Johns, while campaigning in Bend, Oregon, died while attempting to rescue a young boy who had fallen into the river shortly after one of his opening campaign events. With their standard-bearer having passed, the executive committee of the Party tendered the presidential nomination to Reynolds, with the place of vice presidential nominee being filled by Jeremiah Crowley of New York. Speaking of the "decay of the Capitalistic System", Reynolds campaigned on the idea of Industrial democracy. Prohibition Party Held at the La Salle Hotel in Chicago, the fifteenth Prohibition Party Convention met on the tenth of July. Dr. D. Leigh Colvin and other Prohibitionists had found both the Republican and Democratic planks regarding Prohibition as unsatisfactory, and there was open discussion of nominating a ticket despite the continued reversals the Party had suffered since 1920. The name of former Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania was bandied about as a potential contender, though there were those like Colvin who wanted to take advantage of the Democrat's nomination of a Wet Catholic by nominating a Dry Southern Democrat to the head of the ticket in the hopes of carrying one of the Southern states; William Gibbs McAdoo, Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma, and former IRS Commissioner Daniel Roper were other names considered for a draft. A merger with the Farmer-Labor Party was contemplated for a time, and a committee was appointed which named a potential ticket of Gifford Pinchot for President and former Governor William Ellery Sweet of Colorado for Vice President; however neither man responded to inquiries whether they would accept the nomination, and eventually both the Prohibition and Farmer-Labor Parties tabled motions calling for fusion. There remained immense pressure within the Party to name Herbert Hoover as their choice for president despite his dithering on the issue of Prohibition enforcement in the eyes of the stricter Drys, and indeed when the balloting for the presidential nomination commenced Hoover was found to be the second most popular choice of the delegates. Those opposed to Hoover rallied on the second ballot however behind frontrunner William Varnery, an insurance salesman and party regular from New York. James Edgerton, a Virginian native who had headed the Jefferson-Lincoln League in the failed effort to fuse the Prohibition and Farmer-Labor Parties, was nominated for the Vice Presidency. An olive branch was still offered to Hoover however, with the Prohibition Party promising to withdraw their ticket and