Education of a Senator

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As the new Congress tried its wings last week, with the Democrats triumphantly in control, it seemed almost like old times. Old familiar faces, which had all but disappeared from sight during the two-year Republican interregnum, turned up again at the head of congressional committee tables. Veterans of the early New Deal, like West Virginia's demagogic Matt Neely, 74, unpacked in Washington, back from political exile. As in the old New Deal days, congressional corridors were crowded with eager Democratic freshmen, anxious to get their first speeches off their chests.

But this was no New Deal revival: the New Deal, accepted and respectable with age, was by now almost old hat. Harry Truman, in an offhand phrase that was his own, not his speechwriters', had called the new era the Fair Deal. The young bloods of the 81st Congress had not come to Washington, cheering and defiant, to start a revolution. They had come to consolidate one. As the Democrats heard it, what the people really said last November was that they wanted not new highways but a widening of the roads that Franklin Roosevelt had built.

The Fair Dealers. Who were the new men of the Fair Deal? Returning veterans, like Iowa's white-haired, 69-year-old Senator Guy Gillette were freshmen, and perhaps Fair Dealers, in name only. Texas' New Dealing Lyndon Johnson and Tennessee's Estes Kefauver had won their spurs in the. House, and now would wear them in the Senate. Illinois' able Paul Douglas, 56, was a onetime leftish college professor (University of Chicago) and a wounded, decorated Marine veteran.

Most of them shared in common the handful of ideas that Harry Truman campaigned on. They also shared among them a hatful of political savvy. Many of them had been stronger than the ticket, had got to Congress on their own merits. Ideologically, they were not coattail riders of Harry Truman either; they were men who had gotten their political doctrine from the same source: the collection of ideas known as the New Deal.

The man who was the most articulate spokesman of the Fair Deal among the newcomers was Minnesota's brash, bustling young Senator Hubert H. (for Horatio) Humphrey Jr., 37, a hardworking, fast-talking fireball from the Midwest.

The Rough & Tumble. Hustling Hubert Humphrey doesn't fit the usual conception of a U.S. Senator. A glib, jaunty spellbinder with a "listen-you-guys" approach, he talks and looks more like a high-school science teacher who coaches basketball on the side. He has the cyclonic attack of an advertising salesman. A charter member (and this week the new national chairman) of Americans for Democratic Action, a coalition of leftist, non-Communist intellectuals and displaced New Dealers, he has little use for the old party-machine school of politics.

For all of that, he has, like most of his fellow freshmen, already made his mark in the rough & tumble of practical politics. He Was twice mayor of Minneapolis, the man who helped put together Minnesota's humpty-dumpty Democratic-Farmer-Labor ticket, the clever and determined tactician who led and won the civil rights fight at the Democratic Convention last summer. One thing, above all, explains his way of thinking: all of his adult life has been spent in the era of Franklin Roosevelt. His dad, and the Dust Bowl taught him most of what he knows.

Boy Orator. His father, a big, kindly, stoop-shouldered man, was a druggist who became a Democrat in Republican South Dakota when he heard William Jennings Bryan speak. By the time young Hubert was seven, his father was already reading Tom Paine and the life of Jefferson to him. Before he was out of grammar school, Hubert Jr. went along to Democratic rallies and conventions, saw his father become first alderman, then mayor of Doland, S. Dak. (pop. 550).

A spindly, freckle-faced kid with a wide grin, Hubert Jr. was his high school's prize debater, came out second in the state's regional tournament. That was in 1929 and Hubert was 18.

The depression brought him back from the University of Minnesota at the end of his sophomore year. The family had moved to Huron, where Hubert worked in the drugstore, slept in the basement, and ate at the fountain to save money.

Dust Bowl. One November day in 1933 the sun turned pink, then red, then grey. Dust swirled up from the drought-ridden plains, rolled over the town in a black, gritty cloud. That winter and spring there were 90 such daylight blackouts. Dust stood an inch and a half deep on the window sills. Grasshoppers and locusts moved in as cattlemen and farmers moved out.

To keep his family going, Hubert Sr. toured the state in a battered Ford, peddling a pig serum he had developed. That left the store without a pharmacist. Hubert Jr. hustled through a six months' course at the Denver School of Pharmacy, moved in behind the prescription counter (where his certificate still hangs).

Through the next three years he saw many a hard-working Dakotan come to poverty through no fault of his own. Merchants and farmers, caught in the same trap together, turned to the Government. Relief checks saved the town and the family business. Said Humphrey later: "I learned more about economics from one South Dakota dust storm than I did in all my years at college."

Don't Laugh at Me. By 1935, Huron was on its way back, and Hubert, who had shown little interest in girls, had met a brunette named Muriel Buck, the daughter of a produce and feed dealer whose business had gone to dust. Hubert took a bus trip to Washington, and wrote a letter back to his fiancee:

"This trip has impressed one thing on my mind ... I need to do more reading, more writing and more thinking if I ever want to fulfill my dream of being someone in this world. Maybe I seem foolish to have such vain hopes and plans, but, Bucky, I can see how some day, if you and I just apply ourselves and make up our minds to work for bigger things, how we can some day live here in Washington, and probably be in Government politics or service. I set my aim at Congress. Don't laugh at me. Maybe it does sound rather egotistical and beyond reason, .but, Muriel, I do know others have succeeded."

Cicero's Wind. A year and a half after they were married, Hubert set out to fulfill the dream. Back at the University of Minnesota, Muriel got a job as a typist, Hubert got a part-time drugstore job, worked as a janitor to help pay their rent.

The Minnesota campus was full of New Deal-talk. Humphrey plunged enthusiastically into the midst of it. He gulped down the New Deal ideology, lock, stock & pork-barrel. He became a big wheel in the political science department, a voluble, incessant talker--long on persuasiveness, a little short on logic. A professor once told him: "If God had given you as much brains as he has given you wind, you would be sure to be another Cicero."

After graduation, Humphrey went to Louisiana State University as a graduate student and instructor, wrote a master's thesis on "The Philosophy of the New Deal." (Henry Wallace, reading it years later, commented: "Humphrey, you get an A on this.")

The Mashed Potatoes Circuit. Without ever taking his eye from his real goal--politics--Humphrey returned to Minnesota and a series of odd jobs: as an instructor at the university, as adult education director for the WPA, and as assistant regional director of the War Manpower Commission. But he also began to get around. In his WPA job, he printed and mailed out thousands of diplomas, each carefully signed by Hubert H. Humphrey Jr. He joined everything in sight. The word spread that Hubert Humphrey was a rousing speaker--and always available.

He became the darling of the Townsendites (though he nimbly avoided endorsing the Townsend Plan). He got on the chicken a la king and mashed potatoes circuit: Kiwanis, Rotary, the Elks. Then, at 31, when the time looked right, Humphrey plunged into politics, aiming high. He ran for mayor of Minneapolis, came in second in a field of ten. In the runoff he lost out by only 5,000 votes.

That summer Humphrey got to thinking: the trouble with liberal politics in Minnesota was that Democrats and Farmer-Laborites fought each other instead of the Republicans. He took a day coach to Washington, sold Democratic national headquarters on his plan for fusing the two parties, returned home and presided at the wedding.

That gave ambitious Hubert Humphrey a base to work from. He took a job teaching politics at St. Paul's Presbyterian Macalester College, got a part-time job as a radio commentator (WTCN) and waited. In 1945, he was elected mayor of Minneapolis by the largest plurality in the city's history.

"I'm My Own Boss." Minneapolis was a wide-open town. At least 50 brothels were running full blast, afterhours, liquor joints flourished, local mobsters were riding high. Almost every corner cigar store had its betting books, its hooligan and "14" games (dice) or "66"(punchboards).

Humphrey moved into the Victorian-looking mayor's office and started to rattle the stained-glass windows. He gave his cops a single order--close down or else, Minneapolis closed down overnight, even to the slot machines at American Legion hall. He pushed through a city FEPC which made it a misdemeanor ($100 or 90 days) to discriminate in employment. He warned management that he would not use police to break up picket lines. When the labor bosses who had helped put him in office protested his selection of a police chief, Humphrey told them flatly: "I'm my own boss."

Handicapped by an archaic 1872 charter which made him, like all his predecessors, the Throttlebottom of the city council, he set up mayor's commissions on everything from human relations to smoke abatement. He was a great hand at patching labor troubles. After settling one row, Humphrey proudly explained: "What labor and management need is a catalytic agent. And brother, that's little Hubert."

Working up to 18 hours a day (in three years as mayor he had dinner at home only 25 times), Humphrey kept city hall in a turmoil, but he also gave Minneapolis an honest, efficient government.

By the time he came up for re-election in 1947, Humphrey hardly needed to campaign. He won by an even greater plurality than before, carried every ward in the city. Hubert Horatio Humphrey got to thinking about Washington again.

Power-Seeking. In the old days at the University of Minnesota, his favorite instructor, Ervon M. Kirkpatrick, once quoted to him a useful maxim: "Power goes to those who seek it." Power-seeking Hubert Humphrey first had to force a showdown within his own sprawling party. For months, Humphrey lieutenants stumped the state, lining up delegates to fight the Wallaceites and Communists in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor ranks (Humphrey broke with Wallace after Wallace's pro-Soviet speech at Madison

Square Garden). At the state convention last June, Humphrey's regulars overwhelmingly defeated the Wallaceites, who sulkily withdrew to a rump convention of their own. Humphrey himself was nominated for the Senate by acclamation.

Into the Sunshine. Not very happy either about Harry Truman's ways or his chances, Humphrey managed to lead an uninstructed delegation to Philadelphia, able to jump on any bandwagon. When Humphrey and his fellow Northern liberals could draft neither Ike Eisenhower nor Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, they swallowed Truman, and tried to look happy. Then they went to work to get Truman's civil rights program into the Democratic platform. While Southerners howled, Northern liberals brought out a minority report from the platform committee, backing up the President.

Delegate Humphrey seized the moment. Bursting into impassioned prose, he cried: "It is now time for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly in the bright sunshine of human rights." The resolution was put to a roll call. Down in the South Dakota delegation, Delegate Hubert Humphrey Sr. proudly announced his state's eight votes for the amendment. It carried by 69 votes.

After that, the senatorial campaign in Minnesota was almost an anticlimax. Republican Joe Ball hardly had a chance. Humphrey walloped Ball for his vote against the Marshall Plan, butted him around for supporting Taft-Hartley.

Between July and November, Humphrey traveled 31,000 miles, made 691 speeches, whirled through 450 communities in every county of the state. Says Humphrey: "I visited all the county fairs, shaking hands and eating hot dogs until I had hot dogs coming out of my ears. I used to be razzed for it. People said it was not dignified to campaign for U.S. Senator in that way. But when I'd go down a midway, the barker would stop and point me out, saying: 'Hey, there's my friend who is going to be the new Senator from Minnesota.'

"It's like running a drugstore. When people come in you've got to do things for them, show an interest in them, take them to the door."

Humphrey beat Joe Ball by 243,693 votes, and became the first Democratic Senator ever elected in Minnesota.

Etiquette. The freshman Senator from Minnesota was a little ill at ease in his new job. Just how do you go about being a Senator? As a starter, he bought a new black Homburg. Where was he going to live? He checked in with the Democratic National Committee, and started looking. From 7 in the morning until midnight, he looked at houses, 125 of them in eight days. He finally bought one for $28,000 (four bedrooms, two baths) in a new housing development near Chevy Chase.

Humphrey's wife arrived with their three sons, their daughter and a cocker spaniel. Mrs. Humphrey was clutching a copy of Emily Post's Etiquette under her arm. She was distressed to read that a Senator's wife was expected to spend her first Monday visiting the wives of the Supreme Court, Tuesday with other Congressmen's wives, etc. (It has not been required since World War II began.)

Invitations started pouring in: a Congressional Club reception, a party given by Columnist Drew Pearson, the Inaugural Ball (black tie). Commentator Edward Murrow wanted Humphrey to appear on a radio program with West Virginia's Neely; Ohio's Governor Frank Lausche wanted him to address a Jewish women's organization in Cleveland. Two of the dinner invitations had prices attached: $20 and $25. "Jeez," cried Humphrey, using one of his favorite expressions. "When in hell do we get paid?" Assistant Bill Simms, whose job it is to know about such things, said, "Every two weeks. In cash." Riding over to the Capitol on the Senate's underground railway, Humphrey picked up another piece of useful information from Oklahoma's freshman Senator Bob Kerr. Said Kerr: "I just found out how you get one of these things. You ring three times. That means a Senator's waiting. Same thing for the elevators."

Fourteenth in Line. On the opening day of Congress last week, Humphrey told Assistant Simms: "Be sure to brief me on protocol. I'm liable to start sliding down the bannisters." In the Senate chamber, he spotted his family sitting in the gallery, just to the right of the clock. When it came time for Senator Arthur Vandenberg to swear in Humphrey, 14th in line, Humphrey's father leaned forward, dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. "He's going to be a great Senator," the father said afterward. "Maybe he's going to be something else too."

The freshman Senator made only one minor bobble the first week. Trooping over to the House chamber for the President's State of the Union message, he and Illinois' Paul Douglas sat down by mistake in chairs reserved for Cabinet members. Ubiquitous Senate Secretary Les Biffle hustled over to set them straight.

Five-Star Treatment. Whatever Hubert Humphrey still had to learn about becoming a Senator, there was not much for him still to learn about politicking. He briefed his new eight-man staff: every letter was to be answered, every request followed up, a card-index system established to show what action was taken. Minnesota correspondence was to get priority (in one week he got 2,000 letters, tops for any freshman). He had a list prepared of big Minnesota names, who were to get the five-star treatment.

Munching Life Savers, puffing away at one cigarette after another, he spent one morning consulting his friends in labor. What was their reaction to the President's message? There was nothing like starting off right, keeping the right people happy.

But once started, the question now was: "Where did Hubert Humphrey go from here? He had made a smashing success in the minor leagues. How would he do in the majors? He well knew that freshmen Senators are to be seen and not heard, and for the present at least, he was going to play that way.

"What Am I All About?" His critics insist that he is too cocky, too slick, too shallow, too ambitious, a brain-picker rather than a scholar, clever without being wise. Said one of his Minneapolis lieutenants: "The trouble with Humphrey is he never takes time out. He's never alone with himself. If the guy would only sit down with himself and say, 'What am I all about?' But he's afraid to ask himself that question."

But his friends could say in his favor that he had also proved himself an honest and able public servant, with a quick, retentive mind, inexhaustible vigor, and considerable political courage. His point of view, born of the Dust Bowl, was honestly arrived at and stoutly held.

The real question seemed to be whether hurrying Hubert Humphrey would fail to get where he wanted (wherever that was) because he had tried to get there too fast. A man who has an answer for almost everything, Hubert Humphrey also had an answer for that: "I still have an interest in the drugstore." But, he added: "It's going to take a real good man six years from now to make me move out of here."

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