U.S. At War: Mister Speaker

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There is a chance, however, that Sam Rayburn may be asked to desert his love, as has many another strong Speaker before him. Polk was the only Speaker who advanced to the Presidency, but Clay, Elaine, Reed, Champ Clark, Jack Garner and others had Presidential or Vice Presidential ambitions. It so happens that by 1944 the South's Sam Rayburn, a solid, middle-of-the-roader, a man who can placate Congress, may be just the kind of running mate Franklin Roosevelt desires. In that case, Term IV may be Sam's first —in a different job.

Deep in the Heart. When Sam Rayburn made the decision that molded his life he was a barefoot boy chopping cotton on his father's 40-acre farm, near Bonham, Tex. As befits a U.S. politician, Sam was born in a log cabin, the eighth of eleven children. His father had fought in the Civil War, settled in Tennessee, moved to Texas when Sam was five.

Sam soaked up Texas history (Bonham was named for a heroic messenger of the Alamo); he also followed contemporary politics. His hero, and the hero of many another Texan at the turn of the century, was Joseph Weldon Bailey, a towering, rugged character, a mighty orator, a political reformer who rose to be Democratic leader in Congress, then graduated to the Senate. Sam Rayburn likes to recall the day when, as a ten-year-old boy, he got permission to saddle up his father's mare and ride twelve miles to town to peep breathlessly through a flap in the Fairgrounds tent while Joe Bailey held an audience spellbound.

The Rayburns were Hard-Shell Baptists, and poor as the dirt they worked in. Father Rayburn told his eight sons again & again: "Character is all I have to give you. Be a man." But when Sam finally left the farm for college, Father Rayburn, solemnly shaking hands with him at the station, pressed $25 into his hand. That was the total cash capital of the Rayburns.

At East Texas State Teachers College Sam swept dormitory floors and rang the college bell. He taught school until he could run for the State Legislature, a job he coveted because it would pay him $5 a day and give him a chance to study law at Texas University. After two terms in the Legislature, he was Speaker of the House: before he had finished his law course, he had won a seat in Congress.

The Rancher at Home. Thousands know Sam Rayburn of Washington, the shy, hardworking, orderly minded man who has a kind word for the lowliest of Capitol employes. Very few know Sam Rayburn, the rancher, the Squire of Bonham, the North Texas cattleman.

In Fannin County, the Rayburns are known as "black-dirt folk," the flattering description of the more opulent farmers and cattlemen who own the county's best rich, deep black soil. They stand apart from the folk on the "grey-dirt" farms, where only a thin layer of slate-covered loam hides the limestone.

The Reyburn home in Bonham is a big white house with twelve rooms, four 20-ft. white columns in front, four sleeping porches, 14 rocking chairs and almost as many couches, and a Brobdingnagian butane gas stove in the kitchen. The farm has 150 acres; there are 208 more acres on a neighboring farm, and 917 on the Rayburn cattle ranch 13 miles away. Sam's brothers, Tom and Jim, run the farm and ranch; his sister Lucinda, known to all as Miss Lou, is the mistress of the house.