Away From It All

Candidate Adlai Stevenson climbed into his state-owned, two-engine Beechcraft last week, and flew off to the Wisconsin north woods for three days of fishing and his first holiday since he won the Democratic nomination. He picked a Hollywood version of a hunting lodge on the 138-acre country estate of an old friend, Clark W. Finnerud, a Chicago dermatologist.

Stevenson felt the need of a rest. He spent most of the daylight hours loafing on the lodge's flagstone patio, wandered only occasionally down to Lake Minocqua, 70 yds. away, for a little halfhearted casting. Evenings he lolled in the bearskin-draped living room before a fieldstone fireplace big enough to take 7-ft. logs, which were hauled automatically from the basement at the touch of a button. He went to bed at 9:30 every night to sleep under the stars, seen through the shatterproof glass roof of his bedroom.

Beyond dictating a few letters and holding two press conferences, he did little work. He made one important appointment: Beardsley Ruml, 57, was named Democratic finance chairman in charge of fund raising. A man with a fixed aversion to physical exercise, Ruml has told his friends, "If you ever hear of me dropping dead on a tennis court, you'll know it was because I was crossing it on my way to a Scotch & soda." For four years chairman of the board of Manhattan's R. H. Macy & Co., Ruml was chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1941 to 1946. He is best known as the father of the pay-as-you-go tax plan. In 1942 Ruml began worrying about the problem of the $7,500-a-year Macy executive who was called into the Army on a salary of $50 a month. How could he pay his 1941 income taxes? Ruml proposed that everyone get out of debt to the Government by moving over to a pay-as-you-go basis. In 1943, Congress passed an amended version of the Ruml plan, setting up the present withholding-tax system. Now nobody, but hardly anybody, is in debt to Uncle Sam--though Uncle Sam is still in debt.

The Democrats need a touch of pay-as-you-go: they have already booked $1,500,000 worth of radio and TV time for the campaign.

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