"We Love Him"

The C.I.O. had a lavish welcome ready for its new political hero, Henry Wallace. He was housed in the six-room Skyway Suite of Chicago's Hotel Stevens--where Tom Dewey stayed last June. He was dined by C.I.O.'s nobility--Phil Murray, Sidney Hillman, R. J. Thomas, Jim Carey. And a key spot was saved for him on the C.I.O. convention program.

The shy, kindly man for whom all this was meant--the lame-duck Vice President of the U.S.--stepped off the train in Chicago's Grand Central Station, suitcase in hand. An aide hurried up after him. He, too, lugged a suitcase. Together the two men moved briskly out of the station, spurning porters and taxis, setting out on the ten-block hike to the Stevens. The aide had wisely put on rubber-soled shoes. Said he: "Wallace doesn't walk, he hops."

Henry Wallace had been invited to the convention by Phil Murray "to meet a few of his friends." To Murray's invitation, Wallace had replied: "Why, bless your heart, certainly; I was wondering if you were going to ask me."

"Forty-Eight!" Murray introduced him to the thousand delegates crowded into the Stevens' Grand Ballroom: "Here he is, your friend, my friend, and the friend of the common man. . . ." The delegates rose, stomped noisily for six minutes, and set up cries of "Forty-eight! Forty-eight!" The Wallace Presidential boom had begun.

Henry Wallace seemed to have the same idea. He carefully hewed out a political platform for himself. Some of the planks:

P: $2,500-a-year salaries for "the average working man."

P: "Government payroll insurance ... to tide sound, young business over temporary depressions."

P: "[We] may ultimately have to provide that any person not willing to work shall be told that he must work. We cannot carry drones--either poor or rich."

In the midst of the Wallace speech, fiery little "Butch" LaGuardia, attending the Aviation Conference on another floor of the Stevens, made a dramatic entrance. This meant a five-minute interruption, while everyone was photographed once around (see cut). Wallace resumed with an awkward sally: "I thought I could get out here to Chicago and attend the meeting without the Mayor of New York invading it." In the tumult when Wallace had finished, few could hear Phil Murray's ecstatic tribute: "We love him because he is one of us, a common man."

Murray and Hillman hustled Wallace to the Skyway Suite for luncheon. As two waiters served the first course (honeydew melon), Henry Wallace looked about him, at the luxury of the room, the sumptuousness of the menu. With his familiar, head-cocked grin, he drily observed: "You common men live well."

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