Janitor’s confession bared in cathedral death hearing
Criticism of his work given as cause for attack
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GOP chairmen hit sour note in 29th slate
Fight starts over names of delegates to convention
By Kermit McFarland
Republican leaders in the 29th Congressional district held a more or less riotous meeting in the Penn-Lincoln Hotel, Wilkinsburg, last night and picked a “harmony” slate for the April 25 primary which will have to be made over or there will be no harmony in the district.
The chairmen and vice chairmen of the wards, boroughs and townships in the district overwhelmingly ratified the choice of the county leaders for the Republican Congressional nomination – Howard E. Campbell, East Liberty real estate dealer.
The fight developed, unexpectedly, over the candidates for delegate and alternate delegate to the Republican presidential convention.
Secret ballot taken
Republican County Chairman John S. Herron and the county vice chairman, Mrs. Nelle G. Dressler, were chosen as delegate and alternate, respectively, by acclamation.
But on the selection of the second delegate candidate and the second alternate candidate, there was a secret ballot.
As announced, the result of this balloting gave William P. Witherow, president of the Blawnox Company, 11 votes for delegate and Thomas E. Whitten, Wilkinsburg attorney, 10. For alternate, the vote was: Robert L. Cook, Republican chairman of the 14th Ward, 12, and Adelaide Coly, Young Republican leader, 9.
There was some dispute about the accuracy of this count.
Up to committee
As a result, both the Young Republicans and the Whitten backers are up in the air. They charge that Mr. Herron and Mrs. Dressler picked themselves and that a deal which had previously been made was not kept.
In a previous conference, it was decided that the Old Guard faction would name one delegate and one alternate candidate, and the Young Republicans would name one each. The Young Republicans decided on Mr. Witherow and Mrs. Conly.
Unless the so-called “harmony” committee which has been busy with slate-making for several weeks can patch up the confusion at a meeting tonight, a wide-open contest for delegate may develop in this district.
Local Republican leaders from the boroughs and townships in the 10th legislative district also met last night and selected a slate of candidates for the four Republican legislative nominations at stake in the April 25 primary.
The four candidates are Paul M. Bardes of Oakmont (former legislator), Dr. Walter Feick (Glassport dentist), Albert E. Beech of Wilkinsburg (an employee of the State Labor & Industry Department) and William P. H. Johnston of Penn Township (an auto salesman).
Veto is hinted of new plans for Army vote
President says existing law may give ballot to more men
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt said today the crux of the soldier vote issue is whether more soldiers could vote under existing law or under the proposed legislation evolved by House and Senate conferees.
His press conference comment was interpreted as indicating that he might veto the new legislation if it reaches him in such form that he believes it will reduce, rather than increase, the number of servicemen who will be entitled to voice.
Mr. Roosevelt was asked to express his attitude toward the compromise soldier ballot measure. He said he could not go into details because he had not seen the actual language of the new measure.
Meanwhile, it appeared that the entire issue may be reopened on the floor of the Senate.
Senate-House conferees, by an 8–2 vote, reached final agreement on the issue by restricting use of the federal war ballot to overseas servicemen who have applied for but not received a state absentee ballot by Oct. 1.
*A further restriction provides that the federal ballot will go to such servicemen only if their governors, “as authorized by” the laws of their states, have declared the federal ballot acceptable for counting.
The conference report now goes to both Houses for final action – perhaps next week.
The much-amended bill was denounced by two Senate conferees – Theodore Francis Green (D-RI) and Carl A. Hatch (D-NM).
Senator Green said it would have been better “to have no bill at all than one like that” and indicated he would fight actively against Senate acceptance.
Senator Hatch said:
It does not simplify, but complicate and does not extend the federal ballot but curtails it.
In the voting, three federal ballot proponents – Senator Warren R. Austin (R-VT) and Rep. Eugene Worley (D-TX) and Rep. Herbert C. Bonner (D-NC) – joined with the five original states’ rights adherents in approving the conference report. The others were Senators Tom Connally (D-TX) and Hugh Butler (R-NE) and Reps. John E. Rankin (D-MS), Harris Ellsworth (R-OR) and Karl M. LeCompte (R-IA).
In Washington –
Arabian oil line drips post-war policy worry
Ickes to keep on building until stopped, he says; industry cites danger of entanglement
By Marshall McNeil, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Pravda renews bitter attack on W. R. Hearst
Goebbels’ barking echoed in American’s papers, communist says
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Phone cord ties absentee chief to freed areas
McGoldrick sticks to job despite Army cries of inefficiency
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Naples anxiously awaits strike ‘defying’ Allies
Last-minute move made to exempt essential workers from 10-minute demonstration
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4th term ‘if’ put on issue of ‘emergency’
Democrats’ former publicity chief discusses Roosevelt candidacy
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Charles Michelson, publicity director emeritus and now adviser to the Democratic National Committee, is significantly on record again today as believing President Roosevelt will seek another term if emergency seems to demand it.
Mr. Michelson’s first recording of that opinion was on Aug. 7, 1938, in a paragraph in his weekly political column, Dispelling the Fog, which is reproduced now in the body of an article published in the current American Magazine. He was talking about a third term that time. Now he refers to a fourth.
The magazine article, entitled “Roosevelt, the Enigma,” discusses a number of things, including the probable political plans of former Committee Chairman James A. Farley.
Bolt doubted
Mr. Michelson predicts that Mr. Farley will not bolt the party if Mr. Roosevelt is renominated but will attempt to prevent his nomination at the convention. Failing that, Mr. Michelson says Mr. Farley will announce that he will vote the Democratic ticket straight and take no further part in the campaign.
This correspondent understands Mr. Farley’s intention to be precisely that.
Mr. Michelson relates a conversation with Mr. Roosevelt as follows:
He said to the President prior to 1940:
I think that you will agree with me that no Democrat but yourself can be elected this year. Would it not be better – in the event of your not being a candidate – to let Jim Farley have the nomination?
If he was defeated, that defeat would be attributed to religious prejudice. If almost any other of the aspirants was nominated and lost, that defeat would be hailed as a repudiation of your administration and the New Deal.
Farley praised
The President replied:
No, that would be most unfair to him. He is too fine a person to be subjected to the humiliation of a bad defeat and the setback that would involve to prospects and career. I do not agree that our party is destitute of available candidates. There is Cordell Hull, for example.
In same position
Mr. Michelson of 1944 writes:
As to Roosevelt’s intentions, I am in the same position as I was five years ago when I wrote:
Of course, I am entitled to a guess, and my guess is that Franklin D. Roosevelt would take a case of the hives rather than four years more of the headache that being President means. It will not be so easy a choice at that.
Circumstances might arise that would make it impossible for him to lay down the burden.
The world may be at war with or without threat of our involvement, or some other equally acute emergency may eventuate that would forbid a change of administration; and the man in the White House is not the kind of an individual who would let his personal desires interfere with what seems to him his duty.
Part left out
There was more to the paragraph in 1938, according to this correspondent’s files, and Mr. Michelson seems to have left out a fairly pertinent final sentence, as follows:
He could not say today, even if he were so inclined, that he would or would not be a candidate in 1940.
GOP internal unity urged by Willkie
New York (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie said in a radio speech last night that the Democratic Party was “falling to pieces” and warned that the Republican Party “must achieve internal unity.”
In his first nationwide network talk since he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President, Mr. Willkie said:
The New Deal Executive Department is becoming increasingly petty in its relationship to Congress.
Regarding the GOP, he said:
The Republican Party already has come to many basic conclusions, and it is apparent that steady progress has been made in both foreign and domestic fields. The problem now is to come to definite conclusions and agreements which will be the salvation, not only to the party itself, but to the nation.
Editorial: The compromise is compromised
After almost interminable wrangling, House and Senate conferees on the soldier-vote issue have come up with a compromise plan which nine of the 10 members of the joint committee approve.
But in compromising the extreme views in this controversy, the compromisers virtually compromised out of the picture anything like a simple, uniform system of voting for the Armed Forces.
The new scheme may be better than nothing, but not much.
It does not offer the Armed Forces a maximum opportunity to vote. It does not provide a uniform system, and it is complex and confusing.
The patched-up compromise applies only to overseas forces.
It leaves the garrisons and trainees at home to what are now widely varying state voting laws.
Even so, Rep. Rankin, Mississippi’s tireless obstructionist, continues to shed glycerin tears for the Constitution and to shout against any kind of federal ballot.
Under the compromise as it now stands, federal ballots will be available to:
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Overseas troops from the two or three states which have no absentee-voting laws, and
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Overseas troops from other states who apply by Sept. 1 for state absentee ballots and do not receive them by Oct. 1.
But in earlier case, federal ballots will be furnished only if the governor has certified that the federal ballot is acceptable under state law.
The result is approximately what it was before Congress started to battle over this issue – the state legislatures which gave not already done so will be required to convene and enact new soldier voting laws, meet the overseas problem in particular, and there will be a multitude of different systems, or no system at all in some instances.
This will complicate the Army and Navy delivery problem and make it next to impossible for many in the Armed Forces to vote.
As applied to Pennsylvania, the compromise measure is doubly confusing.
It practically repeals the Pennsylvania law without providing a reasonable substitute.
The compromise says the federal ballot will be distributed to soldiers who do not apply for state ballots before Sept. 1. Under Pennsylvania law, no member of the Armed Forces may apply for a state military ballot before Sept. 18.
The compromise provides for the use of federal ballots in cases where the voters in the Armed Forces do not receive state ballots before Oct. 1. The deadline for Pennsylvania voters to apply for military ballots is Oct. 7, and the present procedure effectively prevents elections authorities from mailing out military ballots much before Oct. 20.
The only ameliorating circumstance on the whole situation is the announced determination of Governor Martin to summon a special legislative session to amend the present law so members of the Armed Forces may vote as conveniently as it is possible for the State to permit them.
Background of news –
Roosevelt-Congress test due
By Jay G. Hayden, North American Newspaper Alliance
Washington –
President Roosevelt confronts at least two issues calculated to disclose whether he is chastened by the Congressional uprising against his tax veto or infuriated by it to the point of precipitating an all-out conflict with the legislative branch.
These issues are (1) the compromise soldier-vote bill, which likely will be sent to the White House next week, and (2) the Slattery-Daniels affairs, which involves both the President’s right to discharge administrative officials and the validity of a Senate subpoena, directed to one of his close personal assistants.
The soldier-voting bill, accepted by all but one of the Senate and House conferees, varies little in its practical effects from the measure which Mr. Roosevelt branded, in a special message to Congress, “a fraud on the soldiers, sailors and Marines.”
The substance of the President’s contention was that reliance on state ballots would disfranchise “the vast majority of the 11 million members of the Armed Forces.” This condition, he said, could be corrected with nothing short of the Green-Lucas-Worley nameless federal ballot bill, which would permit soldiers:
…to cast their ballots without time-consuming correspondence and without waiting for each separate state to hold its primary, print its ballots, and send them out for voting.
Veto threatened repeatedly
All of the latter principles, which the present compromise bill retains, plus the provision for a federal ballot, is applicable to states which have no absentee voting law and to individual soldiers who swear that they applied for state ballots and failed to receive them before Oct. 1. Even in these contingencies, federal ballots would be good only if state governors certify in advance that they will be counted.
In the course of the Senate and House debates, the President’s spokesmen threatened repeatedly that Mr. Roosevelt would veto any bill that did not provide an effective federal ballot, and there is little doubt that this was his settled intention.
The happening since, which may have changed Mr. Roosevelt’s mind, is the tax bill revolt, led by Senator Alben W. Barkley. This development undoubtedly hastened agreement on the state ballot bill. Convinced that if the President vetoes this bill he will be overridden, Republicans were anxious to out it up to him. and it is a foregone conclusion that such a veto would find Senator Barkley again leading the van of opposition.
Coincidentally, it is certain that unless Jonathan Daniels, one of the President’s secretarial “selfless six,” recants his refusal to testify before a Senate agricultural subcommittee, he will be cited for contempt by overwhelming vote of the whole Senate next week.
Further, the Senate may try Mr. Daniels and sentence him, if convicted, to its own basement lockup – a course which Congressional lawyers say would put him beyond reach of a presidential pardon.
Precedent recalled
A precedent for this course was provided in the case of William McCracken, whose trial and conviction by the Senate itself on a charge of contempt of one of its committees in 1934 was sustained by the Supreme Court.
More often the Senate has preferred to turn its contumacious witnesses over for prosecution by the Attorney General in the regular courts. That procedure was rendered ridiculous in this instance when Ugo Carusi, executive assistant to Attorney General Francis Biddle, appeared as legal counsel for Mr. Daniels, while he defied the senatorial questions.
An even more interesting court clash will eventuate if the President follows through with an attempt to remove Harry Slattery, the rural electrification administrator whose testimony got Mr. Daniels into hot water. Mr. Slattery declared that Mr. Daniels three times tried to persuade him to quit, once offering him a lucrative State Department job abroad as an inducement.