MICHIGAN: The Professor's New Course

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Thrusting out of the Midwest into four of the five Great Lakes, Michigan is a self-contained empire. Imperially big, rich and varied, it is the land where Hiawatha played, where the French voyageurs sailed even before the Plymouth colony was founded, where conservative Germans settled on the smiling farmlands of the fertile south, and the Scandinavian Paul Bunyans came to cut the timber and mine the ore of the rugged north. It was here that Henry Ford, messiah of the machine, swung the U.S. mass-production revolution on his assembly lines and broke the bonds of the workingman's poverty by instituting the $5 eight-hour day.

Today Michigan's proud boast is that it can make anything. It manufactures more cars, corn flakes and chloromycetin than any other state, commonwealth or country. Dynamic Detroit may have less charm than any other great U.S. city—but it has more factories. It is the symbol to the world of U.S. industrial genius.

Back-Seat Help. In Election Year 1960 Michigan is something more. It has been governed for an unbroken dozen years by a statehouse administration dominated by organized labor. The influence of labor—on the tax structure, welfare laws, political appointments—is more conspicuous in Michigan than in any other state. Six times in succession a labor-liberal machine has elected Democratic Governor Gerhard Mennen Williams, and "Soapy" Williams, with the unashamed back-seat help of United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther, has steered the phaeton of state down a left lane.

In a year when 27 races for the State House all over the U.S. show a glittering entry of hardy challengers, the outstanding challenger of them all is the Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan, a polio-crippled professor of speech from Michigan State University, Paul Douglas Bagwell, 47. To succeed retiring Soapy Williams, the Democrats have selected blond, boyish John Swainson, 35, Michigan's lieutenant governor, who is the handpicked choice of the U.A.W. The candidates are attractive, the issues are sharp, and Michigan's election shapes up as 1960's hottest state race.

"All the Fat Cats." National campaign patterns are reversed in Michigan: Republican Bagwell is attacking the incumbent administration, Democrat Swainson is defending it. Bagwell charges that Soapy Williams' high-taxing and labor-leaning administration has scared off employers, swelled Michigan's unemployment (current rate: 6.3%). Asks Bagwell: "Does anyone believe that re-election of a Democratic state administration, with its uncompromising attitude and continual emphasis on political war between labor and industry, can get the 100,000 jobs a year that our people need?" Democrat Swainson sounds not unlike Republican Richard Nixon as he defends the record of the state administration: "Under Governor Williams' brilliant leadership, we have been developing a winning team and publicly supported programs. This would be a poor time to change the script."