WLB is defied as strike hit 30 war shops
Independent Ohio union protests NLRB rule on UAN plea
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Soldier vote test set back
Senate unable to round up quorum for session
Washington (UP) –
Too many Senators played hooky from the Saturday session scheduled for today, and the Senate had to call the whole thing off and postpone further consideration of the soldier vote controversy until Monday.
The convening hour of 11:00 a.m. ET found only seven Senators on the floor. The initial roll call was answered by 37 Senators as they filed in during the slow calling of names. A later roll call of the absentees brought the total number of Senators answering their names to 43.
This was still short of a quorum, so Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) moved for a recess until Monday noon.
Senator Barkley had previously expressed hope that the administration’s federal ballot bill could finally be acted on by tonight, shunting back to the House the issue. The House had rejected Thursday night the administration federal-ballot proposal by a 51-vote margin.
Showdown next week
The showdown now due Monday or Tuesday will involve another attempt of the Republican-Southern Democrat coalition to limit the voting to regular state ballots.
There is little chance of a Senate filibuster to delay further final action as a limitation on debate was agreed to earlier this week to speed action on amendments to the pending Green-Lucas federal bill.
A comparison of the official list of those answering the quorum call with yesterday’s test vote on the Taft amendment to restrict use of a federal ballot showed that the state ballot forces had a margin of two on the floor as today’s session began.
Twenty-three of those who voted for the Taft amendment yesterday were recorded as being present. Twenty-one of those who voted with the administration yesterday were recorded as being present.
Use day to clear up mail
Senator Barkley told reporters that he could have obtained a quorum but it would have been difficult to hold the Senators on the floor throughout the day because they traditionally use the Saturday recess to clear up accumulated mail in their office.
The official roll call showed the state ballot forces on the floor included 12 Republicans and 11 Southern Democrats. They were:
REPUBLICAN: Ball, Brewster, Brooks, Bushfield, Butler, Holman, Moore, Nye, Robertson, Taft, Wherry and White.
DEMOCRATS: Bailey, Byrd, Caraway, Eastland, George, Hill, McClellan, McKellar, O’Daniel, Overton and Smith.
The opponents of the Taft amendment recorded present included 14 Democrats, six Republicans and one Progressive. They were:
DEMOCRATS: Barkley, Clark (ID), Clark (MO), Green, Guffey, Hayden, Jackson, Kilgore, Lucas, Murray, Stewart, Tunnell, Tydings and Wagner.
REPUBLICANS: Austin, Danaher, Davis, Ferguson, Tobey and Vandenberg.
PROGRESSIVE: La Follette.
State’s Democrats hope to ride with Roosevelt
Name candidates with full expectation of being running mates of President
By Robert Taylor, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Keynoting their campaign with “Victory and a just and lasting peace,” Pennsylvania Democrats have named a slate of candidates for state offices with the full expectation that they will be running mates of President Roosevelt in a fourth-term campaign.
Members of the Democratic State Committee yesterday took the first organized action toward a fourth-term campaign when they adopted a resolution asserting that:
The people of this state and of every other state look to Franklin D. Roosevelt for continued leadership.
The Committee instructed State Chairman David L. Lawrence and other committee officers to circulate primary petitions for Mr. Roosevelt and place his name on the ballot in Pennsylvania’s preferential primary April 25.
Speakers at the Committee’s biennial meeting left no doubt that they expected to fight the 1944 campaign on the international issues as both Chairman Lawrence and Rep. Francis J. Myers of Philadelphia, who emerged as the slated candidate for the party’s senatorial nomination, spoke on that theme.
Mr. Lawrence told the 109 members of the Committee:
What we do in the next election and the next administration will determine the speed of victory, the preservation of that victory and its translation into lasting peace, and the security and prosperity of the American people including the 11 million men and women in service in this war.
After receiving the committee’s designation for Senator, Mr. Myers said:
We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of 1918, 1919 and 1920. If we do, the sons of the men now fighting will fight again in 25 or 30 years.
Mr. Myers, 42, a third-term Congressman and former deputy state attorney general, has been an administration follower throughout his service in Congress. His final selection as the senatorial candidate came in a backroom conference nearly two hours after the committee was scheduled to meet.
Complete harmony
The committee members, meanwhile, waited for word from their leaders and endorsed the selection without opposition.
Complete harmony in the Democratic primary, for the first time since 1936, was assured when Rep. Michael J. Bradley of Philadelphia, who had announced an independent campaign with labor backing for the Democratic senatorial nomination withdrew from the race.
The only opposition in the committee occurred when Westmoreland County Democrats, seeking a state judicial nomination for Common Pleas Judge George H. McWherter of Westmoreland County opposed designation of U.S. Circuit Judge Charles Alvin Jones for a State Supreme Court nomination.
Opposition voted down
The Westmoreland Countians, led by State Senator John H. Dent, were voted down, 86–16.
The committee filled out the state slate by designating Superior Court Judge Chester H. Rhodes of Monroe County, auditor general, and F. Clair Ross of Butler, for nominations to the Superior Court; Third Assistant Postmaster General Ramsey S. Black of Harrisburg, for state treasurer, and State Treasurer G. Harold Wagner of Luzerne Country, for auditor general.
Wallace warns against slip into Fascism
Labor, business, farmer must cooperate after war to avoid it
Los Angeles, California –
The central problem of post-war democracy for labor business and agriculture will be “to work together without slipping into an American Fascism,” Vice President Henry A. Wallace said in an address here last night.
A post-war struggled among “big business, big labor and big agriculture” might bring Fascism, he warned at a Win-the-War rally in Shrine Auditorium in which he predicted a “serious conflict” of “the Big Three” unless they all recognize “the superior claims of the general welfare of the common man.”
Mr. Wallace said:
Such recognition of the general welfare must be genuine, must be more than a polite mouthing of high-sounding phrases.
He added:
Each of the Big Three has unprecedented power at the present time. Each is faced with serious post-war worries. Each will be tempted to profit at the expense of the other two when the post-war boom breaks. Each can save itself only if it learns to work with the other two and with government in terms of the general welfare.
Discussing the post-war aims of workers, businessmen, farmers and returning servicemen, Mr. Wallace said they all merged into a general desire for pursuit of happiness.
Scores big businessmen
Organized labor has become of age and has become a responsible partner of management in operating industry and trade, he said.
He scored big businessmen who “put Wall Street first and the nation second” and warned they “will fight with unrelenting hatred through press, radio, demagogue and lobbyist every national and state government which puts human rights above property rights.”
Farmers, seeking bargaining power equivalent to that of labor and industry, have learned the art of lobbying, he said.
He declared:
They intend to use federal power to hold up farm prices after the war.
Mr. Wallace praised businessmen more interested in serving humanity than in making money for money’s sake.
Small man wants chance
He declared:
The small businessman wants a fair chance to compete in a growing market with fair access to raw materials, capital and technical research.
…and demanded that big business not be allowed to control Congress and the executive branch of government so as “to make it easy for them to write the rules for the post-war game.”
Discussing the returning servicemen, he said:\
These young men will run the country 15 years hence.
He warned that:
Their disgust with pressure group politics wrongly channeled could lead to a new kind of Fascism. But, rightly directed, it may result in a true general welfare democracy for the first time in history.
Oppose propaganda, Bricker tells editors
Columbus, Ohio (UP) –
Newspapers must meet the New Deal’s “calculated purpose to discredit the press” with a threefold attack on government propaganda, censorship and centralization of power in the executive branch, Governor John W. Bricker said last night.
In an address hailed by his campaign headquarters as “the strongest” since he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Bricker warned members of the Ohio Newspaper Association of three “dangers” threatening freedom of the press:
First, the use of the press for propaganda “in the nature of a trial balloon for political purposes.”
Second, censorship:
…the road down which the people of Germany, Italy and Japan were led to slavery and ultimate defeat.
Third, concentration of power in the executive branch of the government, making “the danger to a free press more and more imminent.”
Jack doubts job guarantee after the war
Roosevelt means well, Clevelander allows; fears ‘crackpots’
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U.S. indicts six in whisky inquiry
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Named judiciary chairman
Washington –
Senator Pat McCarran (D-NV) was named chairman of the important Senate Judiciary Committee today to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Frederick Van Nuys (D-IN).
Yanks patrols drive across Bougainville
U.S. raiders wreck 80 Jap planes at Guinea base
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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Editorial: Raymond Clapper
This exceedingly fitting and gracious editorial appeared in yesterday’s editions of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Press reprints it as an eloquent tribute to a reporter whose work we were privileged to publish.
Other newspapermen have followed the troops to the field and died in line of duty, but none as well known as Raymond Clapper who might be called a volunteer. A Washington correspondent, he could easily have stayed at his desk in that safe place and continued to write clearly and fairly about what was going on throughout the world. But that happened not to be his way, and he chose to go to the Pacific to get his views on war firsthand.
That was one reason why newspapermen rated Raymond Clapper pretty close to the top among our columnists. If he didn’t score as many sensational scoops as his rivals, he consistently knew that he was talking, or writing, about. He could express his views as boldly and as vigorously as anyone, but he always took the trouble to make sure of his facts. Thus, his writing was characterized by that quietness, that objectivity, that sweet reasonableness which was the measure of the man.
Or just say that he was a newspaperman’s newspaperman, a straight-shooter, a conscientious craftsman, a swell reporter who was killed on the job; and let that be his epitaph.
Background of news –
Soldier votes and some statistics
By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports
From present indications, the number of men and women in the Armed Forces and the Merchant Marine will be around 11 million by Election Day, 1944. Of this total, perhaps 7.5 million will be outside the continental United States.
President Roosevelt, in his soldier-vote message to Congress Jan. 26, put the number overseas by Election Day as “more than five million,” but the President evidently slipped up on his mathematics, for that is the estimate given for the Army alone.
Of the 7.5 million overseas on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November 1944, perhaps 1,200,000 will be under 21 (Georgia is so far the only state which has reduced the voting age to 18). Perhaps another 300,000 will be non-citizens, so that the potential voting strength of the Armed Forces overseas will be in the neighborhood of six million.
That is only about 7% of the total potential voting population. It is slightly more than President Roosevelt’s popular majority over Wendell Willkie in 1940, considerably less than his majority over Alf M. Landon in 1936, slightly less than his majority over President Hoover in 1932.
Not likely to be decisive
Some of the six million soldiers eligible will certainly not bother to vote, whatever the facilities provided. Of those who do vote, the division among the two major party candidates is not likely to be much greater than 75–25. In other words, the overseas soldier vote could not decide the 1944 election unless the election should otherwise be considerably closer than the election of 1940, when almost 50 million ballots were cast for President.
From the above statistics, it appears that the overseas soldier vote is not likely to provide either major party presidential candidate a margin of more than 5% of the total vote cast. Under the electoral system of the United States, that must be broken down by states, to gauge its effect.
The Democrats are maintaining that most of the soldier vote will go to the Commander-in-Chief, so that if most of the soldiers are prevented from voting, the Democrats may charge that the election was stolen from them. However, the loss of 5% of his votes in 1940 would mean the loss of only four additional states from Mr. Roosevelt, if the Republican vote were the same as in 1940. These four states are among the largest in the Union – New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Wisconsin – and together they account for 104 electoral votes.
Would have made no difference
Mr. Roosevelt received 449 electoral votes in 1940, and the loss of 104 would still leave him 345, considerably more than enough to elect. So, if the Democrats were to lose the 1944 election with most of the overseas soldiers not voting, the loss would be due only in part to the absence of soldier votes, much more to a shift of civilian votes away from the Democratic column since 1940.
Chairman Spangler of the Republican National Committee has reported that informal polls taken by his friends indicate that most soldiers overseas are inclined toward the Republican ticket. If that be true the Republican presidential candidate will suffer if most of the soldiers don’t vote.
The states, with their electoral votes, carried by Mr. Willkie in 1940 by less than a 5% margin were as follows:
| Colorado | 6 |
| Indiana | 14 |
| Iowa | 11 |
| Maine | 5 |
| Michigan | 19 |
These five states accounted for about two-thirds of the total electoral vote for Mr. Willkie.
Tokyo labels treatment of captives too lenient
Another Jap broadcast recites tale of ‘love and benevolence’ toward war prisoners
By the United Press
The Tokyo radio said today that Kimachi Yamamoto, Vice Minister for Occupied Areas in Asia, told the Diet Thursday that “our treatment (of war prisoners) is too lenient in comparison to that given our prisoners by our nations.”
While Yamamoto’s statement was confined to internment camps in China, a later Tokyo broadcast offered the more inclusive statement that Jap military forces:
…are at all times carrying out a war of moral principles which uphold righteousness and humanity and never mistreat prisoners.
The Jap broadcaster then substantiated this claim with what he modestly termed a “beautiful account of love and benevolence.” The account concerned a Chinese “commander” taken prisoner at the Yunnan front in November 1943, “who thought that if captured, he would be killed.”
The speaker said that because of the “warm care” accorded him, “the officer’s misunderstanding melted away” and he offered such wholehearted cooperation that “his subordinates surrendered in great numbers.”
Tokyo ended the “beautiful account of love, etc.” by declaring that it demonstrated the “high moral principles” of the Japs and showed that the Allies “must be trying to deceive heaven” in charging mistreatment of prisoners.
Washington (UP) –
The information bulletin of the Soviet Embassy charged today that Finland is trying to annihilate all Soviet war prisoners.