TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/56elect/56elect.007

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                                                                                October 8, 1956

THE CAMPAIGN

Midwestward Ho!


     In clouds and swarms, the politicians, pundits and
pollsters descended on the Midwest. Not since the great locust
plagues of the 1870s had the farm states seen such an invasion:
candidates criss-crossed one another's paths, columnists probed
and interviewed, and any farmer who had not been polled by the
pollsters felt sadly neglected. The consensus at week's end:
Adlai Stevenson has cut into Dwight Eisenhower's farm strength,
but not by enough to win the national election.

     Democrat Stevenson was leaving no field unplowed in his
effort to win the Midwest. Following up his defense of
continuing surpluses and his promises of fixed 90%-of-parity
price supports made in his major farm speech at Newton, Iowa, he
rounded out his case at Oklahoma City, picturing the farmer's
lot under the Republicans in terms of despair and suffering.
Then he took off for a trip through the South, but by midweek he
was back in Missouri, thence to Indiana.

     Word from What Cheer. To Peoria, Ill. traveled Dwight
Eisenhower, having already turned down all suggestions that he
try to outpromise Stevenson. If Adlai's farm-rich home state was
turning against Ike (who carried Illinois by 443,000 in 1952),
it could not be seen in the crowds flanking Peoria's streets
four and five deep. That night in Bradley University's
overflowing field house (seating capacity: 8,300). Eisenhower
was interrupted 31 times in 28 minutes by applause while he
scorned the Democratic farm program.

     Nonetheless, from every hamlet and crossroad, pundits
pushed the panic button for Republicans after studying the
skies (large parts of Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma and Iowa, as
well as Kansas, are suffering from drought) and the statistics
(Republicans cringed at an Agriculture Department report last
week showing that farm prices had gone down by .5% between
mid-August and mid-September). Wrote Columnist Stewart Alsop
under a What Cheer, Iowa dateline: "Candidate Eisenhower is in
deep, deep trouble in the typical Midwestern farm community
which surrounds this small town."

     Interest in Divorce. Some of the pollsters agreed. A squad
of New York Timesmen circulating among the crowds at Newton's
National Plowing Contest, came forth with the information that
"10.6% of those who said they voted for General Eisenhower in
1952 now say they will shift in November." A farmers-only poll
in Iowa released this week by Wallaces' Farmer and Iowa
Homestead shows 43% for Stevenson, 35% for Eisenhower, 22%
undecided (in July, the same poll showed Ike 49%, Adlai 32%,
undecided 19%).

     But Pollster Sam Lubell, while recognizing the genuine need
for G.O.P. worry about the farm vote, also found cause for
Republican cheer. Wrote he: "Strong as the uprising is against
the Republicans in the rural Midwest, much of its force is being
blunted by two feelings. One is a deep sense of gratitude to
President Eisenhower for ending the Korean war. The other is a
widespread dislike of Adlai Stevenson among farmers, and
criticism for his divorce . . . In 1952 among several thousand
voters I interviewed, only about a dozen brought up Stevenson's
divorce as their reason for voting against him. In this
campaign, however, in nearly every city and farm county I have
gone into, one or more voters have volunteered that they would
be for the Democrats except 'if a man can't run his family, he
has no business trying to run the country.'"

     The Long, Steep Climb. With such factors in mind -- plus
the fact that even in the Midwest the farm vote is less than
20% of the total -- Adlai Stevenson's big farm push seemed to
be winning back only Missouri (where he appears to have a
decided edge), along with a chance for Minnesota. Given those
three and the South (although Florida and border-state Kentucky
cannot be considered solid for the Democrats), Stevenson would
still fall considerably short of the necessary 266 electoral
votes.

     That meant that Stevenson would have to make up the deficit
in the Far West -- where his best chance is to grab onto Senator
Warren Magnuson's flying coattails in Washington -- and the
industrial Northeast, where Pennsylvania looked especially
important to the political swarms that were heading its way.
That the Stevenson campaign still faced a steep uphill climb was
evidenced by last week's Gallup poll, showing Ike still ahead
of Adlai by 52% to 41%, with 7% undecided. For all the talk of
farm revolt and G.O.P. disaster, Adlai Stevenson had not yet
gained a single percentage point on Dwight Eisenhower since the
poll published two weeks earlier.


The Human Pinwheel

     From Miami to Minneapolis, through nine states and across
3,600 miles, Adlai Stevenson went whirling across the U.S.
landscape last week, spouting sparks and smoke. He showered
scorn and anger on all Republicans, but saved his biggest
rockets to lob at Dwight Eisenhower and members of his personal
and official family. Such pyrotechnics did not go
unappreciated. Time after time, voices in his small but
enthusiastic audiences cried out, "Give 'em hell, Adlai." And
the new Adlai, when he heard, would grin and crack back: "I'm
doing my best."

     In his liveliest campaign week to date Adlai Stevenson:

     -- Broadly suggested again that the U.S. should end the
draft, which he described as "wasteful, inefficient, and often
unfair." Then he hedged his bets, called for "a fresh and
open-minded look at the weapons revolution and the whole
problem of military manpower."

     -- Proposed a moratorium on H-bomb tests; the U.S. can
detect Russian violations, and if "the Russians don't go along,
then at least the world will know we tried."

     -- Charged (with Harry S. Truman grinning happily on the
platform beside him) that President Eisenhower was guilty of
buck- passing and ducking the responsibilities of leadership:
"Who's in charge here, anyway? Who, in this businessman's
Administration, keeps the store?"

     -- Braved a possible booing at Little Rock, Ark., instead
was warmly applauded for firmly stating that he believed the
Supreme Court decision on segregation "to be right; some of you
feel strongly to the contrary, but what is more important is
that we accept . . . that decision as law-abiding citizens."

     -- Proposed increased federal funds for school
construction, more and better-paid teachers, and college
scholarships -- all without more federal "control over the
content of the educational process."

     -- Charged, without naming him, that the President's
brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, had "assumed special, if
informal, responsibility" for U.S. relations with Argentina to
the benefit of ex-Dictator Juan Peron, who pocketed $100
million in U.S. loans to Argentina.

     At his press conference, President Eisenhower quietly set
straight what was probably the most reckless blunder of the
Stevenson campaign. The U.S. had indeed made a loan to
Argentina, but it was for $130 million, not $100 million, said
he. And it was made not by his Administration but by Truman's.
Later in the week Secretary of State Foster Dulles underscored
another pertinent point: Peron thrived in office all through
the Truman Administration, fell from power during the
Eisenhower Administration -- which has propped up the new
government with a total of $160 million in loans.

     The blunder on Peron typified the difference between the
Stevenson of 1952, a man meticulously concerned with facts, and
the Stevenson of 1956, a man furiously concerned with winning.
Last week, particularly when he discussed his concept of a "New
America." Stevenson showed flashed of his old eloquent self
("Leadership in a democracy can be no more than the capturing of
a people's power to realize their own best ideals"). But most of
the time, he seemed more content to let the sparks shower
merrily and fall where they might.


--------------------------------------------------------------
IKE ON THE FARM

     [The case for the Administration's farm program as detailed
by President Eisenhower in Peoria:]

     For almost ten years, as farmers' costs have gone up, year
after year, farm prices have gone down. There are two exceptions
when prices went up. One was the tragic year when the Korean
battlefields provided the kind of market that no one wants. The
other is this year. And this year there is no war.

     Now what mainly caused that long, discouraging decline? One
thing only: political expediency in Washington, D.C. . . . And
what were the results? For one, Uncle Sam himself took up
farming. Synthetic farmers behind Washington desks started
telling farmers all over again what crops to plant, how much to
grow . . . the prices to charge. You know, farming looks mighty
easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles
from the cornfield . . . The value of the Government stockpile
of farm surpluses climbed to $9 billion. The cost of storage
alone has been $1,000,000 a day -- none of it going to the
farmers and with farmers helping to pay the bill. And these
surpluses, by holding down farm prices, last year cost farm
people some $2 billion.

     Head-On Attack. I'd say we have come pretty far in 45
months . . . We freed peacetime agriculture from programs
designed for war. We eliminated stifling wartime controls. We
attacked the menacing surpluses -- head-on. We regained many of
the lost markets. We helped the lowest-income people in
agriculture. We brought social security for the first time to
operators of family farms. We refunded to farmers the $60
million-a-year federal tax on farm gasoline. We started the
great St. Lawrence Seaway project -- the 30-year dream of
Midwestern farm families . . . And we turned prices back up --
without a war.

     I have two things to say about this beginning. First, the
old price-depressing Democratic farm program stayed in effect
right up to harvest last year . . . Eighty-five per cent of the
price decline after the Korean war inflation came while rigid
price supports were still in effect. Our opponents today are
criticizing the mess that they themselves left behind.

     Second, recent developments prove that the clean-up part of
our job is well on its way . . . Part of that assurance comes
from our new soil bank . . . This year the soil bank is
retiring over 12 million acres and earning 500,000 farmers more
than $260 million. When next year it retires 40 million to 50
million acres, overproduction will start coming under control.
That means better times for every farmer.

     Parity in the Market Place. Full income parity is a full
share in our country's good times. In a free agriculture,
farmers can attain that kind of parity only in the market
place. That's what I spoke for at Kasson four years ago: the
attainment of that full share for the farmer . . . That's what
I have been working for. I shall keep on working for it. And the
facts show good progress.

     Today farm foreclosures are near an alltime low. Today more
farm operators own their own farms than ever before. Today the
value of farm lands is at an alltime high. Today farm income is
at a $1 billion rate above last year. And the long decline in
farm prices has stopped. Prices today are higher than last April
when I vetoed that hodgepodge that the politicians called a farm
bill. Prices are 7% higher than last December. They are higher
than a year ago, when high rigid price supports still applied
. . . And we will keep on doing all else that is fair and
constructive -- all that is not political quackery -- to bring
our farm people the only kind of prosperity they want --
prosperity that can be enjoyed in time of peace.