THE MOOD OF AMERICA

...On the Congressional level, labor counts every GOP Representative from Iowa as an enemy...

...With the field wide open, Philip Hitchcock, a relatively obscure state senator, emerged as the successor to Patterson...

...DICK BRUNER is a free-lance writer and official of the United Packinghouse Workers, District 3. . . . AL TOFRER is an editor and writer in Iowa who has written for The Nation, Frontier, and other publications...

...Turner's speech was a slashing repudiation of the GOP Administration...

...Oregon is thus no longer a one-party state and the Republicans cannot, as formerly, laugh at their opponents...

...In a state where the Republicans were regarded as the respectables and the Democrats as sacrificial lambs, it was difficult to induce persons of integrity and ability to run on the Democratic ticket This was true even in New Deal days, when Franklin D. Roosevelt always captured the state and an occasional Democrat was elected to Congress...

...McKay was on the defensive throughout the primary campaign...

...Chief preacher of the new gospel of farm-labor unity and the need for political action was 43-year-old, crew-cut Corbin Crawford, operator of a 430-acre farm in Ainsworth, Iowa...

...It was generally believed that McKay, twice governor of Oregon and long in public life, had no desire to run again for elective office...

...Symbolic of this new spirit of cooperation that has spread across Iowa in the last year was the jointly sponsored labor-NFO festival in Ottunwa over the Labor Day weekend...

...McKay's campaign is waged on the smear level...

...The Administration's farm policy was denounced again and again, with labor speakers emphasising the impact of the farm slump on employment in agricultural implement centers in Illinois and Iowa...

...Albert Ullman, well-known for his fight to save Hells Canyon, has a fighting chance in the second district to defeat Congressman Sam Coon, the man who voted against federal aid to education and against nearly every other liberal measure introduced in the last two Congressional sessions...

...Three days after announcing his candidacy, Patterson dropped dead of a heart attack...

...Sundry examples of local political horse-flesh were up for judging in what was called "Candidate's Day...

...Significantly, there is a large group of undecided farm voters—30 per cent, according to a recent survey of the contest involving Hickenlooper...

...President Eisenhower will come into the state to say nice things about the Cabinet minister he eased out of office...

...But all this will probably be of no avail...

...Hickenlooper relied heavily on the small town, non-farm vote...

...Unlike its northern neighbor, Washington, Oregon usually elected Republicans to both the House and the Senate...

...Edith Green was elected to Congress from the third district, hitherto considered a Republican pocket borough...

...Polls taken by Wallace's Farmer, for example, demonstrate that on agricultural issues Iowa farmers are extremely anti-Republican...

...Unhappily, the Republicans have had poor luck with their candidates...

...The big oil companies, the private utilities, big lumber companies, and assorted business interests have opened their purses wide...

...At Corvallis McKay lost his temper when heckled by a State College student, called the young man a "Marxist," and shook him up bodily...

...The eight farmers were directors of the Iowa chapter of the National Farmers Organization...

...Oregonians are constantly dinned with charges that Morse is a carpetbagger (he is a native of Wisconsin but has spent the better part of his life in Oregon), a traitor to the Republican Party and the people of Oregon, a filibusterer, and a slippery character...

...Governor Paul Patterson was selected by the maharajahs of the party, including President Eisenhower, to run against Morse, and decided to make the race against the advice of his family and his doctor...

...Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature were considerably reduced...

...Membership in a dozen Midwestern states zoomed to 170,000 in the months that followed...

...Others wanted organizational advice...

...NFO had decided in earnest to take the plunge into politics...

...At one stroke they succeeded in getting rid of an unpopular Cabinet officer and finding a man who, they thought, could beat Morse...

...As a result of this meeting NFO is choosing a committeeman in each Congressional district in Iowa to work with a labor counterpart drawn from AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education...

...Represented on the labor side were the newly merged Iowa State Federation of Labor and the United Packinghouse Workers of America...

...Crawford toured the state tirelessly repeating his message and fighting in the higher counsels of NFO for a strong pro-labor orientation...

...In the intense two hour session, there was really only one subject: politics...

...Ironically, Morse was able, by voting with the Democrats, to give them the majority needed to control the Senate in 1955...

...Morse, however, is given a good chance to win...

...By early spring farmers, frustrated by federal inaction, were besieging union offices in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and as far east as Kentucky and Detroit...

...There have been meetings between leaders of the NFO and the UAW, but these have been limited mostly to closed-door sessions, with little rank and file participation on the part of either group...

...In fact, they are generally running scared, a stronge contrast to the complacency of former years...

...Leaders of both groups are supporting R. M. Evans, former official of Democratic agricultural departments, who opposes Hickenlooper...

...career civil servants fired and replaced with politicians, and the Bonneville Power Administration emasculated...

...It is impossible to predict just how deep the new farmer-labor alliance goes or how long it will last...

...Sandwiched among horseshoe pitching contests and old-time fiddling competitions were speeches by Harry Truman, a UAW vice president, and Oren Lee Staley, 32-year-old national president of NFO...

...The old man, who has served as NFO's father-confessor since its inception, had played a moderating role, retarding the rapprochement with labor and holding back political action...

...Eyes on Oregon's Senate Race By SAMUEL MARKHAM Portland THE spectacular race between Wayne Morse and Douglas McKay for the U.S...

...Bourke Hickenlooper, chief Republican target of Iowa NFO members...

...Ralph Bradley, president of the group, is convinced that a swing to the Democrats is definitely in the making...

...While nothing is certain in politics, the defeat of McKay, who has made his name synonymous with "giveaway," seems reasonably certain...

...Morse points to his opponent's record as Secretary of the Interior, when the Hells Canyon damsite, formerly earmarked for federal multi-purpose development, was handed to the Idaho Power Company...

...In Missouri, as in Iowa, the NFO has increased its membership greatly...

...McKay can count on the stalwart and die-hard Republicans, whose ranks here include segments of labor and agriculture...

...Since 1954 the Democrats have continued to build strength until now they slightly outnumber the Republicans in registered voters...

...betting odds are 11 to 10 on him...

...The Republicans understandably are more eager to unseat Morse than any other Democrat in the Senate...

...As for the other major contests in Oregon, the Democrats are not so op timistic, except for the re-election of Representative Edith Green, who is pitted against a weak opponent...

...The Democrats will have to come up with the answers to questions about other issues too, not the least of which are the issues of foreign policy...

...NFO is opposed to most of them, but has so far taken an official "hands off" position in regard to three—Karl Le-Compte, Ben Jensen, and H. R. Gross...

...The strongest links in the chain of farmer-labor unity have been forged in Iowa, and it is here that any overall political test of its potency will be made...

...Crawford's final victory within NFO took place as the Democratic Party was assembling for its convention in Chicago...

...Some sought outright affiliation with the AFL-CIO...

...In Michigan, dairy farmers, working closely with the state CIO organization, struck and won higher milk prices from the processors...

...Eisenhower carried the state by a whopping majority in 1952...

...This time, as the nation knows, he is running as a Democrat...

...As the campaign rolls along Morse is sure to bring his big guns into action...

...The chief weakness of the Democratic Party used to be its inability to find good candidates...

...In September, 1955, angry hog-raisers in southwest Iowa formed the NFO and sent a protest delegation to meet with President Eisenhower and Ezra Benson...

...For this the Republicans never forgave him...

...THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on a Farmer-Labor Coalition in the Midwest—and the Race in Oregon Farm-Labor Pact Faces Election Test By DICK BRUNER & AL TOFFLER Des Moines ELEVEN MEN—eight farmers and three labor officials—met recently in Des Moines to talk about the mutual interests of their respective groups...

...The result of this episode is that McKay now faces a libel suit...

...There the new wave of pro-labor sentiment was expressed in an unpublicized poll of key people in that organization...

...Little hope is held out for the displacement of major Republican officeholders in that state this fall...

...An innocuous governor and pliant tool of the big business interests, McKay had a large following in Oregon until he moved to Washington...

...Morse faces almost solid opposition from the press...

...That is, Morse is constantly raising the issues, while McKay dodges them...

...Senate after switching parties...

...In the primary McKay ran only a little ahead of Hitchcock in a field of three and failed to get a majority of the votes cast...

...His oratorical ability, gift of pungent phrase-making, and incisive wit are in contrast to McKay's dull platform manner and inability to read well the speeches written for him...

...But Sherman Adams and Leonard Hall were too persuasive...

...One of the most courageous men in the Senate, Morse bolted the Republican Party in 1952 when he saw Eisenhower taken captive by the Taft wing, and campaigned for Stevenson...

...it tingled happily in the ears of Democratic bigwigs...

...He and Hitchcock vied with each other in belittling Morse, but Hitchcock showed an even temper, McKay a surprising irritability...

...The McKay-Morse battle is not only a grudge fight but a clear-cut campaign on the issues...

...But the national leadership had no faith in Hitchcock and at the last minute persuaded Douglas McKay, Secretary of the Interior, to resign his post and enter the race...

...Republican leaders publicly discount the influence of NFO on the farm vote in Iowa and elsewhere...

...To a large extent the Democrats have overcome this handicap, and the slate put forward this year for state and national offices is probably the best in the party's history...

...McKay tries to make capital out of the fact that Morse during his Senatorial career has introduced many bills of which only a small number were passed...

...Parallel endorsements have been made in some districts, and a concerted drive is planned to get out the vote election day...

...Heading that slate is Wayne Morse, twice elected Senator on the Republican ticket by resounding majorities...

...SAMUEL MARKHAM is the pseudonym of a teacher and writer in the Pacific Northwest...

...His woeful record as custodian of the federal government's natural resources has substantially diminished his popularity...

...The Republicans count heavily on the blitz technique...

...NFO has made inroads in Nebraska, but its ties with labor have been soft-pedaled there...

...In 1954 the Democratic Party scored stunning victories...

...Green, Monroe Sweetland, C. Girard Davidson (formerly Undersecretary of the Interior) and others, and to the elimination of faint-hearted Democratic politicians who preferred to make deals with the Republicans rather than win campaigns...

...McKay headquarters bristles with manpower—directors, executive directors, and publicity directors— while Morse's headquarters, for lack of money, are understaffed...

...In Illinois, a strong Farm Bureau state, the leading farm force for liberal activity is the Illinois Farmers Union...

...Republicans hope that the soil bank program—which pumped money into rural areas at a politically strategic moment—has cooled some of the revolutionary fires which warmed sale barns last fall...

...They point to the fact that Dayton Countryman, who opposed Hickenlooper in the primary with some unofficial NFO support, was defeated almost two to one...

...And yet, when the magazine polls its readers about their choice of candidates, the Democrats usually come out on the short end...

...In 1954 only three dailies supported Neuberger— the Coos Bay Times, Pendleton East Oregonian and Medford Mail-Tribune—and Morse will probably get their backing...

...Republicans monopolized the governor's chair and had overwhelming majorities in both houses of the legislature...

...the federal power development program in the Pacific Northwest stopped...

...oil leases were lavishly granted on the federal wildlife refuges...

...The CIO-AFL, Farmers Union, Grange, vocal public power groups, and similar groups solidly support Morse...

...His campaign was marked by defection of some leading Republicans to Hitchcock, including former Governor Sprague, publisher of the influential Salem newspaper, the Oregon Statesman...

...Other Republican bigwigs will be imported from out of state...

...These accomplishments were the result of vigorous new leadership exemplified by Neuberger, Mrs...

...Turner joined in the attack on Sen...

...But there has been activity in other states too...

...However, there are indications aplenty that farmers are cynical about the kind of help they can expect from a GOP Administration...

...These findings seem to indicate that the farmer's vote won't be decided on the basis of hog prices alone...

...At an NFO convention in Des Moines, Crawford introduced aging Dan Turner, former governor of Iowa and a lifelong Republican stalwart...

...This was the climax to a long chain of dramatic developments which began when hog prices plummeted to new lows last fall...

...Senate is focusing national attention on Oregon's current political campaign...

...Joint NFO-labor mass meetings, called on local initiative, were held in Sioux City, Fort Dodge, Mason City, Waterloo, and dozens of townships...

...Richard L. Neuberger—so well known to readers of The Progressive—defeated Senator Guy Cordon and thus became Oregon's first Democratic Senator in forty years...

...Until recently Oregon was a one-party state—Republican...

...Few men have ever been re-elected to the U.S...

...But a private survey made by the organization after this primary fight revealed that in purely rural precincts, where there were no consolidated townships, Countrymen led Hickenlooper...

...News of the strike became feed store gossip throughout the corn belt...

...Joint farmer-labor meetings are being held in union halls, courthouses, and sale barns...

...Radio, TV, billboards, mass mailings, and mass newspaper advertisements, they hope, will put their man across...

...Splinter farm groups sprouted like insurance claims after a hail storm...

...In Robert Holmes the Democrats have a personable, articulate, and liberal candidate for governor running against an arch-conservative, the incumbent Elmo Smith, but this office seems to be a perennial Republican plum...

...Hickenlooper is also a major target of organized labor in the state...

...For this effort they are willing, it is said, to spend a million dollars...