Prodigy's Progress

(See Cover)

As the farmers and townsmen of Ottawa County streamed out of the fairgrounds at Marne, Mich, one day last fortnight, they came upon a handsome, square-shouldered man wearing a big, green, polka dot bow tie and a wide, bright, boyish grin. He stood astride the main exit, reaching out to shake hands with all who would come within his grasp. The smile and the green bow tie identified him as Gerhard Mennen Williams, governer of Michigan. "Look," murmured one woman to another as they pressed by, "he's getting grey hair already."

To Michigan, the discovery that "Soapy" Williams was showing his age came as a shock. It was a little like comprehending that Shirley Temple is a mother and Yehudi Menuhin has three kids of his own. For Soapy Williams is Michigan's political prodigy.

Four years ago, he and his tireless wife Nancy came out of political nowhere to tour the state in their battered De Soto convertible. Soapy called square dances at every crossroad, and he and Nancy out-polkaed the Polish-Americans in Hamtramck. In six months of hard campaigning they got Soapy elected as one of the rare Democratic governors in a traditionally Republican state. In 1950 they did it again, to make him the second Democratic governor in Michigan's history ever elected in a nonpresidential year. Last week, at an undaunted 41 years. Soapy plunged into the campaign for his third term, with a good chance of breaking the alltime record and becoming the only Democrat to win three consecutive gubernatorial terms.

Big Mistake. This time Soapy is running against Republican Fred Alger Jr., 45, Michigan's secretary of state and the grandson of a former governor, Russell A. Alger, who was McKinley's Secretary of War (1897-99). In Fred Alger the Republicans have put their best foot forward. He has proved himself a good vote getter in four previous statewide campaigns for political offices, and he can make a better, more forceful speech than Soapy.

Alger and Soapy have known each other off & on for years: they both grew up in Detroit's crusty, oldtime high society, which still considers itself one notch better than the new rich of the automobile industry. Soapy insists, however, on making a distinction when he and Alger are referred to as a couple of millionaires. "Alger traveled in the polo-pony class," says the Democratic candidate, "while I was in the tennis-racket crowd."

Fred Alger made his biggest political mistake four years ago. During the Republican administration of Governor Kim Sigler, Alger got Soapy appointed to a Democratic vacancy on the bipartisan state liquor control commission. He misjudged Soapy's ebullient New Dealism, his youthful enthusiasm and his common touch as the signs of a willing political amateur. But genial, hard-plugging Soapy traveled the state like no liquor commissioner in history, soon turned a host of liquor dealers into personal friends, and turned his job into a first step on the Michigan political ladder. Kim Sigler's successor as governor: Soapy Williams.

Heavy Mortgage. Fred Alger's error is a common one in Michigan because Soapy is an uncommon politician. From his office on the second floor of the state capitol in Lansing, Governor Williams runs Michigan with a fine air of democracy and honest folksiness. His office door is never closed, and newsmen are privileged to wander in & out of his "goldfish bowl" (as he calls it); they listen in on state conferences. Soapy detests pomp and formality, sends his three youngsters to Lansing public schools. He lives well within his $22,500-a-year salary: there is only one maid to help Nancy run their rambling old house eight blocks from the capitol (Michigan does not provide an executive mansion). Frequently Soapy answers his own telephone.

In religion he is a devout Episcopalian. In political philosophy he is a New Dealer with a pressing desire for public service and a sense of noblesse oblige. From his days in short pants he has been outstanding for two clear qualities: natural leadership and dogged ambition. In proper balance these qualities should lead to greatness. Yet in practical politics Soapy Williams has somehow not been great There are, in his record, strong indications that he has pawned the quality of leadership to feed ambition.

Dutch Bobs. "He's just the kind of guy who has to lead." says Soapy's admiring younger brother Hank, now a Republican district committeeman and rancher in Glenwood Springs, Colo. "Soapy was president of the choir at St. Paul's in Detroit. He used to kick me out all the time. I made the kids laugh and Soapy would run me out. Luckily I had pull: father was a vestryman and he would get me back in." Father Henry P. Williams built up a comfortable income in the pickle business and in Detroit real estate. Mother Elma Williams is a Mennen, sharing with her brother control of the Mennen Co. (shaving cream and toiletries), worth an estimated $12 million. She had her own positive notions about bringing up her three sons, Mennen, Henry and Richard. "We used to wear our hair in those Dutch bobs." Hank recalls, "and we used to have to wear those Buster Brown collars. But the kids in school in the seats behind us would write all over them, and when Mother saw what they wrote we didn't wear them any more."

In summers the family traveled widely, both in the U.S. and abroad. One summer the three boys were packed off to a ranch in Wyoming. There the cowboys dubbed little Dick "Suds." called Hank "Lather," and Mennen "Soapy." Much to Mrs. Williams' distress. Mennen's nickname stuck with him from that date on.

Horrible Armlock. Hank was perhaps the first victim of Soapy's grim determination. "Soapy was a muscle man when we were kids," he says. "That was the time of Lionel Strongfort, and Charles Atlas was just starting to advertise in a big way. Soapy used to get all of those muscle books and send for all of Atlas' muscle courses and all the gadgets. He used to use me to practice his wrestling holds. I was sort of double-jointed and gave poor Soapy a bad time, I'm afraid. He would prop the book up in front of him and then get a horrible armlock on me. I would wiggle out of it, and Soapy would check the book again and mutter, 'I'm sure that is the right hold, Hank. Let's try it again.' "

At a gangly 14, Soapy was shipped off to Salisbury (preparatory) School in Connecticut. There he gravely determined that he would get good grades. To the regular curriculum he added a special course in Greek, came out of Salisbury with the highest grade average the school has ever had, before or since. "In my experience," recalled Soapy's old Latin and Greek teacher Samuel Carr, last week, "most schoolboys, when they excel, are just precocious. But with him it was a little different. He was very thorough. He just thought things through ... He had a social gift and more breeding than most boys, and it rather amazed me. because he came from the Midwest and you expected the best breeding among the boys from the East."

Young Republican. When Soapy went on to Princeton in 1929, he deliberately shut himself off without a roommate so he would not have to waste study time in senseless gabbling. With mathematical exactness, he budgeted his time among his studies, sports, activities and an occasional social whirl. Once, he decided that the time had come for him to know something about drinking. (Today he rarely drinks anything stronger than milk.) "We stopped one night and bought a bottle of gin, and one of Scotch and some champagne," says Soapy's old friend Standish Backus Jr. "We took the booze and went to a hotel and holed up for some serious experimental drinking. Soapy wanted to find out how much he could drink without getting sick. Four hours later we had the answer to that. But Soapy didn't seem to mind. He just checked it off to experience."

By graduation (1933), Soapy had made Phi Beta Kappa, had skied, wrestled, played basketball, rowed on the junior varsity crew, and won two football letters. He also won. the presidency of virtually every organization he touched--including, to his later chagrin, the presidency of the Young Republicans.

Politics bit him hard. "If God and Mammon are willing," he wrote Stan Backus one summer, "I'm going to play some part in government. I'm praying to God for brains and faith, and I'm going to try to wrench away some of Mammon's treasure for power to do things."

Blind Date. Soapy's inevitable next move was into law, and he enrolled in the fall of 1934 in the University of Michigan Law School. At Ann Arbor he fell under two major influences: 1) the spell of the New Deal, and 2) the spell of a slender, quick-witted social-service student from Ypsilanti named Nancy Quirk. Nancy and Soapy met one night on a blind date. Like Soapy, she was naturally friendly, bright and outspoken. Like Soapy, she hated social airs and petty pretenses. They were married in 1937.

Soapy plugged through law school to win his usual scholastic honor record, but this time he could not resist the bull sessions. Like all universities, Ann Arbor was in a ferment over the New Deal. The standard bull-session topics of sex and religion went out the window, and long debates raged over the day's headlines from Washington. Soapy thought of himself as a liberal Republican, but a close friend, Jim Denison (now a successful Los Angeles lawyer), convinced him that there could be no such animal. Soapy flipped resoundingly into the New Deal camp, much to the distress of his family. (Elma Williams, in moments of political outrage, still sometimes calls her son a D.D., for damned Democrat.)

One day Denison proudly presented his new convert to Mother Denison, who was visiting the campus. Afterwards. Mrs. Denison said thoughtfully: "I am very much impressed with your friend Soapy. He is a Franklin Roosevelt at 24. He will some day be President."

Corner Turned. People were always saying things like that about Soapy, and some of them were politicians who knew a good thing when they saw one. Soapy was hardly installed as a lawyer in New Deal Washington before Michigan's redheaded Governor Frank Murphy summoned him to Lansing to be assistant state attorney-general. When Murphy went on to run Franklin Roosevelt's Justice Department, he made Soapy his executive assistant. Then Murphy sent Soapy into Michigan so the home folks could see him. Soapy was appointed as a prosecutor in Murphy's drive to get something on Republican Boss Frank McKay. McKay was indicted for fraud, but despite Murphy's lawyers--including Soapy--McKay was acquitted.

Soapy went into the Navy as a deck officer and gravitated to staff work. When he was discharged in mid-1946, a lieutenant commander with ten Pacific battle stars and a Legion of Merit, Murphy got him a job as deputy director of OPA in Michigan. By this time Soapy was on the make for governor, and--when the OPA job expired--he gladly seized at Fred Alger's offer of the spot on the liquor commission. At the same time Soapy Williams, the boy wonder of three schools, rounded the corner and came face to face with practical politics. He aligned himself with two highly practical Democratic groups which needed nothing so much as a popular candidate. They were the C.I.O.'s Political Action Committee and a Fair Dealing reform group known as the Michigan Democratic Club.

New Outposts. Today, Soapy's strength in Michigan is built on a sort of right triangle. The base is the powerful C.I.O.P.A.C., anchored by some 400,000 members of Walter Reuther's United Auto Workers in & around Detroit. The vertical side, extending far upstate, is the Michigan Democratic Club, founded by Soapy's good friend and law partner, Hicks Griffiths. The hypotenuse is the candidate himself. Each member of this triangular coalition is essentially dependent on the other.

At the outset of the 1948 campaign, Griffiths took on the job of wresting party control away from the conservative Democratic Old Guard. He and his wife Martha beat the bushes through upstate Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, stopping where no old-line Democrat had ventured for years. Along their trail they left scores of new party outposts. The outposts did not count much in general elections, but they could send delegates to the state Democratic conventions--and seizing control of the party was the coalition's first objective.

Goon Politics. The C.I.O. went to work in Wayne County, the heavily industrial base of the state. Into every Detroit precinct C.I.O.-P.A.C. threw its paid and unpaid political workers in order to get their candidates elected precinct captains. They caught the Old Guard Democrats napping, and the coalition wound up in the 1948 state convention with a two-thirds control of the delegate vote. The regulars fought back in 1950, sometimes with nominating petitions salted with forged names. Then the going got rough.

To maintain control of the 1950 district conventions, the C.I.O. equipped important Wayne County meeting places with goons. The Fifteenth Congressional District convention, for example, was held in the headquarters of a U.A.W. local. Delegates were received in a small anteroom where half a dozen factory workers watched while credentials were checked. If a delegate passed, he was allowed to proceed through a gantlet of guards, one of whom was armed with something resembling a baseball bat. If the delegate was considered unfriendly, he might be seated on the convention floor with a husky C.I.O. "guardian" on either side. With the aid of such tactics the Williams coalition carried the day. By the 1950 state convention they owned the Democratic Party of Michigan, lock, stock, policy and patronage.

In all of this organization activity Williams was the indispensable man. His handshaking and backslapping helped to arouse the enthusiasm of precinct and outpost alike. And above all, he beat the Republicans. The pundits give Soapy little credit for winning in 1948, because the G.O.P.'s Kim Sigler was an overconfident pushover. But they marvel at the off-year victory in 1950. It was so close that it took five weeks to determine that Soapy had beaten ex-Governor Harry Kelly.

The Trusty. The current Republican charge in Michigan--abetted by Detroit's anti-Williams newspapers--is that Soapy is the prisoner of labor. Both Soapy and the C.I.O. protest that this is not so. But there is plenty of evidence that, if Soapy is not labor's unhappy prisoner, he is at least the C.I.O.'s happy trusty. And the C.I.O.-P.A.C. has been able to get, during his administration, just about everything it wants from the executive.

What smart labor leaders--like C.I.O. State President Gus Scholle and Walter Reuther--really want out of political control is not patronage, because they don't want to lose their active labor leaders to politics. The P.A.C. is supported by contributions of its members, and neither needs, nor wants, political kickbacks. Nor do the labor leaders want political publicity. They have learned the hard way (e.g., in Detroit's mayoralty campaign) that the C.I.O.'s open endorsement can be the kiss of death. During the 1950 campaign, P.A.C. workers deliberately identified themselves simply as "Democrats," even in dealing with C.I.O. workers.

What Scholle, Reuther & Co. wanted--and got--was effective control of policymaking jobs. At the outset of his first term Soapy Williams appointed as his press secretary and right-hand man Paul Weber, executive secretary of the Detroit Newspaper Guild. Weber was Gus Scholle's hand-picked recommendation. To this day Weber writes and edits most of Soapy's speeches, and thinks up the gimmicks of Soapy's "Build Michigan" legislative program.

"P.A.C. did not hesitate to bring pressure for sympathetic appointees to the Michigan Unemployment Compensation Commission, the State Department of Labor, and the Public Service Commission," wrote a P.A.C.-C.I.O. research assistant in a study of Michigan politics published last week.* By 1950, she notes, the platform of the Michigan Democratic Party took on a striking resemblance to the P.A.C. legislative program.

Favorite Son. Soapy Williams has been an ineffective governor largely because he plays his legislative program from a strictly partisan angle. Like Harry Truman with the 80th Congress, Williams attacks his Republican legislature for failure to carry out the Williams program without trying to find a statesmanlike middle ground for action. For example, Michigan is rolling up an ever-increasing deficit. Soapy wants to lessen it by a corporate income tax (a C.I.O. project which would sock General Motors alone some $27 million a year). Soapy has vetoed major Republican efforts to work out substitute measures, which, say the Republicans, could have cleaned up the deficit.

As election gets closer, Soapy has taken a firm tone to prove his independence of the C.I.O., and C.I.O. has cheerfully joined in this chorus of innocence. When Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg died, the C.I.O. came forward with its candidate, C.I.O.-man George Edwards, onetime Detroit city council president. Soapy, on Hicks Griffiths' advice, rejected Edwards and told the C.I.O. he was going to pick Detroit Newsman Blair Moody, an old, personal friend. The C.I.O. publicly beat its breast over this "defeat," but had no really serious objections. And any doubts about Moody's relations with labor were dispelled at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

In Chicago, Moody and Soapy were in the truculent forefront of the disastrous, disingenuous attempt to bind the South with the loyalty oath (TIME, July 28). Behind them, egging them on, was Walter Reuther. Moody's performance for the cause was the most appalling of all, for in his arguments before the credentials committee he became so mixed up that his ally, New York's Franklin Roosevelt Jr., had to straighten him out--which is like being saved from drowning by a three-year-old boy.

On the presidential nomination, Michigan's 40 votes were pledged to Soapy as a favorite son. Soapy had no illusions about his chances for the top job--this year--but he was not beyond hoping that lightning might strike for the Vice Presidency. Hicks Griffiths, Soapy and Moody swung Michigan to Estes Kefauver after the first ballot. This, too, proved to be a disastrous piece of political miscalculation. On the third ballot, Michigan scrambled on to Stevenson's bandwagon. Said Hicks Griffiths sadly, as he answered to the poll of the delegation: "I give up. Stevenson."

Explaining Soapy. The big question in the minds of Soapy's ardent friends and well-wishers is whether he can ever revert to the independent old Soapy of Salisbury, Princeton and Michigan. Or will his political indebtedness, like his graying hair, increase as he progresses further into politics? The questions are extremely pertinent because Soapy, as ever, has budgeted his time closely. He would like to be in the Senate by 1954 and in the White House by 1960.

Soapy's old Princeton buddy Stan Backus is a solid Republican, but last week he voiced a kind of pathetic bipartisan concern about the prodigy. "Today, when the class of '33 gets together, we talk about Soap," said Backus. "He's the guy who has done the most and gone the farthest. But I've stopped trying to explain him to my friends. For a while I would stand up for him and make excuses for his actions. But I can't any more. It's strange. We always looked to Soapy for ideals. But now I wonder if he hasn't scuttled them for practical politics."

*The C.I.O. and the Democratic Party, by Fay Calkins; University of Chicago Press.

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