National Affairs: The Senator Goes West

The 50 reporters scribbled quietly and intently. They were jammed into a small room in the grey stucco auditorium at Santa Cruz, Calif., and Ohio’s Republican Senator Robert A. Taft was not a man to raise his voice. Looking professorial in his neat blue suit, Bob Taft was talking matter-of-factly, almost abstractedly, as if he were speaking across a committee table. But for a fraction of a second, every man in the room looked up and stared as if the Senator had just pulled out his penknife, opened it, and absently swallowed it.

Taft had been discussing the high price of food and what he thought should be done to allay it. “Voluntary reduction of consumption,” he said, “is the first step. We should eat less . . . eat less meat and eat less extravagantly.” He went right on talking. The Chicago Daily News’s Ed Lahey broke in, gave him a chance to get off the hook by asking: “Do you think that would cover the whole populace?”

“Yes,” the Senator said. “Hoover suggested the same thing some time ago. He suggested that we ought to start … a campaign to save food and eat less. …” Only then did Bob Taft seem to realize that he had been thrown a cue. He began qualifying: “I know there are a lot of people who can only just get enough, but there are many who could take that advice and save a lot of money. . . .”

“Eat Less Taft.” The next day the “eat less” quote made headlines. Democrats, remembering G.O.P. protests against the deaths of small pigs during the New Deal, delightedly considered ways & means of exploiting it. Longshoremen chanted the phrase as they picketed one of Taft’s appearances at Santa Cruz.

The Senator was honestly startled by all the furor, but after the first shock, he seemed almost resigned. His western tour had been playing him tricks almost since he began planning it. He had hoped to make a quiet, semi-vacation trip, sounding out the reaction to his hopes for the presidency. But speaking invitations had begun pouring in.

When he started west last week, two carloads of reporters, photographers and radiomen left Washington, planning to meet him in Santa Cruz. They met him much sooner. The Senator told a reporter in Columbus, Ohio that he did not believe the Taft-Hartley Act would be an issue in the campaign. The newsmen in the special cars read that statement in Chicago, uttered wounded cries about being scooped, piled out, found Taft at the Union League Club and got interviews of their own. The Senator got on a fast train after that, beat the newsmen to the coast by twelve hours. He had time to attend an outdoor steak dinner in a redwood grove, and to have a private chat with California’s G.O.P. Governor Earl Warren.

Big Break But from then on, Bob Taft found that he had to stage a full-scale western campaign with all the trappings, whether he liked it or not. Once he got used to the idea, he seemed to like it. His bobble on food prices was a setback, but it had happened early—he had more than a dozen appearances ahead.

In his formal appearances in Santa Cruz, he drew no wild applause. But he got a wonderful break before he left town. Tough, chunky Harry Lundeberg, belligerent chief of the A.F.L. Seafarers Union and archenemy of Harry Bridges, asked for a chance to talk to him. The next day Harry Lundeberg startled everyone in sight. The Senator had told him that he was considering an amendment to the Taft-Hartley Act which would permit a closed shop if a majority of workers favored it.

Lundeberg added: “He doesn’t give you a lot of sweet con like a lot of these others.”

At week’s end, the score for Taft seemed to be: one hit, no runs, one error.