Maine's May

Oldtimers on Capitol Hill could not recall a similar event. All of the Congresswomen, the entire delegation from Maine and about 30 members of the press had been invited. The Speaker and other House leaders were asked to drop in. The place: the Capitol dining room of the Speaker of the House. The occasion: a luncheon, given by Maine Congresswoman Margaret Smith, for Mrs. Elizabeth May Craig, Washington correspondent for 17 years and now the new president of the Women's National Press Club.

As Washington correspondent for five Maine newspapers (Portland's Press-Herald, Evening Express and Sunday Tele gram, Augusta's Kennebec Journal, Waterville's Sentinel, all published by Guy P. Gannett) May Craig keeps Mainers so well posted on national affairs that newsmen nave quipped: "As May goes, so goes Maine." This is somewhat exaggerated. No Down Easter herself (she was born in North Carolina, spent most of her life in Washington), May Craig is likewise no Republican. She describes herself as "about 75% New Dealer." But her Maine readers are fond of her.

Roundabout is Straightaway. Those who attend Presidential press conferences know May Craig as the small, pert woman who always gets to the front row, always asks deft, roundabout questions in a far-from-timid voice. When President Roosevelt's reticence in disclosing his Third Term plans had the U.S. in a dither, May noticed that some of his naval prints had been removed from the conference-room walls. Instead of asking the direct Third

Term question that seethed in many press minds, May looked up quizzically at the wall's blank spaces, wondered aloud if the pictures had been sent to Hyde Park.

Another time, when the peace referendum issue was before Congress, May knew a direct question would net zero results (the President tries never to discuss legislation in process). She asked: "Mr. President, do you regard a peace referendum as consonant with a representative form of government?" To neither question did she get an answer. To the last she got a question: did she stay up all night thinking it up? Answered May: "I did." May Craig got into newspapering in 1923 by helping her late husband Don Craig (then Washington reporter for the old New York Herald) with a sideline column he wrote for the Portland Press-Herald. She did so well that the column began appearing under her own name, and in additional papers.

A vigorous, vocal feminist (she marched in the suffragists' parade at Woodrow Wilson's inaugural), she will fight at a hat's drop for female equality in anything.

Once she campaigned for a women's rest room in the Senate Press Gallery and got it--complete with horsehair sofa. She helped organize the Mrs. Roosevelt's Press Conference Association and several months ago. when PM's Gordon Cole applied for admission, she was the only member to back him (she believes in equality for men, too). The press conference she jokingly resents is War Secretary Stimson's, because Mr. Stimson invariably looks through and beyond May Craig and says: "Good morning, gentlemen!"

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