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The 46 county seats of South Carolina were wide awake last week. Through them since early summer had been traveling two political circuses: a party of eight candidates stumping for nomination as Governor; a trio wrangling over a Senatorship. The nation watched the trio for in it was Senator Ellison DuRant ("Cotton Ed") Smith, 74, dean of Senate Democrats (30 years), upon whose classic brow Franklin Roosevelt had placed his angry Purge mark. Governor Olin Dewitt Talmadge Johnston, 41, was the Purge's agent and candidate. Third man was State Senator Edgar A. Brown. 50, able parliamentarian, former Speaker of the South Carolina House, who in 1926 came within 5,000 votes of unseating Senator "Cotton Ed." Obedient to Democratic custom, these three toured the State together, taking turns on the same stumps at tearing each other to bits for the edification of an appreciative electorate.

In his back-platform talk at Greenville last fortnight. Franklin Roosevelt had given the trio a last-minute "issue": whether or not a man can live in South Carolina on 50-c- a day. It came from a Senate speech made by Mr. Smith last year (TIME, Aug. 9, 1937). Last week Mr. Smith was angrily explaining that the President had been misinformed: his reference to life on 50-c- a day was "for illustration" only in discussing Wages & Hours. South Carolina's best newspapers all believed him, quoted the speech to help him prove Candidate Johnston a misinformer, and the 50-c- issue became a boomerang to improve, instead of diminish, "Cotton Ed's" chance of a sixth consecutive term.

Son, grandson, great-grandson of farmers (George III granted his great-grandfather the family's ancestral acres near Lynchburg), "Cotton Ed" Smith is South Carolina old-style--bulky, voluble, a tobacco-chewer, whittler, turkey hunter, storyteller. Candidate Johnston calls him "the sleeping Senator" but he can point to a long list of farm legislation he brought to passage as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. His chief sins against the New Deal were opposing processing taxes, the Court Plan, Wages & Hours, Housing, Anti-Lynching. Last week he eagerly promised to vote with Franklin Roosevelt whenever he thought him right. His personal platform (the same for 30 years): "States rights, white supremacy, tariff for revenue only."

Governor Johnston is South Carolina newer-style--a husky Sergeant of Engineers who went through college after the War, drove to the top in politics with energy that sometimes gets him in trouble. Candidate Brown, quiet, efficient, lawyerlike, would not let voters forget the time "Machine Gun" Johnston called out the militia to drive able Chief Highway Commissioner Ben Sawyer out of office, only to have the State Supreme Court uphold Mr. Sawyer. Both Candidates Johnston and Brown proudly recall that they worked in cotton mills as boys -- a good political start in a State where textile workers vote as heavily as farmers.

Observers last week rated Senator Smith and Governor Johnston the likeliest qualifiers for a run-off primary, gave Senator Smith some chance of winning a majority on the first vote, next week. If he wins then or later, he will owe thanks to two friends of Franklin Roosevelt who refused to play their part in the Presidential purge: Mayor Burnet R. Maybank of Charleston, leading candidate for Governor, and South Carolina's junior Senator James ("Jimmy") Byrnes. They are fond of "Cotton Ed." and they know he cannot live forever. If he dies with his Senatorial boots on. Mr. Maybank may slip into them and Jimmy Byrnes (who, coming from Spartanburg, would be embarrassed if Spartanburg's Olin Johnston became South Carolina's other Senator) will be senior partner of the team of Byrnes & Maybank.

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