The Next President?

Grandfather George Martin Dewey, a Harvardman, helped found the G.O.P. at the historic conclave under the Michigan oaks in 1854. Father Dewey (also George Martin) was a Republican editor and postmaster in small (pop. then: 8,000), maple-shaded Owosso, Mich. The Deweys lived in a large, white frame house on the best street in town, but the family never had much left over when the bills were paid. Like most small-town boys, Thomas Edmund Dewey began picking up spending money in his early teens--delivering papers, clerking in the drug store, hiring out as a farm hand in the summers. But unlike most boys, he organized his moneymaking. At 13 he had nine other youngsters working for him as magazine agents, selling the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies Home Journal, Country Gentleman. His savings in four years: $800.

This money went into his tuition at the University of Michigan, where he kept adding to it by working as telegraph editor of the Michigan Daily. At college he pulled down A's in history, economics, and rhetoric without any midnight oil, but he was much more excited by the discovery that he had the best baritone voice on the campus. The first victory of his life came easily in the Michigan State Singing Contest (in the nationals, he placed third), and he cut a middling campus swath as head of the Glee Club, a leader of the music fraternity Phi Mu Alpha, and a stellar player in an opera called Top of the Morning. His role: a bold, bad conspirator, constantly plotting a coup to seize the throne.

At graduation he was torn between music and law. He plunged into both. When a famed voice teacher, Percy Rector Stephens, encouraged him to continue his voice training in New York, he saw an even more interesting opportunity. The Professor's secretary, a gifted mezzo-soprano, Frances Eileen Hutt, of Sapulpa, Okla., was also going to New York.

While Thomas Dewey made money in church choirs and explored torts at Columbia, Frances Hutt spent two years on the stage, including a spell as a singer in George White's Scandals. By 1928 Thomas Dewey had made two decisions. Forced to sing at an important concert when he had a sore throat, he decided once & for all that he could not let his future depend on such a fragile thing as his vocal chords. And he married Frances Hutt, who immediately retired from the stage, in time became the mother of Thomas Edmund Jr. (now 11) and John Martin Dewey (8).

Young Man in a Hurry. After Columbia Law School, Tom Dewey went into the substantial law firm of MacNamara & Seymour. And he met a G.O.P. district leader, who put the bustling young man with the ready, dimpled smile to work ringing doorbells. Within three years he became an officer of New York City's Young Republican Club, had been spotted as a comer by U.S. District Attorney George Zerdin Medalie. Just 29, Thomas Dewey became Chief Assistant to District Attorney Medalie and the administrative head of the largest prosecuting office in the federal Government, with 60 lawyers under him. Appointed Special Prosecutor, and elected District Attorney for New York County, by 1938 Thomas Dewey had made the name racket-buster synonymous with his own.

He brought to his prosecuting office a technique and an attitude. The technique, always thorough down to the last whereas, has been criticized on the grounds that it disregarded the fine points of civil liberties. The attitude--that previous D.A.s had wasted too much time going after tinhorns instead of the big shots, and that it is results that count--was admired as efficient, but sometimes came in for the same sort of criticism from those who do not believe that the end always justifies the means.

As a prosecutor Thomas Dewey: 1) sent Prohibition Racketeer "Legs" Diamond to Atlanta for four years--Legs's first conviction; 2) smashed a loan-shark ring (which had often charged as much as 1,040%), convicting 27 out of 28 men he had arrested, later getting a guilty plea from the 28th; 3) gave the order to arrest "Dutch" Schultz, Harlem's policy-racket tsar; 4) broke the luck of "Lucky" Luciano, worst racketeer in New York racket history, by a sentence of 30 to 50 years; 5) started potent Tammanyite "Jimmy" Hines, for years a protector of rackets, on his way to the penitentiary; 6) as Special Prosecutor, made the sensational record of 72 convictions out of 73 cases tried.

At 42. When Thomas Dewey, running for District Attorney in 1937 on the same ticket as Fiorello LaGuardia, polled an even larger majority than the then overwhelmingly popular Mayor, the Partymen knew they had something. Many of them had little stomach for this always successful, always self-contained newcomer. But Thomas Dewey could get votes, and votes salve political wounds. When he was nominated for Governor in 1938, the Democrats were forced frantically to draft Herbert Lehman to stop him. Only the Willkie miracle kept him from the GOPresidential nomination in 1940. But he always learns from setbacks; he took over New York's Governorship in 1942 with a rubber-tired steam roller.

And in those few brief years since his District Attorney days, Thomas Dewey worked out a smooth relationship with a formidable triumvirate that was to manage him into the Presidential nomination: Nebraska-born, Yaleman Herbert Brownell, brain-truster and grand strategist; big, short-sleeved New York State Chairman Ed Jaeckle, breathing old-style politics from every pore; and easy-mannered J. Russel Sprague, National Committeeman and general front man. Of the three. Lawyer Brownell most likely would get the Dewey nod to succeed Harrison Spangler as Republican National Chairman.

At 42, Thomas Dewey could be the youngest President in U.S. history.*

This week an inveterate admirer of Wendell Willkie, the New York Herald Tribune, said editorially:

"It is not just by chance that Mr. Dewey has reached this extraordinary height. When he declared his position with respect to the nomination, the experts threw up their hands. Nobody had ever won a nomination by sticking to his state duties, refusing to talk with the politicians and promising not a single job to any one. . . .

"What we offer in explanation of this miracle is that Governor Dewey is first of all an organizer and second, as a correspondent of the Wall Street Journal has phrased it, a very tough guy. Mr. Dewey did not find himself alone and drifting in national politics. He had already surrounded himself with as able a group of specialists, a personal cabinet, as contemporary politics affords. . . . Having known them and watched their development over the years--it is 14 years since Mr. Dewey began his public career--we are glad to testify to their quality. They would prove an unusual group of able, high-minded, forceful men in any company.

"But such a group, even if selected with all the persistent care with which Mr. Dewey fills every post, could not accomplish much unless there was a very strong leadership somewhere. That is our second point. Mr. Dewey is a calm, steady, patient leader. He believes in conference and collaboration and he is loyal to his men. But he demands their best. He is himself a terrific worker, he applies his abilities and his energies with a unique concentration of power. . . .

"In our judgment, so far as organization and administration go, Mr. Dewey would prove one of the ablest Presidents who ever sat in the White House. He would pick the best brains the country afforded, regardless of the politicians or party lines, he would delegate authority, he would have departments that clicked from top to bottom. . . .

"So far as policies go, Mr. Dewey has yet to give his full specifications. . . . We are confident that he will. For that is the sort of campaign he makes--terse, forceful, clear. . . .

"We like Dewey."

* The youngest President so far: Theodore Roosevelt, who when he took the oath of office at the death of President McKinley, was 20 days older than Dewey will be on Inauguration Day.

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