Oral History Interview with Arthur Y. Lloyd

TS: General AL, I thought we'd start out today perhaps by discussing your early career in government, particularly your service with the Division of Public Assistance. Would you tell us about how you became involved with the Division of Public Assistance and the duties that you performed there?

AL: Well, at the time I was head of the Department of History and Political Science up at Morehead State Teacher's College which is now Morehead State University. And, being interested in government, teaching political science, I naturally kept track of a lot of things, and I took a considerable amount of interest in the gubernatorial election in 1935 because 1:00"Happy" Chandler--A. B. Chandler--was running for governor, and he was born and raised in the next county from where I was, and I'd known him for some time even though he was older than I was. And, as a matter of fact, when I first met him he was going to Transylvania University and I was just a senior in high school. And I was for him and he was elected. He had me convinced that he was sort of a bright young fellow that would ride a white horse and that his opponent Tom Rhea had horns. 2:00I really did. I thought Tom Rhea and “Doc” [Emerson] Beauchamp--both whom later became my friends, particularly “Doc” Beauchamp--I really thought they had horns. I didn't know them, but I thought they had them.

TS: Any particular reason that you can think you came to that conclusion?

AL: Well, because "Happy" was always talking about how crooked they were.

TS: Oh, I see.

AL: As a matter of fact, in practically every speech he made in Kentucky during that campaign he referred to opponent Tom Rhea in this fashion. He said the bank in Russellville, Kentucky, had only been robbed twice; once by Jesse James, and secondly by Tom Rhea. How you can get by with that type of charges during a campaign, I don't know, but that's the way it was in Kentucky at that time.

TS: Liable was not a big threat in those days.

AL: So I was very much in favor of "Happy" because he was young and he appealed to the young people, college group, and so on. And I thought he'd make a great governor. He had opposed a sales tax when he was lieutenant governor and presiding officer 3:00of the Kentucky Senate; and Ruby Laffoon, the governor who had gotten into that position mainly by Tom Rhea's influence, had favored the sales tax. I thought it was a bad tax myself because it was a tax on the necessities of life and applied to people who could pay the least instead of the ones that could pay the best . . . or the most. And about that, I was for "Happy" and supported him. He wasn't too well known up in eastern Kentucky where I was teaching but he got around. And then, too, my friend and an older man and a superb, I thought, statesman--and 4:00he was certainly a very successful politician--Judge W. W. Young was for Chandler. So he got in as governor. We had a double barrel primary that year. Tom Rhea had enough influence and he expected to get in on the basis of Democratic State Convention. And when Ruby Laffoon had to go to Washington as governor to see about getting some money for the highways or some other state purpose, I don't recall now--I think it was highways, though, because the highway commissioner went with him. And while he was gone overnight, Chandler called a special session of the General Assembly for the sole purpose of having a 5:00primary in the event one person didn't get a clear cut majority in the gubernatorial race. Same thing they have in a good many of the Southern states that they call a double barrel primary.

TS: Umhmm. A run-off primary.

AL: So that made a very bitter campaign, and had Ruby Laffoon not gone to Washington, Tom Rhea would have been nominated for governor because he got a majority. He could've gotten . . . he could have easily gotten the convention's vote. But this thing . . . Ruby Laffoon thought he'd offset Chandler's political move by calling for a double barrel primary and having a run-off. It turned out Rhea, of course, didn't pass the thing the way the governor wanted. 6:00And people are very strong for not having a convention anymore. That got to the point where you got a few people in a smoke-filled room, as they say, that's deciding who's going to be governor. So Rhea got the majority but not enough . . . plurality, I should say, but not a complete majority and, therefore, the run-off of the three candidates. The three candidates that got most of the votes was Rhea first, Chandler second, and Fredrick A. Wallace of Paris, Kentucky, was third. And so what happened then, and what usually happens in most Southern states in a situation like that, the third man joined up with the second man to beat the first man. And Wallace supported, with his group of people--and he had a respectable number of voters—Chandler, and Chandler won the run-off. Well, that pleased me and I felt at home after Chandler was made governor. I could go down and talk with him 7:00if I needed some help with the school and that sort of thing. Then he turned up and he wanted me to take a job.

TS: Hmm. Can I interject one moment?

AL: Yes.

TS: Can you tell us any specific duties that you performed in this primary process?

AL: Well, I . . . when he came up to Morehead I took him around and introduced him to a lot of people. But that wasn't nothing unusual. If somebody came up there that I knew and wanted to meet some county officials and people that I knew, why I did it. As a matter of fact, I did the same thing for a fellow known as "Walking Mun" Wilson. 8:00"Walking Mun" came down from Hopkins County, the next county from where I was, and he got his name by . . . he ran against some fairly rich person over in Hopkins County who campaigned with a pair of matched team horses and practically a surry with fringe on top. Great style, and Mun Wilson walked from one place to another, and he said if the good people of that county would elect him, he'd walk all the way to Frankfort to get a seat in the legislature, which he did.

TS: Was he as poor as he claimed to be?

AL: Yes, he really was. He was very poor.

TS: He was a perpetual candidate, as I recall, he ran many times.

AL: Yes, he was. He ran for United States senator and a number of things. But I remember when he was running for lieutenant governor, he came up to Morehead and I introduced him around because he knew me. And while he was making a speech out on the campus there, just getting the crowd together 9:00to make the speech, well, one of the local policemen came up to arrest him for inciting a crowd. Somebody else had sent them up there and I explained to this fellow that he was a bona fide candidate. He had every right to speak anywhere he wanted to. He was speaking out on the street. And they didn't take him to jail on account of me vouching for him. But that was just something I just did as a . . . well, it created more interest among my students.

TS: Umhmm. You seemed to like the underdog at this point in your life, is that true?

AL: How's that?

TS: You liked the underdog in the candidates.

AL: Usually. But I didn't vote for Mun Wilson, but I felt the same duty towards him that I would've felt for any candidate. Incidently, later on after I became Director of Public Assistance--that 10:00probably should come later but, anyway, I'll advance a little and tell you a story about "Walking Mun" Wilson. He was a real character. And I was in my office one day and we were having--this was in the early part of the program--having difficulty in getting sufficient proof of age and other things that were required by the federal government to give them a grant. And somebody came in my office and said, "Did you know ‘Walking Mun’ Wilson's in town and up there on the courthouse square making a speech against you?" And I said, "Why, no. What's he saying?" He said, "Why, he said you're one of the plutocrats and you're making a lot of money off the old people, and he can't even get his old age pension as he calls it. He called you just a regular crook." And I said, "Well, I can't imagine Mun doing that, but maybe he has some advisement on it." I ran into Mun later on in a restaurant, and due to his poverty and so on, he used to go into a restaurant up there and ask for a cup of hot water. And at this restaurant they had . . . of course, that was free. They'd give him a cup of hot water. So then he'd take the tomato sauce, sprinkle that into the hot water, and then the crackers 11:00they had there were free with the soup. Well, he'd fill it up and make a bowl of soup and walk on out without paying anything. But he was a character of that type. Anyway he told me, he said, "I made a speech against you. You haven't got my old age pension yet." I said, "You haven't been able to prove your age yet, either." But he believed in hitting at anybody he thought . . . to make a good story, or to make some point to the people. But I always liked the old codger. He never really did me any harm. 12:00TS: [Chuckle] He added to the colorfulness of Kentucky politics.

AL: Getting back to how I got to be in that job. Governor Chandler wanted . . . he had a highway commissioner in that district at that time by the name of Vernon Kaufman over at Maysville. And I knew Vernon. He was a very bright, fine, young lawyer, and I had worked with him some on these political things. He wanted me to take a job and the governor offered me a job with . . . the director of a new division called "Parole and Probation". Well, that did not appeal to me, particularly. It appealed to me from the standpoint of taking a new law and developing an organization to implement it, but it didn't pay quite as much as I was making up at college, which was low enough. 13:00And I turned that down. So Vernon then went to the governor and told him that they ought to give me a better job and I might take it. So they offered me the director of Public Assistance which paid, not handsomely, but a little bit more than I was making at the time. And so they wanted me to come down to the capital before that went into effect. It was Kentucky's implementation of the Social Security Act of 1935 passed by Congress. And it was supposed to go into effect in Kentucky on July l, 1936. Well, I was obligated to teach summer school, had been since September, and I'd already been elected to another year. Certainly I felt an obligation--I was already in summer school--and I told them I couldn't come 14:00to Frankfort until about August 10, which, I think I recall is when summer school ended. So at that time I went down there. And it was a very interesting time because I've always liked to take something or some department that you start with, or something new, and see if you can organize it. Or take something that has reached about as low a point as it could reach, and reorganize and see if I could improve it.

TS: That's the political scientist in you.

AL: Yeah. So this was something new started. But they had me . . . they felt the urge to get things going as fast as they could. And when I arrived in Frankfort--and summer school was over in August, about the 10th as I recall--I found 15:00I already had two hundred and forty workers. Now there were not enough trained social workers in Kentucky. I don't think there were more than six or eight mastered social workers . . . with a masters degree in that field in the whole state. They were what the federal government preferred to have as social workers to go and meet with the client, prove their qualifications, that sort of thing, and then decide on how much money they needed to give them for an adequate budget. The law in Kentucky was the very . . . one of the lowest in the state . . . I mean, of the all the states.

TS: You mean throughout the federal system?

AL: Our law provided for a maximum of thirty dollars per month, of which the state could furnish fifteen dollars or one half, and the federal government would furnish one half. The limit on the federal government if I recall correctly was only thirty dollars maximum for their part. 16:00The states could add on to that much or any more above that they wanted to. So that meant that we weren't even taking final advantage under Kentucky law as passed of the full federal government contribution we could have gotten. However, this was during the Depression and people could live on much less than they do now. But I found we had two hundred so-called social workers. When I looked into the way they were appointed, the governor had either himself or had 17:00one of his political advisors to call the county chairman that helped him get in, in all the one hundred and twenty counties, and said we're going to need two social workers in your county. Get the best ones you can get. Of course, most of them interpreted it as get the ones who'll do the most for me--that is Chandler. They'd already appointed two. They had two in Jefferson County the largest populus county in the state, two in Pike Co. which has the largest territorial area in the state, and two in Robertson County which is the smallest in population or area. So that didn't make a lot of sense. But they were there so we had to . . . I did have the help of two or three trained social workers. One was Mrs. Margaret Wall who was put in charge of training of the social workers. 18:00She'd been with the Red Cross of the United States. And Mrs. Helen Beauchamp and two or three others, at least, had master's degrees in social work. They were the nucleus I used to train these people. Everybody--the professional people in social work--were very critical of that kind of set up, but we didn't have that many trained people in Kentucky and we couldn't get them from outside the state because our salaries were very small. Bear in mind this was the Depression. The trained ones we paid one hundred and fifty dollars a month. All these others, the two hundred and forty that were not trained, got one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, but they had to furnish their own car and pay their own travel. So it was right tough, 19:00but Governor Chandler insisted on starting the program. Starting in August we had to pay somebody, had to find somebody eligible to get some pay by the end of that month, which increased considerably the difficulty of what we were trying to organize. Because he wanted the old people. He wanted to try to get two from every county. He had until the last of August to get checks. He wanted to give the checks out personally.

TS: Were they roughly equally divided between men and women, or were there far more men?

AL: I don't remember the statistics on it at the time but, roughly, you had actually more women, I think. Certainly the population figures, I'm sure, will show there were more elderly women still living at that time than there were men.

TS: No, I meant the social workers.

AL: Oh, no. They were practically all women, the social workers.

TS: All women, huh?

AL: Well, we had . . . I only remember one that we had who was trained. One man was a trained social worker. Years later he took my place as director, but he's been dead now a good many years. But in the ones in the counties, 20:00we had more women than we did men. Men weren't . . . they didn't care too much about that type of work, and they preferred to get a job with the foreman on the highway gang or something like that.

TS: Which probably paid more.

AL: Probably, yeah. Well, not much more. But we did have some men. And the same was true in office force. We had an office force and we had more women or girls than we did men, but we had some men. Men were on the jobs such as head of the mail section, 21:00and getting the supplies out to workers and all that kind of business. So it turned out we managed to get . . . I don't remember today exactly the number, but we did get a respectful, I'll put it that way, not two from every county, but at least two, three, or four from a great many counties in the state, to come up there. And a field worker--we called our social workers ‘field workers,’ the ones that actually worked out in the field in the county--and they brought them in their automobiles. If you're familiar with Kentucky, we have very hot weather in August. And at the state capitol where the governor wanted to have the big 22:00gathering and a big show about handing out the checks, was going to be in the House chamber of the state capitol. And there was no air-conditioning in the capitol in those days. To make it worse, the House chamber had a big glass dome over it. With a ninety-five or one hundred degree heat beaming down in the dome and down on the people below, why, it was like an oven. We were . . . I know the four of us there were very much concerned that if we brought in a lot of people over sixty-five in there on a hot August afternoon, and the heat was about one hundred and twenty, we were going to have a bunch of people to just pass out and die. It took a little ingenuity. What we done 23:00on that was we managed to get a lot of big wash tubs. In those days these ice companies made ice in big blocks, three-hundred-pound blocks, mostly. We got a bunch of tubs, put them all around in a semi-circle in front of the speaker's stand, and put all our old-age recipients on the front row in the House chamber. We had to bring in a lot of chairs. And we got some great big tall fans the height of a three-hundred-pound block which was set up longways behind those to blow cool air out over the audience, and fortunately nobody died. 24:00And the governor made a great speech, and he was ridiculed by some of the newspapers about it but I'm sure the recipients were right pleased, and they were probably disappointed in the amount of the grant because they all didn't get even thirty dollars. Matter of fact, I think they averaged about fifteen dollars. And . . . but it was a big ceremony except for where the governor was criticized because he . . . here we were, he was handing out checks from as low as seven dollars maybe up to as high as twenty dollars or thirty dollars, and he told them, "Please do not go out and buy whiskey with this or spend it at riotous living."

TS: [Laughs] He used those words?

AL: Those were his exact words. Yeah. 25:00But, anyway, we worked on and gradually . . . we were criticized for the slowness in some places. As I said, we just didn't have trained people to do that kind of work, but we was training them as best we could. But they weren't bad. I found that most of them really were precinct workers. Women who'd helped the campaign manager in the county to do most of the work during the campaign. And I found the real good precinct captains are something in any rural county. They have a deep feeling for people that are in trouble or people who have needs or that sort of thing, and they were very conscientious. They tried to get the 26:00legal aspects of the qualifications worked out so that when the federal government had an audit, we wouldn't lose money on people by them not being eligible. That went on for some time and gradually I found this to be true. Of course, we had another election that fall. Kentucky has an election every year. And while we did not permit our workers to--even though they might have been a precinct worker formerly--we did not permit them to continue that type of work. I was accused somewhat because the word had gotten around and, of course, in that election, why, the people had 27:00. . . the forces of Governor Chandler preferred me in office and the people that was responsible to other factions. So they . . . a lot of highway workers particularly were--I heard--were being assessed on the basis of two percent of their salaries to contribute to the campaign. I did not permit any assessment on our workers because we were in a position of dispersing federal as well as state money. And though I . . . when a worker came to me and told me that he or she wanted to contribute something and asked if I'd take the money, I'd say, "Yes, I'll take it." I'd put it in the . . . give it to the hand of whoever was supposed to be getting it. 28:00That didn't cause any particular trouble. I didn't think anything about it. Matter of fact, some people, when they wanted to contribute that much money, and I didn't think they were financially able to do so on account of a big family or something, I'd say, "Don't contribute that much." I'm sure that didn't please some of the politicians, but that was the way I did it. I really didn't . . . it wasn't until the next senatorial election . . .

TS: '38?

AL: . . . that we really got into a problem on that.

TS: That's the [Alben W.] Barkley-Chandler . . .

AL: Barkley-Chandler race. And, of course, the federal people and all these, they were very careful that they didn't want any people throwing money, half of which came out of government money, working for Chandler and so on. And neither did the state want . . . neither did Chandler want people he had appointed and paid working for Barkley.

TS: As you know, though, it's often been said that most of the state workers 29:00worked for Chandler.

AL: Oh, yeah.

TS: Most of the federal workers worked for Barkley, and that's where both of them found their strengths in that election. Maybe that's the common charge, as far . . .

AL: Oh, yeah, that's true. I was called up one day by someone representing the federal government. I think he was an FBI man wanting me to . . . he put it very plainly. He said, "Your workers are being assessed." I said, "No." He said, "We hear they're being assessed, and I want to talk to you about it. Do you want to meet me or do you want me to send a subpoena?" I said, "I've got nothing to hide and I'll be glad to meet you wherever you want to." Well, he was in Bowling Green and I was in Frankfort, 30:00but I went down to Bowling Green to meet him. And he raised these questions about assessment and I said, "We haven't assessed anybody." He said, "Well, have you told them they ought to give a certain amount of money?" I said, "No. I told them they had a right to give anything they wanted to. And if they want to give a certain percent of their salary or more than that or less than that, we left that up to them." He said, "Didn't you collect most of the money?" I said, "Well, a great deal of it, yes. They brought it to me and I took it." He said, "What'd you do with it?" “Well,” I said, "I put it in a bank first under fund account, and when I got enough 31:00to turn it over to somebody I took it over and turned it over to them." He said, "Well, who'd you turn it over to?" "Well," I said, "I turned it over to Sherman Goodpastor." He said, "Who's Sherman Goodpastor?" "Well," I says, "he's the head of the state insurance department." He said, "Why'd you turn it over to Sherman Goodpastor?" I said, "Well, before I came down here to Frankfort I lived in the next county to Bath County, and he was one of the strong Democrats in Bath County. And if I wanted to give something, I usually just took it over and gave it to him. And so I just followed the same pattern.” He said, "Well, do you mean he was the state treasurer for the campaign?" I said, "No, not as far as I know. He was just one of the department heads and I just turned it over to him." He said, "Well, did you turn over a list?" I said, "No." 32:00He said, "Do you have a list?" I said, "No." Of course I . . . [End of Tape #l, Side #1] [Begin Tape #1, Side #2] TS: I believe we should back track a little bit to the list.

AL: Okay. What do you want me to do, now?

TS: Would you go back and discuss . . .

AL: Well, he asked if I had a list, which I did not have because I didn't want to be in a position to . . . not to have one. And he said, "Well, what do you think--you know all the money that you collected." I said, "I didn't collect it. I didn't solicit it. I took it when they offered." He said, "Well, you know that all that went to Chandler and not any of it was going to Barkley." 33:00I said, "Well, I can't swear to that. I gave it to Sherman Goodpastor. But knowing Sherman, I know that none of it went to the Republicans." That's the way we left it. I never was again questioned about it.

TS: Did you ever discuss it later with Sherman Goodpastor? 34:00AL: Oh, yeah, I think I told him about it. Yeah.

TS: Did he ever say that it all went to Chandler?

AL: Well, I didn't ask him.

TS: [Laughs] Just an understanding. I see. Okay. While we're on this topic, as you know, there are many people that claim that the idea of assessment, particularly the two percent assessment, remained a factor in Kentucky politics, according to many, up until about the early 1960s and about the [Bert T.] Combs administration. Do you . . . is that a fair assessment?

AL: I think that it . . . it's pretty much been handled that way, those that worked. I never did. I never did that when I was employed later on by the Legislative Research Commission. 35:00Of course I . . . even when, after the war when I came back to Kentucky, I was engaged in . . . Earle Clements asked me--he was in Congress and getting ready to run for governor--and he asked me if I would not take my job back for the state, which I could have done under Kentucky law. We had a Republican governor at that time, and while I'm sure I couldn't have gotten my same job back, I don't think he would have given it to me, but he would have given me some job comparable, perhaps, in salary because that was the law. And I didn't care too much about doing that, and Earle 36:00asked me not to. He talked to me and said he was going to run for governor and he wanted me helping him in his campaign. He wanted me to be in a position where I could do so legally, and just not to take the job back under a Republican. So that's what I did.

TS: So you waited it out?

AL: I waited it out and I worked out of Clements' headquarters in Louisville. But I'm sure that at that time a lot of workers that had been appointed by the Republican governor were possibly assessed, or given an opportunity to contribute to the Parkins campaign. And the same was true of people who had relations with the Democratic side. I expect it still goes on.

TS: Do you have any inside comments about the 1938 U.S. senate race? 37:00I mean do you have any particular recollections that perhaps we would not likely find in print or from other discussions with people?

AL: That I would not like to find in print?

TS: No. No. Let me rephrase that. Do you have any anecdotes or inside information about the 1938 race which we would not likely pick up from other sources?

AL: Oh, I see what you meant. Well, there was . . . I'm sure that you had a lot of federal workers who were violating the federal law and doing things for Senator Barkley. And a lot of state people were out working. I would have normally been for Senator Barkley due 38:00to the fact that he had came from western Kentucky and been our congressman and then our senator, and my parents and grandparents had been for him every time he ran. I was not for him in the campaign in which he ran against Chandler. I can give you one comment on the situation that puts a . . . I understood it, but it was kind of amusing because great stress was made about the federal merit system, civil service, and all that sort of thing. We were in a . . . Kentucky was in a regional district of the Federal Social Security Board which included the states of Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. Of course, Kentucky had very few things in common 39:00with Michigan or even Ohio, other than a joint boundary with Ohio. One of the members of the Social Security Board came to see me after this race was over and Barkley was re-elected and back up up in Washington. He came down from the Cleveland office--they put the district social security office in Cleveland itself and, of course, it was halfway in-between Michigan and Kentucky--and he came down to see me and he wanted me to apply for the other vacancy. There was an army brigadier general by the name of Crowell. During that period of the Depression, the army couldn't get enough funds to pay a lot of the people. They put them on detached service many times to fill in other government positions so they wouldn't 40:00. . . the overall cost wouldn't be as great. And Brigadier General Crowell was the executive, or whatever you wanted to call him, up there in the Social Security Board office in Cleveland. I knew him real well. He was a very capable administrator but he was getting ready to retire. So this man from the Cleveland office came down to me and said, "We've talked it over up there in the Cleveland office and we would like for you to apply for the head of that office . . . Social Security Board, Civil Service Commission." And I said, "Why, I haven't got a chance!" He said, "Oh yes, yes. It's a non-competitive examination. You won't have to take the examination. Just take your background and credentials, degrees, and experience, and compile it and come up with a . . . you're 41:00bound to be one of the top three." And I said, "I don't think I can get it in." He said, "Well, you’re bound to because you have Senator Barkley, and he's the strongest man in the Senate." “Well,” I said, "he won't be for me." “Well,” he said, "he's bound to be for you because you're from Kentucky. He wouldn't turn down a Kentuckian in order to get somebody from some other state." I said, "I don't think you know Barkley that well." "Oh," they said, "we want you to do it. We're all for you. You're the only one that has a Ph.D., you're the only one that's been active in the . . . this program to the point where you know it real well, and we think you'll be the top one of the three, but Barkley will have to be for you." I said, "Well, if you all want it that badly, I'll apply," which I did and I never did expect to move to Cleveland, however, because Barkley was the kind of man that didn't remember such things as that. And what made me mad about it though was that, oh, after about three or four weeks I got a letter from social security. Oh, not social security. I mean the Civil Service Commission up in Washington telling me they were very sorry that my record and application had been reviewed and I did not qualify in the top three, which was no surprise to me but a great surprise to the people in the Cleveland office. And they came back down and said, "We don't understand it." I said, "Well, I understand it. It's not necessary for you to understand it." 42:00“Well,” they said, "you ought to do something about it. There's just something wrong up there." “Well,” I said, "okay. What do you want me to do?" “Well,” they said, "you ought to file a protest and ask for another review." I said, "All right, I'll do that," and I did. Meantime, they appointed a man from Ohio as the head of the office up there. And after that had been done I got another reply back from the Civil Service Commission that they'd reviewed my record and qualifications and found I did qualifiy for the job but there was no vacancy at this time.

TS: [Laughs] That's a good way around it. [Laughs] That's a good story.

AL: That's the way you learn about federal politics.

TS: Did Barkley ever say anything to you afterwards about it?

AL: No, and I never said anything to him about it. Because later on when I was up there in Washington with the tobacco people 43:00. . . well, before that I was up there during the war and I dropped by. His top secretary lived in the same apartment building my wife and I did and the same . . . Clements was in the same . . . he and his wife was in the same apartment building. A bunch of Kentuckians were there. We were all friendly and everthing. I didn't dislike Barkley. I liked him. But I never said anything about that. And he was helpful to me when I was . . . on anything else I ever asked him for.

TS: Did you work for any of his other campaigns later on?

AL: Well, I was a delegate to the national convention when Truman was . . .

TS: '48 AL: Yeah, in '48 I was a delegate at large from Kentucky up there and I supported Barkley all down the line to get him to be nominated for president.

TS: Then in '52 did you support him? 44:00AL: Yes, I think so.

TS: He was being run for president.

AL: Yes. But I supported him in the Democratic election up there, but I learned something . . . a lesson there, too. The Kentucky delegation was . . . I think most of the delegation was quite despondent. They just didn't . . . didn't have the fire. They just didn't think that he could win. And Barkley made the keynote speech at that convention, and he had the only--and I mean he made a fiery speech, about an hour and a half--and he roused the only spontaneous 45:00enthusiasm during that entire convention. When his speech was over the delegates got out in the aisles and they whooped it all up and everything for about another hour or so. But I learned this, though; the security at that convention was very great. Of course, Truman wanted to get it, and you had to . . .

TS: But he didn't really want Barkley, did he?

AL: Huh?

TS: But Truman really did not want Barkley, did he?

AL: No. No. But we wanted Barkley [for] president. Truman wanted to be president. But we had . . . the only spontaneous, real celebration was after that speech. But the next day when they were going to nominate Truman up for nomination, security was tight. 46:00If you didn't have your delegate badge you couldn't get in there. And for . . . and, of course, they had all the balconies . . . but they wasn't letting anybody in until suddenly people appeared from everywhere. They were blowing in there by the hundreds. And all those places were given to these people who were supporting Truman. They really turned on.

TS: That was a surprise to you, I gather.

AL: Well, it was a surprise to me to see it done so openly and without regard to any kind of . . . after all, they were all Democrats, supposedly. But you couldn't . . . now, I learned to like Truman, 47:00but he wasn't . . . he didn't inspire that convention very much.

TS: As Barkley had.

AL: Well, of course, we could've elected Barkley if we could've nominated him.

TS: [Laughs] You feel very strong about that, that Barkley could've been elected?

AL: Yeah. Yeah, he could've been elected. And I thought of that campaign somewhat when I remember when Truman came down to Kentucky. We put him in the presidential suite down at the Kentucky Hotel, and some people in power had got some people in there to talk to him. He talked to, I guess, fifty, 48:00seventy-five, or eighty people in that suite, and I was among those invited. And I sat there and heard Truman. He was a nice fellow, but I got . . . I just sat there and thought I believe he's the only person in that room that thought he was going to be elected. We wanted him to be, we just didn't think he had a chance. But he was confident all along. And I learned something from the standpoint of politics . . . practical politics in that election in that I was discouraged but I was working for him trying to do what I could to get him elected. 49:00I think most everybody in the Democratic Party in Kentucky did, and I should have gotten something out of this. I'd drive . . . oh, when . . . as part of my work I drove over the state a lot, and when I'd stop at a gas station I'd probably say something about it, or if I'd see a Truman button on somebody or a Barkley button I'd talk about how the election was. I heard time and time again people say, "Well, I tell you it's pretty tight down here. I'm going to vote for that little fellow Truman. I don't think he's got a chance but I'm going to be for him." And you heard that a lot.

TS: “The little fellow.” AL: Yeah. He had the sympathy of all of them and I think that's how he got elected. And he turned out to be a good president, I thought. 50:00But he certainly didn't have a . . .

TS: The charisma . . .

AL: He wasn't a Jack Kennedy by any means, or a Roosevelt.

TS: We're going to hate ourselves here, but while we're on the 1948 election maybe I might ask you this question. Clements, as I recall, and Ed Prichard both put together an arrangement to get Wilson Wyatt of Louisville to write the nomination speech for Barkley for VP in '48. Do you know anything about that?

AL: Well, 51:00I think . . . I think that that is correct, though I always had the impression that Clements was the one that maneuvered it.

TS: Well, as you know, Wilson Wyatt was one of the three people considered by Truman as a running mate, and Wyatt says, and I believe he says it in his recent book, that he was the first choice among the three. And so to get Wyatt to make that nomination address for Barkley must have been a major feat. And as the story was related to me some years back, if I recall it correctly, Clements and Prichard, along with Wyatt, wrote out the basics 52:00of that address on the back of an old envelope very hastily . . . very shortly before it was given. And as I understand it, it was a very well done address.

AL: Well, it was. I knew nothing about it at the time. So Wyatt has done a number of things that he . . . he's shrewd himself. He wouldn't . . . he'd do things like that, and Clements had a lot of influence on him. As a matter of fact, you remember . . .

TS: In '59 he influenced him very greatly, as I recall, 53:00to put that ticket together, . . .

AL: . . . in '59 he . . .

TS: . . . the Combs-Wyatt ticket.

AL: Yeah. He got Wyatt to take second place then.

TS: Something that many people thought would be impossible.

AL: That's right.

TS: Do you recall anything else about that '48 election? You know, you were in attendance.

AL: Well, I was. I think everybody ought to go to a national convention once. But I will remember till my dying days though--I've forgotten who actually made the nominating speech for Truman--but I remember to my amazement that they had an even bigger demonstration 54:00on the nomination . . . I mean before the voting segment, just the nomination, than they had the preceeding day when Barkley gave the keynote speech. People by the hundreds, they say, from all the balconies and everything poured down the aisles and down front, hollered and whooped. And I stood up and I thought, "Gee, what in the world is happening?" And Barkley gave his keynote speech and here was all this enthusiasm. I stood up in the seat and looked around. There were practically no delegate seats empty. These were all outside people, federal government people, all outside people that were piled in there to . . .

TS: [Laughs] To beef it up, huh?

AL: . . . and, I guess, paid to really whoop it up. They were not delegates.

TS: That's an interesting comment.

AL: But, of course, on TV you couldn't tell the difference. 55:00TS: Sure. Very interesting.

AL: Another thing I'd like to mention, it so happened that our seats of Kentucky were just in front of--they tried to seat the delegates alphabetically--and we were just in front of the seats from Minnesota. Do you remember who was the governor of Minnesota at that time?

TS: That was the farmer, [Robert] LaFollette?

AL: No.

TS: Let's see, Humphrey was the mayor.

AL: Well, that's the fellow. He wasn't governor, you're right. He was mayor.

TS: Minneapolis Mayor Hubert 56:00 Humphrey.

AL: Hubert Humphrey was very anxious to be very prominent in this convention.

TS: Right. Right. I couldn't remember the governor.

AL: Yeah, well, it was Hubert Humphrey and he sat right behind me. And he was always demanding to be recognized by the chair. He was just like a jack-in-the-box. He'd jump up and he'd holler, "Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!" And usually the chairman had a list of people who he could recognize and who he didn't, and he wouldn't recognize him. But, unfortunately, Hubert had a . . . he came in with a morning paper which he always rolled up and he banged down, and he'd keep hitting me on the top of the head. "Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!" This went on quite a while, and the chairman would recognize somebody and he'd sit down, and the next time if he got a chance he jumped again. 57:00And after he did that three or four times--you know, he was a small fellow.

TS: Yeah, and you're pretty big.

AL: Well, I was 6' l" and it got tiresome. My head was getting sore. So I finally got up--and he was seated at that time--and when I got up in my seat and looked back at him--I almost towered over him--and I shouldn't have done this but I said, "You little son-of-a-bitch, you hit me in the head another time and I'm going to knock the hell out of you." And his mouth gaped open and he looked like no one had ever said this before. He said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." But the reason I told you this is because later on when I was adjutant general of Kentucky, we had our . . . I was president of the National Association of Adjutant Generals 58:00and we had our annual meeting . . .

TS: You didn't tell me that last time. You left that point out.

AL: When I was up there for this . . . our annual meeting, the Adjutant Generals Association was being held in Washington, and that was when Hubert was vice-president and wanting to be president. And so our office in Washington got a letter from the vice-president that said if we should decide to want him to talk or to appear before our convention, he'd certainly try to make it possible--which, after all, the vice-president . . . the president is the commander-in-chief of the army and the navy and all the armed forces [and] the vice-president is within a heartbeat of being the commander-in-chief. So there was nothing to do except invite him to make 59:00a big speech there, which we did. And I, as president, had to introduce him.

TS: What year is this?

AL: This was about '66 or '67. I think it was '67. So we invited him over and I hoped he wouldn't recognize me. I made sure that every time he saw me I was in full uniform, so I don't think he ever did. But it would have been embarassing if he had referred to that campaign. But I gave him a good introduction and he made a good speech and everything was fine. Because I'll never forget the look on his face when I said that to him. I shouldn't have done that but, after all, I was tired of being hit in the head.

TS: [Laughs] That's 60:00a good anecdote.

AL: Well, there was a lot of things happened like that. One thing, at the national convention up at Pittsburgh, some delegate that I knew from down in Tennessee--I've forgotten his name now--but he was about my age and I was fairly young back in those days. So he suggested we go out to find where the best nightclub was and go . . . go out to the show and see whatever kind of entertainment they had. So we got a cab and told him we wanted to go to be best nightclub 61:00. . . asked him what the best nightclub was. He said, "Well, the best . . . the most popular nightclub in Pittsburgh is sort of a private affair. It's called a bachelor's club." And so we said, "Well, take us there. He said, "Well, I can take you out there. It's kind of out on the edge of town, a pretty long drive, but I'd be glad to take you there, but I doubt whether you can get in when you get there." Well, we thought, well, fine, anyway, we'll see what we can do. I said, "Well, I've been . . . I was a member of the Bachelor's club in Frankfort, Kentucky." There wasn't, as far as I know, ever any international organization with those clubs. So I . . . we drove out there and they had a kind of speakeasy kind of a door where they looked through and wanted to know whether you got your card and that sort of thing. I told them I didn't have a 62:00. . . I wasn't a member of their club but I was a member of the Bachelor's Club of Frankfort, Kentucky, and I said we always reciprocate whenever your members are down that way. Of course, we didn't even have a clubhouse in Frankfort. And so the fellow that looked through the hole talked to somebody else and they said to come on in. And to my amazement, we went in and the floorshow was being announced and conducted by Charlie Forester, who was mayor of Louisville. So there was a whole bunch of Kentuckians there.

TS: He probably brought along his rebel yell, too.

AL: Oh, yeah. Well, now, where are we?

TS: Okay, well, there was one question that 63:00. . . perhaps it might be appropriate to ask this, now that I was thinking about . . . as you were talking about '48, and that was back in '44, your governor, or prior governor, who you served under wanted very desperately the presidential nomination. And afterwards, A.B. "Happy" Chandler said that he thought that he had, in effect, been robbed of that presidential nomination by the faction within the Democratic Party in that he would have been elected as young as he was in 1944. And, of course, at that time he had been serving in the U.S. Senate. As some detractors would argue that "Happy" Chandler had been hurt by 64:00the [swimming] pool issue and the war materials issue that had come up before the Senate investigation committee which . . . you know, which was headed by, of all people, . . . [End of Tape #1, Side #2] [Begin Tape #2, Side #1] TS: I'd better repeat part of that previous question. In 1944 "Happy" Chandler claimed that he had a very good shot at becoming president, and he thought he would have had it had not some of the people in the Democratic Party, particularly the Kentucky Democratic Party, opposed him. Now, some of the people who detract . . . who are among his detractors believe that he, "Happy" Chandler, had been hurt by the swimming pool charges and the war restricting materials charges relating 65:00to the swimming pool he built in his backyard. But it was an interesting period because Harry Truman in '42 or '43, I believe, had served on the Senate investigation committee which had basically exonerated Happy Chandler of having used war restricted materials in that pool. The 1944 election, of course, was one of the more fascinating elections, and Chandler believed he had a good shot at it. And later on he also, I believe, thought he had a good shot in 1956, as well. But can you fill us in on what you knew about the '44 presidential election? Did you have any role in it? Did you work for Chandler?

AL: I had no . . . no, I had no role in that election. In '44 . . . summer of '44 I was in New Guinea. So I had nothing to do in that election because 66:00I immediately . . . upon Pearl Harbor happening, why, I wired the War Department. In those days it was the War Department instead of the Department of Defense. But I requested that my ineligibility and reduced grade in the reserves be waived and I be ordered back to duty. And I was ordered back to duty by the time I got back to Kentucky. I was down in Florida and I came back to Kentucky and I had orders by the time I arrived here. So then I went on to active duty, and so during the actual election I was over in—at least for most of the campaign--I was over in New Guinea. They brought me back here in July, but outside of just passing by through Kentucky on the way to Washington, I was still on active duty. And so I took no part in that election 67:00at all. I think that to answer your question, I think that when the investigation . . . I knew when the cabin and the swimming pool were built, and I knew the contractor who built it. They'd done business with the state. And it was general knowledge, I think, that they built this pool and cabin at little or no cost to the senator. I wouldn't swear to that because I never heard about it one way or the other, but I'm sure the cost was not commensurate to the . . . "Happy" may have paid him something, but it wasn't commensurate to the value of the materials at that time. That 68:00hurt him. It probably hurt him more by merely the fact that he was investigated by the Truman committee than it did here in Kentucky, because most Kentuckians weren't surprised. What would have hurt him in Kentucky more than anything else was the fact that he resigned from the Senate and later on became baseball commissioner, after the election. Kentuckians didn't like that very well. Of course, important to me is to live long enough till you become a legend.

TS: Well, he did win re-election as the governor after his resigning in 1950, I believe it was.

AL: When you become a legend, people . . . you're related.

TS: Umhmm. You overcome [inaudible]. Umhmm. Moving back a little bit again to fill in a few gaps, can you give us any sketches of other people who served in the first 69:00Chandler administration; people who you knew fairly first-hand, and can you tell us anything about what you thought of their capabilities? As you know, there are many people who believe that the first Chandler administration was among the best, if not the best gubernatorial administration in twentieth century Kentucky government. And you worked, I believe, under Vego Barnes . . . Commissioner Barnes.

AL: Well, no. I knew Vego real well but we were in different departments.

TS: Oh, I'm sorry.

AL: He was . . . in that period of time when Chandler was governor and I was director of public assistance, which was in the Welfare Department, Vego was director of unemployment compensation, and it was a different department.

TS: Okay. I was thinking they were together at that point.

AL: No, 70:00later on he became . . . when we . . . under Clements’ administration, when we . . . and I was, of course, not in the department at all. I was commissioner. Clements first appointed me commissioner of welfare. But he and I agreed on the thing that the Welfare Department had become such a conglomerate, many divisions and so on and needed to be reorganized and refined and so on, and that's what happend. So then he created the Department of Economic Security. But the whole department and the whole Division of Public Assistance was moved into it intact. And Vego was the head of it. And his office still had unemployment compensation and so on. But, 71:00getting back to "Happy", certainly there is no doubt in my mind that his first administration was materially better than his second administration. And I think the reason for it was the people that were his closest advisors. I'm not including myself as one. Vego Barnes might have been. But the man closest to him was Dan Talbott. Dan had been close to him all along during the whole campaign. All the time he had been lieutenant governor, Dan Talbott had been helping him plan and organize and get ready to run for governor. So I think 72:00Dan Talbott is due the credit and he never got it. Chandler, I don't think, was due the credit for making a good governor. As far as I can tell, I've always admired Dan Talbott as being one of the most honest politicians I've known. He had the chance to get lots of money through politics but he died broke. Dan Talbott was . . . I've seen him pound on the desk. "Happy" used to have some . . . occasionally would have the department heads and division heads over for breakfast to talk over things about the way the government was running and political . . . politics and so on. And sometimes I've heard Dan over there. Dan was always there when I was there; I think he was there most of the time. But "Happy" would want to do something 73:00and Dan would say, "Dammit, Happy, you can't do it!" and he'd pound the desk. "That's not quite honest! You're not going to do it!" [By] the second administration Dan Talbott was dead. But he was . . . Dan Talbott was "Happy's" ‘no’ man. You know what I mean. During the first administration, "Happy" would . . . somebody would go around to "Happy's" office and want a job or get something done. He'd say, "Well, fine. You're a friend. Here, take this note and go to Dan Talbott. He'll get it done for you." The guy didn't deserve it in the first place, probably wasn't qualified, and probably hadn't even been for "Happy". And he'd go over to Dan who had a keen 74:00memory. The guy would come in with a note from "Happy" Chandler saying, “Put this fellow on the highway job so-and-so.” I've heard Dan talk to some of them. He'd say, "Why, you son-of-a-bitch, you weren't even for us! You're not going to get a job!" He had to do that so much that when he wanted to run for congressman over in the Fourth District, he had everybody mad at him. He didn't get very far. You can't be a “no” man in politics.

TS: [Chuckle] I recall that.

AL: You can't be a “no” man in politics and get very far elected. But he had some . . . "Happy" had some good people in the administration. I think one of the reasons that 75:00he offered me a job--it's part of a thing he did intentionally, not on my account, but that was during a period of time when Roosevelt was getting a lot of favorable publicity about the “brain trust.” He had a bunch of university professors from Harvard and places up there and gave them jobs. So "Happy" took a leaf out of Roosevelt's book and he got Jim Martin over at the University of Kentucky.

TS: Finance.

AL: Finance. Got John Manning, who was a political science professor over at the university, and put him over in personnel. He pulled me out of Morehead and put me in the Welfare Department. And later on he picked other people who stayed on and . . . like Clyde Reeves, a protege of Martin's and so on. And other people were brought into the thing. 76:00I think by and large . . . this fellow Sherman Goodpastor was--we talked about him earlier--he was a good administrator, sharp, and a real gentleman with it. I mean he was distinguished-looking. He looked like a statesman. He could deal with people and made compromises and that sort of thing. "Happy" had a good many of them like that. I can name many more, I think, but that's why the first administration was more successful.

TS: And so your point is that in the second administration there seems to have been a relative absence of the same caliber of people. Would that be a fair assessment?

AL: Well, and then 77:00he didn't have any of them that were powerful enough to say “no.” And make it stick, I mean. Some of them might advise him not to do something and "Happy" would get mad. He didn't like to take advice.

TS: There wasn't really any single person who could stand up to him as some of the people in the first administration could have and did. That's an interesting point . . . fascinating point. What about Keen Johnson?

AL: Well, Keen Johnson did exactly as he promised to do when he ran for governor. He said, “I'm going to be a frugal governor.” He believed in frugal and honest. He didn't have much glamour. There was many things he didn't know about politics, but 78:00he was . . . he tried and learned. For example, when he first came in as governor, he . . . for a period of time he scheduled all the department heads and so on to come in to the governor's office and talk about problems. If they thought anything was wrong with the department, he wanted to know it. If something happened that shouldn't have happened, he wanted to know it. He wanted to know how . . . what their ideas would be about improving things. And he was sincere. "Happy" was not the kind of person that wanted to hear anything bad. It would make "Happy" awfully mad if you told him something he didn't want to hear. 79:00Earle Clements was the only man that was the opposite of that. Earle, as governor, if you told him some good thing that happened in your department he'd say, "Well, that's fine. I'm glad that's true, but where are we hurting? What's wrong? What do we need to do better?" That was his approach.

TS: That's interesting. I'd never heard, you know, the differences between the two expressed in quite that manner.

AL: Well, to give you an example, up in the old [inaudible] District up there, and this was when . . . the old Eighth District, 80:00back when "Happy" was running for senator and he tried to get everybody involved in working for him and everything and he had a lot of “yes” men around him. He always did. And I remember this real well. They had a big rally for Chandler where he was going to speak up at Morehead. In view of the fact that I knew a lot of people up at Morehead, he told me to be sure and be there. I was there. We had a big crowd. The courthouse was crowded, the judge . . . the courtroom itself couldn't hold them all. They were scattered out even out on the lawn.

TS: Allie Young was there.

AL: No, 81:00Allie Young was dead by then.

TS: He was dead by then?

AL: Yeah. But we even had loudspeakers out so the crowd could hear him out on the courthouse lawn. And there was a lot of enthusiasm and I really didn't see him much; I was in the crowd and I was greeting people and so on. And then I was supposed to be over there at Flemingsburg that night. A fellow name of Pierce Plummer, who's dead now, was highway commissioner of that district. And they put on a whale of a rally over at Flemingsburg, and again the courthouse was filled and the yard was filled and everything was filled. And some one of the--I don't remember who it was right now--but some one of "Happy's" aides told me that the governor wanted to see me right after the speaking up in the jury room off of the courtroom. So after the speaking was over, I went up there and I went in and there was about twenty 82:00or thirty people in there all of them friendly politicians. And "Happy" said--he used to call me doctor--he said, "Doc, I saw you up at Morehead this afternoon but I didn't get a chance to talk to you. That's why I want to talk to you tonight. How much am I going to carry Rowan County by?" That was Morehead's county. I said, "Governor, you want me to tell you the truth?" He said, "Why, hell, yes, I want the truth!" “Well,” I says, "the truth is you're going to lose it." And to my amazement he jumped on his feet and pouted up and said, "You"re against me! You're against me! You wouldn't say that but you're against me!" He said, "You see all that crowd of people? You hear all that cheering?" I said, "Yes, Governor, you have a lot of that. But 83:00most of those people don't vote in Rowan County. They're from all over the mountains up here and work for the highway department." And that's true. And he lost it. But he was just mad as hell at me.

TS: Which raises an interesting question. You had obviously worked for Chandler and you worked for Clements. In the early ‘50s those two forces really bashed heads, bashed them fiercely beginning in late 1950-51 when [Lawrence W.] Wetherby ran for the Senate, I mean for governor, and then there were the senatorial races. And, of course, by '55 when Chandler--'54-'55--when Chandler was re-elected and served again a second administration, there was a lot of bitterness there between the Chandler faction 84:00and the "Clementine-Wetherbine" faction as is often said. How did you find yourself amidst all of the . . .

AL: Well, I was on a different team then. I was on the Clements-Wetherby team. I wasn't for Chandler that time.

TS: I realize that, but . . . but do you . . . how did Chandler take that?

AL: He didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. But out on our farm out there near Midway we had a sort of a recreational log cabin. Clements,when he came in as governor, loved a thing called a “varmint dinner.” 85:00And we used to have . . . we used to . . . Jim Cammack, who was the head of the Court of Appeals, we usually sort of went back and forth. He'd have a varmint dinner over at his house and I'd have a varmint dinner out on the farm at my cabin.

TS: Oh, you had some varmint dinners, too?

AL: Oh, yeah.

TS: I didn't realize that. As we both know, Chandler made some accusations about the varmint dinners. I don't want to steal your fire because of it.

AL: What . . . my friend, Lewis Cox, Pete Sumner, and friend Dick Maloney, and both of them were on my Legislative Research Commission. That was during the period of time when I was president of the Legislative Research Commission. The fellows came by to see me one day over at the Capitol and they said, "We want you to have your varmint dinner." And I said, "Fine, 86:00I'd be glad to. Who do you want to invite?" And they said, "Well, we want to pick very carefully who we invite. We want to invite all the friends we can get who are friends of Chandler’s, but are for Wetherby. And we want you personally to invite Chandler, too." Well, that's what we did. We had a big varmint dinner with, oh, I guess, one hundred and fifty.

TS: You needed a lot of varmints. [Laughs] AL: Yeah, we had a lot of varmints. We had groundhog and ‘coon and rabbit and ducks, squirrels and all kinds of varmints. The idea was that--I wasn't . . . didn't plan the thing, I just cooperated and carried it out--but 87:00their idea was to get a lot of people . . . we knew our side or our team, whatever you want to call it, was going to be for Wetherby. We knew Chandler wanted to run. We wanted to get all of Chandler’s friends we could who were for Wetherby out there. I don't think we . . . I don't think we missed very many. And I don't think we had anybody who was for Chandler over Wetherby, either. So we had the varmint dinner and "Happy" came. And everybody talked and finally we ate. And after we ate we ordinarily didn't have any big speeches or anything, but "Happy" indicated he wanted to say a word. So we got everybody quiet and--I tell you another person we invited wasn't what 88:00you’d call a politician but a friend to both of them, was Earl Ruby of the Courier Journal. And, anyway, "Happy" got up and he did it very graciously. I was sort of amazed. He said . . . stepped to the side and said to Lawrence, said, "Lawrence, I've been thinking strongly about running for governor. I know you're running for governor. And I've been out here and I've found a lot of my old friends . . . I've found all of them are for you. So I'm going to tell you right now, I'm not going to run." So he didn't. He ran the next time.

TS: Umhmm.

AL: Of course, I bet he didn't get anybody that was there that time, either.

TS: So that varmint dinner may have made the difference between him running and . . .

AL: Well, it was calculated to do that.

TS: Was that '50-'5l? 89:00AL: Yeah. It was calculated to do that. But, now ,following up on that, to show you how he is. When he was elected and I was still director of the Legislative Research Commission, and I knew "Happy" wouldn't want me in there, but on the other hand it was not a gubernatorial appointment. The director was appointed by the Legislative Research Commission which was ruled by the leaders, all ex officio at that time, of both the Republican and Democratic leadership in both houses, plus the lieutenant governor. And, of course, this . . . I knew what'd I'd done didn't sit well with 90:00the governor, but he wasn't running. He said he wasn't going to run and so it wasn't a question of me coming out and saying, "Happy, I want to be for you and I can't be,” or something like that. So a few days . . . you know, the governor is inaugurated the first Monday in December, and the legislature of the General Assembly does not meet until January. Harry Davis, who is a strong . . .

TS: He was executive secretary.

AL: . . . supporter of Chandler and later became executive secretary, came by my office to see me. And Harry and I'd known each other for some time, and although I'd had one unfair kind of a bad experience with Harry when . . . during the . . . I think the first year or two I was in the Legislative Research Commission office 91:00during the Clements administration. Harry Davis had been a lobbyist for the distillers and brewers of the state. And when we started out having a pre-session conference of the legislatures, which I thought was a good thing and . . .

TS: Down at Kentucky Dam, as I recall.

AL: Well, we had one down at Kentucky Dam during . . . the first one we did. And Clements thought it was a good thing. We all did because it got all these legislators together and--both Republican and Democrats--and they got to know each other and find they didn't have horns and so on. And they came back and it increased the time necessary . . . reduced the time, I should say, of organization . . . getting the committees and everything organized, leaders and so on, by about ten days.

TS: Which is very important because you'd only meet for sixty days every two years.

AL: So 92:00the second one of those we had--nobody knew much about the first one because we . . . well, the first we didn't have all together. We had the House members in one place and the Senate down at Cumberland Falls. But then next time we decided we ought to bring them all together. We decided it was organized enough that we could do that. So to my surprise we made reservations at the park, at Kentucky Dam, for all the legislators that wanted to come, [and] most of them did. And Harry Davis had set up a whole big nice cabin down there where he was dispersing free booze. All the distillers donated plenty of it. And my commission was very upset about that, and they asked me about it. I said I didn't know he was going to be there, I made no reservation 93:00for him, he made the reservation himself. “Well,” they said, “you'll have to tell him that that can't be done anymore. The next time you see to it that when the LRC goes to a state park, the parks department is notified that there will be no other reservations in there except for those that come from the Legislative Research Commission. Even if they have to have a bunch of vacancies, that's the way it's going to be. So I had to tell Harry that the next time he wasn't going to be able to go. I didn't do it until after the next one came pretty close along. Parks knew about it and he couldn't get a reservation. Of course, he was down there. He did the same thing over at a motel someplace not too far away. But, anyway, he wasn't there at the park. So Harry came to see me 94:00after Chandler's election. And I said, "Well, Harry, I'm glad to see you. How's everything going?" and so on. He said, "Well, I've got . . . I've talked to the governor and he asked me to come see you." I said, "Well, how's he doing? Is he going to be happy he got elected and everything?" He says, "Well, he would like for you to resign as soon as possible. He's going to ask for the resignation of a good many department heads and he particularly wanted you to resign. He doesn't want to have to fire you, doesn't want any trouble, just wants you to resign." “Well,” I said, "now, Harry, I know the governor better than that. That wasn't what he said. I just want you to tell me what he said. He never put it in that term at all about wanting me to resign or anything, or not wanting to fire me 95:00and all that business." And he said, "Well, if you want it that way, he said he wanted you out of this Capitol. He didn't want to be in the same building with you and you had to go before he was inaugurated." “Well,” I said, "you can go back and tell him that he can't fire me, only the Legislative Research Commission can fire me." And I said, "They have offered me a four-year contract, and there are pretty good lawyers on there. They said they could draw up a contract that would stick, and I could draw my pay whether the governor wanted me over here or not for four years." “Well,” Harry says, "he wants you out, no doubt about that." I said, "Well, you tell him I'm sorry he feels that way about it, 96:00but I want you to tell him you told me what he said. Now, I want you to tell him what I said. You tell him that if he doesn't want to serve in the same building with me, you tell him I'm going to be up here on this fourth floor--or was it the third floor? They've got the offices now on the fourth floor--. . . [End of Tape #1, Side #2]] [Begin Tape #2, Side #2] AL: I said, "Harry, you tell him I'm up here on the legislative floor. The governor's floor and executive offices are on the second floor. If he doesn't want to stay in the same building with me, I'm going to be here. I can't be fired even by the commission until legislature convenes the next January." I said, "I'm 97:00not unaware of the power of the governor to--we have an ex officio commission--I'm not unaware of the power of the governor to aide in selecting a speaker, a majority floor leader or a minority floor leader, but he couldn't get a commission named after the session started that could fire me. So, I've been offered a contract which I think would stick. But they might try to fire me but I wouldn't be here. They could get me out of the building. I might still be drawing my salary. So if he doesn't want that to happen, I'm going to be here. They can't fire me until after they start and change the commission." I said, "I'm going to be here and he'll just have to start his governor's office and business over in the mansion because I'm not going to be over there either." Harry said, "Well, he's not going to like that." I said, "I know he's not going to like it, 98:00but that's the way it's going to be." So I shouldn't have done that, I guess, but he shouldn't have done what he told me. As it turned out what I did, I didn't want . . . it would have been stupid of me to have . . . being director of the Legislative Research Commission is hard enough, [or the] director of any department is hard enough when you have the full cooperation of the governor. It would be an untenable position. You couldn't get anything done that you needed the governor's consent on or permission to be in that type of situation. And I wasn't about to take their contract, and I told them the reason why and they agreed with my feelings. I did go to Harry Lee Waterfield who was coming in as 99:00lieutenant governor, and I'd always been friendly with . . . fairly friendly with Harry Lee except when he ran against Clements. And I said "Harry Lee, as lieutenant governor you undoubtedly will be the chairman of the Legislative Research Commission when the first session . . . they meet. And I want to tell you that we have a fine staff here. I don't think I can work with because he doesn't want to work with me, and I'm going to resign. But I'm going to resign only if you'll assure me that you will endeavor to keep our professional personnel." I said, "You can change some clerks, or change some secretaries or something, those are things that they can do. But we have one of the best groups of people--I've been told that by the Council of State Governments 100:00in --that we have the best administration in the country among professionally qualified people. My commission told me to hire anybody that we needed without regard for politics or whether they be from even. And I have some here that can get better jobs in other states right now. But I want you to try to keep them because you need them." And he promised me he would. So I says, "Okay. At the end of the inauguration you get my resignation. Not to the governor, but my resignation to you as chairman of the commission." And I did. You know that when I came back over to four years later that everybody . . . every professional person except two were gone. 101:00Well, as a matter of fact, everyone except one was gone. One of them got back in that had been fired and later became director of it. That was Jim Fleming. But the only one left professionally was our librarian. And you might wonder why she stayed. I tell you she was a neice of Ace Dawson who was the biggest road contractor in the state and always supported "Happy".

TS: Fascinating. Now, can I ask you whether you put the onus for these removals more on Harry Lee Waterfield or on the governor.

AL: Well, the governor suggested 102:00[it], I'm sure, and Waterfield didn't have the nerve to stand up against him. [Bert T.] Combs offered that job to me again when he came in as governor the next time. He said, "There won't be any other applications. You'll have it by the unanimous support of the old commission." I said, "Bert, I don't want it." He said, "Why not? You liked it." I said, "I liked it better than any job I ever have done, but . . .

TS: Is that true?

AL: Well, I enjoyed it. It was something that I was interested in and I wanted to see it done. I just was interested in doing it. But I wouldn't want it there without my staff. Sure I could've. 103:00Bear in mind the session was about ready to start within six weeks after Combs talked to me, see, because right after the election he got hold of me wanting me to come back to that job. I was in . And I was in a terrible position because there were people who didn't have the qualifications of the people who had been fired. And they all got good jobs. They didn't stay in , but they all got good jobs. One of them got a similar kind of job in , another went out to , one to . They got good jobs. But I would've gone in there with the legislature with studies we . . . I'd had nothing to do with and hadn't been prepared by my people and so on, and tried to get a legislative program [that was] helpful. Well, the legislature would've said, "Hell, what's happened to AL? He's 104:00just lost his cookies or something."

TS: I see your point.

AL: If I could have gone in six months . . . even six months, but preferably a year, ahead of the session, I could have done something. And, anyway, I've never felt quite the same about Harry Lee since. But I don't blame him. He didn't quite have the guts to stand up against the governor adamantly.

TS: Interesting point. The hostilities between the two factions greatly increased during the [ W.] Wetherby administration. You were a Wetherby man during this period.

AL: Well, I just . . . I was on a different team.

TS: What do you attribute to this just enormous 105:00increase in hostilities between the two factions in the Democratic Party during that period. I mean, there has always been factionalism, you know, in the moderate Kentucky Democratic Party. There was a lot back there during the time of 's first administration and just prior to it. But by most accounts, the hostilities heated up and the bitterness became much greater in the mid-‘50s during 's second administration. A lot of people, including myself, are just fascinated by that occurrence. Not . . . not to say that we like hostility, but trying to explain, you know, why . . . why did it get out of hand? Now, I once asked Harry Lee Waterfield, I said, "The name calling that went on and the wild charges that went on," I said, 106:00"as lieutenant governor what did you think of that?" And he turned the question back to me and he said "Well, I, as lieutenant governor, never did say those things. The governor said a lot of those things. But if you'll check the newspaper accounts, you'll see that I did not make those wild accusations." And he said he also caught some grief because he would not get into it in as rough a way as the governor was involved at that point. And as we both know the hostilities continued afterwards. I understand even in the 1970s there was still great hostility between Wetherby and , and between the people who followed . . . who, you know, were associated with both. What happened? What happened during that period?

AL: Well, I can't say for sure. 107:00I think it was purely a question of the temperament of the people involved. You can . . . Chandler was the type of person that you could be for in ten elections as long as you do just exactly what he wants you to do. You cross him one time and he'll never forgive you. Now, Clements was not that way. Now, Clements was tough.

TS: But he could be volatile. I mean, I think we've both experienced Clement's temper.

AL: But one of the best examples I know: Henry Ward was opposed to him when he ran for governor. And yet because Henry opposed him, Clements didn't hold it against him. He gave him one of the top jobs . . .

TS: Top jobs in the administration.

AL: . . . in the state, and he did it well. And he was just as loyal to Clements during the Clements 108:00administration as he had been for the other fellow. But was not that way. I think in our discussion on . . .

TS: Would . . . would . . . if I could interject for a second, would this again go back to your point about Dan Talbot, whereby you said Talbot, or you kind of hinted that Talbot kept in line on legislative matters in particular. But perhaps the absence of Talbot in the 1950s on political issues as well, let the factionalism get out of hand.

AL: There was no one that "Happy" believed in or listened to during the second administration like he did Dan Talbot the first administration. I think . . . there's no doubt in my mind about that, I think, in discussing something about . . . in one other tape somewhere, at the time 109:00when I was adjutant general at the National Guard convention in San Francisco I ran into "Happy.” You remember me talking about that? "Happy" was so glad to see me. I thought he was trying to make-up, and I took him out to the ballgame and put him in the press box and had him on TV and everything like that because a cousin of mine was in the public relations business with the teams out there. And then he comes back a week or two later in , and when he sees me coming down the street where he was talking to some of his henchmen there, he turns around so he won't have to speak to me because he didn't want them to know he wasn't mad at me anymore. I was rather tickled at that.

TS: What about Wetherby? 110:00You know, in hindsight and looking back, do you think Wetherby in any particular way exacerbated the tensions? How much of the blame would you put on Wetherby in this? And why is it that even by the time of the 1970s, it would appear to many of us that tensions between Wetherby and remained, whereby the . . . whereas the tensions between, say, Clements and had largely lessened . . . been ameliorated. Is that not true?

AL: Well, I can't answer that except that Wetherby would hold a grudge and so would "Happy". And Clements had the diplomat's 111:00touch most of the time, and he could keep his henchmen and people from fighting all the time and kind of smooth the way along in a very diplomatic manner. That's just the difference in the two men.

TS: But he apparently never did fully smooth Wetherby over in that regard.

AL: Well, no, but there was no need for him to. I don't think Clements would just go out of his way just because he wanted and Wetherby to be friends, to work on it.

TS: I just found it an interesting point because, you know, Wetherby's public image 112:00is one, or was one, of a rather mild mannered person, some rather affable easy-going person. And quite different in some regards, I think, to Clements, who, you know, many people who were both for and against Clements would recognize as a man who could be very, very tolerant, and then who could be volatile in a minute,, and yet who could get over that volatility and startle people both getting into it and getting over it . . . how he got over it. In many ways I think Clement's personality would keep people . . . people aren't prepared for that kind of person.

AL: I would . . . I would agree with that. But Clements 113:00had had a great deal more experience in that type of thing. You look back at his career and I felt like he was probably the best man trained to be governor of by experience that we've ever had. Because he started in from the ground up, [the] national capital, and he knew it all.

TS: I suppose we should backtrack a little bit here and talk about the LRC. As I understand, as I recall from when we talked a few years ago, the legislative council by 1946 114:00had become pretty much a defunct organization. It had been a weak organization previously. It basically . . .

AL: It was basically weak to start with because instead of being a legislative council, it was a governor's validated council. Because when the orginal bill was written during "Happy"'s first administration, you had five members of the senate . . . five members of the senate to be appointed by the lieutenant governor who was the chairman of the senate, and then five members of the house who would be appointed by the speaker of the house, and then five department heads appointed by the governor. So, you know, out of fifteen people, five of them were appointed by the governor, and the governor could control at least two or three of the others appointed by the speaker or the lieutenant governor. It was the governor's council; it wasn't no legislative council. 115:00That's why I wanted to change.

TS: Well, who wrote that original bill, and was that done inadvertently or intentionally?

AL: No, no, I don't think it was. It was written by a right good firm. One of the things that Chandler did in his first administration, he got the Griffin-Hagan & Associates from Chicago to come down and make a study of state government. And, of course, the first legislative council was started in in 1932, if I remember correctly. I think that's correct. And this Griffin-Hagan report was made in '36. And they drafted . . . I mean not physically drafted a bill, but they came up with the recommendations for all the Reorganization . . . or part of the Reorganization Act of 1936. 116:00So they were the ones that brought it that way, but that was the way wanted it.

TS: So you think the original bill was largely set up to give the governor control over . . .

AL: More power, yeah, entirely.

TS: But did not the legislature balk at all over this thing called the legislative council which would be basically a tool of the governor? There was no real discussion of that issue?

AL: Well, there was some talk about it, but the catch in the thing was that it couldn't operate. They didn't have a staff of people, or not politically-minded people. I mean the pure researchers and factual people who come up and say, “Here are the facts on the thing.” We didn't make recommendations when 117:00my people did it. We gave them the facts on each side and what would happen if this or that came along, and what to do it was this way and so on. I had . . . if anything, I impressed on anybody . . . we had a little slogan that appeared on every publication; we had to give the legislature the facts and let them make the opinion.

TS: Whereas the earlier council was largely composed of . . .

AL: The only way they'd get anything was to ask these five department heads to give them the information, and they gave them what the governor wanted.

TS: That must have made Governor [Simeon] Willis, who succeeded Keen Johnson in the early ‘40s, mighty mad when he inherited that animal.

AL: Well, he inherited not only that, but he inherited the majority of Democrats in both houses.

TS: This is the implication. 118:00As I recall, about '46 they very basically pulled the funding out from the old legislative council.

AL: Yeah. Well, we had . . . that's why we didn't even call it a council. It was a council similar to what the . . . I helped draft the bills on it. Clements wanted me to go--this was when I was commissioner of welfare--before the session. He wanted me to go up to to the Council of State Governments and find out where some of the best states were that had some of the best working operations and pattern a bill after that. They suggested that I go to , and , who were comparable states to in many respects, I mean 119:00agriculturally and economically and, not industrially, but pretty much so. And each place I went, to the head of the council and told them what I was doing and I said, "I want to go over your law and you tell me what you like about it and what you don't like about it, and what you'd do if you did it over again." And from that we drafted the bill.

TS: But you did this pretty much on your own?

AL: Well, I paid my own expenses. I wasn't . . .

TS: But, I mean, this was not a . . . you did not have a large group with you doing this?

AL: Oh, no. I did this myself.

TS: Basically on your own.

AL: Yeah. John Manning was some help to me because he knew one or two of these people and got in touch with them. Did I ever tell you about my experience 120:00when I first went to council?

TS: I don't think so.

AL: Well, I went up to council, and not being on a state expense account I paid my own way. But I was wanting to go anyway. I had a bull I was sending up to the National Livestock Exhibition. While I was there I called out to the council and told them that--I had been at the first meeting of the council way back there when they had reorganized from the American Legislatures Association into the Council of State Governments back in '34, so I knew who to call--and I called out there and I said, "I want to talk to whatever staff member you have that knows the most about legislative council." And they said, 121:00"That's our Mr. Wilson, Herb Wilson." I said, "Well, make me an appointment with him." They said, "Well, he's not in town today, but he'll be back tomorrow." “Well,” I said, "Ask him if he won't meet me for lunch. I want to talk to him about legislative councils." Well, Herb can tell you this better than I can, but he was flabbergasted because I couldn't tell him exactly . . . I told him . . . he'd never met me before and I'd never met him before. He said, “Well, what is your position into accounts?" I said, "I'm a farmer." "Well, what brings you to ?" I said, "I'm up here showing a bull at a livestock exhibition." He said, "Well, why are you interested?" I said, "Well, we're going to have a new governor coming in here in another month and he's been in the state senate down there and unhappy with some things. And he's been up to Washington 122:00and he's saying that the legislatures up there have more staff people and got more facts about things, and we want a fact finding agency who will be impartial,” and so on. He said, "Well, what are you going to have to do with it.? Are your going to run for senate or something, or the house?" I said, "No, that doesn't have anything to do with it at all. I'm just trying to get some facts together and help draft a bill so it can be passed." He said, "Well”--he still laughs about it everytime he sees me--he asked me, "Can you get it passed?" I said, "If I can get one good bill, I can get it passed." He said, "What assurance do you have?" I said, "Well, you'll just have to believe me." So he believed me well enough that he wasted a lot of time . . .

TS: [Laughs] This guy with this bull [is] going to run the legislature!

AL: He wasted a lot of time. At least he had enough confidence in me [that] he wasted a lot of time telling 123:00me things.

TS: [Laughs] That's a good story.

AL: He's told that to a lot of people up there in .

TS: So was the law basically . . . let me rephrase that. Was the law based more on the statute than on and the other.

AL: I don't think so, necessarily. Of course, there's some essentials. Giles helped start the first one in . And we picked up some ideas from all three of them. 124:00I guess I got more help out of because Giles had been the head of it longer than the two people from the other places. He just had more experience on it. I really got more help out of the Council of State Governments than the people up there because there were forty-eight of them in on it.

TS: So how many states at this point had a legislative research commission-type set up?

AL: Oh, I think about, maybe, thirty, thirty-one, something like that. There were a lot of different 125:00combinations over the country. I wanted to try to remove it as far as I could from the internal politics of the state capitol. In fact, I wanted to put it over at the , not as part of the university, but on the campus.

TS: I remember several years ago you mentioning that to me.

AL: Where we would have the facilities [such as the] library and consultants and that sort of thing, but . . .

TS: You had the research tools there . . .

AL: Yeah.

TS: . . . which you don't have in .

AL: But of all the people who should have been for it Dr. [Avery] Vandenbosch, the head of the Political Science Department, he advised President [Herman] Donovan not to do it because, "You'll have politicians running in and out of the campus all the time."

TS: [Laughs] As if that's never happened since. 126:00That's cute. Cute comment. [Long pause] Well, can you tell us some more about the functioning of the LRC as it developed at that early . . .

AL: Well, it's changed so tremendously [that] you wouldn't even know it at the present time.

TS: Well, under the original bill also, wasn't the governor, if I recollect correctly, the ex officio chairman?

AL: Yeah, and I'll tell you why. I had two real good constitutional lawyers on my commission, Lewis Cox and Dick Maloney. They both agreed when we were working on a bill that the only way that you could make it legal to pay a per diem to members of the commission when the legislature 127:00was out of the session and during the period of adjournment, was to have it tied into the executive branch. I still think that's true, though they changed that later.

TS: I was about to ask you that.

AL: If anybody was to challenge it in court, I'd be willing to bet they'd be knocked down now. But we had to have some means by which you could pay. What we did was pay the same for them--in those days it didn't cost anything much because it was only fifteen dollars per day to the legislators when they attended one of these official meetings as they would when they was in session. And we had to tie it in with the executive branch so, therefore, it made the governor the ex officio chairman. Or he could appoint the lieutenant governor. And every one of them did. Clements did it the first day he was chairman.

TS: I recall.

AL: But I think that would still hold up in 128:00a good court. Because when the legislative General Assembly adjourned, it was adjourned. The only way it could do any function then would be . . . [End of Tape #2, Side #2] [End of Interview]