Cain and Humphrey

Americans for Democratic Action would be a vastly improved organization if it would do two things. The first would be to unfrock the Hon. Hubert Humphrey as its vice chairman. The second would be to give its annual award this spring to the Hon. Harry P. Cain, former U. S. Senator from Washington.

Humphrey continues to offend the sensitive by defending the disgraceful bill he introduced into the Senate last summer which would have saved us from communism by sending every pitiable old woman in the open party to prison for five years as a conspirator. You would think it was something a man would prefer to forget, but Humphrey glories in it.

His conduct is a rather extreme of what has become a habit pattern for most of our liberal paladins. None get better, some get worse, and the best of them earn what credit they deserve by standing still. That is why Harry Cain deserves an award of some sort. Harry Cain has gotten better.

As a Senator, Harry Cain was one of Joe McCarthy’s best friends. When he was foully cut down by the voters of Washington in 1952, Joe wrote a letter to C. E. Wilson suggesting Cain for Assistant Secretary of Defense. Cain finally settled down as a member of the Subversive Activities Control Board.

The other day, the Reporter sent a man around to see Harry Cain in his office. The visit was occasioned by a recent speech in which Cain had warned that our security system was making “cowards and mental robots out of free men and women.” What, the Reporter wanted to know, had happened to Harry Cain?

“Well,” said Cain, “for the first time since I got out of school, I have 50 per cent of my time to think.

“One day a man came in from my state. He was a scientist and a security case. He told me neither one of his Senators nor his Congressman was interested in him. They wouldn’t touch his case with a 10-foot pole … I told him I’d look into it and see what I could do. I’m not a lawyer, but I defended that one.”

The Senators who turned their backs on this man in trouble are named Henry Jackson and Warren Magnuson and they are pillars to the ADA.

This man, Cain went on, “was a scientist working on cancer problems for the government. What could be more important to the country? But someone said he was a Communist organizer back in 1941 … And an old lady of 80 wrote in and said he used to associate with some funny people. Of course, he did; he’s a non-conformist.” When did you last hear the word non-conformist on the lips of Hubert Humphrey? …

Harry Cain hopes the White House will think about these things. If it doesn’t, he says he can quit. I wish he would and I wish he’d try again for the Senate and then Warren Magnuson could spend 50 per cent of his time thinking a little while and be a better man, too.

Okay, so Cain may go bac...