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Administration and labor strategy was to save their final barrage for the last week before the election. The biggest gun in their artillery, Vice President Barkley, would be rolled into position in Canton and Cincinnati at the end of this week.
Honking Approval. But Taft, noting these things out of the corner of his eye, stuck to a campaign which was as orderly as Ferguson's was haphazard.
He was not through yet. He still had to shake up a lot of farmers, who, like the farmers in Illinois, were doing well and felt no great urge to go out and vote against the Fair Deal. There were those who would stay at home because they did not like either candidate. Taft would get some of the labor vote, but the anti-Taft sentiment was not confined to labor groups. A foreman in the engineering section at Wright Field expressed the feelings of some ordinary voters: "Taft is for big business." A painting contractor in Cleveland expressed a kind of vague, personal prejudice: "I don't like the way he talks. He's too egotistical."
He continued to talk. Ohioans had to take him as he was or leave him if they didn't like him. His idea of serving them as a Senator was not to cater to them for the sake of their votes, but to try to convince them of the wisdom of his own position. He hoped, after they saw him and listened to him, they would believe in him.
By last week, he had not left much political ground uncovered, or much of the state of Ohio. He had even spoken in the full glare of the headlights of 40 automobiles, whose drivers stayed on to listen to him after the show at the Dent Drive-in Theater. At points to be applauded his listeners flicked their lights or touched their horns. At the end Taft was startled by prolonged honking, which the chairman assured him was meant to be applause.
He had been in every one of Ohio's 88 counties. Counting last fall's campaign, he had visited 325 factories, delivered The Speech 762 times, made 136 radio talks and 13 television appearances, attended 129 receptions and 145 meetings with Republicans.
At week's end, he got into his blue Plymouth and drove home to Cincinnati to rest his voice and nurse his tongue, which he had bitten chewing on a piece of beefsteak. His ailing wife, Martha, awaited him. Her active participation in this campaign was sorely missed. Martha Taft's intimate manner and witty tongue, which had given her cool, impersonal husband a kind of reflected warmth, had helped him mightily in the past. He had phoned her every night to report his progress.
What could Mr. Republican report? Two weeks before the election, Joe Ferguson was claiming that he would beat Taft by 250,000 votes. Ohio political reporters guessed: Taft by 50,000 to 100,000. Mr. Republican had made no exact calculation, at least in public. He merely said in his flat voice: "I'm going to win. Don't worry about that."