Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 186, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1919 — WILL H. HAYS, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CHAIRMAN, AS SEEN BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON, INDIANA AUTHOR [ARTICLE]

WILL H. HAYS, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CHAIRMAN, AS SEEN BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON, INDIANA AUTHOR

[From The New York World.] MWRHDTTH NICHOLSON, the well known novelist, who contribute* thle sketch. Is himself an liwlianAn and. »>. emtaefttly 'fitted by birth end association to appreciate and do justice to the peculiar and eiwwrltiK cTuwwcteristlce of the ohalrman of the republican committee. Since he began writing Mr. Nicholson has found time to study law, dicker in politics, engage In coal waning; edit « pewsp-r and travel extensively. He hold> a leading position in the front ranks of Hoosier authors who have made themselves ■."WSown tPsenevw“booSe are read \- a’ novelist he has perhaps t scoot 1 Of titles to his credit, among the best known of which are: "The House of « Thousand Candles." "The port of Missing Men, and “The Valley of Democracy.” A slender, boyish-looking man; an alert, quick-moving man, who walks with a long, swinging stride, clutching a big black portfolio; such is the stranger’s first impression of Will H. Hays, of Sullivan, bld., chainman of the republican national committee. As he crosses a hotel lobby there is a general stir. Men who have been lying in wait rush forward to intercept him at the desk, where he grabs a mass of telegrams and mail turns with a smile to find himself surrounded. Someone relieves him of the portfolio (he’s the kind of fellow people like to do little things for), and he begins to shake hands. It is a long, shapefly hand, and he gives it with a cordial clasp. He does not say “What name?” in the manner of the old-time politician; he gets it instantly, and it ds filed away in the head with a snapshot photograph of the person it belongs to. He has a thin, long face, with a nose that had already achieved a fair length when it took a notion to add a section and tacked it on successfully. His wellshaped head is covered with thick, dark-brown hair. The eyes are brown, too. They are steady, responsive eyes that sadden.or brighten witfi the play of the owner’s quick emotions. His voice is a little nasal, but in conversation pitched low. On the platform it grows a trifle shrill but it carries, and the effect of what he is saying is not spoiled. When he strikes a conversational tone in a speech he plays with his voice in an interesting fashion, or maybe it plays with him, and he can utter the name of Abraham Lincoln in a way to bring tears. Hays is tremendously in earnest, and his capacity for'work is enormous. ' Unfinished business is a tortare to him. While changing his cflothes in a hotel bedroom he talks to visitors, keeps the telephone going (he is a slave of long-distance connections), nibbles a sandwich and reads and answers his telegrams. What he didn’t clear up at his last stop is in the black portfolio, and he will begin reading correspondence and dictating answers the moment he lias made a flying catch of the last car of the train he is scheduled to take. He can work twenty hours a day for a long stretch without apparent fatigue, and in the congressional campaign last fall he made a record of fifty-nine consecutive nights on sleepers. While he answers to Will or Bill, his real name is William Harrison Hays. He has always signed himself Will, perhaps from a feeling that there is something hifalutin and ostentatious about William. When a friend suggested that he should give thought to the appearance and dignity of his name in history, he wrote it out in full, studied it quizzically and then dropped the slap of paper into the wastebasket Puzzles the Politicians. The ways of Hays are interesting because Hays, who is the most unconscious person alive, is different. He is unlike any other politician now in the public eye, and it tickles me to think how he must puzzle and worry some of the grand, gloomy and peculiar statesmen of his- party who feel that theirs is the Godgiven right to hand the people what they think the people need. Hays is not like that He thinks in terms of the whole United States, and he continues to be interesting and impressive even after you know him pretty well and call him Bill and have begun to be disappointed and chagrined because you can’t find any green or yellow streaks in him. He looks like a college senior, but often when you’ve been chaffing him and talking nonsense, he suddenly grows serious and talks like Aegyptus, who was old and knew’ ten thousands things. Indiana has produced a great number of politicians in the one hundred and three years of her existence. She has one president to her credit and more vice presidents than any one cares to count. Thomas Taggart and Harry S. New’ have served their respective parties as national committee chairmen. As both Taggart and New attained seats in the United States senate, a national chairman from Indiana may be considered to be within range of whatever lightnings play over the commonwealth. There, are republicans of seeming sanity who say that Hays is marked for high place. Bering a democrat, who voted twice for Woodrow Wilson, I shall express no opinion on this grave matter beyond predicting that Hays will call the republican national convention |o order next summer with the nomination for governor of Indiana in his pocket If the delegates fail to agree on Wood or Taft, Johnson Or Harding, Goodrich or any other favorite son—but Hays is a mighty good fellow, and I don't care to lose his friendship! Son of a Country Lawyer. Haya was 'born at Sullivan, Suliivan county, November 5, 1879. His (father was of Scotch stock that has fignred hugely in Ohio valley his- 1

tory. John T. Hays practiced law for forty years in the same office, on the square opposite the red brick court house at Sullivan. The office was expanded two years ago to a handsome suite with mahogany furnishings in a new budding opposite the old site. All of John T. Hays’s letter books from the day he began his practice and copies of most of .the pleadings covering his professional Career are preserved by his sons, Will H. and Hinkle. The father w’as an indefatigable worker, a man of probity, with the highest standing at tie Indiana bar, and his practice was not confined to his own county but intruded upon neighboring circuits. There is coal under much of the wheat and corn land on the lower Wabash, and coal and railroad litigation has lent variety to the business usual in country law offices. Will Hays was not an athletic youngster, and as there was little for a boy to do in Sullivan, he spent his leisure, from about his tenth year, browsing in his father’s office, or watching the trial of cases in the court room. An Indiana lad learns politics as he learns the way to the best swimmin’ hole and the place where tihe paw-paws ripen first. So when he was sixteen, young Hays attended his first national convention in St Louis and saw McKinley nominated. Whether he there highly resolved that he would one day call a national convention to order is not known, but from that experience dates his entrance into politics. Born in the Presbyterian faith, it was natural that Wffl should 'Attend Wabash college at Crawfordsville. Wabash was established by Godfearing New’ Englanders to the end that the humanities might be brought to the attention of the young men of what was then a new common wealth. Wabash is one of those foolish institutions where students are expected to study or go home. It has never tried to be a university or anything but just a college. Besides being a place of substantial educational standards, its Americanism has been, from the day it opened its doors, 100 per cent. ■ There is a bronze tablet on the walls that recites the names of the graduates and undergraduates who answered the call to arms in 1861. And President George L. Mclntosh, who is as Scotch as his name, declared at the beginning of the recent „war that if necessary he would nail up the doors of the college until the kaiser had beeh put out of business. At the Hoosier Athens. Hays not only got all there was to get out of his college, but he got a good deal out of Crawfordsville itself. The town has been called the Hoosier Athens, not because of the pernicious activity of the Greek letter fraternities in occasionally painting up the town, but because it has from the beginning been a place where people loved , literature and frequently proved it by writing books. As I was born in this town I shall not scruple to brag of it as a place chockfull of what Riley used to call culturine. And Wabash college is an institution where young gentlemen may learn to write governor’s messages or even messages to congress, and to impart to their public papers the grace and vigor of real literature. ‘Hays did all this and more; he found and married a wife there, the daughter of Judge Thomas. , Whenever there was an oratorical contest forward he entered the lists, and where he did not win the first prize he tied for first place. Receiving his A. B. in due course, he went after an M. A., and won it with a thesis he called “A Discussion of the Negro Problem, Including Law Brief on the Legal Status of the Negro.” This essay did not shatter foundations of the earth and it has never been published; but it is an honest job, well larded with quotations and authorities. He didn’t need the master’s degree particularly; it could be of no use to him in the practice of law at Sullivan; but he went out for it and got it, and getting what he goes for is one of the ways of Hays. On the day he was twenty-one Hays voted and was admitted to the bar. Sullivan County had long been a democratic stronghold. There was not much chance that a young republican no matter how promising, would ever get very far with Sullivan as his home base. Hays was a candidate for prosecutor in 19G2, this being a mere matter of routine, as every two years the nomination is wished ’on some young republican lawyer to allow him to figure as a sacrifice hitter on the score card. 'Hays was defeated —the fact that I his father had been elected to the same office as a republican away back in 1872 failing as a precedent for William. Undismayed, he became county chairman in 1903, and he displayed such zeal as an organizer that “Jim” (now Governor) Goodrich called him to the capital to run the speakers’ bureau. " Any man who can handle, as Hays did, a bunch of temperamental Hoosier orators so they won’t burst out sobbing if switched to Boonville, or Rising Sun when they fully expected to spout to the larger and more critical audiences of Indianapolis, Evansville or Fort Wayne, is dearly destined for immortality. Hays was liking politics so well tfmt in 1906 he tackled the county chairmanship again and elected one <wndi<iote to the general assembly and the sheriff. He was the district chairman for four years, widening’ by house to house visitations his| knowledge of the fried chicken and Quince preserves that grace the

tables of the honest husbandmen of the Wabash valley. Then, in 1914, he was stung by having the state chairmanship conferred upon him. Republican fortunes were at a low etab. The Hoosier progressives were sliding on their own cellar door and not at all anxious to kiss and make up with the haughty republican 'boys in the next yard. There was talk of cutting the republican state convention to a halfday session, but Hays played it for three days, winding up with a love least around the old totem pole. That no element of picturesqueness might be lacking, he went to Cincinnati and borrowed a real elephant from the zoo, inscribed it with the legend, ,“G. O. P., I am back already,” and sent it through the streets of Indianapolis to the strains of joyous music. Continuing in the chairmanship through the campaign of 1916, he carried the state for Hughes by 7,000 votes. This was an achievement. The democrats never had a better organization, and they waged battle with vigor and intelligence. How He Became Chairman. When America went to war, Hays, failing of acceptance for the army because he didn’t weigh enough, became chairman of the state council of defence. He organized Indiana against the kaiser with as muchz enthusiasm as though the great war lord headed a democratic ticket. If anybody in Indiana didn’t do something toward winning the war it was because Hays cpuldn’t find him. He was enjoying himself making Indiana a center of war activities when fate handed him another job. Chairman Wilcox, of the national committee, resigned. Hays was not a member of the committee and he was not a candidate for the chairmanship. The reactionary element thought the vacancy offered a brilliant opportunity to frame things for 1920 by selecting a chairman who would walk blindfolded. The contest at St. Louis was a very pretty little affair. Hays took no part in it, remaining at Indianapolis on his war job. He wasn’t at all anxious for the chairmanship. He is a home-loving man, and to do the job right meant constant travel. When the reactionaries found it impossible to land John T. Adams, of lowa, in the place it fell to Hays, on his record as an organizer and harmonizer. Reports had gone abroad that the man from Sullivan preferred the peace pipe to the tomahawk, and, all things considered, this was promising. Hays and I were discussing Walt Whitman in an Indianapolis restaurant when he was called from luncheon to receive notice over the, telephone of his appointment He came back and we finished up Whitman before he went out to meet the newspaper men. He was quickly in motion, attending conferences in every part of the country, getting ready for the congressional campaign. Heartened by the result of last November, he at once began digging trenches for the contest next year. Hays has a sentiment about his party, and he wants it to stand for big things. His feeling about America is that of all boys of his generation who met in the streets of their towns men who had seen Lincoln face to face. He is folksy, as we middle westerners use the word. He is a provincial character, without airs or affections, who likes to visit his neighbors on porches and knows all thfc children in town. His next door neighbor is Mr. Claude (“Guppy”) Stratton, one of the inside doorkeepers of the Indiana republican grand lodge. “Cuppy” is a strategist, and when he and Bill get together with a pitcher of buttermilk on the Hays porch the Democratic party is in peril. A churchgoing .person and for fifteen years a Sunday school teacher, a friendly soul, Hays finds delight in doing things for the folks he knows and likes. Through four years of constant meetings in which we have discussed practically every man in public life, he has never “knocked” anybody. When I have swung the hammer he has smiled a wistful little smile and said: “Oh, well, that fellow got off on the wrong foot that time/' or “You mustn’t lay that up against him.” About the meanest term I ever heard him use is “Ibtus-e&ter,” a Tennysonian epithet extremely neat and illuminating as he applied it. An Adept Listener. ' Two men have warned me that Hays is an untrustworthy person, prone to deceive the unwary. One of these was a democratic candidate for congress, smarting from defeat that he held Hays responsible for, and not without reason, for Bill certainly gave him a licking. The other had reference to myself. I was told that Hays had prevented my appointment to the state council of. defense. In fact, he twice of-1 sered me a place there, and on another occasion joined with Governor! Goodrich in urging me to takeMhe secretaryship. Small town stuff. I threw it into the sketch merely to give it a moral tone. It was one of the ways of Hays to listen. He is indeed a master of the neglected art of listening. If someone addresses him in a crowd :that person has his full and undivided attention. Standing or seat‘ed he is a little restless, lifting one shoulder with a characteristic, curi- ‘ ous heave, but the brown eyes are I intent upon the speaker; not impa- • tiently, but with a friendly deliberative interest that invites and in-| 1 spires confidence. He win say with his winning smile: “This is just I between ourselvesbut in saying, something which obviously is an ex-

pression of personal opinion, not to be quoted, he speaks his mind freoly, and 'having once said that the matter is confidential he does not again refer to the obligation of silence. Plays in Open. If Hays should essay the role of liar he would 'be a dismal failure. Before he could lie he’d have to get a different pair of 'eyes. If you broach a matter that he prefers not to discuss, he says so, though I do not recall that he has ever evaded a question that I have put to him in frequent talks that have covered well-nigh every phase of politics, with tangential dashes into literature and religion. Hays has given a hard jolt to the old idea that a politician is necessarily a crafty person, stealthily operating the wires of a mysterious machine from a secret chamber. With a pink parasol tilted over one shoulder he' rides the battle-scarred republican elephants right up Main street preceded by seven brass bands. Of course there are secret conferences and journeys that don’t get into the papers, for he is far too wise to scorn the assistance of the veteran medicine men who cling to the old style boiling the dog in the dark of the moon. He would rather attach to an organization one. man with agile legs who knows how to round up votes than a dozen of the rumor-bearers and rainbow-chasers who invest a headquarters. Not too proud to take hints from any quarter, Hays may have profited from a contemplation of Thomas' Taggart’s methods in managing the Democratic party in Indiana for a quarter of a century. Taggart made friends and kept them. He is a man who awakens and holds affection, just as Hays does. No one who kicked Taggart ever knew that he knew that he had bee nkicked. We have had in Indiana in both parties politicians who spent much time in fighting enemies within their own camp, and while in a few instances they arrived at the goal of their ambition they did so only through the mannanimity of their fellow partisans. Hays, like Taggart, is a conciliatory person. He does not hate anybody. There may be those he distrusts or dislikes, but he will waste none of his energy in hatred, ■Which is exhausting and not conducive to that tranquility of temper which is essential to successful political management. Hays’s sole ambition is to be a success as the executive head of his party. He maintains a strict neutrality as between presidential candidates, potential or active, but is earnestly engaged in trying to get the elephant in shape to give a smooth and perfect performance in 1920. He has reduced his idea of the 'best way to build an organization to this formula: Assimilation, no elimination. He exhorts all who would know the joy of republicanism to come in under the big tent while there is yet time. “The progressive schism was a significant thing,” I said. “It’s a mistake to underrate its importance.” And he answered: “Right! The doors are wide open. We not only want their votes but we want their full co-operation in formulating policies, in doing the work the Republican party has got to do to realize the full promise of America.” Works as He Talks. We were motoring to Sullivan out of Crawafordsville, where he had gone for commencement and to attend a meeting of the board oi trustees of his college. He unbuckled the bulky portfolio and read mail and letters as he talked. Scarlet ramblers in a door yard, a fine field of wheat, a creek spanned by a nold covered bridge caught his alert eye and evoked his appreciative comment. “The South? Yes. We have heard continually that the South needs the Republican party. That’s true enough, but it’s just as true that the Republican party' needs the South. The Republican party as a national party can only function properly when it serves’ the nation and not a section of that nation. I am anxious for everything possible to be done to provide in every sec■tion the fullest Chance of political self-determination. I want the Republican' party to win on its merits as a national party in such fashion as will bring a final dissipation of any possible remaining influences of civil war prejudices. “One byproduct of the war that is of inestimable value is the riew realization it has brought to all the people of America as—nation. Men of the South and the North fought in France as soldiers of Am erica, not as Northerners and Southerners, and they are coming home with a new and proud consciousness of all that America means in the world.” We skirted the edges of the Hoosier melon belt. Ralph Lencke, of Indianapolis, county treasurer-elect, and Samuel Dowden, the boy orator of Decatur county, who were of the party, fell into acrimonious dispute as to which is the nobler pabulum, watermelon or cantaloupe. Hays’s vote won for the cantaloupe as more delicately flavored and tidier to eat from the vine. We grew serious again and Hays talked of labor. “Mere profit-shar-ing is not sufficient for labor. I urge that a real effort 'be made to develop a reasonable method for honest and efficient labor to acquire an interest in the business to which they are expected to give their best efforts. It is the one just and best way for both the employer and the laborer. Hi* Political Strategy. “We have been saying in this country, ‘Live and let live.’ That is not enough. I say live and help live. Just as vigor©ups and -thorough must be our efforts to make certain for the business of the country that opportunity and encouragement which will insure its development and growth on which the prosperity of

the country depends. Business must have sympathetic help, and not antagonastic curtailment. It must be treated with an appreciation of its fundamental importance, and not as a demagogic Shuttlecock.” Hays believes that politics is an exact science, to be practiced in the eyes of all men, and that the side that offers the 'best programme wiH win if the people are told about it. Mistakes are to be avoided because mistakes are unscientific and costly. With all the impression he creates of nervousness, he is capable of sitting stall a long -time and thinking. He thinks out a problem quicker than the average man because his wits work faster. This is not - his fault; 'but calls for rapid functioning on the part of an adversary. He believes in playing the game straight, and he wants the Republican party to deserve support and victory by not trying to fool the .people. For the simple reason that this is a democracy he thinks everyone entitled to vote should take a hand in politics, not merely riding on the wagon, but helping push it along. How to get young men interested in politics is a matter that engages his constant attention and he is enthusiastic as to the beneficent influence of women in public affairs. While he would prefer that all should enroll under the republican banner, he insists that everybody join some party and do his or her full civic duty. “Right” is a great word with him. In conversation, when something is said that him hard he points a dong finger at the speaker and exclaims “Right!” with jubilant emphasis. Another favorite word of his is “Absolutely,” which he pronounces in the Hoosier fashion, with exaggerated stress on the “lute.” There is no middle ground, no -halfway, timid foolishness about Hays. He knows what he thinks and he expresses himself in terse English without quibble or equivocation. At Home in the Corn Belt. Hays is a Hoosier of the Hoosiers. Not for nothing has he swallowed his sassafras tea every spring from earliest boyhood.. The essence of the Indiana soil isjn his blood, and he can light on both feet anywhere between Lake Michigan and the Ohio river and feel himself afhome. His philosophy and sentiment are those of James Whitcomb Riley; his humor is that of -George Ade and Booth Tarkington. He is a good deal like Ade in -his dry way of saying a funny thing. If Ade, Tarkington and Hays could be got round a table, with Gov. Allen and William Allen White, of Kansas, the humor of the corn belt would find its complete expression. Vice President Marshall should not be excluded from this company, as he speaks much the same language, though, of course "with a democratic inflexion. Hays receives about a hundred warnings a week to safeguard his health, which -is excellent in spite of his frail appearance. Some enemy told him that golf would be a good thing for him to cultivate, and he has played five times, twice with me. He is the worst golf player in the world. His idea of an afternoon of relaxation is novel', to say the least. He rushes from the lunch table into a fast runabout, gripping the inevitable portfolio. The car stops at the first hole of the nearest country club. He springs out and swats the ball. He begins to talk ■enthusiastically of things in nowise related to the philosopher’s sport. If the ball eludes his search for the moment he cheerfully throws down another. The liesurely caddies are appalled by the speed with which he moves -over the links. Once he beat bogey on the Woodstock links at Indianapolis, but that was his first time on any course, and it was a case of sheer luck. At the last hole he springs into his machine and is off for town. He says he can ride a 'horse, but he doesn t. No horse is fast enough for him. Both his parents died within the present year. For a long period it had been the established custom for the two sons and two daughters of John T. Hays to dine every Sunday noon in their father’s house at Sullivan. Will would travel five hundred miles to keep that tryst. He speaks -of Helen, his wife, and Billy, their (boy, in a way that warms your heart and makes you feel yourself a member of the family. A fellow of charm is Hays; a likable chap, a comradely man, whose impulses are all generous; an optimist with his feet on the ground and his head in the stars. His ideals and aspirations are as Round as well-ripened corn. He does with all his might what his hands find to do, and, just now he is bending every energy and giving (the best thought of his restless, vigilant mind to unifying and energizing the Republidan party. He is a figure to reckon with in the immediate future of America.