Man of the West

(See Cover)

On the pediment of the neoclassic State Office Building at Sacramento is inscribed a line from a poem by the late Sam Walter FOSS: BRING ME MEN TO'MATCH MY MOUNTAINS. Visitors to the Governor's office frequently wonder if Earl Warren, California's 30th governor and favorite son for the Republican Presidential nomination, is not such a man.

Big, blond, blue-eyed Governor Warren seems to radiate goodness and warmth. Impressed by his relaxed good nature, his evident simplicity, the eager "yes, yes" and "uh-huh, uh-huh" with which he indicates earnest interest in everything they have to say, his visitors often begin to fit him into a scheme of history. They see him not merely as a perfect political candidate, but as the forerunner in U.S. politics of a new era of friendly men to succeed the recent era of angry men--the era of the Burt Wheelers, the Fiorello LaGuardias, the Huey Longs, the Harold Ickeses and the Culbert Olsons.

Lengthening Shadow. Examination of Earl Warren's 25-year record in public office fails to reveal much promise that he is a potential giant in U.S. history. The Warren utterances and speeches have never risen above the level of safe, dull political prose. He has rarely tried anything which had not been tried before. A calm man of Swedish descent, slow to anger, he has stuck close to the middle of the road. But the record does reveal an able, hardworking, personally attractive public servant who, with the westering sun of California behind him, is casting a longer and longer shadow across the land.

At the meeting of Republican national and state committeemen in Chicago last fortnight, Earl Warren's was the name most mentioned for second place on the Presidential ticket. As leader of a 50-vote delegation, the governor of the great, growing and no longer so screwy State of California is sure to be a power at the G.O.P. convention. Warren is in the front rank of the group of up& -coming Republican governors who are, in considerable degree, the life of the Party. And he is also nationally significant as the most active political leader of a West which, enormously altered by war, is both worried and greatly hopeful about its future, and is resolved to fight for that future on both economic and political fronts.

This year California has a strong and active Willkie faction. But the bulk of the State's Republican leaders, including those for whom Willkie is too liberal, are waiting to see how the bandwagons roll. Thus far they are less interested in nominating any particular candidate than in electing some candidate, and primarily interested in the political concessions which California and the other Western states can exact by their convention bargaining. So intent is Governor Warren on retaining this bargaining power that though denying he is either a candidate or anti-Willkie, he told a TIME correspondent last week that if Willkie should enter the California primary "I would indeed exert all my influence and all my effort against him." A few days later Mr. Willkie (who not long ago called Warren one of the nation's "great governors") announced that in view of the Governor's assurances of neutrality he had decided not to enter the California contest.

Tom and Earl? Governor Warren's disclaimers of candidacy sound more wholehearted than Governor Dewey's because he declares that he not only intends to finish out his present gubernatorial term but "God and the people willing, I hope to be governor for a second four years." Unlike Dewey, who felt that he was ripe for the Presidency at 38, Earl Warren at 52 modestly asserts that he is not yet experienced enough for the nation's No. 1 job. But when convention time comes Earl Warren may think differently.

The political appeal of a Dewey-Warren ticket is obvious : two young governors from opposite ends of the country, from politically strategic states, two ex-district attorneys, two family men with impeccable private backgrounds.

Tom Dewey and Earl Warren have other similarities. Dewey was a flashy racket-buster who fastened on cases with national interest and made the most of the attendant publicity. Earl Warren's work as district attorney of Alameda County (Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley) was less spectacular. But in a state where most gang-busting is done on movie lots, he sent droves of bootleggers, con men, grafters and corrupt city officials packing off to jail.

Both Dewey and Warren have been charged with being somewhat insensitive to the means which they have employed in pursuit of their righteous ends. In 1930, when Warren set out to indict some Oakland city officials for graft, he well knew that if the indictment did not come off, he would be charged with engineering a whitewash. Accordingly, he released daily transcripts of the grand jury testimony to the press -- a clear law violation -- to show that he was doing his utmost. Happily for him, the indictment and convictions followed.

The episode of Earl Warren's past remembered most unfavorably on the West Coast is his handling of the celebrated Point Lobos case. In 1936, at the height of West Coast labor strife, the chief engineer of the freighter Point Lobos was stabbed and beaten to death in his cabin, while the ship lay at an Alameda dock.

The chief engineer had been known to unioneers as a fink. Some five months later, District Attorney Earl Warren got three union officials indicted and convicted on a charge of conspiracy to murder the engineer. The trial had some curious aspects: the judge was an old friend of Warren's; the deputy district attorney who tried the case became heavily indebted to one of the jurors. Labor and many liberals cried "frame-up"; labor unions surrounded the courthouse daily with 1,000 pickets. The three unioneers were subsequently pardoned by Governor Culbert Olson. Labor has never completely forgiven Earl Warren.

Warren, though personally warmer and more ingratiating than Dewey, has even fewer intimates. Both are politically cautious. But both have proved excellent governors, with a talent for leadership, for organization, and for picking able assistants.

Up from Waking Up. The house on Los Angeles' dingy Turner Street where Earl Warren was born in 1891 is now occupied by a Chinese family. Earl Warren's father was a master carbuilder for the Southern Pacific, who lost his job in 1894 when he went out on strike. The family moved 110 miles north to Bakersfield, then still something of a frontier town. Governor Warren recalls the day as a child when he was riding his donkey down the main street and ran spang into the running gun battle in which Deputy Sheriff Wil liam E. Tibbett, father of Baritone Lawrence Tibbett, was killed by an outlaw. (Thirty-five years later, Earl Warren's father, who had branched out into real estate, was found murdered in his Bakersfield home. The crime is still unsolved.) Young Earl Warren started his working life as a call boy, waking up railroadmen on time. Then he was a newsboy and cub reporter for the Bakersfield Californian. He played the clarinet in the Kern County High School band, later joining the Musicians' Union. At the University of Cali fornia, Warren was a steady but not bril liant student. He flunked second-year Greek; he failed to make the baseball team as a pitcher because he was too wild. After law school, he practiced for three years in Oakland, then was drafted for World War I. He ended up as an infantry first lieutenant, but did not get overseas.

His political career began after the war when he landed a job as a clerk to a legislative committee in Sacramento. Thence forth his rise was cautious and well-planned: he did not try for a new job unless he was reasonably certain he could get it. His first important job, as assistant district attorney, was assured him by the friendly legislative committee for which he had worked. As district attorney, he guided through the legislature a bill vastly increasing the powers of the state attorney general, and raising the pay from $6,000 to $11,000 a year. His next step up was to the attorney generalship.

Warren says that what finally determined him to try for the governorship was his utter inability to get along with Democratic Governor Culbert Olson. Many other Californians could not stomach New Dealing Governor Olson either, and Earl Warren shrewdly capitalized on this feeling. Running as a "nonpartisan" (he came surprisingly close to getting the Democratic nomination as well as the Republican), he stumped the length (1,000 miles) and breadth (200 miles) of the state, probably shook the hands of more Californians than has any other man alive.

Family Man. When the Warrens moved to Sacramento, the Governor's Mansion (once the boyhood home of the late great muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens) was an ugly, grey, 70-year-old frame relic. Part of the roof had toppled off, the rococo porches had rotted, plaster had fallen from the ceilings. One Governor after another had boarded off sections of the 20-room house.

The Warrens changed the mansion into a gleaming monument to the gingerbread era in American architecture, filled its spacious, high-ceilinged rooms with rollicking laughter which had not been heard there for decades. The Warren family is self-sufficient. The Governor and his wife (the former Mrs. Nina Palmquist Meyers, a widow, whom he married in 1925) have never entertained much. Mrs. Warren explains: "I had five children in six years, and you can't do much entertaining then."

When Governor Warren gets home from his office, he is greeted by his bouncing children as though he had been away for months. At bedtime Papa Warren makes the rounds of all bedrooms for a good night, or if he has turned in early to read in bed, the children troop in to him. The Governor has a study on the third floor, but he rarely uses it. Home, he feels, is for relaxing. He reads a lot of nonfiction.

The Governor. Earl Warren brought as much life to California's government as his family did to the mansion. Californians, looking at his first-year record, had to go back to the turbulent first year of Hiram Johnson's administration (1911-17) to find a yardstick by which to measure their new governor. Warren has yet to equal Johnson but he has chalked up some solid accomplishments.

The legislative session which followed was the shortest in California since 1907, and the most businesslike. In 71 days, Governor Warren pushed through:

> Reduction of the state sales tax from 3% to 2 1/2%; raising of personal exemptions in the income tax. (Said Warren: "It didn't mean much to the average individual taxpayer, but it did turn the tax indicator downward for the first time in history.")

> Upping of the old-age pension from $40 to $50 a month.

> Streamlining of the State Guard.

> A Food & Fiber Act which provided state aid in the harvesting of crops.

> Earmarking of $43,000,000 in state funds for postwar development and $25,000,000 for a "war catastrophe fund."

> Establishment of a postwar Reconstruction & Reemployment Commission.

> Total number of bills signed: 1,137 out of 1,291 passed.

This week, when the legislature meets in special session, another record seems sure to be set. Governor Warren has asked the legislature for but three measures: 1) prison reform; 2) soldiers' vote bill; 3) authorization of a constitutional amendment permitting the state to tax federal lands. (The Governor will dodge the touchy issue of California's relocated Japanese citizens.) Legislative leaders expect the session to last just three days. Reason for the speed is Earl Warren's established practice of thoroughly thrashing out bills in citizens' committees and informal groups of legislators before they are even submitted to the legislature.

Warren & the West. Earl Warren enjoys being governor of California. But to him one of the best parts of the job is the chance it gives him to take the lead in safeguarding and building the future of the West. California used to snoot its smaller Western neighbors. But Governor Warren called the first conference of the governors of the eleven Western states at Salt Lake City last May. A third meeting will be held soon.

The problems which the governors have to discuss appear at their biggest in Governor Warren's state. Although California has lost a half million workers to the armed services (plus 40,000 working Japanese), its total employed population nonetheless grew from 2,482,000 in April 1940 to 3,375,000 in June 1943, and is still growing. More significant than the growth in numbers of California workers is the change in the type of work they do. In 1939, 55% of its industrial workers were employed in manufacturing nondurable goods like food, textiles, oil products. Today 80% of them are manufacturing durable goods; more than half of that 80% are employed in the two industries of aircraft and shipbuilding. And most of California's new industrial plants have been built with federal money.

So California now has three great worries. It fears a terrific employment slump when the demand for its airplanes, ships and other war products stops. It is afraid that its federally owned factories may be nationalized or dismantled. It is afraid that when the war with Germany ends, the war with Japan will keep it absorbed for another couple of years, while the East gets the jump on it in reconverting to peace. Oregon and Washington have had similar booms, now have similar worries. And the industrial fates of the hinterland western states, as suppliers of metals and other raw materials, are closely linked with those of the Coast.

So the West, itself once a frontier, now has frontiers of its own, on the Yangtze and on the Potomac. It does not aspire to displace the East industrially. What it wants is to develop a great home market for its industries, and to trade greatly with British Columbia, Alaska and the Orient--especially with new China. To banish its postwar nightmares, to achieve its postwar dreams, it feels that it must continue its fight for States' Rights under Warren and other governors but must also have far more representation in Washington, D.C. than it has ever had before.

California's acting Republican National Committeeman, William Reichel, explains the immediate hopes of California Republicans simply and bluntly. "I'm pro-Warren and pro-California," he says. "We want something to bargain with for California. We're not anti-anyone. Our program is sound. It's got logic. We have 50 convention delegates. We are big and strong and important and we're going to get something. At the convention our votes will get us a western Cabinet member, a western Supreme Court Justice and a western man on every high policy-making body in the Government. That's what Warren will be bargaining for. We'll get them or they won't get our votes."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.