Report of the County Chairman Read Free

contemptuous of the intellect; in the Little Rock period, antagonistic to anyone who was not white; and in the whole decade, paralyzed by a fear of natural revolution. From abroad we seemed to be a faltering nation, insecure even in those great principles upon which we were founded, and I felt that something had to be done to rectify this national image.
    Another decision I reached during the night watches was that I would henceforth, insofar as I was able to determine my own actions, never again make even the slightest concession where race, religion or a man’s type of work was concerned. I found myself willing to accept a man whether he was a Negro or not, whether he was a Catholic or not, and whether he belonged to a union or not. In fact, I suppose I was dangerously close to making the error of believing that merely because a man was a Negro, or a Catholic, or a union member he must be a good man; but I felt that if I were to be guilty of error, such an error had this to commend it: on it social progress has often been built and can be built in the future. If one elects to act on the contrary principle, no progress is likely.
    If I had been required then to state one short reason why I was about to plunge into national politics I would have said in summary, “Because there is a nation to be won.” In those intense days on the bosom of the stormy Pacific I visualized the United States as a rich and lumbering galleonadrift without crew or purpose, and I knew that she could be won by men of vision and determination. In the forthcoming election on many lonely nights I would remind myself stubbornly, “There is a nation to be won,” and I knew that I was engaged permanently in the battle to win it. But if I had been asked why I wanted to capture a nation I would have been forced to reply, “Because I want my ideas of justice and accomplishment to prevail.” Later I was to discover that many of the men with whom I was to work had exactly the same idea.
    Consequently, when I reached California one of the first things I told my wife was, “We’re going back to Pennsylvania, and I want to work in the Presidential election.”
    “Good!” she cried. “This time well make sure that Adlai wins.”
    I remember that I was silent for a few moments. Then I said, “I’m not sure I’m going to work for Adlai in the primaries.”
    “My God!” she shouted. “Who else is there?”
    My wife was a charter member of the Adlai Stevenson Club. In Chicago long before we were married she worked for him when he ran for governor of Illinois. In the 1952 Presidential campaign she not only worked vigorously but contributed her own funds and all that she could cadge from others. When he lost, her friends tell me, she went home and wept. In 1956 we were working in Europe, and I remember that bleak November morning when we staggered in to Paris after a dismal trip from Bordeaux to find that Stevenson had lost again. This time I know she went up to our hotel room andcried. If ever a husband had reason to support Adlai Stevenson for President, I did.
    We drove across country to our home in Pennsylvania, and as we rode through one brilliant state after another—California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado—we often spoke of how magnificent our nation was. We had each, I think, known the grandeur and the misery of life in America. As I have indicated, in my case the misery came first, in the early years as a small boy who almost never got the playthings a boy would want, with the grandeur coming later, when as an adult I found thrown at me almost everything a man would desire. In my wife’s case it was rather the reverse. As the much-loved youngest daughter of a successful Japanese melon grower in eastern Colorado, she grew up in a family where her brothers spoiled her and where the world was good. Then, in a series of dramatic shifts, her older brother died of a ruptured appendix; her father died because a doctor failed to diagnose blood