CRUSADE OF THE BALLOT CHILDREN

NOT since the civil rights march on Mississippi in the summer of 1964 had so many young Americans committed themselves so fervently to a major national cause. Indeed, the volunteers who swarmed to Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire were far more deeply involved in the political mainstream than the civil rights marchers, and his youthful workers--some 5,000 strong--won results far more tangible and immediate than their predecessors in the South. In an era when many younger Americans are turning away from involvement in the democratic process, by dropping out either to psychedelia or to the nihilism of the New Left, the cool, crisply executed crusade of Gene McCarthy's "ballot children" provided heartening evidence that the generation gap is bridgeable--politically, at least.

McCarthy's student power came mostly from nearby Eastern Seaboard schools--Harvard, Radcliffe, Yale, Smith, Columbia, Barnard and such lesser-known institutions as Dunbarton, Belknap and Rivier--though some of his supporters arrived by Greyhound or jalopy from points as distant as Duke and the University of Michigan. All were soberly antiwar and anti-L.B.J. Many had demonstrated against the war at sit-ins or last October's Pentagon march, but even those happenings were, in the end, frustrating. "It looked more and more as if the physical types of protest--picketing and marching and all that--were having no effect except as an emotional outlet," said Jon Barbieri, 23, a Connecticut-educated Peace Corpsman who came back from India and soon entered McCarthy's campaign. Said Dan Dodd, 23, a tall, tweedy Oregonian who dropped out of Union Theological Seminary to join Gene: "I was thinking of turning in my draft card, but then the campaign began. We're not going to build grass-roots politics in time to end the war by November, but if we can end the present President's career, maybe we can do it by then."

"Clean for Gene"

At the outset, few of the volunteers were excited by McCarthy's prospects for success or ignited by his deliberately low-voltage campaign style. Yet his refusal to harangue crowds or play the demagogue ultimately generated a subtle student-professor relationship. At the same time, McCarthy demanded hard work and personal self-sacrifice from his young workers, many of whom had been supporters of Robert Kennedy. To escape the hippie image, miniskirted girls went midi, and bearded boys either shaved or stayed in the back rooms, licking envelopes or compiling address lists to the accompaniment of muted Beatle music.

One youth cold-shaved his chin in a Concord street to "Get Clean for Gene," while another hirsute can vasser, barred entry because of his beard by an irate housewife, borrowed a razor and tried to con vert her while depilating. Though a sign in one McCarthy headquarters proclaimed that "Strange Politics Makes Bedfellows," housing was strictly segregated by sexes (boys in a gymnasium, girls in McCarthy supporters' homes). In keeping with McCarthy's own austerity, the kids largely eschewed beer drinking, though one group of New Yorkers nearly came to grief in a Rochester bar: a local tough announced that "McCarthy is a mongoloid idiot," but was soon buying beer for the earnest young proselytizers on the simple strength of their arguments and jovially warning them to "drink it or wear it."

"New Stevensonians"

The students, of course, had slogans of their own. Some McCarthy workers sported buttons reading "We Try Harder"--in Hebrew. Posters announced: "God Isn't Dead--He's Just Lonely--But He Might Commit Suicide March 12th. It's Up to You." That same sense of last stand desperation was echoed in a primary-eve plaint: "Over 40%, we go on to Wisconsin; 30%, back to school; 20%, we burn our draft cards; 10%, we leave the country." When the results came in, it was on to Wisconsin, where last week a hard-core cadre of 300 New Hampshire veterans, many of them AWOL from classes, deplaned to begin organizing up to 25,000 fresh Midwestern volunteers pouring in from Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa--not to mention a goodly number of the Badger State's 70,000-odd resident students. As in New Hampshire, few of the volunteers had any political experience, and one veteran said: "Some of their instruction will have to be given on the buses." Other cadres were at work in Nebraska, Indiana, South Dakota and Oregon. Chief among the organizers: Samuel Winfred Brown Jr., 24, a baby-faced Harvard Divinity graduate student who was board chairman of the National Student Association when its CIA link was exposed last year; blue-eyed Ann Hart, 20, a diminutive (5 ft., 102 Ibs.), self-described "dropout and cop-out," who is the daughter of Michigan Senator Philip Hart, a Johnson Democrat; and freckled-faced Mary McCarthy, 18, who was a Radcliffe sophomore until she took an authorized student sabbatical last month to work for her father's nomination.

Most of McCarthy's staffers consider themselves "New Stevensonians" and are outraged by Bobby Kennedy's candidacy. "We'll fight him the same way we fought Johnson," growls Joel Feigenbaum, 25, a Cornell theoretical physicist. Ann Hart and a few plucky pals argue that McCarthy's issue-oriented idealism is the only answer to the nation's malaise. "We wouldn't do this cruddy work for anybody but Gene McCarthy," says Ann, who lost 18 Ibs. during her New Hampshire duty, and slept a straight 16 hours on returning to her Washington home. "We've sworn ourselves to him."

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