ULCERS & POLITICS.

WATKINS began his legal career in Vernal (pop. 3,000), Utah, where he also edited a weekly newspaper. When he was 33, he was forced to return to the farm for six years because of stomach ulcers. The ailment left effects that have plagued him ever since. During the first attack his hair turned snow-white. Says he: "I've been an old man since I was 35."

A good Mormon, Watkins abhors smoking, does not drink liquor, coffee or tea, often stops to pray before a big debate on the Senate floor. As president of the Sharon (Utah) Stake of the Mormon Church from 1929 to 1946, he took a lead in sponsoring a number of cooperative ventures, e.g., group medical care plans, a phase of his career that later caused consternation among some of his Republican friends.

The product of a staunchly Republican family, Watkins showed his first interest in politics as a follower of Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party. For four years (1928-33) he served as a district judge. In Washington, as a member of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, he has had firsthand experience at investigation of Communist infiltration. His family and friends remember only one Watkins statement about McCarthy: "The people of Wisconsin must like him; they elected him."

Thin of face, frame, voice and manner, Watkins is cautious, precise and meticulous. Despite his quiet manner, he has a stubborn quality, has refused to be blown down by such formidable wind channels as Texas' former Democratic Senator Tom Connally and Illinois' Republican Senator Everett Dirksen. Last week in Utah, the Senator's father was asked if he thought Joe McCarthy could bulldoze his son. Replied old (89) Arthur Watkins: "Nobody ever has."

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