National Affairs: Bolters

The pilot said it was his roughest trip in four years. The big, silver United Air Lines Willkie Special lurched in the uneasy air, sometimes dropped 60 feet in a bump. Candidate Wendell Willkie and his wife, flying from Salt Lake City to Colorado Springs, kept their chins up as well as any one. Far below lay grand U. S. scenery that would have been more reassuring if God had provided more landing fields upon it—the jutting peaks of the snow-clad Rockies.

This was part of Candidate Willkie’s long rest before beginning a strenuous campaign. Last week he also visited three rodeos, ate thoroughly at a Cheyenne, Wyo. barbecue, made seven speeches, watched a one-hour parade in his honor in Salt Lake City, met Westerners at short train stops, upped the number of voters who had cheered him on his Western trip by 200,000.

Old-Timers. Nobody was surprised that the Willkie campaign attracted many an old-line Democratic politico who was against Roosevelt long before Chicago 1940: angry John O’Connor, victim of the 1938 purge; ex-Senator James Reed of Missouri; Nebraska’s Senator Edward Burke, defeated in this year’s primary; Stephen Chadwick, former American Legion commander.

But most of these had fought Franklin Roosevelt from way back. More surprising was the rush to Willkie of amateurs and semi-pros, who had been for Roosevelt before.

Hones & Douglas. One day last week Candidate Willkie, at his Colorado Springs hotel, got a wire from two ex-New Dealers: “We, the undersigned lifelong members of the Democratic Party, are deeply disturbed by the developments at the recent Democratic Convention in Chicago. They constitute the first organized effort in American history to keep the same national administration in public office beyond the historic two-term period. . . . We therefore propose . . . to enlist in your behalf the support of Democrats who believe with us that loyalty to country takes precedence over loyalty to party.”

It was signed by Lewis Douglas, 46, president of Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York, onetime Director of the Budget, who resigned in 1934, and John Hanes, 48, who resigned as Under Secretary of the Treasury, with many a kindly word from Franklin Roosevelt, seven months ago. Candidate Willkie made them welcome—”I recognize that you are not actuated by personal friendship but because of your grave concern for . . . the democratic way of life in this country”—and put them to work, with University of Rochester President Alan Valentine and former Women’s Club Federation President Roberta Campbell Lawson of Oklahoma, organizing former Democrats and independents.

Amateurs. Candidate Willkie was soon hard put to it to find new ways of welcoming newsworthy recruits. President Hamilton Holt of Rollins College came out for him. So did President Ernest Hopkins of Dartmouth, Nobel Prizewinners Dean George Whipple of Rochester University, Dr. George Minot of Harvard. (“I am very much pleased that this type of citizen is coming out for me. These men represent the very best in our intellectual and social life. . . .”) So did President Charles Seymour of Yale (“a Democrat since Woodrow Wilson”).

Because rumors had spread that Candidate Wendell Willkie was antiSemitic, because no prominent Jew had declared for him, the support of New York’s former Supreme Court Justice and onetime Roosevelt Adviser Joseph Proskauer made news: “I ask to be enrolled for active service as a devoted supporter of your candidacy as a Southern-born Democrat ”

High Level? Any belief that 1940’s campaign would float at a high level of statesmanship to a happy landing in November, dominated by grave discussions of the international situation and of Third Term pros & cons, crashed with a thud. At Hyde Park President Roosevelt talked over the leading bolters with reporters, took a crack at every one. Said he: “Senator Burke did not bolt the Party, the Party bolted Burke”; Mr. Douglas and Mr. Hanes were amiable young men whose minds ran “more to dollars than to humanity”; besides, Mr. Douglas had not supported the Democratic ticket in 1936 and “not very much of Mr. Hanes” had supported it then; ex-Senator Reed, said he, had opposed him in 1932, 1936 and, he thought, perhaps in 1928, was also interested in sweatshops.

Fire-eating Jim Reed denied he had opposed Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, and to prove it showed a letter of Presidential thanks. He added that he had campaigned for Al Smith in 1928. As for representing his wife’s dress company in a National Labor Relations Board case last year (which was won by the company, and is now under appeal), Oldster Reed snorted that sweatshops had nothing to do with it, his wife’s employes got better than union wages.

Said Candidate Willkie of the Democrats who joined him: “Not a Hague, or a Kelly, or a Nash, or a Pendergast in the lot.”