Yankee Liberal

Six years ago in Vermont, Industrialist Ralph E. Flanders lost a campaign for the Republican senatorial nomination. His friends jokingly tell him that it was because of a widely circulated photograph of himself. It showed him holding a pig in an awkward fashion. Vermont farmers, say Flanders' friends, laughed and voted for Senator George Aiken.

Joke or no, Ralph Flanders made no such mistake last week. Result: he carried the farm as well as the city vote (with C.I.O. backing), swept to easy victory over Lawyer Sterry R. Waterman (30,878 to 24,823). This made him almost certain to go to the Senate as the successor to able, scholarly Warren R. Austin, who resigned to become permanent U.S. member of the U.N. Security Council.

Bald, bespectacled Ralph Flanders, 65, will be no stranger to Washington. His engineering and machine-tools skill and his Yankee obstinacy have kept him in & out of the capital for 13 years. As part of a Commerce Department advisory committee in 1934 he calmly and candidly criticized the Roosevelt Administration. In 1941 he resigned his job as OPM boss of machine-tool priorities because his bluntness had him at odds with OPM bigwigs. When the OPM was reorganized, he was quickly recalled. He did advisory and expert jobs for the WPB and the Economic Stabilization Board. Lately he has been influential in the Committee for Economic Development.

At home in Springfield, Vt., he is the progressive chairman of the board of the crack Jones & Lamson Machine Co. His labor skirts are clean. The United Electrical local at J. & L. is on record to the effect that he has given it "absolutely fair treatment." The natives know he is a sound, hardheaded Vermonter.

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