The Pittsburgh Press (January 23, 1944)
Allies within 16 miles of Rome; trap threatens 15 Nazi divisions
Yanks, British in surprise attack seize beachhead near Eternal City
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
…
Roosevelt sets up board to rescue victims of Nazis
Hull, Morgenthau and Stimson told to act for ‘persecuted minorities of Europe’
…
In hotel slaying –
Lie detector may be used on daughter
Will of diplomat’s wife will be opened in Chicago Monday
…
Union blasts two men –
Suspended ‘fast workers’ rapped as ‘stool pigeons’
But Ford official charges UAW is using contract as ‘whip’ to ‘slow down’ production
…
Chicago chosen for convention –
Democratic leaders back fourth term for Roosevelt
Approve resolution asking President to continue as ‘our great humanitarian leader’
By Arthur F. Degreve, United Press staff writer
Washington – (Jan. 22)
The Democratic National Committee, in a thinly-veiled appeal to President Roosevelt to seek a fourth term, today unanimously approved a resolution calling on him to continue as “our great world humanitarian leader” and declaring his liberalism “must be imprinted in the peace.”
The resolution, the last of 12 approved without dissent, said:
We pledge full and unflinching confidence in President Roosevelt’s leadership at home and abroad.
The action came after Robert E. Hannegan of St. Louis, a 40-year-old lawyer-politician, had been named national party chairman as successor to Postmaster General Frank C. Walker, who resigned to devote his entire time to his federal post.
Coincident with his election, the White House announced Mr. Hannegan’s resignation as Commissioner of Internal Revenue. In accepting Mr. Hannegan’s resignation, Mr. Roosevelt avoided all mention of politics, but said Mr. Hannegan had “my continued good wishes and confidence.”
The committee chose Chicago as the site of the forthcoming national convention – when, if the delegates’ wishes are followed, Mr. Roosevelt apparently will be named the party’s standard-bearer for the fourth time – but left to Mr. Hannegan’s discretion the time. The Republican National Convention will be held in Chicago beginning June 26, and the Democratic meeting is expected to be late in July.
Show of sentiment
The first show of delegate sentiment on a fourth term came early in the meeting when James P. Aylward, Missouri national committeeman, recommended Mr. Hannegan as Mr. Walker’s successor.
He began:
When the history of the next campaign is written and we win another presidential election with President Roosevelt for a fourth term–
He was interrupted by cheering delegates.
In accepting the post, Mr. Hannegan described himself as a “plain, everyday, 100%, straight organization Democrat.” He said he was “frightened up here – this is the big league for me and I’m used to the bush leagues out in the Ozarks.”
To avoid party feuds
Mr. Hannegan made it plain that he would remain aloof from party feuds. He paid tribute to James A. Farley, former national chairman who managed the first two Roosevelt campaigns and then broke with his political partner over a third term, and said he would seek advice from him.
At the same time, however, he emphasized he would also consult with Mr. Walker and with Edward J. Flynn of New York, who succeeded Mr. Farley to the chairmanship.
Mr. Walker left the chairmanship expressing confidence in a Democratic victory and warning that the nation must elect a President and a Congress in November who “will fearlessly lead America to victory in war and to victory in peace…”
Green reports resolution
The resolution soliciting the President to “continue as our great world humanitarian leader” was reported by a committee headed by Senator Theodore F. Green (D-RI), a strong administration supporter and fourth-term proponent. On the group were also other fourth-term supporters as Mayor Edward J. Kelly of Chicago.
The Democratic chieftains will leave for home as much in doubt about the President’s fourth-term plans as they were when they came here. Mr. Roosevelt gave them no hint of his intentions at a tea given in their honor at the White House Friday.
There was general agreement that the party could not win in 1944 unless the President headed the ticket. But one committeeman described the feeling of his colleagues toward a fourth term as one of acquiescence rather than appeal.
Wants two-thirds rule
Former Governor E. D. Rivers of Georgia protested against the view “that this party will go by the boards with the passage of time and unavailability of the President.”
He said:
We know that any two men nominated and backed by the sincere support of the party, including Mr. Roosevelt and Jim Farley.
He precipitated a brief skirmish by proposing that the party readopt the two-thirds rule under which it nominated presidential and vice presidential candidates until 1936. The delegates tabled Mr. Rivers’ proposal.
Anti-New Dealers out to stop Roosevelt
Omaha, Nebraska (UP) – (Jan. 22)
Anti-administration Democrats will open a drive Feb. 4 at Chicago against a fourth term for President Roosevelt, Robert O’Brien of Des Moines, president of Tabor College, said today.
The drive will be spearheaded by a speech of former Secretary of War Harry Woodring of Kansas before the Chicago Executives Club, Mr. O’Brien said.
Mr. O’Brien, former Iowa Secretary of State, added:
Mr. Woodring’s speech will be the initial move of anti-administration Democrats to prevent the President from running for a fourth term. We must eliminate from the Democratic Party all terms of New Dealism.
Mr. O’Brien said he expected attendance from all parts of the country at the Chicago meeting.
Poll: Soldier bonus finding wide public favor
People ready to meet higher taxes for substantial service payments
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
…
Ickes’ ex-aide will face jury in letter quiz
‘Central figure’ telegraphs that he will appear Monday morning
…
Centralized plan may foil thefts of gas coupons
OPA’s new system calls for day-and-night guard; latest setup will have little effect on auto owners
By Ned Brooks, Scripps-Howard staff writer
…
In Washington –
Stimson opposes soldier-vote bill offered in House
Regular state ballots would cut space for servicemen’s mail and hurt morale, War Secretary says
Washington (UP) –
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson feels the soldier-vote bill approved by the House Elections Committee would “interfere with the prosecution of the war” because distribution of regular ballots to servicemen overseas would cut into space available for mail and thus lower morale.
A letter from Mr. Stimson expressing these views was made public by Committee Chairman Eugene Worley (D-TX), who is leading a fight for House approval of federal ballot legislation instead of the so-called states’-rights bill approved by his committee.
The tangled and controversial issue is scheduled for House consideration next week. It also may come up in the Senate, which last month rejected a bill providing for federal control over balloting by servicemen and women and passed a measure urging the states to make special provisions for absentee voting by members of the Armed Forces.
House, Senate bills similar
The bill brought out by the House Elections Committee is similar to that passed by the Senate. But the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee in the meantime was sent to the Senate a “compromise” bill which would call for creation of a war ballot commission which would supervise distribution of special federal ballots, collect them and then turn them over to the states.
This compromise may be called up for Senate consideration Monday. Thus, the hotly-debated issue was headed for a showdown and final decision.
Mr. Stimson’s letter to Mr. Worley took issue particularly with a clause of the House committee’s bill which would give transportation priority – over all other communication, official and unofficial, except those whose delay would interfere with the war effort – to state ballots and election material.
Amendment planned
Mr. Worley said he would offer on the floor of the House an amendment to follow out Mr. Stimson’s suggestion that a “simply, uniform” federal ballot be adopted. He said it would not replace he regular state ballot in all cases, but would be used only when it was impossible to transport the bulky state ballots with sufficient speed.
Meanwhile, CIO president Philip Murray wrote letters to all members of Congress urging them “to provide federal machinery for placing ballots in the hands of every qualified soldier and sailor and for guaranteeing that his vote when cast will be counted in accordance with the law of the land.”
He said the bill passed by the Senate was a “grievous affront to the nation’s fighting forces.”
New Democratic leader –
Hurd: Hannegan has habit of getting things done
Left flourishing law practice to enter federal service
By Carlos F. Hurd, St. Louis Post-Dispatch staff writer
St. Louis, Missouri – (Jan. 22)
When black-haired, square-jawed Bob Hannegan takes over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, some visitors to Washington headquarters are likely to ask how Hollywood came to overlook him.
Had he taken a scree test instead of the bar exams, Joel McCrea and Gary Cooper might have had competition for some of their best roles, and the 21st Ward precinct organization in St. Louis might have had to get along with a less dynamic leadership.
As it was, the boys in his ward, and the friends whom he made at City Hall, gave him a lively short term and a later, longer and less disturbed term in the St. Louis city chairmanship. There he learned to add and balance the items of urban voting strength in somewhat the way that he will have to figure the electoral trends of New York, Indiana and California next summer when, three years after conducting a losing municipal campaign, he will direct his party in a crucial contest for the Presidency of the United States.
Financial loss
Mr. Hannegan, now in Washington a little more than three months as Commissioner of Internal Revenue, is 40. Lawyers who know the extent of his practice say he took not only the $6,500-a-year job of Collector for the Eastern Missouri District, but also the $10,000 Washington job, at a financial sacrifice, and might have decided, after making good in the Washington post, to resign and return to St. Louis.
Now, however, as National Committee chairman, he is on the path that leads, in the event of party victory this year, to the President’s Cabinet, as Postmaster General, an office which has been combined with the committee chairmanship under presidents both Democratic and Republican.
Washington reports that Mr. Hannegan, since his appointment as commissioner, has been working like a beaver. He has bachelor quarters at the swank Shoreham Hotel, his family having remained in St. Louis.
Holds pep meetings
Weekends he has made train or air trips to hold pep meetings of regional collectors. Mr. Hannegan reads all papers and documents requiring his signature and has taught his immediate subordinates to do the same. This was after he found an order signed by seven sub-executives and was unable to get an outline of it from some of them.
The social swirl does not interest him, and though he finds himself in some convivial groups, he has not abandoned the no-liquor, no-tobacco rule which he adopted in St. Louis several years ago. While others lament the scarcity of their favorite beverages, he takes ginger ale.
Golf is his recreation; he plays frequently with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who cites an age handicap of 29 years as a sufficient reason why Mr. Hannegan beats him.
Politicians say Hannegan tends to regard political maters in a professional and impersonal light, just as he would look at a law case; that he seldom permits himself to be drawn into heated political arguments, and will grin and walk away when others become unduly excited.
Helps his workers
Up to a year and a half ago, when he took the St. Louis collectorship, Mr. Hannegan knew about as much of its problems of accounting as any lawyer might learn from handling estates in Probate Court. He found the office bookkeeping being supervised by two men, past middle age, who were doing capably and were not complaining although they had received no adequate pay increase in a period when the work of the office had multiplied.
He got handsome pay raises for the two elderly men and kept them at their former work, with increased authority. For others, as their competency was shown, he obtained increases and promotions, he made an able clerk a department head.
By the time income-tax returns were due, at the beginning of 1943, he streamlined the procedure considerably.
Goes to Washington
About the time he was ready to plan new methods for handling the 1944 taxpayers’ rush, Mr. Hannegan was called to Washington. The administration had decided that the important national office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue, about to become vacant, should be filled from the ranks of the district collectors. Four names were considered, and Mr. Hannegan, backed by Missouri’s two Senators, was selected.
In the brief time since his appointment and confirmation in the first week of October, Mr. Hannegan extended throughout the country his rules for courtesy in forms of correspondence with taxpayers and took up a pressing problem outside income tax matters – a drive on the black market in liquor.
Mr. Hannegan is the son of Police Capt. John P. Hannegan, in St. Louis. As a student in St. Louis University, he played football and went for a time into minor-league professional baseball. He took his law degree in 1925, and in 1933, at the beginning of Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann’s first administration, was appointed by Governor Guy B. Park to the Democratic City Committee.
Named chairman
Elected chairman of the committee in August 1934, he was soon in the thick of a fight for the Mayor against his opponents in the committee and in the Board of Aldermen. He represented the city administration, at the 1935 legislative session, as city lobbyist, receiving $3,000 and expenses. One of his duties, on the Mayor’s order, was to oppose the Hess horse-dog racetrack betting bill, which the Senate defeated after it has passed the House.
In June 1935, the anti-Dickmann faction turned Mr. Hannegan out of the chairmanship. Mayor Dickmann went all-out for Mr. Hannegan with city patronage, firing adherents of anti-Hannegan men right and left. Turmoil at City Hall reached its height when, on Sept. 11, 1935, factional fighters shot up the new chairman’s office and the adjacent City Hall lawn, wounding four persons and piercing English’s coat with a bullet.
The patronage purge was effective, and in the August 1936 primary, which served as the quadrennial election of committee members, the Mayor regained control and Mr. Hannegan was reelected chairman.
In midst of probe
The 1936 primary was held in the midst of an investigation of city-wide registration frauds, instituted by The Post-Dispatch and resulting in the later removal of the entire Election Board by Governor Park “for the good of the public service.” The Mayor and Mr. Hannegan, it was learned, sought to dissuade the Governor from this action on the ground of party welfare.
Between November 1940 and April 1941 came the attempt of the Democratic majority in the Legislature to overturn the result of the state’s vote for Governor, the Republicans having elected Forrest C. Donnell by a small lead. Lawrence McDaniel, Democratic candidate, had the right to file a legal contest, but some of the party leaders decided that the Legislature should block the seating of Mr. Donnell and should then “investigate” the election. This plan, worked out chiefly by the then state chairman, C. Marion Hulen, followed a preliminary discussion at a meeting in St. Louis, called by Mr. Hannegan, at which the Mayor was present. At Jefferson City, Republican State Chairman Charles Ferguson charged that Mr. Hannegan was “riding herd” on the St. Louis Democratic legislators to keep them in line for the program. A Supreme Court decision wrecked the conspiracy.
Doubt remains
Just how far Mr. Hannegan, and the Mayor approved the Hulen scheme has been in some doubt ever since.
Some Democrats did object, and the attitude of the Mayor and chairman, in contrast, caused them to be castigated by Republican campaign speakers and contributed to the defeat of Mr. Dickmann for a third term and the election of the late Judge William Dee Becker.
Mr. Hannegan resigned from the city committee chairmanship after the election but remained as a member until his federal position made resignation mandatory. His appointment to the collectorship was opposed by The Post-Dispatch because of the governorship episode.
He and Mrs. Hannegan, formerly Miss Irma Protzmann, daughter of a late North St. Louis banker and real estate dealer, have two sons and two daughters.
Rayburn joins in endorsement of Roosevelt
$100-a-plate diners hear Speaker and Wallace laud New Deal
Washington (UP) – (Jan. 22)
House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Vice President Henry A. Wallace, either of whom may be selected as President Roosevelt’s running mate if he makes the race in the coming election, tonight vigorously defended his leadership at home and abroad in what appeared to be endorsements of a fourth term.
Neither actually mentioned a fourth term possibility, however, in their speeches before the $100-a-plate Jackson Day Dinner here. And the President, in line with his expressed desire to keep politics out of the war effort, sent no message to the gathering which was held to raise funds for the 1944 presidential campaign.
No ‘shooting Thomas’
Mr. Rayburn, who made the main address, linked Secretary of State Cordell Hull with the President in describing them as two heroic figures “Who would bring the light of satisfaction into the eyes of our forefathers.” But when he described the kind of a candidate the Democrats will name at their convention in Chicago late in July, the picture he painted greatly resembled Mr. Roosevelt.
The Speaker said the Democrats would not palm off on the American people an imitation liberal and that the people would not entrust the Presidency to one who has no proved ability in the field of foreign policy. The Democrats, he said will offer no “shouting Thomas” and the party is not “shopping around for symbols whether they are Main Street or Wall Street.”
New Deal alive
Mr. Wallace said the New Deal is not dead and has yet to attain its full strength. The statement recalled President Roosevelt’s recent press conference declaration that the New Deal had served its purpose during the domestic crisis and was being replaced by a “win-the-war” policy.
He said:
One man more than any other in all history has given dynamic power and economic expression to the ageless New Deal. That man is Roosevelt. Roosevelt has never denied the principles of the New Deal and he never will. They are part of his very being.
Roosevelt, God willing, will in the future give the New Deal a firmer foundation than it has ever had before. So, on with the New Deal, on with winning the war and forward march for peace, justice and jobs.
Why we are here
Mr. Wallace said that the diners, as individuals, were present:
…because the people, suffering from the Hoover-Mellon-Wall Street collapse, demanded a New Deal.
The people believed in Roosevelt, the Democratic Party and the New Deal in 1932 because they felt that the New Deal stood for human rights first and property rights second. The people confirmed their faith in Roosevelt and the New Deal in 1936 and 1940.
Mr. Rayburn asserted that many economic reforms achieved by the Roosevelt regime would not be junked after the war. He slapped at the “small minority of hecklers” who still complain of administration policies; pointed to the nation’s outstanding production record since Pearl Harbor, and declared America went to war under a caliber of leadership that has proved that it was worthy of the high trust placed in it.
Lawrence and Guffey hope for harmony at Harrisburg
Washington meeting ends in ‘progress’ report as state ticket remains a mystery
Washington – (Jan. 22)
Ten Pennsylvania Democrats, at their semi-final slate making conference here tonight issued a non-committal report of “progress” toward selection of a candidate for the party nomination for U.S. Senator and other statewide offices.
State Chairman David L. Lawrence, spokesman for the group, said, however, that “everything was harmonious and we are very sanguine about having a harmonious meeting of the state committee.”
Avoidance of an open fight in the state committee meeting, scheduled for Feb. 4 at Harrisburg to recommend candidates for the April 25 primary, will depend on whether Mr. Lawrence and U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey, recently-reconciled party leaders, can agree.
Guffey favors Black
Mr. Guffey was represented as favoring Ramsey S. Black of Harrisburg, third assistant postmaster general, for the Senate nomination, while the Lawrence group was considering other possible candidates.
Among those discussed in a series of meetings with county leaders which preceded today’s conference are Auditor General F. Clair Ross (Lawrence-supported candidate for Governor in 1942), State Treasurer G. Harold Wagner, former Philadelphia city chairman John B. Kelly, and former Auditor General Warren R. Roberts.
Already in the senatorial race, independently of the two leaders, is have sizeable backing from labor organizations.
Mr. Lawrence admitted that candidates were discussed at tonight’s meeting, which followed a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, but refused to say who had been proposed for the Democratic slate.
One man is sure
One candidate was definitely endorsed by the group – Judge Chester H. Rhodes of the Superior Court, who will seek reelection to another ten-year term.
The state committee will designate candidates for auditor general, state treasurer, two Superior Court places and one judgeship on the Supreme Court. Candidacies in these offices will depend upon selection of a candidate to run for the place now held by Republican Senator James J. Davis.
Attending tonight’s meeting, in addition to Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Guffey, were Allegheny County Commissioner John J. Kane, Irwin D. Wolf (Pittsburgh department store executive) and county leaders from Philadelphia, Luzerne, Lackawanna and Berks Counties.
New food subsidy fight is predicted
…
WAC enrollment short
Washington –
WAC enrollment for 1943 totaled a little over 60,000, far short of the goal of 150,000.