Cleveland's Mayor

The man who made headlines in Ohio last week was Wendell Willkie (see p. 26). But the man Ohio was talking about was Harold Hitz Burton, mayor of Cleveland, Republican candidate for the U. S. Senate.

When Burton sought the nomination last spring, the G. O. P. machine was set to roll him flatter than a pancake. But Burton, like Willkie at Philadelphia, stopped the professionals in their tracks. After his nomination, astute Harold Burton made peace. It took some making. As mayor of Cleveland during the city's relief crisis, he had cracked out right & left, had collided with such Party holy men as State Boss Ed Schorr and Governor John W. Bricker. When he was fighting them for the Senatorial nomination he had proclaimed: "If I am elected I will take an oath to support the Constitution and not to support Ed Schorr." But when he had whipped them, he made terms which they could accept, and the professionals, who can forgive everything but failure, came trooping back. The Burton band wagon has been rolling ever since.

Greying, square-cut, with darkly shadowed eyes, Harold Burton is as conservative as Robert Taft, though he frequently disagrees with him (Burton was for conscription 100%). Dispassionate, honest, he has few close friends, many admirers. His Yankee ancestors fought in the American Revolution. He himself fought in the Meuse-Argonne, won the Belgian Croix de Guerre and the U. S. Order of the Purple Heart.

When Burton became mayor of Cleveland in 1935, the city was infested with underworld mobs, riddled with police graft. He appointed young Eliot Ness safety director, started a clean-up which had spectacular results. One racketeer it dredged up was Albert Ruddy, who this week was convicted of shaking down building contractors for thousands of dollars during his 20-year reign as a union tsar. Burton earned for Cleveland, once a city shamed by its record of traffic deaths, the National Safety Award in 1939 and 1940. He turned his attention to public health, and this year Cleveland won the National Health Award. He has fought for free speech and tolerance. To Cleveland this year went the National Civil Liberties Award.

A former corporation lawyer, accused by political snipers of being "the little brother of private property," Burton is, nevertheless, installing a $6,000,000 addition to the Municipal light plant over the bitter protests of Cleveland utility interests. When he ran for re-election last year, Democrats, who dominate Cleveland politics, did not even put up a candidate to oppose him.

By last week, onetime black sheep Harold Burton had become the G. O. P.'s featured attraction in Ohio.

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