THIRD-PARTY IDEOLOGIES 349 



'What good does that power do North Dakota'? they said. The dignity 

 of the chairman of the Senate's chief committee was probably less imposing 

 among his own constituents than anywhere else in the world. The Con- 

 servatives, on the other hand, charged McCumber with having played 

 for re-election by flirting with the Senate farm bloc. . . . Also, in twenty- 

 four years in office McCumber had accumulated the usual enemies, while 

 his aloofness had prevented him from acquiring a corresponding number 

 of militant friends. . . ," 14 McCumber also had taken a prominent hand 

 in the shaping of the Tariff Act of 1922, which sent tariff schedules sky- 

 rocketing to a new high. This was something that many progressives 

 would not allow his constituents to forget. 



lowans, normally less iconoclastic than the people of Wisconsin, Minne- 

 sota, and North Dakota, did not hesitate to elect an aggressive radical like 

 Smith W. Brookhart to the Senate. The German vote, prohibition, and 

 the World War had a hand in this uprising. "But the common bases of 

 revolt were the low price of farm products and the high price of every- 

 thing else; high freight, high taxes, and opposition to the Esch-Cummins 

 Law, to the Federal Reserve Board, to ship subsidy, and to 'Wall Street' 

 influences generally." 



Brookhart captured the seat that had been vacated by Senator William 

 S. Kenyon, who became a federal judge. The old-guard Republicans, 

 instead of putting up a real leader with a real policy, bungled things by 

 allowing four regular candidates to divide the vote among themselves in 

 the primaries. Brookhart, "the cowhide radical," got 42 per cent of the 

 votes, was nominated and finally elected. 10 



In Nebraska, a more radical state than Iowa, two progressives were 

 elected, one a Republican senator and the other a Democratic governor. 

 The new senator, R. B. Howell, an "educated gentleman" with less shock- 

 ing views and mannerisms than Brookhart, defeated Senator Gilbert N. 

 Hitchcock by a majority of 72,085. Local factors played a role in this elec- 

 tion as they did in Iowa. 



The new Nebraska governor was Charles W. Bryan, the brother of "the 

 perennial W. J." "Charley" Bryan had a long, checkered career. He had 

 been an Omaha cigar-store operator; an advisor, secretary, and "man 



14. Chester H. Rowell, "The Political Cyclone in North Dakota," World's 

 XL VI (July, 1922), pp. 265-67. 



15. Rowell, in World's Work., XL VI (August, 1923), pp. 478-81. 



