M. Hyde of Missouri, and Charles G. Dawes, author of the German war reparations payment plan. It was hoped that both the party's candidates would be chosen on Thursday, June 12, to avoid the necessity of naming the Vice President on Friday the 13th. The platform also came under special consideration in the weeks before the convention. Some Republican liberals threatened to support La Follette's third party ticket if the document omitted certain planks. Other problems faced the Platform Committee: the veterans' bonus, tax reform, Chinese immigration, and the World Court — all issues that cut at least one extremity from the main body of the party. Heading up the Committee on Resolutions, which was enjoined to formulate the party platform, was Charles B. Warren. In fact, however, much of the actual drafting fell to a subcommittee of the national committee, with vice-chairman Ralph Williams of Oregon as its head. Nicholas M. Butler suggested that the platform consist of twelve to fifteen crisp sentences written by President Coolidge. It did indeed turn out to be a short and noncontroversial document. No mention was made of the Ku Klux Klan, and faint praise was given to hopeful plans for joining the World Court and helping the farmer. Apparently the party thought that traditional Republican strength in the areas affected by crop failure and low prices could accommodate a mild rebellion without loss of the section's electoral votes. The platform spoke of Coolidge's "practical idealism"; it also observed apologetically that "time has been too short for the correction of all the ills we received as a heritage from the last Democratic Administration." It proposed a conference on "the use of submarines and poison gas." Though the document was drafted by a new breed of Republican such as Ogden Mills from New York - who even recommended the adoption of an anti-Klan plank - rather than party stalwarts like Senator Henry Cabot Lodge from Massachusetts or Senator George Pepper from Pennsylvania, it remained conservative in its blandness. A substitute platform presented by Wisconsin progressives caught a moral tone the other failed to embody, but was defeated without a vote. The convention formally ran from June 10 to 12. No questions arose over the choice of the presidential nominee. After the delegates tried unsuccessfully to prevail on Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois to run for the vice presidency — they actually nominated him but