Student Politicos Knee-Deep in Work As Hot Election Race Draws to Close

One day early in September, two members of the Young Republican Club walked into a Boston office building and collided head on with a member of the Liberal Union. After an awkward exchange of pleasantries, the political rivalries discovered they were both in the building to call for Registration literature at their printers. The Republicans' printer was on the fifth floor, the HLU's on the sixth. Both parties picked up their bundles and walked away, muttering about "a small world."

This parallel activity with opposite purpose has marked Republican and Democratic political groups at the College all fall. Canvassing, poll-watching, literature hawking and button-holing have been the stocks in trade of both sides. Even their memberships are nearly equal--the HYRC's 400 almost cancelling out the Young Democrats' 150 and Liberal Union's 275.

The closeness of this year's Presidential, race has fanned their activity to an intensity unmatched in recent years. The worst of political action, door-to-door canvassing, has been brightened by new group techniques. The HYRC canvassing core, led by Nathaniel Bond '56, Warren Dillon '56, Robert Roger '55 and Gerry Wolff '54, teamed up with lady Republicans from neighboring colleges. Converging on one town each night, they plugged Eisenhower-Nixon in pairs in what they called "Operation Sweeping Victory." Weekend dates and even some full blown romances have come out of this coeducational canvassing.

More Democrats

Despite their smaller membership and factional squabbles, the Young Democrats managed to turn out more canvassers than the HYRC--almost fifteen a night. Besides polling Cambridge citizens on their Presidential choice, the Democrats have huckstered a "Stevenson Comic Book". Canvassing interest in the HLU started slowly, but zoomed after the story got around that one Boston lady locked an HLU canvasser in her room and tried to seduce him.

Shunning house-to-house politicking, some have appealled to the voters from the street corner. Holding down the biggest job, and perhaps the hardest working politician in the College, is Roger A. Moore '53, HYRC vice-president. Since the end of June, Moore has spoken nightly from Boston street corners on behalf of the state Republican ticket. He orates from the back of a truck, festooned with a replica of the State House. In his four months of forays into every ethnic neighborhood in the Bosto narea, Moore has used almost all the tricks of the politicians' trade. Here is his technique:

Internationalist

Parking on a likely corner, the truck blares forth recorded music on its system--Irish jigs or Italian tarentella, depending on the neighborhood. As soon as a crowd forms, Moore begins to orate for the Republican ticket. First he softens the crowd up with references to their homeland. (You've got to be careful not to say the wrong thing," Moore says. "For instance, you don't praise Jan Masaryk in front of a Slovak group--the Slovaks hate the Czech's guts.") Then relates the near and dear to his subject ("Garibaldi was a Republican, too.") Often Moore flavors his speech with some phrases in the native tongue.

Since there are four first-generation Americans on the Republican ticket, Moore has found his ethnic appeals popular. He drew his biggest crowd, and got his biggest thrill, when he introduced (in Italian) Sen. Richard Nixon to a crowd of 12,000 in East Boston.

Civil Liberties

A more national appeal was the Liberal Union's trump card in the fight for civil liberties. Although three professors wrote and signed the 1952 Civil Liberties Appeal, it was an HLU project from there on. In a two-week office work orgy, Liberal Union members and their friends prepared 20,000 letters for mailing.

Over seven hundred of these have come back to the home of Prof. Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. one of the signers, with over $10,000 enclosed. Not all the replies have been favorable and munificent, however. One of the first said "I have always known you and all your family have been Communists." Another warned "you Harvard--and--and Communists to stay out of politics. If we had 96 McCarthys is the Senate, we would be better off."

Little Bitterness

Despite the abundance of partisan activity, there has been little of the bitterness and public name-calling between the groups that marked previous elections. Two years ago, the HYRC ran as ad in the CRIMSON attacking the HLU as "political charlatans" for its "fakery and moral bankruptcy" in challenging Republican gubernatorial nominee Arthur W. Coolidge '06 to debate Gov. Dever via sound truck in Harvard Square. The HLU retorted in kind.

But this year things are tamer. There was a brief exchange over civil rights, and a challenge on McCarthyism, but none of the violent personal attacks of the past.