TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century / TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO / election / 40elect / 40elect.002 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-02-27 | 37.1 KB | 724 lines

<text> <title> (40 Elect) Republicans:The Sun Also Rises </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940 Election </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> July 8, 1940 CAMPAIGN The Sun Also Rises </hdr> <body> Black rainy clouds hung low over Philadelphia; Sunday afternoon was one long twilight that deepened steadily into gloomy night. In the gathering dusk, over the city's brick-paved streets jounced cabs from the three-day-old airport from this dismal cavern of old Broad Street Station. Packed in the cabs were thousands of men whose minds were as wind-tossed and gloomy as the night. They were men of all sorts: lean and broad of beam; men of integrity and men like rats; obscure men and famous; of fixed prejudices, and fixed ideals. They filled Philadelphia like a flood, jamming hotels, squeezing into elevators, pounding on restaurant tables for quicker service. Wherever they were, they argued, worried, plotted. Some were wise guys, some were simpletons. All were Americans. And mostly they worried. From Sunday night, when they sought out restaurants where Scotch-&-sodas were served in coffee-cups, the 1,000 delegates, 1,000 alternates, the thousands on thousands of heelers, promoters, wives, newshawks, tag-along citizens worried steadily, through the five days and four nights of the Convention. What they worried about, or what they told themselves they worried about, was the Man who would be born from this political travail. Unbossed, Unled. From the moment they came to town, Republicans of all stripes agreed wholeheartedly that this was "the damnedest convention that ever was." Nothing went they way things had always gone. This was the fault of the people, said the professional politicos. It was the fault too, of another interloper, a big, shambling bear of a man with tousled dark hair, great beefy shoulders, a long, determined upper lip, a fast, tough mind. Wendell Lewis Willkie, 48, product of an Indiana Main Street and New York's Wall Street, was in town. The Convention had not invited him: the Convention wished he were anywhere else. On that dark Sunday afternoon Wendell Willkie was already a political phenomenon without parallel or precedent, a new fare a new force, something powerful and strange cast up out of the sea. The situation was so simple that it confused the politicians hopelessly. Well they knew the ancient political doctrine: find out what the people want, promise it to them, then lead them in that direction--but not too fast, for good leadership keeps but a half step ahead. But now the people seemed to want only one thing: a leader. The politicos found that desire a perplexing simplification of the traditional problem. It was true that Wendell Willkie seemed to be a leader. Even now, after six short weeks of campaigning, he was marked with the indelible stamp of leadership: fanatical friends, fanatical foes. And to town with Wendell Willkie came the three original members of the For-Willkie-Before-May-11-1940-Club: 1) Russell ("Mitch") Davenport, gaunt, earnest journalist-philosopher who quit his job as managing editor of FORTUNE to devote himself to this man; 2) Oren Root Jr., young New York law clerk, who formed a Willkie-For-President club on his own hook and $150; 3) Charlton MacVeagh, a G.O.P. contact man who drafted himself. These had been Mr. Willkie's Farley, Moley, Frankfurter, Rosenman, Howe, Hull, Wallace, Woodin and Tugwell; his braintrust and his backers, working for him--at least at first--against his will. Neither Davenport nor Root knew anything practical about winning votes and influencing people, but they did have faith, and it nearly burned them up. Willkie was not a leader in any sense that was politically recognizable. In fact, the delegates told each other, he was politically impossible, an amateur whose rankness you could smell. Nevertheless, they went to see him, and get a nearer sniff. His small 16th floor suite at a corridor's end in the Benjamin Franklin hotel became a crazy-house, a stifling welter of political amateurs and well-wishers (bond salesmen, debutantes, business bigwigs), gawkers (clubwomen, tourists, thrill- collectors), and disgusted professionals, indignant at their offhand treatment by people who had never heard of them and who even now regarded politicos as casual, unimportant, irrelevant vermin. In this cramped hot-house every political mistake that could be made was made. Nevertheless, somehow, the boom grew: it could be seen growing. Nearly a Flop. Monday and Tuesday the Convention's first two days, were black days for the bosses. Their delegates roamed like rambunctious mavericks, uttering mating calls, nickering for sympathy, stampeding in any direction, unbossed and unled. At first they liked it. But Joe Martin's gavel raps were deadlines as well as calls to order; choices had to be made. Everywhere were men waiting only to be really convinced that here was the man, in him the only issues. But in the almost austere convention hall (no bunting, no parading brass bands) the convention had opened: strapping young Harold Stassen, the Minnesota boy Governor too young (33) to be President, had delivered the keynote speech. No orator, using gestures out of the book, huge Mr. Stassen handled his problem well, but only well: from him no hearer got any sense of a collapsing world. And after the keynote that wasn't quite the keynote came Herbert Hoover. Even now the delegates came with solemn hope they would get a chance to tear up their chairs and set fire to their hats. They were more than willing to give him the benefit of all their doubts; they were eager to hear him demolish the New Deal; they were even more eager to cheer some challenging declaration of faith. But inflexible Mr. Hoover mushmouthed his delivery; the clear, hot words of his finest address got lost (as always) deep in his bulldog chops. He stood there awkwardly, a near great man whose fate has been to cast his mother-of-pearl words before mobs who, whether friendly or bitter, always yell "Louder!" No honest Republican denied to himself that the convention until now had laid the biggest egg since the roc. Crisis. With the third day came something like panic. Suddenly the newspapers, even their home-town papers, were black with tall headlines, homemade advertisements, home-grown editorials, all shrieking "We Want Willkie!" The delegates couldn't understand it. The big bear-man's face, life, family swiftly became oppressively familiar. Most of the delegates wanted to be let alone, to go about their ancient business in the ancient way. But rabid strangers, unlike any political heelers they had ever seen, surrounded them on the street, gripped their lapels, argued bitterly, demanded (not begged) their vote for this man Willkie. In this urgent, crusading atmosphere the delegates were increasingly uncomfortable. They could no longer read the newspapers with any enjoyment for all the important political columnists were daily comparing the nomination of anyone but Willkie to the Fall of France--Ray Clapper, Mark Sullivan, Arthur Krock, Dorothy Thompson, Walter Lippmann, Westbrook Pegler, Hugh Johnson. Even the coldest, toughest of all, nail-hard Frank Kent told them flatly in his old-shrew style that, while Herbert Hoover was the best man, Wendell Willkie was the only winning candidate. From the first night the galleries had shouted "We Want Willkie" over & over like a college yell. Delegates could hardly get into their rooms past the bundles of pro-Willkie telegrams from back home. Their suits came back from the hotel valet with Willkie buttons pinned on. Long-distance calls came from their wives, pastors, bankers, luncheon clubs, saying with one voice: "Willkie!" A rising suspense hung over Philadelphia. The pall spoiled the ordinary political gaieties. Uneasily, defiantly, the delegates debated with their consciences and each other; uneasily they tramped around to see Willkie again & again, catching fleeting glimpses of a shaggy man, haggard, hoarse, seating, strange, standing on a hotel dressing-chair exhorting: "Vote for me early. It's better to come to grace early than late." The delegates felt other pressures too. The platform committee, meeting a week early, with the heavy foundation of the Glenn Frank Committee report to build on, still had come to no conclusion: after days of tortuous debate, they still fought over the crucial foreign policy plank. Collapse. All of them--delegates, newsmen, wise guys--understood politics thoroughly. The question was: Did they understand a political movement? They shied off like wise guys, sneering: "Willkie, the Nine-Minute Wonder," "Hopson's Choice." They gave themselves comforting reasons for his upsurge--Eastern seaboard hysteria, Wall Street propaganda, utilities propaganda--explained away the galleryites as paid Wall Street stooges, explained away the telegrams by knowing references to utility tactics in fighting the Wheeler-Rayburn Holding Company Act. Their own freedom frightened them; it began to look like inescapable responsibility. The delegates scuttled back to the bosses' comforting shelter. The wandering lines reformed. For this moment two men, David S. Ingalls of Cleveland, and Charles P. Taft of Cincinnati, had planned well. In all the dull, careful campaign, when New York's Thomas E. Dewey was the glamor boy and public darling, these Taft managers had quietly, soothingly circulated word that theirs, after all, was the real, regular Republican organization. So skillful, exactly calculated, expertly handled was this Ohio campaign that it almost prevailed against the tidal wave. The platform had come out, hailed with feeble cheers, fated to be forgotten. Prudently ambiguous on every controversial domestic matter, but less long-winded than most, the platform had a foreign policy plank based on a somersaulting weasel: "The Republican Party stands for Americanism, preparedness and peace. We accordingly fasten upon the New deal full responsibility for our unpreparedness and for the consequent danger of involvement in war." The New York Times barely avoided calling this plank a lie, denounced the G.O.P. claim for preparedness "when a majority of its spokesmen in the Senate have opposed within the last two years measures which proposed to provide 6,000 new planes for the Army, and increase in the battleship strength of the Navy and the acquisition by both services of strategic war materials. "Nor is the Republican Party entitled...to call itself the exclusive `peace party' of the United States, or even to claim that it has worked very well or done very much for the cause of peace...." But no one really cared; the expedient, weasel words faded out of mind as fast as ink dried on the newsprint. Something bigger was afoot than mean, dishonest words. The trend that Willkie was in front of spread like floodwater. ("TAFT AHEAD," wrote political pundits.) Willkiemen and Willkiewomen surged around Philadelphia like a lynch mob, carrying the torches of their faith. The professionals now were angry. With the dreadful patience of men irked to the limit, they once more pointed out all the things that made Wendell Willkie politically impossible. Yes, said the Willkie Zealots, but this is no ordinary year, this is no ordinary man. The U.S. has only one standard now--strength of leadership--and here is a strong man. To win in 1940, they shouted, the G.O.P. must snatch 10,000,000 Democratic or independent votes. The cumulative impact of these answers cut deep into the delegates convictions. The 22nd Republican Convention was a comparatively young man's gathering: most of the delegates were about 50 years old, at least vulnerable to new ideas. Some of the younger ones had already succumbed. In early June Connecticut's burly, bass-voiced Governor Raymond A. Baldwin and State Boss Sam Pryor, had been converted, had committed the State's 16 votes to Mr. Willkie. Before that, in April, New York's Kenneth Simpson, tweedy, pipe-puffing, silk-stocking liberal, had begun to see how he might wreak a beautiful revenge on his bitter foe, Tom Dewey, by boring in among New York's 92 votes for the Willkie cause. With Simpson came Representative Bruce Barton. The word came: Watch Stassen. The huge, young Minnesotan held off until his keynote speech was over, then plumped for Willkie. This was disturbing, but the pros winked wisely, said "Boy Scouts." The missionaries were everywhere, spreading the gospel: in the Kansas delegation, James A. Allen of Chanute; in West Virginia's, Walter S. Hallanan of Charleston: in Massachusetts', Sinclair Weeks of Newton: in New Jersey's, Lloyd Marsh of Passaic County; in Illinois', James Douglas; in Missouri's, Edgar Queeny of St. Louis. And Wyoming's millionaire dude-rancher, Frank O. Horton, supposedly Hooverite till death, swung over with the others. By Wednesday afternoon the Convention was tense as a drumhead. The Dewey camp privately despaired. Only Taft headquarters was really confident. With the nominating speeches the chips were down. Lawyer John Lord O'Brian nominated Dewey, the organ played, hands pounded, State delegations grabbed standards and tramped theatrically around the hall. There was a brief interlude of exquisite boredom while New York's Frank Gannett was nominated by Representative James W. Wadsworth. A few hand-claps echoed in the deep apathy into which the publisher had poured his $500,000 candidacy. The galleries were unmoved, and stayed that way through the speech of Toledo Blade Editor Grove Patterson nominating Senator Taft, when a lustier demonstration came off. Then came the moment everyone awaited. Indiana's dark, slight Representative Charles Halleck was brought forward by the Convention's chairman, wily little Irish-tongued Joe Martin of Massachusetts. Halleck hit hard. Directly and flatfootedly he slugged it out, slamming breadbasket-blows. From Wall Street to reciprocal tariffs he went down the line, swinging all the way. As he spoke, the real line of cleavage in the Convention came clear for the first time. The delegates booed him, the people cheered. "...No campaign fund," cried the Indianan--and the floor hissed and booed in cynical unbelief. The galleries caught up and drowned the boos in a crescendo of applause. The delegates looked suspiciously at the galleries. Up there sat the people, and the people should be against this man. As the galleries' applause broke out, again, again, again, the people up there began to seem more important than the men on the Convention floor. As Halleck finished, the press stood up, then the galleries, then the delegates: 10,000 people on their feet. The demonstration for Wendell Willkie began, not much of a parade--a few shouting delegates, a few Eastern State standards. Fights broke out: the Virginia standard tottered, waved, came down and started off in a pull-haul fight. Police dove along the aisles, smashing up little melees around one standard after another. But the big States stood fast. Relieved, the pros told each other, "Well, there goes your Willkie boom!" The demonstration subsided; then came the seconding speeches by Representative Bruce Barton. Colorado's Governor Ralph L. Carr, Anne Stuart of Minnesota. Connecticut's Governor Raymond Baldwin (best voice at the convention). Into the June night the crowds shoved. They were gloomy. As of that minute, Ohio's Taft seemed to be the nominee. The crowd had nothing for him, either. The crowd knew that Mr. Taft would play clean, hard politics; they found nothing blameworthy in that. A vote for Taft was a vote for the Republican Party; a vote for Willkie was a vote for the best man the Party had to lead the country in a crisis. Next morning more nominations droned on: Iowa's Hanford MacNider, Michigan's Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, New Hampshire's Senator Styles Bridges. Oregon's Senator Charles McNary. Pennsylvania's Governor Arthur H. James, South Dakota's Harlan J. Bushfield. At 2:50 p.m. Chairman Martin rapped his new translucent plexiglas gavel, adjourned the Convention until 4:30 p.m. At 4:50 o'clock the fight began. Alabama cast seven votes for Dewey, six for Taft. As yet, word had not gotten to the Convention of a lunchtime deal between Messrs. Taft and Dewey. "Understanding" was a more accurate word: all that passed between headquarters was an agreement that, if Dewey failed, as was long since certain, such delegates as he controlled would thereafter go first to Taft. The unanswerable question was: Do the two G.H. Q.'s control 501 votes (the number required to nominate)? The experts knew how the first ballot would go, and they had a fairly accurate idea of the second. On Ballot I Dewey was to get 377 votes, Taft 250. Willkie 100. Ballot II; Dewey to slip a little, Taft 300, Willkie 150. After that they figured it would be anybody's battle, but probably Taft's; Willkie's maximum strength, 190; if a deadlock, Joe Martin. But right away something happened. Dewey had counted on New Jersey's full 32 votes. He got 20, Willkie 12. Passaic's pugnacious Lloyd Marsh had delivered on the nail, had two more votes in his pocket when needed. Bob Taft was far below his set quota: 189 votes was a tortoise-like start indeed. Ballot I: Dewey 360, Taft 189, Willkie 105, Vandenberg 76, James 74, Martin 44, Gannett 35, MacNider 34, Hoover 17. Taftmen, shocked, began to tighten the screws. But the delegations were stubborn. Now there was no doubt about the galleries; every Willkie vote was cheered every swing-over hailed with screams and roars. Gains for other candidates were received politely but suspiciously; dark rumors of deals and sellouts, coursed the balconies. On the second ballot, Dewey fell a little--a sure sign to the experts--Willkie zoomed, and Bob Taft gained only 14 votes. (In U.S. political history no candidate who lost ground on any ballot has ever been nominated by either party) Ballot II: Dewey 338, Taft 203, Willkie 171. Willkie had cracked a few votes out of Boss Pew's hoard in Pennsylvania, now had votes scattered over 26 States. The first ballots had been slow, as a Georgia delegate insisted his delegation be polled, so that every delegate's vote be put on record. Accepted reason was that at least one delegate had sold his vote to several candidates. At 6:50 p.m. Joe Martin adjourned the session until 8:30 p.m. On Ballot III Willkie picked up steadily all along the line. New Hampshire's Bridges, green at a missed opportunity to join the "Boy Scouts," released his delegates too late to Willkie (six of New Hampshire's eight had already gone over). Massachusetts cracked wide; Joe Martin released his men and they plunked for Willkie--the first big State to do so. The galleries went crazy. Then New York split (27 of 92 followed Simpson over to Willkie); Pennsylvania broke open (15 would stand no longer with Boss Pew's forlorn belief in James). And still Bob Taft only crawled, gained only nine votes. Ballot III. Dewey 315, Willkie 259, Taft 212. The fourth ballot was crucial. Everything depended on it, perhaps even the G.O.P.'s future. For this time Dewey's men would be released; now would come the test of Taft's fast-working ball club; this vote would determine whether Willkie had reached his maximum strength. The hall alternately screamed and sat tensely silent. Dewey's last forts crumbled. Willkie's floor organization (Halleck, Simpson, Stassen, Baldwin, et al.) worked like beavers. Taft gained 42 votes. Willkie 47. Ballot IV. Willkie 306, Taft 254, Dewey 250. Now that Willkie had shown he could hold his own, the problem became: Can he go on to win? And Ballot V screwed the tension to a point with few equals in U.S. politics. The pros were in a last-ditch battle and knew it. They closed ranks and moved together. Again the gains were level; Taft up 123. Willkie up 123. On his rubber-soled shoes Charley Taft fled up & down the aisles, engineering, devising, attacking, feeding in every vote he could. But everywhere, at every turn, bulked Boy Scout Stassen, blond imperturbable; Boy Scout Simpson, sweating, a dead cigar or dead pipe alternately gripped in his mouth; and innumerable other Boy Scouts, amateurish, in the way, bungling yet effective. And then New York went over almost wholly, a moment that the crowd yelled at more hoarsely than a more significant triumph a few minute before: the unemotional Kansas twang of small, grey Alf Landon announcing: "Kansas gives all of its 18 votes to Wendell L. Willkie." Ballot V. Willkie 429, Taft 377, James 59, Dewey 57. There remained only two phalanxes to break, but it was vital to break both of them. One was Michigan, the other Pennsylvania. After the fourth ballot, John Hamilton and Joe Martin had agreed that any move to adjourn the convention would be regarded as a Taft deal to gain time. The clock crept on, and the sixth ballot: Pennsylvania reserved its vote to the end of the list. The thirsty, hungry, seating galleryites booed and whispered "Deal, Deal." But Willkie's total crept on, Taft's dropped slightly but surely: anything might still happen. Then a grey, spectacled man took the platform: Howard C. Lawrence (Senator Vandenberg's campaign manager), to announce release of the Michigan delegates and a poll result: Willkie 35. Taft 2, Hoover 1. The crowd shouted. Then Pennsylvania asked for recognition. Willkies' total was now 499, with 501 needed. The people booed--meaning they were in no mood to give any thanks to Boss Pew for so belated a conversion. Ex-Senator David A. Reed seized the microphone to shout a loud untruth: "Pennsylvania casts 72 votes for Wendell Willkie!" (Later newshawks learned that 29 Pennsylvanians had just then voted to stick fast to James.) But the story was over, the people had won. Hats sailed in the air and handkerchiefs were shredded. For the first time since Teddy Roosevelt, the Republicans had a man they could yell for and mean it. Gentleman from Indiana Two days before the opening of the Republican National Convention, Wendell Willkie, formerly of Elwood, Ind., blew into Philadelphia. He announced to newsmen: "My campaign headquarters are in my hat. Be sure to put it down that I'm having a swell time." Talking all the way, followed by a curious crowd, he strode down Broad St. until he reached convention headquarters at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. There, in the lobby, the upstart G.O.P. Presidential candidate was almost mobbed. Only six weeks before, Wendell Willkie president of Commonwealth & Southern Corp., had officially started his campaign. Launched by groups of ardent political amateurs, his campaign had become a political children's crusade. But there was no time to lose. Mr. Willkie rolled up his sleeves. Business already knew him as a super-salesman: politics was soon to find it out. He made a speech to well-scrubbed Philadelphia Main Liners at the staid Academy of Music. He ordered fried chicken for G.O.P. Negroes. He invited himself to a caucus of Kansans, had breakfast with Candidate James's hogtied Pennsylvanians, and began raiding every delegation in sight, loose or tied. Actually there were more Willkie offices in town than even he could get under his size 7 3/4 hat. Volunteer workers had opened several. And in the plush and marble Benjamin Franklin Hotel, when Candidate Taft had his elegant headquarters in the ballroom and on two additional floors, Willkie headquarters had been established in a small suite of rooms on the 16th floor. There he arrayed himself, burly in a blue suit, charging from one room to another, standing hour after hour answering newsmen, posing for photographers, meeting spectators, delegates, anybody. Even when he dashed out to a corner drugstore for a cheese sandwich newsmen interviewed him as he perched on a stool. A reporter talked to him while he took a bath. His hearty voice began to grate with constant wear till it sounded like someone shucking corn. He proclaimed: "You'll hear me called a New Dealer and a Democrat. If there's one thing I have done it's fight the New Deal. Why, some of the other fellows who call themselves Republicans were selling off the regalia while I was defending the lodge." To a statement from 40 Republican Congressmen which hinted that he was "unavailable" because he was a neophyte Republican, onetime Democrat Willkie retorted in a favorite phrase: "That's a lot of spinach." He had made no commitments, he was making none. How did he expect to be nominated then? Barked Mr. Willkie cockily: "If I don't get the nomination, it won't be worth anything anyhow." In the background was tiny, shy, astonished Mrs. Willkie, of whom Indiana Congressman Charles Halleck, Willkie's nominator, remarked admiringly: "She's plain vanilla." Anxiously she watched her husband sweat through shirts every few hours, while his broad face grew haggard, the shadows under his eyes dark, his smile strained. At one conference he almost collapsed, was rushed off to bed. He slept an hour, came back for more. The Willkie disorganization of amateurs did their best. Politically speaking, their best was none too good. But by the Convention's second day, a few interested professionals had tiptoed out of the tall timber, taken a look, listened, pledged their cold political steel. Wednesday night, a weary Willkie flopped down beside the radio to hear Halleck's nominating speech. He listened while Halleck pleaded his cause, told the story of Wendell Willkie, who had been born 48 years ago to a lawyer mother and a lawyer father in Elwood, Ind., now wanted to be President. This Willkie boy had worked as a harvest hand in Minnesota, in the oil fields of Texas, had run a tent hotel in a Colorado boom town, worked as a migrant laborer in California. He had gone to Indiana University, been admitted to the bar, married pretty Edith Wilk, an Indiana girl. He had gone to war in France. He had returned to practice law, become the head of billion-dollar Commonwealth & Southern Corp.... Gravely Mr. Willkie listened. Halleck had left out some of the story, His grandparents, nonconformists, had fled from Germany a hundred years ago, political exiles. Their name: Willcke. Wendell ("Win") Willkie had not been a model boy. He had tipped over neighbors' privies, painted his class numerals on the ceiling in high school, spent a night in jail after a football riot. In college he had been known as a radical, a disciple of Teddy Roosevelt, of Fighting Bob La Follette. His classmates had chosen him senior orator.... Halleck's voice came over the radio: "There's a man big enough to be President of the U.S." Willkie flashed a broad grin when he heard the demonstration start and the galleries begin to chant: "We want Willkie." Then he ducked downstairs for a conference with ex-Governor Alf M. Landon of Kansas, who reportedly said to him: "If you're still in there pitching on the fourth or fifth ballot I'm with you." Thursday evening, with a few friends, reporters, some curious strangers, he listened to the balloting broadcast from Convention Hall. Mrs. Willkie had gone to the hall, disguised in a new wide-brimmed hat, a pair of dark glasses. Nervously the gentleman from Indiana rubbed his hands with a big handkerchief, pushed his fingers through his thick, still dark, rumpled hair. He had shaken at least 7,500 hands. At the end of each ballot, more people crowded in. One admirer, who had already begun to celebrate, hovered over Mr. Willkie, repeating: "What a man! What a man!" In the narrow bedlam Mr. Willkie tried to concentrate, wrote down the votes, ballot by ballot. State by State. On the fifth, Kansas came in with all its 18. Someone shouted. "You're in!" A radio crew elbowed through the crowd with a microphone. Policemen appeared, wanted to know who was who. If Mr. Willkie was really going to be the nominee, they had to bodyguard him. Mr. Willkie added up the tally on the fifth. On the sixth, as State after State began rolling over to him, photographers got their cameras ready, flash bulbs set. Illinois shifted heavily, Michigan came. Missouri, Oklahoma, Virginia--it was all over. He had been nominated for President of the U.S. Mr. Willkie, formerly of Elwood, Ind, rose; someone pushed him toward a microphone in an adjoining room, and he said in subdued voice: "I'm overwhelmed. I'm deeply grateful.... Now I want to go and join my family." Mrs. Willkie, who had fled from the Convention Hall after the fifth ballot, hurried to the Warwick Hotel, where the Willkies and their son Philip had rooms. At 1:30 a.m., a big, disheveled man, fighting his way through cheering mobs, arrived, embraced her. Next day, out at Convention Hall, after the G.O.P. had picked Charles McNary of Oregon for his running mate. Mr. Willkie appeared in person. He had prepared no speech. On the way out, he had turned over some sentences in his mind. With Mrs. Willkie he walked down the centre aisle, while the band blared his theme song Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho! It's Back to Work We Go, Republicans cheered, balloons and confetti rained down from the galleries. Said Wendell Willkie, shaking his big head: "Forty-eight days, and only forty-eight days ago, I started out to preach to the American people the doctrine of unity, the doctrine of the destiny of America.... The cause is great. We must win. We cannot fail if we stand together in one united fight." Added Mr. Willkie of Elwood, Ind.: "Now I'm going to sleep for a week!" When Mr. Willkie was nominated, newsmen dashed to the vicinity of the Willkie apartment at 1010 Fifth Ave., Manhattan. to find out what the neighbors thought, and what the neighbors looked like. Burbled Mrs. Benjamin Friedland: "He is a perfectly marvelous man." Said Tommy Rolla, who delivers groceries to the Willkie door: "Never met him. Mrs. Willkie? Okay!" Convention City Last week Philadelphia brimmed with comedy, tragicomedy and a few dashes of pure drama. First tragicomedy came when a 42- year-old elephant named Lizzie died at the Zoo, prompting the New Dealish Record to watch for other signs of impending Republican doom. Last week Lizzie's cousin Josephine had been named official symbol of the Republican Party. -- Candidate Frank Gannett saved the day by importing three live elephants, marched them incessantly through the streets. Senator Robert A. Taft also had elephants (of papier-mache): one in the quiet dignity of his ballroom headquarters at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, two perched on the marquee outside. Candidate Taft also had 100 rooms for his staff and the support of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who said, in her best Alice-blue style, "The Willkie campaign comes right from the grass roots of every country club in America." -- Both Messrs. Taft and Gannett showed campaign movies, but found few takers for such 16 mm. cinema. Of the ten candidates, only Mr. Gannett, a Dry who will not accept beer advertising in his 17 newspapers, formally served free liquor to callers. Only Mr. Gannett hung the hotel lobby and the uncomplaining streets with 15-foot portraits of himself, in color. -- Little Thomas E. Dewey, arriving late and flustered for press conferences, sometimes heard impatient reporters yell, "Bring in Willkie!" Dewey had the biggest piles of campaign literature, the satisfaction of having led the Gallup Poll for 15 months. He was left with both. -- From Buffalo came the Uncle Sam Marching Club, resplendent in peppermint pants and top hats with signs telling delegates to "Vote for Dewey." A girl band tooted, marched, got shiny-nosed in Mr. Dewey's cause, collapsed between parades in his hotel lobby. -- No zippy theme song like Landon's Oh! Susanna or Roosevelt's Happy Days Are Here Again rocked Philadelphia's vast, egg-shaped Convention Hall. Slogans were as uninspiring as the candidates they sought to tout--slogans like "Trust-in-Taft," "A Top Scholar--Taft," "Do It With Dewey," "Gannett--America's Best Bet," and Vandenberg's labels on yellow fans, which came in handy in the hot Convention Hall--"Fan with Van." -- In the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, in the Benjamin Franklin, in the Hotel Walton, elevators were stacked to the gates, shot by the middle floors. Drugstores made enormous sales of Scholl's foot powder. Telephone switchboards seemed always to have all lines busy except late at night, when they were taken over by operators who said "Huh?" or "O.K." most of the delegates missed seeing the brief Mummers' Parade--a Philadelphia spectacle usually put on on New Year's Day, revived especially for the Convention--because it marched while Herbert Hoover spoke. -- Seeking to emulate radio, which got its first big lift from the 1924 Democratic Convention, television backers gave their product its first big play. Individual close-ups of speakers showed up well on the screen; long shots were fuzzy. -- Nearly all the 68 unemployed who were given jobs cleaning up the Convention Hall (under button-shoed Governor James's "Work or starve" law) turned out to be ardent New Dealers. Their take: ten to 30 tons daily of cigaret butts, red Taft carnations (handed out fresh to each delegate each day), campaign literature, assorted debris. In a packjammed elevator in the Benjamin Franklin, Wendell Willkie's 250-lb. brother Ed was recognized, admitted "Yes, ma'am, I'm his baby brother," responded to commiserations on Mr. Willkie's exhausting ordeal: "Oh, he's like a mule: he just rolls over and then he's all right." -- Negro delegates enjoyed their quadrennial privilege of being received at swank hotels. -- Optimistic Colonel Carl Estes, righthand adviser to Republican Angel Joe Pew, bet even money right up to convention time on Governor James. James was a 100-to-1 shot in most books. Odds on Willkie's nomination were even on Tuesday, dropped slightly on Wednesday, fell as low as 1-to-4 just before the balloting began on Thursday, when rumors of a Taft-Dewey deal began to be accepted as fact. -- For the $200,000 it paid to snare the convention, Philadelphia grossed $12,000,000. But bellboys and cab drivers grumbled that tips were juicier in 1936, when patronage-laden Democrats whooped Franklin Roosevelt into Candidacy II. Good Soldier For Vice President Republicans needed: a man who favored Federal power, a Westerner, a farmer, a lifelong Republican, a seasoned politician. Quick as a wink, in one ballot, they named Charles Linza McNary of Oregon. Tall, trig, suave, 66. Charles McNary has been in politics 34 years, spent 23 of them in the U.S. Senate. No one in the G.O.P. is better qualified to help Novice Willkie through the guiles and intricacies he would face in Washington. Easygoing Senator McNary, leader of the minority, has won many a triumph himself with nothing up his sleeve but pure, political cunning. Born on an Oregon farm, he went to Leland Stanford University. Like his running mate, he was a lawyer. He began his political career in 1906 as an Assistant District Attorney. In 1917 he went to the Senate. Still a farmer at heart, whenever he can leave Washington he makes tracks for Salem, Ore., where he owns a farm, bird sanctuary, an experimental laboratory, in which he developed the world's largest prune, the Imperial. Nuts are also a hobby, especially filberts. Senator McNary has the wise and cynical expression of an old bachelor, though he has been widowed once, is now married to the former Cornelia Morton, which was told of her husband's nomination while she was in a Salem grocery store. Said Mrs. McNary: "I couldn't believe it. Charles had wired me this morning that he wouldn't accept the nomination." In the Senate, where he has cut independently across party lines, Mr. McNary has favored the Wagner Act, the NRA, old age pensions, aid to the farmers, the Securities & Exchange Commission, TVA, the Muscle Shoals development. Said Mr. McNary, who had never met or even seen his running mate (their first conversation was on the telephone last week): "I am profoundly conscious of the confidence reposed in me by the Conversation. I wish they had imposed this chore on someone else. However, I'll be a good soldier and do the best I can." </body> </article> </text>