‘Purple Heart Circuit’ gets full-hearted support
Show folks say they enjoy doing entertainments for ‘the boys’
By Dennis Dalton, United Press staff writer
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Polls indicate a close race for President
Danger signals found for Democrats
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Public opinion polls forecast the closest presidential election contest this year since 1916 when California’s 22 electoral votes for Woodrow Wilson kept Charles Evans Hughes out of the White House.
There has not been a presidential contest since then whose result was not fairly obvious prior to Election Day.
Assuming even that President Roosevelt is the Democratic nominee again, there are some danger signals for the Democratic ticket in recent polls. The polls must be read, however, in light of an allowable error of some 4%.
The National Opinion Research Center, with headquarters at the University of Denver, Colorado, spotlights a couple of them in a poll survey.
Businessmen favor Dewey
There is nothing surprising, nor likely to disturb Mr. Roosevelt, in the report of the magazine Fortune poll that among a representative list of top-ranking business executives fewer than nine of each 100 wanted Mr. Roosevelt reelected.
This business and management group favored Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York of the four men suggested to them.
A Gallup poll was predicated on the European war still being on next November but under circumstances indicating it shortly would be over. The question was limited to Mr. Roosevelt and Governor Dewey.
Trouble signs for Democrats
Business and professional groups gave Governor Dewey 58% of their vote and the remaining 42% to the President.
The Roosevelt 42% was six points less than he received in 1936 from that strata of voters. But it was a 6% increase over the percentage of business and professional voters who supported the President in 1940. That represents a substantial gain which might be vital in a close contest.
The most alarming development from the Democratic standpoint is indicated in Gallup’s survey of farm sentiment. On Election Day 1940, it is estimated that 51% of farmers outside the South were for Mr. Roosevelt. By August 1943, a Gallup poll reported that support had shrunk to 39%. As of now, it has slumped further to 35%.
That means political trouble for the Democrats in the Farm Belt and in the so-called farm states which, prior to the New Deal, had been considered traditionally Republican.
22 for Roosevelt
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (UP) –
Oklahoma’s 22 delegates to the Democratic National Convention had instructions today to support President Roosevelt for a fourth term at Chicago in July.
Democrats at the State Convention so instructed their delegates last night after Robert Hannegan, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, predicted that Mr. Roosevelt will accept a fourth term nomination “when he weighs the national security against his personal feelings.”
Mr. Hannegan insisted, however, that he was not speaking for the President.
California votes
Sacramento, California (UP) –
Californians went to the polls in a consolidated wartime primary today, to ratify unopposed presidential delegate slates pledged to President Roosevelt and Governor Earl Warren and select nominees for one U.S. Senate seat, 23 posts in the House and for state legislative offices.
President Roosevelt was assured of 56 unopposed delegates to the Democratic National Convention, while Governor Earl Warren automatically will win 50 delegates to the Republican convention. The Warren delegates are expected to switch later to Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.
New Jersey votes
Trenton, New Jersey (UP) –
Voters in New Jersey went to the polls today to select delegates to the national presidential nominating conventions and to nominate candidates for the U.S. Senate and House.
The state Republican organization had a full slate of convention delegates, including seven for delegates-at-large and two from each of the state’s 14 Congressional districts. Governor Walter E. Edge, former supporter of Wendell L. Willkie, heads this slate. An opposing faction, pledged to draft Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York entered a slate for the delegates-at-large seats, and also contested state organization choices in three Congressional districts.
Delegates supporting President Roosevelt for a fourth term had no opposition.
Jackson to pinch hit for Truman here
Washington –
Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO), chairman of the special Senate Committee Investigating the War Program, had to cancel his scheduled address at Pittsburgh’s Jackson Day dinner tomorrow because of the press of committee business, his office said today.
Mr. Truman is the reported choice of a number of State Democratic leaders for the party nomination for Vice President, in place of Henry A. Wallace, and his Pittsburgh visit was expected to develop further support for such a move.
Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA), who entertained for Vice President Wallace at a garden party here last week, advised Allegheny County Democrats of Mr. Truman’s inability to appear and obtain Senator Samuel Jackson (D-IN) instead.
Senator Jackson, appointed Jan. 28 to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Senator Frederick Van Nuys, has been an administration supporter in Senate votes.
CIO woos the Democrats –
Guaranteed weekly wage pledge asked of party
Union group wants backing for revolutionary change in American industry practices
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
CIO union leaders, now out in front of the Roosevelt fourth term movement, hope to get a Democratic National Platform Commitment that would indorse a revolutionary change in industry practices.
They want the Democratic Party to sponsor their proposal that every workingman ve guaranteed a specific weekly wage, in good times and bad, come hell or high water.
This was learned today from sources close to CIO president Philip Murray, who has made the wage guarantee a principal demand in the big wage case of the United Steelworkers before the War Labor Board.
In last week’s Cleveland convention of the steel union the statements of Mr. Murray and other officers gave the wage guarantee question an importance equal to that of the union’s demand that the Little Steel wage formula be broken to allow a pay boost of 17 cents an hour for the more than half a million employees of this industry.
The steel union, on the 17-cent demand, is up against the facts that President Roosevelt wants to make no change in wartime wage-control policies, and that under present law the War Labor Board says it cannot change its pay yardstick.
Roosevelt backing hinted
But the wage-guarantee issue is one that Mr. Roosevelt is said to be ready to regard as part of a general social security program, and the CIO forces might accept victory on this front as recompense for failure on the pay-boost question.
If the wage-guarantee theory should be enforced in one industry, it inevitably would spread through others, with the result that employers of non-white collar workers would have to revamp their financing plans. The wage would have to be paid all qualified employees during times when, according to past history of depressions, plants would be shut down.
The steel union’s proposal is that an employee’s average hourly straight-time earnings be averaged for the preceding year, be multiplied by 40 (for the legislated 40-hour week), and that the resulting sum be his weekly guarantee.
The union proposal said:
For each week during life of this contract that the employee, for reasons beyond his control, does not receive a sum equal to this minimum amount, the company shall make up the difference.
Ups and downs cited
The union pointed out that the steel industry has been subject to sharp ups and downs in activity and employment, and therefore:
There is the imperative social need to assure steelworkers that the prince and pauper era is at an end. Economic security through full employment, thereby creating freedom from want and freedom from fear, can and must be accomplished for this basic industry. This objective is not attained through the pitiful unemployment compensation payments.
Industry leaders have charged that both the political and war situations are being used by the CIO union to force adoption of a government policy that might not be attainable under ordinary conditions.
Fairless quoted
B. F. Fairless, president of U.S. Steel Corporation, testified:
A guaranteed annual minimum wage would not ensure employment, but would inevitably destroy the financial ability of the steel industry to employ. In fact, the demand for such a revolutionary change becomes fantastic unless the eventual insolvency of the steel industry is the desire.
War experience in planned production, asserted the union, makes the wage-guarantee plan feasible.
The future of every man and woman who works on a wage basis, rather than on a fixed salary, may be affected by outcome of this phase of the steel case. So may the planning of industrial operations.
The War Labor Board proceedings resume today after a two-week recess.
New Deal secrecy hit by Landon
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Alf M. Landon, the 1936 Republican standard-bearer, said today that the most important qualification for a President was ability to formulate a clear domestic policy and provide the leadership to carry it through.
Mr. Landon told the 147th Rotary International District Conference:
A man can’t be a “statesman” abroad and a failure at home and be of much use in the period ahead, either to America or to the world.
Mr. Landon charged that:
The everlasting confusion over manpower and the draft – to mention only two items out of a long list – brings the realization of the great need for an efficient administrator in the White House.
The Kansan said:
There is a marked difference between Woodrow Wilson’s publicized diplomatic exchanges and the personal secrecy of President Roosevelt.
We should have had long ago the promised report from the President on his conferences, and agreements with Stalin and Churchill. We do not know whether we are headed in the direction of a super international state – a league of nations – a federation of nations – a world court – or a balance of power alliance, or a direction not yet made known.
Tammany strife taken to court
New York (UP) –
A court order obtained by foes of the Tammany Hall regime of Edward V. Loughlin forced the organization’s leaders to call off a meeting of 1,000 county committee members last night and to delay adoption of a resolution endorsing a fourth term for President Roosevelt.
Mr. Loughlin charged that the motive behind the move by John L. Buckley and Dennis J. Mahon, members of Tammany’s Executive Committee, was to prevent passage of the resolution.
Mr. Buckley and Mr. Mahon, who obtained the order, alleged that the rules the committee was scheduled to adopt were not formulated properly. The proposed rules changes, they said, would have had the effect of strengthening the present leadership of Tammany.
The order is returnable next Monday.
Background of news –
New York and the election
By Bertram Benedict
In the election in November, the state of New York will have 47 (17%) of the 266 electoral votes necessary to elect a President. This is more than the combined electoral vote of 12 other states. No wonder, then, that most of those who expect the election to be close are prophesying: “The man who carries New York will win,” nor that the Governor of New York now seems about to walk away with the Republican nomination.
For Mr. Dewey looks like a remarkably good vote-getter in New York, even if he was born and reared in Michigan. In 1938, he ran against Governor Lehman for the New York governorship and came within a hair’s breadth of winning. Mr. Lehman received 1,971,000 votes on the Democratic ticket and 420,000 on the American Labor Party ticket, for a total of 2,391,000. Mr. Dewey, receiving 2,327,000, was defeated by only 64,000 votes out of more than 4,700,000 cast.
In the same year, the two Republican candidates for U.S. Senator from New York (one for an unexpired term) lost by 438,000 votes and 355,000 votes, respectively. Two years before, the Republican gubernatorial candidate had lost by 521,000 votes. And in 1942, Mr. Dewey defeated the Democratic candidate and the American Labor Party candidate by a clear majority of 245,000.
Opposed by Willkie in 1942
Mr. Dewey received the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1942 over the ill-disguised opposition of Wendell L. Willkie. When the state Republican leaders were obviously about to swing the party nominating convention over to Mr. Dewey, Mr. Willkie came out for a free-for-all nomination race, although disclaiming any ambitions for himself and any participation in a Stop-Dewey movement.
Mr. Willkie was understood to have warned the party leaders privately that Mr. Dewey would be defeated because of his alleged isolationism prior to Pearl Harbor. But Mr. Dewey got the nomination hands down.
Mr. Willkie himself had run well in New York against President Roosevelt in 1940. There Mr. Willkie had 48% of the major party vote, as against 45% in the nation as a whole. If one in every 25 New Yorkers who voted for Mr. Roosevelt in 1940 should vote for the Republican candidate this year, the Republicans will carry the state.
However, the fact that Mr. Dewey ran well for Governor does not necessarily mean that he will run as well for President in the Empire State. Alfred E. Smith was also a great gubernatorial vote-getter, but the state which sent him to the Governor’s Mansion in Albany four times (once in a Republican landslide year, 1924), would not vote to send him to the White House in 1928.
Yet while New York was voting against Mr. Smith as the Democratic presidential candidate, it was voting for Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Democratic gubernatorial candidate.
Hughes wins – but loses
In 1916, the Republicans nominated for the Presidency Justice Charles E. Hughes of New York, largely because he was expected to carry, in what looked like a close election, the state in which he had been elected Governor in 1906 and 1908. The expectation was realized, for Mr. Hughes carried New York by a substantial margin, but he lost the election by 23 electoral votes (Woodrow Wilson, the winner, lost his state, New Jersey).
That was really the only time since the Civil War in which the country did not vote as New York voted. True, in 1876, New York voted for its governor, Samuel J. Tilden, only to see Hayes elected, but probably Tilden was unfairly counted out; as it was, he had a popular majority.
If it is Dewey vs. Roosevelt in November, it will be the first time since 1904 (Theodore Roosevelt vs. Alton B. Parker) that both major party candidates have been New Yorkers. In the year 1884, Governor Grover Cleveland of New York carried the state and was elected President; in 1888, he lost the state and the Presidency; in 1892, he carried the state and the nation again.