National Reports:

...In light of Slab Fork's eventual 100 to 36 pro-Kennedy vote and in view of an Alsop remark to a Charleston editor that he disliked Humphrey intensely, it is obvious from whose typewriter the ugliest bit of reporting during the campaign emanated...

...Polling the populace became a favorite pastime for almost every correspondent...

...Although the outcome was a surprise to most people, responsibility for the surprise must rest with the visiting press and the pollsters who emphasized, sensationalized and distorted the religious question out of all reason...

...The McNamara pronouncement and Alsop's gratuitous opinion set the campaign theme for most outside correspondents...

...The Massachusetts Senator bought a landslide not an election, while Humphrey's restricted financial resources forced him, near the end of the campaign, to sign personal notes to stay in the race...

...a mining town in which a few Catholic families reside...

...The New York Herald Tribune unearthed an anonymous doctor's wife in the rural town of Parsons and reported she had been pressured by neighbors to stop passing out Kennedy literature...

...Most papers, including the Tribune, did not...

...A retired Episcopal bishop, asked his opinion, said he saw no reason to doubt Kennedy's promises that he wouldn't be influenced by his church...

...Whereas in other states one in five democratic voters, worried over the prospect of a Catholic President, had told Lubell he would vote for the Republican nominee were Kennedy nominated, in West Virginia only one in nine Democrats, similarly concerned, had said he would desert his party's candidate...

...After his speech it took Humphrey a half-hour to break loose...

...Kennedy is using his West Virginia victory to support his argument that a Catholic can be elected President...

...The conclusion of Charleston Gazette City Editor L. T. Anderson might account for the failure of the Times and the press corps as a whole to forecast the results correctly: "The senseless 'bigotry' business was magnified apparently because Washington correspondents couldn't distinguish between intelligent concern and boorish inflexibility...

...Newsmen proclaimed that the present bishop was "against" Kennedy...

...The New York Times team, headed by W. H. Lawrence, throughout the campaign hinted at a Humphrey win and the day prior to the election picked Humphrey in a squeaker...

...The sole pollster of national reputation to suggest the religious issue might be exaggerated was Samuel Lubell...

...The election returns indicate that in some counties Kennedy was carried on the slates of rival organizations...

...If Kennedy formerly feared his religion might hurt his Presidential chances, let him continue to run scared...

...Kennedy had a professional and a volunteer group work ing in every county and in most of the state's 2.750 precincts...

...Actually, neither bishop publicly stated a preference...

...The questioning revealed many Protestants critical of their Catholic neighbors—"They're the ones bringing up religion"—but it also revealed the same Protestants voting for Kennedy...

...City Editor Anderson conducted a poll of his own in Whitesville...

...also a Catholic, who announced to the world before the campaign got underway that Kennedy could not hope to get fair treatment from the voters...

...The present Episcopal bishop said he felt the questions put to Kennedy were proper ones, that a Catholic candidate may legitimately be asked how far he would go in disputing the traditional position of his church...

...Many polls showed Kennedy winning, but few reporters believed their own samplings...

...Should Kennedy win at Los Angeles...

...West Virginians compared the two candidates and decided they preferred Kennedy...

...however, bigotry was not decisive in Smith's 1928 defeat...

...No mention of violence or of threats appeared in the release, and the reader had to decide for himself whether the unknown wife had quit her political activity in Kennedy's behalf...

...The story was given prominent space on page one under a headline attesting to the bigotry of West Virginians...

...The metropolitan press corps accurately described that part of West Virginia which they could see—the abandoned coal towns, the poverty, the grandeur of the mountains...

...A number of newspapers, including the Tribune, extracted from the West Virginia Hillbilly a headline— "Pa Ain't Going To Sell His Vote To No Catholic"—and reproduced it as an outrageous testimony to religious intolerance...

...West Virginia will give him its eight electoral votes...

...Newsmen declared the retired bishop was "for" Kennedy...

...He admits that it was to settle the Catholic issue that he contested West Virginia—a state, as Hearst feature writer Bob Considine noted, which has barely enough convention votes to break a tie...

...Against Hoover, Smith polled a larger West Virginia vote than Protestant native son John W. Davis received four years before...

...West Virginia did not shift to the Democratic column until 1932...

...It is doubtful if a single pro-Kennedy voter requiring a ride to his polling place in any of the state's 55 counties was without transportation...

...Everywhere he went Kennedy attracted the larger crowds...

...Many persons came to hear Kennedy out of curiosity, but most went away impressed...

...Kennedy's television, radio and newspaper advertising literally smothered his opponent...

...W. E. CHILTON III followed the West Virginia primary as assistant to the publisher of the Charleston Gazette...

...The religious issue was not settled in the Mountain State...

...They failed to recognize that personal distaste for Catholicism doesn't insure a vote against a Catholic...

...In the cities Democrats—and not just co-religionists—who had forgotten they were Democrats toiled for Kennedy...

...The column from Slab Fork, where Alsop interviewed 80 families, produced considerable comment, for in it Alsop charged that the shoeless, the slatterns and the slobs were for Humphrey while most responsible citizens were backing Kennedy...

...In Logan, for example, both candidates spoke on separate occasions in front of the courthouse...

...The state became known as an anti-Catholic citadel after Al Smith lost to Herbert Hoover in the 1923 general election...

...Smith's Catholicism contributed to his defeat, but equally important were his Tammany Hall connections, his espousal of the "wet" cause and the state's basic allegiance to the GOP...

...In such counties the organization is principally interested in electing its local ticket and is usually seeking financial assistance...

...The Washington Post and Times Herald subsequently apologized to its subscribers for using the story...

...Then, columnist Joe Alsop came to the state, traveled with Kennedy's own poll-taker for two days, and wrote three columns on his findings...

...The opening religious salvo in the 1960 West Virginia primary was fired in Washington by Michigan's Democratic Senator Patrick Mc-Namara...

...The victory was achieved by inspired organizational effort at the precinct level, hard work, money and Kennedy's youthful appeal to the electorate...

...Humphrey did not...

...But when they attempted to second guess human motives—something they could not see—they ran into trouble...

...Two examples will suffice to show how quickly the outside press leapt to conclusions...

...NOW THAT THE historic John Kennedy-Hubert Humphrey Presidential primary contest in West Virginia is ended some observations can be made: • The issue of Kennedy's religion was a minor factor in determining the result...

...The real factors in Kennedy's victory were superior organizational effort, money and voter sentiment...

...Kennedy was detained 45 minutes...

...They drove cars in parades, gave coffee parties in their homes to introduce members of the Kennedy family, sold tickets for fund-raising luncheons, enlisted recruits, typed precinct and election official lists, stamped and sealed letters and gave up evening pleasures to circulate literature at rallies—no matter how small or insignificant...

...At the outset Kennedy contracted with factional organizations in machine-controlled counties where money talks...

...In West Virginia, there was a great deal of the former, very little of the latter...

...What reporters forgot to tell their readers was that the headline was satirical and had appeared over an anti-bigotry story...

...Catholics, it is true, comprise a mere five per cent of the total West Virginia population...

...Protestants there had helped with the construction of a Catholic church, a fact they were quick to point out during the interviews...

...Although his boyish good looks have been cited as a handicap to his Presidential aspirations, his charm, dignity, quiet manner and obvious intelligence overcame this objection with the West Virginia electorate...

...In summary," the column said, "this critical West Virginia primary looks like a very ugly business, in which Hubert Humphrey can only win— if he does win—for very ugly reasons...

...In the final days of the campaign he wrote an article declaring he had found considerable evidence to indicate West Virginia was less bigoted than most states...

...Earlier, West Virginians had given him a primary victory over Missouri's James Reed, a Protestant...

...The truth, of course, is that bigotry exists here as in every state...

...What concerns Kennedy supporters in this state, today, is whether the religious issue is as unimportant throughout the rest of the nation as it was on May 10 in West Virginia...

...The cynic will charge that Kennedy money had greater appeal than Kennedy personality, but the truth is both attract supporters in abundance...