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-