In the last few days of the campaign, Aline Barnsdall, a multimillionairess, came to Craig and told her she had decided to put ten thousand dollars into the fight. Craig told her to take it to Dick Otto, and needless to say she was welcomed at headquarters. Among other things we did with that money was to put on a huge mass meeting in the prize-fight arena in Los Angeles. I had never been in such a place before and have not since. Speaking from the “ring,” I could face only one fourth of the audience at any one time, so I distributed my time and spoke to each fourth in turn. There were four loudspeakers, so everybody could hear, and the audience enjoyed the novelty. The speech was relayed and heard by an audience in the huge auditorium in San Francisco; so I dealt with the problems of southern California for a while and then with those of the north.
I remember on the afternoon before the election a marvelous noon meeting that packed the opera house in Los Angeles. Our enemies had made much of the fact that the unemployed, otherwise known as “bums,” were coming to the city on freight trains looking for free handouts. This had been featured in motion pictures all over the state and had front-page prominence in the Los Angeles Times. I told the audience that Harry Chandler, owner of the Times, had himself come into Los Angeles on a freight train in his youth. I shouted, “Harry, give the other bums a chance!” I think the roar from the audience must have been audible as far as the Times building.
No words could describe the fury of that campaign in its last days. I was told of incidents after it was over. A high-school girl of Beverly Hills told me of being invited to the home of a classmate for dinner. The master of that home poured out his hatred of the EPIC candidate, and the schoolgirl remarked, “Well, I heard him speak, and he sounded to me quite reasonable.” The host replied, “Get up and get out of this house. Nobody can talk like that in my home.” He drove her out without her dinner.
Another woman in Hollywood, a poet rather well known, told me of a businessman she knew who had made his will and got himself a revolver, and was going to the studio where I was scheduled to speak on election night; if I won he was going to shoot me. I did not win, and in my Beverly Hills home that night a group of our friends, including Lewis Browne, sat and awaited the returns. Very soon it became evident that I had been defeated, and Craig, usually a most reserved person in company, sank down on the floor, weeping and exclaiming, “Thank God, thank God!” Our dear Lewis, whom she knew and trusted, came to her and said, “Its all right, Craig. We all understand. None of us wanted him to win.”
Many people rejoiced that night, and many others wept; I was told that the scenes at the EPIC headquarters were tragic indeed. I won’t describe them, but will take you back to that old home in Greenwood, Mississippi, where an elderly judge sat listening to his radio set. It was Craig’s Papa, the one who had “overspoke himself” a little more than twenty years earlier. He had owned a great plantation, much land, and two beautiful homes. He was the president of two banks, vice president of others—one of which he had founded; and in all of them he was a heavy stockholder. The panic had come, the banks had failed, and under the law he was liable to the depositors up to twice the amount of his own holdings. It had wiped him out.
I had warned him of what was coming. I had warned his son, Orman, who also was a lawyer and ran the law business that had been his father’s. Orman had replied, “To show you how much I think of your judgment I will tell you that I am buying a thirty-thousand-dollar property.” That may sound ungracious, but it wouldn’t if you knew Orman, who was a great “kidder.” He bought the property on credit, and he was in trouble too.
Interesting evidence of the respect in which Leflore County held “the Judge”: the people who took over his homes did not let him know it; they let him use both houses for his remaining years. I suppose they did it by a secret arrangement with Orman; anyhow, he was there in his Greenwood house, with his large gardens. All his Negroes were dependent upon him; they worked the gardens and lived on the food—corn and beans, tomatoes, and milk from the cows.
Such was the situation when the Judge sat at his radio set, listening to the news of the California election. It should not surprise you to learn that he was hoping for his son-in-law’s victory, and disappointed at his son-in-law’s defeat.
He was a proud old gentleman. With Craig’s approval, I had sent him a check for two hundred dollars—and that check was in his pocket, uncashed, when he died. But one other gift he did accept. One of his daughters wrote that his greatest trouble was that he had nothing to read. I was taking some fifty magazines, and still do. Every week, after I had read them, my secretary would bundle them up and mail them to the Judge, and it touched our hearts to hear of his pleasure.