SUBJECT FILE                                     McCormick, Ruth Hanna,
                                                           Illinois senatorial campaign.
                                                           1929-30

October 2, 1929

MEMORANDUM
Out of ninety six members of the United States Senate only twenty
nine served in Congress before going to the Senate. Sixty-seven
Senators went to Washington without any previous service in the House
of Representatives. This seems to be a good reply to those who ask
why Mrs. McCormick does not continue her service as Congressman for
a longer period than two years before she undertakes to become a
member of the Senate. Mrs. McCormick was elected Congressman-at-Large
to the 71st Congress in the general election of 1928. Under ordinary
circumstances her actual service in the House would not have begun
until the first Monday of December, 1929. The president's call for
a special session, however, made it possible for her to take her place
in the House on April 15, 1929. Her participation in the work of this
first, or extraordinary session of the House of the 71st session of
Congress has given her eight months more actual service than she
otherwise would have had. Mrs. McCormick's term will not expire until
March 3, 1931 and on that date she will have served on two regular
sessions and one extraordinary session of Congress.
If Mrs. McCormick had chosen to become a candidate for re-election
as a Congressman-at-Large instead of becoming a candidate for the
United States Senatorship, it would still be necessary for her to make
a campaign this fall and winter and next spring to retain her present
position. It is therefore, no more necessary for her to resign her
place in Congress in order to run for the Senate than it would be
necessary for her to resign her place in Congress to run for re-election.
In either case, the term for which she were elected in November, 1930
would not begin until the first Monday in December, 1931. In


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the meantime she will serve in two full sessions of Congress.
In view of the fact that sixty seven members of the United States
Senate have had no experienced whatever in Congress before their election
to the Senate there seems to be no basis for the occasionally expressed
opinion that Mrs. McCormick serve an apprenticeship which sixty seven
Senators were not called upon to serve.
Mrs. McCormick has a record of a quarter of a century of active and
successful public service. She has worked in the offices of Senator
Hanna, her father, and Senator McCormick, her late husband. She is
a thorough student of national and international problems and has understood,
since girlhood, the technic of preparing legislation and obtaining
action upon it. She is a post graduate therefore, in the school
of political and legislative experience.

[*[1930]*]

THINKING THINGS OVER WITH CALVIN COOLIDGE
By Calvin Coolidge
(printed in the Chicago Herald and Examiner)
NORTHAMPTON, Mass., Sept. 4. - The senatorial committee investigating
campaign expenses is not a dignified spectacle.
After the Supreme Court decision that jurisdiction over
nominations rests with the states, an investigation of them under
the fiction that it is for the purpose of future legislation is a
questionable use of authority. It would seem to lend almost to the
conclusion that the people cannot be trusted to choose their own
candidates without supervision. To admit that is to admit that self-government
has failed.
Proper police power should be invoked through executive
action against violations of the law. For a legislative committee
to engage in it, to direct a force of detectives against candidates
as through they were suspected of criminal action, does not comport
with the dignity of a great deliverative body. Now a counter band of
detectives are investigating the investigators.
Evil practices in making nominations should be prevented
and punished. But that is not the function of the Senate. Liberty
requires that the executive, legislature and judiciary be kept
separate. Tainted elections can be handled in a dignified way on
the Senate floor. They do not warrant a dangerous invasion of executive
functions and state rights.


Outline Speech
Women's Campaign Committee
Illinois State Republican Committee
(In making this speech, go over carefully all material sent you so
as to be well informed.)
I. Introduction

A. Greeting

B. The Off-Year Election
1. Meaning - The year when President is not elected
Generally considered a light vote - will be heavy
this year - because of unusual interest in many issues.

II. Hoover Administration.

A. Legislation

B. Foreign Achievements

C. U. S. in better condition than any other country in world. 
There is world-wide depression and reconstruction, but
owing to steadiness, farsightedness and energy of President
Hoover, our country still leader in economic and social
security.

III. Situation in Senate. 

A. Carrying out President's program necessitates a friendly,
co-operative Republican Senate.

B. Present make-up of Senate.
56 Republicans - 39 Democrats - 1 Farmer Labor
Of these Republicans there are 9 so called insurgents who when
combined in part or whole may overcome or seriously menace the
Republican majority. Most important that not a Republican be
lost to the Senate this year.

IV. Importance of Maintaining Republican Administration.

A. From point of view of nation.

B. From point of view of Illinois.

C. How can be maintained.

1. Election entire Republican Ticket
National - State - County

2. Keeping up Republican Majority in Senate by
election Ruth Hanna McCormick

V. Candidates

A. State Ticket
Discuss one or as many as you desire including Congressman-at-large.

B. County Ticket
Stress importance



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C. Senatorial Candidate
The reason for discussing the Senatorial candidate at length
is because that office heads the ticket, and because it is
the only office for which more than two candidates are running.

1. Qualifications
a. Mind of a Statesman
b. Intellectual honesty
c. Interest in not only the state, but the people themselves.

2. Experience
a. Political experience since girlhood
b. Suffrage work
c. Congressman at Large
d. Business experience.

3. Character
a. Known intimately to Illinois for 25 years and to the
women of the nation
b. Fearless - straightforward - honest.

VI. The Importance of a Woman in a Senate

VII. Close.


INFORMATION

Prohibition Referendum

A. This referendum was initiated under the Illinois Public Policy
Act and signed by more than 400,000 citizens. For this reason
and because we believe in the right of the people to petition
their government, attention must be paid to it.

B. The rule of the majority in a fundamental tenet of American
government. If this is not to be endangered, the will of the
people must be considered.

C. Mrs. McCormick's stand.
1. She is a dry - (see page 10 of speech "The Constitution First")
2. She believes in strict adherence to the constitution and the
laws of the federal and state government.
3. Therefore she stands for strict law enforcement of the 18th
Amendment and the Volstead Act as long as they are in existence.
4. Believing in the sacred right of the people to petition and
the rule of the majority, she will, if the people of the state
vote to repeal the 18th Amendment - cast her vote in the
U. S. Senate to resubmit the question to the states. In so
doing, she will not be voting "wet" - or "dry". (See page 11
speech, "The Constitution First")
5. If the Referendum for modifying the Volstead Act carries,
Mrs. McCormick has definitely stated (See pp. 6-Par. 5
speech at Springfield August 22.) that she will not support
any legislation for modification that would in any way tend
to nullify the 18th.
6. It is charged that Mrs. McCormick initiated the movement for
the Referendum. This is not true. (See pp 4 speech on Constitution
First)
7. Important dry leaders have taken the same stand as that of
Mrs. McCormick; agreeing to be governed by the referendum in
their states. Senator Wesley Jones of Washington, Author of
the five and ten law. Senator Walsh of Montana leading dry
and authority on Constitution. Senator Shoppard of Texas
called the father of the 18th and author of a bill now pending
making it a crime to purchase liquor. Senator Overman of
North Carolina, 28 years in the Senate and one of the country's
leading drys. 
8. The only logical, honest and effective action for the voters
is to vote and get out the vote on the referendum and support
the only candidate who will recognize the referendum.

INFORMATION

Nye Investigation

A. Function of the Committee:
The Committee was organized following a resolution introduced
by Senator Norris of Nebraska for the purpose of investigating
primary expenditures with a view of passing a law regulating
primary expenditures, and a sum of $100,000 was appropriated
for the purpose. At present there is no federal law regulating
primary expenditures, nor is there any state law in Illinois to 
that effect.

B. Action of the Committee.
132 candidates were up in the spring primaries - and senatorial
primaries were held in 32 states.
Up to date the senatorial committee has spent ten days in Illinois.
If that amount of time were to be spent in each state it would take
more than a year to complete the investigation. Of the $100,000.
appropriated for this purpose, it is said that fully one half has
been spent in Illinois alone and investigations up to date have
been held only in Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and
Nebraska.
Investigations have shown that more money was spent in the Pennsylvania
primary than in Illinois and it is charged that more
money was also spent in Massachusetts and North Carolina.

C. Result of Committee Meetings
Although the Committee was in session for ten days, has taken
more than 1000 pages of testimony and has heard innumerable
witnesses, including City and County leaders from all over the
state, Mrs. McCormick's report of expenditures stands 100%
perfect and not one single act of corruption has been unearthed.

D. Read Mr. Coolidge's two statements.


THINKING THINGS OVER WITH CALVIN COOLIDGE
By Calvin Coolidge
(printed in the Chicago Herald and Examiner)
NORTHAMPTON, Mass., August 21. - A serious weakness of the direct
primary is the cost to the candidate. The picture of an electorate,
eager and informed, going to the polls to defeat all that is bad and
to elect all that is good has proven an illusion.

Human nature, in spite of legislation, is still human nature
and functions accordingly. Securing good government by presenting
good issues and candidates to the people requires work and money.

At an election this is provided by the party organization.
In a primary the candidates must have their personal organization,
involving large expense in a large state.

Oftentimes in politics too much money defeats itself, but
not always. Then when the person apparently elected with no violation
of any state or national law is presented to take the oath of office,
trouble begins.

The federal constitution specifies the qualifications of
office holders and the method of election. Yet when all these requirements
are met admission to the Senate may be denied.

Large personal expenditures are an evil. Their necessity
can be removed by returning to the original method of election.

But it is even worse for the Senate to evade or violate the
constitution in an effort to apply "an extra legal remedy."

Release for the afternoon papers of January 13, 1930 and the morning
papers of January 14.

Speech by Ruth Hanna McCormick
Shelbyville, Ill., Jan. 13, 1930.
When I decided to submit my candidacy for the United States
Senatorship to the people of Illinois, I was [am] not unmindful of the responsibilities
of that high office and I was fully aware that perhaps
the chief opposition to my nomination and election was in the fact that
I am a woman. I realize that, being one of the very few women who has
sought a place in the Senate, I shall be regarded as something of a
pioneer; just as I was the days when we were making the campaign for
woman's suffrage. After women had won the franchise I was one of the
those who earnestly desired to broaden the field of women's activity
to include the profession of public service.
I sat in the gallery of the House of Representatives the
day that Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to be elected to Congress,
took her seat. The galleries were packed with men and women, and as
Miss Rankin walked onto the floor the men of the House arose and applauded
her entrance. I am sure that I shared with all those present
the conviction that we were witnessing the beginning of a new era in
public life in America. Today there are eight women participating in
the work of the Lower House of Congress. When we took the oath of
office on the first day of the special session last April, there was
comparatively little comment in the press, in the corridors, or on the
floor of the House.
The men of the House take us for granted. They have observed
that the women have proved themselves capable and that they give
conscientious attention to the work on the floor, in the committee
rooms, and in the busy private offices. I believe many thousands
of constituents all over the country have learned that they can be as
well represented by women in Congress as by men.


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This much having been gained the women who have been pioneering
in public service feel the responsibility of carrying on, of
moving forward to new frontiers. I know that I express the sentiment,
not only of the women of Illinois, but of women in all the States,
when I say that we desire now to be given the opportunity to serve
in the Upper House as well as in the Lower House.
Let it be clearly understood that we do not favor the election 
of any woman to any office for the sole reason that she is a
woman. In becoming a candidate in the Senatorial primary contest, I
take the same position I took two years ago when I ran for Congressman-
at-Large; that I hope nobody will vote for me simply because I am a
woman, or vote against me solely because I am a woman. Neither method
of selection or rejection would hold much promise that the public officer
chosen would be the best available individual for the place. If
I were to be defeated in this campaign upon the deliberate judgment
of the voters that I was not the most desirable candidate in the field,
I should accept that verdict cheerfully. But if it developed that I
had lost the contest, not because of lack of the voters confidence in
my ability and sincerity as an individual but because of the fact that
I was a woman, I would share the disappointment of millions of American
women at discovering their earnest endeavors in public service
were to enjoy only limited recognition simply because of their sex.
I believe the time has arrived in this country when no such discrimination
will be made.
I have found no suggestion of such an attitude in the House
of Representatives since my election in 1928. On the contrary it
was the pleasure of the Lower House, when they assigned new members

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to committees, to place me upon that important major body, the
Committee on Naval Affairs. In selecting a woman for this committee,
another precedent was established and that in the face
of the fact that with a naval conference of world-wide significance
was about to assemble in London and what we are entering upon a
period of incomparable importance to the future of our armament
on the seas.
I have been told that one of the objections raised to
my candidacy was based on the fact that I had not had sufficient
experience in the House to warrant my moving to the Senate. It
has been said also that I am resigning from the House in order to
make this race, which, of course, is ridiculous. Whether or not
I win the Senatorial nomination next April, I shall remain in the
House until the end of my elective term in March, 1931. By that
time I shall have served in one long extraordinary session and two
regular winter sessions, which will supplement the experience I
have had for many years in connection with legislation in both
houses of Congress.
As a Congressman-at-Large, representing more than seven
millions of people in Illinois, my constituency is now identical
with that of a United States Senator from Illinois. My work is
not limited to any Congressional district, any more than is the
work of a Senator. The volume of correspondence in the office is
as large. The necessity for carefully studying legislation from
the viewpoint of both Illinois and the nation is as pressing. The
responsibilities are as various and the procedure in the making of
laws in broadly similar.
Furthermore, the theory that experience in the House of


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Representatives is essential to good service innthe Senate is being
advanced for the first time. As a matter of fact sixty-seven of the
present members of the United States Senate including both our Illinois
Senators never served at all in the House of Representatives. Only
twenty-nine Senators out of the total of ninety-six have had that experience.
In view of all the foregoing facts, I am confident my
candidacy will be weighed [weighted] fairly upon the basis of experience, and
that my qualifications, such as you may deem them to be, may not be
submitted to any tests not applied to any other candidacy.
I come to you, then, as an independent Republican candidate;
independent in the sense that I have no alliance with any factional 
group within my party. It seems to me that the electorate should
welcome such a candidacy for the reason that it is stripped of all
confusion with other candidacies, either for State, County, or National
office, leaving the voter to judge of the merit of one individual
for one office.
In accordance with the primary law of this state, I am running
on the authority of petitions signed by the voters. My candidacy
is not due to any arrangement between party bosses. It has no
machine back of it. I submit to you that nominations procured on any
other basis defeat the very purpose of the primary law. We have
witnessed alliances between leaders of political groups in this state
which have chosen the nominees in primary elections with the same
regard for the opinion of the voters that formerly marked the selections
made in boss-ruled conventions. We have observed with bewilderment
between elections the violent breaking up of such groups and have found that leaders who quite recently
had delivered broadsides of righteous indignation against bosses of

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other groups had eagerly rushed into alliance with the very bosses
they had denounced. If local, state, or federal office holders
including men in highly responsible positions of public trust and
responsibility are to be forced hither and thither in the interest
of such alliance or groups, their value to the public is bound to
suffer.
The people of Illinois are weary of trying to keep pace
with the ever changing workings of political leaders. They are tired
of trying to learn the names of new combinations of candidates made
for the purpose of perpetuating themselves in office and controlling
patronage at the expense of the tax payer. They have a right to
expect more of their public officials. A new day is dawning in Illinois.
The apathy of the average voter is rapidly becoming dissipated.
The public is aroused from its indifference. The people
are beginning to realize the power that lies within their grasp if
they will take the trouble to walk to the polls and vote. Primary
elections in the past have been won because a large number of people
failed to vote and so the selection of party candidates has been
left to the faithful factional party workers. This old-fashioned
method of trying to gain political power will soon be thrown into
discard. Whatever are the faults of the primary law, and it has 
many, it may be said in its defense that it offers the voter his
opportunity to redeem public service and place it where it belongs
as one of the professions most to be desired.
I should like to speak to you today of various legislative
matters that particularly interest our people but the list is long
and our time is short. Later, as I continue my tour of the counties
I shall discuss the Illinois waterway appropriation which, I hope,
I shall soon have the pleasure of indorsing by my vote in the House.

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I shall have something to say of recent legislation in behalf of our
disabled soldiers and of our hope of further aid for those who fought
our fight in France. I shall discuss legislation affecting labor and 
other large groups of Illinois citizens.
Internationally we are upon the threshhold of momentous
decisions. We have, within the year, witnessed the completion of a
new plan for the financing of Europe's war reparations. We have effected 
a compromise with France as to her debt to us. We have seen
fifty-five nations renounce war as an instrument of national policy.
Washington has been active in movements calculated to safeguard the
future peace and prosperity of foreign nations in all climes and on
all continents. We have been in no sense an isolated America.
Next week we go into a conference with four other great
powers, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, to attempt a limitation of
naval construction. Most of us are convinced that under present circumstances
and possibly for some time to come it will be necessary
for us to maintain adequate national defense, particularly upon the
sea, where our navy has been our first line of defense for one hundred
years. And yet I say that all of us are heartily in accord with
President Hoover in this renewed effort to eliminate competitive naval
armament and that our hope joins sincerely with this hope that out of
this London conference shall be born a new international spirit looking
forward to reduction of armament as contrasted with a striving for
supremacy in the agencies of force. Mr. Hoover, in this, is not
entitled only to our commendation but we should give him our full
support, as individuals and as a nation.
We are also confronted once more with the proposal that the
United States shall adhere to the Permanent Court of International

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Justice of the League of Nations. I assume that most of you know how
I stand on that question. I stand where I have always stood- in opposition
to the League of Nations, or any of its essential parts. I
have not changed my mind on this issue because there is no change
in the Covenant of the League, which was written as a part of the
Treaty of Versailles and adopted with the provision and power of
enforcing its territorial sanction. As I am opposed to foreign entanglements
I would be reluctant to see our country take any step
toward joining the League of Nations or any part of the League. It
seems to me that in adjusting a foreign policy we should also look
at the reverse side of the question. What advantage could America
gain by becoming part of the League of Nations? What service could
America render the rest of the world by being a member of the League,
which service she is unable to accomplish as an independent power?
It is not a policy of isolation we are considering; it is a policy of
preserving our independence of action. The question of whether the
United States Senate will ratify the reservations which have been
revised at the instance of the League of Nations, will be submitted
to the Senate by the President at some convenient time. Whether it
will be this session of Congress or at the next session will be determined
by President Hoover. It is not possible for me, at this time,
to enter into a detailed argument in support of my position, which
is one of opposition to our joining the International Court of Justice
of the League of Nations. I think it is advisable, however, for us
to review the events which have led up to our signing the protocol
of the World Court at Geneva, December 9, 1929. Seven years ago it
became definitely settled that America would not join the League of
Nations. Four years ago the United States Senate passed a resolution
favoring adherence to the World Court with five reservations. Sufficient

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opposition to the Court was overcome by these reservations
to enable the resolution to pass the Senate on January 27, 1926.
President Coolidge, through the State Department, sent communications
to forty-eight nations, then adherents of the Court, transmitting
the reservations and asking for replies. In two months only
three of the forty-eight nations had replied and on April 1, 1926,
the Council of the League of Nations addressed an invitation to the
United States requesting that representatives be sent to a conference
of nations, signatory to the Court, for the purpose of discussing
our reservations. President Coolidge declined this invitation of the
League on the ground that the reservations made by the Senate were
clear and required no explanation. The League's conference was held
in September of that year, but the United States was not represented.
On the following November 11, in an Armistice Day address at Kansas
City, President Coolidge said the foreign nations had rejected our
reservations, and announced he would not ask the Senate to modify
them. That was regarded as the end of the long discussion over
American adherence to the Court.
Three years later President Coolidge, shortly before his
retirement from the White House, announced that a new effort would
be made to effect an agreement with the foreign nations as to our
Senate reservations. Secretary Kellogg, of the State Department,
again sent out notes to the League Court nations which had, with
few exceptions rejected hi advances in 1926. Early in 1929 the
Council of the league of Nations named Elihu Root, distinguished
American lawyer and statesman, as a member of a commission of jurists
which was to meet and at Geneva. A revised draft of the Protocol was
then prepared, which was known as the Hurst-Root Formula, Sir Cecil
Hurst of Great Britian having rewritten Mr. Root's plan.

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The Council of the League of Nations formally approved this formula
in Madrid, Spain in June, 1929, and in September, 1929, the Assembly
of the League of Nations also approved the new Protocol. Salmon O. 
Levinson, another American lawyer, meanwhile had induced the jurists
to make several changes in the final draft. On December 8, President
Hoover announced he had authorized the Secretary of State to cause
the signature of the United States Government to be affixed to the
new Protocol.
I have the greatest admiration for Mr. Root and Mr. Levinson
both as men and as lawyers. Their work in Geneva was highly technical
involving intricate legal reasoning. It is so involved, and there is
such fine shading of meaning in words and phrases that it would take
too long to go into their details.
At some further time during the campaign I will have more to
say on the question, as I shall hope to discuss more in detail other 
national and international questions.

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I am going to speak but briefly in reporting to my constituents 
here today on my stewardship of the important task which you
assigned to me in 1928. I believe that my record on important legislation
is known to you. I pledged myself in the campaign of 1927,
and 1928, to work for a farm bill which would help to place the agricultural
industry on an economic equality with all other industries.
When President Hoover convened an extra session of Congress for the
two major purposes of passing a farm bill end readjusting the tariff,
with particular relation to greater protection for farm products, it
was inevitable that controversy should arise as to the best means of
attaining these objectives. With relation to farm legislation, I
felt from the first that my proper course had been clearly charted for
me by the voters of Illinois. In the campaign of 1928, the Presidential
candidate of our party pledged himself to a farm plan which was definite
even to the point of specific details. You will remember that I made
this plan a feature of my own speeches throughout the state. I had
favored an equalization fee plan; but in view of the substantial
evidence of support for the substitute device of cooperative associations
and stabilization corporations working under direction and
supervision of a federal farm board, I accepted that program. Inasmuch
as President Hoover was elected by a vote of landslide proportions,
it may be admitted that he and those elected on the ticket with
him had a clear mandate from the people in support of this plan. The
House prepared a bill in accordance with these pledges to the people
and I worked for this measure and voted for it unhesitatingly. It was
passed by the Senate and obtained the prompt signature of the President
and the farm bill, promised in the 1928 campaign, is now a law and has
been functioning for approximately eight months. This bill presented a

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basis for the greatest economic adventure in the history of the
United States. Naturally a plan which involved directly the well-
being of more than thirty million of our citizens could not be letter
perfect in its first draft. It was obviously impossible to foresee
all the difficulties of its application to individual problems. It
was admittedly, an experimental measure but it committed the country
to a definite effort toward just dealing with the farmers and it has
brought renewed confidence and hope to the millions of citizens in
rural districts whose interest had been too lightly weighed for
generations.
But it was not by the establishing of a Farm Board alone
that we were to revive the lagging of agricultural industry. We,
as a party, wrote the following paragraph into the platform at the
Kansas City Convention in 1928:
   The Republican Party pledges itself to
the development and enactment of measures
which will place the agricultural interest
of America on a basis of economic equality
with other industries to insure its prosperity
and success

In his speech accepting the nomination President Hoover said
"The most urgent economic problem in our Nation today is in agriculture."
That was a true declaration made in all sincerity. President
Hoover was elected after a campaign in which this vital need of
equality to the farmer was given dominating importance and attention.
President Hoover repeated it, in effect, in his inaugural address
and finally he called a special session of Congress on April 15
of last year, the declared purpose of which was to pass a farm
marketing act and readjust tariff schedules in the interest of agriculture.
We have carried out one half of the program but the special
session adjourned with no tariff legislation having been completed.

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In the present session, therefore, we are again facing this "most
urgent economic problem in our Nation." We must face it squarely and
fairly in the light of our pledges and of our necessity."
The House bill, passed early in the special session last
spring, was understood to be one that would inevitably be revised
and in large portions rewritten by the Senate. The House bill came 
out of committee with many increases in protective tariff rates for
agricultural products but on some important items the increases were
distinctly disappointing to the farmer. The American dairy interests
has desired a material increase, for example, in the tariff on imported
casein. Casein is made from skimmed milk and 75 per cent of
the American product is used in the manufacture of coated paper.
It is used also in the making of certain kinds of glue and in the
making of combs and backs of brushes, etc. It is one of the many byproducts
through which the American dairy farmer could extend his
profits and build new markets if he were protected from foreign competition.
The farmers asked that the tariff on casein be increased
from the present rate of 2 1/2 cents a pound to 8 cents a pound but the
best they have been able to get thus far in the tariff adjustments
is an increase of 1 cent a pound. You may better understand the
disappointment of the dairy farmer when it is stated that the imports
of casein into the United States amounts to 28,000,000 pounds each
year. In the Kansas City platform already quoted, it was said "The
Republican Party believes that the home market, built up under the
protective policy, belongs to the American farmer, and it pledges its
support of legislation which will give this market to him to the full
extent of his ability to supply it." In view of the foregoing facts
I want to ask if anyone can contend that we are giving the American
market to the American farmer so far as casein is concerned?

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It will not do to point out that the duty on corn imports has
been raised to 25 cents, per bushel, whereas formerly it was only 15
cents. That is what has been called a "mental" duty because only one
fiftieth of one percent of the corn used in this country is imported.
We have made quite a gesture of this increase but it means
little. We are protecting our corn growers against imports which do
not exist. We are merely shadow-boxing. In adjustment of the corn
tariff we leave the farmer just where he was before. We have done
nothing there to assist in restoring the farmer to economic equality.
We have done nothing there to carry out that other pledge that the
farmer shall have his own American market. The corn market is his
already, except where imports of foreign products make it difficult
for him to sell his by-products at a profitable price; such imports
as cocoanut oil, competing with corn oil, and blackstrap molasses,
competing with corn in the manufacture of industrial alcohol.
There is not time to go into further details. There are more
than 10,000 items which are in process of adjustment in the tariff
bill. But if the list of proposed changes were to be read we should
find many vitally important products which still are forced to confront
competition on the American market with products from foreign shores.
Now we come to another phase of the tariff discussion which
is fully as important as that of the failure to give greater protection
to ur agricultural products. I mean the decision of the House
Committee and apparently the determination of a substantial membership
of the Senate to make an extensive upward revision of the duties
on manufactured goods imported from abroad. President Hoover had
advised and asked only "a limited revision of certain industrial
items to assist those interests that had suffered as a result of
recent economic shifts."

-14-

It is the contention of the farmers, supported by some of
the leading members of the Senate, that in making extensive increases
in industrial items we have given the farmer something with one hand
and taken it away from him with the other. In other words, we have to
some extent aided the farmer by protecting his market for the things
he has to sell, but we have at the same time forced him to pay more for
for the manufactured goods such as clothing and building material and
miscellaneous things which he must buy. The farmer insists, apparently 
with some justice, that further protection of American manufacturers
in no way aids in restoring the economic equality of the farming
industry with the manufacturing industry.
As a farmer in the great state Illinois, having come from
Ohio where I spent much of my girlhood on my grandfather's farm in
northern Ohio, I realize as perhaps only one who lives on a farm can
realize, how important the prosperity of the agricultural industry is
to the wellbeing of the nation as a whole. We can not long continue
to live in our present prosperity if agriculture continues to suffer
as it has suffered since the war. We have grown so rapidly and our
industry has developed to such size in a comparatively short time that
our eastern representatives in Congress have not kept pace with the
development in the middle and far west. It is difficult to readjust
their point of view when it comes to writing a tariff bill. They
claim that they represent farming interests but they fail to understand
how different is the farm in Pennsylvania from the farm in North
Dakota. They are unable to visualize the technical difference between
the farm in Massachusetts and the farm in Minnesota or Idaho, where
diversified farming is not possible because of difference in climate

- 15 -

and soil conditions. Our country is too big, our economic problems
are too numerous to enable any one representative in Congress to be
equally conversant with all sides of our national life. This fact
becomes most apparent when the question of writing a tariff bill is
brought into Congress. It is inevitable that the bill, must finally 
be written as a compromise measure to a greater or lesser degree.
The representatives of the big industrial eastern states are quite
naturally more actively concerned with the industrial schedules, while
at the same time those representing the far west take the side of
agriculture in the present debate.
The economic conditions in the South have so changed since
the last tariff bill was written that I confess to being both astonished
and amused when I find Ruth Bryan Owen and myself voting alike
on a protective tariff bill. Think how times have changed when it is
possible for the daughter of William Jennings Bryan representing Florida
and the daughter of Mark Hanna, from Illinois casting the same
vote on tariff legislation. The lines are drawn geographically in
the present Senate debate, not on party lines. Those of us from Illinois,
representing the state as a whole, are more thoroughly conersant
with the problem of the country as a whole. We represent
large industrial interests and at the same time our future holds within
its borders great farming and dairy interests. We must be fair in
casting our votes and make certain that we do not fail either the one
interest or the other. Personally I believe President Hoover pointed
the way, from a national point of view, when he recommended:
   "A limited revision of certain industrial items
to serve those interests that have suffered as
a result of recent economic shifts."
However, this is much easier said than done because of the
conditions that exist in the Congress today. The lines are more

-16-
sharply drawn and are more in evidence in the Senate than in the House
because in the Senate the debate is open and in the House it is limited.
As a middle western Congressman, I cannot but feel that in the best
interests both of my state, and the country, as a whole, we should
raise the agricultural industry up to the level of the other industries
and that this is the most urgent economic question before us today. The
purchasing power of the people is of vital importance to industry,
but unless a farmer receives his share of the profits his ability to
purchase the manufactured article is inevitably reduced.
I have voted, upon those items which were open to individual
vote, for an increase in tariffs on agricultural products. I shall
continue in this session to do what I can to meet fully the pledges
made to the farmer by the party and by myself as a candidate when I
ran for Congress.
In all other respects since I took my seat in the House of
Representatives, I have endeavored to serve you to the best of my
ability. Whatever the outcome of this primary I want to express now
my deep appreciation to the people of Illinois for giving me the opportunity
of representing this great state in Congress.

REPORT OF SPEECHES MADE AND WORK DONE
By
MARY CHURCH TERRELL
IN MRS. RUTH HANNA MCCORMICK'S CAMPAIGN
From Nov. 12th to Nov. 24th, 1929, inclusive.

BLOOMINGTON: Tuesday, November 12th, I spoke at the residence
of Mrs. William Johnson to a group of about twenty women.
I contrasted the attitude of Senator Deneen toward our group with
that of Mrs. McCormick. I stated also that Mrs. McCormick had
asked me to tell how the men whom they had helped to elect behave
when they get to Congress. For thirty years, I said, I have been
sitting in the gallery in the House of Representatives and of the
Senate listening to the speeches made by the people you helped to
elect and watching the animals perform. I urged each and every
woman to vote, and to induce her sisters to do the same thing,
pointing out that our only weapon of defense is the ballot.

I was given an enthusiastic reception and each woman shook
my hand at the close of the meeting and expressed herself as
much pleased. Mrs. Lelah Morris Brown, a member of the Colored
Republican Women's Club, asked me to tell why Mrs. Susie Myers
was no longer working for Mrs. McCormick. I told her that I did
not like to gossip, but I related the facts as I knew them. She
said she requested me to do this because some women in Bloomington
did not know them. She then related an incident which happened
at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago when she, Mrs. Myers and other
women attended a Republican meeting there and were told to use
the freight elevator.

The President of the club grasped my hand warmly and said
all the members had been benefited by the information given.

Wednesday, November 13th, Mrs. Fred Wyche tendered me a
reception, to which she invited some of the women whom I had
not met the day before. I made practically the same speech to
this group of women that I did to those who assembled on Tuesday.
I went to see Rev. Oliver, pastor of the A. M. E. Church, and
told him about Mrs. McCormick's interest in our group, gave evidences
of her desire to be just and urged him to do everything
he could to impress upon the members of his church the necessity
of voting, of studying the record of the people for whom they
voted, in order to see whether they were willing to give our group
a fair chance and a square deal.

[*1943-8*]

CHAMPAIGN: November 15th. Spoke in the Masonic hall for
Mrs. Louise Thomas, Worthy Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star.
"The Progress of Colored Women" was my subject, but I injected
considerable information about the political situation of the
State. While it was not a genuine political speech, I took occasion
to drive home some facts which would help Mrs. McCormick's
campaign.

November 16th. Made contacts with several women. In the
evening Miss Jennie E. Lawrence called me up and informed me
that she and Mrs. Gaines had come to Champaign to see the football
game. Mrs. Thomas and I went immediately to the residence
of Mrs. Wells where they were at that time. I talked with Mrs.
Gaines and described the conditions which obtain in Bloomington
between two of the prominent women there,--Mrs. Fred Wyche and Mrs.
Lelah Morris Brown. Mrs. Gaines informed me that they were not
friends and refused to speak to each other, and that nothing
could be done to heal the breach between them.

Sunday, November 17th. I attended the Baptist Church Sunday
morning. Rev. Jones, the pastor, who knew me very well,
gave me a most complimentary introduction to his congregation
and allowed me to speak.

Sunday afternoon I spoke in the Masonic Hall at 3:30. The
hall was given me free of charge, so that I could make a political
speech in Mrs. McCormick's behalf. I was very grateful for
this evidence of interest in my work. Mrs. Eleanor C. Bainum,
President of the County Republican Women's Club, was present and
heard my address. "Your address was wonderful", she said. "I
have not words to express what I feel. You brought out just
those points which would make the deepest impression upon your
people", she said. This greatly encouraged me, and I was glad
to know a white woman's reaction to the very strong criticism
of Senator Deneen which I had made.

After my speech at the Masonic Hall, the Women's Federated
Club gave a tea in my honor, (Sunday afternoon) at which at least
forty women were present. They asked me to talk about the work
in which I am engaged, and thus I had a chance to make another
speech in Mrs. McCormick's behalf. I cannot say too much about
the enthusiasm with which the women received my message.

Sunday night I attended the A. M. E. Church of which Rev.
Brooks is pastor, and talked a few minutes there also. Rev.
Brooks introduced me to the congregation in the most complimentary
way, and they listened attentively to what I had to say.

- 2 -

[*1943-9*]

DECATUR: November 18th. As soon as I reached Decatur I
went to the residence of Mrs. J. R. Morris, 629 E. Grand Avenue,
to whom I had been directed by my itinerary. She was not home.
I hunted for her daughter, whose name I was informed by a neighbor,
was Mrs. Davis. I could not find Mrs. Davis, so I returned
to Mrs. Morris' residence and found her at home. "Have you arranged
a meeting for me", I asked. She was greatly surprised.
She said she had not. I said, "This is Mary Church Terrell.
Can't you get a group of colored women together?" "Oh!", said
Mrs. Morris, greatly surprised, "do you want me to get a group
of colored women for you?" Then I realized that Mrs. Morris
was a white woman and was not expecting me. I asked her if she
was acquainted with any of the colored women of the city. She
said she was and most obligingly volunteered to take me to the
home of a colored woman with whom she was acquainted and who
lived near by. She took me to the residence of Mrs. Cora Johnson
and her sister, Mrs. Laura Bryant. I asked them to give me the
names of the leading ministers of the city and of some colored
women, urged them to try to arrange a meeting for me in their
residence the next afternoon, and to try to plan a meeting for
me that night. In less than three hours a meeting had been arranged
for me in the homes of Mrs. Jennie Brown and Mrs. Mattie
Metlock. That night, therefore, I spoke to as fine a group of
women as I have ever met anywhere. They welcomed me cordially,
listened attentively to what I had to say about Mrs. McCormick
and promised to do everything in their power to promote her candidacy.
They insisted upon organizing a Ruth Hanna McCormick
club right then and there, and actually did form a temporary
organization. I explained to them that it was not my duty or
mission to organize clubs as I went throughout the State, but
that I felt quite sure Mrs. McCormick would be greatly pleased
if they did organize one of their own free will and accord.

The following are the Minutes of this meeting, which was
held at the residence of Mrs. Jennie Brown, on November 18th:

Having heard an interesting talk by Mrs. Mary Church
Terrell, the true reports of the work and doings at our Nation's
Capitol, the staunch friendship and keen interest Mrs. Ruth
Hanna McCormick is showing and promises to give our group, Mrs.
Cora Johnson suggested that the ladies organize a Ruth Hanna
McCormick club. This idea was heartily approved by those present.
A committee of temporary officers was appointed. Indiana
Brown, Chairman; Stella M. Walker, Secretary. Other officers
to be permanently elected at a later date. The purpose of the
club being to support Ruth Hanna McCormick in the Senatorial
election. And that was signed: Chairman, Indiana Brown. Secretary,
Stella M. Walker.

- 3 -

[*1943-10*]

Tuesday, November 19. Spoke to a large group of women at
three o'clock, at the residence of Mrs. Metlock. I had the
same success with the women who met there as I did with those
whom I had addressed the previous night.

Tuesday night I called on Mrs. Slaughter, who is the President
of the G. O. P. Colored Women's Club of Decatur. I told
her that the women said they wanted to form a Ruth Hanna
McCormick club, but that some of the women and I felt they had
better not do so until I had spoken with her, so as to see
whether there could be any objection to having such a club formed.
She said she could see no objection to it, and would be glad to
do what she could, although she would have to see "what was
going to be done" before she could state positively for whom she
is going to vote.

Tuesday night I spoke at the Baptist Church. Mrs. Metlock,
the president at whose home I had talked that afternoon, asked
me to speak to the group of men and women who were present.

Wednesday morning I went to see Mrs. George Steele, a white
woman, who is an ardent supporter of Mrs. McCormick. She said
that Mrs. Eleanor Bainum of Champaign had told her all about me
and had said some very complimentary things. She was eager to
have the colored women form a Ruth Hanna McCormick club. She
understands some of the unfortunate political conditions which
exist in our group almost everywhere, and said that she hoped
some of them might be corrected in the approaching campaign.

Wednesday afternoon I spoke in the beautiful residence of
Mrs. Ellis, wife of the leading physician of Decatur. The
Progressive Club was entertaining some old people at dinner,
and after I had enjoyed dining and talking with them, the president
of the Progressive Club, Mrs. Winston, asked me to tell
my message to the company who was assembled there. Thus, having
reached Decatur Monday morning without the name or address of a
single colored woman, I had been able to deliver four addresses,
and had come in contact with a large number of people. I called
on Dr. John C. Ellis, a prosperous physician of Decatur and
urged him to do what he could to have our group support Mrs.
McCormick. I went to see the Managing Editor of the Decatur
Herald, who received me very cordially and insisted upon introducing
me to Miss Riggs, one of the women on his staff, who is
an ardent supporter of Mrs. Ruth Hanna McCormick. This newspaper
gave me a very fine press notice about the meetings which had
been held in the State and about the work which I, myself, had
done.

- 4 -

LINCOLN: November 21st. I spoke to a group of women
who belonged to a sewing circle, at the residence of Mrs. 
Taylor. That night I took advantage of an excellent opportunity
to reach a large number of people, old and young. A
play was given at the Masonic Hall, and Miss Mae Perkins arranged
to have me speak at the conclusion of the exercises.
Thus it was that I had a fine chance to tell my message to
a group of people whom I would have been otherwise unable to
reach.

Mrs. Steele of Decatur had asked me to call on Mrs. Gullett
of Lincoln. I called her up shortly before I left Lincoln for
Springfield Friday morning, and she said she would be glad to
[?]. Soon after I reached her residence she called
up her husband and asked him to come over to talk to me. They
are both ardent supporters of Mrs. McCormick and we had a delightful
visit together. Mrs. Gullett took me to the station
in her automobile, and invited me to return to Lincoln, if I
could possibly do so.

SPRINGFIELD: November 22nd. Mrs. Margaret Byrd of
Springfield had arranged a meeting for me shortly after I arrived.
It was the largest meeting I had addressed in a private
residence. There were at least thirty of the representative
women of the city, and when I finished talking about Mrs.
McCormick they complimented me for the manner in which I had
expressed my thoughts, and stated that they would do everything
they could to promote interest in Mrs. McCormick's campaign.

I called on Rev. Harshaw, pastor of the A. M. E. Church,
and told him how fair-minded and broad Mrs. McCormick is, and
presented many facts which he told me he did not know. He
thanked me for coming and giving him the information which he
said he could have acquired in no other way. I was glad to
talk with Rev. Harshaw because I believe that my conversation
with him will bear fruit in getting votes for Mrs. McCormick.

DANVILLE: Sunday Morning, November 24th, I spoke to a
large congregation in the A. M. E. Church of Danville, of
which Rev. Wittenberg is pastor. He said he remembered hearing
an address that I had delivered at least twenty years previously
to a school in Baton Rouge, La. I did not begin to speak
until after the services had been concluded, and it was nearly
two o'clock when I finished. Not a single member of the congregation
left the church until I had stopped speaking.

- 5 -

[1943-11]

DANVILLE: (Concluded).  Sunday afternoon I spoke 
at a Baptist Church, and Sunday night I spoke at the 
largest Baptist Church in the City, of which Rev. 
Crockett is pastor.

Monday morning, the Executive Committee of the 
Republican Women's Club (white) invited me to attend 
their meeting.  A few minutes after Mrs. Wheeler, (who 
had arranged for me all these meetings to which I have 
referred) and I entered the room at the Y. W. C. A., 
Mrs. Cooley, the presiding officer, introduced me, told 
about my work and asked me to come forward to speak.  I 
briefly outlined what I was doing in Mrs. McCormick's 
interest with my own group.  Then I asked the members 
of the Executive Committee whether they had approved of the 
course I was pursuing, and if they had any suggestions 
to offer.  Everybody who talked felt that I was doing 
the right thing and complimented me on the way the work
was being done.

Monday night there were nearly thirty people 
present (men and women) at the residence of Mrs. Lillian
 H. Wheeler, a member of the Executive Committee.  After 
my talk a Ruth Hanna McCormick club was formed.  I was 
made honorary president in spite of my effort notto 
have any such effort conferred upon me.  At the conclusion 
of my talk there was a very earnest discussion of the 
political situation in Danville.  Nearly everybody 
present spoke, and it was the consensus of opinion that 
the colored people of the city should do something to 
correct the many evils which have existed for years in 
the politics of the city.
-----------

-6-

Address by Ruth Hanna McCormick 
Congressman-at-Large for Illinois 
And Republican Nominee for United States Senator.
Station WRC, Washington, D.C.
Thursday, April 24, 7:30 P.M.

There has been a great deal of speculation as to what effect, if 
any, my success at the Illinois primary election on April 8 will 
have upon the women throughout the country. I have been asked frequently 
whether in my opinion my nomination for Senator will stimulate
 a desire among women to engage more actively in politics. The 
question is raised as to whether the result will be regarded merely 
as the victory for women, as such, and whether it will make any 
change at all in the reluctant attitude of women toward political 
service. In reply to these questions I would say that I believe
women everywhere will be pleased that a woman has been chosen by the 
Republicans of Illinois to be their candidate for the highest office
in the gift of the state. I am confident, further, that men will be 
as eager as women to determine, if I am elected, whether the choice 
of a woman was justified by her ability, her integrity and her willingness 
to serve. In that respect the nomination has placed upon me 
a great and distinctive responsibility. I am hopeful, also that the 
nomination will lead women to take a more individual interest in politics. 
If it has such a result the benefit will be a substantial 
one, as when our people placed the Nineteenth amendment in the Constitution 
they placed upon women the duty not only of exercising 
their right to vote but to study politics sufficiently to enable them 
to know how to vote. I am hopeful, too, that much of the prejudice 
among women against participation in practical politics will be removed. 
This desirable end will be more completely achieved if my 
candidacy, before election, and my service after election, are based 


-2- 
upon worthy idols and inspired by a serious purpose to serve well. 
Other women have faithfully and very ably served in public offices 
but the proposal to place a woman in the United States Senate apparently 
has caused renewed interest in the whole question of 
woman's fitness for still greater responsibility. 
There is one fundamental fact with relation to the question of 
women's political activities that I sometimes fear is quite generally 
overlooked. That is the truth that the economic and political interests 
of men and women are largely identical. Women's clubs for years 
have been working toward a broader education for girls with the purpose
of making them economically self reliant and to give them better 
equipment for co-operation with men in the administration of public 
affairs. Women have been close to the economics of housing; of sanitation; 
of security for their families, of the benefits in better 
paving, in parks and playgrounds, in better educational facilities 
of all kinds; of labor saving devices; of better ventilation and 
light; of improved local government and of higher standards of living 
generally. The woman has learned home economics thoroughly and as 
she has progressed along this line she has come to learn that if she
and her children and her husband are to live fuller and more useful 
lives, women, as well as men, must take an active interest in the 
economics of national as well as local government. Women's interest 
in international affairs also is identical with the interests of the 
men. 
Who would try to minimize the direct personal interest of every 
American woman in national legislation, for example? Who can doubt 
that the millions of women living upon American farms are vitally concerned 
in the success of the new Farm Marketing Act, under the Federal 
Farm Board? Even more, possibly, is the farmer's wife affected by

- 3 -
the effort to create broader and more profitable markets for farm
products by means of an adequate protective tariff.  The adjustment
of railroad rates touches closely the lives of women for transportation
costs directly relate to the cost of food and clothing and
building material.  As our immigration restrictions affect the laborers'
wages and standard of living in America so does it equally affect
the wives of laborers and those women who themselves are included
in the ranks of organized labor.  The question of avoiding foreign
entanglements that may lead to future wars is essentially important
to all American women.  The construction of public works for the benefit
of commerce and health come within her personal interest.  The
problem of local and federal taxes most certainly is shared by our
women.  All these influences upon the peace and prosperity of the
people are universal in their scope.  If women are to vote for public
servants in the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government
they must realize, as I believe they do now realize, that
they must examine the whole structure of government.
Men politicians in Illinois and women who live outside Illinois
have expressed surprise at the heavy majority polled in the recent
election.  Men and women joined together in producing that result.  A
fact overlooked by those who had not anticipated such a vote is that
for ten years the women of Illinois systematically have been informing
themselves on public questions, local, state-wide and national.
They have organized groups for the study of ways and means to improve
material and cultural conditions.  They have learned that
organization is essential if the expression of their opinions is to
be effective.  Finally, they have learned how to organize.  I take
pleasure in saying that my observation of the growth of political

- 4 -
consciousness among Illinois women has proved to me that they have
come to their conclusions through painstaking study and patient
purpose to be useful in wider fields.
They approached the problem of voting as they always approach
any household problem or civic problem by first gathering all the
available information on the subject before they act.  Women are conservative;
they are responsible human beings.  They take their duties
seriously and voting has become a duty.  They would not vote at all
unless they knew first what they were voting for and for what sort
of an individual they were casting their vote.  It has taken them a
long time, a longer time than the men are willing to give them.  But
women have at last learned to weigh candidates and issues and, perhaps
more important still, they have learned that if they are to make
their opinions and policies effective they must express themselves
through organization.
I believe we are entering upon a new era in American politics.
Not an era of man's politics or of woman's politics but of informed
politics for all.  Largely responsible for new methods of campaigning
is the radio.  Here we have found a new--the most effective
agency--for informing the people.  Here we have a medium by which we
bring the town hall debates on candidates and issues to the fireside.
The modern political meeting has entered the family circle.
Styles change even in politics.  Before the radio the individual
voter if he was interested in politics made an effort to fathom the
debates in the paper but unless the campaigns made speeches with news
value the papers, because of lack of space, cut the speeches so that
only those who followed the debate carefully day to day could understand
the arguments.  Quite naturally the average voter gave it up

-1-
Ruth Hanna McCormick's father was Mark Hanna, Ohioan
who directed the famous 1896 campaign in which William McKinley defeated
William Jennings Bryan for the presidency.  Ruth Hanna, then a
young girl, accompanied her father on campaign trips in various states.
That was her first glimpse of politics.  As the campaign progressed
she became intensely interested.  She was one of the girls who served
refreshments to those who came from great distances to shake hands
with McKinley at his home in Canton, Ohio.  McKinley conducted a "front
porch" campaign, the voters coming to him instead of his going to them.
Ruth Hanna's next experience in politics was after 1900
when her father became a United States Senator from Ohio.  She became
his secretary and worked daily in the gallery of the Senate, watching
the progress of legislation and reporting to her father.  In the Washington
home of the Hannas there were almost daily gatherings of politicians,
diplomats and important figures in national and international
life generally.  Ruth Hanna assisted in extending the hospitality of
the Hanna home and she was privileged to hear discussions of domestic
and foreign matters that added to her knowledge of public affairs and
of politics and politicians.
Her later association with her husband, Medill McCormick
in his work as a member of the Illinois State Legislature, the House of
Representatives in Washington and as United States Senator still further
added to her experiences and knowledge.  She became thoroughly familiar
with the technic of legislation in Washington and for almost thirty
years was actively engaged in party activities.  This was the long
training in practical public service and in the subleties of politics
that prepared her for the candidacy for Congress.  She stumped the
State of Illinois three times during the primary and the later election
campaign in 1928, traveling more than 24,000 miles in her open car and

-2-
visiting all of the 102 counties in Illinois at least once.  She received
more than 1,711,000 votes on election day, Nov. 6, 1928, thus
leading all other candidates on the state ticket.
Mrs. McCormick has a 2,400-acre farm near Byron, Ill.
Her herd of thoroughbred Holstein-Frisians is one of the finest in the
country.  Her dairy produces approximately 1,000 quarts of certified
milk daily for the Rockford and Chicago markets.  It was Mrs. McCormick's
personal interest in this farm that led her to make a special
study of the farm issue in the 1928 campaign and she developed the
subject until other Illinois speakers left it to her to present that
phase of the campaign to voters.  She spoke in Wisconsin, Indiana
and in Minnesota after her Illinois campaign was ended, again specializing
on the farm problem.
Mrs. McCormick is owner and publisher of the Rockford
Daily Republic and takes an active interest in that property.
Biography
Mrs. Medill McCormick - Farmer, politician and publisher.
Clubs - Women's City Club of Chicago, New York and Washington; Colony
Club, New York; National Republican Woman's Club, New York;
Chicago Woman's Club; Rockford Woman's Club; Rock River Golf
Club; Congressional Golf Club; Business and Professional
Woman's Club; Illinois Republican Woman's Club; Woman's Roosevelt
Republican Club and Illinois Woman's Athletic Club,
National Women's Press Club.
Political Activities - First Chairman of the Republican Woman's
National Committee in 1917; first elected National Committeewoman
on Republican National Committee from Illinois; candidate
for Congressman-at-large from Illinois and elected Nov. 6, 1928;
worked for party, State and Nation for 25 years.

-3-

Welfare Activities - Member of National and State Women's Trade Union 
League; National Civic Federation - first chairman of the women's 
division - National Child Welfare; Consumers' League.

Education - Two years at Dobbs Ferry; three years at Farmington and one 
year at Hathaway Brown School, Cleveland, O.

Travels - United States and Europe.

Was graduated from Farmington in 1900.  From then on she lived 
in Washington, when her father was United States Senator.  She spent her 
time in learning politics, first hand.  Married in 1903, and from that 
time lived in Chicago.

1904 - Helped organize women's division of the National Civic
Federation and worked, as a member, of the Woman's Trade Union League.  
Helped organize Chicago's Woman's Club.  Director in National Good Roads 
Assn.

1910-11 - Became active in politics and worked for Roosevelt 
and was very active in the Progressive campaign of 1912.  Her husband 
was elected to the Lower House of the Illinois Legislature.  Mrs. 
McCormick went to Springfield as an active suffragist worker in the 
Winter of 1913.

1914-15-16 - Became chairman of Congressional Committee of the 
National American Woman's Suffragist Association and worked in Washington 
on Federal amendment until it passed.

1916 - Medill McCormick was elected Congressman from Illinois 
and in 1918 was elected United States Senator.  Mrs. McCormick lived 
for eight years in Washington and worked in his office and on state 
politics.

1917 - Appointed first woman chairman of Republican Women's 
National Committee.  Organized Republican women all over the country.


-4-
When women became elective members of National Republic Committee
Mrs. McCormick was first National Committeewoman elected from Illinois 
in 1924.  Represented Illinois on the National Committee from 1917 to 
1924.

1928 - Elected to Congress, Nov. 6.

Speech by
Ruth Hanna McCormick
Rock River Farms, Byron, Ill.
By Radio over KYW and WJJD
7:30 P. M.
April 7, 1930.

FOR RELEASE ANY TIME AFTER SPEECH IS DELIVERED.

Republican Voters of Illinois:

As I sit here before a log fire in my farm house with the daughter who has shared the recent hard work of the campaign with me, just as she did two years ago when we toured the state, I realize that the long task of presenting my primary candidacy for the United States Senate has come to an end.  Most of you have made up your minds as to how you are going to vote tomorrow and probably nothing that I can say at this eleventh hour will avail to further away the judgment of the electorate.  For several months you have been considering the issues and weighing the personal and political qualifications of the two principal contestants for this nomination.  The offices of United States Senator is the highest post of honor which a state may offer, and any candidacy for it should have earnest and thorough examination.

You have a right to know whether it is personal ambition or a genius aspiration to assume leadership in public service that has led me into this contest.  You have the right -- it is, indeed, your duty -- to determine in your own minds whether I have fairly and logically interpreted 

-2-
the issues; whether I have conducted my canvas of the state with a sincerity and dignity of purpose and method worthy of one who seeks a place of high honor and conspicuous responsibility.

I want to leave with you tonight a definite impression of the attitude of mind with which I entered this contest, and with which I am closing it.  There were several considerations which occupied my thought and attention.  One of these was the fact that I am the first woman to become a candidate for a seat in the Senate with any serious prospect of election.  This has placed upon me a tremendous responsibility.  I was a worker in the suffrage cause and, since the enactment of the Constitutional Amendment, I have counseled the women of the United States to take an active part in politics and in the affairs of government.  One of the articles of my creed has been that women should have opportunity for public service in exact proportion to their ability for such service and no more than just that.  I have said in this campaign that I did not want anybody to vote for me solely because I was a woman; nor yet did I believe that anybody would be justified in voting against me, simply because I was a woman.

But it is impossible to evade the fact that the women of Illinois are intensely interested in this first serious senatorial candidacy by a woman.  It is true also that the women of the country, far and near, are watching this contest.  Therein lies a distinctive responsibility.  I have

- 3 -
felt that, more than figuratively, I have held a mandate, from
those millions of women, to be worthy.  The whole character of
my campaign, its expressions and its implications, demanded
adherence to the best ideals.  The candidacy for membership in
the Senate has held out the hope that woman's usefulness in
public life was to have a new seal of faith and confidence.
And, after election, this faith and confidence must be wholly
justified by conscientious, diligent and effective performance.
There must be no step backward.  That recognition of a solemn
obligation was in my mind, then, when I entered this important
contest, and as the campaign closes it is still a silent but
insistent mentor, as well as a very real inspiration.  At this
time I want to express to the women of Illinois my gratitude for
their fine loyalty to me in the development of this campaign and
in my campaign of two years ago.
Since January 13, I have motored through most of the
102 Counties of Illinois, covering a total distance of more
than twelve thousand miles.  I have spoken in more than a hundred
cities and villages and the exacting schedule has kept despite
occasional difficulties of snow-covered or flooded roads.
I have proved to my own satisfaction that Illinois is justified
in its proud claim that is has more miles of paved highways than
any other state in the Union.  Several times before I have made
similar itineraries from the Wisconsin border south to the Ohio
river and from the Indiana boundary to the Mississippi.  Each
time I have returned to my farm home here on the Blackhawk Trail,
beside the beautiful Rock River, and any edge of weariness has

- 4 -
been removed by a feeling that there is full compensation in
having renewed old friendships with our great prairies, our
gently flowing streams, our bustling industries and our productive
farmsteads.  There is abundant reward for the stress of
political campaigning in a better acquaintance with the people
of our sturdy inland empire.  And there is a deep satisfaction
in coming back here, at the end of the journey, to my home in
Ogle county, where wide acres and budding trees are giving me
a charming welcome.  Tomorrow I shall cast my vote and immediately
after election day I shall return to my work in Washington.
I shall take with me a deeper sense that ever of the
responsibility of one who undertakes to serve this Prairie State.
I have said that this is not the time to enter upon the controversial
issues of a campaign that is ended.  Rather, I would
prefer to sit here and meditate aloud with you, if you please,
upon conditions and events and prospects that are close to our
hearts and our hopes.  I believe that nowhere may a citizen have
a better perspective of men and events than from a farmhouse on
a hilltop.  The reflection is quite natural, looking out over
pastures and grazing herds, that the fields within our range of
vision are but a tiny section of the twenty millions of acres of
Illinois farmlands that yield "health and strength for all the
nation."  It is from such a vantage point as this wooded hill
that the Illinois farmer perceives his own vital importance in
the scheme of economics.  He knows that of the Illinois area of
more than 56,000 square miles 85 per cent of the land is in

- 5 -
improved farms.  More than two and one half billions of bushels
of corn were grown in Illinois last year and more than a half
billion bushels of wheat.  Illinois orchards produced more than
one hundred and thirty-nine million bushels of apples in 1929,
a crop valued at more than one hundred and eighty-four millions
of dollars.  There were vast crops of hay and oats and of peaches
and pears.  Illinois ranks fourth among the states in agriculture.
Agriculture is the greatest industry in Illinois.  Who can doubt
that the first duty of Illinois is to her farmers in the light of
those stupendous figures?  Who could be blind to the fact that if
the prosperity of the Illinois farms is diminished the material
interests of all the State suffer instant injury?
Mr. Hoover said in his 1928 campaign that agriculture
presented the greatest economic problem of the nation.  That was
a true statement and it follows that agriculture presents the
most serious economic problem of the State of Illinois.
While experts study the farm situation as a problem in
national economics, the farmers of Illinois are trying to work it
through as a problem of self preservation.  We have established a
Farm Board with a federal fund of five hundred millions of dollars,
available for the purposes of cooperative associations and stabilization
corporations.  Half a billion appears to many to be a
huge sum to be set aside for aiding the farmers in forty-eight
states.  But in Illinois alone last year the combined value of
the corn and wheat crops was more than five times as great as
that half billion dollar "revolving fund".  My friends, the
farmers whom I have met in traveling about Illinois have a very


- 6 -
real interest in the success of the Farm Board's effort to so
regulate the marketing of farm produce that seasonal surpluses
shall not sweep away the small margin of profits obtainable
from this great productive industry.  The Farm Marketing Act has
not received its decisive test.  It was, and is, an experimental
device.  But it has given a new hope.  Discussion of it has served
to educate the farmer as to the benefits of cooperation, and that
spells progress.
A generous Providence has placed in the soil of Illinois
the capacity for production of almost inestimable wealth, but we
are the guardians of those riches rather than the owners in fee
simple.  We must develop and protect our farms, our markets, our
manufactures, our shipping, so that future generations will place
their mark of approval upon our stewardship.  It is a blessing
that, along with the natural wealth which has come to this commonwealth,
there has been bestowed upon its people a spirit that
give them courage to progress.  It was only two hundred and ten
years ago that the first settlement of white men was established
at Kaskaskia, and yet today our Illinois public schools are
opening their doors to more than thirteen hundred thousand boys
and girls.  We have eleven hundred cities, towns and villages.
There are 1,765 banks, the total clearing through which last year
were in excess of thirty-seven billions of dollars.
Agriculture was the foundation of this vast economic
structure and agriculture is its bulwark today.  Yet self-reliant
as are our farmers, proud in a consciousness of strength, they
have found that their new standard of living and the almost

- 7 -
miraculous development of transportation by water, rail and air,
have brought new problems and complexities.  In bringing the
Central West into closer touch with the world abroad, we have
found that we have also opened the way for great quantities of
foreign products, which are brought to our markets, swiftly and
economically, to compete with the sales of our own produce.
Congress is now wrestling with a tariff bill, the
original purpose of which was to "give to the American farmer
the American market to the full extent of his ability to supply
it."  That means simply that, so far as is reasonably possible,
we have proposed to relieve our farmers of the necessity for
struggling against the competition of foreign products.
Vegetable oils from the Philippines come into the
country to compete with the products of our Illinois dairies
and of our hog farms.  Molasses from Cuba comes in in immense
volume to compete with our corn growers in the manufacture and
sale of industrial alcohol.  In Illinois we have one of the most
important centers of the soy-bean industry in America.  The soy-bean
is a crop that enriches and revives the soil.  It provides
an important feed for cattle and its oil is extensively used in
the manufacture of varnishes and paints and for other purposes.
We have but a vague idea of Manchuria in this country, but we have
gained a very definite knowledge that Manchurian soy-beans are
competing with an Illinois agricultural industry that would have
almost limitless possibilities if the burden of foreign competition
might be lifted from it.
If Illinois, the fourth agricultural state in the Union,

- 8 -
is to protect itself and carry through to the ultimate fulfillment
of its responsibility and promise, it must turn once more
to the protective tariff, one of the fundamental policies of the
Republican party.  It is the duty of every citizen of the Prairie
State, knowing her opportunity and her difficulty, appreciating
her vital part in the well being of all other states, to insist
upon a tariff program whose first and principal object shall be
the safeguarding of our farms.  We should undertake this task
with the same zeal with which we shall have to protect and develop
our mines, whose production of coal is only exceeded by that of
two other states.
Illinois is but one of forty-eight states and its people
have no desire to selfishly exclude from consideration the best
interests of all the other states.  But so long as we work diligently
for a better agricultural market in Illinois, for completion
of our inland waterway, and for all legislation that will
broaden our opportunity and our usefulness, we shall not earn the
condemnation of any other commonwealth.  Instead, we shall enjoy
in still greater measure their respect for the great state of
Lincoln, Grant and Logan, and we shall be sustained by the pleasing
consciousness that we have cared for our own [men].
These reflections, as I have said, arise quite naturally
when one is looking forth upon a peaceful pastoral picture in
Northern Illinois.  But the vision of our citizens reaches vastly
farther than our own State's welfare.  Our people have an abiding
patriotic interest in the cultural progress and material advancement
of the nation.  Illinois is a gigantic granary, but at the

- 9 -
same time, its other industries contribute largely to the financial
and commercial life of the whole country.  We rank third
in the amount of federal taxes paid.  Last year our total federal
taxes amounted to $259,183,682.  We paid, on Illinois incomes, a
tax of $236,986,918.  Those millions do their generous part in
building our navy, in maintaining our coast defenses, and in
supporting an army for preparedness' sake.  Out of those millions
have come substantial aid for great government projects in all
parts of the country.  Illinois may claim an important part in
the financing of such immense public works as Boulder Dam, the
deepening of the Ohio River, the construction of national highways
from coast to coast.  Our state is justly proud of its share
in support of the vast expenses of the national government in all
its branches.  In the geographical heart of the country, we are
identified with those things which are closest to the heart of
the nation.  Our material interest in a prosperous Unites States
quickens our pride and our patriotism.  Knowing that our diversified
industries perform so important a part in the economic machinery
of the government, we take a particular interest in what the
government at Washington is doing.
That thought leads us logically to a discussion of our
interests in the international relations of the United States.
We have helped to make this the most powerful among the nations
of the world.  We have helped to make it the creditor nation of
the world.  We have assisted in establishing upon the seas a
merchant fleet which carries billions in commerce to the far ports
of the world.  The last decade has witnessed a closer relationship

- 10 -
between the United States and all other nations.  In business
and in commerce it has been necessary and right that we should
have built up harmonious contacts with other peoples.  We have
been able to do this without surrendering any of that independence
of action of which this country has been so jealous since
the time of Washington and Jefferson.  We have not been an isolated
country in any sense of the word, for our millions have
gone into Europe, into Siberia, and into all parts of the world
where there was human distress or where the young industries of
those developing countries needed gold.
But in Illinois we have maintained definite ideas about
how far our relationships should go.  Our commerce brings us into
daily relationships of huge importance to the rest of the world
and to us.  But politically we have preserved our own traditions
of freedom from entangling alliances.  The World War and the
reconstruction days that followed it, seemed for a time to confuse
many Americans as to the extent of our duty to the nations
which were allied with us in that conflict and to the nations
that were arrayed against us on the battlefields of Europe.  But
the wisdom of Washington prevailed.  We declined to extend a temporary
military relationship into a permanent political partnership.
We refused to ratify the Treaty of Peace at Versailles, with
its mandate upon us to share in the adjustment of Europe's politics
and the permanence of Europe's new territorial boundaries.
We made our own treaty of peace with the Central Powers, and then
we returned to our farms and offices and factories and resumed the
peaceful activities which appeal most to our national love of

-11-

friendly independence and aggressive spirit of industry.  We 
stayed out of the League of Nations and up to this time we have
 not decided that it is wise or necessary to join the Permanent 
Court of International Justice, which many Americans sincerely 
believe to be but a part of the League of Nations.

I am not going to discuss that issue except to say that 
every citizen of Illinois should be proud of the serious, intelligent
 attention which has been paid to the discussion of this 
international situation.  It has been said, hastily, by several 
of our own Illinois writers and speakers that the arguments on 
the League of Nations and the Court have been appeals to prejudice 
and to ignorance.

I sometimes wonder how well we Illinois citizens know 
ourselves.  Do we realize that in our larger cities are newspapers 
which give to our rural and metropolitan readers a greater volume 
of world news than is provided by the daily journals of any other
 state?  Do we realize that fact sets up absolute proof of 
the intelligent eagerness of our men and women to understand our 
own government and its relations with all other governments?  Newspapers, 
if they are conducted along wise business lines, publish 
what the people prefer to read.  Our people are students of foreign 
news and of the daily record of legislation and negotiation at 
Washington.  It is a libel upon them to say that any appeal or an 
international issue can presume upon their ignorance.  There is 
an informed electorate in Illinois, and for that very reason our 
State has come to be respected as one which makes up its own mind 
on our international politics and expresses its opinions with 


-12-

forthright independence.  [*Y*]Our ignorance, if we are to be called 
so [*ignorant*] , is limited to an inability to understand the intrigues and 
shifting alliances of European nations, particularly with reference
 to any demand that we shall become involved in them.  Our 
prejudice, if our patriotic passion for peace and independence 
may be so called, is a prejudice against departing from the 
counsel of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln.  On that sacred 
policy our state repeatedly has decided that it is willing to
 stand.  Illinois is a great member of the family of American 
Commonwealths, with its wealth, it schools and colleges and 
churches, its newspapers, its resources of man power, and its 
productive hills and valleys and its manifest destiny toward 
still greater things.  Its interests are closely woven into the 
fabric of all our national interests.  Its conscience merges into 
the national conscience.  Its vision is clear; its aspiration is 
noble and courageous.  My friends, when Illinois decides that it 
is irreconcilable on any international question, that decision 
must be respected as one based upon a sincere love of country.  
The opinion of Illinois is not lightly to be considered either 
in the councils of our own national leaders, nor in the chancelleries 
beyond the seas.

Illinois is for international peace.  What state is not?  
Illinois would be the last to interfere with any program which 
promised assurance of release from menace of future wars.  We sent 
more than a quarter of a million young men to join the colors 
under General Pershing.  Our total casualties were 18,264.  There 
is not a city ward or precinct, not a rural village and scarcely

- 13 -
a countryside in Illinois that was not directly touched by the 
horror of the World War.  Thus we have rejoiced at the outlawry 
of war treaties proposed first by our own country, and later indorsed 
in writing by all the important powers of the world.  We 
have earnestly supported the principle that arbitration must replace 
appeals to arms in the settlement of international dispute. 
We have indorsed the recent efforts to substitute a limitation of 
armament for competitive building of navies.  Those are facts which 
prove our essential love of peace.  We may differ as to agencies, 
but we are all inspired by the same ideals.  We desire peace but 
we are not pacifists.  We are courageous enough to hate and fear 
war.  We shall never be an aggressor against another nation unless 
we are forced to take up the sword in defense of our national 
honor and security.  And yet we have once again followed the counsel 
of our fathers in maintaining our national defense against 
possible aggression by others.

In closing I want to thank you all for the earnest consideration 
you have given to my candidacy.  I have discussed for 
you at some length the character of Illinois and of its millions 
of sons and daughters.  In doing so I hope I have left with you 
a conviction that I have a sincere appreciation of the new responsibility 
I am seeking at your hands.  If, as your representative 
in the Senate, I shall be permitted to serve your vast interests 
and assist you in enabling the opinion and conscience of 
Illinois to exert in its proper influence upon our countrymen, 
I shall deem it a sacred trust.  In assuming that trust I shall have 
two main objectives: the progressive development of our own state's 


- 14 -
well being, and independence of action and security of our country.

I thank you.

*******

[10-29-29]
Reprinted from "The Chicago Defender," October 12, 1929

At Mrs. McCormick's Headquarters

Seated left to right: Mrs. Joana Snowden, Ruth Hanna McCormick, congressman-at-large, and Lorrain Johnson. Standing:
Irene M. Gaines, Mary Church Terrell, Margaretta P. Wolf, LeRoy M. Hardin, campaign manager of our group; Jennie
Lawrence and Alice Sutton. They are going over plans for Mrs. McCormick's campaign for United States senatorship. 

Mrs. McCormick Has Record of Fairness 

One of the busiest sections of Mrs. 
Ruth Hanna McCormick's headquarters 
in the London Guarantee building, 
from which she is directing her campaign
for the United States senate, is
the group of offices occupied by a staff
of five Colored men and women.

The enthusiasm and energy displayed 
in the headquarters is reported to be due 
to the fact that the Colored people of the 
country, city and state, have been particularly
interested in Mrs. McCormick's 
record of the last 12 months. The manager
at the Colored headquarters told the 
Defender that their work of interesting 
the voters in Mrs. McCormick's behalf 
had been made easier by three incidents. 

The first of these was an address delivered 
at a Colored mass meeting in the 
1928 campaign, in which Mrs. McCormick
raised her right hand and pledged
herself to fight for enforcement of the 14th and 
15th amendments to the United States
Constitution. The McCormick workers
display records in the house of representatives
which show that Mrs. McCormick,
a few months later, on the house
floor in Washington fulfilled that pledge. 
She then voted for the Tinkham amendment 
to the census and reapportionment 
bill, which demanded that southern states
either permit Colored men and women 
to exercise their right to vote under the
Constitution or that the southern states
should submit to a reduction of their representation
in the lower house of congress,
as also provided in the Constitution. 

The McCormick workers have a large 
collection of clippings taken from the
newspapers of the southern states in 
which Mrs. McCormick was abused during 
the last spring and summer because
she had on one occasion sat at a table with
Congressman Oscar DePriest of Illinois in 
the house restaurant in the capitol at
Washington. Mrs. McCormick has paid 
no attention to these criticisms because, 
in her opinion, they deserve none.

When a reporter for the Defender 
visited her headquarters he found there
an organization of workers, all of them 
quite evidently filled with the spirit of 
confidence and friendly good will. In one
suite of four rooms was installed a busy 
staff who will be in charge of Mrs. McCormick's 
campaign among the Colored 
people. Those include Mrs. Mary Church 
Terrell, brought to Chicago at the suggestion 
of outstanding Chicago Colored leaders.
Leroy M. Hardin, identified with the 
late Medill McCormick's last campaign
and the head of Mrs. McCormick's Colored 
organization in her primary campaign
for congress last year, is in charge
of the organization of the Colored men. 
Another pillar of strength in the group 
is Mrs. Irene McCoy Gaines, who has 
held office in several of the leading civic,
fraternal and political organizations of
the county and state, and is the Colored
state committeewoman in Illinois. Mr. 
Hardin is assisted by Miss Lorraine Johnson,
a stenographer and secretary, and 
Mrs. Alice M. Sutton is engaged in a 
similar capacity for Mrs. Terrell and Mrs. 
Gaines.

In addition to the members of this staff
in the state headquarters there are two 
women who are in charge of other activities:
Miss Jennie Lawrence is in command
of the Cook county organization.

Mrs. Terrell has been in Chicago several
weeks meeting old friends and making
new ones and going about her plans for 
advancing the cause of Mrs. McCormick.
Mrs. Terrell has a record of distinction 
and is known throughout the country as
an effective speaker, an able organizer
and as a woman of wide culture. She 
was the first president of the National
Association of Colored Women, she was 
the first woman of her race to serve on
an American board of education. This
service was performed in Washington, 
D. C., and her term of 11 years broke all
records for length of service in the
national capital. Mrs. Terrell attended
the quinquennial congress in Berlin several 
years ago, where she was particularly 
useful because of her command of 
English, French and German. Mrs. Terrell
befriended the Colored soldiers during 
and after the war and successfully intervened 
in their behalf with Chief Justice
Taft, then secretary of war, when an attempt
was made to dismiss a group of 
Colored doughboys without honor. 

Mrs. McCormick told the Defender reporter
that she was delighted to be able
to induce Mrs. Terrell to remain in Illinois
and assist the Colored women of 
Chicago and the state in organizing for 
the campaign. Her decision to accept the 
assistance of Mrs. Terrell was influenced 
by the cordial endorsements given of Mrs. 
Terrell's ability and experience by various 
leaders of the Colored group in Chicago
and elsewhere. The personnel at Mrs. 
McCormick's headquarters believe that
Mrs. Terrell will be able to help the Colored
women of the state materially in the 
coming campaign.

Soon after the 19th amendment was
passed, granting suffrage to women, Mrs.
Terrell was appointed by the national
Republican committee as director of Colored 
women in the eastern division. She
worked at the national Republican headquarters
during the day and made 
speeches at night and party leaders of
that time credited her with excellent 
service. She has worked in every campaign
since that time.

The reporter for the Defender found 
Mrs. Terrell much more willing to talk
about Mrs.  McCormick than about herself. 
Mrs. Terrell is a woman of charming
personality and of intense enthusiasm.
Modesty is apparently one of her chief 
viruses and Mrs. McCormick's success in 
the present campaign is one absorbing
interest. 

"I know we shall have no trouble in 
convincing the Colored women as well as 
the men of the desirability of Mrs. McCormick
as their candidate for the United 
States senate," said Mrs. Terrell. "Mrs.
McCormick does not need to tell the
Colored people of Chicago what she and 
her husband, the late Senator McCormick,
have done for them, as her friendly service 
is written upon the record of various 
public offices where the McCormicks have
placed the names of Colored men and
women on the rolls. I was particularly 
impressed by the manner in which Senator
McCormick had obtained a place for 
Elmer J. Myers as a clerk in the postoffice. 
Mrs. McCormick, at the written 
request of Mrs. Susie Myers, interested 
herself further in the matter and was 
successful in obtaining for Mr. Myers a
position as a foreman in the postoffice. I 
am sure that Mrs. Myers has not forgotten
the grateful letter she wrote to 
Mrs. McCormick as Mrs. McCormick had
obtained a promotion and higher pay for 
her husband.

"That is only one of many instances 
of the consideration that Mrs. McCormick
has given and is giving to the Colored
citizens. I know something of her record
in Washington with relation to matters 
affecting the Colored race and I hope to
tell about those things to all the Colored
voters of Illinois or as many of them as
is possible to reach." 

LeRoy M. Hardin goes into the McCormick-
for-senator campaign with a wide
acquaintance gained during his previous 
political work. His offices are equipped
with all facilities for reaching the Colored
voters of the city and state and he is
already well on his way in the responsible
position which he holds. The last word 
to the defender reporter at the main
headquarters was, "Please come again
and tell all your friends and our friends
where we are." 

409

FREE LECTURE

Ruth Hanna McCormick

By a Noted Lecturer of Washington, D. C.

WHY WE MUST VOTE FOR
RUTH McCORMICK

Sunday 3:30 p.m., November 17, 1929
At Masonic Hall, 205 N. Walnut
CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS 


Facts About
Ruth Hanna McCormick

CANDIDATE FOR 
United States Senator
FROM ILLINOIS

WHO IS MRS. McCORMICK?
WHAT HAS SHE DONE?

Mrs. McCormick is one of the two Congressmen-at-Large from Illinois, having received more votes than any other candidate on the Republican state ticket in the general election of November, 1928.

She is a member of the important Committee on Naval Affairs of the House of Representatives.

She is the owner and publisher of the Daily Republic, Rockford, Illinois.

She is the owner and director of a 2,400 acre farm near Byron, Illinois.  The farm breeds, raises and merchandises cattle, hogs and chickens . The Holstein-Friesian herd is one of the finest in Illinois.  The dairy produces large quantities of certified milk daily for the Chicago and Rockford markets.

As a practical farmer she early became interested in farm legislation and vigorously assisted in the passage of the Farm Bill which is now a law and under which the Federal Farm Board is now operating.

Mrs. McCormick was the chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Women's Suffrage Association and aided in securing the passage of legislation, leading to the suffrage amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  Previously she had aided in a campaign to pass a suffrage law in the Illinois legislature.  She was the first woman elected by the State of Illinois to the position of Republican National Committeewoman for the state.  From 1919 to 1924, she was chairman of the first Woman's Executive Committee of the Republican National Committee.

She has long been a member of the Women's Trade Union League, the Consumer's League, the Child Welfare Association and other organizations identified with improvement in social, labor, civic and economic conditions.

Mrs. McCormick is a dry and has definitely taken a position in complete accordance with that of President Hoover favoring enforcement of the 18th amendment, and the Volstead Act.

Mrs. McCormick was reared in a Quaker home.  She attends the Presbyterian church in the rural community near her farm.  She is a member of the Eastern Star and of the Order of Rebekah.
-2-


RUTH HANNA McCORMICK

Ruth Hanna McCormick, Congressman-at-Large from Illinois, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, March 27, 1880.  She is a daughter of Marcus Alonzo Hanna and Charlotte Rhodes Hanna.  She was reared in a Quaker household and received her education at Hathaway Brown SChool, Cleveland, Dobbs Ferry, New York, and at Miss Porter's School at Farmington, Connecticut.

In her sixteenth year, Ruth Hanna, learned her first lesson in politics when her father successfully directed the campaign of William McKinley for President, in opposition to William Jennings Bryan, who in that year had come to the front as the "peerless" leader and eloquent spokesman of the Democratic Party.  Miss Hanna, on vacation from school, accompanied her father on his visits to several western states and amid the stirring events of the memorable campaign, she acquired an interest in political issues and methods of political organization which has only been strengthened by the later years.

After the election of Mr. McKinley, Miss Hanna had the privilege of meeting and knowing well a large member of the associates of the President and of Mark Hanna.  But her interest was not limited to her school work and the early lessons in how campaigns are organized and elections won.  Her father, true to his Quaker traditions, had made sure that a part of her education was the acquiring of a habit of work.  After school hours in Cleveland, she spent considerable time in her father's offices.  Two of her summer vacations
-3-

were spent away from home, one in the coal mining districts of Pennsylvania where she lived among the miners and another in the Iron Range of Minnesota, where she lived among the workers.  These experiences, while, of course, not affording a thorough knowledge of labor conditions and economics, did make enduring impressions upon which are founded a life long interest in the welfare and progress of those who live by toil.  When Mr. McKinley's campaign was launched in 1896 upon the issue of "the full dinner pail," she understood fully the significance of the slogan.

In 1897, her father was sent to the United States Senate and in Washington, she had a large opportunity to study statesmen and statecraft.  She spent many hours in the Senate gallery and in her father's office assisting in secretarial work and in watching the progress of important legislation.  On many occasions, she was hostess at the breakfasts in the Hanna home at which gathered the political leaders of the day.  After the assassination of President McKinley, she was brought into frequent contact with Theodore Roosevelt and in 1900, began that loyal friendship with continued until Mr. Roosevelt's death.

Ruth Hanna was married to Joseph Medill McCormick on June 10, 1903, at Cleveland.  While for several years and she and Mr. McCormick did not participate activity in public affairs, they had a common interest in social, economic and political trends.  A part of a winter in this period was spent in the Chicago University Settlement in the Stock Yards District.  A few years later, Mr. McCormick decided upon a political career and in 1913, was elected as Representative in the Illinois State Legislature.  He served there for two terms and in 1916 was elected Congressman-at-Large from Illinois and in 1918, was elected to the United States Senate.  Mr. McCormick died in Washington on February 25, 1925, a week before the expiration of his term in the Senate.  He was buried in the wooded lot adjoining the Middle Creek Presbyterian Church, in Winnebago County, Illinois, at which rural congregation Mr. and Mrs. McCormick had long attended.

Mrs. McCormick has three children, Katrina, John Medill, and Ruth Elizabeth.  The McCormick home is at Rock River Farms, Byron, Illinois.
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TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PUBLIC SERVICE

Mrs. McCormick early made her choices between a public social career and the less comfortable life of public service.  While she assisted her husband in his study of conditions which called for careful legislation, her activities were largely independent of his.  A year after her marriage she was devoting her time and energy generously to assisting the organization of the Women's Division of the Civic Federation, and Woman's City Club of Chicago, which brought her actively into the field for better government.  She inherited an interest in the effort of labor to organize for its own good and it was quite natural that after observing her father's earnest endeavor to establish better relations between capital and labor Mrs. McCormick as a comparatively young woman became a working member of the Women's Trade Union League.  She also associated herself with the Consumer's League, which undertook to provide better markets for manufactured goods produced in plants where wages and working conditions were more just and humane.  She was the first chairman of the Women's Division of the National Child Welfare Association.

Probably few women are members of more clubs of organized women, but her chief interest in them has not been in their purely social activities, but in the opportunity offered by them to assist in progressive civic programs.  She is a member of the New York and Washington City Club, Woman's City Club of Chicago, Rockford Women's Club, Business and Professional Women's Club, is a vice-president of the Illinois Women's Republican Clubs, and is a member of the Illinois Women's Athletic Club and the Woman's Athletic Club of Chicago.

Mrs. McCormick is a member of the Eastern Star, allied with the Masonic Order, and she is a member of the Rock River Lodge of the Order of Rebekah, which is affiliated with the Odd Fellows.  She is an honorary commissioner for the Chicago Council of Girl Scouts.  She is a contributing member of the Young Women's Christian Association and of the American Red Cross.

The cause of women's suffrage found in Mrs. McCormick an enthusiastic adherent.  In 1914, 1915 and 1916, she was chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Women's Suffrage Association.  She travelled extensively with Dr. Anna
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Howard Shaw.  Mrs. McCormick attended sessions of the Illinois legislature as one of the leaders in the finally successful effort to win the right to vote for Illinois women.

After the 19th amendment was added to the Federal Constitution, Mrs. McCormick undertook to convince women that their only chance to use their vote effectively in molding legislation and selecting deserving public officers was to do so as members of party organizations.  This was clearly in line with her life-long belief in the power of organization.  As a member of the Republican National Committee, she aided in organizing the women members of her party throughout the state of Illinois into the Illinois Women's Republican Clubs, which have become a model for similar organizations in other states.  Mrs. McCormick's useful work in behalf of the party was recognized in 1917, when she was elected National Committeewoman for Illinois, being the first woman chosen by election by her state for that responsible post.  She held that position from 1917 until 1924, and from 1919 to 1924, was Chairman of the first Women's Executive Committee of the Republican National Committee. 

ELECTION TO CONGRESS

After twenty-five years of public service Mrs. McCormick made her first race for public office.  In the fall of 1927, she announced that she would run for the nomination for Congressman-at-Large in the Republican primary election of April 10, 1928.  She did not make the familiar argument that she was induced to run by urgent appeals of many friends, but frankly said that she was a candidate because she wanted the office and believed she was capable of filling the position acceptably.  She made a speaking campaign which carried her into almost all of the 102 counties in Illinois and in the primary election received a total vote of 805,775.  She led her nearest competitor, the late Congressman Henry Rathbone, by 92,670 votes and received 278,073 more votes than her next competitor, Congressman Richard Yates, former Governor of Illinois.  With this encouraging start as a vote-getter within her own party she set out upon a campaign for election, making two additional tours of the state in an open car.  The total distance covered in her two campaigns was more than 34,000 miles.  Traveling sometimes two to three hundred miles a day, addressing an average 
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of three widely separated audiences, she missed only two speaking appointments in the entire campaign and did not keep these only because roads under construction made it impossible.  On the 1928 itinerary in which she appeared on the platform with the candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and United States Senator and others, she established an exceptional record as a tireless campaigner.

Mrs. McCormick's friends were delighted with the announcement of the election results on November 6, 1928.  Not only had she been honored by the first election ever won by a woman for the office of Congressman-at-Large, but she had received more votes than any other state candidate.  Her total was 1,711-651 votes which was 540,131, more than her nearest democratic opponent received.  Mr. Hoover was the only candidate who received more votes in Illinois in the 1928 election than Mrs. McCormick.

A BUSY TERM IN CONGRESS

Having been elected to Congress, Mrs. McCormick immediately went to Washington and opened a suite of offices for the purpose of making an early start in the study of prospective legislation and in organizing a staff prepared to handle the great volume of business which must be disposed of by a Congressman-at-Large representing more than 7,000,000 constituents.  Under ordinary circumstances she would not have taken her seat in Congress until December, 1929, but President Hoover called a special session and Mrs. McCormick was sworn in on April 15, 1929.  President Hoover, in his first message suggested that Congress do the following things:

Create a Federal Farm Board to establish a more profitable system of marketing of agricultural products.  

Revise the tariff so as to give further protection to farm products and make a limited revision of the tariff for the protection of a few industries which may have been placed under a disadvantage because of recent economic changes.

Continuance of the flexible tariff provision to give the President authority to adjust rates on recommendation of the Federal Tariff Commission.

Improvement of waterways transportation as an aid to agriculture.

Repeal of the National Origins Immigrations formula.
The taking of a decennial census in 1930.
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At top: Mrs. McCormick and her children at the farm home on Rock River.  Seated, left to right, Ruth 
Elizabeth, Katrina, Mrs. McCormick.  Standing, Medill McCormick.
At left, below.  Mrs. McCormick and Ruth with a thoroughbred Holstein calf.
At right, Medill with one of his farm pets.

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The two most important of these items in the program of the special session were the creation of a Farm Board and Tariff Revision.  President Hoover said, "I have called this special session of Congress to redeem two pledges given in the last election -- farm relief and limited changes in tariff."

Having supported the farm plan proposed by the Republican platform and advocated by Mr. Hoover in his campaign, Mrs. McCormick at once took a position favoring the passage of the Farm Bill, which overwhelmingly was passed by the House and which is now a law.  In a speech made before the final passage of the bill, Mrs. McCormick said:

"Under all the circumstances I favor enactment of this bill at this extra session.  Any other course will present the danger of another futile session of Congress, aggravation of the farmers' situation and general disappointment at the failure to fulfill the Republican platform and campaign pledge.  Admitting that it is experimental, let us pass it and use it as a basis for future amendment, if found necessary."

As a basis for further consideration and amendment by the Senate, the House of Representatives passed a tariff bill on May 28, 1929.  The bill was then submitted to the Senate, but the upper body was unable to complete a measure and reach a vote and the special session was adjourned in November without any tariff measures having been enacted.  The whole question will again come up for consideration in the present session of Congress.  Mrs. McCormick throughout the special session adhered to the opinion that Congress should carry out the promises made during the national campaign and later urged upon Congress by President Hoover in his first message.  That promise was simply that further tariff protection to farm products should be given and that there should be a limited revision of the tariff for the protection of a few industries.  In the present session, Mrs. McCormick is working for the fulfillment of that clearly expressed program.

Repeal of the National Origins Immigration formula was not acted upon by the Senate and therefore, automatically it went into effect on June 1, 1929.  Mrs. McCormick is in favor of restricting immigration, sharing the President's belief that the National Origins Plan has grave faults.  She believes that these faults will become apparent as the new formula is being given a practical test and that later legislation may be necessary.
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Vigorously supporting the program outlined for great inland waterway systems, Mrs. McCormick has given special attention to the necessity for completing the sixty-three mile section of the Illinois River channel so that the Lakes-to-the-Gulf waterway may be put into service as soon as possible.  Mrs. McCormick was a member of the delegation which made a tour of the Upper Illinois River in company with the late Secretary Good, of the War Department, Governor Emmerson and others.  More recently she was commissioned by Governor Emmerson as a delegate from Illinois to the 25th annual Rivers and Harbors Congress, which held sessions in Washington, and at which all sections of the country were represented.  She was among the first to pledge herself to the support of the plan to obtain from Congress an appropriation of approximately $6,000,000 to enable Illinois to complete work on the section of the Illinois River between Lockport and Utica, thus connecting this link with the chain of deep channels which promise for Illinois and the entire Central West a new era of agriculture and industrial importance and prosperity.

While legislation in the special session necessarily has been limited in its scope, Mrs. McCormick has succeeded in accomplishing a vast amount of work for individuals.  As a Representative-at-Large, the demand for her services is not limited to any one congressional district of the state, but extends to all of the 25 districts.  Therefore, requests for increase of pensions for veterans and their dependents, and requests for help in expediting matters under consideration by the various Departments and Bureaus in Washington, reach her daily from all parts of the state.  So voluminous is the correspondence involved in these duties that Mrs. McCormick has established a bureau of her own for handling these details.

During the long extra session of Congress, Mrs. McCormick has been present at practically all sessions of the House and she voted on all important bills, amendments and resolutions.

THE FARM ON ROCK RIVER

During the 1928 campaign Mrs. McCormick's speeches on the farm issue attracted wide attention and toward the close of the campaign the Republican National Committee induced her to make similar addresses outside of Illinois.  Among other cities in which she made speeches supporting the Republican Farm Program were South Bend,
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Indiana; Janesville, Wisconsin, and Duluth, Minnesota.  To all of her great audiences, in Illinois and elsewhere, Mrs. McCormick spoke both as a Republican and as a farmer.  Her own farm on the Rock River near Byron, Illinois, has 2,400 acres of improved land.  From the Rock River Farms are shipped upwards of 1,000 quarts of certified milk per day.  The Holstein-Friesian herd is one of the largest and best in the state.  A specialty is made of breeding and while the McCormick stock is exhibited at various states fairs, the chief purpose of the Rock River Farms organization is to produce its own strain of fine blooded stock.  The Rock River Farms entries in stock shown never include any prize animals bought from other herds.


Being a vigorous supporter of the Federal and State regulations aimed at the elimination of tuberculosis and other diseases from dairy herds, Mrs. McCormick has made her own herd a model for the whole state.  The McCormick herd was given the first Illinois certificate for dairy cattle qualifying as free from contagious abortion.  This distinction was awarded after three successive tests supervised by the University of Illinois.

Mrs. McCormick believes that the question of pure food is vitally involved in the scientific breeding of fine cattle and the effort to produce milk that is 100 per cent in nourishment and purity.  Her interest in pure milk was first inspired by the necessity of obtaining such milk for her own children.

In 1928, she undertook to iodize the milk from her dairy by the simple process of feeding the cows powdered seaweed which contains a substantial element of iodine.  After extensive tests, it was found that the milk produced by the cows, so fed, contained a sufficient amount of iodine to justify an opinion that 

Haying time at Rock River Farms: Mrs. McCormick at extreme left.
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such milk might be a preventative of goitre.  This successful experiment has attracted attention of dairymen, physicians and scientists throughout America and in foreign countries.

Her blooded cattle and model dairy are more than casual interests; they are business enterprise conducted on a large scale and organized by the practical purpose of paying a profit.  These farm activities are supplemented by the raising of hogs for the market and recently a poultry farm has been added which has 2,000 laying White Leghorn hens.  Most of the grain and hay raised on the McCormick farm is used for feed.  The whole establishment is under constant supervision of Mrs. McCormick and has been for the last eight years.

Her interest in farming, therefore, is much deeper than an academic one and explains her enthusiasm in behalf of any or all legislation that purposes to restore agriculture to an economic equality with other industries. 

Mrs. McCormick was for some time the only woman director of the National Holstein-Friesian Association.  She is a member of the Advisory Board of the United States Good Roads Association.

SOME QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The question discussed on this page have appeared occasionally in letters received at the Ruth Hanna McCormick headquarters.

QUESTION:  Why should not Mrs. McCormick have more experience in the House of Representatives before she seeks membership in the Senate?
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ANSWER:  The House of Representatives in Washington
has never been regarded as a necessary training
school for those who aspire to membership in the
United States Senate.  As a matter of fact 67 of the 
present members of the United States Senate have
never served a term in the House of Representatives.  
Of the 96 members of the present Senate only 29
served in Congress before going to the Senate.
Neither of the present two Illinois members of the
Senate had been to Congress before election to the
Senate.
QUESTION:  Is it necessary for Mrs. McCormick
to resign as Congressman-at-Large before making her
campaign for the Senate?
ANSWER:  It is not necessary because, if elected
to the Senate, Mrs. McCormick will not take her
seat until March, 1931, the end of her term as
Congressman-at-Large.  In the meantime she will
serve in two winter sessions of the 71st Congress in
addition to having served in the long special session
which opened April 15, 1929, and was adjourned
November 22, 1929.
QUESTION:  If Mrs. McCormick were to seek re-election
to her present office as Congressman-at-Large
would it be necessary for her to announce her candidacy
and make her campaign in 1929, almost two
years before her present term expires?
ANSWER:  Yes.  Her present term expires in March,
1931, and if she wished to remain in the House, she
would have to make a campaign in 1929 and in the
spring of 1930, because the primary election for the 
selection of candidates for the House of Representatives
for the Congressional term starting in 1931 is
to be held on April, 1930.
QUESTION:  Why are candidates for the House and
the Senate nominated and elected so long before their
term of office begins?
ANSWER:  Because the founders of our government
so arranged it in the early days and, while the conditions
have changed, the constitution has not been
amended in that respect.
QUESTION:  Is Mrs. McCormick a stockholder or
director in the Chicago Tribune, and if so, how does it
happen that she disagrees on several important issues
with the attitude of the Chicago Tribune?
ANSWER:  Mrs. McCormick is neither a stockholder
nor a director in the Chicago Tribune.  Mrs. McCormick 
has absolutely no connection with, or authority
over, any business or editorial policy of the Tribune.
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FROM MRS. MCCORMICK'S
PUBLIC ADDRESSES

"I do not believe in the League Court because it
is still a part of the League.  An an advocate of peace
I oppose the League Court because it is a part of
the League of Nations which was organized on a
basis of preponderance of force.  I am against the
League Court, with or without reservations, because
I believe that adherence to the Court will inevitably
draw us into League affairs.  I am for maintaining
our American independence of action." --Speech at
Winchester, Ill., Jan. 20, 1930.
_________________
"I am a dry.  I stand by the demand of President
Hoover for enforcement of the 18th Amendment and
of the Volstead Act."
_________________
"It is to be hoped that time will bring the tariff
problem to its proper status of a plain, common
sense, business proposition." -- Executive's Club of
Chicago, November 1, 1929.
_________________
"While I believe in military preparedness and an
adequate national defense, I favor making every effort
toward international peace and I believe that the
Kellogg Peace Treaties, outlawing war, are the
greatest step ever taken in that direction."
__________________
"A nation's conscience may be judged pretty accurately
by that country's attitude toward those who 
went to war that their people and their government
might survive."
__________________
"Immigration should be rigidly restricted along 
humane lines for the protection of American Labor."
__________________
"There is little doubt that the question of government
assistance for the Illinois waterway will be
placed before Congress in the next regular session.
I want to take this opportunity to say that the request
for this small appropriation shall have my
vigorous support." -- Park Ridge Community Picnic,
July 4, 1929.
__________________
"If the children of laborers have better schools,
more libraries and greater opportunity for enjoying
life and making the most of it, it is due to the
efforts of American labor." -- Labor Day Speech, Rock
Island, Illinois, September, 1929.
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WHAT ILLINOIS EDITORS SAY OF MRS. McCORMICK

Chicago (Ill.) Herald-Examiner

Soon there will be a woman in the Senate.  Mrs. Ruth Hanna McCormick, daughter of Mark Hanna, now in the House of Representatives, will be sent to the Senate next year by the people of Illinois.  The recognize earnestness and ability and are proud of their intelligent women.

Kewanee (Ill.) Star-Courier

Mrs. McCormick is a resourceful woman.  She is the nearest approach in America to England's Nancy Astor.  As a senator, in the same desk where her husband at, she would be a dynamic force.  Her two years as congresswomen for Illinois would constitute good training for her in the contemplation of greater responsibilities. 

Lincoln (Ill.) Courier

It would be difficult to find a woman in the middle west who has the grasp on the national political affairs that Mrs. McCormick commands.

Mascoutah (Ill.) Herald

This will be no ordinary campaign.  A candidate like Mrs. McCormick will bring together these who wish the best for their state and their nation.

WHAT OTHER EDITORS SAY

Minneapolis (Minn.) Tribune

She is known as a keen and discerning student of current economic problems and a champion of clean government.  In the lower House of Congress she has commanded respect.  Her record is one of constructive effort.

Utica (N. Y.) Press

Mrs. McCormick has demonstrated capacity as a campaigner and as a legislator.

Philadelphia (Pa.) Record

Her record since her election will stand her in good stead.  She brought to Washington an intensely human view-point.  She was shown a fine and sympathetic appreciation f the needs of the people.  She has displayed independence of thought.

Forth Worth (Tex.) Star Telegram

She enjoys a good record as a member of Congress, and possess the advantage of a political heritage that is hardly equalled by any other woman in politics.

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.