The Campaign

I. Senator From Massachusetts

The scuffle for election as U.S. Senator from the Commonwealth this year is a friendly one, devoid of low blows and rabbit punches. Neither Senator Leverett Saltonstall nor the challenger, John I. Fitzgerald, have called each other a spade, and whispers are currently inaudible. The two nominees are old friends, having served together in the State Legislature. Their sons served together overseas in World War II.

But if the 1948 show is a gentlemanly one, it will probably be a strongly Republican one as well. Saltonstall slaughtered Corcoran in 1944, and apparently neither the miraculous vote-pulling ability of the Senator nor the national Republican tempest have abated.

Saltonstall will campaign on his four-year Senate record, which followed that of most internationalist Republicans in the Senate. He voted against last December's bill to authorize Presidential price controls; and against slum clearance and public housing provisions of the housing bill. He voted for the Taft Hartley law and to override the President's vote of the tax reduction bill. He supported an amendment to the rent control bill which authorized a voluntary 15 per cent increase.

On these national issues he will be directly opposed by Fitzgerald, who has been endorsed by the C.I.O. and the A.F.L. Fitzgerald, a former President of the Boston City Council and former acting mayor of Boston, is trying to pull Boston back into the Democratic column. He is campaigning for large federal education bill providing free lunches, medical aid, and transportation for sectarian schools; Saltonstall opposed this provision. In their foreign policy the two men are fairly close. Both support full appropriations for the Marshall Plan, and both favor putting teeth in the United Nations. Fitzgerald makes two specific proposals for the U.N. One would require only a four-out-of-five vote of the Security Council's permanent members in order to settle key questions. Second, Fitzgerald wants the U.N. to get itself a strong military force to back up decisions. As Fitzgerald's campaign manager, John I. Fitzgerald Jr., puts it, "My father believes you can keep world peace the same way the police keep the peace in Boston--by force."