Everyman's Columnist

Something significant will be missing this month from the press of the nation: Columnist Raymond Clapper has headed for Rehoboth Beach, Del., for his first vacation in two years. In those two years Clapper has more than doubled his readers (to 8,598,635, in 144 papers), has doubly cinched his unique place among U.S. columnists.

Five years ago Washington correspondents voted that Clapper (who had then barely started syndication for Scripps-Howard) was the "most significant, fair and reliable" columnist. Today a majority of his fellows would still probably give Clapper the same award. The quality which wins him such tribute from his colleagues is his plainness, as man and writer, in articulating a plain man's concept of democratic government.

Lone Wolf. Many political columnists prefer to run with the partisan pack, but Clapper declares: "In this business you've got to be a kind of lone wolf." He has refused to endorse any group, and he belongs to no political party. A pre-Hearst discoverer and longtime friend of Alf Landon, Clapper did not mince his criticism when Landon swung to the Old Guard in the 1936 campaign. He is still Landon's friend.

There are many more examples of his independence and, what is more striking, of his stinging criticism:

> A sympathizer with much New Deal legislation, he denounced Roosevelt's third term in one of the iciest phrases of the 1940 campaign: "Up to the time of that message [F.D.R.'s "draft" speech] I have had faith in Mr. Roosevelt. I have so no longer."

> On the morning Columnist Clapper read the announcement of Mayris Chaney's appointment to OCD, the Clapper breakfast-table peace was shattered by an oath that shook his family out of their seats. That day his column crystallized the general feeling that Mrs. Roosevelt should retire from politics. Nevertheless, Mrs. Roosevelt kept him on her visiting list.

> When he recently turned on Congress, calling its proceedings "99% tripe, ignorance and demagoguery.' he stepped on sensitive and corny toes. Said Clapper, "The very heart of democracy is Congress. In the scramble for X cards it was destroying itself, forcing the people to turn to somebody else for leadership."

Pragmatist From Kansas. The evidence of Clapper's levelheaded common sense shows not only in his column but in his attitude toward his trade. An isolationist until Munich, Clapper was roundly berated by some readers when he thereafter veered toward Roosevelt's foreign policy. Said he: "I try to learn from events. . . ."

Columnist Clapper confirms his pragmatism thus: "Public opinion will not tolerate indefinitely theories that don't work in practice." He consciously writes his column for "the people I knew out in Kansas," and his favorite maxim is "Never overestimate the people's knowledge nor underestimate their intelligence."

Clapper is a stocky, stoop-shouldered man with beaked nose, retreating forehead, thoughtful blue-grey eyes set in dark rings like small rain clouds. Younger looking than his 50 years, he gives the appearance of being easily transplantable back to the east Kansas farm where he was born.

As a cub on the Kansas City Star he got an assignment to do a story on a judge in Emporia. William Allen White gave him the story and an enthusiasm for Bull Moose politics. Later Clapper worked for United Press. His first big triumph occurred in 1920--toward dawn one morning in Chicago. When other reporters had gone home to bed, he buttonholed Charley Curtis (soon Vice President) as he emerged from Colonel Harvey's smoke-filled suite in the Blackstone Hotel. Curtis said the decision was to try to put Harding over. U.P.'s chief political writer Harold Jacobs put his by-line on Clapper's story, but the truth soon got around.

Made head of U.P.'s Washington bureau in 1929, at $225 a week, Clapper didn't like the executive end of newspapering. The right job turned up on the Washington Post, shortly after it was purchased in 1933 by rich Eugene Meyer, a shrewd greenhorn with much curiosity. Clapper became chief political writer, head of the Post's Washington bureau, and a generally useful adviser for Publisher Meyer to have around. Clapper's first column, "Between You and Me," was a political miscellany started in September 1934. Its strict accuracy and non-ax-grinding made it unique, and in 1936 Scripps-Howard hired Clapper back to write a column for its 24 papers.

Legman. Clapper still gathers his own information. He attends White House press conferences, gets around to the State Department once a week, catches the leading press conferences in Army,' Navy, etc. He usually lunches with "someone who can give me some background." To give himself background on the Molotov visit, he talked off the record to five key sources, in addition to press conferences.

He regards his evenings out (sometimes every night of the week) as part of his job. He discovered, he says, that "at dinner parties guests sometimes relax and think out loud." He gave up lecturing when it cut into his column time. Last month he cut his news broadcasts from five to one a week. His column is absorbing him more & more.

"Nice Inside." The Clappers' new house in the wooded Spring Valley section of suburban Washington is their pride & joy. A $50,000 house (Clapper's income last year was $49,000), it is a modernistic, white-painted brick box, with vast windows giving a magnificent view across both the Virginia and Maryland hills.

When Alf Landon first saw the house, he said: "It looks New Dealish to me." Now the Clappers head off visitors' comments on the house by saying, as they draw up at the curb: "It's nice inside."

Conversation among the Clappers (they have a pretty, blonde daughter, Janet, 18, a serious, redheaded son, Peter, 15) frequently resembles a political forum. Mrs. Clapper is now on the speakers bureau of the National Democratic Committee, a job that took her this year from Boston to California. Probably the best tribute to Clapper's incorruptible independence is offered by his wife. Says she: "I get excited about causes. I am a New Dealer. I want to be Utopian sometimes. Ray listens. He is interested and sympathetic. But he refuses to be pushed overboard. I've tried."

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