Nation: WALLACE'S ARMY: THE COALITION OF FRUSTRATION

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they read in the nation's newspapers or magazines. Though he is usually amiable with newsmen in private, Wallace nurtures this general distrust by deriding reporters and editors as "sissy-britches intellectual morons." When he does come up against the "pointy heads," it is almost always the man from Clio, Ala., who triumphs over the products of Cambridge, Berkeley or New Haven. Usually more adroit than his questioners, Wallace either evades tough questions or answers them with a half-truth about his record in Alabama. Few outside the state know enough to dispute him. A sample: "My wife received 87% of the Negro votes in Selma in the general election." Mrs. Wallace did indeed receive that percentage of Negro votes in the general election, but her Republican opponent was also a racist and many Negroes were running for local offices on the Democratic ticket. She had received virtually none in the more important primary, when Negroes had a choice.

Surefire Footage

When confronted with hecklers, many of them college students or teachers, Wallace can be masterful. Though he sometimes loses his temper, most often he orchestrates the shouts of the protesters with chants from his own audience, working both groups up to a fever that occasionally erupts in violence, making surefire footage for the evening TV news shows. "They on our payroll," he cracks about the hecklers.

"When I get through speaking," he will tell them, "you can come up here and I'll autograph your sandals." Or: "There must be a barbers' strike around here." If nothing else works, he can usually provoke an angry reaction with the remark: "Now, let's talk about race." However it is started—and provocation is not often necessary—there is almost always a commotion, often ending in fistfights or clashes with the police. His point is made. Since the beginning of this month, Wallace's language has become increasingly blunt; and his audiences, ever more ferocious, have responded in kind. In Pittsburgh this month, white youths in the crowd confronted black demonstrators with screams of "Who needs niggers? Who needs niggers?"

Hecklers may realize that they are helping him, even as Wallace claims, but this does not deter them. "You have to show that there are people against him," is the reasoning some give, or "Nixon has already won." More and more, they shout four-letter words or make obscene gestures. Their signs, at least, are original, ranging from CHICKEN LITTLE WAS RIGHT to SIEG HEIL, Y'ALL and WEIRDOS FOR WALLACE.

In a real sense, Wallace has been practicing for this campaign all his life. The grandson of a country doctor, he had readymade constituents. Many of the men in Harbour County who carry the first name Wallace were delivered by Dr. Wallace, a well-remembered, rigidly pious man who rode a horse every day until he died in 1948 at the age of 80. George was always closer to his grandfather than to his father, George ("Sag") Wallace, a sickly, angry man who tried his hand—without any success—at farming. Sag was more successful at courthouse politics—he was once chairman of the county board of revenue—and young George can at least credit him with his own vocation.

When Sag died in 1937, George's mother, Mozelle