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<text> <title> (56 Elect) Midwestward Ho! </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1956 Election </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> October 8, 1956 THE CAMPAIGN Midwestward Ho! </hdr> <body> In clouds and swarms, the politicians, pundits and pollsters descended on the Midwest. Not since the great locust plagues of the 1870s had the farm states seen such an invasion: candidates criss-crossed one another's paths, columnists probed and interviewed, and any farmer who had not been polled by the pollsters felt sadly neglected. The consensus at week's end: Adlai Stevenson has cut into Dwight Eisenhower's farm strength, but not by enough to win the national election. Democrat Stevenson was leaving no field unplowed in his effort to win the Midwest. Following up his defense of continuing surpluses and his promises of fixed 90%-of-parity price supports made in his major farm speech at Newton, Iowa, he rounded out his case at Oklahoma City, picturing the farmer's lot under the Republicans in terms of despair and suffering. Then he took off for a trip through the South, but by midweek he was back in Missouri, thence to Indiana. Word from What Cheer. To Peoria, Ill. traveled Dwight Eisenhower, having already turned down all suggestions that he try to outpromise Stevenson. If Adlai's farm-rich home state was turning against Ike (who carried Illinois by 443,000 in 1952), it could not be seen in the crowds flanking Peoria's streets four and five deep. That night in Bradley University's overflowing field house (seating capacity: 8,300). Eisenhower was interrupted 31 times in 28 minutes by applause while he scorned the Democratic farm program. Nonetheless, from every hamlet and crossroad, pundits pushed the panic button for Republicans after studying the skies (large parts of Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma and Iowa, as well as Kansas, are suffering from drought) and the statistics (Republicans cringed at an Agriculture Department report last week showing that farm prices had gone down by .5% between mid-August and mid-September). Wrote Columnist Stewart Alsop under a What Cheer, Iowa dateline: "Candidate Eisenhower is in deep, deep trouble in the typical Midwestern farm community which surrounds this small town." Interest in Divorce. Some of the pollsters agreed. A squad of New York Timesmen circulating among the crowds at Newton's National Plowing Contest, came forth with the information that "10.6% of those who said they voted for General Eisenhower in 1952 now say they will shift in November." A farmers-only poll in Iowa released this week by Wallaces' Farmer and Iowa Homestead shows 43% for Stevenson, 35% for Eisenhower, 22% undecided (in July, the same poll showed Ike 49%, Adlai 32%, undecided 19%). But Pollster Sam Lubell, while recognizing the genuine need for G.O.P. worry about the farm vote, also found cause for Republican cheer. Wrote he: "Strong as the uprising is against the Republicans in the rural Midwest, much of its force is being blunted by two feelings. One is a deep sense of gratitude to President Eisenhower for ending the Korean war. The other is a widespread dislike of Adlai Stevenson among farmers, and criticism for his divorce...In 1952 among several thousand voters I interviewed, only about a dozen brought up Stevenson's divorce as their reason for voting against him. In this campaign, however, in nearly every city and farm county I have gone into, one or more voters have volunteered that they would be for the Democrats except `if a man can't run his family, he has no business trying to run the country.'" The Long, Steep Climb. With such factors in mind--plus the fact that even in the Midwest the farm vote is less than 20% of the total--Adlai Stevenson's big farm push seemed to be winning back only Missouri (where he appears to have a decided edge), along with a chance for Minnesota. Given those three and the South (although Florida and border-state Kentucky cannot be considered solid for the Democrats), Stevenson would still fall considerably short of the necessary 266 electoral votes. That meant that Stevenson would have to make up the deficit in the Far West--where his best chance is to grab onto Senator Warren Magnuson's flying coattails in Washington--and the industrial Northeast, where Pennsylvania looked especially important to the political swarms that were heading its way. That the Stevenson campaign still faced a steep uphill climb was evidenced by last week's Gallup poll, showing Ike still ahead of Adlai by 52% to 41%, with 7% undecided. For all the talk of farm revolt and G.O.P. disaster, Adlai Stevenson had not yet gained a single percentage point on Dwight Eisenhower since the poll published two weeks earlier. The Human Pinwheel From Miami to Minneapolis, through nine states and across 3,600 miles, Adlai Stevenson went whirling across the U.S. landscape last week, spouting sparks and smoke. He showered scorn and anger on all Republicans, but saved his biggest rockets to lob at Dwight Eisenhower and members of his personal and official family. Such pyrotechnics did not go unappreciated. Time after time, voices in his small but enthusiastic audiences cried out, "Give 'em hell, Adlai." And the new Adlai, when he heard, would grin and crack back: "I'm doing my best." In his liveliest campaign week to date Adlai Stevenson: -- Broadly suggested again that the U.S. should end the draft, which he described as "wasteful, inefficient, and often unfair." Then he hedged his bets, called for "a fresh and open-minded look at the weapons revolution and the whole problem of military manpower." -- Proposed a moratorium on H-bomb tests; the U.S. can detect Russian violations, and if "the Russians don't go along, then at least the world will know we tried." -- Charged (with Harry S. Truman grinning happily on the platform beside him) that President Eisenhower was guilty of buck-passing and ducking the responsibilities of leadership: "Who's in charge here, anyway? Who, in this businessman's Administration, keeps the store?" -- Braved a possible booing at Little Rock, Ark., instead was warmly applauded for firmly stating that he believed the Supreme Court decision on segregation "to be right; some of you feel strongly to the contrary, but what is more important is that we accept...that decision as law-abiding citizens." -- Proposed increased federal funds for school construction, more and better-paid teachers, and college scholarships--all without more federal "control over the content of the educational process." -- Charged, without naming him, that the President's brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, had "assumed special, if informal, responsibility" for U.S. relations with Argentina to the benefit of ex-Dictator Juan Peron, who pocketed $100 million in U.S. loans to Argentina. At his press conference, President Eisenhower quietly set straight what was probably the most reckless blunder of the Stevenson campaign. The U.S. had indeed made a loan to Argentina, but it was for $130 million, not $100 million, said he. And it was made not by his Administration but by Truman's. Later in the week Secretary of State Foster Dulles underscored another pertinent point: Peron thrived in office all through the Truman Administration, fell from power during the Eisenhower Administration--which has propped up the new government with a total of $160 million in loans. The blunder on Peron typified the difference between the Stevenson of 1952, a man meticulously concerned with facts, and the Stevenson of 1956, a man furiously concerned with winning. Last week, particularly when he discussed his concept of a "New America." Stevenson showed flashes of his old eloquent self ("Leadership in a democracy can be no more than the capturing of a people's power to realize their own best ideals"). But most of the time, he seemed more content to let the sparks shower merrily and fall where they might. IKE ON THE FARM [The case for the Administration's farm program as detailed by President Eisenhower in Peoria:] For almost ten years, as farmers' costs have gone up, year after year, farm prices have gone down. There are two exceptions when prices went up. One was the tragic year when the Korean battlefields provided the kind of market that no one wants. The other is this year. And this year there is no war. Now what mainly caused that long, discouraging decline? One thing only: political expediency in Washington, D.C....And what were the results? For one, Uncle Sam himself took up farming. Synthetic farmers behind Washington desks started telling farmers all over again what crops to plant, how much to grow...the prices to charge. You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the cornfield...The value of the Government stockpile of farm surpluses climbed to $9 billion. The cost of storage alone has been $1,000,000 a day--none of it going to the farmers and with farmers helping to pay the bill. And these surpluses, by holding down farm prices, last year cost farm people some $2 billion. Head-On Attack. I'd say we have come pretty far in 45 months...We freed peacetime agriculture from programs designed for war. We eliminated stifling wartime controls. We attacked the menacing surpluses--head-on. We regained many of the lost markets. We helped the lowest-income people in agriculture. We brought social security for the first time to operators of family farms. We refunded to farmers the $60 million-a-year federal tax on farm gasoline. We started the great St. Lawrence Seaway project--the 30-year dream of Midwestern farm families...And we turned prices back up--without a war. I have two things to say about this beginning. First, the old price-depressing Democratic farm program stayed in effect right up to harvest last year...Eighty-five per cent of the price decline after the Korean war inflation came while rigid price supports were still in effect. Our opponents today are criticizing the mess that they themselves left behind. Second, recent developments prove that the clean-up part of our job is well on its way...Part of that assurance comes from our new soil bank...This year the soil bank is retiring over 12 million acres and earning 500,000 farmers more than $260 million. When next year it retires 40 million to 50 million acres, overproduction will start coming under control. That means better times for every farmer. Parity in the Market Place. Full income parity is a full share in our country's good times. In a free agriculture, farmers can attain that kind of parity only in the market place. That's what I spoke for at Kasson four years ago: the attainment of that full share for the farmer...That's what I have been working for. I shall keep on working for it. And the facts show good progress. Today farm foreclosures are near an alltime low. Today more farm operators own their own farms than ever before. Today the value of farm lands is at an alltime high. Today farm income is at a $1 billion rate above last year. And the long decline in farm prices has stopped. Prices today are higher than last April when I vetoed that hodgepodge that the politicians called a farm bill. Prices are 7% higher than last December. They are higher than a year ago, when high rigid price supports still applied...And we will keep on doing all else that is fair and constructive--all that is not political quackery--to bring our farm people the only kind of prosperity they want--prosperity that can be enjoyed in time of peace. </body> </article> </text>