Glacier County chief., 1939-10-27

Il started out to be a news
paper man." said the district
attorney of New York county,
as we chatted across his big,
uncluttered desk, over a couple
OF bottles of coca-cola. "My fa-
ther was editor and publisher
of the weekly paper in Owosso,
Mich, where I was born and
where my mother still lives;
and I learned to stick type as a
schoolboy."
Thomas E. Dewey, the young
man whom more Republican
voters prefer as their presiden-
tial candidate for 1910 than any
other in the field, according to
all the important polls, took
another sip of coca-cola and
smiled reminiscently, as if re-
calling his first encounter with
a type-louse. While he talked
about his youthful days in the
print-shop I was trying to size
him up, to discover the secret
of his rapid rise from small
town obscurity to national
fame.
I wanted to find convincing an
swer to the question many people
are asking: "Will Dewey do?"
Is this young man, born on March
"a, 1902, old enough to head a ma
tion of 135,000,0O0 people? He will
be nearly 40 when the next Presi-
dent is inaugurated, in 1941. That's
two years younger than Teddy
Roosevelt was when he became
Chief Executive. It's three years
younger than George Washington
was when he took command of the
Continental army. But, on the 9TH
er hand, Tom Dewey at 81 is 16
years older than William Pitt the
Younger was when he became
Prime Minister of England. Mr..
Dewey could echo with good grace
Pitts famous retort to jeering op-
ponent: 1.-THE heinous crime of be-
ing young man shall attempt nei-
ther to palliate nor to deny"
Dewey's Background.
What counts is not how many
years a man has lived, but what he
has done with the years. That and
what he started with. Which brings
US back to Owosso and Tom Dewey's
background.
He was almost literally born Re-
publican. There is more truth than
poetry in the famous lines from the
operetta "Iolanthe.
Every little boy or gal
Who's born into this world alive
Is either little Liberal
Or little Conservative.
Tom Dewey's grandfather was one
of the groups of reformers who met
in grove at Jackson, Mich, and
laid the cornerstone of the Repub-
lican party. He was kin to Admiral
George Dewey, of the same New
England stock. He founded the
Owosso Times and passed it on to
his son, George Martin Dewey Jr.,
who in turn passed on the gospel of
Republicanism to his son. Tom
Dewey got to know the party lead
ers of his youth, intimates of his
father who was postmaster of Owos-
so and the local Republican leader.
He speaks fondly of such party nota-
bles as Gov. Chase S. Osborn and
Sen. Joseph W. Fordney, frequent
visitors at the paternal home, and
reveals in conversation his admira-
ton for Teddy Roosevelt and Charles
Evans Hughes, crusading Republi-
can reformers of his boyhood. And
he recalls vividly his fathers vehe-
ment denunciation of Tammany Hall
as the most corrupt political ma
chine in the nations history.
The 12-year-old boy didn't know it,
but he was headed for a political
career that was to lead him to New
1OEh dllu " DaII1S " q lllSll
against Tammany.
Owosso folk who "knew him
when" remember him as an active,
imaginative boy, fond of the out-of-
doors, who peddled the Saturday
Evening Post, worked on occasion
for neighboring farmers and built
up the physique which makes him
the untiring worker he is today. He
was close enough to the soil to learn
something of farmers problems,
and to acquire love for the land.
His pride today is in his farm in
Duchess county, New York, 20-odd
miles from F. D. RS home. He
wants his two little boys to grow up
with something of the same free
dom of the fields and streams that
he enjoyed. He has to maintain
a residence, a modest apartment, on