Crossfire

Two facts which had been almost completely overlooked before the election now stood out like very sore thumbs: 1) labor voted in droves against the Taft-Hartley law and worked quietly but feverishly to sell the Democratic ticket to everyone in sight; 2) many farmers, who had been expected to vote Republican as usual, voted for Harry Truman instead. Between them they caught the Republicans in an implacable crossfire.

Side by Side. There was no doubt about labor's part. Its politicos worked quietly, kept their names out of the papers, deliberately played down their activity for fear of antagonizing non-labor votes. But labor was united for common action as seldom before. Said one Illinois organizer: "In 1944 we made a lotta noise. In '48 we worked."

In every big industrial state, labor organized down to the ward and precinct level. The A.F.L. and President A. F. Whitney's Railroad Trainmen worked side by side with the lieutenants of C.I.O.'s Jack Kroll (who had predicted Harry Truman's election right along). They combed registration lists, personally called on unregistered voters.

As the campaign got under way, labor punched doorbells, manned sound-trucks, flooded the country with campaign literature. In Chicago alone, labor mustered nearly 10,000 volunteer workers. Many a worker in Democratic headquarters had his salary paid by labor. On Election Day labor provided free babysitters, free taxi service and piled up Democratic pluralities.

Angry Mutterings. Farmers had no such specific target as the Taft-Hartley law. But they had been muttering angrily ever since Congress refused to grant appropriations to the Commodity Credit Corp. last summer for more crop storage bins. Because no Government loans can be made on crops stored on the farm, they had been forced to dump their surplus on a falling market.

In case any farmers missed the point, Harry Truman blamed the G.O.P. directly when the price of Illinois corn dropped from $2.29 to 96-c- a bushel in September. Ahead of and behind the President, Agriculture Secretary Charles Brannan also roamed the Midwest, hammering home the same argument. Candidate Dewey, on the other hand, failed to give any specific assurances on the future of price supports. Besides, many farmers just liked the prosperity they had gained in Democratic years.*

Thus, on Election Day, thousands of farmers decided either to vote Democratic or to stay home. In the normally Republican counties of rural Illinois, the vote fell 150,000 below 1944, 400,000 below 1940. In Indiana, rural returns almost upset Dewey's earlier lead. In Iowa, the farmers assured Harry Truman's victory.

Distrust & Revolt. Obviously labor and the farmers were not enough to turn the trick alone. There were other important factors:

P: The bandwagon pressure of the public-opinion polls, which encouraged many waverers to vote for Underdog Truman just to slow up the expected Dewey landslide, and caused many overconfident Republicans to stay away from the polls entirely.

P: The impact of the candidates themselves, which stirred many to vote for Harry Truman's fighting campaign, and sent others to the polls in revolt against the lofty Dewey platitudes.

P: The strength of local Democratic tickets, which gave Harry Truman a boost in almost every key state.

All these reasons added up to the one big reason--the voters' distrust of the Republican Party as mirrored in the 80th Congress, a distrust which Tom Dewey's promises of efficient government had never been able to erase.

* Example: two weeks ago, Alvin Meyer, a 53-year-old farmer of Van Meter, Iowa, walked into Des Moines' radio station WHO, announced that he wanted to go on the air for Truman, plunked down $85 to pay for the time. In his broadcast, he explained: in 1932 he was broke and facing foreclosure. Today he owns 540 acres of land, 500 hogs, a restaurant, and twelve filling stations. It was the Democrats and their aid to farmers that did it, he declared. Why change?

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