General injured knee; he believes Germany’s military situation is hopeless
By John E. Lee (representing combined U.S. press)
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Headquarters to probe charge businessmen were transported into liberated areas
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Seize key positions in Gothic Line in Italy
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Washington (UP) – (Sept. 23)
Senator Josiah W. Bailey (D-NC) said today that Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey has “endorsed all the New Deal except Secretary Ickes, Miss Perkins and President Roosevelt and proving almost as good a New Deal speechmaker as Vice President Henry Wallace.”
Mr. Bailey, who has introduced a bill to limit presidential terms to two, said he would support President Roosevelt for a fourth term because “I am a Democrat,” but that he intended to do what he could to keep Sidney Hillman, chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee, out of the party.
Mr. Bailey said:
It appears Mr. Hillman is trying to control of both the political parties with a view of setting up his own peculiar sort of government.
Fight between CIO and AFL since merger with Postal Telegraph nears showdown
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By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington – (Sept. 23)
Hopes for an early extension of the social security system were raised in Washington today through Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s endorsement, in a Los Angeles speech last night, of some important features of legislation stalled in Congress since its introduction in June 1943.
The Republican presidential nominee, it was noted here, came out in favor of certain major phases of the program which appeal to the largest number of citizens and which have encountered the least opposition.
On one controversial feature, which its foes call “socialized medicine,” he proposed a method intended to turn the opposition of powerful medical groups into cooperation.
Job for the states
He would legislate “assurance of medical service to those who need it, and who cannot otherwise obtain it,” but he would reach that objective by enlisting “the leadership and aid of the doctors of America in organizing our private and public hospitals as well as our other services into a fully effective system to protect the health of all our people.”
He would not follow the proposal of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bills in placing technical and professional administration under a federal bureau (the U.S. Public Health Service).
In another important particular, Governor Dewey differed from the philosophy of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bills, and did so in harmony with the declared Republican policy of maintaining and strengthening state functions rather than extending federal power. He would return to the states the control of employment services, and would leave unemployment insurance with the states.
Present law cited
In the long argument over the wisdom of encouraging the individual to look more and more to the federal government for his upkeep in times of unemployment and to depend on Washington to get him a job, the New York Governor takes the side of those who believe these are proper functions of the states.
But Governor Dewey expressed full support for the effort to add 20 million Americans to the 40 million now carrying federal social security cards which promise them old-age pensions after retirement at 65.
Under the present law, enacted in 1935, and for which the Roosevelt administration claimed full credit (although the Republican candidate pointed out it was passed “by a nonpartisan vote of overwhelming proportions”) the old-age survivors’ insurance plan covers business and industrial jobs.
Some excepted now
Congress excepted a number of other large classes of employment – including agricultural labor, domestic service, public employment, service for non-profit and government institutions, and self-employment.
For instance, a printer who works for a commercial publisher gets the benefit of the present law, but a printer for a religious organization does not. The law covers a janitor who sweeps out a grocery store, and a stenographer for an industrial concern, but not a janitor in an educational institution, nor a stenographer for a charitable group.
‘Not good enough’
These exceptions were made for various reasons, including the one stated by Governor Dewey, “difficulties of administration.” Governor Dewey said this was “not a good enough answer.”
Governor Dewey did not adopt all the ideas of the Social Security Board, nor of the framers of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bills, nor of the American Federation of Labor, which has been active on the subject. But his supporters think he may have found a way to end the stalemate in the Democrat-controlled Congressional committees (Ways and Means in the House, Finance in the Senate) where the proposed legislative extensions of social security have rested for 15 months without even a hearing.
New York –
Former Governor Alfred E. Smith was discharged from St. Vincent’s Hospital today after an examination disclosed that his condition was “much improved.” He entered the hospital Aug. 10, suffering from heat exhaustion.
Once it was city, now it’s rubble
By W. C. Heinz, North American Newspaper Alliance
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President has electoral vote lead, drops slightly in Pennsylvania
By George Gallup, director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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‘Cotton Ed’ heads Democratic group
Washington (UP) – (Sept. 23)
Anti-fourth-term Democrats appealed to farmers tonight to “smash the vicious control of the New Deal” by giving overwhelming support to the Republican Dewey-Bricker ticket in November.
The plea came from the newly-formed National Agricultural Committee, headed by Senator Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith (D-SC), a bitter critic of President Roosevelt and his policies. Mr. Smith was recently defeated for renomination. The drive to place the farmers in the Republican camp is part of a continuing revolt by Southern conservative Democrats which began this summer in South Carolina and spread to Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and other areas south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Southern customs involved
One of its primary purposes was to seek to force the administration to go on record in opposition to racial equality, repeal of the poll, tax and other kindred measures involving deep-rooted Southern customs.
The rebellion suffered a reversal today when the Texas Supreme Court ordered names of 23 pro-Roosevelt electors placed on the Democratic ballot in the state’s general election Nov. 7. They will replace a former slate which included 15 members who publicly announced they would not vote for the President.
The action assures the Roosevelt-Truman ticket the support of all Texas electors. since Chief Justice James P. Alexander of the Texas Supreme Court said no motion for a rehearing would be entertained.
Economic freedom urged
Mr. Smith’s organization, in a resolution adopted at the close of a two-day session here, said “it is the patriotic duty of Americans to place the interest of their country above any selfish party affiliation.”
Mr. Smith said:
The time for the economic freedom of the American farmer has arrived. He has been held in virtual slavery for 12 years by New Deal schemes designed to keep him dependent on government handouts which he never wanted.
Ralph Moore, former official of the Texas Grange and secretary of the new organization, said:
This committee will get out a farm vote sufficient to offset any possible gains to be made by Sidney Hillman and his Political Action Committee.
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
Washington – (Sept. 23)
Wrong or obsolete address, given for soldier voters, are cutting into the potential vote of the more than 550,000 men of the Armed Forces on the soldier-vote lists of Pennsylvania.
Army officials said they could furnish no figures on the number of state ballots sent out, or the number returned for lack of proper addresses, but they conceded that many ballot envelopes had been returned because of wrong or old addresses.
It was pointed out that the Army averages some 70,000 transfers daily and the Navy 30,000 and that addresses furnished by friends or relatives may be so obsolete as to be valueless.
Most states furnishing absentee ballots to service men have followed the suggested procedure of waiting until the military voter sends in his application card, containing an up-to-date address, but under Pennsylvania’s law ballots were mailed out on the basis of a local canvass.
Despite the state canvass, 193,680 service men have sent applications for ballots to the State Elections Bureau, which were referred to County Elections Boards. Most of them are believed to be duplications of names listed in the state canvass, which totaled 554,332 two months ago.
Service men may apply for federal ballots if the state ballots for which they made application fail to reach them by Oct. 1 and War Department officials have distributed 3,800,000 federal ballots to the Army, 3.400,000 to the Navy and 400,000 to the War Shipping Administration.
Unofficial estimates here are that Pennsylvania ballots returned because of wrong addresses have totaled as much as 15 percent of those sent out from individual counties.
At the start of the soldier voting program, it was recognized that there would be difficulty in getting mail to men in combat theaters, whose addresses are subject to frequent change. In many cases, soldiers have reported that mail failed to catch up with them for months.
It was also recognized that men in actual combat, including whole divisions and units, may not get the chance to vote in time to count in the election, despite elaborate plans to make it possible, including training of special officers to handle voting details.
There are no official estimates of what percentage of the eligible military voters may cast ballots, in event they are made available on schedule, and the possibility of wrong addresses and uncertainty of delivery will complicate further political forecasting.
Hitler fights on to save own skin
By Carroll Binder, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service editor
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Speaking with what may have been unintentional candor, the CIO Political Action Committee’s Sidney Hillman gave the United Auto Workers’ convention some pretty concise directions on which way the United States ought to go. He said:
The right-hand fork is a wide road on which the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau and the Committee for Constitutional Government drive abreast at full speed with an escort of motorcycle police. It leads straight to the arid plain of “normalcy.”
The other road is neither smooth nor straight. It runs up hill and down dale, skirting the sides of many precipices and bumping along over stretches of bad pavement, but it leads eventually into the fertile valley of lasting peace and stable prosperity. I need not tell you much about this road, for it is the only one which we have been traveling for the last 12 years under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The PAC people’s program… points the way.
To the left, of course. The “normal” America of busy factories, abundant jobs, prosperous farmers and the world’s highest wages arouses only contempt among Mr. Hillman’s Communist associates.
He’s right about that left fork he says we’ve been following, though. It isn’t smooth and it definitely isn’t straight. It has, in the 12 years he mentions, bumped over some mighty bad pavement and past plenty of precipices – only we call them “emergencies.” It has brought us, so far, to raking leaves for WPA, to waste and idleness and debt and endless depression – but nobody has ever yet seen the happy valley at the end of Mr. Hillman’s pink rainbow.
Well, it’s still a free country, and if anyone wants to follow a strange guide down an unmapped detour toward an unknown destination, it is still his privilege to do it. We’ll stay on the main highway, ourselves.
Governor Dewey’s social security program coincides with the important and worthy proposals of the American Federation of Labor on the same subject.
High-up New Deal spokesmen likewise have advocated, as Mr. Dewey does, that old-age insurance be broadened to bring its benefits to millions now excluded – farmers, farm workers. domestic servants, servicemen, employees of charitable institutions and governmental units and people who work for themselves. So, too, on the broadening of unemployment insurance.
Voters who agree – as we do – that these improvements in our social security system should be made, will ask this question:
Would they more likely be attained through Mr. Roosevelt’s leadership, or Mr. Dewey’s?
Mr. Dewey answers that by pointing out that the original Social Security Act, from which these obviously fair and desirable provisions were excluded, became law in 1935, and since then, except for minor amendments in 1939, no changes have been made in the law. True, the New Dealers have proposed; but they haven’t disposed.
Mr. Dewey didn’t say so, but the reason the New Dealers have not succeeded – and probably never could – is that every time they propose such worthwhile reforms as those listed above, which nine out of 10 Congressmen would be glad to vote for, they also insist that Congress accept a lot of controversial and screwball proposals at the same time.
They demand socialized medicine, and thereby arouse all the doctors to oppose any change in the law. They insist that the state unemployment insurance systems be federalized – and so stir up the opposition of state governments and people who believe in home rule. They cry out for such fantastic schemes as paying people $35 a week for not working, which is more than many people get for working – and an understandably suspicious Congress pigeonholes all proposals.
With the New Dealers, it’s “whole hog or nothing” – and more and more lately it’s nothing.
Mr. Dewey evidently does not intend to make any such silly mistakes. His program is one which would enlist the support, rather than the opposition, of doctors and state governments, and one which Congress quickly would accept. Mr. Dewey seems to think that the goal of all Americans sharing alike the benefits of social security is more desirable than eternally fanning a controversy.
Harding-Coolidge reaction feared
By Harry Hansen
Several months ago, I was eating lunch with a gay party of writers when one man remarked that he had just read advance sheets of biography of Thomas E. Dewey. The table fell silent, as if it had just received bad news, and a friend asked: “Who wrote it?”
“Stanley Walker.”
“Is it worth reading?”
Our informant spoke deliberately and, I thought, sadly, “Yes, I really think so.” he said. “But then, you see, Walker likes Dewey.”
This seemed to explain everything, like a doctor’s account of how you got that boil on your neck. The talk turned to other matters, but I reflected that these men found such a book scarcely comprehensible. Stanley Walker has seen similar manifestations of this among columnists, publicists and diners at nightclubs and lashes out at them in his book Dewey: An American of This Century (Whitney House).
Walker can be pretty sarcastic when he gets going, but about the only time he really hits one in this polite narrative is when he considers authors and newspapermen who are opponents of Thomas E. Dewey. He speaks with disdain of those who meet at the Artists and Writers Restaurant, where Walker himself must go for a snort, the Algonquin, the Stork and 21.
“Does anyone give a hoot what saloon society thinks about Dewey?” he asks, “Probably not, but still the matter has a certain importance because these people are not only very talkative, but some of them, unless far gone in crapulence, can actually write stuff that is widely read.” Walker knows that “they fill the magazines and the syndicated newspaper columns to an extraordinary degree.” Some exhibit signs of hysteria when Dewey’s name is mentioned. “In these circles being against Dewey is a fashionable pose.”
Dewey and writers
It 1s quite true that many writers are against Dewey for President. and Stanley Walker’s book would have been stronger if he had discussed the reasons seriously. Writers, on the whole, are not conservatives; they are in the vanguard of reform and fear the conservative influence of Dewey, in spite of their irritation with what they call the conservative tendencies of the Roosevelt administration. They swallow many of the injustices of the administration because they fear a reaction to the Harding-Coolidge days, although, the record of Dewey as prosecutor and governor has given little comfort to the old guard.
As I am not an extreme partisan in either camp. I often view the intolerant attitudes of my friends – who are in the lead in condemning intolerance – with awe. After the First World War I returned a firm believer in the League of Nations. When practically all the writers began to kick the League around, I became a sadly confused man. Now they are all on the other side again, clamoring for a League with teeth in it. A few years ago, they cheered Thomas E. Dewey when he convicted gangsters and crooked politicians. Then word got around that he was a cold proposition, sometimes curt, not hail-fellow-well-met with newspapermen and they fell out. Walker agrees that this trait can be exasperating, but there is something to be said for reticence. “Like it or not, it’s Dewey.”
You can take your choice between the Dewey coolness and the Rooseveltian warmth – especially toward vice-presidential candidates. They seem to cancel out.
Taller than Stalin!
Stanley Walker has given an excellent account of the Governor’s beginnings, his family – strongly, rooted in American pioneer history – and his career in public office. And the book is a model of a campaign biography. There are no log cabins in it and no horny-handed sons of toil, although Tom did pitch hay on Michigan farms. There is no bitter attack on the Roosevelt administration, although included are speeches that criticize it.
The chief objections to Dewey are brought up and answered.
There is the charge that the Governor is young and his own retort: “Is that wrong?” There is the old stock question of the unconvinced: “Has he grown?” There is mention of the charge that he caught a few crooks but did not cleanse New York of sin, that in convicting some he protected and freed others. Stanley Walker has pretty good answers to these stock objections. To the talk that Dewey is a little man, Walker replies: “He is about three inches taller than Joseph Stalin and almost two inches taller than Winston Churchill.”
That ought to put the opposition on its toes. But there is still the matter of the mustache. That’s a tough hurdle. Walker does his best to justify it. He says it gives cartoonists a chance to do things with Dewey’s face. Let the opposition be grateful for that. All the Republicans have had to distort these many years is a cigarette holder.