Big Red & The Standpatters

(See Cover)

Republicans streamed into Philadelphia this week with a sense of determination and high purpose. The scent of victory was in the air. For the 24th National Republican Convention would do more than pick its candidate for the 1948 campaign. After 16 years of Democratic rule, Republicans were almost certainly choosing the next President of the United States.

As the big moment approached, no candidate could claim anywhere near a majority of solid, blitz-proof delegates. Like its well-remembered counterpart of 1940, this would be an open convention. Most of the convention's 1,094 votes were still uncommitted to any candidate. The delegates' decisions were still deferred for many reasons: honest indecision, a desire to make a deal, a desire to be on the winning side.

But there was one other big reason. It was the basic political fact that a state's position in the national political scene is often determined by a purely internal political scrap. Nowhere was that clearer than in Pennsylvania, the host to the convention, the traditional home of rugged Republicanism, the Keystone State whose 73 votes are second in weight only to New York's 97.

Grundy & Co. The leader of one side was Pennsylvania's Governor James Henderson Duff, a strapping, affable redhead, who believes with an evangelist's zeal that the future of the party lies with a progressive candidate. The man who best fitted that description, by Jim Duff's analysis, was Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg.

The other leader was apple-cheeked, 85-year-old Uncle Joe Grundy, the wealthy Quaker mill-owner whose name has long been a synonym for high-tariff Republicanism and who has fed and guided the forces of Pennsylvania's conservatism for nearly half a century. Uncle Joe is quite deaf, scorns such contraptions as hearing aids, and conserves his energy. While he planned the strategy for his camp this week, the tactics were in the hands of his handyman, National Committeeman G. Mason Owlett, who doubles in brass as president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association. Grundy, Owlett & Co. were working for the nomination of Tom Dewey.

There were some splinter groups--and some who still hoped to heal the breach. Oilman Joe Pew, once a real power but now a political has-been, privately favored Bob Taft. Philadelphia's ex-City Chairman Jay Cooke had a small handful of delegates lined up for Harold Stassen. National Committeewoman Mrs. Worthington Scranton was working feverishly for unity behind U.S. Senator Edward Martin--who would be the delegation's favorite-son choice on the first ballot.

Beginner's Luck. But the big split between Jim Duff and the Grundy-Owlett group was a fight for state control which had been raging ever since Big Jim Duff sat down in the governor's chair. For years Joe Grundy had run the state through his Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, founded on and dedicated to the principle that what's best for industry is best for the state. Jim Duff had another theory: that capitalism thrives best when it is not just the protector of entrenched wealth, but serves all the people equally.

That was no sudden, theoretician's conclusion. Big Jim had come up through the brawling competition of the wildcat oilfields; his roots were deep in Pennsylvania history. One of his ancestors was a member of William Penn's Council. His grandfather was one of the first to strike oil in western Pennsylvania.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, he went to Princeton (class of '04), studied law at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh. After he had hung out his shingle in Pittsburgh, he scraped up $5,000 for an oil driller's rig and took a lease on some property not five miles from home. With beginner's luck, he struck. Since then he has followed the wildcatters from western Pennsylvania to the Gulf Coast of Mexico. He made a fortune, lost most of it in the 1929 crash, returned to the law practice he had never quite abandoned.

When his old friend Ed Martin asked him to help with the Martin campaign for governor in 1942, Jim Duff had long been neck-deep in Pennsylvania politics. As a delegate to the state convention in 1912, he helped swing Pennsylvania away from William Howard Taft and into Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose herd. He was a constant rebel against Joe Grundy's local and state machines; he remains a Bull Mooser to this day.

The Devil's Work? As Ed Martin's attorney general, he banged head-on into Joe Grundy's industrialists. Under Duff's urging, Ed Martin liberalized workmen's compensation and unemployment laws (which Joe Grundy and the P.M.A. have always considered the devil's work), pushed through a bill to curb the discharge of mine silt into the Schuylkill River. When mineowners protested, redheaded

Jim Duff shot back: "Do the job yourselves before I've got to put the iron to you."

Despite such run-ins, when it came time to pick a successor for able Governor Ed Martin, the party's bigwigs settled on Big Jim. After a long, weary afternoon's session in the Hotel Hershey, the bosses could still not decide between four other entries. Finally, in a moment of unguarded weariness, Joe Pew pointed to Duff: "That redheaded s.o.b. ought to be the candidate. I called him about it a few days ago and he told me to go to hell."

Like most candidates. Duff campaigned on the time-honored issues of conservation, public health and education. But unlike many, Duff meant what he said. He toured 45,000 miles of the state in his automobile and was swept into office by more than 550,000 votes.

Almost at once he started to make good on his promises. He raised state aid to education by $47 million (to $239 million, a whopping 40% of the entire budget). He began rebuilding the state's antiquated mental hospitals with an $82 million appropriation, increased their staff doctors by 30%. He is increasing the state's nursery capacity from five to 60 million trees a year, the yearly output of fish hatcheries from 3 1/2 to 10 million fmgerlings.

Cracking down with the state's anti-pollution laws, Duff has already cut the dumping of mine waste by 80% in the Schuylkill River basin. The task of dredging out millions of tons of accumulated silt and culm is ready to begin. Similar projects are under way along the Lehigh, the Lackawanna and Susquehanna Rivers.

No Free Seats. Go-slow Grundymen, alarmed by such sudden changes, began to eye the state capital with increasing suspicion. When Jim Duff presented his bill, they yowled for vengeance. To raise an extra $133 million in state revenue he increased cigarette taxes from 2-c- to 4-c- a pack, slapped new taxes on beer ( 1/2-c- pint) and soft drinks (1-c- per 12 ounces). Then he prevented repeal of the five-mill tax levied on manufacturers' capital stocks and franchises.

Pennsylvania's manufacturers, led by Mason Owlett, descended on the governor's office in Harrisburg, singly and in angry droves. To all, Big Jim had the same answer: "If you think I'm going to give you a free seat in the grandstand at the same time I'm raising the price of the bleacher seats, you're crazy." After the tax bills had passed, he remarked to a friend: "Those bastards are so accustomed to getting their own way they make blueprints for their track and start scheduling trains over it right away. When the trains don't go through they're startled."

Last winter they were startled more than ever. The moment that his old mentor, Senator Martin, began sniping at the flanks of ERP, Duff rose up before a Temple University audience to throw his full weight behind the Marshall Plan. He jarred the old guard again by warning a P.M.A. dinner that the way to start fighting inflation was by cutting back prices. When he let it be known that he was getting ready to swing his convention support behind a candidate of his own choosing, the regulars reached for their knives.

Incongruous Alliance. Just before Pennsylvania's presidential primaries last April, they struck. Their campaign took the form of a heavily financed write-in drive for Favorite Son Ed Martin, and a hardhitting attack on Duff's State Chairman

Harvey Taylor, a converted Grundyman who was after renomination as state senator. But that attempt to give Duff his comeuppance ended disastrously.

On election day Ed Martin ran third, behind both Harold Stassen and Tom Dewey, as a presidential favorite. Duff's man Taylor squeaked by with a 1,199-vote majority. Throughout the state the returns put Duff more securely in the saddle than ever.

But that first defeat only made Grundy, Owlett & Co. more determined than ever to unseat the rebel. Scenting the fight, Deweymen rushed in to exploit the Grundy-Owlett wrath. It was an incongruous alliance. In the very week that Tom Dewey was urging reciprocal trade extension in Boston, Grundy's Doylestown Daily Intelligencer was editorially burning free-trade heretics at the stake. It was not that Joe Grundy distrusted Tom Dewey less; it was a case of distrusting Jim Duff more.

The Big Stick. By last week the battle lines were drawn. Mason Owlett threw in the full weight of the P.M.A. coffers. No Pennsylvania manufacturer went uncalled, no weight of pressure on wavering delegates went unused. Ed Martin had been independent of Joe Grundy when he was governor. But now, through him, Grundy and Owlett cocked the big stick of federal patronage. A Republican President would have 101,000 federal jobs to distribute in the state (though many of them were under civil service). U.S. Senator Ed Martin would be the man to parcel them out.

Tom Dewey himself entered the fight. Fortnight ago Philadelphia's Sheriff Austin Meehan, a Duffman who has been given control of the job-heavy state Department of Revenue, got word that the governor of New York wanted to call for a personal interview. When Meehan replied that he would see Dewey only in Duff's company, the interview was called off.

Snorted Duff: "Dewey turns up in this state with the vigorous support of the people who have opposed every progressive step the Republican Party has taken. I assume that since Dewey says publicly he is ... for these programs, he or his agents must be telling Mason Owlett something else. I am driven to the conclusion that Dewey will promise anybody anything if it will make him President of the U.S. Dewey looks like a man without principle to me."

One Ambition. Plainly, Jim Duff was not a man to run from a fight. At 65, he is a friendly, outspoken six-footer with a rugged frame and electric blue-grey eyes that make him look 20 years younger. Since he moved to the Executive Mansion, he has become a familiar sight on Harrisburg streets--window-shopping, chatting with the local newsstand dealer, gassing with the cop on the corner.

His real love is the country and he spends at least half of the year at the governor's summer home, built by Ed Martin on the military reservation at Indiantown Gap. With his wife and their two dogs Jim Duff patrols the grounds inspecting the new tree plantings which are his pride. Unpretentious and homespun, Jim Duff has only one ambition: "To get something started in Pennsylvania which they'll be afraid to wash out when I leave here two years from now."

Into the Firing Line. But long before he left--this week, in fact--he had to deal with the standpatters. Despite the forces arrayed against him, Big Jim was not without weapons of his own. His rear was secure. The Republican organization of western Pennsylvania, led by Banker Richard Mellon, was solidly behind him. The Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) delegates had already announced their intention of following his lead. Above all, he would still be governor of the state for 2 1/2 more years, with 40,000 state jobs at his disposal.

Last week Jim Duff moved into the firing line with his rifle cocked. As rumors of deals and counter-deals mounted, Duff summoned a press conference in Harrisburg. Said he flatly: "I have been saying for a solid year that I am not a candidate for anything and I'm not going to be. It has been suggested that I am anxious to be a Cabinet member in the next Administration. I do not expect to be. I will not be--and that is without reservation or qualification."

The day before, in Philadelphia, he had loosed one warning shot toward Ed Martin, who was trying to tie up the delegation in a holding action until he released them himself. Said Duff: "That's the kind of stuff that made the Pennsylvania delegates so ridiculous in 1940 . . . Before they realized what was going on, Willkie had the nomination."

Then Jim Duff fired point-blank at the Grundy strategists. "If they want to get tough," said Big Jim, "I'll show them that I can get tough, too. I'm not looking for a fight but I certainly am not going to sit down and do nothing . . . Let them start something and see the heads fall."

Key Man, Keystone State. Jim Duff was confident that a minimum of 44 delegates would stick by him to the end. He conceded a maximum of 25 to Grundy,

Owlett & Co., four to Joe Pew and Jay Cooke. What worried Duff most was Arthur Vandenberg's reluctance to come into the open, the lack of a strong Vandenberg organization which would be needed if the critical moment came.

Duff's strategy was clear but flexible. On the first and second ballots he would probably ride with Ed Martin. The test of his strength would come on the big third and fourth ballots, when Dewey would have to make or break, when Arthur Vandenberg would have to start his drive. At the strategic moment he would either: 1) give the Vandenberg bandwagon a powerful shove, or 2) if that looked hopeless, back anyone else to the limit in order to stop Tom Dewey.

Either way, it might well have a decisive effect on the nomination. Either way, it was a plan Grundy, Owlett & Co. would fight to the last ditch. That was why the control of keystone Pennsylvania was one of the big question marks of the convention. That was why Jim Duff, along with the heads of the other big delegations--Illinois' Dwight Green, California's Earl Warren, New Jersey's Governor Alfred Driscoll, etc.--would be one of the key men of the convention. In Manhattan last week, Earl Warren made clear his alarm at efforts of reactionary elements to gain control of the party, and announced his determination to fight them (see below).

The real job before these key men, and all the delegates, would be to nominate a man who would steer the Republican Party along a progressive let's-get-things-done course. The U.S. people were already restless, waiting for a new Administration to take over. It was up to the G.O.P. to nominate a man who would give them a psychological lift.

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