions-hate, fear, courage, despair, admiration, and disgust. All of these emotions manifested themselves in the varying roar which filled the wide walls of the Garden. The yappings of individual voices could be heard only from those who were near by. Twenty feet away they were swallowed up in a tumult which came from fifteen thousand throats, but which voiced the emotions of the crowd as though it came from a single pair of lungs.

As the second fight progressed the blows which fell upon the eyes of one of the contestants seemed to promise an early closing hour, but he fought back gamely and in the end won the decision.

The third bout produced two men unequally matched in weight, but. with the balance of skill falling heavily in favor of the lighter man-127 pounds against 140. He carried the fight with him in every round of the ten, dropping his opponent in the seventh and eighth each time for eight counts. More than once he seemed on the verge of landing a knockout. blow. He kept his opponent at a distance with his straight right arm, while he landed with his left almost at will. Once his opponent, clinging to the ropes with his left arm and feebly attempting to ward off the blows which broke through his defense, caught a series of left jabs in the stomach which left him white and reeling. The lighter boxer fought with his chin