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As Bob Dole has campaigned for president, yellow and brown sunflower buttons have appeared on the lapels of loyal Republicans everywhere. The sunflower symbol helps remind everyone that Dole is from the heartland of America, and not from somewhere scary like New York or Los Angeles.
Sixty years ago, another Kansas candidate burst onto the scene with a breath of fresh air for button aficionados everywhere. The button industry was, artistically, at a low point. After producing incredibly beautiful buttons in an uncounted array of colors between 1896 and about 1916, by 1936 buttons were most commonly red, white, and blue lithos. Word pins were more common than picture buttons, and when the candidate was pictured, chances are the button was in black and white.
The Landon campaign, first of all, had the rarity of a unifying symbol for the campaign. Well over half the Landon campaign items featured the sunflower. Although Al Smith had had his derby, and TR his bull moose, few candidates in the 20th century have made such extensive use of a symbol. Further, the Landon campaign cleverly moved away from the red, white, and blue color schemes everyone was used to, and instead made millions of buttons in brown and yellow. As if all this were not innovation enough, the Landonites also provided the novelty of a backing for their buttons--usually made of felt--in the shape of a sunflower. The result was eye-catching buttons that did yeoman's work as campaign advertising items.
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In New York City the Republicans opened a "Sunflower Shop" on Broad Street. The shop was staffed by young women of the "Landon Volunteers" organization, who were present to answer questions, hand out pamphlets, and above all, to sell sunflower buttons. The buttons proved very popular with the public, which had never seen anything like them. The first run of 200,000 was gone as early as June 12, forcing party officials to hurriedly order more while public demand increased.
Meanwhile Democratic union members assailed the Landon sunflowers for being manufactured in sweat-shop conditions "by home workers in sunless rooms." Those complaining were members of the Artificial Flower Workers' Union. Union spokesmen complained that Republicans were using a New York company to manufacture the sunflower buttons, a company that had a "union-smashing record." Of course, these union members were hardly impartial in the presidential race. Their union was co-operating with the American Labor Party, and as such was supporting Roosevelt.
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Actually, "home work" was used in the manufacture of both Landon and Roosevelt buttons. While the making of lithos and cellos was highly mechanized, the one task that was still labor-intensive was the inserting of pins in the backs of the buttons. The New York Times reported that during periods of peak demand Bastian Brothers sent trucks full of buttons into the rural areas around their Rochester base, dropping the product off at hundreds of farm houses. Farm wives and children inserted the pins, and the trucks returned the next day to pick up the assembled products. "Thus," wrote the New York Times journalist, "Maud Muller and her little brother, the barefoot boy with cheek of tan, help the mighty statesmen to save the country in election years."
The Democrats had not expected buttons to be so important. Campaign chair James A. Farley explained sheepishly in October that the Roosevelt campaign was running a deficit. The reason? "We had to buy 20,000,000 buttons." Several of the Democratic buttons focused on sunflowers. Some of the most clever pictured a sunflower and had the legend "We Can't Eat Sunflowers." Democratic literature made use of the slogan "Sunflowers Die in November." Still other Democratic items turned to rhyme: "Back on the Rocks with Landon and Knox."
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Meanwhile, in Chicago, enterprising owners of soda fountains offered the "Sunflower Sundae," pioneered by officers of the Soda Fountain Institute. The sundae consisted of a round dollop of hot fudge in the center, with banana slices radiating outwards and forming the petals. The chocolate ice-cream itself was at the edges of the dish, added almost as an afterthought. This is one sunflower that I suspect is not represented in even the most advanced Landon collections.
Landon did not rely entirely on the sunflower to get his message out. To demonstrate his party loyalty, aides arranged to have Landon shake hands with an elephant in New Hampshire. To show his old-fashioned American values, Cleveland Republicans used a covered wagon drawn by four oxen to advertise the Landon candidacy. Some Republicans grumbled, however, that the covered wagon made Landon seem like a candidate from a previous era. The parallels to the Dole campaign are striking! In another leap back to the past, Maine Republicans held a torchlight procession one foggy night. Candidate Landon later recalled that the marchers "looked just like ghosts coming in from the fog."
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Voters decided not to vote for the candidate of ox wagons, torches, and sunflowers. In fact, Landon's finish in the electoral college (8 votes) stands as an all-time low for a major party candidate. Landon tied with William Howard Taft for this dubious distinction. Landon carried Maine and Vermont, and topped 45 percent in only two other states, New Hampshire and his native Kansas.
The Republicans in 1936 had a decent candidate, and they certainly had the most imaginative buttons. But voters still associated the Republican party with the great crash, and with President Hoover's do-nothing policies. They associated the Democrats with progress over unemployment and with the reopening of the banks. Alfred Landon was more of a sacrificial goat than a viable candidate for president.
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Landon buttons make a great specialty for button collectors. The yellow and brown colors, and the felt and other backings make Landon buttons especially distinctive. Yet Landon buttons also tend to be affordable. Of the 141 Landon buttons listed in volume I of Hake's encyclopedia, only five of them top $300, dozens are priced under $20, and several are under $5. These are 1991 estimated values for buttons in excellent condition.
There are some nice Landon tabs, die-cut in the shape of sunflowers. There is an interesting array of Landon coat-tails (most of which did the local candidates no good!). There are nice, colorful enameled pins available at surprisingly low prices. There are interesting varieties of size and color, and such varieties and "left-facing elephant" and "right-facing elephant."
Ironically, despite all the focus on sunflowers, at least one of the top two or three Landon items fails to use the sunflower at all. The pun button "Land on Was