Newspaper Articles

Logan County today becomes the center of the state's presidential primary election campaign fight and will be in the limelight on at least two other occasions this month.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. was scheduled to arrive here at 2 p.m. today and will deliver the keynote address at a political gathering at 7:30 p.m. at Logan Memorial Fieldhouse.

Roosevelt currently is stumping West Virginia on behalf of Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination and running in the West Virginia primary against Sen. Huber Humphrey of Minnesota.

Sen. Humphrey is scheduled to make a personal appearance in his own behalf at 8 a.m. Monday when he will deliver a breakfast talk at the bus terminal auditorium. Sen. Humphrey will be the first presidential candidate ever to appear.

Sen. Kennedy also is scheduled to make a personal appearance in Logan. His campaign tour of West Virginia calls for a stop in Logan on Saturday, April 30.

Today's celebration in honor of Roosevelt's visit is expected to be the biggest of the campaign. The late president's son was to take part in a parade at 2 p.m. today and attend a dinner in his honor before presenting his talk at the fieldhouse.

Arrangements for the visits by Roosevelt and Sen. Kennedy were made by the Logan County Kennedy for President Club headed by co-chairmen Alex DeFobio and Claude Ellis.

Sen. Humphrey's visit was arranged by the Logan County Humphrey for President Club headed by chairman Tom Childers.

Humphrey and Kennedy are the only candidates in the state's Democratic presidential primary May 10. The two senators met in the Wisconsin primary last Tuesday. Kennedy won that one by more than 100,000 votes.

Humphrey made most of his stops in the state's southern coal mining counties, areas plagued by unemployment, closed mines, and ghost towns.

"I think it is scandalous," Humphrey said in a speech from the courthouse steps in Fayetteville, "that this administration can turn its back on unemployment in West Virginia.

"There isn't one thing being done by the administration to alleviate human suffering," he continued.

By Herb Little

HINTON (AP) - Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn), rested after a man-killing schedule the first day, carried his campaign deeper into southern West Virginia today.

Traveling by chartered bus, he had appearances scheduled in this railroad center and in Princeton. Then he was to head back north to Madison, where he will speak at a Democratic dinner tonight.

In this less thickly settled section, where it's a long way between towns, there was no repetition of yesterday's schedule of stops every two or three miles.

The two-day weekend swing in the southern part of the state is Humphrey's first serious campaigning for the May 10 primary election in West Virginia.

In a test of their popularity as contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Humphrey and Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass) will oppose each other as they did in the Wisconsin primary last Tuesday. Humphrey was the loser there, although his showing was better than many had expected.

West Virginia's primary, unlike Wisconsin's, will not bind any delegates to the Democratic convention in Los Angeles. Kennedy will arrive in the state Monday to begin campaigning.

Humphrey spent last night in Beckley, last of 16 stops on his first-day schedule.

After only two hours of sleep, he set out from Charleston at 7 a.m. yesterday. Sixteen hours later, and seemingly still fresh, he would [sic] up shaking hands all around at a Bar Mitzvah (Jewish confirmation) in Beckley last night.

Speaking to a rally crowd of about 800 earlier in the evening in the Memorial Auditorium at Beckley, Humphrey sailed into what he called the "Eisenhower-Nixon-Benson administration."

He said it "never rises to opportunities. It just lies down on them and falls asleep."

Humphrey said that Vice President Nixon, almost certain to be the Republican presidential nominee, up to now has "been spending his time at sporting events rather than debating the issues and defending the administration's record."

Before an audience that applauded and cheered often, Humphrey attacked President Eisenhower and his administration for:

(1) Veto of an area redevelopment bill which Humphrey said would have helped economically distressed sections such as the southern West Virginia coal mining area.

(2) Veto of the coal research and development bill, of which Humphrey was a co-sponsor along with West Virginia Senators Jennings Randolph and Robert C. Byrd. This measure, said Humphrey, was aimed at "West Virginia's No. 1 problem."

(3) Failure of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson to implement a good [sic] - stamp program for the needy which was provided for in a bill passed last year. Humphrey called failure to put it into effect a "lying down veto."

There were variations on the theme of shorter Humphrey speeches earlier in the day, which he made standing in the back of a pickup truck at Montgomery, on the courthouse steps at Fayetteville and on the sidewalks of the main streets of Oak Hill and Mount Hope.

At most of his other stops in towns along the Kanawha River and unemployment-blighted mining communities on Cabin Creek, he didn't make speeches but shook hands and chatted with small groups wherever he found them.