The Press: The Road Shows

One morning last week, on the home-bound Presidential Special, tired, baggy-eyed Charlie Ross, press secretary to Harry Truman, ambled into the reporters’ work car. Said Ross: “Good speech coming up at Clarksburg; it’ll make a good story.” Then he put down a sheaf of papers and said casually that here was a White House statement.

The newsmen scanned the executive order on reserve units of the armed forces. When they got to the phrase “proceed without delay … to organize … all reserve components,” they rushed to their typewriters. At first glance, it looked like an urgent mobilization.

It was nothing of the sort, but by the time Charlie Ross got it explained, precious time had gone by—and the reporters were scrambling to cover the Clarksburg, W.Va. speech. Without warning to the pressmen, the President had stepped off the rear platform to say his piece, and the loudspeakers in the train had not caught a word. To make matters worse, the press services could not get stories of the speech off the train for 45 minutes.

News on the Run. There were few such snafus aboard the campaign specials that roamed the U.S. last week. But even without them, the specials were no gravy trains to the working press. Though both the Dewey and Truman trains carried loudspeakers, the reporters had to hop off for platform speeches if they wanted to size up crowds. And they heard so many speeches that they began to sound like broken records. Stories were written in a hurry, lest they miss the telegraph operator at the station stop. At some points, Western Union stationed runners along the track, to catch weighted envelopes of copy tossed from the moving train.

At night, behind screaming sirens, the press parties were hustled to hotels. They jostled for a chance at a shower bath, grabbed drinks and dinner before covering the evening show. They were earning their money and probably their king-sized expense accounts—although most would have been working just as hard at home. But if the 1948 trains were the last of their kind, to be outmoded in 1952 by television, that would be all right with a good many reporters.

Beefs & Boredom. The Truman special, the newsmen generally agreed, was badly run. Texts of the nightly speeches were handed out at the last minute. Moreover, in spite of all the rushing, the news was so thin that some of the 41 newsmen aboard had been told by their offices to keep it brief. The total daily file off the train was down to 75,000 words, only half the “copy drop” from Tom Dewey’s train. Between stops, the reporters never visited Mr. Truman in his armored car, the Ferdinand Magellan. He had not wandered up their way since an earlier trip, when a LIFE photographer had snapped him by surprise as he looked in on a poker game.

Sometimes reporters could not even pass the time drinking, thanks to Hearst’s smart-aleck Columnist George Dixon. He had printed a giggly prediction that the Truman train would ignore local liquor laws. After that, for several dreadful days, the bar had been locked up in dry states.

Switches & Whistles. Though many in the 80-man Dewey press corps did not yet really like the candidate, they had to admire his streamlined press relations. The text of each night’s speech was Mimeographed by the morning before; coffee and beef sandwiches were at hand in every press workroom along the way. Press Secretary James C. Hagerty’s motto was “Make it as easy as possible for them to get what they want—and don’t lie.”

To relieve the boredom, reporters turned to inventing cynical little ditties. The best the Dewey press corps could work up was a feeble jingle about “Unity plus Dewnity.” The boys with Truman were more inspired; they hit their peak with a parody of I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover:

I’m, looking over a well-warmed-over Dewey from ’44;

One for the money and two for the show; Halleck was promised but Warren will go.

No use complainin’; I’m still maintainin’; we’ll get what we had before:

Harry or Dewey, the same old hooey, again and again and more.