THE CAMPAIGN: Tough as Boiled Owls

The West Virginia primary campaign highballed into its final week like a Norfolk & Western coal train whistling across a trestle. Both candidates were on the ragged edge of exhaustion. Hubert Humphrey, rolling through the Alleghenies in his Scenicruiser bus, grabbed sleep in fitful catnaps between stops in coal-mining camps and mountaineer hamlets. Jack Kennedy virtually lost his voice, but doggedly kept up the campaign with weary smiles while his aides read his speeches for him.

Kennedy's camp was plunged in gloom: all the portents indicated a Humphrey victory next week. "Things aren't as bad as we say they are," said a weary Kennedy aide. "They're worse." Humphrey fluctuated between doubt and exultation. "You know what?" he told a reporter, only half in jest, "I may win this primary. It scares me to death. Then what will I do? Every favorite son in the country will begin to quiver again. They'll get as tough as boiled owls."

Little Black Bag. With each weary day, the campaign grew more bitter. Humphrey hinted darkly that his opponent was buying West Virginia votes. "I can't afford to run through this state with a little black bag and a checkbook," he cried in Kingwood. And again, at Philippi: "I don't think elections should be bought. Let that sink in deeply." But there was no more evidence of political payola than rumors and hints, and even less that the West Virginia vote could be bought at any price. Said a state official in Logan County: "This county's been bought. But Humphrey will get it anyway."

Humphrey, who cut his political teeth on New Deal oratory in the Depression '30s, sparked like a mountain evangelist to the bleak depression in West Virginia's coal counties. He slashed the Republicans for indifference, flicked Kennedy for his wealth, reminded his listeners that he, too, had been a poor boy. "American politics are far too important to belong to the moneyman." he said on Milton's Main Street. "I want to bring back politics to the people, to Main Street." In Hamlin he rose to a high for hokum: "They say, 'Don't cut foreign aid to Formosa, but don't give one dime to West Virginia.' This is a one-eyed Government: one eye looking overseas and the other eye closed."

"My Father." Kennedy, too, hit the economic theme with a glancing blow at Lyndon Johnson and Stuart Symington, the candidates who have sidestepped primaries, and another at the White House. In East Bank he croaked hoarsely: "I wish every candidate for President could come here and see these conditions. If I am elected, West Virginia will have done it, and I'll do everything I can for the interests of this state."