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Ring Party Gong: Democrats Bound From Lethargy to Cheer Convention Speeches

Whoop It Up for Barkley: Keynoter’s Address Brings a 28-Minute Ovation – May Win Historic Niche

Philadelphia, July 12 – Mrs. India Edwards tonight let a balloon out of a box on the platform to symbolize inflation, but it also might serve as a symbol of the enthusiasm which burst from the hitherto apathetic delegates to the Democratic national convention.

In a stamping half-hour tribute to Senator Alben Barkley at the conclusion of his keynote address, and in the applause which frequently interrupted him, the convention shook off the air of gloom and defeatism which has pervaded it.

The delegates left no doubt of their regard for Barkley and their appreciation of his long, impassioned defense of the new deal. In the course of his address, which ran an hour and ten minutes, even after severe cuts in the text which he made as he went along, several points were received with particular relish. Such, for example, as his definition of a bureaucrat as a Democrat with a job a Republican wants.

Mrs. Edwards, executive director of the Democratic committee’s women’s division, made something different in the way of a convention speech. The Republicans’ Clare Luce might have had as snappy a script , but she didn’t give it the production that Mrs. Edwards provided for hers.

She opened with the balloon act, telling how “the Republicans loosened price controls, just as I’m loosening the strings on this box. They left the lid, just as I’m lifting this lid.”

Out and up from the box floated the big, white balloon, secure on the end of a string. After pulling the balloon down, replacing it in the box and releasing it again for the photographers, Mrs. Edwards proceeded to explain that the balloon could be replaced in the box, but that the Republicans had failed to reel in the string.

Mrs. Edwards also had a shopping bag, from which she produced a pound of round steak for which she had paid $1.10. As she brandished the steak, she asserted that the same piece of meat would have cost only 46 cents right here in Philadelphia in 1946. She waved the steak for emphasis, and seemed about to throw it to an Associated Press man in the first row, but laid it down on the speakers table instead.

The next episode in Mrs. Edwards’s drama introduced another character, little Sally Zimmerman of Philadelphia, who perched on the table while the inflated cost of her clothing was discussed from her $6 shoes ($4.75 two years ago) to her “little panties which now cost 69 cents” and used to cost 10 cents less.

The galleries began to thin out after the Barkley speech and demonstration, and they were only sparsely inhabited by the time Mrs. Edwards pulled down her balloon , tied down the lid of the box, picked up her notes and steak and left the platform.

She was followed by Miss Frances Perkins, a drabber figure in her black dress and familiar tricorn hat, who found the lateness of the hour (it was nearly midnight when she started to speak) difficult competition to face. As she spoke her eloquent evocation of the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt, the spectators had mostly gone and more than half the delegates also had departed.

It was a quiet finish for an evening which had reached its peak when the final “Amen” of Senator Barkley’s speech had brought the convention to its feet. First into the aisles were the Kentucky delegates, and others joined in as the band swung into “My Old Kentucky Home.” While the senator, obviously fatigued, stood mopping his face and fanning himself, the Democrats cheered, applauded and sang a variety of songs, mostly with a strong Southern flavor, from “Swanee” to “Maryland, My Maryland” and “The Missouri Waltz.”