Patrician on the Sidewalks

Candidate Averell Harriman, who had been taking political instruction from his managers until 2 a.m., climbed out of bed at 7 o'clock one morning last week in his elegant Manhattan town house. He barely had time to zip through a shave and into a grey worsted suit before the doorbell rang. His first guests were ten representatives of the A.F.L. building and construction trades, and while Harriman walked them across the red dining-room carpet past the French panels, a flying wedge of television cameramen, newsmen and campaign assistants moved in too. They recorded the scene as the labor men chomped their bacon & eggs and listened while Harriman scored the "punitive" Taft-Hartley Act and promised 100% support to the New & Fair Deals.

At 10 o'clock, Honest Ave took his wife's arm and walked to his 1939 Lincoln Zephyr. The TV cameras asked him to do it again. He obliged, and this time, with a determined smile, reached out to pump the hand of a surprised Department of Sanitation streetcleaner. Then the Harrimans were off for the politician's tour of the city.

At a housing project in Upper Manhattan, they dropped in on the Phil Frankels, and, for the cameras, Harriman bravely tried to hold squalling one-year-old Jay Frankel. He went on to Harlem, then stopped near the Brooklyn Bridge to pay homage to the statue of Al Smith.

Man to Beat. Averell Harriman is the only candidate in history to arrive on the sidewalks of New York via a lifetime of private railroad cars, first-class steamships, private airplanes and chauffeur-driven limousines. He is worth some $40 million and owner of homes in Manhattan, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, Hobe Sound (Fla.), Sun Valley and Paris. But he is possessed with a patrician's best instinct for public service, decency and generosity. As adviser, errand boy and global troubleshooter for Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, he has always been selfless, tireless--and available. When he was sworn in for his present job as director of the Mutual Security Administration, Presidential Secretary Matt Connelly quipped: "Averell, isn't this the eighth time you've been sworn in? It's about time you learned to hold a job."

In March, at Washington's Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, Harriman was seated at the head table when Harry Truman broke the news that he would not run again. In the confusion that followed, New York Democratic Chairman Paul Fitzpatrick grabbed Harriman and said: "Averell, you've got to be a candidate to hold New York together." Harriman assented on the spot, and set to work with characteristic doggedness to make himself not only a favorite son but a man of the people. By last week, he could shout like any other candidate: "I am the Democrat to beat"--and say it without coughing at his own chest-thumping.

Graduate Vice President. Harriman was raised on the 20,000-acre family estate at Arden, N.Y., built by old E. H. Harriman's Union Pacific Railroad profits and other phenomenally successful Wall Street ventures. Averell was a senior at Yale when he was elected to U.P.'s board of directors, and he graduated ('13) into a vice-presidency of the railroad. He was studious in his business dealings, invested carefully in shipping, commercial aviation and investment banking (Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.). In 1928--irritated by Republican high-tariff policy--he turned Democrat and began the first of a series of investments in the Democratic Party.

While he was board chairman of the Union Pacific, Harriman went to Washington as one of Franklin Roosevelt's "tame millionaires" to help out in NRA. His old friend Harry Hopkins--whom he had met at a Long Island croquet party in pre-New-Deal days--eventually pulled him into the White House vortex. Harriman's first big job for F.D.R. was to work out the provisions of Lend-Lease aid to Britain. His second assignment was to get aid to Russia, and in 1943 he was appointed Ambassador to Moscow. Harriman was never dazzled by the Communist dream, was skeptical of the Kremlin's power politics as early as 1943. Two years later he officially warned Washington that a weak China would invite quick, dangerous Russian influence in Asia.

Harry Truman brought him home from the London embassy to replace Henry Wallace as Secretary of Commerce. In the Cabinet he pushed the Truman Doctrine and aid to Greece, and his Committee on Foreign Aid drafted the working basis for the Marshall Plan. In 1948 Harriman became EGA chief in Europe under Paul Hoffman, and last October--after an interlude as Harry Truman's foreign-relations adviser--he moved in as chief of ECA's successor, the MSA.

Half Holiday. Harriman knows how to delegate large chunks of authority to his subordinates, yet worries over misplaced commas. He frequently forgets who is doing what job, yet can still recite from memory the call-down of his class roster at Groton. Gaunt, relaxed and notably stoop-shouldered, he drives himself from 8 a.m. until past midnight, and expects his staff to have the same endurance. Once he assigned an aide a job at 2 a.m. and was on the telephone at 7 a.m. to ask how it was coming. On another occasion, he strode out of his office at 5 p.m. and announced over his shoulder: "Today's a half holiday."

He is still shy and tense with strangers. He avoids cocktail parties as a waste of time, but loves dining out with people he knows, keeps a well-stocked cellar for home entertaining. (Quipped Friend Alexander Woollcott when Harriman became ambassador to London: "Oh to be in England now that Averell's there.") Like many a millionaire, he is thoughtless about pocket money, one day had to borrow a nickel and a penny from his legal counsel to get a candy bar and a handful of peanuts (his lunch) from a White House vending machine.

Pole Vault. Democratic politicos know Harriman can never hope to rival Estes Kefauver as a handshaker and winner of popularity contests. Instead, they have mapped a speaking tour through a dozen-odd cities from Boston to San Francisco just so delegates and the professional pols can get to know Harriman. If Adlai Stevenson definitely bows out and Harry Truman gives the nod, Harriman might possibly vault into the nomination on the strength of boss-controlled votes--without having entered a single primary.

Once nominated, Harriman would doubtless draw all the New Deal-Fair Deal support and the endorsement of organized labor. Like Stevenson, Harriman has the handicap of a past divorce (his second wife is the ex-wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt ["Sonny"] Whitney). Against Taft, his strong foreign-policy record might bring in some of the independent vote, but would pale as an asset if Eisenhower is the G.O.P. candidate.

But Candidate Harriman, out on the sidewalks, allows himself to think about none of the discouraging factors. He is committed to the old American principle that any man, if he works hard and long enough, can rise above his beginnings to be President of the U.S.

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