I DARE SAY —
Seventeen
By Florence Fisher Parry
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Negroes form group for fourth term
New York (UP) –
Thirty-five Negro leaders announced today the formation of the “National Nonpartisan Committee for the Reelection of Roosevelt.” It is headed by Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune.
The committee’s statement said:
We will work and vote for those men and those measures which, irrespective of party labels, will best advance the welfare of our people.
Officers of the committee include Doxey A. Wilkerson (New York vice chairman), Ross Gragg (Detroit secretary) and William P. Harrison (Chicago treasurer). Regional vice chairmen included Arthur Huff Fauset of Pennsylvania and Bishop R. R. Wright Jr. of Ohio.
‘Cleared through Sidney’ –
PAC ‘a company union in politics,’ Thomas writes to Hillman
Tie-up of CIO group with ‘city bosses’ put it in wrong boat, he asserts
By Fred Woltman, Scripps-Howard staff writer
New York –
In an open letter to Sidney Hillman, chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee, Norman Thomas, Socialist candidate for President, today charged that PAC “is, in effect, a company union in politics,” and that the tactics “have delayed rather than advanced intelligent labor action in the political field.”
Mr. Thomas called many of the charges against the PAC “unfair and frivolous,” but, he declared:
The net result of PAC activity has been to make you one of the motley crew of bosses who control that extraordinary conglomeration of Northern city political machines and Southern bourbons, known as the Democratic Party.
Truman assailed
You, Hague, Kelly, Hannegan and the Southern bosses managed to blackmail your pet hates until by elimination you got as a possible future President of the United States that mediocrity, convict-boss Pendergast’s protégé, Harry Truman.
You got personal power, but not power enough to renominate Henry Wallace, whom Mr. Roosevelt dismissed with a character reference, and not power enough to write planks in behalf of the rights of Negroes or of labor itself, as good as even the Republicans produced.
The Socialist candidate wrote:
I emphatically oppose attacks on PAC on the irrelevant issue of the land of your birth. I applaud the idea of workers’ participation in politics.
I think it unfortunate that your present playmates, the Communists, are so influential in your organization because they have no principles except a desire for power.
‘Company union’
His main objection, however, said Mr. Thomas, “is your company unionism politics.”
You had a rare opportunity to start effective organization of the workers on behalf of some new political realignment based on principle. Instead, you chose to play along with the bosses…
In one respect, the PAC is less advanced than the American Federation of Labor. You have been very hesitant about endorsing any candidates, however well qualified, except Democrats, because, as some of your subordinates have explained, “the workers are too dumb to split their ticket.” The AFL is far less hesitant in crossing party lines in “rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies.”
What of coercion?
Mr. Thomas criticized PAC as “undemocratic in that its meetings or conventions have never been allowed to share policy but only to execute your policy.”
He went on:
You have challenged anyone to prove coercion of CIO members to support the PAC. I am not a detective and I shall not press individual cases, but I can testify that in state after state which I have visited there is among CIO workers a definite feeling that it would be very unhealthy not to support the PAC, especially if they happen to be on the CIO payroll.
Your cynicism infects your subordinates so that they can print a picture of the Chicago massacre of 1937 where workers were victims of Mayor Kelly’s police, as if it had happened under a Republican administration. That’s company unionism with a vengeance!
Future wars?
On none of “the great issues of future peace or war, of abundance or depression,” he told Mr. Hillman, “did you get any worthwhile declaration from the Democratic Party. The President, with your approval, is preparing the way for future war by underwriting with American blood the indefinite ‘Balkanization of Europe’ and by supporting the French, Dutch and British empires in the Far East.”
Pointing out that he “was not indicting PAC” for its failure to support the Socialist ticket, Mr. Thomas concluded:
…My indictment of your manipulation of the potentially useful PAC goes far deeper. It is that you have delayed the awakening of American workers by your application of the principles of company unionism to support the party of Kelly, Hague, Crump and Bilbo.
PAC denounced by Jeffers
Democracy’s, union’s death knell feared
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
William M. Jeffers, president of the Union Pacific Railroad, today denounced the CIO Political Action Committee and declared that if the PAC succeeds in its aims “the disintegration of American labor unions starts and democracy begins to crumble.”
Mr. Jeffers, former controller of the rubber industry, told the 70th annual convention of the American Bankers Association that he was speaking as a man “who has carried a union card all his working life – and still does.”
Longtime union man
He said:
I was a union man before the un-American element now dominating segments of American labor was born. The railroad brotherhoods know how and where I stand. But I say that no Political Action Committee or any group or individual is going to tell me or any upheaded American how he is going to vote or what he is going to think.
Mr. Jeffers declared that when the victorious U.S. Army comes home, the fighting men are going to insist upon coming back to a better America than when they left.
He said:
It may go hard with any individual or group who attempts to herd them in a civil non-thinking regiment or attempt to stamp them in a common mold.
Post-war business
Mr. Jeffers urged the convention to liberalize banking practices to aid little businessmen in the post-war period. It is there, he said, that the Walter Chryslers and the Henry Fords of the future will be found. He said that many post-war planners have dreams of enticing large established business institutions to new locations.
“But the mirage of big business on the dreamy horizon,” he said, “must not blind these communities to the successful little businesses now within their grasp.”
Mr. Jeffers also denounced the government’s antitrust suit against the railroads and declared that Attorney General Biddle and his assistant, Wendell Berge, “hate secured the bulk of their railroad knowledge from riding in Pullman drawing rooms paid for by taxpayers.”
Sherwood leaves OWI to aid 4th term drive
Washington (UP) –
Playwright Robert E. Sherwood was free to begin active work on behalf of President Roosevelt’s fourth-term campaign today following his “regretfully tendered” resignation as director of the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information.
He will be succeeded in the OWI post by Edward W. Barrett, who has served at executive director of the Overseas Branch since January.
Mr. Sherwood said his sole reason for resigning was the conviction that Mr. Roosevelt’s reelection was of “supreme importance in this hour of history.” In order not to compromise OWI’s “rigidly nonpartisan” political position by work on behalf of the Roosevelt campaign, Mr. Sherwood said, he decided to make a “clean, complete break.”
It’s fun killing Germans, but…
Richards: Seeing friends go under gets you
By Robert Richards, United Press staff writer
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Chinese to join peace session
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Editorial: Dewey gets tough
Well, now we are getting into the sort of political campaign to which we have been accustomed every four years.
For a time, it was almost too polite to be true. The terrible reality of war had laid restraint over the quadrennial electioneering. Mr. Roosevelt said he would “not, campaign in the usual sense” – he did “not consider it fitting.” And Mr. Dewey was sedately stumping the country, tolling off the issues in a dignified tone and manner.
Then came Saturday night. “The Champ” stepped into the arena, before a banquet of the teamsters’ union. A born crowd-pleaser, he couldn’t resist the temptation to use the kind of language he did. “Fraud,” “falsehood,” “isolationists,” “labor baiters,” “monopolists,” with liberal reference to Mein Kampf and Goebbels. Brickbats such as “the Champ” had not felt compelled to use in polishing off Messrs. Hoover, Landon and Willkie. It was a gay and hilarious evening of name-calling and wisecracking.
So last night, in Oklahoma City, Mr. Dewey picked up the brickbats and hurled them back.
He read the record to sustain charges which the President had said were “false,” “fantastic” and “fraudulent.”
The man who had suggested that after the war we could “keep people in the Army about as cheaply as we could create an agency” for jobless men when they are out, Mr. Dewey recalled, was “the national director of Selective Service, appointed by Mr. Roosevelt and still in office.”
The men who had said we were unprepared when war came were generals, and such administration Senators as Messrs. Barkley and Truman.
Where had Mr. Dewey picked up that strange idea that Mr. Roosevelt had prolonged the depression? From the record which showed after seven years of Roosevelt rule 10 million still unemployed – figures supplied by the American Federation of Labor.
And the suggestion that Mr. Roosevelt considered himself “indispensable” – where did that “malicious falsehood” come from? And again Mr. Dewey quoted, from Senator Truman and Boss Kelly – men certainly not repudiated by the President.
“The man who wants to be President for 16 years,” said Mr. Dewey, “is indeed indispensable, He is indispensable to Harry Hopkins, to Madam Perkins, to Harold Ickes, to a host of other political jobholders. He is indispensable to America’s leading enemy of civil liberties – the Mayor of Jersey City. He is indispensable to those infamous machines, in Chicago – in the Bronx – and all the others. He is indispensable to Sidney Hillman and the Political Action Committee, to Earl Browder, the ex-convict and pardoned Communist leader. Shall we, the American people, perpetuate one man in office 16 years to accommodate this motley crew?”
Mr. Dewey, the prosecuting attorney, speaking.
The case is now getting ready for the jury.
Editorial: Ask Orson; he knows
Orson Welles, actor, playwright, producer, magician, child prodigy, etc., etc., etc., now bows himself in as a pro-Roosevelt political orator with this brilliant effort:
Tom Dewey is a persuasive conman. He leads a slicker’s gang of conmen, of expert wreckers. The American people are as wise as they are good, and it’s true that they can’t be fooled for long; but they can be fooled a little and enough.
We don’t wonder that Orson considers himself a great authority on fooling – and scaring – the American people. But we think he was more effective when he was using those Men from Mars.
In Washington –
Senate faces bitter fight on fair job bill
Measure put aside until after election
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
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Youthful director is going places!
Delmar Davis handles more stars than are seen in Milky Way
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States urged to create job opportunities
Overhauling of public financing suggested
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Slaying inquiry bungled, woman’s attorney says
Lawyer points out discrepancies in stories told in court and before grand jury
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Stokes: The fight is on
By Thomas L. Stokes
With Dewey party –
This 1944 presidential campaign is apparently going to be the dirty affair that many people feared.
Who is to blame will be argued from now until Nov. 7 by the partisans of President Roosevelt and Governor Dewey. But, however that may he, it is obvious that the campaign is headed for the “you’re another” level.
This was made certain when the Republican candidate, nettled by President Roosevelt’s campaign address last Saturday night – which patently disturbed the Dewey high command – rolled up his sleeves, dug his pitchfork into the Roosevelt record, and made the dirt fly, with a blunt: “He asked for it. Here it is.”
Governor Dewey’s charge in his Oklahoma speech that the President’s “sad record of failing to prepare the defenses of this country for war has cost countless American lives” and “untold misery” inevitably will bring back, from the Democratic side, the record of Republicans in Congress – on an increase in the air force, on national defense measures generally. on extension of the draft which Republicans in the House fought so bitterly, on Lend-Lease.
Willkie warning recalled
This was the record of which Wendell Willkie reminded them almost daily this spring in his Wisconsin primary campaign. That is why Republicans dislike him so.
Governor Dewey undoubtedly will get read back to him also some of his own statements in his 1940 primary campaign, in Wisconsin and speeches of other Republican leaders.
This is only natural, since the Republican candidate has opened the subject and has quoted President Roosevelt, even though such quotations from either side may prove nothing conclusively. For the nation was going through a terrible ordeal of the spirit in those years, yearning for peace, not realizing the seriousness of the Nazi menace.
The debate undoubtedly will bring out many other things – Mr. Roosevelt’s “quarantine-the-aggressors” speech in 1937, for which he was so seriously criticized in some quarters, the charge against him of “warmonger” and the heavy onslaught from the other side urging that he take the country into war while its defenses still were unprepared, and so on.
Significant move
It was significant that Governor Dewey seized the occasion of President Roosevelt’s first campaign speech also to return again to the remark of Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, draft director, that “we can keep people in the Army about as cheaply as we could create an agency for them when they are out.” He also repeated his charge that the administration “is afraid to bring men home after victory.”
This tack is regarded by Republicans as a most persuasive argument with soldiers weary from the fighting and from their confinement in camps here at home, as well as with their parents and relatives. This line of political argument brought a stinging retort from the President.
It is no secret that the strategy of the Republican campaign was to draw out President Roosevelt, to put him on the defensive. Governor Dewey’s aides pointed out to reporters on the trip that Mr. Roosevelt had assumed a political role much earlier this year than four years ago, when he waited until mid-October.
But they did not expect him to come out fighting so vigorously.
The Roosevelt speech created a mild panic on the campaign train. As a result, the Oklahoma City speech was rewritten to meet the Roosevelt onslaught.
Henceforth it will be politics as usual.