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It came dramatically. In Indianapolis, the reporters following Stevenson were routed out of bed at 3 a.m. and assembled in a makeshift pressroom. They were handed thick envelopes containing a prepared statement by Stevenson and a bulky audit of the Stevenson-for-Governor Committee's 1948 campaign fund. Stevenson was not on hand; there was no press conference at which the reporters could question the candidate. The prepared statement closed with an announcement obviously calculated to take Stevenson off the defensive: both he and Vice-Presidential Nominee John Sparkman were going to make public their income-tax returns for the past ten years. The unspoken implications: Eisenhower and Nixon should be expected to do the same thing.
Stevenson's statement on the fund went back to the beginning of his term as governor. He found that "key officials" in the state government were receiving too little pay. "I adopted the practice of making gifts, usually around Christmas time, to a small number of key executives who were making sacrifices to stay in the state government ... I need not point out that the single object of these gifts was to improve the quality of public administration in Illinois." Total of the gifts: $18,150 (exactly $85 less than the Nixon fund).
Post-Campaign Funds. The audit showed that at least $13,000 of the surplus in the 1948 campaign fund came from postcampaign contributions, made after Stevenson was elected governor. Among these was one anonymous item of $5,000. entered exactly a week after the election. Many businessmen who sell supplies to the state were on the contributors' list, e.g., Stuyvesant Peabody Jr., president of the Peabody Coal Co., whose firm sells thousands of dollars worth of coal to the state. He gave $500.
Biggest single contributor was Marshall Field Jr., publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, which is now supporting Dwight Eisenhower. His specified contribution was $7,100, but a note indicated that he had given more on an "anonymous" basis. Among other contributors: the C.I.O.'s United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers unions, $2,500 each.
Explaining why he had been loth to give names, Adlai Stevenson pointed out that Illinois law does not require any public accounting of political contributions, so those who gave did so in the belief that "their privacy" would be respected. Nearly all states now require some accounting of campaign funds, but Governor Stevenson has never proposed such a law for Illinois.
Eight Intimates. On the list of "key officials" who received the money were eight names, all of men close to Stevenson. His $1,500-a-year publicity man, William I. Flanagan, assigned to build the governor into national prominence, had received almost half of the fund: $7,900. Others on the list: Legal Counsel Carl McGowan, $3,000; Insurance Director Day and Welfare Director Hoehler, $2,000 each; ex-Finance Director Mitchell and State Police Superintendent Thomas J. O'Donnell, $1,000 each; Administrative Assistant Lawrence Irvin, $750; Justice Schaefer, $500.