The Daily Record

CHICAGO, (UP)--Democratic leaders crossed their fingers today and scheduled a short national convention with an open door for organized Labor but no welcome sign is yet visible for conservatives.

Speaker Sam Rayburn was the only top-drawer Southerner assigned a major spot so far in convention proceedings. Rayburn will be permanent chairman.

Convention speakers uniformly were chosen from the East, West and North. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt will be the star of visiting orators.

Two places on the 21-member preliminary drafting committee, which will rough out the 1952 Democratic platform, were assigned to the CIO and the AFL. The CIO was represented by Joseph A. Beirne, president of the Communications Workers of America. The AFL representative was President W. H. Lee of the Chicago federation of labor.

The South's most significant representative on this preliminary committee which began work today was Rep. Brooks Hays, Arkansas, who took the lead in Congress toward a civil rights plank compromise which would hold the Negro and other minority votes in the North without inciting Southerners to bolt.

TRUMAN SPECIFICATIONS

Seventeen of the 21 drafting committee members were from the East, North or West, a tipoff that National Chairman Frank E. McKinney was organizing this convention to President Truman's specifications.

Mr. Truman holds that the party's 1952 presidential nominee must run on the Truman administration record. An administration-controlled convention is being set up here to make it stick. That means the Truman forces are out to stop Sen. Richard B. Russell, Georgia.

Mr. Truman does not care much for Sen. Estes Kefauver, Tennessee, either. There was pre-convention speculation that strategists would make one more effort to persuade Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson, Illinois, to head the 1952 party ticket. Failing that, Mr. Truman might help boost either Averell Harriman or Vice President Alben W. Barkley.

KEFAUVER LEADING

With the opening session scheduled for 11:30 a.m. (CDT), July 21, the standing of top candidates for delegate votes was: Kefauver, 267; Russell, 117 1/2; Harriman, 113 1/2; Stevenson, 51 1/2; Sen. Robert S. Kerr, Oklahoma, 43 1/2; Barkley, 26 1/2. None was even close to

the 616 minimum necessary to nominate.

McKinney scheduled nominating speeches for July 23 and the first presidential ballot for July 24 in a four-day convention if two or three ballots would suffice. But deadlock and multiple balloting were more likely than an early, easy choice.

The Republicans put on an angry show here last week. The Democrats may equal or better it when they come to grips with the issue which sharply divides the party in the South from its affiliates elsewhere in the country. That issue is civil rights and it comes before the convention in two forms.