WLB lines up against shift in ‘Little Steel’
Action hints denial of steelworkers plea
…
Nimitz back at post
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii –
It was announced here today that Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Central Pacific, has returned to his Pearl Harbor headquarters following a series of conferences in Washington.
Two top aces lost within period of days
Lynch and Kearby got 41 Jap planes
By Ralph C. Teatsorth, United Press staff writer
…
Negro unit joins Bougainville battle
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands (UP) –
The first Negro combat unit to go into action in the South Pacific fought the Japs on Bougainville Island Sunday, it was announced today, and gave a good account of itself in jungle warfare.
The unit was the 24th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army, which had nearly a year of jungle training before taking over a sector of the Empress Augusta Bay beachhead, where the Japs attacked last weekend.
All line officers are white and the non-commissioned officers are Negroes, with the general command under Lt. Col. Julian C. Hearne of Wheeling, West Virginia.
Give us stuff, Navy exhorts shipbuilders
Labor, industry are shown need
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
…
Roosevelt ‘studies’ veto of soldier vote bill
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt delayed his decision on whether to sign or veto the compromise soldier vote bill today pending results of his canvass of state governors on effectiveness of its federal ballot provisions.
Acting shortly after the House completed action on the measure by approving it 273–111, Mr. Roosevelt wired the 48 state governors yesterday for their opinion as to whether their state laws would permit use of the federal ballots and, if not, whether steps would be taken to make their use possible.
Rep. Charles A. Halleck (R-IN), chairman of the Republican Congressional Elections Committee, said he believed the survey unnecessary because the positions of the states were already known.
Move assailed
He recalled a similar survey of gubernatorial opinion by Senator Harry F. Byrd (D-VA) and said it shows that governors were:
…willing and ready to provide soldiers with a full local absentee ballot, if the government provided transportation, thereby making the bobtail federal ballot unnecessary.
House Republican Leader Joseph W. Martin Jr. said he was unable to explain the motives behind the President’s move.
What bill provides
As finally approved by Congress, the bill provides that the government shall transport state ballots to the men and women of the Armed Forces, the Merchant Marine, the Society of Friends and the American Red Cross. The federal ballot can be use only if the soldier certifies that he had applied for a state ballot by Sept. 1 and had not received it by Oct. 1; and his state has certified that it will accept and count a federal ballot.
Servicemen stationed in the United States are barred from using the federal ballot.
The President telegraphed the governors “to enable me to form an opinion as to the effectiveness” of the bill. There answers will help him reach his decision on whether to sign or veto the bill**
Vote analyzed
On the basis of the House vote, a presidential veto could be overridden by the necessary two-thirds majority, but the Senate vote, if maintained, would not be enough to override.
The House roll call showed 175 Republicans, 97 Democrats and one Farmer-Laborer voting for the bill. opposed were 96 Democrats, 12 Republicans, two Progressives and one American-Laborer.
The Senate vote on the bill was 47–31.
Editorial: The President takes a poll
Mr. Roosevelt’s telegram to the 48 governors, asking whether they think the soldier vote bill just passed by Congress will be implemented by the laws of their states, is a new wrinkle for a President pondering a veto. It seems to make common sense.
If most of the governors reply that their states probably will not act before the July 15 deadline to authorize use of the federal short ballot – in cases where state ballots are unavailable to soldiers and sailors overseas – then the President will have a strong case for a veto.
If on the contrary the replies are weighted on the side of state cooperation, he can safely sign the bill as preferable to the existing but very controversial statute of 1942, in which Congress sought to eliminate poll tax and registration requirements for men, in uniform and to make ballots available to them on request.
In any event, the President draws dramatic attention to the fact that the responsibility for facilitating or blocking the soldier’s right to vote now is back on the doorsteps of the state legislatures.
Background of news –
Republicans recall 1920
By Bertram Benedict
Some Republicans declare that recent election results in Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania and Colorado indicate a Republican landslide in 1944 like that of 1920.
In 1920, the Republican Party gained its greatest national victory since Reconstruction days. It had 76% of the electoral vote, carrying every state outside of the South and also Oklahoma and Tennessee, and gained almost 70% of the seats in the House of Representatives. To a considerable extent, these results were presaged by the elections in the winter of 1919-20.
Kentucky, which elected a Republican governor in November 1943 and replaced a Democrat by a Republican in the House, elected a Republican for governor in November 1919 by 32,000 votes, the largest majority ever given a Republican gubernatorial candidate in the Blue Grass state. Kentucky also gave the Republicans a majority in the lower branch of the Legislature, while the Democratic majority in the State Senate was reduced to 2.
Big Coolidge victory
The most startling Republican victory in November 1919 was registered in Massachusetts. There Governor Coolidge was reelected by a majority of 124,000 over the Democratic opponent he had defeated in the previous election by only 17,000.
Mr. Coolidge had won national acclaim for what was considered his strong stand in the Boston police strike, and President Wilson sent him a telegram of congratulations on his victory, as one for law and order. Newspaper accounts said that many recently demobilized soldiers and sailors had voted for Mr. Coolidge in resentment at the police strike and other strikes.
In New York, the Republicans increased their strength markedly in the Legislature. Republican F. H. La Guardia was elected president of the Board of Alderman over the Democratic incumbent in New York City. The Democratic organization lost 10 seats in the Board of Alderman, and was defeated badly in two judicial contests.
On Nov. 8, 1919, in a special election to the House of Representatives from Oklahoma, in a district normally Democratic by about 5,000, the Republican candidate won the seat by a majority of 708.
On the other hand, in New Jersey the Democrats took the governorship from the Republicans, with the Republicans retaining control in the Legislature. The Democratic candidate, Edward I. Edwards, had promised if elected to press for state legislation annulling national prohibition and his election was considered a wet rather than a Democratic victory.
Wilson not a candidate
In Maryland, the Democrats, with Albert C. Ritchie, another wet, retained the governorship by a sharply-reduced majority, but made gains in the Legislature.
Early in 1920, the Democrats retained a House seat from a district in Missouri nominally Democratic. Several special elections for the House from New York City districts were meaningless as a gauge, because the Republicans and Democrats had combined against the Socialists.
It must be pointed out that in 1920, President Wilson was not running for reelection. The Democratic candidate, James M. Cox, had hardly the political appeal which had been Wilson’s. Mr. Wilson had been physically incapacitated for more than a year and the Democratic organization had drifted. The war was over and the peace treaty, rejected by the Unite States, had gone into effect in Europe. And the post-war depression had begun.
It must be pointed out also that in the midterm elections of 1922, with the country still in depression, the Democrats won 75 House seats from the Republicans, whose majority was reduced from 168 to 18.
Millett: Critical feminine trait penalizes war wives
Sometimes they’re not invited because they have a ‘snoopy’ eye
By Ruth Millett
…
Cox demands two-thirds rule restored
Convention power of South is issue
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington (UP) –
Rep. Eugene E. Cox (D-GA) today demanded changes in Democratic National Convention procedure which would provoke the bitterest kind of intraparty dispute.
In an address prepared for delivery at Moultrie, Georgia, but released here, Mr. Cox summoned the South to unite to compel the party convention to return to the two-thirds majority system of nominating presidential candidates.
The two-thirds rule was abolished in the harmony convention of 1936 when triumphant Democrats nominated President Roosevelt for a second term. That rule, requiring that a nominee must receive a minimum vote of two-thirds of convention delegates, almost prevented Mr. Roosevelt’s first nomination in 1932.
Clark-Wilson case
It did actually prevent the nomination of Champ Clark of Missouri in the Democratic National Convention of 1912. Woodrow Wilson was chosen there after Mr. Clark piled up a majority vote but was unable to achieve a two-to-one margin.
Under the two-thirds rule, Southern delegates had in effect a veto power against any candidate.
Mr. Cox said:
When the two-thirds rule was abrogated, the South completely lost its power independently to influence party affairs. It is true that the South may still vote in national elections, but for candidates chosen by others.
Favors unequal
So long as the South submits to this, a single Northern state in the politically doubtful column and with only a handful of people will continue to receive governmental favors far exceeding those bestowed upon the entire South.
Now is the time for the South to make itself heard. Let the demand be made upon candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency before the convention is held that they make disclosure of their attitude toward the proposal to reenact this two-thirds rule.
Mr. Cox is a notable anti-New Dealer and a consistent critic of Mr. Roosevelt.