24 aboard believed dead –
Lost airliner found in river near Memphis
Rescuers using grappling hooks bring up part of plane
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24 aboard believed dead –
Several indicted by U.S. –
Jury throws book at Charlie Chaplin
Miss Barry’s charges may mean prison for comedian
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But how to collect ‘em?
Union seeks to exact dues from German war prisoners
Closed shop contract with produce farm cited in AFL group’s demand for 25¢ a week
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Strike ban urged –
Bricker extends a friendly hand to Congressmen
Reversing Willkie’s tactics, Ohio Governor seeks to play legislators against a ‘weak’ executive
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Governor John W. Bricker’s Lincoln Day speech proposal for absolute prohibition of wartime strikes aroused top interest here today among the issues discussed by the Ohioan in his pre-convention campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
But Governor Bricker’s bid for consideration in this political hotspot proved to be a combination of bitter denunciation of the Roosevelt administration and of significantly kind words for Congress. He pegged his appeal on domestic issues, but did propose that the United States “should take her place in a cooperative organization among sovereign nations after this war.”
Differs from Willkie
His tactics were in contrast with those of Wendell L. Willkie, the Ohio Governor’s most active opponent, who occasionally undertakes to shake Congress by the ears, losing more than a few friends thereby.
Governor Bricker challenged “weakness of the New Deal in handling labor relations” and said:
A law should be enacted by Congress laying down fundamental principles for the administration and adjudication of labor disputes and the prohibition of strikes in time of war.
He said it was too late now to consider a national service act as proposed by Mr. Roosevelt.
In a final major appearance here today, Governor Bricker told the National Press Club at a luncheon that he proposed that the term of the President be limited to one six-year term or two four-year terms. He preferred the latter, he said, but in any event believed that the tenure “must be restricted.”
Express Democratic help
Rep. Joseph W. Martin (R-MA), introducing Governor Bricker to the Mayflower Hotel audience, said it was the largest Republican gathering held here in a dozen years. He predicted victory in this year’s elections, but said it would not be Republican victory alone.
He said:
Victory will come because millions of honest, sincere, patriotic Jeffersonian Democrats will submerge part to the welfare of their country and because independent voters will unite with us.
He told last night’s audience that Mr. Roosevelt’s policies were leading the country to socialism, if not communism.
Proposes fiscal program
In his prepared text, he proposed a new fiscal program linked with early post-war balancing of the budget art a rate of spending approximating $15 billion a year. Here is Governor Bricker’s substitute for what he termed Mr. Roosevelt’s policy of “spend, waste, borrow and tax:”
- Simplify and stabilize the tax laws.
- Use the tax power to raise necessary revenue and not “as an undercover method of effecting social changes.”
- Limit federal taxation so that adequate revenue sources will remain to the states and local governments.
- Adhere to fiscal and tax policies which will stimulate private enterprise and venture capital.
- Reduce federal taxes as soon as possible after victory.
We’re all in the war
Charging that the Roosevelt administration has “bewildered and oppressed” the people, Governor Bricker said:
The New Deal is the American counterpart of the sweep of absolutism which has destroyed so much liberty around the world.
He sought to rebuke Mr. Roosevelt for personifying his administration as “Dr. Win-the-War.”
Mr. Bricker said:
Winning the war is not a partisan opportunity. It is an American responsibility.
Governor Bricker’s bid for Congressional friendship and support was direct and full of sympathy. He said:
The time has come to take the policymaking of government out of the hands of the arrogant bureaucrats and return it to the hands of the elected representatives of the people.
Willkie wants party to look forward
Seattle, Washington (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie, 1940 Republican presidential candidate, accused the administration of “fighting a soft war” last night and said the people would willingly bear an increased tax burden if the government made an effort to halt the “reckless expenditure of their money.”
Mr. Willkie told a Lincoln Day audience of 2,500 persons:
After the war, we should reverse our taxation system in order to stimulate our economy and prove the largest possible national income.
If the Republican nominee is a forward-looking leader, the rank and file of the party will rally as a unit in his support.
Statement is explained
He confirmed a statement attributed to him at Baker, Oregon, earlier in the day in which he was quoted:
I’m going to be nominated for the Presidency on the Republican ticket.
He smilingly recounted the incident, saying about 300 persons gathered at his train when it stopped in Baker briefly.
He said:
I made a few remarks and among other things said, “I’m going to take you into my confidence – I’m going to be the Republican nominee for President.” You wouldn’t expect me to tell them I was not going to be the nominee, would you?
Program outlined
Mr. Willkie revealed that following an address in Tacoma today and an appearance in Portland, he would fly to Sacramento Sunday and have lunch with Governor and Mrs. Earl Warren and make a radio address there Sunday afternoon. Mr. Willkie has agreed not to enter the California primary, in favor of Warren.
Denying to reporters that the Republican Party is divided, Mr. Willkie said it was natural for the party out of power to have leaders with diverse ideas, and added that the election of 26 governors and additional members of both houses of Congress had given the party “new vigor.”
Sees Roosevelt handicap
In support of his charge that the Democratic Party is divided, he cited refusal of “a committee of Democrats” to support the Treasury Department’s tax program, which he said was itself “wholly inadequate,” and the fact that the states’-rights soldier vote bill was prepared “by members of the President’s own party in opposition to the administration-supported federal ballot bill.”
The Democratic Party is “decadent and falling apart” and President Roosevelt, if reelected, would be frustrated by the division in its ranks, he insisted.
He said:
I am going to break this power in Washington if I can, for if I don’t, everything I hold precious will disappear.
Wallace puzzled by Johnston plaint
Minneapolis, Minnesota (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace said today that he had not talked to President Roosevelt regarding his candidacy for Vice President in the November elections.
Mr. Wallace, who stopped in the Twin-Cities for several hours when his Seattle to Chicago plane was grounded by storms southeast of here, said:
But then I did not consult with him in 1940 either.
Mr. Wallace said that he had found “an unusual sentiment in the West for a fourth term for Roosevelt.”
When informed that Eric A. Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was critical of his speech at Seattle last night. Mr. Wallace said he could not “see any reason for that.” Mr. Wallace had labeled certain business interests as fascist in tendency.
In Washington, Mr. Johnston said Mr. Wallace was sowing “seeds of disunity… on the event of an invasion which will bring our most crucial military test.”
Mr. Johnston said:
Name calling by the Vice President of the United States is the wrong way to get national unity in this hour of crisis…
American business despises fascism. If there is a threat of it in this country, it is not to be found in big business, but in big government.
Stokes: Bricker roars at the New Deal in its den, and (obviously) it was planned that way
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, who has been browsing around the outlying precincts as a sort of Ferdinand-the-bull candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, came to the capital, to the lair of the New Deal, to change all that – and how!
He shook his big frame – and he’s a husky specimen – and began to roar in all directions – at the White House, where that man still resides, at the government buildings, where there are too many folks, as he sees it, busy about “bureaucracy,” and he even had a few suggestions for Congress.
‘Go get ‘em’
No longer was he the careful, cautious gentleman, a little timid about issues, spouting generalities.
The unveiling of the new Bricker was carefully arranged in advance, perhaps a shade too obviously, for it was a bit of a shock to see the once-amiable fellow come out talking so loud, somewhat as if he had been studiously instructed and shoved out before the footlights. You could almost hear the stage whisper:
Now get out there and tell ‘em!
He did.
Strikes at hot issues
He stepped right into the midst of the middle on Capitol Hill, which has got President Roosevelt down for the moment. He came out for state ballots in soldier voting, which President Roosevelt has called “a fraud.” He came out against subsidies, over which the Senate is wrestling, taking direct issue with the President.
He demanded that Congress pass a law to prohibit strikes in time of war and laying down “fundamental principles for the administration and adjudication of labor disputes.”
Jumping right into current controversies, while they are not, is somewhat unusual for candidates for presidential nominations, even for Wendell Willkie, who spoke up about taxes after Congress had already acted, and espoused a federal Ballot for soldier voting too late for any effect.
Strictly Republican!
Governor Bricker’s credo is strictly conservative, old-school Republican, entirely acceptable to the Old Guard element which is backing him, including Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. He abhors the New Deal, lock, stock and barrel, and makes no bonds about it. He disagrees, he said, with the whole philosophy of the New Deal. He did not temper his Lincoln Day speech here to concede anything to the Roosevelt dispensation.
The two-day Bricker show here was quite an event for the candidate and the entourage which came on from Ohio to celebrate his launching here in the deep waters of national affairs.
Advance agents arrived days ago to pass out photographs of the candidate and his wife and their schedule to newspapers, to arrange for the press conferences of the Governor and Mrs. Bricker and for the Lincoln Day dinner last night.
Taft stands by
Republican members of House and Senate, as well as a few Democrats, filed by to shake his hand in a reception in the capital. The candidate beamed on all comers, and his henchmen glowed.
Senator Taft stood to one side, smiling. He has a stake in all this. If the Governor doesn’t make the grade, then the Senator is presumed to inherit back the organization which he has turned over for the Governor’s candidacy to use for himself at the convention.
Independent union strength set at 5 million
Telephone workers join in plea for placer in governmental labor counsels; power politics blamed
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Heavy snows borne to East by cold gales
Heaviest storm of season threatens to block New England
By the United Press
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Cheaper train meals urged for soldiers
Congress offered measure by sponsor of plan for free furlough rides
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Editorial: Mr. Hearst goes too far!
Publication of the shocking story of Japanese atrocities against American and Filipino prisoners of war naturally caused untold anguish and concern in the homes of every American listed as captured or missing in the Pacific area. Their cup of grief and worry is already running over.
But as if their burden were not great enough, certain newspaper strategists are trying to convince the American people that our national leaders are not trying to help them – this in the face of Secretary Hull’s disclosure that more than 80 protests have been made to the Japanese government on behalf of the captives and that a long struggle has been waged through every diplomatic source to relieve their plight. This in the face of the speeding up of the Pacific War, the capture of Kwajalein Atoll, the shelling of Paramushiru, the efforts of our fleet to lure the Japanese Navy into battle and all the other evidence of more vigorous and successful prosecution of the Pacific War.
William Randolph Hearst writes:
One would naturally expect that the administration and Congress would immediately formulate a plan to get our men out of the clutches of Japan.
But at this writing, Congress and the administration remain as inactive before this heartbreaking question as if it had never arisen.
Nothing could be more false, and we are certain that most people will realize this. But there may be some who, in their anguish, in their hoping against hope, in their prayers that something, somehow, may happen to save their loved ones, will be influenced by the widespread publication of such charges to believe that they are being ignored.
There are only two ways to relieve the plight of the American prisoners of Japan. One is by diplomacy, the other by force. The State Department, the Red Cross and other agencies of mercy have done everything within their power to get Japan to observe the rules of the Geneva Covenant governing the treatment of war prisoners, but in vain. The Army and Navy and Marines are applying force – but the struggle is terrific and the obstacles enormous.
Can it be said that America remains “inactive” when our soldiers and Marines and fliers and sailors are daily shedding their blood to defeat Japan and rescue their captured comrades?
But Mr. Hearst does say it. He continues:
What is being done by the rulers of our government to prevent a repetition of these ghastly outrages?
The answer is: NOTHING.
This amounts to a charge of treason against the President and the other responsible leaders of the war. It is a deliberate, definite statement that they are not making an effort to save and protect American soldiers and sailors captured by the enemy. If true, it would mean that our war is a phony war; that our leadership is faithless; that the captives in the Pacific have been betrayed.
This is not true; and even the bitterest critics of our national leadership will generally admit it.
To try to convince the American people of such things; to publish them for the men in our Armed Forces to read; to proclaim them to the tortured and sorrowing families of the men in captivity, is an unpardonable assault on national unity, on the faith of our people in their military leaders and on the integrity and patriotism of our American commanders.
Editorial: Bricker goes to Washington
Governor Bricker of Ohio went to Washington last night to make a campaign speech. His indictment of bureaucracy and of concentration of power in the President was effective.
He read the record: Relegating Congress to an inferior position, attempting to pack the Supreme Court, moving into fields of state and local administration, expanding authority of the White House at the expense of coordinate branches of government. This process, he said, operates on pap and patronage – particularly the deficit financing of spend-waste-borrow-tax. Unless checked, it can destroy the autonomy of state governments, the federal system, and free enterprise.
Apparently, the President himself is aware of the public reaction on this subject, or he would not be so anxious to bury the New Deal label, which now evokes more moans than cheers.
Governor Bricker, for his domestic policy would eliminate overlapping boards and bureaus. He favors “a sound constructive post-war tax policy,” including simplification of returns stabilization, taxation for revenue rather than for social changes, adequate revenue sources for the states, encouragement of venture capital and private enterprise, and reduction of federal taxes “as soon as possible after victory.”
His foreign policy was hardly mentioned. To say that “we want no super-government,” but membership in a cooperative organization among sovereign nations, is clear so far as it goes.
But to say “an international cooperative organization, whatever precise form it may take, can solve the problems which lead to war and fulfill the hopes of our people for a peaceful and better world” means little or nothing. If he has knowledge of foreign affairs or conviction on foreign policy, he is keeping it quiet. Maybe he will speak out as the campaign progresses.
Editorial: A clean fight won’t hurt
Republican manipulators whose money and activity have out them in positions of party leadership have decided against risking a primary fight in a year when they think they have a chance to carry Pennsylvania.
Specifically, they have decided against opposing U.S. Senator James J. Davis, who will be a candidate for renomination in the April primary, although they have consistently been against Mr. Davis in former elections.
Credit for this development must go to Governor Edward Martin and, from the standpoint of party interest and discipline, it was a magnanimous and intelligent decision. Mr. Martin has now love for Senator Davis, whom he fought for the governorship nomination in 1942.
The other two manipulators, Joseph R. Grundy, who symbolizes and directs the bulk of the so-called Old Guard faction of the party, and Joseph N. Pew of Philadelphia, who has contributed a disproportionate share of campaign expenses in recent years, also sacrificed some pride on coming to this conclusion – because they likewise haven’t had much time for Mr. Davis.
But the whole maneuver, despite the mutual buttering-up, was founded on expediency. It didn’t stem from any respect for Senator Davis’ statesmanship, but from fears that a vigorous primary battle might so cleave the party as to imperil success in the November election.
This type of thinking, which also characterizes the leadership in the Democratic Party, probably takes its roots from the 1938 primary when the Democrats, riding high up to that time, split in a bitter campaign and subsequently were decisively beaten in the November election.
But it wasn’t the mere fact that the Democrats disagreed over candidates in the primary which led to their downfall in Pennsylvania. Not even the vindictive mudslinging in which they engaged could be held solely accountable.
The Democrats were beaten in 1938 because they tried to scuttle the grand jury system. They were beaten because they abused and wasted the WPA. They were beaten because they became unreasonable and arrogant.
They would have been beaten, under these circumstances, even if their preceding primary had been a model of harmony and unity.
They beat themselves, but not because they indulged in a primary contest. That’s what primaries are for.
There is just as much reason for a party to get licked if it doesn’t put up its best candidates. And when the so-called party bosses grease the machinery so that all opposition is skidded out the door, the best candidates are seldom nominated.
A primary contest is a healthy thing. No party can long maintain virility without differences of opinion. And the place to settle those differences is in a free and open primary, not among a few self-constructed leaders in a backroom.
The primary need not degenerate into a mudslinging contest. Issues can be debated, constructively and informatively, as well as in a general election campaign.
The candidates who are nominated by the Republican Party in Pennsylvania – and the Democratic Party, too – should be nominated by the registered voters in that party, not by two or three scrapping leaders who get together and make a deal.
Ferguson: Women and home
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Observers report that feminine workers in England will never go back to the old-fashioned idea that “woman’s place is in the home.”
It would not sound so severe and would be nearer truth to say “home is woman’s destiny; she cannot escape it.”
It is unlikely that the majority of women will remain in industry after the war. Economic conditions will not permit it, unless the millennium is just around the corner, which I doubt. Millions of soldiers will be back demanding their old jobs; women will be asked to retire to the “sanctity of the kitchen,” and whether they like it or not they’ll be compelled to do so.
I dare say our standards of service will also rise. Because of manpower shortages, many inefficient and lazy people are now overpaid. That will pass. In the post-war world many women will find it difficult to keep pace with men, and by the same token many men will find that they are not as good at the job as some women. It should be the quality of the work that determines its awards, and on that ground, women can demand fair treatment.
The equal rights movement is sure to spread. There are no longer any reasonable arguments against it, now that women have proved their equality, ingenuity and efficiency during the war effort.
But as for saying that most of them will refuse to go home – that, too, is nonsense. We aren’t quite so dumb. We know that if all women hate the restriction of home and let their children be cared for by the community, the Americanism for which we are fighting will be dead.