Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields

3. A POLITICAL CAREER BEGINS

chapter 3 z A POLITICAL CAREER BEGINS I n the postwar United States, consumer buying was at an unparalleled high. The country had a ready supply of money, and, after the stark years of the war, people had a new desire to spend it. The first electronic digital computer, the forerunner of today’s computers, was dedicated at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It contained eighteen thousand vacuum tubes, occupied a 30-foot-by-60-foot room, and weighed some thirty tons. It took 150,000 watts of power to run, had more than 500,000 soldered connections, and had taken 200,000 man hours to build. Television had been demonstrated at the 1939 World’s Fair, but the war intervened and it was not commercially available until around 1946-47. Six thousand TVs were produced in 1946 and 179,000 were produced in 1947. There were only 31,611,000 telephones in the country in 1946. The predominant employer in the United States was involved in manufacturing, with agriculture being number two; and the U.S. population was around 140 million. The U.S. budget for 1947 was $34.5 billion (a far cry from the trillion-and-ahalf -dollar budgets of the mid-1990s). On December 14, 1946, the UN accepted a gift of $8.5 million from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., for the purchase of property along New York City’s East River to house the permanent United Nations headquarters. 42 chapter 3 Having become interested in politics, I ran for a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates. It was 1946, while I was still employed at the Carolina Supermarket. Few people would have bet that I would win, but I did win and got the highest vote among the thirteen primary candidates in Raleigh County. I worked hard, and took my violin (fiddle) everywhere I went as I campaigned. Of that campaign and the election returns, Beckley newspaperman Roy Lee Harmon, himself a candidate for the House of Delegates in that election, stated in his column: “That fellow [Byrd] went faster than the tempo of ‘Turkey in the Straw’ at a Saturday night hoedown.” Harmon had been named poet laureate of West Virginia. William H. File, Jr., also a candidate for the House of Delegates, recently home from the navy, was the city attorney of Beckley. File and Harmon, in that order, received the next highest numbers of votes following me, and were both elected. I had won the nomination, but the general election was still ahead. My interest in poetry, and its use in politics, manifested itself in the general election. In one of my newspaper ads, I ran the poem, “Wanted,” by Josiah Gilbert Holland. God give us men! A time like this demands strong minds, Great hearts, true faith, and ready hands. Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not lie. Men who can stand before a demagogue And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking! Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking. For while the rabble, with their thumbworn creeds, Their large professions and their little deeds,— Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps! God give us men! Men who serve not for selfish booty; But real men, courageous, who flinch not at duty. Men of dependable character; a political career begins 43 Men of sterling worth; Then wrongs will be redressed, And right will rule the earth. God Give us Men! One of my campaign newspaper advertisements was characteristic of the substance of my campaign speeches: “America needs men who possess qualities and strength of character which will give them calmness and poise in prosperity, and courage and vision in adversity; men who are guided not only by patriotism of the tribe but also by morality and religious faith which belong alone to the individuals; men who are guided not by political expediency but by their interest in the welfare of the people; men upon whose integrity hangs no price tag.” In that Republican political year of 1946, when President Harry Truman was taking his political lumps and the GOP swept Congress, Beckley could boast of being the home...