Evening star., 1940-06-09
Willkie Rides Political Tide
Business Champion Has Chance for Republican Nomination
By Charles G Ros..

chances of Wendell Lewis Willkie head
OF the Commonwealth and Southern
Corp, one of the country's biggest public
utility holding companies to become the
Republican nominee for President of the
United States. The talk was all of Taft,
Dewey, Vandenberg and the prospect
that If they killed one another off in the
balloting. dark horse bearing suspi-
clous likeness to House Minority Leader
Joe Martin would gain the nomination.
Willkie? capable and interesting
citizen, said the politicians, but about as
likely to be put up for the Presidency as,
for instance, Joe Pew or Tom Girdler.
WILKES headship of a great utilities
corporation they said, was q fatal
handicap. Willkie felt pretty much the
same way about the matter himself.
Today Wendell Willkie is a factor to
be reckoned with in the convention. He
may not make the grade, but the change
of his color from black to gray repre-
sents the most remarkable in the whole
stretch of American politics.
Exploits His Chances.
Wlllkie himself is convinced that he
has chance and he is putting on steam
accordingly. What was once casual
adventure, arising out of bits of talk
here and there that Willkie would be a
good President, has become business to
be prosecuted in dead earnest. He has
chance and he's exploiting it with all
the skill and energy that took him up
from small-town law practice in his
home State of Indiana to the $75.OOO-
a-year presidency of the Commonwealth
and Southern.
Inc Wlllkle boom, as he says, has lust
groWed.' For several years his name
had been often in the headlines be-
cause of his battles with the T. V. A.
He had come to be recognized as the
most articulate businessman opponent of
the New Deal philosophy. Where others
had pulled their punches-some of
them out of fear of reprisals, others out
OF hope of reward-the No. man of
commonwealth & Southern had lashed
out with a mental vigor commensurate
with his feet l inch of height and his
220-pound bulk. He had deliberately
gressional committees in order to get
sounding board for his ideas. He thinks
he has run up a record for number of
appearances before such committees.
AS his name became familiar to the
public, he began to be invited to write
Tor magazines. A succession of articles
appeared-ln Fortune, Life, the Satur-
day Evening Post, the New Republic.
Letters poured in from people who
thought that perhaps here was the
man to 60 to the mat with the New Deal.
Willkie was pleased and he was frank
to say so. 1t delighted him to think
that the boy who had gone up to New
York, via Akron, Ohio, to be first the
co-counsel and later the president of
Commonwealth & Southern. had reached
a point where good number of his
fellow citizens were thinking about him
for the presidency of the United States.
No Central Organization.
Presently, Willkie- for President Clubs
were springing up over the country
These were composed almost wholly of
amateurs in politics. There was no
central organization, and there is none
today. One of the earliest of these
groups was formed in New York by a
young lawyer, Oren Root, the grand
nephew of the late famous Elihu Root.
When Willkie heard that Root. a good
frlend OF his, was collecting money. he
sent for the young man. Root came to
his Office looking a little sheepish. II
guess he said to Willkie, you are going
to give me hell" Il am" replied Willkie
ii you have been out soliciting money
I don't want any money Root assured
him that the total collected was about
sl700 for Willkie buttons and the print
ing and circulating of Willkie- for -Presi-
dent petitions. He said that all the
contributions had been volunteered.
AL right said Willkie. GO ahead,
60 on about your business, but don't
solicit money and don't take anything
over 5000" That was two or three
weeks ago Willkie thinks that by this
time the Root organization has spent
maybe $4,000.
Willkie himself has spent. he saws
around $4,000, for the travelling expenses
OF himself and his secretary and he CAL
culates that the whole cost of his pre-
convention campaign, including the ex-
penditures of all the Willkie Clubs that
he knows anything about, won't run
over 900,
The campaign, if you can call it that,
has proceeded along the simple lines
suggested by this amount.
A couple of months ago it took on
the really serious aspect that it wears
today. Around that time there began
to be felt, Willkie thinks, the cumulative
effect of widespread public dissatis-
faction with the wares that the leading
Republican candidates had to offer.
h