Through a Lens Brightly

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"Tlrere've been a great many boys begin as low down as you. Dick, that have grown up respectable and honored. But they had to work pretty hard for it."

"I'm willin' to work hard." said Dick.

"And you must not only work hard, but work in the right way."

"What's the right way?"

"You began in the right way when you determined never to steal, or do anything mean or dishonorable, however strongly tempted to do so. That will make people have confidence in you when they come to know you. But, in order to succeed well, you must manage to get as good an education as you can. Until you do. you cannot get a position in an office or countingroom, even to run errands."

"That's so," said Dick, soberly. "I never thought how awful ignorant I was till now."

"That can be remedied with perseverance," said Frank. "A year will do a great deal for you."

"I'll go to work and see what I can do," said Dick energetically.

--Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks, by Horatio Alger Jr.

In the days of his youth. Chuck Percy befriended a kindly gentleman by the name of Mr. Silverstein, the proprietor of the corner delicatessen. Chuck, a curious and observant boy, noticed that Mr. Silverstein rarely closed his place of business.

"Mr. Silverstein, sir, don't you ever close your place of business and go out and have some fun?" inquired the lad solicitously, as was his warm and friendly fashion.

"Young man," responded the kindly gentleman soberly, "I own this business. It is all mine. This is my fun."

Mr. Silverstein and his delicatessen have since passed into oblivion. But Charles Harting Percy did not. He applied himself, worked hard and persevered, and by dint of luck and pluck became a wealthy, successful businessman who is now the Republican candidate for Governor in his home state of Illinois, and--who knows?--may become something even bigger before he turns 50. To this day, Percy recalls his conversation with Mr. Silverstein. "I've never forgotten this," he says, "because he was right. It's fun working when you're working for yourself. Having your own equity, working your own business, having a feeling that what you're doing is building something for yourself--these things are important. I found that out."

Golly! Chuck Percy really looks and acts the part of the Algeresque hero. He is 45 years old this month, but he has the mien of a boyish 30. He has frank brown eyes, a frank, open face, a trim, exercise-toned body (5 ft. 8 in., 165 lbs.). He is hardworking, fun-loving, self-disciplined and perfectly organized. He reads deep-think books, takes religion, politics and self-improvement seriously. He is a Christian Scientist. He neither smokes nor drinks. He prefaces his sentences with "Golly!" and "Gosh!" and "Gol darn it!" and when he once said "Damn!" his friends thought the walls were about to come tumbling down. When one of his innumerable plans or projects goes sour, he simply shrugs and says: "Well, we've got a lemon. Now let's see if we can make lemonade."

In a day and age when traditional virtues are often the subject of scorn, Percy is suspect to many. A political adviser recently told him that it was to his disadvantage to be considered "too good to be true." Percy just laughed. "Well," he said, "that's my imperfection." Recalling his remarkable business career, some critics think of him as an opportunistic Boy Scout who likes to help little old ladies across the street and into the bank. "This little pip-squeak," says a man who knows him, "is just too damned ambitious. It'll get him in the end."

Strong Cadres. Percy's wife Loraine understandably takes another view. "Chuck," she says, "just likes to think he's making a better world." Indeed he does. That is precisely why he is running for Governor. He has a deep, dogged idealism and a relentless energy that have brought refreshing excitement to Illinois politics. As a result, Percy has become a front-line soldier on the Midwestern battleground that may be crucial in Election Year 1964.

If Barry Goldwater is to stand even the slightest chance in November, he must carry the Midwest, once, but not any longer, an unassailable bastion of Republicanism. Goldwater has strong cadres of Midwesternstrength, but most indicators show him trailing President Johnson in general popularity; moreover, Hubert Humphrey, a founder of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, figures to be a definite Midwestern asset to the national Democratic ticket (a proposition subject to some conjecture by those who recall that John Kennedy beat him in the 1960 Wisconsin primary).

In any event, Goldwater plainly needs help in the form of strong showings by Midwestern state candidates, such as Ohio's Representative Robert Taft Jr., now running for the Senate against Incumbent Democrat Steve Young; Indiana's Lieutenant Governor Richard Ristine, currently favored to win the statehouse back from the Democrats; Wisconsin's Gubernatorial Candidate Warren Knowles, a definite threat against Incumbent Democrat John Reynolds; and even Michigan's Republican Governor George Romney, who despite his announced distaste for the Goldwater candidacy could, in the event of a sweeping personal victory for reelection, bring along a decisive number of straight-ticket voters.

Of all these Midwestern states, Illinois is the most populous (10,437,000), the richest, the most diverse and the most influential. It is also the Midwestern state in which the Republican candidate for Governor is waging the most energetic campaign of all against what would seem to be--on paper--fairly long odds.

Urban Salesman. Percy got his energetic nature from his Chicago-born mother Elizabeth, who is 71, and who only recently gave up her bicycle.* She has not, however, forsaken the violin, which she has been playing arduously for more than 50 years. She still practices several hours a day, and while Chuck is campaigning, she likes to go with him to entertain the crowds with a rendition of Perpetual Motion or Maria Wiegenlied.

A chamber-music player of some talent, Elizabeth was touring the U.S. with a string quartet when she met Edward Percy in Pensacola, Fla. They got married, settled down there for a few years, and in 1920, six months after Chuck was born, moved to Rogers Park in Chicago. There Father Percy did well as a bank cashier, and Chuck soon learned the value of a buck. At age five, he began earning his first regular income by selling magazines, and not long afterward got his first accolade: a plaque honoring him for selling "more Country Gentlemans to city people than any other urban salesman in the United States."

On Relief. Then, in the best Alger tradition, adversity sprinkled spikes along the road to success. The Depression hit, and in 1931 Edward Percy lost his job when his employers' bank failed. "Living through those years," says Chuck, "was the best thing that ever happened to me. What had been fun before became a strong necessity." The Christian Scientist Percy family staved off despair with resolution borne by faith. Though Edward Percy found jobs here and there, the family had to go on relief. The welfare truck used to deliver food to the family through the alleyway behind the Percy house. "In fact," says Chuck, "it was the occasion when the truck dropped off an extra 100 lbs. of flour and sugar that put our family into the bakery business. I sold homemade cookies door-to-door and got up at 3:30 a.m. to deliver newspapers."

In the mid-'30s, luck rewarded pluck. Chuck's Christian Science Sunday-school teacher was Joseph McNabb, a benignly despotic sort of fellow who was president of a small movie-camera company, Bell & Howell. Through Chuck, McNabb came to know and like the Percy family, gave Edward a job (from which he retired, as office manager, at 73; he died at 75 in 1959). Chuck himself got a summer job at Bell & Howell, and it was there, under Joe McNabb's tutelage, that Chuck found his star.

McNabb's protege did himself proud not only in those summer jobs at Bell & Howell but also at the University of Chicago. An excellent swimmer, he became captain of the water-polo team; he was president of his fraternity and of the interfraternity council.

While majoring in economics, Percy devoted himself to the practical application of that inexact science. Of course he waited on tables. But he also took over and expanded a cooperative purchasing operation for all the fraternities, ran it into a highly profitable enterprise. He assumed management of the libraries in all the men's residence halls. He recruited students for an association of small colleges, got 5-c- for the name of every high-school student that he submitted and $10 for each of these who actually entered. Business got so good that Chuck subcontracted the job to some of his fellow university students, paid them 3-c- a name and $5 per college entry.

So hectic was Percy's extracurricular pace that his grades suffered (he graduated with a C average), and University Chancellor Robert Hutchins was once moved to admonish him: "You're exactly the kind of student I'm trying to keep out of the university." But in later years Hutchins recalled Percy as the "richest boy who ever worked his way through college." He had a point: in his senior year at the university, Chuck grossed $150,000 from his business enterprises, netted $10,000.

Hymns & Games. When Percy graduated in 1941, a fulltime job was waiting for him at Bell & Howell. Joe McNabb put him in charge of the company's newborn defense-contracts department. Two years later Chuck joined the Navy, where his business experience led to a post in procurement operations.

During his three-year Navy career, Percy married Jeanne Dickerson, daughter of a Chicago plumbing contractor. They had three children--twin girls and a boy. Percy meanwhile had returned to Bell & Howell, become McNabb's right-hand man and been named to the board of directors--at 23. In 1947 Jeanne, who was not a Christian Scientist, underwent an operation for ulcerative colitis that was deemed successful. Still, her doctors recommended a second operation. This one brought on complications. Jeanne was given penicillin, to which she suffered adverse reactions. Other drugs were tried, but to no avail. After his wife died, Chuck agreed to an autopsy. According to Percy, the physicians concluded that she had died not of her original ailment, but of a reaction to the drugs.

For a long time thereafter, Percy lost himself in his work, took the children with him whenever he traveled out of town on business. In 1950, after an 18-month courtship, he married Loraine Diane Guyer, whom he had met on the ski slopes of Sun Valley. Percy has two children by his second marriage, and his family life strongly reflects his penchant for organization. The Percys live in a sprawling lakefront home in Kenilworth, north of Chicago. There is swimming in the family pool, which is enclosed in a special wing of the house. There are hymn singing ("We like to start the morning with a song"), Bible study, prayers, discussion periods, cycling, speed-reading projects, games and storytelling. Chuck's specialty: spinning little fantasies about "Weenie Mouse" and "Meenie Mouse" for his son Mark.

A Setback. Percy's postwar rise at Bell & Howell astonished the Illinois business community. He so impressed Joe McNabb that when the old man died, he left a kind of corporate will designating Percy his successor. As a result, Chuck was elevated to the presidency at 29, and along with that, picked up options on 25,000 shares of stock at $5 less than market value; the stock is now worth $550,000. Against an avalanche of foreign cameras in the U.S. market, Percy diversified the company, put it into electronics and business machines, saw its annual sales volume grow from $13 million to $160 million.

Even as a captain of industry, Chuck Percy's horizons have always been wider and brighter than his company's best lens could encompass. He was always fascinated by politics. In 1955 he took charge of the United Republican Fund of Illinois, developed a pattern of party fund raising on a broad base; in 1957 he became vice chairman of the Republican National Finance Committee. In 1959 he headed Dwight Eisenhower's 42-man committee charged with the responsibility of drawing up a blueprint of party goals. In 1960 he became chairman of the G.O.P. National Convention's Platform Committee--which turned out to be a humiliating experience. Committee conservatives, enraged by what they considered to be Dick Nixon's platform "surrender" to Nelson Rockefeller, rebelled. Percy simply was not seasoned enough to put down the revolt, and toward the end he was relieved of the chairmanship by Wisconsin's Congressman Mel Laird.

Toward the Slum. That setback only whetted Percy's taste for politics. By 1962 he had moved up to chairman of the Bell & Howell executive board, and the prospering company demanded less of his time. "I was approached by a number of people who asked me if I would go into public life," he recalls. "It wasn't quite a draft, but it was something like that. I was really encouraged by a lot of people. On the governorship, if I'd waited for a draft, I'd have waited forever."

A Percy friend, William "Pat" Patterson, chief executive officer of United Air Lines and a Bell & Howell board director, urged him against running for Governor, suggested that he wait until 1966 and run for the U.S. Senate against Paul Douglas. "Springfield is no place for you, Chuck," Patterson said. "It's a slum. It's a place where there's nowhere to go but down."

To Chuck Percy, that was a challenge--and he has never failed to respond to a challenge. Says Percy: "I think I probably decided right then I'd run for Governor. If state government was held in that kind of ill repute by responsible leaders of our society, it was something that badly needed attention and leadership." Thus, in July 1963, Percy announced his candidacy for Governor, chucked his family into a "Chuckwagon" and began campaigning.

Percy's Purge. He had a long way to go. Barry Goldwater was the clear presidential choice of Illinois Republicans, and Barry's backers were suspicious of progressive-minded Chuck Percy. Leading in the campaign was amiable, conservative Secretary of State Charles Carpentier. But last January Carpentier suffered a heart attack; in April he died at age 67. Into the race swept State Treasurer William Scott, 37, a strong Goldwater supporter, who accused Percy of everything, from being in cahoots with Chicago mobsters to being soft on Communism. To blunt the charge that he was anti-Goldwater. Percy, for his part, publicly pledged that at the G.O.P. National Convention he would vote with the majority of the Illinois delegation--for Barry. On primary day last April, Percy swamped Scott.

He immediately set about proving that though he might be a do-gooder, he could play rough-and-tumble politics with the best--and against the worst--of them. The balance of power in Illinois' closely divided state house of representatives has long been held by a handful of Republicans from Chicago's West Side who actually owe their political allegiance to the city's Democratic Mayor Richard Daley. Among other things, the members of the so-called "West Side Bloc," both Republican and Democratic, were notorious for voting against anti-crime legislation.

Gubernatorial Nominee Percy wanted to rid his party of its West Side Blocmen. He saw his chance in an astonishing political situation. Owing to self-defeating political maneuvers, Illinois did not redraw its house districts as required by the state constitution. Thus candidates for all 177 house seats this year must run in a statewide, at-large election. Both Democrats and Republicans have nominated only 118 candidates for those seats, so that neither party will be able to elect more than a two-thirds majority.

Since Illinois' paper ballots will be about the size of a bed sheet, the situation strongly favors straight-ticket voting, and it is conceivable that the winning party will send to Springfield its entire slate of candidates. Percy wanted the Republican slate to be a clean one --which meant, at the very least, purging the West Side Blocmen. And at a state G.O.P. convention in June, he all but read the undesirables out of the party. Rarely have such howls been heard. "You may be dynamic, Mr. Percy," cried one purgee, "but you'd better learn how to aim the dynamite!" Warned another: "You who execute me today will never wash the blood off your hands!" But the purge proceeded successfully.

Fumbles. That freed Percy to turn his fulltime attention and limitless energies to his campaign against Democratic Governor Otto Kerner, 56, a handsome, likable man who was hand-picked by Chicago's Boss Daley. As Governor since 1960, Kerner has a good record on civil rights, can point to advances in the field of mental health, savings in Illinois' huge public-aid expenditures. But he has fumbled badly in efforts to reform Illinois' archaic tax structure, and not even his fellow Democrats would accuse him of being a dynamic leader. Said onetime Chicago Boss Jake Arvey recently in an unguarded moment: "Otto Kerner is an awful nice fellow, but I do wish he had some of Chuck Percy's brains."

Most of all, Kerner is vulnerable to the charge of being a Daley stooge, and that is the theme Percy has played endlessly in the campaign. So far, Percy has traveled more than 200,000 miles through the state, visited every one of the 102 counties at least once, and more than half of them several times. He has appeared at no fewer than 70 local fairs, attended more than 2,000 rallies, dinners and other functions. When Bar ry Goldwater turned up in Illinois last week, Percy was there to introduce him to a local audience, but took his leave as soon as he decently could.

The Federal Balance. The reason is fairly obvious to those who have observed Percy over the years: he and Goldwater are miles apart on many issues. Percy, for example, reflects the tone and content of the 1960 Republican platform, which is more moderate than the Goldwater platform. Though Percy opposes an open-occupancy law in Illinois, his position on civil rights is far more liberal than Goldwater's.

Just before the Senate voted on the 1964 Civil Rights Act last June, Percy announced that "if I were in the Senate.

I would vote for the bill." The 1959 committee on goals for Republicans that Percy chaired for Eisenhower took a view that was in general more moderate than Goldwater's; it endorsed low tariffs, cultural exchange and trade with Communist countries.

In his gubernatorial campaign, though, Percy has been sticking strictly to state and local issues. He has nailed Kerner for shortsightedness in planning state aid to schools (which runs about 20% of school costs v. a national aver age of 40%), for failure to cope with Chicago's notorious crime record, and for overall governmental inefficiency, with special emphasis on Illinois' outmoded tax programs. One recurrent Percy theme concerns the need for stronger state government. "For many years now," he says, "we have been hearing complaints about the erosion of states' rights and states' power, and the accompanying growth of national power. State government is everywhere in bad repute, in Illinois as well as in other states of the Union. The federal balance is in jeopardy because of the inability and the unwillingness of the states to assume their proper duty. I, for one, am ready to suggest that we stop begging for states' rights and begin fulfilling states' responsibility."

Typically, Percy runs a high-geared organization. It is directed by a young (35) Burlington Railroad attorney named Tom Hauser, consists of eight departments, each headed by its own chief. One department provides position papers and speech drafts. Another takes care of organizing "Businessmen for Percy" and "Doctors for Percy." Another handles liaison among state candidates, and still another, public relations. There is even a department called "The Office of Take-Over," which is working out details on jobs and legislative programs against the day that Percy moves into the Statehouse.

A Few Obstacles. Will the Office of Take-Over ever see its plans bear fruit? In what appears to be a generally Democratic year, only an optimist would rate Percy's chances at better than even. Governor Kerner has accused Percy of letting his ambition overrule his conscience in his support of Goldwater. Chicago's 976,000 Negroes are solidly anti-Goldwater and seem certain to vote a straight Democratic ticket despite Percy's progressive stand on civil rights. Another Percy headache arises from Illinois' voter-assistance law, which permits officials to help voters make out their ballots. Says Percy Aide Hauser: "In 1,500 Chicago precincts, you've got to watch like a hawk, since only in a few are there any real Republican judges. Usually the Republican judges are Democrats listed as Republicans." Adds Percy: "Voter assistance is automatically worth between 60,000 and 100,000 votes to the Democrats."

Then, too, some voters are concerned lest Percy's Christian Science attitudes affect his public policies, particularly in the field of health and welfare. Percy's reply: "In matters of personal health, I don't see doctors and I don't take drugs. But on the occasions it's required--for insurance, for school and so forth--the children are seen by a pediatrician. All of us, of course, see a dentist or an eye doctor. If Loraine breaks an ankle or falls from a horse, she has the ankle set by a doctor or has a doctor determine if she has broken a rib. There's nothing that would prevent me from making any decision relating to public health that would not be in the best interests of the public, giving Illinois the best possible medical and mental-health programs."

If, against all the obstacles, Chuck Percy should win in November, he will automatically take his place in the front rank of the national Republican Party. If, at the same time, Barry Goldwater loses, Percy would immediately become the subject of presidential speculation for 1968. That, of course, is a long way off, but the possibility has not escaped some sharp political eyes. In 1962 Chuck testified on reciprocal trade before a House committee in Washington. While he was in town, he stopped off at the White House to chat with President John Kennedy. Kennedy was considerably impressed by Percy. Later, in an informal conversation with Illinois' Republican Senator Everett Dirksen, the President asked, "What does Percy want?"

"You ought to know," replied Ev.

"I don't know," insisted Kennedy.

Said Dirksen: "He wants to sit in that very seat that you're sitting in."

Horatio Alger could do no better by any of his heroes.

* Actually, she only lent it out to her granddaughter after exacting the promise that it would be returned.

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