Story of a Train

Last week one of the strangest journeys in U. S. history neared its finish. Through 30 States, for 17,300 miles, for seven long weeks, the Willkie train had rolled. Endlessly the U. S. flowed past. Now the mountains had gone by, the people standing, still and lonely-looking, in the thin, chill air; the prairies had fled by the windows, people waving from the little houses on the flat plains. Through the fruitlands of California, north through the forests to Portland, Seattle, east through the mountains of Montana. Oil lands, cattle lands, deserts and mountains.

Through the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, east to Wisconsin, on to New York, rolling, rolling; the landscape still brilliant with autumn, but the greens no longer fresh, the reds beginning to fade.

There had never been such a train. Over rusty freight spurs that had never carried a passenger train, deep into industrial Roosevelt areas, north to Detroit, south to Toledo; Pittsburgh, New Jersey, New York again; out to Chicago, St. Louis, crisscrossing the big electoral-vote States --seven times through Illinois--back to New York, out again, south to the border States, back to New York, always rolling, almost always late. In the dark green, twelve-car special train sat men who had lived there since Sept. 13. They bore the air of those who had now experienced everything and couldn't believe it. One of these veterans said last week: "I haven't had a bath since Sept. 22 at Portland, Ore.--over a month. I don't dare."

Cause of this strange journey, and principal passenger, was a bull-thewed man named Wendell Willkie. Up & down its rocking corridors, talking in torrents, gesturing in giant swipes, he strode. He lived and worked in the last car, the Pioneer, the mahogany-paneled private car in which Franklin Roosevelt once traveled. Just ahead of the rear platform was a glass-walled observation lounge, the candidate's living room, heavily carpeted, with a deep sofa, four club chairs--all chintz-covered--lamps, a radio, smoking stands. Beyond it were bedrooms for the candidate and his slight, pleasant wife; one for huge, lumbering Brother Ed; a section fitted as a dining room; a kitchen; compartment for maids, secretaries, aides and two New York City detectives, Stephen Buckley and Rudolph McLaughlin --both on the Manhattan payroll of Third Termite Fiorello LaGuardia.

In the car just ahead was the "squirrel cage"--the staff of experts and writers whose job was to dig up facts, rough out drafts for Willkie speeches. Head of the squirrel cage was dark, intense Russell ("Mitch") Davenport, onetime FORTUNE managing editor, whom Willkie affectionately calls "The Zealot." Others: Pierce Butler, dry-witted, sunken-cheeked Minneapolis lawyer, son of the late famed conservative Supreme Court Justice; "Bart" Crum. smart young San Francisco lawyer; Raymond Leslie Buell, jug-eared foreign affairs expert; blond, sharp-eyed young Elliott V. Bell, former New York Times financial expert. Their routine was agonizing and invariable. One would be given a speech to write. When he had sweated his brains out over it, two or three colleagues rewrote it completely.

Then the hashed-up remains went to Davenport, to sit up with it all night, rewrite it again. Willkie would get the finished version an hour or so before speech time, use perhaps 20% of it.

In the same car were political advisers: Indiana's Representative Charles Halleck; John Hollister of Cincinnati, ex-law partner of Senator Robert Taft; bumptious ex-Gagman Walter O'Keefe, drape-suited young Lawyer Oren Root Jr. Then Vincent Gengarelly, barber-valet-masseur; Willkie's press-relations man, quick-smiling, 30-year-old Lamoyne Jones, ex-crack police reporter of the New York Herald Tribune, who looks like a juvenile lead.

Forward of the squirrel cage was a lounge car for the "boll weevils" (local politicos); two diners (which became traveling nightclubs after the last speech of the day); a press lounge; car after car of reporters, cameramen, assorted camp followers. One of the most popular inhabitants of the train was Porter Foley, who could get there fustest with the mostest drinks. In one week he drew $40 in tips.

A quiet, firm-voiced little Hollywood doctor, Harold Barnard, had joined the train at Kansas City, summoned by plane from Hollywood. Willkie glared at him. "Lean back and open your mouth," ordered Dr. Barnard. "Go to hell and take your tools with you," croaked Willkie. Dr. Barnard looked at him a moment, said: "Personally, I don't give a damn. But that throat of yours right now is the only way some 20,000,000 Americans can express themselves. Lean back!" Willkie looked at the doctor, grinned, opened his mouth.

In the diners the reporters drank thousands of whiskeys-&-sodas, gloomed over the candidate's daily mistakes, over Willkie's inability to get political, mourned the low quality of cocktails on trains, wrote millions of words, ran endlessly back to the rear platform over gravel and cinders to observe the crowds, rode for hours in cars through cities that looked almost the same, sat listening while Willkie hammered away at his message, his voice hoarse with urgency as well as weariness: "Only the strong can be free and only the productive can be strong." Reporters got so they could chime in on this chorus. One strange feature of this train's life was the rarity of poker games, bridge, barbershop harmony. Reason: the correspondents were usually too tired.

On every platform sat Mrs. Willkie, arms filled with flowers; Ed Willkie, open-mouthed in admiration of his brother, his lips mumbling over the words as his brother spoke them. Invariably he led the applause; then waking as from a dream, would push a way to the waiting automobile with Mrs. Willkie, his gentle voice more effective even than the ham-hands that had made him an All-America tackle and an Olympic wrestling champion.

In the train the air was bad, generally the food was worse. Newsmen wrote songs --"Wending Along With Wendell" (to Marching Along Together), "Yes, We Have No Bananas--Yet"; ran the International News Service's harried newshawk, Walter Kiernan, and Wide World's ace photographer, John Collins, in a mock campaign for President. (Shouted Kiernan in a campaign speech: "I can stay here only a moment as we are three weeks behind schedule. There is only one real issue: 'Are Women People?' The No-Term Candidate says nothing about this subject. I say 'Yes, possibly.' Think, think, think. Are you thinking? Where would you and I be if there were no women? Don't tell me--let me guess. ... A vote for Kiernan is a vote for liberty and license. You take the high road--trie No-Term Candidate takes the low road and I go down the middle. . . . Elect me--keep the light of liberty burning so that a thousand years from now men will say: 'What the hell is in that lamp?' ")

Everyone on the train caught cold--except Willkie. He slept six hours a night, would appear at 6:30 a.m. ready for an argument, wondering where everyone was. If the train was still, on a siding, he would walk heavily, rapidly, up & down beside it, a swift, awkward shamble; climb back on, order fruit, scrambled eggs & sausages, a pot of coffee, toast and jam--and let it get cold as he read the morning papers.

Throughout his crusade on wheels Wendell Willkie kept in mind the one fixed tenet of his campaign: see as many Americans as possible, talk sense to them. By last week's end he had made 38 major speeches, 146 unscheduled, 93 scheduled talks.

He had seen millions of Americans, and they had seen and heard him.

But by last week everything had changed. The little daily mistakes, the lateness, the hot-boxes, the eggs & tomatoes, the boos--none of these mattered now that the train was rolling like a chariot. The very atmosphere had changed.

Many of the reporters themselves were zealots now; the train seemed to be riding the glory road. Even defeat would be a close defeat; what had mattered only to Willkie now mattered to millions of Americans. The weary, perspiring, bag-eyed travelers on the train, homesick for solid earth, had taken their news of the outside world mainly from newcomers, and now the newcomers came aboard like men joining a band wagon. Everywhere the train had been, a ferment was now at work. When Wendell Willkie went to Chicago last week for his second appearance there, it was in triumph: veteran newsmen agreed that few political meetings in their combined experience could touch the fervid ovation given the Republican candidate at Chicago Stadium; seldom had they heard boos so blasting as those for the New Deal.

Rolling faster, rolling smoother, the train clackety-clacked on, through Ken tucky, through Maryland, northbound for the final show at Madison Square Garden. Past the windows fled the shape, the spirit, the people of the U. S., in a landscape now dun-colored with the lateness of the season, a land readying itself for the rigors of winter, a winter that would bring in a new and fateful year. The hour of decision was now hard upon the U. S. When the train stopped rolling, the people would vote. To semaphores set for Nov. 5, the train rolled on.

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