America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

9514

americavotes1944

In primaries –
Clark trailing; Fish renominated

Missouri Senator appears defeated
By the United Press

Senator Bennett Champ Clark, ardent isolationist before Pearl Harbor, was apparently defeated yesterday in his race for renomination in the Missouri Democratic primary, unofficial returns showed today.

Mr. Clark was trailing State Attorney General Roy McKittrick by more than 21,000 votes, the unofficial returns from 3,785 of Missouri’s 4,516 precincts giving McKittrick 147,229 and Clark 125,828 votes.

Clark was beaten in the rural sections. St. Louis and Kansas City practically cancelled each other, the former backing McKittrick and Kansas City going for Clark.

In the New York primary, the renomination of Rep. Hamilton Fish Jr., another pre-war isolationist, in New York’s reapportioned 29th district, was assured.

In another contest in a newly-aligned district in New York, Rep. Vito Marcantonio, seeking renomination for a fifth term, won both the Democratic and Republican nomination, leading Democratic Rep. Martin J. Kennedy of the old district, 10,100 to 7,759, and Republican Robert C. Palmer, 2,949 to 2,720.

Fish’s opponent concedes

Mr. Fish’s opponent, Newburgh attorney Augustus W. Bennet, conceded the nomination early today when unofficial returns from 252 of 278 precincts showed 13,975 votes for Fish and 10,891 for Bennet.

Mr. Bennet, however, was unopposed for the nomination for the Democratic and American Labor parties, and will oppose Mr. Fish in the November election.

Bennet to fight on

Mr. Bennet said later today that he was starting immediately to circulate a petition to have his name placed on the ballot on November as Independent Republican candidate – “independent of the dictates of the Hamilton Fish clique.”

He said:

The primary was but one phase of the crusade to crush those things Hamilton Fish stands for in the Republican Party and in American life.

The margin of victory was the smallest ever piled up by Mr. Fish, who battled for renomination in a reapportioned district in which voters of three counties were strangers.

In addition to the handicap of winning votes in new counties, Mr. Fish was also opposed by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee, and Wendell L. Willkie, the GOP’s 1940 candidate, who attempted to purge him for allegedly injecting racial and religious prejudices into the campaign.

Other Missouri races

In another Missouri primary contest, Governor Forrest C. Donnell won an easy victory for the Republican senatorial nomination with 65,055 votes on the basis of returns from 2,210 precincts. His nearest opponent was St. Louis shoe manufacturer Howard V. Stephens, who received 26,602 votes. It was a seven-man race.

A nip-and-tuck race developed in the Republican gubernatorial race. Returns from 2,220 precincts gave Charles Ferguson, former state Republican chairman, 59,203 to 58,578 for Lebanon lawyer Jean Paul Bradshaw. State Health Commissioner Dr. James Stewart had 17.156 votes in the three-man race.

State Senator Phil M. Donnelly had a 30,000-vote margin for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination on the basis of returns from 2,237 precincts.

All incumbent Congressmen who had opposition in the primary were leading their opponents.

Kansas results

Returns from 733 of the state’s precincts gave Senator Clyde M. Reed a total of 21,553 votes, compared to 16,757 for Carl Friend.

In Virginia, Democratic Rep. Patrick H. Drewry win renomination on the basis of nearly complete but unofficial returns. But in the only other contest in that state, State Senator Ralph Daughton, backed by the political machine of Senator Harry F. Byrd, held a slim lead over his nearest rival in a three-war race for the party nomination to succeed Rep. Winder R. Harris, who withdrew to enter private business.

In another New York City contest, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Negro, defeated Mrs. Sara Pelham Speaks, Negro, for both the Republican and Democratic nomination in the new 22nd Congressional district which comprises Harlem.

9515

Fighting flares!
Strikers defy union, U.S. in Philadelphia

Transit walkout sent to White House

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9516

I DARE SAY —
The rooftops of Manhattan

By Florence Fisher Parry

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9517

Effective Aug. 13 –
Utility beef cuts to be point free

Pork loins and hams will return to list

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9518

Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Somewhere in Normandy, France – (by wireless)
An ordnance tank repair company gets some freakish jobs, indeed.

The other day the company I was with had a tank destroyer roll in. There was nothing wrong whatever with it except – the end of the gun barrel was corked tight with 2½ feet of wood.

What happened was they had been running along a hedgerow and as the turret operator swung his gun in a forward arc, they ran the end of the barrel smack into a big tree.

You would think the vehicle had to be going 100 miles an hour to plug the end of the barrel for 2½ feet simply by running into a tree. But it doesn’t. This one was going 20 miles an hour.

It took the ordnance boys four hours to dig the wood out with chisels and reamers. The inside of the barrel wasn’t hurt a bit and it went right back into action.

A three-inch anti-tank gun was brought in with a hole in the barrel about six inches back from the muzzle. The hole came from the inside! What happened was this: A German bazooka gunner fired a rocket at the anti-tank gun. It made one of those freakish hole-in-one hits – went right smack into the muzzle of the big gun.

About six inches inside it went off and burned its way clear through the barrel. Nobody got hurt but the barrel was unrepairable, and was sent back to England for salvage.

Another freak hit

A tank was brought in that had been hit twice on the same side within a few seconds. The entrance holes were about two feet apart. But on opposite side of the tank where the shells came out, there was only one hole. The angle of fire had been such that the second shell went right through the hole made by the first one.

In another case an 88 shell struck the thick steel apron that shields the breech of one of a tank’s guns. The shell didn’t go through. It hit at an angle and just scooped out a big chunk of steel about a foot long and six inches wide.

It’s very improbable that in the whole war this same shield would get hit again in the same place. Yet they can’t afford to take that chance, so the weakened armor had to be made strong again.

They took acetylene torches and cut out a plug around the weakened part with slanting sides the same as you’d plug a watermelon. Then they fashioned a steel plate the same size and shape as the hole, and welded it in.

The result is that the plug fits into the hole like a wedge and it would be impossible for a shell to drive it in. It’s really stronger now than it used to be.

One of the most surprising things I ran onto touring around scores of outdoor ordnance shops in Normandy was a mobile tire repair unit.

There already are half a dozen of these units here and more coming in. They fix anything from a motorcycle to truck tires. They don’t bother with ordinary holes such as nail holes. Practically all their work is on tires damaged by shrapnel or bullets.

Men especially trained

Each repair outfit consists of one officer and 15 men. They’ve been especially trained and their leaders usually were tiremen back in civil life.

They move in three trucks. When they set up, the three are backed to each other to form a T, thus making a shop with three wings, you get up to it on a portable staircase.

Outside on the ground tires are stacked all around. One set of soldiers works all day with knives carving out the rubber around the damaged places. Then they take the tire inside, and a machine roughens the edges of the holes so the filling will stick.

Then they mold in fresh rubber and put the tire in one of three baking machines. It’s hotter than blazes in there. It takes an hour and 45 minutes to bake each patch so you see they can’t turn them out very fast.

They’ll repair a tire that has up to six holes, but if it has more than that they send it back to England. A six-hole tire takes 10½ hours of baking. One unit can run off a maximum of about 65 tires daily. The unit I saw was set up in a former orchard and was so thoroughly camouflaged with nets you could hardly see it. The officer in charge was Lt. George Schuchardt, who has “The Hawkinson Tread Service” in Nashville, Tennessee. His partner is running it while he’s away.

His first sergeant is Stephen Hudak of Akron, of all places. He used to work for Firestone. I’ve been finding more damned square pegs in square holes in this Army lately. Something must be wrong.

9519

americavotes1944

Perkins: Steel pay case unique factor in election

President’s decision due before balloting
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Washington –
The 1944 election campaign includes a factor never before in political history: The President running for reelection will be called on, probably two or three weeks before the balloting, to decide whether a large group of his supporters shall get an increase in pay.

This was the picture presented today at the War Labor Board through statements that the factfinding panel in the “Big Steel” wage case is working to present its report before Aug. 31. That would give the board two months before the November election to prepare a recommendation that the “Little Steel” revised upward to meet the demands of the United Steelworkers and other CIO unions.

Final decision Roosevelt’s

Only President Roosevelt can make the final decision, because under his orders defining the duties and jurisdiction of the WLB, that agency must have White House approval before it changes the wartime wage standard. WLB states:

In a number of wage dispute cases pending before the War Labor Board and its agencies, including the dispute in the Steel case, unions have presented demands for general wage increases admittedly beyond the limits of the existing wage stabilization policy. The Board is, of course, without power to approve such demands.

Treasury will pay

The steel union, headed by CIO President Philip Murray, is leading the attack on the administration wage policy. This union is also the keystone of the CIO Political Action Committee, which has announced its intention of spending large sums in its efforts to reelect Mr. Roosevelt and to elect a Congress in sympathy with his policies.

If the steel workers and other CIO unionists get the wage boosts they have been battling for, the costs will be paid first by the steel and other companies concerned, but eventually will come out of the U.S. Treasury, because all the companies concerned are working on war contracts.

Leaders of the unions involved are the source from which the PAC, headed by Sidney Hillman, expects to collect several million dollars for use in the Roosevelt campaign.

From two factors

This wage-decision situation is an outgrowth of two factors:

  • The President’s insistence on keeping all the strings of the labor situation in his own hands.
  • The drive begun last December by the Steelworkers to break the “Little Steel” formula.

If Mr. Roosevelt ups the formula for the steel union, it will go up simultaneously for all the other unions, AFL and CIO, that have wage demands on ice. It may mean a major operation on the administration’s anti-inflation policies.

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9520

Simms: Allies believe Germans face bigger revolts

Anti-Hitler plot viewed as genuine
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard staff writer

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9521

Nazi mystery base falls to Americans near Lessay

Flying field dug up, apparently for use as rocket platform – or something
By B. J. McQuaid

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9522

Eisenhower’s caution saves Allied lives

And it brings Nazi collapse closer
By Col. Frederick Palmer, North American Newspaper Alliance

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9523

‘Bravest guy’ kills best pal, now he fights war for two

Kid with the grey eyes doing swell job as wingman although he’s downed no Nazis
By Robert Richards, United Press staff writer

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9524

Bitter fighting rages in Italy

Small gains made below Florence
By Clinton B. Conger, United Press staff writer

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9525

‘Living on borrowed time,’ says modest Mike O’Shea

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9526

Poll: The Solid South is still that way for Roosevelt

Eight states show only slight defection from stand taken in 1940 election
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion

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9527

The CIO in politics –
PAC enlists army of women for 4th term drive

Housewives, as canvassers, will serve as backbone of assault on GOP
By Blair Moody, North American Newspaper Alliance

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9528

americavotes1944

America Firsters replace Bricker

Special caucus names ex-Coughlin aide

Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Gerald L. K. Smith, leader of the America First Party, announced today that his party, in a special caucus, had selected another candidate for Vice President, replacing Ohio’s Governor John Bricker, who indignantly repudiated the nomination yesterday.

The new candidate, Smith said, is Harry Romer, former Ohio leader for Father Charles Coughlin’s Social Justice group.

Smith said of Governor Bricker that “in repudiating the nomination, he has displayed the same weakness as at Chicago when he capitulated to Dewey.”

Answering Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s sharp attack on him, Smith said that:

Dewey has endorsed for Congress against Hamilton Fish the same candidate who is supported by Earl Browder… Dewey’s attack on Hamilton Fish established beyond doubt that Roosevelt, Dewey, Willkie and Browder are in the same bed together.

“I’m not afraid to take them all on at once,” Smith said.

9529

americavotes1944

Dewey offers 15-point policy on home front

Governors conference opens in St. Louis
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

St. Louis, Missouri –
The Republican Governors Conference convened today under the guidance of Governor Thomas E. Dewey, GOP presidential candidate, to establish a domestic program upon which to challenge President Roosevelt’s bid for a fourth term.

The conference will run through tomorrow.

Mr. Roosevelt is already under campaign charges of having failed to cope with pre-war depression and of bungling post-war economic plans.

Governor Dewey, backed by his running mate Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, is presenting a 15-ooint program, for the consideration of the governors assembled here. They represent 26 states in which the Dewey-Bricker managers confidently expect to obtain more than the bare 266 electoral votes necessary to win the election.

The 15-point program follows: Public expenditures; public health; unemployment insurance administration; employment services administration; labor policies; public works; highways; insurance regulations; ownership and use of national lands; coordination of federal and state taxation; agriculture; National Guard policies; especially the extent of federal control; water, flood control and conservation policies; veterans’ affairs; and the question of the relationship between unemployment insurance and employment services.

Although the conferences are closed to the public, their progress will be reported in press conferences, the first of which will be shortly after noon today. They will deal with practically all phases of domestic problems where Governor Dewey charges the Roosevelt administration has failed, and will also give Governor Dewey a chance to talk grassroots politics.

Home front bungling

In this three-state swing, the young New Yorker has outlined the substance of his campaign strategy. It is to avoid any challenge to the conduct of the war and possibly to minimize foreign relations, but to denounce the Roosevelt administration’s domestic policies as a combination of bungling and shortsighted expediency.

The Governor came here from Pittsburgh and Springfield, Illinois, where he conferred with racial, political and other groups. Republican politicians have assured him so far that he will carry West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Illinois. He will hear today that Missouri can also be won by the Republicans.

Governor Bricker yesterday repudiated a move by Gerald L. K. Smith’s America First Party to nominate him for Vice President. Smith, a former associate of the late Huey P. Long and political spellbinder of experience, heads the America First ticket.

An American ‘Hitler’

Governor Dewey compared Smith to Adolf Hitler in his race prejudices and denounced him for a “sinister effort to smear” Mr. Bricker, who also answered Smith in bitter language.

Mr. Bricker said:

The act of Smith in associating my name with his on a spurious ticket, without notice of any kind, is the cheapest demagoguery. I denounce it and shall not have my name used in any such connection.

I hate demagoguery, religious intolerance and racial prejudice. They can destroy our free government as they have destroyed liberty around the world. I shall fight them as long as I live.

Springfield ‘crushes’ Dewey

Substantial crowds greeted Governor Dewey in Pittsburgh, but it remained for Springfield to pack crowds around the candidate until police were almost powerless and there was danger that women and children might be hurt in the crush.

Governor Dewey will confer with Missouri politicians and representatives of other groups before entraining Friday for a weekend at his Pawling, New York, farm, which he will reach Saturday evening.

Illinois veterans present request

Springfield, Illinois (UP) –
A four-point program to aid men and women in the Armed Forces was placed before Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential candidate, last night by representatives of Illinois’ war veterans.

Its major feature was a demand that the veterans be represented at the peace table by representatives of “their own choosing.”

Other phases include state and local planning for war veteran employment, operation of the “G.I.” Bill without red tape and that veterans receive full representations in political parties and governmental operation.

9530

americavotes1944

Dewey amends wage-freeze view given here

Springfield, Illinois –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential candidate, in a press conference here yesterday, said he considered an adjustable wage freeze was essential in time of war.

He discussed the question to amend somewhat the version of his view made public Monday in Pittsburgh by Thomas Mallon, regional director of the American Federation of Labor and spokesman of the labor group which conferred with him in that city.

Governor Dewey said:

I told him that I felt the wage freeze was essential, with such adjustments as should be made from time to time for the rising cost of living. And I said the Office of Price Administration had done an incompetent, bungling job which has brought chaos. A better job of that must be done.

Governor Dewey was asked whether adjustments should be made at once. He said the labor group in Pittsburgh had asked him about the wage increase now sought by steel workers.

Governor Dewey said:

I explained that I had not had an opportunity to read the voluminous testimony and therefore could not pass judgment on that.

9531

Ex-U.S. payrollers with PAC named

15 subject to Hatch Act investigation

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Carolina storm moves westward

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9532

americavotes1944

pegler

Pegler: Dewey in Springfield

By Westbrook Pegler

Springfield, Illinois –
In the hearing of about a thousand men and women and some Whitcomb Riley types of Midwestern boys and girls, most of them carrying small political placards on sticks, Tom Dewey intimated on his arrival in Springfield yesterday that his journey from New York to St. Louis for a conference of 26 Republican governors is, in fact, a campaign trip.

He said he and Illinois Governor Dwight Green, who met him at the railroad station, were engaged in a great campaign, a continuation of their war on gangsters in which both took part 14 years ago.

This was a reference to Green’s prosecution of Al Capone which condemned Capone to long, pensive years in Alcatraz and to continuing oblivion in Miami, and his own attacks in New York on the underworld alliance of Tammany and the racketeers of unionism.

Up to this point, the Dewey party had preferred to pretend that he was not campaigning just yet but only conferring with other leaders of the Republican Party. It is a fine point but he did campaign today, both in his small oration to the crowd at the station and in the press conference at the Executive Mansion.

This, incidentally, is a large and remarkably tasty house which markedly excels the equally large but monstrous old heap in Albany which, nevertheless, has served four New York governors, to date, as a prep school for the White House.

Mr. Dewey’s precise mind apparently has it that a campaign doesn’t begin until the nominee actually starts throwing volleys of lefts and rights to the face and body in prepared speeches. In that sense, he is still doing calisthenics and working out on the heavy bag in the gym, for he refused to elaborate on his reference to the continuing war on gangsters, just now.

Will open up at the bell

This may be taken as an intimation, however, that when the seconds are out of the corners and the bell rings, he will tear into Franklin D. Roosevelt as the protector of some of the foulest criminals of the age who, in turn, in this contest, are supporting Mr. Roosevelt both financially, out of the colossal treasuries, which he helped them to amass, and, politically, through the organizations which, in the guise of labor’s gains, he helped them to create.

The mention of gangsters and the continuation of the old war against them refers to the legal protectorate which was maintained for highway robbers of the criminal underworld of unionism, when Congress tried to pass laws against union racketeering, and to the late Lepke Buchalter, whose field of operations was that section of the New York needle trades dominated by Sidney Hillman.

Mr. Hillman, the boss of the CIO-Communist Political Action Committee, is politically and personally in Roosevelt company, and Dewey is thoroughly acquainted with the career and associations of Lepke, whom he once prosecuted for extortion. And he has neither awe of nor illusions about Roosevelt as a machine politician.

Mr. Roosevelt will not come into the ring as Commander-in-Chief in this phase of the campaign, but as one who befriended the oppressors and dictators of the labor movement on a quid pro quo understanding which reduced labor to helplessness.

Will stress private jobs

Mr. Dewey’s themes apparently will be jobs under private enterprise when peace comes, as distinguished from public employment at dole wages, and the exploitation of the worker by subsidiaries of Roosevelt’s party through racketeers and manipulators in the unions. He has returned to the thought, first expressed in his acceptance speech in Chicago, that until the war created millions of jobs at public expense, Roosevelt’s only solution for the unemployment of 10 million workers had been government-made work projects.

Wendell Willkie refused the issue four years ago but this year, for the first time, the subject of real jobs and law-abiding unionism, all for the benefit of labor, itself, is coming to challenge.

Frank Simpson, a Negro employed in the Governor’s office in Albany, is a member of Dewey’s staff on this trip. As the party drove to Abraham Lincoln’s tomb this afternoon, he remarked gravely that this pilgrimage stirred in him feelings which he could not well express. His grandfather came North with Gen. Sheridan.

He was invited to join the party entering the tomb of the man whom he reverently regards as his emancipator and was shocked to hear that, back in the ‘70s, after Lincoln had been moved 20 times from one more or less temporary resting place to another, a gang of criminals tried to snatch the body, intending to hold it for $200,000 ransom. That was why now it was encased in solid concrete and steel, deep in the ground.

On the way to the tomb, Simpson, who sees Tom Dewey every day, very full of his feelings, heard two little boys playing near the cemetery. One of them yelled to the other: “Did you see Tom Dewey? I saw him good.”

9533

americavotes1944

Political action boomerang –
Now they say CIO ballyhoo did most to bump Wallace

By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
The big ballyhoo of the CIO Political Action Committee in Chicago did more to bump Vice President Wallace off the Democratic ticket than any other thing, many Democrats and labor representatives here believe.

Convention chairman Senator Samuel Jackson (D-IN), answering the criticism of Mr. Wallace might have been put over by the PAC demonstrators had he not adjourned the convention session July 20, summed up the Democratic viewpoint:

There was no favoritism shown in adjourning at that time. Senator Guffey (D-PA), a Wallace manager, urged me to do so. Had we remained in session, the demonstrators might have gotten out of hand, but the result would have been just the same.

CIO dictation refused

I am convinced the Democratic Party was determined not to take the Vice President against after that showing. Many felt it would mean that the CIO had taken over the part, and they would never stand for that.

Perhaps President Roosevelt’s dictation of a Wallace nomination might have won out, but the party refused to accept such dictation from the CIO.

Senator Jackson conceded that when he was selected as permanent chairman he had the definite view if not the understanding, that Vice President Wallace would not be put in second place on the ticket again.

Poor impression noted

Martin Miller, legislative representative of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, expressed a similar viewpoint about Mr. Wallace and the CIO.

Mr. Miller said:

The convention was poorly handled, so far as making a good impression on the country.

But it soon became obvious that the one determination of the majority of the delegates was that they were not going to be dictated to or dominated by the CIO. That was why Wallace couldn’t win, despite the demonstrators.