Cove Cones

Even before Aesop, wise men were illustrating points about human nature with parables about dogs, foxes, geese, snakes, rats, oysters, cocks and bulls. All literature, from the Bible to the comic books, is full of zoomorphic comment on human behavior. Seldom have these comparisons given serious offense, one exception being the case of Aesop himself, who was killed, partly because of his fables, by a Delphian mob. Last week Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson knew just how Aesop felt.

The Narrator. Wilson, an uninhibited teller of down-to-earth stories, was not tabbed for a single campaign speech by the Republican National Committee. But he was going home to Detroit last week for his yearly physical checkup, and he was booked to speak at a fund-raising dinner there. Then a speech in Chicago, 48 hours later, was set up.

After a morning session at Harper Hospital, he went to the Statler. Hotel's Michigan Room for a news conference with nine or ten Detroit reporters. At the doorway Wilson told a story about the western sheriff whose friends smeared Limburger cheese in his beard while he slept. Wakening, he sniffed (Wilson sniffed to demonstrate) and rushed outdoors, but could not get away from the smell. Baffled, he went back in and announced: "Boy, the whole world stinks." That's like the Democratic Party, said Wilson, still accusing the Republicans of the kind of mess in Washington made under the former Administrations.

When the conference began, he talked freely and answered all questions. Many of the questions were about the possibility of more defense contracts for Detroit. Wilson predicted that Detroit would have full employment by Christmas, and said that defense was too serious a matter to be used to make work. "When a whole community gets to leaning too much on military business and gets a vested interest in war, that's not good," said Wilson. He deplored governmental policies that seemed to promise to bring a job to every man in every area; he would like to see more self-reliance. Typically, he made his point by a story about two dogs.

What Makes History. This turned out to be a historic blooper--but the blooper was not immediately apparent. The Associated Press did not put it on the wire for some eight hours, and the New York Times buried it at the bottom of a story. It took the C.I.O.'s Walter Reuther to discover that Charlie Wilson had delivered an insult without parallel to the American workingman.

Demanding Wilson's resignation or apology, Reuther wired President Eisenhower: WORKERS ARE NOW DOGS TO YOUR

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE. Light dawned on a press that had, up to this point, failed to find much of interest in the congressional campaign. When a London paper next day said that Wilson had "referred to the country's unemployed as dogs," it did not need the excuse of distance.

Many U.S. papers and radio commentators went just as far in distorting his remarks.

Wilson had taken a theme from Ae--sop ("The Two Dogs").* According to the transcript, this is what he said:

A. (Wilson): This defense business of the country is too serious a business to look at as though it was made work ... I would like to tell you a story that happened to me . . . down in Washington. A group of people came in like you, from a distress area, so-called labor-surplus area . . . One of them made a complaint--that was a little over a year ago--and he said, "You have just reduced the draft in our district. There are no more young men that won't have to go to Korea and fight and that will add to our unemployment." And that idea that a 19-year-old boy could be drafted and sent to Korea to be shot at, and he didn't have enough gumption to go 100 miles and get himself a job --I don't go for that. I've got a lot of sympathy for people where a sudden change catches them. But--I've always liked bird dogs better than kennel-fed dogs myself.

Q.: Mr. Wilson, how much-- A. (Wilson): You know, one that will get out and hunt for his food rather than sit on his fanny and yell.

What Makes Olin Sick. As it turned out, a great many Americans agreed with Wilson's main point--that it is dangerous to use defense spending as a means to prosperity and full employment. But few bothered to check what Wilson had said.

They took Walter Reuther's cue.

Democratic national headquarters in Washington burned the wires to candidates, urging them not to play Wilson for laughs but to take the same earnest, humorless line as Reuther.

Democrats called Charlie Wilson "revolting . . . inhuman . . . brutal." South Carolina's Senator Olin Johnston said he "makes me sick with fear." At week's end, in his first and only speech of the campaign, former President Harry Truman labeled Wilson's words "the attitude of too many big-business spokesmen in the Republican Party." In Buffalo the C.I.O. handed jobless men cans of dog food.

The Unkindest Cutters. But what fed the headlines more than Democratic gags and diatribes was the Republican panic. G.O.P. candidates all but trampled Charlie Wilson in their rush for the nearest exit. Said Kentucky's Republican Senator Cooper: "Inexcusable, and I criticize it with all my strength." Said Massachusetts' Saltonstall: "Unfair!" New York's Ives and New Jersey's Case turned their backs on Charlie Wilson. In South Bend, Ind., hard hit by Studebaker layoffs, Republican Congressional Candidate Shep Crumpacker demanded his resignation. Then G.O.P. national headquarters was on the phone, asking Charlie Wilson to back out of his remarks. "What do you want me to pull back on?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

For hours the Denver White House flapped like an overcrowded dog kennel in an animated cartoon. But it did not panic. After a flurry of transcontinental phone calls, President Eisenhower issued a steadying statement: "I have never found him [Wilson] in the slightest degree indifferent to human misfortune . . . In spite of record peacetime employment, there are areas suffering from economic dislocations as the aftermath of war and inflation. Every one of these is engaging the earnest and persistent efforts of the Administration."

The Badminton Game. The hardest blow came from Illinois' Republican Governor William Stratton. He had spent the day in the downstate mining city of Centralia. When he got back to the executive mansion in Springfield after midnight, he heard about Wilson's dogs. Governor Stratton was due to introduce Wilson at the Chicago dinner in 18 hours' time; a much-perturbed politician, he decided against it.

He woke his wife, a former secretary, to type up a statement. It took him 90 minutes to write 117 words suggesting that Wilson's appearance should be canceled. About 3:30 a.m. he called Fred Gillies, state G.O.P. campaign manager. "I've got to do this, Fred," the governor said. About 4:30 a.m.--just in time for morning newscasts--he personally phoned his statement to statehouse reporters.

A Stratton aide told reporters that the governor would stay away from the dinner if Charlie Wilson showed up. Wilson, home in Michigan, insisted on going. "The girl's been propositioned," he said. "The marriage ceremony has been arranged. To call it off now would raise quite a stink." Big Ed Moore, Cook County G.O.P. chairman, quivered: "It would be an impossible situation . . . embarrassing."

After frantic effort, G.O.P. headquarters reached Stratton, then called Detroit and--finally--arranged a settlement. Before leaving Detroit for the flight to Chicago. Charlie Wilson knew what he would have to do. Wryly he told reporters: "The rumor around Washington is that I have foot-in-mouth disease."

When he arrived at Chicago's airport, reporters surrounded him: "Can I tell another story?" asked Wilson with a grin. Reporters fairly drooled like bloodhounds in anticipation. Wilson's story was about a migrating bird who arrived late at a Southern rendezvous "because it got mixed up in the darnedest badminton game."

He had already said: "I've found one thing in this. Your friends run fast."

Main Course: Words. At the Conrad Hilton Hotel, 25 C.I.O. pickets barked and yelped as Wilson arrived. They were parading three dogs (hired from a pet shop for $25). At the scheduled dinner hour, Wilson was still hard at work revising his speech; to lull the packed crowd of Republicans, the organist played How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?

At last, Charlie Wilson, a cowlick sticking up atop his head, got up before 1,500 people to eat his words--and he did it without choking. "Some of the advance publicity for this meeting," he said, "was not planned." He went on: "I made a mistake--an unfortunate mistake--by bringing up those bird dogs at the same time I was talking about people . . . Right here, right now, I want to say to the American people that I am sorry . . .

"But," he said firmly, "I will not let our political assailants get away with the charge that I am unsympathetic with the problems of workmen." He noted that he began working at 18 for 18-c- an hour, that "fortunately" his pay kept pace with his growing family (six children), and that while hospitalized with a broken hip, he thought up G.M.'s model five-year labor contract. "I'll match my labor record with anyone," said Charlie Wilson. "I know what it is to work for a living."

Later on, he ad-libbed another story about the operator of a chain of filling stations who tried to check up on his employees by driving up in his car incognito. He was astonished at the super service he always got until one day, lifting his car's hood, he saw a note attached to the motor: "Be careful what you do or say. This s.o.b. is president of the company."

A Lesson Learned. It was nighttime when Charlie Wilson returned to Washington after his eventful five-day trip. He was the last passenger off the Capital Airlines plane, which flew in through a squall from Chicago. The reporters were waiting. Asked about Eisenhower, he said: "I hope he isn't worried about it all --he's got enough to worry about." Asked about Republican chances in the November election, he grinned. "I think," he said, "I've proven I'm not a politician."

He could not resist adding that 85% of the people he had heard from by mail and telegraph agreed with his original point illustrated by the dog story. A bystander at the airport yelled: "You were right the first time, Charlie." Wilson grinned and waved, but he did not stop to tell another story.

* "A man had two dogs: a Hound, trained to assist him in his sports, and a House Dog, taught to watch the house. When he returned home after a good day's sport, he always gave the House Dog a large share of his spoil. The Hound, feeling much aggrieved at this, reproached his companion, saying: 'It is very hard to have all this labor, while you, who do not assist in the chase, luxuriate in the fruits of my exertions.' The House Dog replied, 'Do not blame me, my friend, but find fault with the master, who has not taught me to labor, but to depend for subsistence on the labor of others.'

"Children are not to be blamed for the faults of their parents."

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