The Wrangell sentinel., 1940-04-19
BY SIGRD ARNE
AP -EeatlIe SerEloe WIIteI

feet of Styles Bridges of New Hamp-I shire toward the Senate, and now onI a path that might lead to the WhiteI House.
 Bridges had to earn his way through the University of Maine. His people were farm folk WhoI lived on the land their family took up 12 generations back when theI colonial soldiers returned from the Revolution.
 That farm produced an old-fash- toned living. But nothing fancy like college educations. The boy Styles had practically run the family farm from the time he was and his ia ther. died. So he signed up to work in the uniyersity's dairy barns att 15 cents an hour. That meant get ting up at 4:3O am. in those Maine winter mornings, bundling into warm clothes, and rushing through the bitter cold air into the steamy barns. The cows helped. The young Bridges warmed his frost-bitten nose and ears against the cows warm sides as he milked.
 He Held Four Jobs
 In classes he studied the latest ideas about agriculture. Then he rushed through a series of jobs that had to do with farming.
 He became county agent for Han cock county, Maine. Then the spark-plug behind a New Hamp- shire farm bureau. Then he ran an organization for farmers. He became a member of New Hampshires pub mutual auto liability insurance or lie service commission. In 1894 he became governor at 36.
 Two years later, at 38, he was elected to the Senate, just when all but two states in the Union, his own included, slid into the Roos- eyelt '36 landslide.
 In the Senate he's kept up con- stant sniping at the New Deal. Jumped into the headlines by de- manding, and getting, an inyesti- gation of IVA. Worked up that storm by himself with the aid of his office staff.
 That wrote him into the reaction ary columns here In the minds of some Republicans it also put him in the bumptious column. Young Sen- ators are supposed to do the work and let their elders take the credit. But not Bridges.
 They tell story about that. He was his high school class's vale dictorian. Wrote a speech for the big night. And passed it around. It got hot criticisms. So the elders in the family combined to write him another. The night of graduation they sat and listened to him give the first speech.
 Called A Radical
 There's a New England-ish thing to remember about that IVA invest igation. IVA is a government at tempt to cut electric rates. So in the minds of New Deal zealots any one who attacks it is in the hands of the utilities. Bridges attacked it.
 
 had just the other sort of billing. He'd cut utility rates when he was governor He was even declared too radical when he was appointed to the states public service commits sion.
 He's proud of the fact that he broke a Little Steel" strike in Ohio by looking into the strikers attempts to keep mail out of the plants. On the other hand, he says, 'I don't know why a worker doesn't join union when he's too far re- moved from the big boss to talk to him."
 He's been one of the critics of the NLRB. Just to get good ann intuition for his arguments he piled a friend of his into his car one day and drove to Ohio to listen in, un- announced, to an NLRB hearing.
 He's proud of his pay -as-you-go record as a New Hampshire govern or. Immediately set about balancing the state budget. Cut expenditures. Then slapped on two new taxes: One on beer, and one on collateral heirs. That is, your nephew would have to pay state tax on what you left him, but your son wouldn't.
 Bridges never brought his family down here because he has three young sons in school The family stayed in their little white wooden home outside Concord. Mrs. Bridges died in '38, and that was terrific blow to Bridges.
 There's a little story about it. He learned by telephone that she was dying. He couldn't get there fast enough. So, Republican that he is, he called Democrat Harry Woodring, secretary of war, for plane. Wood ring, family man himself, scurried