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Show IMPORTANCE OF lOTEJTBEffi PRIMARY RESULT MAY EFFECT PRESIDENT, MELLON OF PROHIBITION PRO-HIBITION ISSUE Fight Bitter Between George Pepper and Gov. Pinchot, With Vare ss Leading "Wet"; It Also Effects Ef-fects Secretary Mellon Washington. With one exception, the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday is the most important single event of the present political year. The exception excep-tion is the case of Senator Butler of Massachusetts, and the only reason for the Massachusetts election's greater great-er importance lies in the fact that Senator Sen-ator Butler's personal and geographical geographi-cal intimacy with President Coolidge will cause the senator's fate to be interpreted in-terpreted as having a direct bearing on the prestige and power of the president pres-ident himself. For the importance of Pennsylvania Pennsylvan-ia primaries on Tuesday, there are many reasons. It constitutes the best oportunity the "wets" have to register a striking advance in any of this year's pending thirty -three senatorial primaries and elections. It determines the fate of so distinguished distin-guished a senator as George W. Pepper. Pep-per. It effects Secretary Mellon closely-because he. has deliberately solicited solicit-ed the people of Pennsylvania to identify iden-tify Pepper's fate with his own. This Pensylvania primary will either close the political career of Governor Pinchot, Pin-chot, or else give him a powerful shove toward a greater career than he has yet had. It will measurably determine de-termine whether the prohibition issue is to figure in the 1928 presidential primaries and elections. If the "wet" candidate should win it will reveal j ct spoL in tue Republican party almost as conspicuously conspicu-ously as the Democrats have in New York. Persons outside Pennsylvania can best be given an understanding of the situation by a brief chronological statement. George W. Pepper was appointed ap-pointed to the senate four years ago as the successor of Senator Penrose and by roughly the same political organization or-ganization of which Penrose was the head. The selection of Pepper expressed ex-pressed the comparatively steady though sometimes interrupted tradition tradi-tion of Pennsylvania that its senators at Washington should be men of a higher type of intellect and character that .t was the custom to put in ordinary ordin-ary office. By a similar Pennsvlvanla tradition, Pepper shauld now be returned re-turned for a second term without opposition. op-position. That, in fact, was the program pro-gram that remains of the old Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania Republican organization as now captained loosely by Secretary Mellon and Senator David Reed. |