St. Louis, Missouri (UP) – (July 29)
James J. Carroll, nationally known betting commissioner, shortened his odds on the reelection of President Roosevelt today from 1–3 to 2–5.
At the same time, he cut the odds against Thomas E. Dewey from 2.5–1 to a new price of 9–5.
“A flood of Dewey money showed up, forcing us to cut his price,” Carroll said.
New York (UP) – (July 29)
Wendell L. Willkie tonight called for the defeat of Hamilton Fish in his campaign for reelection to Congress from the newly-constituted 29th district of New York.
Mr. Willkie’s statement, in the form of a telegram to playwright Maxwell Anderson, followed by one day Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s repudiation of the Republican Congressman for “injecting a racial issue into the campaign.”
Mr. Willkie’s wire said:
Your fight to prevent his [Congressman Fish’s] reelection to Congress is certainly a public service. It is a great public service to all Americans to help terminate the political career of Ham Fish.
The text of the telegram was public when Mr. Anderson requested the 1940 Republican presidential candidate to defend him should Congressman Fish carry out his threat to bring suit because of Mr. Anderson’s action in printing an advertisement reportedly linking Congressman Fish’s name with “certain persons who have been indicted or convicted as Nazi agents.”
The advertisement reputedly links Congressman Fish’s name with Fritz Kuhn, German-American Bund leader, and George Sylvester Viereck, who was convicted for failing to register as an enemy agent.
Mr. Willkie wired the playwright:
In response to your request, I shall count it a public service to represent you in any libel action which Hamilton Fish may bring.
Mr. Willkie based his repudiation on what he called Congressman Fish’s “narrow nationalistic view.” Such a view, he said, is “the inevitable producer of antisemitism and a dozen other perils to democracy.”
Bonham, Texas (UP) – (July 29)
House Speaker Sam Rayburn told a harmonious Pro-Roosevelt Fannin County Convention here today that, if electors chosen by the people do not vote as directed, “they will be the greatest embezzlers of all time.”
Speaker Rayburn, speaking extemporaneously, said:
I plan to vote for all nominees of the Democratic Party from constable up to President and I want my vote counted.
If I were not a Democrat, I would not participate in the convention and primary.
The Speaker said everyone will have an opportunity to vote for either the Democratic ticket headed by President Roosevelt or the Republican ticket headed by New York’s Governor Thomas E. Dewey.
He declared:
And if the vast majority of Texans cast their voted for the ticket headed by Mr. Roosevelt – as I think they will – then the electors will be the greatest embezzlers of all time if they fail to cast their vote as directed by Texas Democrats.
I hope and trust that every county convention will send a delegation to the state convention that will, in some manner, right the matter of the electors so that they will cast their votes as the people of Texas intend them to be cast.
Five other primaries scheduled next week while GOP governors meet
Washington (UP) – (July 29)
The political eyes of the nation shifted tonight to Missouri in anticipation of next week’s concentration there of three of the leading figures in the 1944 presidential campaign, coincident with a hotly-contested primary on Tuesday.
The spotlight centered on the meeting of Thomas E. Dewey and John W. Bricker, Republican presidential and vice-presidential nominees, with 24 other Republican governors in St. Louis on Aug. 2 and 3.
Other attention was focused on the race between Senator Bennett Champ Clark and Attorney General Roy D. McKittrick for the Democratic senatorial nomination in the Missouri primary on Aug. 1 and the presence of Senator Harry S. Truman, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, at his Independence, Missouri, home.
Shunted into the background by such a concentration of leaders and competition was the fact that five other state primaries, involving races of three other Senate veterans for renomination, are also scheduled next week.
Senator Clyde M. Reed (R-KS) and Senator Robert F. Wagner (D-NY) confronted no trouble for renomination in their respective party primaries Tuesday. Virginia, which has no Senate contest this year, also has primaries scheduled for Tuesday.
Senator Alben W. Barkley (D-KY), Democratic Leader, was generally conceded an easy victory over two opponents in the Kentucky Democratic primary on Aug. 5. The Tennessee primary, Aug. 3, is centered on local issues.
The Dewey-Bricker conference with other Republican Governors was called by the GOP presidential nominee to discuss cooperation between state and federal government. There is no question, however, but that Governor Dewey will use the opportunity to discuss with the governors possible issues for him to raise in the fall campaign.
Immediate purpose is to reelect Roosevelt and install pro-labor Congress
By Blair Moody, North American Newspaper Alliance
…
Timetable of Dewey’s day in Pittsburgh
Governor Dewey’s auto caravan will follow this route tomorrow when the Republican candidate for President travels from the Pennsylvania Station to the William Penn Hotel. He will arrive at 8:55 a.m. ET. A procession of about 20 cars is planned. Mr. Dewey and his party will leave the hotel at 9:15 p.m. and reverse this route before boarding a train for Springfield, Illinois, except that he will go south on Grant Street from the hotel and thence directly down Fifth Avenue.Here is the complete timetable of Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s day in Pittsburgh tomorrow (all times ET):
8:55 a.m.: Arrive Pennsylvania Station, parade down Liberty Avenue, to Fifth Avenue, to William Penn Way to Sixth Avenue, to Grant Street, to William Penn Hotel.
10:00 a.m.: Press conference.
11:00 a.m.: Conference with labor group.
11:30 a.m.: Conference with business group.
Noon: Conference with farm group.
12:30 p.m.: Conference with war veterans group.
1:00 p.m.: Luncheon with Pennsylvania candidates.
2:00 p.m.: Conference with Congressional and statewide candidates.
3:30 p.m.: Reception at Ball Room, William Penn Hotel.
6:00 p.m.: Conference with officials of United Mine Workers.
7:30 p.m.: Dinner with Republican State Executive Committee, statewide candidates and local Republican leaders.
9:00 p.m.: Press conference.
9:15 p.m.: Leaves William Penn Hotel. Parade down Grant Street to Fifth Avenue, to Liberty Avenue, to Pennsylvania Station.
9:44 p.m.: Train leaves for Springfield, Illinois.
His repudiation of ‘Ham Fish’ cited
Albany, New York (UP) – (July 29)
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, having bitterly denounced persons attempting to “inject racial and religious issues” into political campaigns, left Albany today for his Pawling farm, preliminary to an invasion of pivotal Midwestern states.
The Republican presidential nominee will remain at his farm only overnight before proceeding to New York City, where he will board a train for Pittsburgh to meet with Pennsylvania Congressional representatives and leaders of business, labor and agriculture. He will leave Pittsburgh Monday for Springfield, Illinois, and St. Louis, where the Republican Governors’ Conference opens Wednesday.
Attacks ‘Ham’ Fish
Mr. Dewey’s repudiation of Congressman Hamilton Fish, veteran New York legislator, was interpreted as a move to shake all so-called isolationist groups from the Republican camp. The Governor’s attack followed publication of an interview in which the Congressman was quoted, “All Jews will vote for the New Deal and President Roosevelt.”
The Governor said he had “fought that kind of thing all my life and always will regardless of partisan consideration.” He added that he had “never accepted the support of any such individual and I never shall.”
In reply to Mr. Dewey, Mr. Fish said he would “bet a dollar that Dewey doesn’t carry one district in New York City that is predominantly Jewish.”
Fish predicts victory
He added:
When I referred to the fact that people of Jewish origin are largely in favor of the New Deal, I stated a fact that everybody knows.
Mr. Fish said Mr. Dewey’s repudiation would tend to increase his margin of victory in the Aug. 1 primaries and that people of his district resented interference from outside sources.
After issuing the anti-Fish statement, Dewey conferred with former Kentucky Governor Flem D. Sampson and Watertown (New York) publisher Harold B. Johnson.
Waterway discussed
Mr. Dewey and Mr. Johnson discussed the St. Lawrence Waterway and it was understood that the Governor reiterated a statement he made in 1940 in support of the project. Mr. Dewey’s approval of the waterway will remove it as an issue of the presidential campaigns. President Roosevelt also favors the development.
Mr. Sampson said he believed the Dewey-Bricker ticket would receive “a very substantial majority” in Kentucky.
Republican ahead in Wolverine and Hoosier states with 57% of civilian vote
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
…
Lays his defeat to ‘reactionaries’
Des Moines, Iowa (UP) – (July 29)
Vice President Henry A. Wallace today exonerated the South as a whole for his failure to win renomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week, but inferred that he blamed “Wall Street-financed Southern reactionary leaders” for the outcome of the voting.
“It is important to say a word about my Southern friends,” Mr. Wallace, who is serving as permanent chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee at the State Convention, told the delegates.
The farmers of the Midwest owe a lot to the farmers of the South. We would never have gotten satisfactory agricultural legislation if it had not been for men like Marvin Jones, Senator John Bankhead and Senator Alben Barkley.
There are certain reactionary leaders, but they are usually financed directly or indirectly from the North. More and more an intelligent, constructive liberal leadership will arise in the South which will not owe anything directly or indirectly to Wall Street or to outworn prejudices.
One function of a liberal, constructive Democratic Party is to keep the West and South united. Another function is to keep the farmer and labor united.
Airfield is taken; U.S. casualties are low
By Rembert James, representing combined U.S. press
…
General stays calm as shot wounds three in next room
By Ira Wolfert
…
Civilians owe soldier debt but don’t treat him as spoiled child
By Miriam Ottenberg, North American Newspaper Alliance
…
Every blow in France big help to Reds
By Col. Frederick Palmer, North American Newspaper Alliance
…
The CIO Political Action Committee is likely to become the biggest issue in the presidential election.
To some, it is a subversive movement organized by a smart coalition of Communists, labor bosses, intellectuals and leftists in general to gain control of the government and make the state supreme under their dictatorship.
To others, it is a crusade to educate voters to preserve democracy – that’s what the CIO leaders call it.
Without debating what it is, let’s at least look at how it proposes to operate – what makes it tick. For it is a real, concrete movement, smartly led and financed with millions of dollars. And if it is to be a force in American politics, we ought to understand it – and if it is to be kept from becoming the dominating force, then we first have to learn how it operates.
For that reason, The Press today starts publication of a series of five stories telling just what the PAC is, what it proposes to do and how it proposes to do it. The stories are based on publications and statements of its leaders and on the textbooks which it is sending out by hundreds of thousands to train its followers in the details of political organization.
Its basic principle is simple – first get ‘em registered, and then get out the vote. Its textbooks center around that theme.
“A big vote is always a good vote,” says the PAC. So, it proceeds on the job of getting out a big vote of its own people. Obviously the only practical policy of its opponents is to get out a big vote of their own people. In which case we may have a big vote of all the people.
If that happens, then the PAC will have accomplished a worthy purpose, regardless of how you view it.
“Unless you are registered you are as useless as a soldier without a gun,” says the PAC political textbook.
Its immediate job is to work through 14 regional officers and thousands upon thousands of shop stewards and local committees and union headquarters to get its vote registered.
To do this, the PAC proposes a registration committee in each plant; complete file cards for each union member; checking of these cards against registration lists; contact with each non-registered worker and his family to get them registered; assistance in making registration convenient or in helping workers to overcome election red tape, and a huge whoop-it-up campaign to make registration popular through posters, leaflets, buttons, etc.
To accomplish these objectives, political textbooks have been issued by the PAC and by various CIO unions.
“The secret of political success today lies largely in doorbell ringing,” says the Guide to Political Action.
“Talk to friends,” it urges, especially pointing out how shop stewards and members of grievance committees are in a favorable position.
“Make a list of neighbors and friends” and then talk to them to see that they are registered. These neighborhood lists are to form the foundation for block and precinct political clubs.
Each precinct is to have a committee and a captain. The PAC textbook says:
A good captain is eager to help solve the problem of his neighbors… Such captains build precinct organizations which become centers of social as well as political activity in the neighborhood. By such work, the precinct captain and his assistants are able to mobilize the people of their neighborhood when a political campaign is launched.
“Whenever possible, the precinct captains should be neighbors,” it is emphasized, and the particular value of women as neighborhood organizers is pointed out.
All of which is very practical, irrefutable and effective politics.
If the CIO and its left-wing associates are to be kept from taking over the government, then the same sort of grassroots organizing will be required to defeat them.
For it isn’t true that a big vote is always a good vote – not when it is a big vote only of those who organized and carried through the essentials of getting one particular group of voters to the polls.
By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
Washington –
The job of enforcing the laws against undue political activity of federal employees will be greater in this election campaign than in any preceding one, for two reasons: (1) There are many more such employees, under the wartime expansion; (2) a large proportion have not had time to become indoctrinated with the politically-passive etiquette that is supposed to govern public servants, and many regard themselves as only temporarily on the federal payroll, with a consequent lesser fear of the principal penalty, expulsion.
The size of the job is indicated by the fact that the number of federal civilian employees, in and outside the continental United States, is now greater than the total number of employees of all the states, counties, cities, towns and other local units of the entire country.
The latest figure of the Civil Service Commission for the federal service shows 2,862,449 federal employees within the continental United states, plus 415,100 outside, a total of 3,277,549. The latest available figure on the total of state and local government is 3,069,600.
Congress has recognized the larger job of enforcing the political activities laws through adding $40,000 to the usual annual $50,000 of the Civil Service Commission for this purpose. That money will not be used for organization of a corps of official watchers of the behavior of federal employees. There is no such corps, and none is planned.
This is the law
The theory is that a federal employee cannot become active in party politics without making himself conspicuous and obnoxious, subject to being reported on or complained against by persons who are on the other side of the question.
Big, black “WARNING” signs have been posted in hundreds of thousands of places where they will reach the attention of the persons most concerned. They cite first, THE LAW:
It shall be unlawful for any person employed in the executive branch of the federal government, or any agency or department thereof, to use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or affecting the result thereof. No officer or employee in the executive branch of the federal government, or any agency or department thereof, shall take any active part in political management or in political campaigns. All such persons shall retain the right to vote as they may choose and to express their opinions on all political subjects and candidates.
Other legislation applies the same restrictions to employees of the District of Columbia, and to state or local employees “whose principal activity is in connection with any activity which is financed in whole or in part by loans or grants made by the United States or by any federal agency.”
Depends on degree
Terms of the law indicate one of its main difficulties – that the propriety of political activity frequently depends on its degree. For instance, while the federal employee retains the right to express his opinions, if he does so in a public speech, he would be stepping over the line.
He may display a political picture in his home if he so desires, and the Commission apparently sees nothing improper about that. And he may wear a political
They may not–
The following are some of the forms of prohibited political activity:
Serving on or for any political committee, party or other similar organization.
Soliciting or handling political contributions.
Serving as officer of a political club, as member or officer of any of its committees, addressing such a club or being active in organizing it.
Serving in connection with, preparation for, organizing or conducting a political meeting or rally, addressing such a meeting, or taking any other active part therein except as a spectator.
Engaging in political conferences while on duty, or canvassing a district or soliciting political support for a party, faction or candidate.
Manifesting offensive activity at the polls, at primary or regular elections, soliciting votes, assisting voters to mark ballots, or helping to get out the voters on registration or election days.
Acting as recorder, checker, watcher or challenger of any party or faction.
Publishing or being connected editorially or managerially with any newspaper generally known as partisan from a political standpoint; or writing for publication any letter or article, signed or unsigned, in favor of or against any political party or candidate.
Becoming a candidate for nomination or election to office, federal, state or local, which is to be filled in an election in which party candidates are involved.
