FROM 'SINGING COWBOY' TO U. S. SENATOR
Neuberger, Capt. Richard L.
A Personality Sketch Of Sen. Glen Taylor, Idaho Democrat From 'Singing Cowboy' To U.S. Senator By Copt. RICHARD L. NEUBERCF.R WHEN Glen H. Taylor, junior Senator from the State of Idaho, arrived...
...The final election was between Taylor and Gov...
...Watch Taylor," is a common comment...
...As a preminent political figure, he could have had an executive job but worked at a bench for 2 years as a sheet-metal mechanic...
...Betting was on Bottolfson, but Taylor talked about Roosevelt...
...It was our failure to face the truth that brought economic collapse before...
...Everyone should have equal opportunity and equal rights...
...The long-established practice of passing on estates to the eldest son was a cherished institution and when it became evident that its opponents were to win the battle, a compromise was offered suggesting that at least the eldest son should be allowed a double portion...
...Just what sort of fellow is Glen IT...
...Unless we face these economic problems in a realistic manner, everything that may be done by the diplomats at San Francisco will be of little avail and the peoples of the world will continue their violent quest in search of economic security...
...C. A. Bottolfson, a conservative Republican...
...the majority leader, informed a newspaper reporter that Taylor was sure to make his mark in the Senate...
...He fought for the confirmation of Henry Wallace and Aubrey Williams...
...Now he is gone...
...Glen Taylor has proved one of the outstanding liberals to arrive in Washington in recent years...
...She played the piano, he played the banjo, and they broadcast cowboy and ranch tunes over the radio...
...He first became interested in politics a few years ago, when he decided he could do as well as many of the men in public life...
...Taylor ran for the Senate again in 1942, losing by only 4,000 votes...
...Taylor's Political Philosophy Many newspapermen on Capitol Hill have been told that Taylor may eventually be considered one of- the foremost progressives in Congress...
...He opposed passage of the manpower bill...
...A Republican state for years, this mountain commonwealth voted four times consecutively for F.D.R...
...We must give more attention to the individual...
...Several of Glen's brothers now manage a chain of theaters extending from the Idaho uplands to the eastern edge of Montana...
...He went back to Idaho for the 1944 campaign and edged out Sen...
...I saw people hungry and ill-clothed and out of work, when I realized that our factories could still produce if the people just had enough money to buy the products...
...I started reading economics and political science and decided I could do better than the law-makers and leaders who had let things get into such a terrible mess...
...This doesn't add up to the presession picture of a wild-eyed singing cowpuncher with chaps, lariat, and 10-gallbn hat...
...Pleasant John preached in camps and outposts all over Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, and Utah...
...RICHARD L. NEUBERCF.R WHEN Glen H. Taylor, junior Senator from the State of Idaho, arrived in the national capital, he and his wife and their two children, like a lot of other new arrivals, couldn't find a place to live...
...His Senate term runs until 1950 at least...
...John Chamberlain, covering the Senate for Life, was told that "Morse of Oregon and Taylor of Idaho" were two newcomers to watch closely...
...This progressive outlook on world affairs stems from a unique background in the Far West...
...In addition, the Senators gave a careful hearing to his description of his own work in a war plant when he rose to oppose the manpower conscription hill...
...His conqueror was John Thomas, 71-year-old present senior Senator from Idaho...
...His liberalism is practical rather than theoretical...
...They called it the Glendora Players, combining both their first names...
...We have been so engulfed with our rapidly expanding industrial system that sometimes we have lost sight of the individual...
...Just another singing cowboy," everyone said...
...Alben Barkley...
...Idaho went for F.D.R.—and Glen Taylor...
...Bottolfson talked about Dewey...
...Just one room or two, any old thing will do, Oh, we can't find a place to stay.'' This confirmed most advance opinions of Idaho's new Senator...
...Oh Susanna!, Home on the Range, and Wagon Wheels during his campaign...
...Two of the most effective speeches for the confirmation of Henry Wallace and Aubrey Williams were delivered by Taylor...
...People knew that Taylor had sung Clementine...
...They have been sadly fooled...
...Show Business And Depression "I think we must keep this thought in mind in our postwar world...
...They suffered with the rest of the nation, traveling from town to town, often broke and hungry...
...And Sen...
...One of his greatest enthusiasms was the late President of the United States...
...The frontiersmen would not pay for their religion, however, so the Taylor family put on concerts to finance the trips...
...He is young and aggressive...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the trend of politics in Idaho...
...As a boy Glen acted in his father's shows...
...After Glen was married he and his wife started their own company...
...Frankly, the one solution I see is to bolster wage standards and guarantee the people sufficient purchasing power to buy everything that can be produced in the way of services and goods...
...And at a Young Democratic Convention in New York recently, Taylor delivered a fighting address that was a highlight of the occasion...
...He said that there had been 2 notable Presidents in history who paid particular attention to the Far West—Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...He rode a horse in the campaign, and his wife and their 7-year-old son helped entertain the voters with music...
...I usually was killed in the third act," he recalls, "but we were short of actors, so I came back as the sheriff in the fourth act to arrest the man who had killed me...
...The want and misery T saw during those years," the Senator now recollects, "made me do some serious thinking...
...With a yard where the children can play...
...Taylor ran for Senator as a Roosevelt Democrat...
...His father, Pleasant John Taylor, a nomadic preacher, was holding a prayer meeting there...
...Taylor is liberal and progressive...
...It led us directly into World War II...
...The nation will probably hear more of the young man who a year ago was hammering out sheet metal strips in a machine shop...
...The whole family was musical...
...He remembers when they could not pay the grocery bill...
...The Senator sat on the steps of the majestic Capitol Building and strummed a ditty on his banjo: "O, give me a home near the Capitol dome...
...His memory bears the scars of the depression, when he and his wife played to meager audiences and had to count their pennies...
...His most cherished message of congratulations was a letter from the war plant where he had been an employe, signed by all his fellow workers...
...Thus far in the Senate Taylor has been definitely on the liberal side of most issues...
...Taylor's philosophy is best epitomized by a statement which he recently made to Young Democrats meeting in New York City: "Jefferson was an advocate of private enterprise, but he also believed in public intervention, if necessary, to secure protection from dangerous concentrations of economic power...
...They braced themselves for buffoonery and court-jesting...
...Another brother, Ferris Taylor, is in the movies...
...It was that collapse which prepared the soil for Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco...
...He is a slight, wiry fellow with many enthusiasms...
...Glen Taylor, a 41-year-old singing cowboy and war-plant worker, inherits the New Deal mantle in the state...
...In 1938 he ran for Congress, using a hillbilly band in the campaign, and finished fourth in a field of 9. In 1940 Glen was nominated for the U. S. Senate on the Democratic ticket, but was defeated in the general election by 14,000 votes...
...Jefferson responded that he would favor that only when the eldest son could eat twice as much as each of his brothers...
...Taylor, 41-year-old junior Senator from Idaho, who was elected last Autumn in one of the big upsets of the 1944 campaign...
...Idaho's senior Senator is past 70...
...Taylor moved to California to work in a war plant...
...This propensity still continues...
...They had made a good beginning when the depression came along...
...In 1937 Glen and Dora Taylor moved to the Idaho town of Pocatello...
...D. Worth Clark by a slender margin in the Democratic primaries...
...Glen Taylor was born in Portland, Oreg., in April of 1904...
...It was that collapse which left people hungry while resources and machines stood idle...
...He is sure to be a political figure for many years to come...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 19
