A Letter From The Publisher, Oct. 27, 1952

For TIME’S 20-odd correspondents who have been scouting their own and neighboring states for political news and trends, the campaign has been an exciting—if exhausting—tour of duty. Nowhere has this been so true as on that uniquely American phenomenon, the campaign train. Jolting in & out of whistle stops, gauging the temper of back-platform crowds, watching the suspense build up from hot August through cool October, and, in general, “trying to do a sitting-still job while moving,” calls on all a reporter’s resourcefulness, as well as his energies.

TIME Correspondents Bill Glasgow and Ed Darby have been traveling with the two presidential candidates since long before the election campaign started. Glasgow, in Adai Stevenson’s press entourage, thinks that he will remember the 1952 campaign, some 20 or 30 years hence, as “a montage of whirling airplane propellers, hotel lobbies in the dreary half-light of 5:30 a.m., piles of baggage, and angry profiles of bus drivers, cabbies and other chauffeurs harassed by the perpetual pleading to ‘hurry up.’ ”

Glasgow, a veteran reporter of Illinois politics, worked for the New York Herald Tribune in Chicago before joining TIME’S bureau there. He did the major part of the reporting for the Stevenson cover story that ran last January, just when Stevenson made his famous visit to President Truman at Blair House. When it became evident that the Illinois governor was a strong contender for the nomination, Glasgow was assigned to stay with Stevenson. For this week’s cover story, he was again called on to supply facts from his storehouse of knowledge about the Democratic candidate.

In addition to their actual coverage of the campaign, Glasgow and Darby are continually queried by TIME’S editors for the answers to specific questions. On the road, says Glasgow, the correspondent’s workday lasts 18 to 20 hours —”no longer than Stevenson’s day.” But the logistics of the campaign trip prove most wearying.

Arriving at the town where the governor makes his night speech, says Glasgow, “you first see if you have a room. Later, it is a good idea to goto your room and see whether the bellboy has left your bag. Sometimes he hasn’t, and bags are swapped back & forth until everyone has his own. My own bag experiences have been only slightly exasperating: 1) one bag irreparably destroyed in the handling; 2) no bag at all for 36 hours, when I went from Washington to Chicago directly and my luggage went there by way of Richmond, Va. and New York City.”

Some of Glasgow’s other problems: finding time and space for writing, having dirty laundry returned still dirty, being displaced from good seats in motor caravans by local dignitaries, being called away from meals just as the main course is being served. “Nevertheless,” he says, “it has been a fascinating experience, even though I sometimes think longingly of the days when McKinley campaigned from his porch.”

Darby, who had been covering the White House for TIME, joined Dwight Eisenhower when “he checked in his uniform June 3,” has traveled more than 30,000 miles by air and about 18,000 miles by rail in the past 4½ months. He first flew to Kansas with the general, stayed with him on the train trip to Abilene. When TIME decided to do an Eisenhower cover story (June 16), Darby spoke to him in one of the rare private interviews the candidate has given. Darby continued to cover Eisenhower through the nominating campaign and the convention itself, and, except for two short breaks, has been with him since.

Of his current assignment, Darby says: “You do your work between speeches, airplane rides and motorcades. Or after the candidate has gone safely to bed and can’t make any more news. At least, you think he can’t. But there is nothing predictable about this business. You can’t leave the man (on this train everyone knows who you mean if you say, ‘What’s the man doing now?’) alone for a moment. Sleep a little and he is out on the back platform in his pajamas and bathrobe, as he was at Salisbury, N.C.”

The typical workday consists of riding in planes, trains and motor caravans, with at least a half-dozen speaking stops. After the first week or so, says Darby, the correspondent settles down to his routine of two to six hours of sleep a night, but, he adds: “What really seems to hurt is a vacation. I had six days in late September and the first couple of days back on the job just about killed me.” But Darby says he was O.K. as soon as he got run down again.

Cordially yours,