DEMOCRATS: The Pride of Red Wing

The process of wooing the woman voter is a little different, in one respect, from that of winning the support of the recalcitrant and suspicious male—words are sometimes not enough. Having made Georgia Neese Clark Treasurer of the U.S. and having sent diamond-studded Mrs. Perle Mesta off as minister to Luxembourg, the Democrats last week offered U.S. females further evidence of trust and affection. Mrs. Eugenie Anderson of Red Wing, Minn, was named Ambassador to Denmark.

Mrs. Anderson, who was virtually unknown outside her native state, was billed as a Minnesota farm wife, and photographed beside a rural telephone in kitchen apron and pulled-back hair. The moral was plain: any woman who could milk a cow could make her mark in Democratic politics. But the build-up did not quite fit the facts.

Mrs. Anderson, a quiet, intelligent and pleasant woman of 40, lives on the good earth of Minnesota — the 400-acre estate left by her father-in-law, the late Alexander Pierce Anderson, inventor of Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice. But she and her husband—Abstract Artist John Pierce Anderson—are hardly horny-handed tillers of the soil. Eugenie Anderson has traveled in Europe, studied music in Manhattan’s Juilliard School. She has an intellectual’s taste in art, books and music. Nevertheless, the appointment, which made her the first U.S. woman to become an ambassador, seemed like a pleasant bit of business for all concerned.

Mrs. Anderson, mother of two children, has long had a passionate, if amateur, interest in world affairs. Five years ago, in an effort to do her bit in molding the world, she got into Democratic politics in Minnesota. She worked diplomatically and well, became a national committeewoman, helped to swing the state to the Democrats.

Her reward was a salute to Minnesota Democrats and to millions of women.. It was expected to sit well with the Danes; the new Ambassador had manners, dignity, quiet but expensive clothes and, best of all, a Scandinavian name. It got India Edwards, chief of Democratic women’s activities, out of Harry Truman’s hair, at least temporarily. And it made Mrs. Anderson happy, too.