College--G.O.P. Marriage Is Still Going Strong

When the College catapulted Thomas E. Dewey into Harvard's honorary Presidency Wednesday, it was not only applauding the Empire State executive; it was also following a tradition as hoary as old ivy and the Charles Regatta. Without slighting Mr. Dewey, it may be said that the College would probably have voted just as happily for any other G.O.P. candidate, whether living or dead. It has always been thus. Since the days of the first President, Harvard, supposed den of political pinks, has consistently lined up on the conservative side, the side of the Federalists, the Whigs, and currently the Republicans.

Only twice since George Washington took his oath of office has the College deserted the Right side. In the 1850's the students left the temperate Whig Party, and throw themselves in with the zealous Republicans. Sla very was one issue which could make radicals of Harvard men, but when the G.O.P. began to drift down the conservative stream, the College followed. And in 1912 the Republican interests of the College were so divided between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt '80, that the students, like the nation, picked a Democrat as Chief Executive.

Counting out these temporary defections, however, the College has consistently demonstrated that it is far from the hothouse to rum, radicalism, and rebellion that it is thought to be. It has not made its point quietly, however. Noise, color, fire, hot words, and hard fists have been a part of every campaign.

The first sign that Harvard was ready to take sides came shortly before the election of 1800. The Hasty Pudding Club, which then represented the College's view fairly accurately, made a declaration of policy. "Three cheers" for Washington, it said, and "three more" for John Adams, 1755, but as for Republican-Democrat Tom Jefferson, "May he exercise his elegant literary talents for the benefit of the world in some retreat, secure from the troubles and dangers of political life." When his campaign brought Jefferson to Harvard he was booed, and the College showed that it hugged warmly the Federalist philosophy of New England.

Until 1824 the Federalists controlled the Massachusetts Government, and at Harvard Federalists dominated the Corporation and the student body. As the old party of Washington died, its policies were handed down to the Whigs and to the Whigs Harvard turned next. The friendship with the Whigs lasted through the Presidency of a Harvard son, John Quincy Adams, '87, through what must have been dreary Jacksonian years, and up until 1848.

In that year Charles Sumner, 1830, and ex-President Adams joined with other Harvard graduates to form the Free Soil Party. College politics then became tangled for a few years; the Board of Overseers, for instance, was a strange mixture of Northern Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats. But by 1860, the dominant Republican sentiment, which has lasted down to the present, was clear. A poll of the Class of 1860 turned up nine Democrats, 23 Constitutional Unionists, and 74 Republicans. The Unionists held the College's first torchlight parade shortly before election that year, carrying signs such as "Bell (the party candidate) and the Belles, 1860, Harvard."

Black Bottles

The development of the torch-light parade was delayed by the Civil War, but in 1868 the College, Republicans all, terrified Boston. Every student put on his class uniform, bought himself a shingle, a plug hat, and a black bottle with a wick in it, and went on the march for Grant and Seymour.

Disruption in the streets of Boston and Cambridge was so great that four years later College authorities forbade students to march as Harvard men. This was easily taken care of. The Class of 1873 tramped all over the neighborhood with huge transparencies, warning, "Whoever says we are Harvard Seniors is a Liar and a Villain."

"Hayes and Wheeler and Reform in the Faculty, Honesty in Policies and Cribs in Examinations," was the battle cry of the 1876 Republicans. From that campaign came the College's only original campaign poem:

"Half a league, half a league,

Half a league townward,

Boldy from Harvard Square

Rode the five hundred.

What, a conductor there!

Put him out! Pay no fare!

Yelled they from Harvard Square.

Yelled the five hundred."

By 1884, hundreds of Democrats had infiltrated into the College. A poll showed that Blaine was the favorite, but only by 483 to 463. The Cleveland and Hendricks backers did not look forward to marching in a traditional Republican parade, so they asked the entire College to rally for Cleveland. The matter was submitted to a vote, and tradition won out; the College voted 569 to 363 to march Republican. This parade was probably the most glorious in College history. Cambridge Police marched in front, followed by a Fife and Drum Corps, followed by the entire cheering, chanting student body, Democrats and Republicans. Torches in hand, the boys weaved in and out of Boston sidestreets winding up at the Brunswick Hotel, where "The Plumed Knight" himself, James G. Blaine, reviewed the mob.

Dems Are Quiet

Democrats at Harvard were hardly so volatile as their opponents. In 1888, for instance, there were 650 Republicans and 493 Democrats. The backers of Benjamin Harrison held a mass rally in Tremont Temple, Boston, with Edward Everett Hale, 1839, as chairman and ex-Governors George Robinson and John Long, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, '71, as speakers. Three days later a three-gun salute sparked the big march for Harrison. But as for the Democrats, what was apparently their only campaign activity was listed by the CRIMSON as follows: "G. S. Howe '89 speaks tonight at a democratic (sic) rally in Georgetown."

In 1892 came the first clear indication that Republicanism was not so rampant in the Faculty and Graduate Schools as in the College. Harrison swept the entire University, 1114 to 851, and the College, 674 to 458, but Cleveland took the Graduate Schools, and the Faculty voted 52 to 6 for the Democrat.

The Democrats were walloped badly in 1896, however. Harvard was a place that thrived on sound money and good gold. To beat William Jennings Bryan, the sound money forces behind McKinley, the Republican, and Palmer, the Independent Democrat, joined forces in a huge intercollegiate parade in Boston. A little too much fireworks and a trifle too much gaiety brought police billies down on gold standard skulls. But this kind of showmanship won followers, and Bryan was left with only 108 supporters.

Further outbreaks of political fervor led the CRIMSON and the Student Council to ask for decorum in the 1904 and 1908 demonstration for favorite son Teddy Roosevelt '80 and W. H. Taft. Ralliers left their feet in 1912, however, and piled into flivvers for the first "flying" rallies--all for the Progressive Party and T. R. But T. R.'s Harvard chances were damaged by President Eliot's declaration for Woodrow Wilson, who wound up with 735 College votes, compared to 475 for T. R. and 365 for Taft.

Wilson Dropped

From the Fall of '12 to the Spring of 1916 isolationist sentiment set in at the College. A Spring poll gave Roosevelt 660 votes to Wilson's 591 and Hughes' 348. When T. R. did not run, Hughes was the beneficiary, piling up 1140 tallies in November to 627 for Wilson. Harvard was further out of line with national sentiment than the Eastern colleges, which gave Hughes an average of only 10 votes to 9 for Wilson.

If Harvard had voted in the Spring of 1920, the election would have gone, eight years prematurely, to Herbert Hoover. When a smoke-filled room nominated Harding for the job that summer, the College got right in step, giving the Great Gamaliel the nod over Gov. Cox by 270 votes. But the Democratic campaign at College featured a major address by Cox in the Union and a boost from President Eliot. These two factors now made the Democrats much stronger at Harvard than at other Eastern schools.

Once the roaring '20' a got started Democrats at the College never had a chance. Coolidge (in 1924) and Hoover (in 1928) won the undergraduate polls handily, although the Law School returned a large majority for Alfred E. Smith in 1928. Two parties of Harvard "indifference" grew up in that decade. 1924 saw the rise and fall of the Nihilists, a masked and secret society of 50 men who backed Little Codfish Cabot (a dummy at the top of a telephone pole) for President and Joe Dube, "the favorite of Soldiers Field," for V. P.

Royalists Ride

The Nihilists gave way to the King George for President Club in '28. This band of Royalists adopted a platform urging "amsigamation of Canada and the U. S., Grenadier Guards in place of Harvard cops, and cascara for Farmer's Relief." The Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 came up to speak for Smith, and Republicans joined with the Cotton Workers' union in a Hoover parade.

The biggest surprise in the 1932 College poll was not that Hoover licked F. D. R., 1211 to 395, but that Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate, fell only nine votes short of Roosevelt. Still the surprise was not half so significant as the statistical fact that depression and national misery could only serve to strengthen Harvard's faith in the Republican Way.

Landon Sneaks In

In 1936, College Democrats came the closest they have ever come to winning a two-party election. Landon, with 1016 votes, was only 21 votes ahead of F. D. R. In the Law School, however, Roosevelt won, and on the eve of the poll, 81 Uni-