Rough & Ready

Like most of its predecessors, the presidential campaign promised to be notable for irresponsible charges and ridiculous statements. Candidate Harry Truman charged that the Republican Party, and thus Candidate Tom Dewey, was the tool of "special interests." Candidate Henry Wallace cried that Candidate Truman was the tool of "the big money or the big brass." Candidate Dewey had not yet said anything, but he had okayed Harold Stassen's accusation that President Truman was trying to set "class against class."

All this, of course, was what Wendell Willkie called just "campaign oratory." But it was shouted from the housetops, and would be for the next six weeks.

"Better Look put." President Truman set the tone of his campaign last week in five Labor Day speeches in as many Michigan industrial cities. In Detroit's Cadillac Square he found a tremendous turnout. The C.I.O. and the A.F.L. had worked together to make a show of labor's numbers. Upwards of 100,000 people packed the open plaza and converging streets around City Hall. Harry Truman gave them a blunt and truculent speech on the theme that only he and the Democratic Party had the welfare of the "little man" at heart. Said he:

"The Republicans . . . voted themselves a cut in taxes and voted you a cut in freedom. The 80th Republican Congress failed to crack down on prices. But it cracked down on labor all right." He said there was "an exceedingly real possibility" of a boom-and-bust cycle if the Republicans came into power; "you can already see signs of it. The boom is on for them and the bust has begun for you."

Then Candidate Truman let his campaign theme run away with his judgment: ''If you let the Republican reactionaries get complete control of the Government ... I would fear not only for the wages and living standards of the American workingman, but even for our democratic institutions of free labor and free enterprise."

That was the sort of extreme statement --like Herbert Hoover's remark about grass growing in the streets--which might bounce back and make Candidate Truman regret that he had ever said it.

"Demagogic Appeal." Next night, Harold Stassen (after clearing his speech with Tom Dewey) gave the Republican answer. He had almost no crowd--only about 3,000 party workers, who left 2,000 empty seats in Detroit's Masonic Temple. But he had the same radio network.

Stassen spoke derisively of Harry Truman's "scolding, threatening, complaining speeches." The President, he said, had "dishonored labor with an extreme demagogic appeal." He called him a sower of "the seeds of disunity for the sake of fleeting political advantage."

If the opening guns were any indication, it was going to be a bitter campaign, with angry charges flying from all sides --though the people, waiting to cast their umpire's vote, had apparently already made up their minds.

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