Jim Farley Gets to Work

The Democratic Party's James A. Farley, greatest living political tourist, first-named his way up & down the Midwest last week. He turned up in Denver "on business," dropped by Omaha on a "chance visit en route," just happened to hit St. Louis to talk to "old political and personal friends."

These elaborate tongue-in-cheek explanations showed that Jim Farley, who likes straight talk when circumstances permit, was not yet ready to tip his hand for 1944. But they did not obscure the fundamental fact: the fight against a Fourth Term for Franklin Roosevelt, inside the Democratic Party itself, had begun in earnest.

Jim Farley, whose 1940 break with the President is now final and irretrievable, was not riding trains out of love for travel or banquet chicken. In Omaha he conferred with practically every important Nebraska Democrat; at a political dinner he got in a sharp dig at appointment of Republicans to war agency jobs (a sore spot with many a Democratic veteran). In St. Louis he talked to ex-Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann and sidekick Robert Hannegan, whose local machine used to be one of the slickest in the party.

Everywhere he preached his interpretation of the recent election results: "It is quite evident that the American people got a little bit tired of being pushed around. . . . The American people can always be depended upon to do the right thing in the long run and ultimately to use good judgment even if they get off the track at times. Gradually the lunatic fringe is eliminated and mistakes corrected."

To the New Deal's political woes (TIME, Nov. 30), Jim Farley's sudden preoccupation with railroad timetables added a ton of new weight. No other Democrat understood so well the hard, patient job of building political fences, brick by brick, name by name, promise by promise. In 1932 and again in 1936, Franklin Roosevelt had learned what it meant to have a faithful Big Jim as advance agent. Now a determined Big Jim was advance agent for the other side.

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