The Listening Campaign

With almost metronomic precision, the Dewey train clacked West. It arrived late only once (Des Moines); if it was ahead of time, it loitered in the yards so as to arrive in town on the very pin point of schedule. The advance of the train was prepared for with the crispest American efficiency. This at first bored, then interested, then absorbed the 63 newsmen on the train.

At every stop, six copies of all local papers were brought aboard for the candidate. At each important stop, the routine was exactly the same: a brief speech to the station crowd, a 25-car motorcade to the leading hotel, a half-hour press conference, followed by closed conferences with local GOPsters, farmers, businessmen and -- as the train went farther west --cattlemen, wool growers, lumbermen. Each of these conferences lasted exactly half an hour -- no more, no less.

In each conference, Tom Dewey followed exactly the same procedure. The GOPsters or lumbermen or wool growers gathered in advance on the chairs and beds of a hotel suite (while the next groups waited in adjoining rooms). Dewey walked in briskly shook hands all around, said: "Well, I'm here to learn what your problems are." He answered some quesions, but mainly he just listened.

If a speech was to be made, the local committee was told in advance just how high the lectern must be. The best method for a Dewey entrance was finally worked out : he waited in the wings until the introductory speaker intoned his name, then walked briskly forward, accompanied by his wife.

Campaign by Ear. Tom Dewey was meticulously groomed, changing suits daily -- brown, blue, grey pinstriped, al ways single-breasted. Always, when he alighted, the grey Homburg was in his hand. Never did he seem flustered. And in midweek the added confidence he drew from the Maine results (see Elections) showed visibly.

The correspondents pondered, and wrote tons of newsprint about this new and, to them, strange kind of campaign. Not even Dewey's most ardent admirers pretended that he ever showed a superabundance of warmth, or relaxed in backslapping informality. His deportment was precise and correct, at times even chill.

But the correspondents noted that the "Listening Campaign" had a good effect; local groups appreciated the sympathetic Dewey ear. And the GOPsters invariably were pleased that they did not have a candidate for whom they had to apologize (like Landon) or whose lusty statements kept them in hot water (like Willkie).

Campaign by Headline. With no major speech in ten days, and in the face of the furious blaze of war news, Tom Dewey kept in the headlines by skillful use of his press conferences.

At Valentine, Neb., he said that General Douglas MacArthur's "magnificent talents" should be given greater scope in the war, "now that he is no longer a threat to Mr. Roosevelt." This statement provided news for several days as correspondents, especially from New Deal papers, kept coming back at it.

At Sheridan, Wyo., Dewey took a sideswipe at the New Deal's efforts to turn the rugged Jackson Hole country into a national park. This, said he, was a perfect illustration of New Deal "deviousness." This was a boggle, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes promptly rose to correct him. Harold Ickes testily noted Dewey's "beagle-like snuffing about for votes," calmly pointed out that the Jackson Hole policy was begun under President Coolidge, and continued by Hoover.

The closer he got to the rugged West, the more aggressive Tom Dewey became; twice he predicted his own election. And, if elected, he said, he guaranteed to fire Harold Ickes forthwith.

"Caprice of One Man." This week, in Seattle, Tom Dewey made his first campaign speech on labor. It was a smashing attack on the New Deal's labor policy as one of "delay, bungling and incompetence . . . subject to the caprice of one man."

Mme. Frances Perkins, said he, is "an estimable lady," but "we need a Secretary of Labor. We need a Department of Labor. Twelve years is too long to go without them. Sixteen years would be intolerable."

Next up for attack was WLB, which "by design or sheer incompetence, has stalled --weeks, months, sometimes years--before issuing decisions.

"This policy of delay and more delay," Dewey declared, "serves only the New Deal and its political ends. It puts the leaders of labor on the spot. It makes them come, hat in hand, to the White House. It makes political loyalties the test of a man's getting his rights." Any break in the Little Steel formula (TIME, Sept. 18), said Candidate Dewey, giving

U.S. workers a wage raise before Election Day, would be "carefully designed to make labor believe that something it is justly entitled to is a special gift from on high." As his own labor program, Dewey promised retention of the Wagner Act, called for abolition of competing bureaus, and pledged the appointment of a Secretary of Labor "from the ranks of labor."

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