THE MOOD OF AMERICA

...His Republican opponent, said the mayor, had "thrown both arms around Dick N ixon...

...Stengel's chances were noticeably brightened by the big financial scandal which rocked the Republican state administration this summer...

...Dirksen's hopes rest largely on the strength of Eisenhower's coattails and the compelling power of the peace appeal...

...For the first time in many years, the AFL in New York State has endorsed a Senatorial candidate—Wagner—and naturally the mayor is making all the hay possible while this sun shines...

...Upstate, Javits did portray himself as an ordinary, almost too ordinary, Republican...

...Mayor Wagner started slowly...

...Finally, Javits is walking in the shadow of an uncompleted investigation...

...And Stengel has found it difficult to come to grips with the underlying issue—peace...

...SINCE January, Richard Stengel has been stumping every corner of Illinois, from the Wisconsin border to the Kentucky line, flailing the right-wing voting record of his opponent, Republican Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen...

...It has been the nation's longest, most arduous political campaign...

...Attorney General Javits got an early campaign start...

...Javits himself is considered the best GOP vote-getter in the state, with the possible exception of the semi-retired Tom Dewey...

...But how," he asks, "can you get the blood off it...

...His theme is geared to one pitch: the Democrats bring "prosperity with blood...

...Wagner uses this with variations all the time...

...In this field, says Javits, the Mayor is just "an amiable apprentice seeking on-the-job training," and even Adlai Stevenson is an "untried quantity...

...The farm depression has shriveled the markets for Illinois' important agricultural implement industry, adding to urban resentment against the party in power...

...Illinois: The Battle Against Dirksen by SANFORD GOTTLIEB Springfield, III...

...Foreign policy always seems to be more important to New Yorkers than to residents in other sections of the country...

...While he underscored the GOP Senator's sins of omission and exaggeration, he did not overcome the feeling which still persists among many Mid-westerners that Democratic Administrations bring war...

...Javits replies that Eisenhower was a "poor boy from Kansas," and that he himself emerged from a ghetto on New York's lower East Side...

...Other soft spots in the state's economy, such as the depressed coal and fluorspar mining areas of Southern Illinois, are causing the Republicans some trouble in specific areas...

...Even in New York City, Javits kept himself in line with his party by arguing that he was a forerunner, during his years as a Congressman, of the "modern Republicanism" of Eisenhower...

...Listening to a Dirksen campaign speech, you would judge that the Democrats launched World Wars I and II and the Korean conflict as soon as they took over occupancy of the White House...

...Dirksen, incidentally, was officially endorsed by Eisenhower in Peoria, on the occasion of the President's major farm policy speech...

...THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on the Course of the Campaign in the States of New York and Illinois Eerie Campaign In New York by OLIVER PILAT New York City THE SENATORIAL contest be-tween State Attorney General Javits, an ex-maverick in politics, and Mayor Wagner, an orthodox New Dealer, has become a horse race...

...He denounced Dirksen for voting against appropriations for a pre-World War II air force, the defense of Guam, and the draft...

...He would sew up the normal GOP vote (i.e., the Eisenhower vote) in that area, then make inroads on the normal Democratic margin in New York City by attacking Wagner's administration at every point...

...Much of the Senatorial campaign here has therefore centered on what is called the "issue of peace...

...Javits has been making intricate appeals to these groups, based on his Congressional record, and on his own considerable social understanding, but it is doubtful if he has made much progress so far...

...He is still doing 80 per cent of the campaigning...

...In 1954, Javits trounced the magnetic and charming Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., by an 173,000 plurality, while the rest of the GOP state ticket went down to defeat...

...He testified voluntarily before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee some weeks ago that charges of Communist contracts toward the start of his political career a decade ago were meaningless and unjustified...

...Stengel made no bold new peace proposals in his major public reply to Dirksen...

...The unexpected closeness of the contest, as well as an eerie quality of the campaigning, are already attracting attention beyond the state's boundaries...

...Wagner has avoided the issue, but it remains in the background of the campaign, despite Javits' demonstrated anti-Communist record in Congress...

...He suggests that Javits did fine when he followed the Democratic foreign policy in the Truman Administration, but came a cropper after Eisenhower reached the White House...

...Starting out in late summer, the honey-voiced, silver-thatched Dirksen has campaigned on an altogether different frequency...

...But in 1940, he asserts, employing AFL figures (his solitary nod in the direction of labor), there were 10 million unemployed, as well as 16 million on relief...

...After all, President Eisenhower carried New York by 848,000 votes in 1952...

...However, he is stepping up the tempo of his attacks on Javits, whom he blames for all the apparent misdeeds or miscalculations of the Administration nationally in power...

...The AFL did, in fact, say there were 9,400,000 jobless in 1940...

...The jobless in some cities include workers with more than 20 years of seniority...

...What possible connection therefore could the President or himself have with the "business barons," Javits demands, not too convincingly...

...He would travel extensively upstate, where some Republicans still think of him as a sort of camouflaged Democrat...

...Stengel, a sober, 42-year-old state representative who gained an excellent reputation in Springfield, has been hammering away at Dirksen's consistent support of the "special interests," citing issue upon issue, vote upon vote...

...And he warns the parents among his listeners in his intimate, counseling way: "It could be your boy's turn to go rolling down some foreign hill, to come home in a box...

...Coupled with the raw emotional appeal of this charge is complete silence on his voting record...

...Although the Illinois farmers have not manifested discontent to the same degree as their Iowa neighbors, their response to declining farm prices cannot help but have an important bearing on the election...

...He moves upstate and down, indoors and out, to everything from large formal meetings to street corner rallies and from press releases to TV appearances...

...He has spent a good part of his campaign down-state in order to become personally known to the voters...

...He backed away from his established status as an independent...

...This hurt, because it was true, and because Nixon was and is distrusted by laborites and independents, particularly among the Jewish votes, heretofore the core of Javits' electoral strength...

...In Stengel's native Quad City area, which boasts the title of "farm equipment capital of the world," employment in the agricultural implement plants has dropped from 22,000 five years ago to about 10,000 today...

...He would like to go them one better, but believes that military preparedness and foreign aid, tailor-made to individual countries, are the essential components of our foreign policy...

...Dirksen paints a glowing tableau of almost 67 million peacetime jobs, with purchasing power at an all-time high...

...Wagner retorts that Javits certainly does not suffer from excess modesty in explaining how he devised and implemented, all by himself, a foreign policy for the United States...

...In order to win, the hitherto little-known Stengel must keep the GOP's downstate (non-Cook County) majority to a minimum...

...It was war—"the most horrible visitation that can come to any country"—that brought prosperity, with millions in the armed forces while the factories were producing for the military, Dirksen has been telling his audiences...

...Stengel has attempted to answer this type of campaign by pointing out that it was the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor and the Communists who attacked in Korea, not the Democrats...

...It forces the Republican candidate to keep one eye over his shoulder on Washington while he campaigns in New York, and a two-front political campaign, like a two-front war, is both uncomfortable and dangerous...

...It is doubtful, however, whether Stengel's case has penetrated to those influenced by Dirksen's arguments...

...His strategy was quite clear...

...Basically, Stengel shares with other Democrats a campaign malaise about the peace issue...

...The Democratic argument that goes over best in New York City, and perhaps nationally, is that the Democrats fight for the little man...

...Javits laid himself open to this kind of attack...

...He berates Dirksen for voting in favor of the natural gas bill and tax relief for the wealthy, and against increased old age benefits and rural electrification...

...He realizes that the Republicans are capitalizing on the ending of the Korean War...

...Former State Auditor Orville Hodge was sentenced in August to from 12 to 15 years for embezzlement of state funds, generally estimated at more than $1 million...

...Furthermore, various racial and religious groups which felt the Eisenhower pull in 1952 are drifting back locally into the Democratic fold...

...He still does very little daytime campaigning, on the ground that he has to keep up his City Hall work...

...Members of his entourage, counting on his appeal to the independent vote in the suburbs, claim he will not only win, but also outpoll Stevenson in Illinois...

...Traditionally Republican, many will be torn between a pocketbook vote for the Democrats on economic issues or an emotional pro-peace vote for Ike and his "team...

...He made the customary GOP peace - prosperity - and - progress pitch, with special emphasis on the help given to business by the Eisenhower Administration...

...But the political advantage of what has become known as the "Hodge-Podge" were somewhat mitigated when another scandal, smaller in scope, broke in the Cook County treasurer's office, forcing the Democratic gubernatorial candidate to step aside for an unsullied replacement...

...Members of Senator Paul Douglas' staff have formed the nucleus of the effort...

...He did not elaborate on Stevenson's suggestion for an end to H-bomb tests and the draft, nor did he try to deny that the New Deal, while it brought long overdue social legislation and an upsurge of unionism, did not solve the fundamental ills of the American economy...

...Domestic issues, however, have dominated Stengel's campaign...

...From time to time, as he must, Javits praised the junior member of the GOP national ticket, and it was at this vulnerable point that Wagner did his first heavy punching...

...Wagner has the support of such groups as the Liberal Party and Americans for Democratic Action...

...What was good for business, he said repeatedly, with a presumed bow in the direction of Secretary Wilson, was "good for everybody...