The Bitter Battle

(See Cover) The Democratic candidate for Gover nor of Pennsylvania is a proudly emotional man. His right fist punches the air, a forefinger lashes out, his face flushes furiously beneath his silver hair. Philadelphia's former Mayor Richardson Dilworth. all atremble, stammers slightly and the savage words about his opponent spill out: "My family on both sides were here long before those robber barons of his showed up. His family sold out their interests in Lackawanna County and then moved out their money . . . This man who claims to be a gentleman . . . this Little Lord Fauntleroy . . . this Ivy League Dickie Nixon . . . this man who seeks on-the-job training.''

The performance is genuine. But it is also calculated to enrage the Republican candidate, to shatter the armored suit of imperturbability that has frustrated Dilworth as few things have before. In open debate, U.S. Representative William Scranton permits a thin smile to flicker across his face while his opponent heaps on abuse. Then he rises to reply--and that reply, despite its cool, deliberate cadence is whiplash in its bitterness against Dilworth. "We have got graft and corruption." he charges. "We have got it in Philadelphia, and we know what has not been done about it ... He cries in front of the courtroom and on television to try and stop any kind of investigation . . . This crown prince of failure . . . who whined and cried and fought tooth and nail to protect the grafters and corrupters."

The use of such invective is a dis appearing art in U.S. politics. This, to connoisseurs, is a pity. But it is being revived with a vengeance in Pennsylvania, where political partisanship runs deep and the stakes are immense.

The Place of Power. The Governor of Pennsylvania is probably the most powerful in the U.S. He has no fewer than 50,000 jobs to hand out. The result is a spoils system second to none. The army of state jobholders knows whom it is working for, and this makes for a built-in, self-perpetuating political machine. In presidential election years, that machine can be used both to throw vital convention votes and to deliver crucial electoral votes.

For decades, Pennsylvania's Republican Party held power, and manipulated the state bureaucracy to its own vast advantage. But the tide turned. Just ten years ago. Republicans held a registration advantage of 1,000,000; now Democrats are ahead by more than 200.000. Democrat George Leader served as Governor from 1955 to 1959; he was succeeded by Pittsburgh's Democratic Mayor David Lawrence. Until two years ago. Pennsylvania since the Civil War had voted for only one Democrat for President--that, of course, was F.D.R. But in 1960, under Lawrence, the state went for Kennedy over Nixon by 116.000 votes--and gave the winner 32 of the 84 electoral votes that he won by.

Unfortunately, all this political power has served Pennsylvania badly. And the Keystone State--all the way from the anthracite regions of the east, across the Allegheny Mountains to the steel mills of Pittsburgh in the west--is in desperate economic shape. Pennsylvania has some 350,000 unemployed. Of its 67 counties, 56 are designated by the Federal Government as depressed areas.

Since the Democrats took office in 1955, employment in the state's primary metals industries has dropped by 37,000. Hot-rolled iron and steel production slipped from 22.8 million tons in 1956 to 15.8 million last year. Bituminous coal production was at 72 million tons in 1954, skidded to 62 million last year. The state has 429,000 people on relief. In Pittsburgh, 9.4% of the labor market is unemployed; in Johnstown, more than 12% are idle.

Both Lawrence, who is not eligible to run again, and President Kennedy, who promised Pennsylvania much but has delivered little, are being widely blamed for these troubles. While Lawrence has done a creditable job of holding down the state budget, and showed a $16.6 million surplus last year, he is catching much of the heat for upping the state's sales tax to 4%, which, with a stiff corporation tax, provides half the general revenue.

Room for Difference. It is against this background that Bill Scranton and Dick Dilworth are contesting each other for Governor. And as a result of this sorry story, they are battling with a bitterness rare even in Pennsylvania's turbulent political history.

Between the two, there is plenty of room for difference. At 64, Dilworth is a veteran Democratic politician who wears his New Deal-style liberalism on the sleeve of his double-breasted suit. Scranton, as a freshman Congressman, is a relative newcomer to elective politics, and he is not in the least dogmatic about his views. Dilworth has been busily running for one public office or another for 15 years; Scranton has been tugged reluctantly into every public job he has ever held. Dilworth was a brilliant reformer who made a lot of enemies and is now harried by those hostilities within his own party. Scranton. fresh and unmarked, is backed by all Republican factions, despite their own fratricidal history.

Perhaps more than anything else, the difference is one of personality. Dilworth is basically a shy man. He feels and appears uncomfortable while partaking of that backslapping, handshaking routine that, curiously enough, has become increasingly important to political campaigning in this day of television. But put him behind a microphone on a formal platform, and Dilworth is second to no one as a slashing speaker. Now shouting, occasionally weeping, he can carry an audience along with him on rolling waves of emotion.

Scranton, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoys street-corner politicking. Thus, in a Reading paint plant, he recently scrambled up a wobbly ladder to shake hands with a worker on a 20-ft.-high scaffold, ignoring the open paint vats below. Said the surprised workman: "Nobody ever went this high for my vote." On the stump. Scranton is far less flamboyant and eloquent than Dilworth. But he is much more controlled. He has an analytical mind that travels fast to the major points.

And so. the campaign's savage exchanges stem in great part from Dilworth's proven ability to demoralize an opponent on the stump and bury him in a bluster of verbiage. Scranton simply means to stay cool, let Dilworth blurt himself into a fatal political blunder. In 1958 Dilworth made just such an error when he advocated the admission of Red China into the United Nations--an issue that had nothing to do with the Democratic gubernatorial nomination he was then seeking. (He has since changed his mind.)

Dilworth's emotionalism is even the subject of jokes within his own party. Quips former Democratic Governor George Leader: "Nobody controls Dick Dilworth. Sometimes he can't even control himself." Dilworth, however, makes no apology for this facet of his personality. Says he: "I am emotional, and I'm damn proud of it. If it hadn't been for emotional men, Philadelphia wouldn't have moved in the last eleven years."

"Like Cutting Your Throat." Pennsylvania's economic ailments are a ready-made issue for a challenger, and Scranton is making the most of this issue. "The other states are getting ahead of us," he stresses in speech after speech. "They're getting ahead of us in their economy; they're growing faster; they have more jobs; their people are making more money. We are going behind and drifting. And it's all because the last administration has been handled on a power-politics basis and for political purposes primarily, and not as a service to the people, which is what government is supposed to be. They have, in the last seven years, doubled taxation in this state; they have doubled expenditures, and we certainly haven't doubled services."

Scranton is plugging a ten-point "program of recovery," which ranges from new state programs for community colleges, commuter transportation and middle-income housing to "unceasing effort to improve the industrial climate of Pennsylvania to entice more industries and thus more jobs." He promises that state agencies will help "eliminate corrupt city government in Philadelphia." On the touchy patronage issue, Scranton pledges that he will push to expand civil service. With characteristic bluntness he adds: "I don't know of a single county leader in either party who shares my views on this." He maintains that he can save millions of dollars by administrative efficiency, steers very clear of talk about possible tax increases to finance his programs.

Similarly, Dilworth is too smart to mention specific increases, says candidly: "That would be like cutting your own throat." His main pitch has been to point to his own really outstanding record in revitalizing Philadelphia. He also fends off any ties to the Lawrence administration. "This state has been inflicted for years with miserable state governments," says Dilworth. "It's been the history of this state to load up the payroll with political hacks who got miserable salaries and stole the rest."

In their bloody battle, both Scranton and Dilworth tend to make each other out as the worst sort of political brigand. Yet neither is anything of the sort, and indeed they have much in common. Both have deep family roots in Pennsylvania. Both were born to wealth. Both are highly educated--and their training includes graduate degrees in the hard school of Pennsylvania politics. Finally, both Dilworth and Scranton are deeply concerned about their state's situation.

Diversify or Die. The Scrantons first came to the state in 1840, when two brothers built an iron foundry in the northeastern Wyoming Valley, turned out rails for the Erie Railroad. Their growing community became known as Scranton. The most prominent of the early Scrantons was Bill's great-grandfather, Joseph. He managed the foundry, started a spur that became the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, organized the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Co., founded a bank and headed the local gasworks and waterworks. The Scrantons grew wealthy, but not complacent. Bill's grandfather, William Walker, as early as 1873 was warning that the town must diversify or die.

Bill's father, Worthington, heeded the warning, made expansion of Scranton's industrial base his life's main work. He had helped create the Scranton Industrial Development Co. with his father (who contributed $50,000) to attract new industry in 1914. After World War II he was the leading figure in developing the "Scranton Plan." Still widely copied, it is a self-help program in which a community buys or builds industrial facilities, then leases them to firms willing to move to the city. The plan eventually drew more than 50 plants and 10,000 new jobs to Scranton.

Summers at the Beach. Bill was born to Worthington and Marion Margery Scranton on July 19, 1917, in their beach home in Madison, Conn. He spent most of his boyhood summers there, overcoming an asthmatic condition by constant exercise in the sun. With his three older sisters,* he enjoyed a huge, century-old house at 300 Monroe Avenue in Scranton, later moved into a great stone mansion atop a hill in suburban Dalton, complete with indoor swimming pool. Father Scranton tended to business and did right well: he and his partners sold the gas and water firm for $18 million in 1928.

But Mother was the political personage in the family. She first picketed for women's suffrage--and took full advantage of it when it came. For more than 20 years she was the dominant woman in Pennsylvania Republican politics and one of the grande dames of the national G.O.P. Always wearing the latest fashions set off with orchids and diamonds, she was affectionately known as "The Duchess." And she liked her politics as up to date as her clothes. "As a party," she told Republicans in 1940, "we've got to be more modern. The party needs a new dress. I don't wear last year's dress when I want to feel fashionable."

Ahead of Her Time. The Duchess was an internationalist even before it was fashionable. She warned in the 19203 that the U.S. would have to fight Germany again. She was Pennsylvania National Committeewoman from 1928 until 1951, vice chairman of the National Committee from 1940 until 1944, and official hostess to the 1940 and 1948 National Republican Conventions in Philadelphia. She was a supporter, before convention time, of Wendell Willkie, Thomas Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower.

For young Bill, politics thus became a personal thing. By the age of nine, he was taking his mother's political calls, knew the names of the county chairmen. He also learned something that he finds handy today: "My parents taught me the necessity of organization. No matter what you might like to do, you can't win elections without it."

After the proper prep schools (Fessenden and Hotchkiss), Scranton majored in history at Yale. There, as a columnist for the Yale Daily News, he commented confidently on most of the world's great problems, demonstrated his penchant for plain talk. "A hick from Vermont has been rais ing a lot of comment lately," he wrote. "Governor Aiken [now a Republican Senator] is obviously a perfectly good second-rate politician who thinks he ought to get the publicity of a first-rate one and is getting it through sensational but ridiculous statements."

In these years, shortly before World War II, Scranton dated Jack Kennedy's sister Kathleen, whom he sometimes visited at Hyannisport. There he met Jack, liked him, found him "quiet and diffident." In Scranton's mind, however, no one matched Mary Chamberlin, a vivacious, charming girl he had long known back home in Scranton. They were married in 1942 when he was in the Army Air Forces.

Upside Down. Scranton had earned a private pilot's license before the war, by getting up mornings at 4:30 to take lessons in Piper Cubs. Despite this advantage, he barely survived his Army Air Forces training. Flying blithely alone over Georgia one warm day, he unfastened his safety belt, slipped off his parachute and shirt to bask in the warm sun. Absentmindedly, he slipped his trainer into a slow roll with the cockpit open--and had to hang on by his elbows and knees to keep from falling out. As an Air Transport Command pilot, he flew such VIPs as General George Marshall and Senator Harry Truman on defense missions. He later ferried combat planes from Brazil and North Africa into fighting areas.

Back in Scranton after getting his Yale law degree in 1946, he continued his father's crusade to stave off indus trial decline. Even before graduation, he had publicly assailed local bankers for building "a monument to myopia" by their hesitancy to join a drive to keep a defense plant in town. Traveling for the local chamber of commerce, he helped land a $900,000 Trane Co. plant, a $500,000 Maxson Electronics Corp. branch and a $1,000,000 Chrysler facility for the city.

He also became a skilled troubleshooter for ailing local firms, nursing them back to health with deft management. In so doing, he also helped himself, adding to his sizable estate. With the inheritances from his parents, Scranton estimates that he is now worth around $8,000,000.

Persistent Calls. Scranton's reputation began spreading beyond his own Lackawanna County. And in 1959, he got the first of a series of calls that were to sharply reshape his career. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was seeking a press aide. Would Scranton be interested? No, he would not. But he did agree to discuss the offer with Dulles--and the skilled old international lawyer was too persuasive to be denied. Scranton took the job, briefed the press for Dulles, made foreign policy speeches, attended international conferences.

When Dulles, fatally ill, resigned, he recommended Scranton to his successor, Christian Herter. Herter expanded the job, made Scranton his office manager and liaison man with the White House and Cabinet. Herter's appraisal: "I have never seen anyone grasp with greater rapidity not only the factual details but the implications in the many knotty problems which come to this office."

The next call came early in 1960, from Republican leaders of Scranton's Tenth Congressional District. They were desperate. It was a heavily Democratic area, represented in the House by one Stanley Prokop. In the coal areas surrounding Scranton there was dismal unemployment --and the area sorely needed a Congressman who might be able to do something about it. Would Scranton run? The answer was no. Scranton said he had plenty to do at the State Department, and had come to like the work there. But all the district's G.O.P. chairmen, normally a quarrelsome lot, agreed that they wanted him, and Scranton finally gave in.

Scranton did not see how he could overturn the Democrats' 34,000 registration advantage. But he took to campaigning as though born to its cloth. He charged about the district, invaded clambakes, stormed factory gates, climbed apartment steps--always telling the people that the area needed help, and that they were not getting it from Democrats. To his surprise, he found it fun.

An Old Friend. But when his old acquaintance, Jack Kennedy, appeared in the Tenth District in his drive for the presidency, Scranton was sure he would lose. As the election returns rolled in, he found that Kennedy had indeed won the district by some 15,000 votes. But to his amazement, he also discovered that he was a winner himself by an even greater margin--17,000. He was tabbed immediately as a Republican comer.

Scranton's main aim in going to Congress was to help his district. He landed right in the middle of a nasty fight over the Kennedy Administration's plan to enlarge the House Rules Committee. Despite pleas from Republican congressional leaders to make it a party-line fracas, Scranton voted with the Democrats. A conservative Rules Committee, he figured, might block bills his depressed district needed.

Scranton ignored the tradition that a freshman Congressman should be seen but not heard. He offered major amendments to the Administration's 1961 housing bill and the 1962 public-works bills, saw both of them adopted. In each case, they reduced the amount of money a local community would have to pay as a share of federal projects. Overall, Scranton voted for those Kennedy programs he felt his home area needed, proved more liberal than most of his state's G.O.P. delegation. "What I try to figure out," he explains, "is whether there's a need to be met by Government. If so, I usually vote for such a bill."

There was not much doubt by this time that a new call to try for another public office would soon come to Scranton. And so it did. Pennsylvania's fuddy-duddy regular Republican organization, disheartened by the Kennedy victory, had just about given up hope of dislodging the Democrats from the statehouse this year. But the regulars were still determined to keep control of the party machinery by naming the party's candidates. A Pennsylvania Republican named Dwight Eisenhower resolved to head off the Old Guard.

A Four-Letter Word. Scranton thus got an invitation from Ike to talk politics at the former President's Gettysburg farm. Scranton knew what was in the wind. But by now he had fallen in love with his House job, had no ambitions about the governorship. Scranton listened politely to Ike, but kept shaking his head. Finally, just as Scranton was about to leave, Ike unleashed a cruncher. "Bill," he said, "this all comes down to a four-letter word-duty."

That four-letter word kept echoing in Scranton's ears. The regular Republican organization went right ahead and backed a colorless party trooper for Governor. Ike was furious. He was quoted as calling it "a miserable ticket," a "goddam rotten setup." By now, the pressure was really on Scranton. He finally agreed to run for Governor--but only on the incredible condition that all 67 of the state's brawling county chairmen endorse him. To his vast surprise, they did.

And that brought him into his present nerve-shredding name-calling conflict with Democrat Dilworth.

The Other Side. The Dilworths were in Pennsylvania even before the Scrantons. They also had a town named after them: Dilworthtown. in Lancaster County. By the time Dick Dilworth was born, on Aug. 29, 1898, the family had moved to Pittsburgh, established a profitable iron firm. Like that of the Scrantons, the Dilworth family fortune was founded on turning out iron for the state's rapidly expanding railroads.

Dick's father, Joseph, was a rigid Republican, the sort who considered Teddy Roosevelt a wild radical. Dick did not shake this Republican influence until he had fought with the Marines in World War I, returned to Yale, and become aroused by the way Republicans were assailing Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations. His defection to the Democrats shook his parents to their Republican roots.

Dilworth graduated with honors from Yale Law School, then built a highly successful practice as a Philadelphia trial lawyer. He specialized in libel law--and it is one of his great political assets that he knows precisely how far he can legally go in his assaults on his opponents. A Marine hero again in World War II, Dilworth returned to Philadelphia to lash out at the Republican corruption that had gripped the city for 63 years. From street corners he shouted the names of madams, gamblers, crooks--and the names of the cops and officials who protected them.

The city's newspapers, and a well-bred Chestnut Hill lawyer named Joseph Clark, joined his cries for reform. Clark and Dilworth finally broke through. Clark was elected mayor in 1951. Dilworth succeeded him in 1956, when Clark decided to run for the Senate. Both crusaders got considerable help from a burgeoning Democratic machine in Philadelphia, run by U.S. Representative Bill Green.

Getting Things Done. As mayor, Dilworth typically tore into the problems that had made Philadelphia one of the shabbiest, most depressed and depressing cities in the U.S. Liberal Dilworth cajoled millions out of the U.S. to rebuild Philadelphia. But he also persuaded Philadelphia's own citizens to pitch in, and he could not have done the job that he did without private-enterprise financing. Dilworth bounced civic heads together until everyone was cooperating on his new highways and skyways, parks and playgrounds, office buildings and housing projects. His energy created a downtown area that today is widely regarded as a model of urban sprightliness, rather than a blot of blight.

Dilworth got things done, but the ferocity with which he did them made enemies. He quarreled with Bill Green. Green retaliated by blocking Dilworth's try for the gubernatorial nomination in 1958. This year Green tried to stop him again with the claim: "Dilworth can't win--he can't even carry Philadelphia." The party split was resolved only by Jack Kennedy. Though deeply indebted to Green, Kennedy sent word that Dilworth was his man.

But Dilworth had troubles beyond mere political enmities. His reform movement had outlasted its zeal, and scandals began to pile up. He dismissed them at first as "penny ante" stuff. Then he took off on a world tour. Then he came back, post haste, as the scandals grew. One contractor said he had been asked to pay $2,500 to get a city council zoning change. Another bragged that he had paid out $75,000 in payola to city officials to get contracts for the Frankford Elevated. Coin laundry operators said they paid $4,000 to avoid new laundry regulations. Dilworth tearfully--and. so far. successfully--argued against a grand jury investigation.

Dilworth's Helper. But despite such difficulties. Dilworth was the man Jack Kennedy wanted to see Governor--and Dilworth is the candidate Kennedy got. Last week the President invaded Pennsylvania on behalf of his choice. The Presi dent led a 21-car motorcade past the grey sheds of idle steel mills in Pennsylvania's southwestern Monongahela Valley. At Monessen. some 15.000 cheered as he shouted the theme: "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" At McKeesport. 35.000 people heard him cry: "Can you tell me one piece of progressive legislation the Republicans have sponsored in the last 30 years? If you can tell me one. I can tell you 100 that they opposed." Across the street, on a faded building, a sign indicated that some felt he had aided them already: "Thank you, Mr. President, for signing our pay bill--Postal Employees of Monessen."

Kennedy has been in the state before. He helped raise $1.300.000 for the campaign at a giant dinner in Harrisburg last month. He will be back again next month for a rally in Philadelphia. The Democratic hope is to pull every possible vote out of Philadelphia, thus overpower the rest of the state. Green is throwing his machine into the effort--despite his dislike for Dilworth, he needs those jobs the Governor passes out. The pivotal area could be Pittsburgh and the countryside that Kennedy stumped last week. It is normally Democratic, but miners and steelworkers are sullen about shorter work weeks and the closing of plants.

Scranton is doing everything he can to turn this discontent against the Democrats. He has barged boldly into some of the state's most Democratic, deeply depressed areas to push his slogan: "Build a better Pennsylvania." With good effect, he argues that Democrats have been in power in Harrisburg for eight years, in Washington for two, yet the workers' plight has grown worse, not better. He pledges to work to bring new industry to the state, as he did to the city of Scranton.

The campaigns of both men are well financed and well staffed. Scranton has been able to get all the Republican factions behind him. if only because they sense the possibility of victory. Scranton is candid about this. "Of course, there's still bitterness," he says. "And they are not all united. But they are working."

While such national figures as Kennedy and Eisenhower are in the thick of the campaign, the basic burden is upon the two candidates. Each tends to be some thing of a loner, and the personal clash is intense. Dilworth's argument boils down to the fact that he has proved his ability in Philadelphia. Scranton pleads only that the Democrats have had ample opportunity to get the state moving--and have failed miserably. He wants a chance to try.

* Now Mrs. Albert G. Isaacs Jr. of Dalton, Pa.; Mrs. Hendrik M. Rozendaal of Schenectady, N.Y.; and Mrs. James A. Linen of Greenwich, Conn., wife of the president of Time Inc.

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