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He rolled into Ohio's small towns, smiling a little self-consciously, climbed out of his car, dodged the highway traffic, threw back his shoulders and launched into what newsmen had dubbed The Speech. He could time The Speech for anywhere from 18 to 50 minutes, depending on the size and estimated temper of his audiences. Sometimes a few score, sometimes a hundred-odd men, women & children stood staring and listening. The horns of a public-address system, mounted on a sedan, lifted the Senator's flat Ohio voice above the din of Ohio's Main Streets.
"It Matters Most." "My opponent is a captive candidate of the C.I.O.," he charged. "The top brass of the labor movement is trying to take over the Democratic Party . . . Do you want people outside the state telling you how to vote? The Administration wants a rubber-stamp Congress. If it gets one, we will have nationalization of medicine and every other welfare service ... I say the Brannan Plan is a fraud. They promise high prices for the farmer and low prices for the consumer, but they don't tell what would happen in between. It would cost the taxpayer about $5 billion a year. And who are the taxpayers? They are the same farmers and consumers . . ."
Ohio's business—farm trucks, oil trucks, family sedans—buzzed by. In the town of Nevada (pop. 1,000), a mile-long Pennsylvania freight train supplied a thunderous overtone. In tiny Wharton, a siren shrieked and a fire truck rattled past the speaker, slowing down to let four of Taft's 40 listeners jump on. "Maybe it's just a Democratic plot," said Taft dryly, and went on talking. Nothing stopped him, nothing could stop him short of a bolt of lightning.
He shook hands genially, despite a cracked little finger which he kept in a splint. He winced a little in embarrassment when an occasional hearty Republican tried to clap him on the back. No toast-mistress called Robert Taft "my little pal."
But high-school bands tootled along his way. Teen-agers gathered and giggled and asked for his autograph. Taft scribbled his name, although—"Autographs take longer than shaking hands," he told his aides disapprovingly. He left no corner unexplored. In a grey business suit with thin, greying hair plastered across his bald spot, he strode into school gymnasiums, eyed his audiences impersonally through spectacles, and gave fidgety small fry The Speech complete with facts & figures. He told them with punctilious grammar: "No one can tell your parents for whom they shall vote. It matters most that they vote for whom they please. But urge them to vote."
(From other reaches of Ohio, Ferguson rasped: "I say these tactics should be stopped because I say we are sending our children to school to learn their lessons and not to listen to a lot of claptrap from some cheap politician.")
"Volume in Detail." His basic campaign tactic, Taft explained to his aides, was "volume in detail." He was trying to reach those people—the great majority, he figured—who would not turn out for a political mass meeting, but would listen to a candidate if he came to them. If he kindled no prairie fires, he at least engendered some sober interest.