| Friday, July 21 |
| 12:30 p.m.: Selection of vice-presidential candidate |
| 9:15 p.m.: Final session – Adoption of resolutions of thanks to the host city |
Wallace-Truman race a tossup as dozen hopefuls are named
Missouri Senator claims 600 first-ballot votes as New York swings to him
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois –
Strong-lunged party orators placed a dozen or so vice-presidential candidates in nomination at the Democratic National Convention today while friends of Henry A. Wallace and Senator Harry S. Truman hastily canvassed delegations for first-ballot votes.
The fight for a place on the ticket as President Roosevelt’s 1944 running mate centered around the larger delegations as the New York group, with 96 votes to cast adopted a resolution favoring the Missouri Senator.
By midday, several names had been placed in nomination. The first was Senator John H. Bankhead (D-AL), who was named by Senator Lister Hill a few minutes after the roll call started. The second was Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO) whose name was placed in nomination by Senator Bennett C. Clark when Arizona yielded to Missouri amid a chorus of boos from Wallace supporters.
The third name placed in nomination was that of Senator Joseph C. O’Mahoney (D-WY) who was named by Wyoming Governor Lester C. Hunt.
After Mr. Hunt’s speech, delegate Martin V. Coffey of Ohio made his seconding speech for Senator Truman, although the poll had shown more Wallace than Truman voted in the delegation.
Mitchell nominates Wallace
Iowa’s former Chief Justice, Richard F. Mitchell of Fort Dodge, made the nominating speech for Mr. Wallace.
Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, Democratic committeewoman from Pennsylvania, saying. “I guess I’m what the Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey would call a tired old woman,” seconded the nomination of Mr. Wallace.
“Mr. Wallace made that office what the Founding Fathers intended, ‘First assistant to the President,’” Mr. Mitchell told the Convention today in his speech to renominate his fellow Iowan.
‘Did not sit by’
Mr. Wallace deserves renomination, he said, because “the Democratic Party does not give the Vice Presidency as a consolation prize,” but to a man who sees clearly his role as a leader and a man of action.
Mr. Mitchell said:
He [Wallace] did not sit idly by and let his Commander-in-Chief carry the whole burden of war forced upon us by a treacherous foe. No, instead he became the special messenger of the President, taking the American way of life to the peoples of other countries.
When the name of Vice President Wallace went into nomination, the convention raised its banners in a crazy dance and ignored Chairman Samuel Jackson. Three big white balloons carried aloft the sign, “the People Want Wallace.”
Band strikes up
Wallace signs blossomed all over the floor, in the balcony, and in the halls. The band struck up “Iowa, Where the Tall Corn Grows” and the marchers made more noise for Mr. Wallace than they did yesterday for President Roosevelt.
Four years ago, when Mr. Wallace was nominated at Mr. Roosevelt’s insistence, the angry convention gave him no chance to make the acceptance speech he had prepared. The demonstration lasted 11 minutes.
‘Not going to Munich’
Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall, seconding the nomination of Vice President Henry A. Wallace, declared today that this is not the time for compromise and that the Democratic Party is not going to Munich to appease those who abhor its policies.
Mr. Arnall said:
The enemies of Franklin Roosevelt, unable today to assail the President, have sought through vicious attacks upon his friend and comrade to weaken the forces of Democratic liberalism.
Mr. Wallace, he said, had been true to the policies and the ideals that saved America from chaos in 1933 and he has been faithful to the man whom Americans in three elections have chosen as President.
Defends farm policies
Mr. Arnall defended the Vice President against criticism that he is a dreamer, a visionary, an idealist. These are not damning words, he said, because “where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Mr. Arnall said Mr. Wallace’s farm policies had restored to usefulness 30 million acres of land, had doubled the cash income of farmers, and had provided the food and raw materials with which we are winning the war.
Repudiation of Mr. Wallace, Mr. Arnall said, would be a rejection of the party’s domestic policies which averted calamity in America and restored prosperity.
Mayor Edward J. Kelly, on behalf of the Illinois delegation, nominated Senator Scott W. Lucas (D-IL).
Truman claims 600 votes
Senator Truman’s aides said he had been promised Massachusetts’ 34 first-ballot votes, bringing to 600 the total they claim have been pledged to the Missourian. A “good chunk” of Illinois’ votes were also pledged for Truman, but on the second ballot.
With Mr. Roosevelt nominated for a fourth term, it remained for the delegates to settle a contest between the left and right wings of the New Deal-Democratic Party and either renominate Mr. Wallace or retire him to Iowa.
Wallace claims of strength were voiced by Harold Young, the Vice President’s secretary and campaign manager, who said that since yesterday, his man had increased his total of promised votes to 580, nine votes short of a majority.
The Massachusetts decision to go for Senator Truman on the first ballot was the best of news for the Missourian. This was one of the largest blocs of votes that had been uncommitted on the first ballot.
The President accepted his fourth-term renomination last night after a routine process of afternoon balloting. The score was:
|
|
| Roosevelt |
1086 |
| Byrd |
89 |
| Farley |
1 |
The surprised delegates learned, as the President talked, that his radio speech was being made from a West Coast naval station. They will be more surprised to read in the papers today that the President passed through Chicago last Saturday and conferred with Chairman Robert E. Hannegan of the National Committee.
The President directly answered the campaign charge of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee, that he and his administration are tired and quarrelsome old men.
He told the jam-packed stadium crowd:
The people of the United States will decide this fall whether they wish to turn over this 1944 job – this worldwide job – to the inexperienced and immature hands, to those who opposed Lend-Lease and international cooperation against the forces of aggression and tyranny, until they could read the polls of popular sentiment; or whether they wish to leave it to those who saw the danger from abroad, who met it head-on, and who now have seized the offensive and carried the war to its present stages of success, to those who, by international conferences and united action have begun to build that kind of common understanding and cooperative experience which will be so necessary in the world to come.
Mr. Roosevelt said the “1944 job” was to win the war fast and overpoweringly, to form international worldwide organizations including provision for the use of armed force to prevent war, and to build an adequate national economy for returning veterans and all Americans. He said his administration had been working on all of those projects.
President is calm
Not long before he spoke, his great ideological adversary, Hitler, was telling a startled world that some of his army officers had been tossing bombs at him. The Hitler speech was a substantial background for the President’s sure confidence in victory.
But the President’s voice was the only calm note around this convention. The left-right wing contestants are set for battle and have begun to slug. Mr. Hannegan talked to President Roosevelt by telephone from the Blackstone Hotel in midafternoon yesterday and subsequently summoned an evening press conference at which he made public the document which has come to be known here as “The Letter.” It was short and to the point, dated from Washington on July 19:
Dear Bob:
You have written me about Harry Truman and Bill Douglas. I should, of course, be very glad to run with either of them and believe that either one of them would bring real strength to the ticket.
Always sincerely,
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Letters are a mystery
The letter raised a number of unanswered questions, principally as to the time and place it was written. Mr. Roosevelt was not in the White House in Washington on July 19, even though the letter as released by Mr. Hannegan was so dated. Actually, in the early morning of that day, the President was arriving at the West Coast naval station from which he addressed the convention last night.
The thought occurred to some here that he may have written the letter welcoming either Mr. Truman or Justice Douglas as a running mate at the same time and place that he composed another famous letter received here. This other letter was addressed to Senator Samuel D. Jackson (D-IN), permanent convention chairman, and was made public on July 18.
