House rejects TVA amendment
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Informational tax returns of unions go by board
Washington raises questioning eye at failure of administration to put law into effect
By Phelps Adams, North American Newspaper Alliance
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All 48 governors may attend parley
Hershey, Pennsylvania (UP) –
The unprecedented situation of all 48 state governors being brought together for a study of problems facing the nation was foreseen today.
Headquarters of the 36th annual U.S. Conference of Governors, meeting here and at the State Capitol, May 28-31, announced that 45 chief executives have already decided to come.
The governors will be given an opportunity to question Bernard Baruch, advisor of the War Mobilization Office, on his plan for post-war industrial reconversion. Mr. Baruch will be a guest at a May 30 round at the capitol.
A highlight will be Memorial Day ceremonies on the Civil War battlefield at nearby Gettysburg. Addresses will be delivered by Governors Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts and J. Melville Broughton of North Carolina, representing the “Old North” and the “Old South” respectively.
At regular sessions here, Governors Thomas E. Dewey of New York and John W. Bricker of Ohio, prominently mentioned possibilities for GOP presidential nomination, will speak. Mr. Dewey will talk on “organizing the states for the future,” and Mr. Bricker will discuss “A Tax and Fiscal Policy.”
Other speakers will include Governor Earl Warren of California, keynoter of the Republican National Convention, whose conference topic will be “Industrial Reconversion.”
Court’s primary ruling stands
Texas denies review of Negro voting
Washington (UP) –
The Supreme Court today refused to reconsider its recent decision that Negroes are entitled under the Constitution to cast ballots in state primaries – a ruling which has provoked widespread criticism throughout the South.
The reconsideration was requested by Texas, the state involved in the original decision, and the two Houston election judges who were defendants in the suit. Democratic Party leaders in Texas and several other Southern states have said they plan to find some means of barring Negroes from voting in primaries.
The high court today agreed to review lower court decisions in three other cases of general interest, and announced that it will adjourn its 1943-44 term May 29. It will sit on each of the next three Mondays, but only to hand down decisions.
The cases which the court agreed to review in the fall:
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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York decision in the government’s antitrust suit against the Associated Press, holding that the AP must modify its bylaws with respect to admission of new members. The high court noted “probable jurisdiction” in the government’s cross-appeal for a stronger injunction against the AP, as well as in the AP’s appeal that the lower decree be set aside.
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The Western Union Telegraph Company’s appeal for reversal of a Southern New York U.S. District Court decision that it must not employ messengers under 16 years of age. Calling attention to the importance of its telegraphic service to the war effort, the firm said, “If forbidden to fill gaps in the ranks of younger boys, the present delays will be accentuated and prolonged.”
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The legal efforts of Mitsuye Endo, a 22-year-old American of Japanese ancestry, to obtain release from a War Relocation Authority center at Camp Newell, California. She contended she was being deprived of her constitutional rights even though she has been classified as a “loyal” U.S. citizen.
Stokes: South may delay giving Negroes vote in primary
South Carolina leads way by abolishing preliminary elections; others may follow
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Atlanta, Georgia –
The South is in a ferment over the Supreme Court’s mandate that Negroes must be allowed, under the Constitution, to vote in Democratic primary elections from which they hitherto have been barred by laws making those elections exclusively “white” primaries.
The court’s decision, specifically applicable to the Texas “white primary” law, invalidates similar statutes in other Southern states which kept Negroes from participating in the only elections in the South which count – the primaries. Because of the lack of a strong second party, primary nomination is tantamount to election.
No clear, South-wide program of action yet has evolved. A majority of the people have adopted an attitude of passive resistance.
South Carolina leads off
South Carolina has led off, as in pre-Civil War days, with enactment of a doctrine of nullification by stripping from its statutes all authorization for primaries. All this done in a bitter atmosphere and with cries of “white supremacy.” A convention system will be instituted, with Negroes excluded.
This pattern may be followed elsewhere. Meanwhile, until a decision is reached on procedure, it is obvious that dilatory tactics will be pursued. It is likely that in some cases Negroes who try to vote in remaining primaries will be challenged. This will only postpone, for the Supreme Court has decided.
The convention system, itself, will inevitably be tested before the Supreme Court.
South at crossroads
This pattern of resistance appears now the probable course unless the South should be prevailed upon by a minority which is yet small and lacks substantial organization, but numbers some courageous and influential people.
This minority seeks the Supreme Court decision as the long-awaited opportunity for the Deep South to stir itself; break its ancient chains of tradition, and boldly take the first step. It holds that those Southern states should accept the decision without further legal to-do.
Some among this minority feel the South has reached a crossroads, that the Texas case may be comparable in its ultimate effects to the Dred Scott decision, that another movement for race freedom, like that which led to the abolition of slavery, is slowly gathering momentum, and that the South might as well accept it and accommodate its thinking to it.
Alert to opportunity
Negro leaders in the South are alert to their opportunity and are active to take advantage of it.
Campaigns of registration of Negroes are going on under the prodding of Negro newspapers, Negro schoolteachers, Negro ministers. In Atlanta, the aim is to get 15,000 Negroes on the books for the July 4 primary. It is doubtful that the total will be anything like that large. Negroes are busy registering in South Carolina.
The objective in South Carolina is to vote, in a separate Negro Democratic party, in the November election. Negroes can vote in the regular election.
This Negro registration has alarmed the whites. A negligible vote is cast in South Carolina in the regular election – 12,000 two years ago – so that the whites are compelled to take precautions that they won’t be outvoted.
Japs launch counterdrive near Kohima
British hold firm in eastern India
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Chinese to yield railroad line
Jap troops gain from north, south
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Japs may try last stand on home islands
British see change in Tokyo’s plans
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Super-carriers to batter Japs
Two 45,000-tonners to be ready in 1945
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Editorial: Welcome back, Mr. President!
The nation is happy over the President’s return to Washington after a month of richly earned vacation. He is reported tanned and rested.
During the winter and early spring, he suffered from the recurrent influenza, bronchitis and sinus infections which have afflicted so many Americans this year. But his physicians say he is now in good shape.
Hitherto the President’s great physical vigor, and ability to snap back after an illness, has been the marvel of a weary officialdom.
With the big offensive planned in Europe and the Pacific, not to mention labor troubles and other problems on the home front, the President will need every ounce of his strength.
Apart from his need for a physical rest, doubtless his absence from Washington has also given him new objectivity and perspective.
Background of news –
GOP and the farm vote
By Bertram Benedict
The Republican Party’s subcommittee on a farm plank for the 1944 platform, of which Iowa Governor Hickenlooper is chairman, will meet in New York this week.
Just as the Democrats count upon the Solid South as a bedrock foundation in the 1944 campaign, the Republicans are counting upon all the predominantly rural states east of the Rocky Mountains as safe for the GOP.
Seven of the 10 states carried by Wendell Willkie in 1940 fall in this category – Maine, Vermont, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota. Of the other three Willkie states in 1940, two are classified in the 1940 census as about half rural, half urban – Colorado and Indiana. Only one is predominantly industrial – Michigan.
All the rural states carried by President Roosevelt in 1940 are in the South or the Rocky Mountains. Six non-Southern states carried by Mr. Roosevelt in 1940 are listed as half rural, half urban – Delaware, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Washington and Oregon.
1942 figures recalled
The 1940 census lists a dozen states, all of them outside of the South, as having 56% or more of their population as urban. These 12 account for 235 votes in the Electoral College, 21 short of the majority necessary to elect. Hence the importance of the farm vote or the rural vote (the rural non-farm population) in the election next November.
In the elections for Congress in 1942, the Republican Party carried more states than in the election for President in 1940. The GOP retained all its states of 1940 (in Colorado, a Democratic Senator was elected for an unexpired term, but by a narrow margin, whereas a Republican Senator was elected for a full term by a large majority, and the total Republican vote for members of the House was much larger than the total Democratic vote).
In addition, the GOP won senatorial elections or had the better of House elections in the following states which had voted for Roosevelt in 1940: Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Population shifts cited
These 15 states, together with the 10 states which Mr. Willkie carried in 1940, have a total of 274 electoral votes – eight more than necessary to elect a President.
The rub in using the 1942 figures as a basis for estimating the 1944 results is, if course, the fact of large population shifts – into the Armed Forces or into industry. In general, the rural states show a loss of population as compared with the urban or the rural-urban states.
The 1940 Republican platform endorsed benefit payments to farmers, “based upon a widely applied, constructive soil-conservation program free from government-dominated production control, but administered, as far as possible, by the farmers themselves.”
The platform promised to continue the present payments until the GOP long-range program equalizing the condition of agriculture, labor, and industry became effective. The platform came out for tariff protection for these three groups, and condemned the manner in which the administration tariff reciprocity agreements had been put into effect.
The Democratic platform, naturally claiming credit for having put the farmer on his feet, charged the Republicans with “allegiance to those who exploit him.”