Oral History Interview
R. Mayne Albright

December 3, 1976

Well, as they say, in the beginning I was born on North Boylen Avenue, in what
I suppose by now can be called "'Old Raleigh.” The lot that my parents bought when
they came from Greensboro was behind "Elmwood," which is one of the historic houses
now in Raleigh where Captain Ashe, the former historian of the state and former clerk
of the U. S. District Court here, lived with his very large family. Our house was
built by my parents in 1907 on a spot that had been his garden. North Boylen was
one of the new developments then as Raleigh expanded from Blount Street to Hillsbor-
ough Street to South Boylen and Boylen Heights and North Boylen Avenue and later to
Cameron Park, and then Hayes Barden.

Wiley's School was near by. As I've explained to my daughter quite some years
ago. . . this was the old Wiley, she thought the Wiley that she was attending was too
old and hoped to go to a new school. I went to the very old Wiley on the corner of
West and Morgan Streets. It was a three-story, wooden building without benefit of
any of the safety precautions that are now necessary in schools. It was a quite ram-
shackled, old building, but with some great teachers - Mrs. Shaywood and Mrs. Bates
among them for whom a later school was named. Public schools in Raleigh at that time
were not the best in the nation or as good as they were perhaps to become later, al-
though they did have those good qualities. So, many people of my age and my sister
who is three years older went to private schools. She went to Peace Institute which
has an elementary and junior college program.

I was fortunate to go to a new school that was opened here in Raleigh that was
known as St. Nicholas School which was out near State College. It was run by an E-
piscopal minister, Dr. Nicholas Collins Hughes, whose son Harding Hughes came to
join him in the teaching and later came back to Raleigh as chaplain of St. Mary's.

 
ED ie

He was instrumental in the religious and civic life of Raleigh for many, many years.
Old Dr. Hughes was a classic. He believed in Latin and Greek and very strict dis-
cipline and even, which I'm sure would be frowned upon in educational circles in
these days, listed all of his students from one to two-hundred-and-fifty in academic
rating for each quarter. This was very flattering to the top ten and those who were
near the top, and a little discouraging to those that were not. But, he was very
thorough. I will always believe that Latin, however impractical it is in other ways,
is an excellent background for those who expect to talk and write and understand the
English language and its roots and meanings. I also found it very helpful when I
spent over two years in Italy and was learning to speak Italian. I found my Latin
was very helpful. I stayed on at St. Nicholas School. I would say that there were
around two hundred and fifty students both boys and girls. They were from Raleigh
families, but there were a few that were from nearby towns.

I stayed through my high school program and then went with Dr. Hughes to Blue
Ridge School in Hendersonville. This was an interesting, small, mountain school. It
was not like some of the rural, cooperative mountain schools there and certainly not
like Asheville School which was a prestige school like Phillips and Grotan and others
and catered mostly to out-of-state students. This was a small school, Except for
the North Carolinians who were there, I guess the greatest number of non-resident
students came from Latin and Central America for some strange reason. I don't know
why except that they were looking for a southern climate and a place to be somewhere
in the state and some arrangements had been made for them. Out of some three hundred,
we probably had thirty or forty of these students that added a good deal to the
school, There were benefits of being there and also in the summer camps in the Bre-
vard area, which I was fortunate to attend for a couple of summers. You had the ad-
vantage in the Blue Ridge, of the mountain apples, and walks at night and also some
canoe trips down the Brevard River and generally a good experience.

 
7.

After that, being the son of a good strong Presbyterian mother, I was headed
for Davidson. I have always liked Chapel Hill even in those days. They decided that
I was a little too young to go to Chapel Hill. For various reasons I didn't go to
Davidson although it certainly is one of the great schools in the country now. I
stayed out a year and took some special work at N. C. State College where I had prac-
tically grown-up anyway being at St. Nicholas, We played football in front of Hol-
iday Hall. The yard was a little bit bigger than it is now. At Red Diamond, we
would have baseball games and we used the swimming pool. So, I felt at home at State.
Incidently, I mentioned with my Boylen Avenue residence another great advantage of my
childhood days and for all of us in that rather productive neighborhood, I think
there were twenty-one children on our block, but some of us at least had the advantage
of St. Mary's being so near by. In the summer, we could play on their tennis courts
and sometimes use their swimming pool and lawn and other things. At any rate, after
I was at Blue Ridge for one year, I stayed at State for about a half a year, only for
a semester, to take some of the things that my parents thought would be helpful to me,
including some math and some penmanship. I'm not sure I learned too much in the pen-
manship course. I also took some bookkeeping. I suppose the thing that was the
most helpful, other than the general experiences of being there, was a very fine
course in public speaking which I have had occasions to do my share of since that
time.

At Chapel Hill, I was in various student activities including being student body
president, not my senior year but in my first year of graduate work which was the
custom at that particular time. I had majored in American History and was even then
very much interested in politics, campus politics of course, at that time. I took
my Masters Degree in Political Science, and then after some indecision went on through
Law School. This was, of course, the Depression time then in 1931 and 1932. We in

 
adi

North Carolina, of course, felt the Depression much more than the stock market crash
in 1929 because it was in 1932 that the banks were closing on their own and 1933 when
Roosevelt declared the bank moratorium. Those of us that were over there found
out that our checks from home were from banks that were now closed. So, with most
of the people over there, it was a time in which you had to arrange some way to earn
your room and your board and other things. I did this through most of my Masters De-
gree and a good part of my Law School work. In Law School, I was the manager of the
Graham Memorial. This was not Frank Porter Graham, as the new one is, but the Edward
Kidder Graham Memorial which was opened in that year. I had the good fortune at that
time to be able to live in the building. It was a one-room apartment there where I
worked with the cafeteria in there to make my money. I believe, as I recall now, as
a full-time job it was a very tremendous salary for one who was still in school at
that time, It was about a $125.00 a month which in those days was great. With that,
Iwas able to leave that job and go on through Law School. So, I got my Doctor of
Jurisprudence. I believe they've changed it now to the Juris Doctor, this is honors
in Law School. I got my Master's Degree in Political Science. Incidently, it may be
of some interest, I did a lot of my work under Dr. E. J. Woodhouse who was a very much
beloved teacher there. He was not only loved because of his teaching which was very,
very frequently from newspapers and current magazines. It was current topics in his-
tory. We talked about what's going on in politics here and there. It was partly un-
der his influence and my own interest first in campus politics and then in other out-
side politics that I wrote my Masters' thesis on the "Powers and the Duties of the
Governor of North Carolina under the Constitution of 1868." As you know, it took us
about one hundred years before we really revised our constitution. We still use the
old 1868 basis which, for its time and considering that it was drawn-up in the Recon-
struction Period, was quite a remarkable document. My thesis being that although

 
mics

North Carolina then as before and since has never granted the veto and the governor
does not have full powers as the political head of the state, the governor of the
state has always been a very powerful figure in the state government. I suppose he
is as powerful as any state governor even those that do have the veto power.

During that time at Chapel Hill in between Graduate School and Law School,
another political campaign was coming up, and I was interested in it. I had gotten
interested in those late days in the Young Democratic organization. Governor 0. Max
Gardner had formed the Young Democratic organization many years before. I think it
was about the time in one of the William Jennings Bryan campaigns, there was a Young
Democratic movement in which Gardner as a very young man participated, He then, of
course, ran for governor in 1920 and in a very close race lost-out; and then was e-
lected without any opposition whatsoever, an unprecedented achievement, in 1928. IL
mention him because he was interested in these Young Democrats. They played a very
important role in the 1928 election, which was the Hoover-Smith election,-dn, which gt
was feared that the state was going Republican not only in the national elections but
also in the state elections. The Young Democrats had a great deal to do with it. I
was a little too young to participate in that. But, the Young Democratic organization
got underway, and I was active in it.

With the 1932 national elections coming up, I came over from Chapel Hill and
called on Tyre Taylor who was a former Chapel Hill graduate. He had distinguished
himself, among many other things, by being the only student to ever refuse being taken
into the Golden Fleece, the highest Honor Society at Chapel Hill. I was a member of
that after my student body year incidently. So, I couldn't understand that partic-
ular action of his, So, I went down to see Tyre anyway and out of that grew one of
the most interesting experiences in my life in politics or anything else. He was
Governor Gardner's secretary at that time. This is during the Spring of 1932, with

 
oe

the Roosevelt election coming up. Tyre was trying to organize a National Young
Democratic organization, because there were groups of young Democrats in several
states. So, my connections with him multiplied from occasional weekend visits and
sometimes during the week to attending one meeting in Washington, D. C. in which he
called together twelve or fourteen states that had some form of Young Democratic or-
ganizations to begin some sort of National Young Democratic program. This may have
been in 1931.

In 1932, as the election grew near, he decided that we ought to have a National
Young Democratic movement underway to participate actively in the National Democratic
Convention. So, we had a very small staff here in Raleigh. In fact, it consisted of
Tyre who was out of the governor's office, a very attractive and brilliant young la-
dy, Lula Martin McIver Scott,who was active in politics later on, and myself. We
formed a three man team. Many people were advising us. Tyre with his wide imagina-
tion and lack of inhibitions of any kind got in touch with National Democratic Head-
quarters and got their assistance and their permission for us to put on a National
Young Democratic dinner during the Chicago Convention. So, off we went. I went up
about a week earlier knowing nothing about what I was doing. We went on to Chicago
and set up headquarters in the LaSalle Hotel. We followed up on the calls we had
been making all over the country. We had called all the prominent people we could
think of to ask them if they would be speakers for free at our National Young Demo-
cratic Convention. Many of them, Will Rogers particularly, was very undecided wheth-
er he would or not until he heard about it as it developed. Anyway, in Chicago by
a whole string of miracles, we pulled together a tremendous dinner. I don't know
how many people attended there at the LaSalle Hotel, but it was an overflow crowd of
several hundred, We had none other than Will Rogers who did appear as the MC. Rob-
ert Maynard Hutchins then at the very height of his fame, was the keynote speaker.

 
a

Will introduced him as Nicholas Murray Butler, and then quickly corrected himself
and said, "Well, he's the Nicholas Murray Butler of the Democratic party."' We had
Admiral Richard Bryd who was at his fame then. We had the Oklahoma Kilties for some
music and an Ohio Men's Choral Group. It was just a tremendous event.

In the Convention itself, we were able to see the remarkable convention when
Roosevelt won the nomination. In one of the first of his unprecedented moves, he
came in to personally accept the nomination. I think that that had not been done be-
fore. It was a very dramatic flight because they would say his plane is approaching
here, he's getting nearer here, he's landed here, he is in the car. Then he came
and his son James and someone else lifted him up. The huge man that he was, they
lifted him up onto the speaker's platform with his smile and marvelous personality.
He made this wonderful acceptance speech at that time. I may be incorrect about that,
but I'm almost sure this was the time in which he said, "We have nothing to fear but
fear itself.'' We never would have done this except for Mayor Cermak who was later
the victim of an assassination attempt. We didn't know whether they were aiming at
him or the President. It wasn't clear, but Mayor Cermak at that time was the Power
in Chicago. He was the Boss! He had a young handsome son-in-law who he had designated
head of the Young Democrats and was speaking for mayor. So, when he said, 'We want
a police line and we're going to have a parade," or whatever we wanted done, it got
done. So, the Young Democrats at this convention had quite a time. Of course the
memory that I was speaking of particularly was just being there. I think before I
cast my first vote, I was 21 or 22 then. That is, at least it was not in a pres-
idential campaign. But, to be there, it wasn't the badge that got me in, something
like honorary assistant Sergeant-of-Arms, which was just something to get us in the
door. It wasn't anything of a feeling of personal pride as much as being a part of
that really tremendously historic occasion.

 
aes

[Any other comments concerning Tyre Taylor?]

Well, Tyre was a brilliant young man. He did not continue active in politics.
His main contribution, of course, was that he was the founder of the National Young
Democrats organization and there is no doubt about that. He was the one that pulled
it together and was its first unofficial president until we had general conventions
and elections. He set a fine note for it. Shortly after that, however, he went on to
Washington and did not take any other part as far as I know in state politics, He
had been very active with Governor Gardner. He was also very active for Governor Gard-
ner's successor, Governor Ehringhaus, through that campaign. He organized Ehringhaus's
campaign. I mentioned having seen him over here where I met him. He wanted to or-
ganize a Young Democratic Club for Governor Ehringhaus in that campaign. At his re-
quest, I headed that. That was my connection with Tyre. He was a reader, he was a
thinker. He was not particularly noted as a speaker. He was a behind-the-scenes
worker. He was not one who would have run for office but he would be a great organ-
izer and string-puller. After Tyre left here, he went with a trade organization there
and he became more and more conservative. He was quite a liberal at least in the Gov-
ernor Gardner tradition which was a liberal tradition for those years anyway. Tyre
became conservative. I don't know if he did it because of a particular position or
what.. He was with the trade organization in connection with textiles. I believe he
was first with cotton textiles, and then he went with another trade organization and
did well in the businessway. But, he became very bitter about national government
and took no part. so far as I know in state politics or national politics thereafter.
This was too bad, because they lost a talented man.

[Speaking in terms of the elections during that period of 1928 through 1932, are
there any thoughts or contacts or observations concerning such people as Cornelia Petty
Jerman or Fernifold Simmons or Josephus Daniels who were real powers in politics along
with Governor Gardner?]

 
=O"

Well, although now I am not among the Young Democrats, but at that time these
were all far older people. I think I never personally saw Fernifold Simmons, Senator
Simmons. IL have certainly read a lot about him, and’he in a reverse way rather shaped
my career, Mrs, Palmer Jerman was one of the many women in the state who came into
prominence as pioneer women in politics. She was one of the greats as was Mrs. Anne
Bost who succeeded her later. I worked with Mrs. Bost and knew her very well. The
young woman of the time who for some strange reason was disassociated, by an accident
I think, from the National Democratic Movement was: the first and prime organizer of
the North Carolina Young Democrats, Mrs. May Thompson Evans. She was later head of
the ‘public employment service here in the state. I did not even know her. We talked
about that later, She and Dewey Dorsett, who-was later Chairman of the Industrial Com-
mission here in this state, Doyle Alley from Waynesville and Edwin Gill were the ones
that were very active in forming the state Young Democratic organization. This is a
matter that is worthy of a historical study of its own, what the Young Democrats have
done here in the state by bringing sort of a new diminsion to politics in the state,

[Did John Lang get involved in that, or was he totally with the National Student
Federation concept?]

John was active in the Young Democrats but not in the organization stages so much,
He was later. I'm not sure when he went to them. I was in the National Student Fed-
eration with John. He and I went to a meeting. I went to two meetings, one time as
the incoming student body President and the next time as a member of the national board
of directors of the National Student Federation. He came in a little bit later although
we were in the same class there. John, I suppose, was some sort of delegate-at-large
up there, Then, he got on the board and soon was president of the National Student Fed-
eration. Incidently, I can't overlook this among the other fortunate and memorable ex-
periences in my time. The head of the National Student Federation when I went up there

 
aie

was I thought the most handsome and brilliant and gallant young man and the best
speaker I had ever heard. That was Edward R. Morrow. He later went on with an Inter-
national Education Program or whatever it was called and then got into broadcasting.

[Mennen Williams was also gnvolved in that, was he not?]

I had no connection with him. I don't know. I remember him as Governor of Mich-
igan, but I did not know him in connection with the National Student Federation. That
was a great experience. You met students from all over the country. That and the
Young Democratic thing on the national level too, they were both great experiences.

Incidently, if I may get off from that just one moment, to the Scottsboro.~ case.
I see the last of the Scottsboro persons who were convicted of that thing were pardon-
ed, Their guilt I have always felt was in doubt and so did Ed and many others at the
time. He wanted some of us not officially for the National Student Federation to go
into Scottsboro. This was far beyond my reach and knowledge and anything else. I nev-
er did go and I don't know what they did, but Ed wrote to a few of us who had been on
this national board. This must have been about 1933 after he had left the presidency,
but he said that the most interesting things in the world today are going on in Russia.
He said we must go over there and get five or six of us and go over there without any
preconceived notions and see what we as student leaders can find out for ourselves and
people over here. I thought that this was going to be the greatest opportunity in the
world, He was going to get some sort of way for us to go whether it was foundation
money or whatever it was. Unfortunately, it never materialized, but it was still an
exciting thought to think about. Incidently, it took me from then until last year with
the UNC tour to get to Russia.

[Did the Federation become involved in the Scottsboro affair?]

No, it did not as far as I know. This was Ed's idea because he had an exploring
and inquisitive mind and a sharp ear and head for injustice. He felt that this was
wrong and that these people had not had a fair trial. It was not only racial but it

 
ay te 4

was all the prejudices and discriminations that may come in a prejudiced area even to
the court system, He though was anxious for us to look into it. I suppose that at
that time, he may not have even been in the National Student Federation. He had then
gone into some international educational work.

Well, let's see now, going back to the Young Democrats, I have spoken of May
Thompson Evans who with her husband, Judge Evans who was later on the Court of Claims
in Washington, They were the real organizers in the Young Democrats in North Carolina.
She was brought in by Capus Waynick, who was well-known in the state in many different
capacities.

When they formed a Public Employment Service here in North Carolina, they called
on the departments of labor largely to come to a special meeting in Washington to see
about this really great unemployment just when Roosevelt had taken office in 1933. At
any rate, they asked each secretary of labor to designate someone to come to a meeting
to talk about forming a National Employment Service as a temporary basis for the State
Employment Service under the United States Employment Service. Well, Capus Waynick
went out and became appointed. He was sent out by Major A. L. Fletcher who was the
head of the department of labor here, He was sent out there to talk about it or maybe
he was the one who was nominated. Anyhow, he became the National Re-employment Service
Director, the first one in the state. I must mention this interesting incident out
there, He said that there were people from different states to be considered for these
jobs and to talk about it. There was one who was sort of an ordinary looking fellow,
and if they had had to take a vote, they would have certainly voted him the least likely
man of the entire group of forty-eight that went out there to hold office. He was later
appointed to this re-employment directory post and that was Harry S. Truman. Isn't that
interesting, because you remember what a meteoric rise he had after that. But then, he
was a sort of a country judge in Missouri at that time and he had not been in the U. S.
Senate. He had not begun his career.

 
os
But at any rate, Capus came back here and headed that up. He asked May Evans
to be his assistant. She did, and they had worked together in the Young Democrats.
She became his assistant organizer of the National Re-employment Service for North
Carolina, Then, on the Wagner-Peyser Bill which was enacted in 1935, they set up a
State Employment Service which was the purpose of the temporary National Re-employ-
ment Service, May Evans was the first director of it. She went over to ask Frank
Graham at the university where she could get some young man to be her administrative
assistant. He was kind enough to mention my name among others. So, she called me
over, As I've said, we had been working in Young Democratic circles, but at that
time, I didn't really know her at all. She asked me if I would work in this brand
new agency that I had never even heard of, and I replied no that I didn't think I
would, Finally, as we talked, I was just finishing up Law School after an interrupt-
ed course in law with my Graham Memorial work and others. I decided it was a flatter-
ing offer. I should have had sense enough to realize what it was, but I thought,
well I'll do this for six months and pay off my Law School debts. I ended up serving
in this service until I got into World War II. That was about six years, That was
a great experience.

May went on to become one of the Co-Chairman of the Women's National Democratic
Committee in Washington. She left here about a year later in 1937. I had been her
administrative assistant which is sort of an assistant director of it. But, this had
nothing to do with my succeeding to her job, because I think at that time May came in
with three thousand dollars a year for head of an agency (it would now be thirty thou-
sand). It was a very good job for those times. Another criticism for those times
was that a woman was holding a job.

Anyway, she left and I would have had no chance to be director of the service ex-
cept for the fact that the United States Employment Service, which was paying me most
of the bill for these services, had determined upon a system of merit examinations

 
Gad

upon which the people were to be selected. So I was fresh from my Masters examin-
ations and my law examinations and taking the Bar Examinations, so I was really
ready for the examination. When I took it, I was fortunate to place at the top of
the list. While they could select from the top three of the people, I believe there
was one almost definite appointment and perhaps another one until the examinations
came out and the people didn't want to take examinations. So, I came in as director
of this service which now has developed into the Employment Security Commission. I
was 26 then. I was the youngest director of this program. They had one in each of
the 48 states. I stayed on with it and it was a great experience. We had about 75
offices in the state. Most of them were small offices that had been put together
hurriedly. It was not a very scientific organization. But, through May and some of
the people who came down, we all had stars in our eyes and worked awfully hard. We
thought we were doing a very important work in those times, and I think we were.

[This is not related to the agency with Mrs. J. B. Spilman, is it?]

Yes. She was with that later on. You see, this was the Public Employment Ser-
vice that began before unemployment compensation came in. First, you had the Employ-
ment Service, and then as government sometimes works, when this new service came in
it was supposed to be linked with it. It was later. So, it became the overall agency.
Those of us in the Employment Service thought jobs ought to come first before paying
unemployment. But, this is one of the things that works out. My appointment was
through Governor Hoey because it was just about the change from the Ehringhaus to the
Governor Hoey administration. At any rate, she was one of the three appointees that
Governor Hoey made on what was then the Unemployment Compensation Commission, which
combined the Employment Service and this new Unemployment Compensation. They were the
two equal divisions under the three-man commission. Mr. Charlie Powell was the chair-
man and Colonel A. L. Fletcher was the other member and also Secretary of Labor and Mrs.

 
ty

Spilman. Then the name was changed later to the Employment Security Commission rather
than the Unemployment. The emphasis was back nearer to what it was at first, on the
employment part of it or the employment security as it became known. As I've said,
I stayed with this Employment Service. Incidently, I went out to some of the meetings
of the national group. I went to one or two of those meetings. I was on their board.
I served as National President in 1941 in what was then the International Association
of Public Employment Services. It still goes on and is rather an influential organ-
ization in this whole field of employment security. I served there until I went into
the army in April of 1942.

Well, that was an abrupt break of course. I was commissioned as a first lieu-
tenant in the Air Corps and was headed for Maxwell Field. The people in the United
States Employment Service had all been commissioned in the Army Service Force Head-
quarters in Washington because they were recruiting people for handling the civilian
manpower problems for the Army, So, they asked me to come up there, and I persuaded
them that that was the place where my talents might be better suited than whatever I
might have been doing in the Air Corps. I am sure that would have been some sort of
personnel position or something of the like at the time. Then, I served in the Army
Service Force Headquarters for fourteen months or about a year. I then was switched
over to the Allied Military Government.

[What were your duties during this year?]

Jim Mitchell, who was later Secretary of Labor and was brother of Tom Mitchell
who played Scarlett's father in Gone With the Wind , was head of the civilian per-
sonnel division of Army Service Force Headquarters. A group of us who had been in
some type of personnel employment works served with him. Our job was to chart the
civilian personnel not only in military units but also the civilian personnel pro-
blems that arose in military suppliers. For instance, we had a tour of most of the
large aircraft factories that were just coming into their own at that time. We also
went to see the Kaiser Ship Works. This was not that we could do anything in a visit,

 
eae

but we could see the people who were in charge of personnel there and tie in their
recruitment with army policies. That was the chief work there, That was very inter-
esting work.

After about a year, I was ready for something else. Being interested in govern-
ment, I applied for a transfer to military government. I went to the military govern-
ment school. It was a short school at that time because time was wearing on, I was
sent out to Fort Custer near Detroit. Our unit was not a fancy unit like they had in
Charlottesville and two or three other places. It was a little different kind of mil-
itary government because we were connected with the military police. They were looking
more at civic government in occupied areas which all of us got involved in. The part-
icular unit that I was assigned to rather than the Charlottesville group was this one.
I had a side benefit there because after my having been on the wrestling team there at
Carolina, they had a little course in judo which I found fascinating. I wish I had
had that when I was going through college wrestling. It was a good experience too.

Since they did need people in this employment field overseas in the allied mil-
itary government, I was shipped out a little early from the school. There weren't as
many people with experience in this field as there were in some of the others. In
fact, I only had about a month there at Fort Custer, We went through Patrick Henry
on a liberty ship. We came on up through Africa just waiting for an assignment there.
There were some worlds of experiences just going through Africa and seeing those
troops coming back from the battlegrounds. They were British boys mostly and were
pitiful sights. They had been with Montgomery through that. I was later assigned to
the Eighth Army Group that was called "The Desert Rats" and so forth. I had the priv-
ilege of knowing those English people who wherever they were made themselves at home
as if they were going to be there forever. They had been in the war for six years, and
we had just gotten in it. When they set up a tent, they had all of the conveniences,

 
16x

a bottle of Scotch, a deck of cards and often a hunting rife. They would indulge
in the nicer things in life until the bombing came and then they would all go to
their duties or wherever they were supposed to be, They are certainly most admirable
people.

At any rate, in this military government, and I think this is perhaps the most
interesting part of my own experiences in it, I was sent down from North Africa into
Sicily for a short while. Then I was taken over on one of the transport boats to
Brindisi which is, as you know, in the very bottom of the boot of Italy. The reason
for that was that Colonel Beatle Smith and General Maxwell Taylor had just had that
spectacular, daring, heroic mission to see King Victor Emmanuel and persuade him and
Marshall Badoglio to come with the Allies. The Fascists were still there, and the
Nazis were still in there. Of course, Mussolini was still there although he had
moved on up north by that time. But, they took Badoglio and brought him down to
Brindisi to work with the Allied government in starting up a new holding government
for Italy. There was a small group of us in military government to work with these
people from Rome who had been brought to Brindisi and was later moved to Salerno to
work with the new Italian government. So, as it was, not because of any special abil-
ities although I had had some experience in there, I was down there as the Allied
government connecting link with the newly appointed minister of industry, commerce and
labor for this new government.

The government was nothing but about five or six men. This young boy, who like
nearly everyone else whether by choice or necessity, no one will ever know, had been
a part of the Fascist government as a very minor employee there. The boy at least had
the virtue of wanting to get out in a hurry. He had been riding his bicycle several
days to get down to Brindisi. He was about the only English-speaking Italian down there
and was very useful in representing everything. We did not know what he was going to
ask to get the government started. He said the main thing they needed was some paper,
pencils and paper clips. So it goes in government. A typewriter would have been almost

 
he

unheard of down there. This was the time of blackouts and the power lines were still
out and all the rest.

[Well, was this much more than a shadow government?]

Well, it had no subjects at that time. Italy, from Naples on north, was still
under Fascist-Nazi control. Now down south, they had not penetrated as deeply or as
fully except . . . well not militarily anyway. ‘This was no official government, ex-
cept that with King Emmanual's consent or connivance Badoglio was forming what would
be a government as soon as they could take over. This became the government, In my
time there, for another sixteen or eighteen months I Suppose, there were six differ-
ent ministers of industry, commerce and labor. Most of these came from the Christian
Democratic Party. I served in one capacity or another as a link between the Allied
Military Government and this part of the government. One of those, the last one I
served with, I was then the official Colligomento or liaison officer to him. TI had
my office with him in Rome for awhile. He later became President after the war some
years afterwards, Giovanni Gronchi, a name that you may remember. I had learned to
speak Italian reasonably well, and on one or two occasions, not of necessity, I made
a radio talk, a recorded talk with the aid of a guidebook. I got so I could converse
in Italian reasonably well. Gronchi also knew some English. Their job in Rome and
other places along with ours was to see about the restoration.

Another branch of government of which we worked very closely, was the Major
Jopolo branch, The man who worked in place of the mayor when the mayor was not there,
Podesta, as they called him, They really managed the government. Our part was in
seeing that the government, whether you were talking about a military industrial plant
or a waterworks, that they had some kind of labor and somebody in charge of it and
some sort of supply.

The most fascinating part for me, working not on the city level but with the na-

 
Fie

tional government level, was the work with the former labor unions. They, in Italy
as in Germany, were some of the first things that the totalitarian governments would
take over in order to control those people. They would take them over and complete-
ly change their character but continue to use them for their purposes, just as they
took over the industrial guilds and kept them carefully organized in Italy and Ger-
many too and used them for their purposes. The labor unions had been completely dis-
torted and corrupted from their purposes of serving the working people. In doing it,
they all had to be in the underground and they had to get what help they could. The
best organizers of them were Communists. They had organized them under the Red Flag.
Our government here sent over two national labor leaders, George Baidanzi from CIO
and one Ontineli from AF of L. They had not merged at the time. They sent them
over to work with the military government to see if they could persuade these people
that there was a difference in a labor union and a political party. Here, when you
are forming a new government, the unions should not operate under a Red Flag, whether
their own or Russia's; but they should concentrate on the labor angles and leave off
officially at any rate any partisan political group. So, that was our job. We had
the most interesting meetings with the government officials there. This was a fas-
cinating part, because this was one of the points in history where the older Italian
leaders who had been head of the Christian Democratic Party. It was the major con-
trolling party over there for many, many years and still is to some extent. It is
less now, unfortunately, than it was. There was also the Socialists, and many other
parties. These men were still around, but they were "has beens,'' They were called
back in. Count Schwartze was another one of them as well as the great Socialist
leader, Nini, I believe it was, and Togliati, the Communist leader. These men all
met with this group of labor leaders that had come over from America, our military
government group. The man that headed this up, Ex-mayor Bill O'Dwyer of New York,

 
Se)

William O'Dryer came over with the general's status and brought this group together.
It was a very memorable meeting. It was said in affect that I am from a different
country and a different interest and cannot tell you what you ought to do, but I
can tell you what I would do if I were in your place. He made a marvelous, effec-
tive speech for them giving up the politics and getting down to the job of helping
to reorganize their country as labor unions which we would want to recognize.

It was very interesting in a little later period when we were trying to do the
same thing after the Italian government had taken over and we had moved on up. I
was in Trieste with the Pole Corps then and the same questions came up. As you re-
member the Yugoslavs occupied Trieste immediately preceding the sort of liberation
and the Italians came back in and took over at that time. The Yugoslavs didn't really
withdraw their military units. They took off their uniforms and commandered one or
two buildings and stored their uniforms and their guns in these buildings in case
they needed them. They thought we didn't know that but our military intelligence
had the information that these people were still around. There was a man named
S T OKA there then, who then was Tito's representative in Trieste. He argued bit-
terly about this business of taking the unions out from under political control. He
said, "Now this is fine in the United States where you have some kind of a democracy.
But over here the very people that you want to give all the power back to are the
Fascists who did all of these things and killed us whenever they got a chance to,
who tortured us and wrecked the country. Now, you're saying to let these workers
and the labor unions be free to be managed by these people instead of by us. We're
not going to stand for that." He had some practical points there but we still felt
he was wrong. So there were various compromises, One of the compromises that I
remember was in the Triste shipyards which was being closed. Under some Communist
directions, although I don't like to blame Tito for all the Russian Communist tac-

 
2

tics, but these workers had been taught they owned the factory. They proceeded
to take the machines apart piece-by-piece and began to take the machines home with
them. So, the shipyard couldn't continue to function.

Some of us were just as bad in a different way. We had a kind of a WPA Program,
We had to make work for some of these Italians. So they were going to dig some
great ditches. I don't know what we were covering up or digging, but there was a
great digging operation. It employed all these people to do it. The army engineers
got hold of it and sent down some of their ditch diggers and did all the work in about
a day or two, and we had no shovel-work left for these people and it had been strict-
ly a made work project that somebody had thought up over there to do.

My experience was in the military government where we were on the verge of the
fighting and the background of the fighting. Occasionally, we would be in the towns
where shells would fall. Frequently these air raid alarms were sounded and sometimes
bombs were dropped, but not on the front line of fighting the military. Some of your
people were. Ours was a governmental organization behind lines in the hope of help-
ing to restore the government as our first cobelligerent and later allies.

[Well it seems as far as the WPA type of work, there would have been a great deal
to have been done in a former combat zone in the way of rebuilding and what have you.]

Yes. There were so few things to do it with at that time, it was very difficult.
Your basic problem was trying to find someone who had not been too indoctrinated as
a Fascist to take over some posts that required technical skills. Finally, they al-
most abandoned that because if you were a school teacher for an example, you had to
be a Fascists, It was not like the Communist party in Russia, as it is now, where
you have to be invited to join. Here, if you did any type of public work, you simply
had to be a member of a little Fascist unit. How much a person had believed in it
depended on the individual and the case. But the fact was that if you wanted to get

 
an engineer to do something at the water works plant or the sewage plant or some-
thing else, just any type of engineering or scientific work, you'd ask him where
he was and what he'd done, but you almost had to forget to ask him whether or not
he had been a Fascist because he would not have been able to be there if he hadn't
payed some allegiance to them at the time. It was hard during our time there, as
there were no great public works projects. There was a hand-to-mouth existance to
try to keep people alive, and to try to keep down disorder and disease and restore
the semblance of government that could become a government.

[I reckon anarchy was the greatest threat there. Well, many of these tech-
nically trained people who obviously had Fasicst backgrounds, did you find that in
many cases this was more or less a lip service support of Facism or was this a nec-
essity for them to attain a special position?]

Let me give you an example. This may not be typical, but I rather have a feel-
ing that it is. In this tiny little town of Brindisi down there where we were for
a while just sitting and waiting to do something and move on somewhere, there wasn't
too much to do during the days because you only had one or two men to work with.
There was a little school teacher named Ugo Galoso who put something in his window
about "English Spoken." So, we looked him up, and a group of us studied Italian
with him. Incidently, he taught us the few words he knew by singing old folk songs,
battle songs, and nursery rhymes which would give you the rhythm of the language.
This was a marvelous way to teach a language. We had little pocket dictionaries
and so forth. He told us his story. He said he was a young man in 1921, when the
call went out for one man from each little commune to come to Rome. He was chosen
as a 20 year old school teacher to come to Rome because something important was hap-
pening there. This was the time when the Bolsheviks as he called them and the other
people that were dissatisfied with Italy (you remember how dissatisfied Italy was
after Versailles), felt they had been treated badly after World War I. There was

 
220

unemployment with disorder in the streets, and all kinds of things were going-on, The
strong man had appeared down there, “Benito Mussolini, who was going to offer them peace
and progress and the reorganization of Italy. Italy was going to rise from the ashes
again. This sounds ominous now that this is what the Fuchrer said later. But, this
was a real call to leadership, by this most dynamic personality. He said that he
had joined with all his heart. He became a member of the new Mussolini Brown Shirts
right then and there. From 1920 until 1928 or 1929,about the time when they started
going into Ethiopia and the beginnings of World War II were coming along, every-
thing was progress in Italy. The:old saying that"he made the trains run on time”
and the other things they said about Mussolini were true. Then, he felt that the
government had gotten self centered and corrupt, and the mysticism or whatever it
was about it. . . the lunacy as we would regardit of Mussolini in his later days
before they strung him up by his heels in Milan as a crazy man. He had destroyed
the remanents of his country. Ugo Guloso, this Italian teacher, felt that then, but
he did not feel it for the first ten years that he was in the movement. He was per-
fectly frank and clear. He didn't feel that he had changed, but that Fascism had
changed, I think that plus the other thing that I mentioned that in the later years,
those of the early forties, that there was no choice, you had to join. You played
the game. What else could you do, if you were a young man growing up there with a
family and career and the only job that you have is under the Fascist label. You
would be shocked by some of the atrosities and would not perhaps see them firsthand.
At any rate, you stay there. Another thing you could do was to go into the "under-
ground," and many of them did that,

[There was a powerful underground during those years.]

Yes, There is literature about it and all the rest. Many of them were killed,
It appeared to us that, this was probably an exaggeration, but it appeared to us that

 
woos

nearly all of them that then were in the "underground" worked under the Red Flag
whether it was the Yugoslavian or the Russian didn't make much difference because
they worked pretty close together. But, the "underground" unfortunately became a
Communist movement in color and label. Although their main work, of course, was
working against the Fascist government and working for some more freedom for the
people. Incidently, I think I should mention that through Gronchi and the work that
I did over there, I was awarded at the end of that time a little Italian recognition,
the ones they give to foreigners that had been a help to the Italian government,
There were several of us in this military unit that worked directly with the Italian
government. It didn't mean a lot, but we appreciated this a great deal anyway. I
have been able to go back to Italy twice. Someone said, Shelly I believe, "Every
man has two countries, his own and Italy!" I certainly have a love for that country.
I love its people.

[This was the "Knight of the Crown of Italy" that you're speaking of?]

Yes, One of the last days over there, William R. Morrow was there and told us,
around a bottle of wine in a blown up little restaurant over there one night, about
the beginnings of the United Nations. Of course, you could see nothing but the hor-
rible wreckage over here that this war had done. It was just full of the suffering
and the destruction and all that, He pointed out the hope in a new United Nations.
Of course, we were all excited about it, and I was after I came back. I got back
in December around Pearl Harbor day in 1945. I got very much more interested in
the United Nations and with a group here under Robert Lee Humber whom I did not
know at the time but who later became the great leader of the World Federalists Move-
ment not only in this state but otherwise. Henry Brandis,who was a law professor at
the University of North Carolina whom I had known as a student there, McNeil Smith,
our present State Senator, Sam Levering from Mt. Airy, and of course Mr. Humber

 
~2he

whom I did not know then but met early, were active in this movement. You could
not miss Robert Lee Humber. We began working in this United World Federalists Pro-
gram and our aim was different from the association of the United Nations. I am
not sure about its state of activity then, but it had generally been one who wanted
to simply improve the operations of the United Nations. Our World Federalists felt
that that was not enough. We needed to make a break from a league in a balance of
power. We needed to make a break from that ideology and instead have a government
of people and not a rule of nations. Of course, you've got to work through the na-
tional unit. I think one of the things that symbolized the World Government Program,
as the World Federalist saw it anyway, was that there could be no peace without law,
there could be no law without government to make and interpret and enforce that law.
So, we wanted to see an international police force. We wanted to see different voting.
We wanted to see it expanded to bring in more nations. Of course, it has been with
mixed results, but it was a necessary principle that it had to be universal or as
near that as it could be. This group was very dedicated and worked hard. We went
on the basis of trying to organize by cities and counties, That was fairly success-
ful for awhile, but it couldn't be sustained. It has since been changed to a pol-
icy group which still exists. It is not very active in North Carolina, but it still
exists, and it does a great work.

[How do you account for the fact that there were so many from North Carolina
involved in this?]

Humber accounts for a great deal of it. The group that we had together I sup-
pose accounted for it. It wasn't Humber alone among the older leaders of the state,
Clarence Poe endorsed the idea. I served for about a year and a half as the execu-
tive director. I came back to the Employment Security job after the Army for about
six or seven months. and didn't find it the exciting job I found four years before.

 
Sop

I wouldn't have left it for anything back in those days. Sometimes, you can't go
back again. So, I resigned from that and with some aid, financial aid primarily
from San Levering, we began a state-wide organization. There were several of us
that went out and got resolutions favoring, in effect, the Humber resolution that
he got through the general assembly which is a historic document. We got the Amer-
ican Legion to even give us a good endorsement which they mostly withdrew several
years later. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Women's Federation of Business and
Professional Women, Young Democrats, and a great many others all had resolutions
endorsing this program and carrying it forward. Of course, Humber himself was just
a tremendous organizer and it is another story in itself how he went into all forty-
eight states and spent time in the General Assembly and promoted the idea. I think
perhaps one of the most significant things that happened to the idea is, again with
a little different emphasis but still on the emphasis of world law, the Bar Associa-
tions took it up; and we got another resolution here in the state from the Bar As-
sociation.

[Is that how Charles Tillet got involved?]

Charles Tillet of Charlotte, Dr. Frank Graham of Chapel Hill, and Frank E. Win-
Slow of Rocky Mount, all were former roommates at Chapel Hill, and two of them had been
presidents of the Bar Association. Dr. Frank was also a lawyer but never did work
at it. Those were three great leaders in it. Justice Denny and I mentioned Dr. Poe
were both involved, There was Josephus and Jonathan Daniels, to some extent anyway,
who were endorsers of the idea though not necessarily all the organizational move-
ment. It is a movement that hasn't died and can't die. It had to change with the
times. It is carried on I think by the Committee for World Peace through World Law,
and the Bar Association International Program. Many of our members here like Bev-
erly Moore in Greensboro frequently goes to that, McNeil Smith has been to them and

 
206-

carried it on, The World Law Center at Duke University is not a by-product of this
movement, but it is certainly an extension of it as a very valuable resource. I
spent a full year on that program traveling around the state and talking about that.
It was at that time I tried to get into’ politics,

[Did you do any of the traveling outside of North Carolina during that year?
Was it primarily in the state campaigning?]

All of it was for the World Federalists Program and nothing was out of the
state except for meetings I attended in Washington, D. C. and I believe in Balti-
more. I had some out-of-state speaking engagements on it, but there was no organ-
ization work outside of the state. We had here a meeting in Asheville in early 1947,
I believe, in which Dr. Frank compared it in his generous way with the Annapolis
Convention that this might be the beginnings of the real organization that would
come later. We had a tremendous group of celebrities who were literary people and
magazine editors. Thomas Spinletter who was Air Force Secretary up there one time
attended. A great many people came down to this Asheville Convention. That attempted
to combine there in one meeting the World Federalist and the Committee for World Law,
the Americans United for Peace, the Association of United Nations and several organ-
izations who were working for the same thing. We had brought them together to see
what we could do to promote them, It was a very successful meeting and the last
big successful meeting of that kind that we had. Humber was the one that carried
the work into all the other states.

[Suppose we go on, and I'll come back later with some more in-depth questions
concerning that year. ]

Alright. As I've said, I had been very much interested in politics and with
my directorship of the Employment Service, I had been in most all the counties of
this state and certainly all in which we had offices, that being in seventy-five

 
apo

different locations. I had worked, to some extent, with the people in industry on
their employment problems. It is an amazing thing to look back on it. In the be-
ginning of this employment service, there were no statistics on unemployed people
and no job dictionary and no classification of jobs. In large industries, there was
no real personnel set-up of any kind where they kept records of these people. Fre-
quently you find that people who had been there twenty years and were very capable
were being passed over for promotions in the working jobs simply because there was
no central organization that knew where the good people were and what seniority meant
or how it could be worked out. The state had no personnel system. It was carried on
under the budget officer who is always the worst person in the world to work with
personnel and budget, because they are almost conflicting principles. They aren't
literally, but you need someone whose emphasis is personnel classification and per-
sonnel recruitment and personnel placement, and there had been very little of that.

Well, as I started to say, I had had experience going about the state at this
time in this, and felt I had a state-wide acquaintance with the Young Democrats and
other things. With the political "monkey on my back" constantly from college on, I
began on this bold venture of running for governor. The main incentive for doing this
was that young veterans were coming home and were being elected to the city council
and mayor and the state General Assembly. In several places in the state, particu-
larly in Asheville and Buncombe County in the 1946 election, they took over the city
and county governments over the rather well entrenched political machines. That's
the time that Judge Frank Parker, now in our Court of Appeals, was elected to the
state senate over Brandon Hodges who was a very fine public servant and had been
state treasurer and had expected to be Lt. Governor and then Governor. In the hier-
archy of politics as it ran, he would have gotten on the wheel; and it would have
rolled around and it would probably have been that. He was an able person. But, when
Frank beat him up there, it knocked out his career, That's just a sideline, but the

 
sa) Bsn

point is that many young people were coming into political prominence and activity
and felt they had something to say to postwar North Carolina. Things looked dif-
ferent when you came back, just as my job looked different. Peoples home towns
looked different, the schools looked different, and the hospitals were different.
Not saying that they were not better than we had seen anywhere else, but never-the-less
they weren't quite as good as we had imagined and hoped they were. ‘There was a real
feeling and movement going on, and I got caught up in it. We had a meeting with a
group of these people, a meeting that backfired in many ways, but we had a meeting
of those people who had come back from war and who were interested in politics. We
either labeled ourselves or got labeled as "G I Democrats." We drew up a platform
for North Carolina, and it was a good platform. Some of these people I've mentioned,
Henry Brandis and Mac Smith among them, helped draw up that platform. Josephus Dan-
iels gave us great publicity and support on it. But, it did not become a real pol-
itical organization as it was accused of being, and to some extent backfired for
various reasons.

At any rate, with that background in mind and with the encouragement of some of
the younger people of the state, not with the state administration by any means, I
got into the 1948 gubernatorial race. I think it is significant to go back just for
a minute here, There had been a continuing succession in the state of "administration
candidates" in quotes. With the good government we had in North Carolina, and this
has been my theme song for many years, we've had excellent, honest government here.
But it has been not only one-party control, but one-faction of that party with the
incumbents or the sponsors of the incumbents picking their successors. There was
first the East and West and we got away from that and went right on down the line.
1948 I think was a real landmark election, it proved to be the real breakthrough.
Not because I was in it, I didn't win it, but because it did end that succession.

 
e910

At any rate, this had been broken a little bit for these reasons. William B.
Umstead of Durham who had been in Congress, had been chairman of the party, was a
very prominent, well-loved person. He got out his letters to announce that he was
going to run for governor. If so, he would probably have had very little opposition
in 1948. Then, he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate by
Governor Cherry. Governor Cherry had Bill Umstead as his campaign manager. He ap-
pointed him to the United States Senate, and that left a vacancy for the succession.
It had been generally assumed that Bill Umstead was going to be the governor in 1948,
So, then the mantle sort of fell to the treasurer, Charles Johnson. There were oth-
ers of us, at least, that felt that there was no great enthusiasm for Johnson. In
the phrase of the times, "it was time for a change." Scott had looked around a lit-
tle bit in the election but had given no real indication that he was going to run.
It was then going to be Johnson against any challenger that came along. Johnson an-
nounced way back in April which was thirteen months before the primary election. It
was unprecedented in the advance notice. This was just after the notice of Umstead's
appointment. Oscar Barker who had been in the Senate, was sort of the school teach-
er's champion, and he announced in May. I had gotten what I could together and I
started out in June of that year. This was still almost a year before the primary.
Later, two or three candidates including the famous Ola Ray Boyd from Down East got
into the picture as did a boy named Simmons from Down East, a young man. Of course,
it was not until late February before the primary that Kerr Scott came in. He had
been doing lots of work and more than people knew about in the meantime. He later
said that he believed in a short campaign. He proved his effectiveness in that one.

[He had been maneuvering behind the scenes. ]

Yes, he had laid a fine background, because he had been not only the head of
the Department of Agriculture here and knew the "branch head’ boys" throughout the

 
=30-

state, but during the real depression years, he had been the officer for the federal
government in the state; and he had been the man that got the federal land bank loans
for farmers that were going bankrupt and were going to lose their farms. He had
staunch friends all around the state that rose up in droves to help him. That was
the field,

The only way I figured I could do it was with the help of these young people
who were not only new in politics but were busy with new jobs after the war. Some
of them had married and were with new families, and couldn't devote full time to it,
and we had no money. We would have to get out and see people. So, we got the trailer
as you have mentioned. As we went along, we painted it up on the side with a map of
the state and the towns that we had visited. There was a trail moving around the
state with a star there. We scheduled our town visits well in advance, and sent them
a little newspaper map and a story. So, they had a little picture of the trailer with
Francis, my wife, and I standing by the trailer pointing to the sign and saying, "We'll
be in downtown Bearcreek at twelve o'clock." The papers would carry the story because
it was already written for them and here was some fresh news anyway. So, it was a
terrific way of campaigning. Trailers were novels at that time. I'm not sure how
we stumbled across it. We had it painted up and it was very successful and we made
wonderful friends. We campaigned almost every day and night from June until May of
1948. Scott's campaign had picked up. I had not thought that I would lead in the
first primary. I had hoped as I went along that I would be in second place. But,
Scott considerably overtook me on the way. One key factor in it was Capus Waynick
that we had mentioned before, who was my friend too and had talked to me about it
earlier, He came in and became Scott's manager. He was able to raise the necessary
funds to operate on which we were never able to succeed in raising. We borrowed a
little money and we lived in the trailer and on our friends and on the land. We had

 
too little advertising. We did very well considering the circumstances of running
as the third man. Johnson did come first as anticipated. Scott was second, and
I was third. Oscar Baker was fourth.

[Even considering the difference in financial problems now of operating a
campaign, it was a tremendous strain even then to finance a campaign unless you did
have the money interests behind you, was it not?]

Yes. If you want that theme properly spelled ouwt,it's in Bill Keys book Southern
Politics. He says that the candidate who appears likely to succeed and is generally
acceptable to the moneyed interest of the state doesn't have to sell his soul to
them, they come to him naturally because they think alike anyway. He is likely to
succeed so money becomes plentiful to them. There was, at that time, a filing fee of
one percent of the annual salary. In the campaign, you could spend a maximum of the
equivalent of one year's salary. This was in 1948, and that was $12,000. Now, in
the 1936 campaign, which was by far the biggest spending campaign, this was Hoey win-
ning over MacDonald in the disputed election, it was more or less reliably reported
that over $300,000 was spent in the Hoey campaign. That was way ahead of any thing
that had been done before. At any rate, the $12,000 legal limit was on. The way
they got around that,was the candidate and his staff had to make a report. They
were careful not to spend over $12,000. But, X industry and corporations were making
contributions freely, and it wasn't prohibited as it is now. They could spend the
money for you. So, the campaign expenditure law really meant nothing.

[All of these little local organizations set uptheir own. . .]

They spent their own. In theory, you are supposed to report them all. I'd say
just because so little was spent, we went around tofind out just how much was spent
on us, We could not really find out how much was spent, but we came up with not more
than $7,000 in all. This was a fairly large spending campaign in both Kerr's and
Charlie Johnson's first and second primary.

 
Wao

[Where was Scott's money coming. from?]

He had great grass roots support. Now Capus Waynick raised a lot of money for
him. He raised it from people who were not natural Scott supporters. Many businesses
and industries hedge. There is one here in town who admittedly let both Democrats
and Republicans have free use of his planes. He said that this was his contribution
to the campaign - love you both. So, Scott got a lot of money through Capus and
from many other friends from groups that did not prefer him but saw a pretty good
chance of his getting elected. He also got a lot of grass root support from the farm
organizations, the Grange, Farmers’ Federation and the diary farmers. He had some pro-
minent people who helped him, Mr. Holding of First Citizens' Bank was one of his big
supporters. This was the only bank that was officially on record for Kerr Scott.
Wachovia and the rest of them, of course, were for Johnson. I had the young people
but not even many of the lawyers, because most of the lawyers were entrenched in pol-
itics, I had a lot of my friends among them. I had various interest groups, but it
takes a lot of those to add up to make a good campaign. We didn't reach the money
sources, and we didn't reach the motivators, the wheelers and dealers of politics.

[That is what I was getting ready to say. . . two or three leading motivators
or manipulators or people of this type who know how to get to the money can make all
the difference in the world in a campaign.]

Absolutely, and you've got to have more than we had. You've got to have the look
of success which is more important than money. Of course, it takes money to have the
look of success, but you've got to look and talk like a winning candidate. We felt
like one that made some great inroads in lots of places. People realized, I think
far better than Fran and I did as we rode around the state, that we were probably go-
ing to be in third place. Therefore, both the Johnson forces and Scott forces could
not have been nicer to us. I thought it was out of love and friendship; but as we

 
S,

were courted in the second primary, I thought that they had political sense to see
that my votes would be important in the second primary.

[Were you the deciding factor for Scott in that runoff?]

Not personally. My voters were by every test you could make of it. I'm not
sure these figures are exactly accurate or these counties,but I carried seven coun-
ties. I was second in twenty-one counties. In nearly every case, but not all, where
I was first or second, Johnson was nearly always the other party and then Scott.
But, in the second primary, unless I'm mistaken about this, all those seven counties
and all those twenty-one other counties were for. Scott. If not, the great bulk of
them did. Nearly all my supporters went for Scott. For various reasons and probably
mistaken reasons and I guess the major reason was that I was too weary and too broke,
we decided that we were going to get in that trailer and get out of it all for about
a month, So we took no part at all in that second primary. I cannot take credit for
Scott's election, although I was very proud of what he did. I was not as enthusiastic
about him at that time as later, but I thought he made an excellent governor.

[Your political philosophy and Scott's political philosophy were more closely
akin than yours would have been with Charles Johnson.]

Yes. In no case could I have supported Charles Johnson aside from personal
factors. On the political differences, no. The difference in my political philoso-
phy and Scott's was that he was, shall we say, a Populist. He was in the Populist
tradition, an agrarian. He was a skillful worker with people and with farm groups.
Mine was more of the theoretical politician, a student of political science.

One of the great contrasts as we all do, we all appeared before the organized
labor groups. They invited the candidates to appear and talk to them, I had labor's
support in that race. This was a big factor, It was a deciding factor in the Sen-
atorial race that year of Broughton over Umstead. The labor vote made the difference,

 
avin

Some of them told me later, that they could not have been for Johnson. They thought
Scott had a better chance of winning than I did. But they felt that while he must
be a great man in the agricultural field, he simply was not fully acquainted at
that time with the problems of labor. When the labor organizations interviewed
them, they had some pretty sharp questions. Incidently, one of the big factors in
getting some support from them was the same George Baldanzi whom I had known overseas
who was sent over by National C I 0. He was here helping the C I O at that time and
helping to get AF of L and Transportation Workers together, There were some very
sharp questions. I understood later, and I don't say this in criticism of Scott at
all, that they felt he simply had not been exposed to anything in politics but agri-
cultural politics. He didn't know anything about workman's compensation, or employ-
ment security, or even with the Department of Labor. His field had been in agricul-
ture and his father's before him. So, he was not an attractive candidate to labor.
I think our political philosophies, while both headed in a certainly more liberal
direction than Charlie Johnson's, were quite different in themselves, if they were
in the same generalized direction.

I had been all my career, up to this point and since then too, a sort of loyal
opposition to the Democratic hierarchy in this state. I felt we had had good govern-
ment but that we had missed most of the opportunities, I thought that it was so
closely controlled that it was not open to the average citizen. Our very low voting
record is one good example of this. This is true of nearly all the southern states.
Our one-party system is good for the controlling party. Fortunately, we have a good
and conscientious party with a remarkably proper and not corrupt record, But, never-
the-less, it was a close held organization that was not fully conscious of the needs
of the people of this state. I'm always trying to preach that and work for it in
the things that I ran for. So, I was undoubtly the most liberal of the candidates,

 
i Sas

This is not only theoretically, but what I would have liked to have seen. My pro-
gram at that time started things which someone could still campaign on today. For
instance, I thought our welfare grants ought to at least be up to the average of
the nation. I thought we ought to do something about our terribly low per capita
income status. I think one of the things that I could preach all over again was
that at least in the things that effect the health and welfare and enlightenment
of the people of the state, our expeditioners for schools and welfare grants and
other things of this kind ought to at least come up to the national average. We
were ranked very far below this. We were fooling ourselves. I also used the 1925
Conservation and Development booklet to show what we were talking about. They pro-
claimed loudly to the world that "North Carolina-the fifth state today." By all
the statistics we had, we were nearer fifth to the bottom, In all the measurements
that you want to take, we were nearer fifth to the bottom. . . i.e. wage, income,

diet, literacy, and almost all of these things. So, anyway, I guess I was sort of

a crusader in that field.
In this campaign, I had the admirable but not very practical idea that a man as
young as I was for a gubernatorial candidate who had been out of the state for a

few years without proper funds and administration backing could change the direction

of the state to a more liberal stance and to a different break in their leadership.

When Scott came in, he and the people who came in with him broke that old tradition
of the one faction control, That broke the mold, and we've had more open elections

ever since then.

[At one time there was some published reports of "dirty politics" at precinct
meetings. At least there was some commentary in the News and Observer that someone
in your campaign whether it was you or your manager made a charge that some unsavory

things were going on at the Democratic precinct meetings or some rigged precinct meet-

ings. Do you recall anything concerning that?]

 
EShe

I don't remember a thing in the world about precinct meetings. It was cer-
tainly true and still is, unfortunately, that a few people had generally controll-
ed the precinct meetings. The main reasons were that they were the only ones that
would go to them, Those that did were usually the "old line” rather than the "new
line" Democrats, I'm sure I kicked about that, but I remember nothing at all about
any "dirty politics" in precincts. The general report, of course, was the misuse
of the absentee ballot which became so notoriously bad that we Democrats abolished
it in the primary and only kept it for the general elections to work on the Re-
publicans. I think I may have said that I thought that was a little unfair. Of
course, we reformed the absentee ballot considerably since then. It was used ter-
ribly in some Western counties and I may have commented on this, but not during
the campaign. There were at least reports, believed to be reliable, that in some
precincts and some areas they would hold out absentee ballots to see just how many
votes they needed to carry on the administration candidate. They would then some-
how bring in enough absentee ballots to swing the tides. There were wide-spread
reports and investigations to some extent whether official or not, after the Hoey-

MacDonald Campaign.

[There was some of this in the Fountain-Ehringhaus campaign in 1932 up in

Lincoln county I know.]

Yes. Usually it has been blamed on the western counties because I guess the

Eastern politician haven't had to as much. They were usually so much in control of

things. This is another interesting characteristic of North Carolina politics, how

the East first was with the majority, but then with an increasing minority of the
total vote, has so controlled the politics of this state, The old planter merchant
tradition of running the town politics and the General Assembly had prevailed for

an awfully long time in the General Assembly. These are fine people but with back-

 
= 39s

ward ideas as far as modern economics and modern government is concerned. Our leg-
islature, which I kicked about too, was run on a factional basis, I don't mean
just between the two major parties, The Republican Party had a pretty rough time.
If a county sent down a Republican representative, his bills were not given the
same attention. That's natural in politics and it would have been the same, I'm
sure, if the shoe had been on the other foot. But, in addition to that, we did
such things occasionally as by law let the General Assembly determine the salaries
and the number of people that could be employed in a county by county and city
government. They could elect who they wanted to up there because it was not a gen-
eral state-wide election, but in those Republican counties the General Assembly
kept control of that. This again is just one of those things that happened. I

don't know anything about any precinct business or such.

[Well, frequently the newspapers run stories. . .]

I think I would be interested in anything that was connected to my campaign.
We had little enough precinct organization,

[Now it was your campaign that was making the charge.]

Well, now that is better!

[It was your campaign that was saying that you were having problems due to
some manipulating in these precinct meetings. ]

Well, I just really don't recall anything about that at all. There is always
some business of tearing down the other man's signs and that sort of thing, but
really I don't recall any of that.

Just to wind-up on this same record, there was one other major attempt any-
way in politics, and this was in 1963 when I ran against Harold Cooley for congress-
man from the North Carolina 4th District. Harold had then been thirty years in Con-

gress as had his predecessor before him. By some strange coincidence, the North

 
Eons

Carolina Fourth Congressional District seat had been changed less than any other
seat in Congress. Edward Pou had held it from about 1900 to 1932. When he died
George Ross Pou, a cousin of his from here, was an interim appointee only and didn't
count. Cooley came in in 1933 and was still holding it at this election in 1963.

During the New Deal he had been a great agriculture leader. He carried out agri-

cultural programs like Congressman Doughton had carried out President Roosevelt's

other programs in here. Since that time though, Cooley had been all involved in
the sugar imports. He had been very bitterly criticized for his actions in that
and in many other matters. I felt strongly that it was time for a replacement and
I ran hard against him. Also, we had reorganized this 4th District bringing John-:
ston County and Davidson County as well as Wake into it. Wake had over 40% of the
population at least for the district. I felt it was a good setup. My friends
said to give him two more years, but I remembered Down East when an aspirant

for that congressional seat waited about thirty-five or forty years for Judge Kerr
giving him two more years. When he finally did retire, Larry Fountain won the seat
instead of the other man that I'm talking about. That and my natural impatience
of youth or what was still my younger years anyway, I decided this was time to run
for Congress. We had an interesting campaign as things go. I found many people
that remembered the trailer in the other campaign, but the congressional campaigns
don't mean as much and they are on a more limited basis. I thought it was a much
better conducted campaign. We had more programs and more issues. I thought I had
a very good chance. I knew some counties I would certainly lose, Nash County of
course was his home county. I figured we would not win Nash although I carried
Nash andEdgecombe by a big vote in the governor's race. I did not think I could
get them again and did not realize how hard it was going to be to take these away

from a native son and a tobacco farmer,

 
be

[That's always a handicap in that area.]

So, we lost that one pretty bad. I did succeed in carrying my home county
of Wake, but I did not carry any other county in this five county district. It
was fairly close in Davidson, and there again there was a tremendous amount of
money spent in the last few weeks in several of these counties - Davidson County
and Wake and others too in particular. Frankly, many of my friends and associates
in Raleigh had been connected with the Cooley campaign for just so many years and
they could not leave him. They were sorry. That was not as significant a campaign.
We never did meet in debates. We had one joint meeting. I was really disappointed
in that one because I felt that this was a more successful and better conducted cam-
paign than the gubernatorial had been, but for many reasons it wasn't.

[Facing an incumbent particularly one who had seniority in the committees and
subcommittees, is such a tremendous handicap.]

I went to the Congressional Records up here in the state library and checked

that out. I didn't check it before I began this campaign but did so later. I think

I should have checked it out before. Imcombents were unseated when they ran again,

but very, very rarely. There wasonly one out of twenty or thirty or about four or

five out of a hundred that were successful in unseating an incumbent. I just didn't

realize it would be that way. You usually have to wait for them to die or something

else.

[Die or retire. ]

Well, we haven't touched on law and we haven't talked about some of the pol-
itical issues that we might want to talk about. I've had a great interest in pol-
itical history in the South, and in particular in political history of North Carolina
as it has developed aside from my own attempted efforts to be in it and being in a

state position for five or six years. I am interested in that field and the changes

that have come about. We might want to talk about the racial issue too.