Bricker cites free enterprise as big 1944 issue
Hershey, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, resumed active campaigning today after spending four “non-political” days in conferences with 35 other governors, including his possible chief opponent, Thomas E. Dewey of New York.
Even before the official end of the 36th Annual Governors’ Conference, Bricker went to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he told local members of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association that “reestablishment of free enterprise” was one of the foremost issues of the 1944 campaign.
Dewey stayed to the end, ruffling some feelings when he observed that the conference spent too much time on social activities and too little time on problems common to the states, but closing it with a conciliatory note when he acted as mediator in a dispute over a resolution demanding better cooperation between the federal government and the states.
Bricker told his Lancaster audience:
Free enterprise made our country great and strong. Yet the New Deal has arrogantly sought to destroy business in many ways.
Recalling the recent government seizure of Montgomery Ward & Co. at Chicago, Bricker quoted Attorney General Francis Biddle as saying in that connection that “no business in this country is immune from seizure.”
He asserted:
If what Attorney General Biddle says is true, then we no longer have a constitutional government ln the United States of America – we have a dictator.