DEMOCRATS: All Aboard

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Outfitted in blue jeans, brown canvas shoes—and sometimes a white buttondown shirt with the collar left unbuttoned—the Squire of Libertyville puttered around his twelve-room house and 71-acre farm last week, getting ready for the campaign's call to alarms. Adlai Ewing Stevenson, as the Democratic presidential nominee, had work to do, but his chores as a top news figure were ordained by a flock of newshawks. He was photographed clipping rosebushes, climbing fences, chasing sheep, petting dogs, pulling corn, bringing in the mail, hauling groceries.

Five-Minute Spots. Between photo sessions, Nominee Stevenson got some important work done. He watched the Republican Convention on TV, frequently jotting down notes and statements which he handed to Press Aide Roger Tubby. There were endless conferences with his staff on both organizational and political matters. Result: Master Strategist Jim Finnegan (TIME, Aug. 27) was named campaign manager for both Adlai and Running Mate Estes Kefauver; onetime (1946) Housing Expediter Wilson Wyatt, who headed Stevenson's 1952 campaign, became "personal adviser" and "Coordinator of the Campaign Division"; Washington Attorney George Ball was designated "Coordinator of Public Relations"; Clayton Fritchey, longtime newsman (Cleveland Press, New Orleans Item), took leave from his job as deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee to become press secretary; and Roger Tubby moved over as "personal assistant," working under Fritchey.

These details taken care of, Stevenson filmed some of the 80-odd five-minute TV spot announcements that will hit the air waves in the weeks ahead, began working out plans for making six national TV addresses, announced that he would kick off his campaign with a big play for the labor vote: * a Labor Day speech, under the wing of United Auto Workers' President Walter Reuther, in Detroit's Cadillac Square.

Regional Readings. Came the weekend, and so, too, came Estes Kefauver, fresh from a triumphant homecoming in Madisonville, Tenn. (where he expressed his homespun concern that "bigness is encroaching on Main Street"). The Keef's arrival in Libertyville prompted a new decree by Jim Finnegan: henceforth, Estes will be welded to Adlai with a hyphen, thereby assuring the proper identity of the Stevenson-Kefauver "team." This week teammates and staff climbed aboard a chartered DC-7, headed out on a week-long trip. Purpose: 1) to take regional readings from politicos in the Southwest, Northwest, Middle West and the South; 2) to establish better the identity of the hyphenated pair.