9,600 men idle in labor disputes
By the United Press
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Aid for farmers pledged by Dewey
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (UP) –
Continuance of several New Deal farm aid programs on a modified basis was promised Oklahoma farmers today by Governor Thomas E. Dewey as he opened a series of conferences with state agricultural, labor and veterans and business groups.
The GOP nominee told farm leaders that a key point in his platform was the revision of social security laws to include them.
Z. H. Lawter, secretary of the Oklahoma Farmers Union, said he believed Governor Dewey “made a good impression” on the Oklahoma farm group.
Mr. Lawton said after the conference:
He talked about social security and he was emphatic in stating that he favored wider courage to take in agricultural workers. And he is for continuing the Farm Security Administration and – in a general way – the triple-A program.
W. E. Harvey, owner of several farm near Ada, said of Governor Dewey, “He talks my language.”
Fireworks promised by Governor Dewey
Aboard the Dewey Special –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey all along has been hinting that the foremost objective of his present transcontinental tour was to smoke President Roosevelt into open battle – the sooner the better – and he lost no time in seizing the President’s Saturday night speech as the consummation of that purpose.
Traversing the New Mexico desert at noon yesterday, Governor Dewey issued a statement asserting that Mr. Roosevelt has “dropped the mask of a ‘non-political’ campaign and I shall feel free to examine his record with unvarnished candor beginning with a national broadcast at Oklahoma City Monday night.”
The complaint heard increasingly from Dewey supporters is that he has been too tender both of President Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Governor Dewey heretofore has made no answer to this criticism but his associates have not been so reticent. They said that, opposing as he was a war-burdened President, sitting silently and aloof in the White House and, as reported, in none too good health, there was a great question as to how far Governor Dewey could go in direct attack without arousing popular feeling adverse to himself.
Certainly Mr. Roosevelt has now demolished this reservation.
Bricker ‘certain’ of Pennsylvania
Cleveland, Ohio (UP) –
Governor John W. Bricker, Republican vice-presidential nominee, was back in Ohio today, convinced of a Republican victory in the New England states and Pennsylvania in November.
Governor Bricker will return to Columbus Wednesday after attending a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite here for two days.
Before leaving his special car at Cleveland yesterday, Governor Bricker said that he was “amazed at the size and enthusiasm” of the crowds he spoke before during his whirlwind 3,250-mile swing through five Eastern States.
Upon his return to Columbus, Governor Bricker will rest until Oct. 1 when he will start on a 9,250-mile tour which will take him through the Northwest, the Pacific Coast and 20 states.
Actually, the Governor’s western trip will begin in the South with two meetings on Oct. 2 at Bowling Green, Kentucky, and at Nashville, Tennessee.
He will be at Centralia, Illinois, on Oct. 3 and at St. Louis on Oct. 4. On Oct. 5, he will speak at Ottumwa, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois. He will spend Oct. 6 in Milwaukee and on Oct. 7 move on to St. Paul, St. Cloud and Duluth. Minn. From Duluth, he will launch his campaign into the Pacific Northwest, but schedules for the trip have not been definitely decided.
America Firsters endorse Dewey
St. Henry, Ohio (UP) –
Gerald L. K. Smith of Detroit and Harry Romer of St. Henry, presidential and vice-presidential candidates respectively of the America First Party, today announced the support of their party for the Dewey-Bricker Republican ticket.
At a rally attended by 3,000 persons yesterday, Smith and Romer said that their party could not carry the nation this year, but added that the groundwork was being laid for 1948.
Browder assails GOP candidates
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Earl Browder, president of the Communist Political Association, last night bitterly denounced Governors Thomas E. Dewey and John W. Bricker for what he called “divide and conquer” tactics in their assertions that the Democratic Party is being dominated by Communists.
Speaking at a rally marking 25 years of Communist activity in the United States, Mr. Browder reaffirmed CPA support of the Roosevelt-Truman ticket, and alternated criticism of the Republican candidates with attacks on Col. Robert E. McCormick’s Chicago Tribune.
“Dewey and Bricker are making a major issue against Roosevelt that the Communists are supporting him,” Mr. Browder said in his first Chicago appearance since the CPA replaced the American Communist Party early this year.
He added:
What nonsense it is talking about someone capturing Roosevelt. The reactionaries have been trying to do it for 12 years, but no one has succeeded yet. Even Hirohito dreamed of it, with no more success.
GOP leaders hit ‘humor’ of Roosevelt
President is termed rival of Bob Hope
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania –
Republican State Headquarters today distributed the following comments on President Roosevelt’s Saturday night speech by “leading Pennsylvania Republicans.”
State Chairman M. Harvey Taylor said:
Once again, he promises us a Heaven on earth. He had 11 years to do it and failed. It took a war to put us all to work. The people of this country will not fall for the same siren song this time. It wasn’t a speech; it was a humorous monolog.
Davis quoted
U.S. Senator James J. Davis, candidate for reelection, said:
Mr. Roosevelt’s speech was distinctive in one respect. It wasn’t made during an inspection of military installations, war plants or from the poop deck of a battleship, his gay hilarity and optimism for a future under the New Deal prove that Mr. Roosevelt is still the great showman who has mastered the art of saying many things without saying anything.
Owlett comments
Republican National Committeeman G. Mason Owlett said:
As a political document, it was a sorry flop. The President used more quips and gags than six professional funny men. Bob Hope and Milton Berle have a new rival.
Old technique employed again by Roosevelt
Strategy of satire and ridicule in speech recalls his addresses made in 1940
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
President Roosevelt’s first avowedly political speech of 1944 gave every indication – in subject matter, technique and tone, in use of satire and ridicule – of a campaign strategy cut from the same cloth as that with which he beat Wendell Willkie in 1940.
It was rated widely here as one of the President’s best political speeches. But observers who placed parts of it against the half-dozen campaign speeches of four years ago came up with “this is where I came in.”
The President’s springboard for the fourth-term campaign is the same he used in 1940. He said then he would have no time or inclination to engage “in any purely political debate,” but that he would “never be loath to call the attention of the nation to deliberate or unwitting falsifications of fact.” He said just about that this year.
Four years ago recalled
In his opening campaign speech at Philadelphia four years ago, he said:
Certain techniques of propaganda, created and developed in dictator countries, have been imported into this campaign. It is the very simple technique of repeating and repealing and repeating falsehoods, with the idea that by constant repetition and reiteration, with no contradiction, the misstatements will finally come to be believed.
Talking Saturday night, he said:
The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a technique invented by the dictators abroad… According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature will make it more credible – if only you keep repeating it over and over again.
Record cited
Mr. Roosevelt will not let the Republicans forget – nor did he in 1940 that his administration came to power after three and a half years of depression, overcame a bank crisis, began taking steps to put people back to work, and went on to institute programs of social security, collective bargaining, bank deposit guarantees, stock market reform and wage-and-hour laws.
Campaigning four years ago, Mr. Roosevelt commented that now the Republican leaders were all for such progressive measures, and “believe in them so much they will never be happy until they can clasp them to their own chests and put their own brand upon them.”
Saturday night, he cited the Republican Party platform’s acceptance of such reforms and remarked that many Republicans “would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight.”
Loves a fight
Four years ago in Philadelphia, Mr. Roosevelt talked of “a chicken in every pot” and “two cars in every garage.” Saturday night it was “Hoovervilles."
“I am an old campaigner,” he said in his opening speech in the fall of 1940, “and I love a good fight.”
He still does. He warmed to that fight Saturday night with effective thrusts of satire and dramatic emphasis on the droll or amusing touch – something GOP candidates somehow do not match.
In 1940, there was the famed “Martin, Barton and Fish” phrase he dished out in his Madison Square Garden speech and, so well did it catch on, used again in Boston.
Chides Dewey
Now. in this campaign, he tells a rollicking story of his dog, Fala. He uses a gag, “Never speak of rope in the house of one who has been hanged,” in chiding Governor Dewey for talking about a depression which began in Republican President Hoover’s era. And talks of seeing many marvelous circus stunts but never a performing elephant that “could turn a handspring without falling flat on his back.”
The speech was that of a man who long ago got his degree in political tactics; he chose adroitly to discuss issues that pleased him and which he could handle frequently with barbed sarcasm, and to overlook others. He could discuss labor questions at length, for example without attempting to answer Governor Dewey’s factual account of the conglomeration of Federal agencies in the labor field.
Jobs is big word
Both Governor Dewey and Mr. Roosevelt are making “jobs” of top-rung importance in their speeches.
Friday night at Los Angeles, Governor Dewey cited the importance of a job in everybody’s mind, said the country must not go back to the 10 million unemployed of 1940, repeated his charge that the New Deal had to have a war to get jobs, stressed the need for peacetime jobs.
The next night, Mr. Roosevelt said:
The keynote of all that we propose to do in reconversion can be found in the one word – “jobs.”
Vote campaign termed battle of personalities
New York (UP) –
Norman Thomas, Socialist Party candidate for President, asserted last night that the two major political parties are waging their campaigns on the basis of personalities instead of concerning themselves with principles and programs which will bring “peace and plenty.”
In an address broadcast locally and recorded for rebroadcast to overseas troops, Mr. Thomas said the issue of the election is not “positively Dewey versus Roosevelt – it is for or against Roosevelt.”
He charged that President Roosevelt had failed to plan for either war or peace in his pre-war administrations. Attacking the thesis that the President is “indispensable,” he said that “no democracy is secure in which the sole question is the personality of the leader.”
Jap barges sunk off Peleliu Island
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (UP) –
Pacific Fleet headquarters disclosed today that U.S. warships broke up a Jap attempt to reinforce remnants of its garrison herded into the northwest corner of Peleliu in the Palau Islands.
At least 10 and probably 13 barges, carrying men and equipment, were wrecked by the warships which moved in close to blast the craft at close range. The barge convoy apparently came from Koror or other Central Palau islands.
On Peleliu, the enemy force, now approximately one-quarter of its original size, was still fighting viciously in the treacherous terrain, reported to be the worst yet encountered in the Pacific.
CIO-PAC attacked by labor leader
Dayton, Ohio (UP) –
A political victory in November by the CIO Political Action Committee “would be a black day for the future of American organized labor,” John E. Breidenbach, president of the Dayton Building Trades Council, said today.
Mr. Breidenbach, in an article printed in the labor paper, Labor Union, charged that a PAC victory would be a triumph for Communism.
He wrote:
A victory by Sidney Hillman’s CIO Political Action Committee would constitute the greatest single political triumph ever achieved by the Communists of America, and would be a black day for the future of American organized labor.
Mr. Breidenbach said:
Granting the probable truth of Mr. Hillman’s statement that he is not a Communist, this does not mean that Mr. Hillman, in his own devious way, has not been a powerful influence for Communism in America.
His current alliance with the Browderites in the PAC merely highlights a quarter-century record of shrewd assistance to selected left-wing causes.
Dewey may talk on Pearl Harbor
Washington (UP) –
Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said today that Governor Thomas E. Dewey has been “gathering facts” about the Pearl Harbor disaster and may use them in a major campaign address on the Jap attack and the “responsibility” of President Roosevelt as Commander-in-Chief.
Mr. Bridges said:
The Democrats are scared to death that the Pearl Harbor question will be brought into the campaign further than it has been.
He charged that the current Army and Navy investigations of the case were “just a means of stalling to cover it up until after election.”
Relief comes just in time for trapped paratroopers
Rescue column struggles through after forced march against Nazi opposition
By Richard D. McMillan, United Press staff writer
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Chinese take bastion near Burma Road
Gain in campaign in Yunnan Province
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Racial war peril in Orient cited
Col. Romulo: U.S. pattern must be adopted
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Ball asks defeat of 11 Senators
Washington (UP) –
Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN) charged today that 11 of 32 Senators up for reelection in November are isolationists who would attempt to stifle plans for a world peace organization and called for their defeat at the polls.
Although declining to identify them, Mr. Ball said eight of the 11 Senators were Republicans, three were Democrats and almost all of them figures of note.
He predicted that a long, and perhaps disastrous, fight would ensue in Congress over the security organization now being planned at Dumbarton Oaks unless the public forces an “involuntary retirement” of certain members of the Senate and House.
At the same time, Senator Warren R. Austin (R-VT) said the world security plan being outlined at Dumbarton Oaks had a single purpose – security – and that fears that it would vest American representatives with authority to plunge the nation into war were premature.
Editorial: Every dog has his day
Just a couple of sidenotes about the President’s first official campaign appearance.
He didn’t dwell on the Commander-in-Chief. It was frankly a political speech. As it should have been.
Memories of 1912 came back when Fala was introduced. Recall the Champ Clark campaign song:
It makes no difference if he is a hound,
You’ve got to stop kicking my dog around.
Champ’s dog was just a mongrel from Missouri, didn’t go either to Groton or Harvard, or to Adak or Québec, wasn’t a Scottie, but played a big part in the campaign that finally nominated Woodrow Wilson.
And as Mark Twain said, “The more I see of men the better I like dogs.”
Anyway – if Fala, the Scottie, were made Secretary of the Treasury, we’d save a lot of billions.
Edson: It’s nice to be President in an election drive
By Peter Edson
Washington –
There are many little ways in which a candidate in office and running for reelection has it all over a candidate not in the office he is seeking to be elected to.
Governor Dewey may not have the responsibilities that President Roosevelt has. Mr. Dewey can do a lot more fancy-free shooting from the hip with small worry about breaking a few windows in other people’s glass houses.
But Mr. Roosevelt can indulge in a lot more high-powered precision bombing from his exalted office without giving any too obvious appearances of playing politics and without ever mentioning his worthy opponent once, by name or inference.
For instance, the President dashes off a directive to Budget Director Harold D. Smith telling him he’s gotta start figuring how to reduce the number of government employees as soon as the war’s over. Thereby the President, in office, gets credit for a beautiful assist at cutting down federal expenditures.
The President signs the G.I. Bill of Rights, and his administration gets credit for being good to the soldiers.
As Commander-in-Chief, the President goes to Africa, the Middle East, Hawaii, Alaska. He sees the troops in those places, and without kissing a single baby or giving away one cigar or cigarette he makes his presence felt and thus appeals to a few hundred thousand potential voters, which his opponent cannot do.
Appointments
He can throw in along with a list of deserving promotions of career diplomats, the appointment of a former Democratic National Committeeman, Charles Sawyer of Ohio, to be Ambassador to Belgium, and he thereby can pay off a political debt.
He can make reports to the nation from “your government” and he can make fireside chats from secret naval bases on the West Coast without mentioning politics, while at the same time giving you every assurance that you now are getting the best possible deal of all.
He can send messages to Congress asking for national service legislation, higher taxes and more subsidies to keep down the cost of living. Such a message makes him a great hero with people who believe there should be national service, bigger taxes and better subsidies, even though it is a foregone conclusion that Congress will never approve such laws.
He can appoint a committee to survey the cost of living, which makes a great hit with folks who believe the cost of living is too high, as who doesn’t.
Without a word from him, a bureau of his administration can in the normal course of its business get ready to say that millions of people should have their wages raised. And you know who gets the credit for that.
Train wreck
He can attend conferences with Nimitz and MacArthur in Honolulu, with Churchill in Québec, Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and Joe Stalin in Tehran. These have nothing to do with domestic politics, but they make an awful lot of front-page news without his party’s press agents having to turn a single handspring. Meanwhile, his opponent has to get in a train wreck to compete.
He can receive ambassadors and ministers and heads of foreign governments with the same official rightness, while flashbulbs pop and the resulting pictures in the papers attest to one and all that the man in the White House knows the important folks from all over, subtly putting across the idea that he therefore should be continued in office to carry on.
Just before an election, he can get the plans all started for keeping the peace, preventing future wars, doing away with the wicked cartels, feeding the hungry, bringing relief and rehabilitation to the dispossessed, educating the dumb, stabilizing the world’s currency, regulating the world’s aviation, rubber and every other thing that is unregulated.
All this is not playing politics, but who would dare propose swapping planners in the middle of a plan?
It is very nice to be President, when you want to be President.