Big Jim Takes Over

James Henderson Duff, governor of Pennsylvania, is a strapping redhead with the comfortable girth of an archbishop and the piercing eyes of an evangelist. Last week, full of evangelical hellfire, Big Jim proclaimed himself the prophet of a new kind of Pennsylvania Republicanism.

The proclamation was delivered where it would do the most good, at the annual meeting of the archconservative Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association in Philadelphia. Ostensibly, Big Jim's theme was inflation. The best cure for it, he told the PMAsters, is a price rollback. No matter how unpleasant this medicine might be, "industry ought to set the example by taking the first dose." After all, said Big Jim, with record earnings industry can well afford the risk.

The manufacturers chomped nervously on their cigars. This was not the kind of advice they were accustomed to hearing from anyone, let alone a Republican governor. But Big Jim was only warming up. Hopping mad about the latest goings-on in steel, he cried: "For one of our greatest corporations and one of our most powerful labor unions to take action, however separate, which has the effect of acting in concert to further raise prices, shows a shocking disregard for public opinion and the national welfare."

Oil & Poetry. PMAsters, many a steelman among them, gasped. When they had helped elect Jim Duff governor in 1946, they had no reason to expect that he would be anything but "regular." Before he got to Harrisburg, the only public office he had ever held was the solicitorship of his native Carnegie, a Pittsburgh suburb. Besides practicing law, he wildcatted for oil with moderate success. On the side, he liked to read Elizabethan poetry.

Big Jim was 59 when he was given his first important party job: running Ed Martin's 1942 campaign for the governorship. When Martin won, Duff was rewarded with the post of state attorney general. When Martin decided to run for the U.S. Senate, party bigwigs considered four other men for the governorship before they finally settled on Big Jim.

Big Jim campaigned with an effectiveness that surprised even his closest friends. Like many a candidate before him, he promised to clean up polluted streams and provide decent facilities for the state's mentally ill. But as soon as Big Jim took his oath, he began to do something about these promises. He asked the legislature for $140 million to spend on conservation and public health. To raise the money, he suggested increasing cigarette taxes, imposing a new tax on soft drinks and reinstating a tax on capital stocks.

No Free Seats. Manufacturers, led by the P.M.A., screamed like wounded banshees. P.M.A.'s founder, rock-ribbed old "Uncle Joe" Grundy, sent a handyman to have words with Big Jim. Ordinarily, Republican governors do as Uncle Joe says. But Big Jim, after hearing the Grundy man out, took his feet off his desk, stood up and roared: "If you think I'm going to give you a free seat in the grandstand at the same time [that] I'm raising the price of the bleacher seats, you're crazy." The tax bills passed.

Big Jim was for Ike Eisenhower for President until Ike removed himself from the race. Now he is pledged to no one, except that he is committed to back Favorite Son Ed Martin on the first ballot. But the word has gone out that neither Taft nor Dewey will get his support. He thinks each of them has "one foot in the 19th Century." If he favors anybody, it is probably Arthur Vandenberg.

At the G.O.P. convention, Big Jim would have behind him the votes of most of Pennsylvania's 73 delegates. With the help of State Chairman Taylor, he had adroitly wrested control, of party machinery away from Ed Martin and the P.M.A.'s old guard. Big Jim had become a man to reckon with at Philadelphia--possibly the most important man.

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