America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

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CIO-PAC called subversive by Governor Bricker

Activities violate law, he believes

Portland, Oregon (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker today charged the CIO Political Action Committee was “subversive” and said that, in his belief, an “honest opinion by the Attorney General would rule PAC’s campaign activities a violation of the law.”

The Republican vice-presidential candidate, on a Western campaign swing, told a news conference:

The Political Action Committee is a real subversive organization. It marks the first time we’ve had a political force based on a subversive philosophy from other countries in our campaign.

Attorney General Biddle hit

Mr. Bricker did not elaborate his charges against PAC, but he added that “if we had an honest opinion from the Attorney General… it would rule the PAC a violation of the law.”

Governor Bricker today for the first time listed eight states as in the Republican “sure” column: Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and Iowa.

Governor Bricker climaxed his Washington drive in Tacoma last night when he told the biggest indoor audience he has faced on this tour that the New Deal candidates should be judged by the company they keep – Sidney Hillman and Earl Browder.

Support not repudiated

His speech was described by his staff as an answer to President Roosevelt’s address of last Thursday. He said that Mr. Roosevelt, “in weak words,” denied he sought or welcomed Communistic or Fascistic support.

Governor Bricker charged:

But he did not repudiate their support. That is a significant fact. Is he now resigned to their support?

The Ohioan recalled a statement the President made in 1938 that political candidates should be judged by their companions. Mr. Roosevelt’s “companions” in this campaign, he said, are Hillman and Browder, “the convict he pardoned.” These two, he added, are the “promoters and financiers” of the New Deal.

Dragged to the bottom

He denied Mr. Roosevelt’s statement of last Thursday that “we have fought our way out of an economic crisis.”

Governor Bricker said:

The fact is that after years of unprecedented spending, pump-priming and economic tinkering, after multiplying the public debt, after exercising power never dreamed of by a preceding administration, and after killing livestock, destroying crops and hamstringing business, the New Deal dragged this country to the bottom of the list of nations in terms of industrial recovery.

With Governor Thomas E. Dewey as President and a “supporting Congress,” he promised there would be jobs for returning soldiers and the people at home, more of “the things we want and need,” and an America “once more on the high road to a noble and better future.”

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americavotes1944

TVA on Missouri urged by Truman

Second flood control speech is planned

New Orleans, Louisiana (UP) –
Senator Harry S. Truman said today that projects patterned after the Tennessee Valley Authority on other large tributaries of the Mississippi River would be a major step toward a permanent solution of flood control problems.

The Democratic nominee for the Vice Presidency spoke over a special hookup of Mississippi Valley radio stations in the first of two “nonpolitical” address on flood control. The second was scheduled for a luncheon session of the Mississippi Valley Association.

He joined President Roosevelt in recommending a Missouri Valley Authority, similar to TVA, to provide an integrated program of flood control, irrigation and power development along the Missouri River.

Senator Truman said the administration had done more in 12 years to combat floods than had ever been done before. A flood control program, he said, must be an integral part of a more comprehensive plan “to control our rivers and to make them our servants instead of our masters.” He said water could be impounded in reservoirs to restrain floodwaters, provide a source of power, promote soil conversion, assist navigation and provide irrigation water when needed in dry periods.

Senator Truman leaves tonight for Los Angeles, where he will deliver the first “political” address of his 7,500-mile campaign tour Monday night.

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americavotes1944

Dewey to center on five key states

Brownell may urge return to Pittsburgh

Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey will spend most of the closing days of his campaign for the Presidency in five states whose 119 electoral votes may become the deciding factor in the November elections.

Despite pleas for personal appearances and major political speeches in widely separated sections, the GOP candidate has decided to concentrate on New York, Illinois, Missouri, Massachusetts and Minnesota. President Roosevelt carried those states in the 1940 elections against the late Wendell L. Willkie.

May come to Pittsburgh

Governor Dewey plans to confer on details of the final drive with RNC Chairman Herbert Brownell Jr. today while he is in New York City reviewing the Columbus Day parade. Mr. Brownell, it was reported, may urge him to appear again in Pennsylvania, possibly Pittsburgh, in an effort to win that state’s 35 electoral votes.

Mr. Brownell conferred with Republican leaders in Pittsburgh yesterday.

Requests for major Dewey speeches have come from Republican leaders in Kansas, New Jersey, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and several other states.

‘Last war’ speech

His announced schedule calls for talks in St. Louis, Monday; Minneapolis, Oct. 24; Chicago, Oct. 25; Buffalo, Oct. 31; Boston, Nov. 1; New York City, Nov. 4 and a final address from a radio studio Nov. 6, Election Eve. He will also speak at the Herald Tribune Forum in New York Oct. 17-18.

Except for a Herald-Tribune Forum speech, Governor Dewey and his associates have guarded the topics of the talks. Next Wednesday, he will speak on “This Must Be the Last War.”

2686

WLB grants union rights to mine foremen

Action is expected to end strike wave

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MESA strike over 75¢-lock sidetracked

3-way conference to study dispute

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americavotes1944

After WLB refuses to act –
Perkins: Labor puts heat on Roosevelt for raise

By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Washington –
Union leaders, fighting for a pay-raise order before election, started work today to get the explosive campaign issue into the White House by the end of next week.

The labor members of the War Labor Board are engineering this move, after roundly condemning the public members of that agency for “inexcusable dereliction of duty,” “timidity, contradictions and doubletalk,” “a clear surrender of the Board’s commitment to exercise its judgment,” and “an admission by the public members that they are not competent to perform their duties.”

This upheaval came yesterday after the Board’s public and management members had turned down an American Federation of Labor proposal for a recommendation to the President that he revise the Little Steel formula upward and allow its general application without submission to WLB; and after the same groups of members, with the labor quartet in opposition, had decided it will merely submit a factual report to the President, and will make no “recommendations for action one way or the other with regard to the Little Steel formula.”

Not ‘sufficiently informed’

The WLB said:

The Board is not sufficiently informed as to the possible effects of a modification of the Little Steel formula on the price structure and on the national economy generally to warrant assurance that any modification could be made consistent with the stabilization needs of the country and with the provisions of the Stabilization Act of Oct. 2, 1942.

The labor members immediately went into a huddle and issued their sizzling statement.

Talking to reporters, George Meany, secretary-treasurer of the AFL, declared, “we hope the President will make his decision without regard to the War Labor Board.”

Emil Rieve, president of the CIO Textile Workers, added:

We will make our recommendation added without going through the Board or the Director of Economic Stabilization or any other agency – direct to the President.

Murray scores politics

R. J. Thomas, president of the CIO United Auto Workers, observed:

And it will be on the President’s desk by the end of next week – maybe considerably before then.

The importance of these statements is that most of the CIO and some of the AFL are backing Mr. Roosevelt for reelection to a fourth term. Philip Murray, head of the CIO, has protested the wage issue being made “a football of politics,” and in almost the same paragraph has insisted that the War Labor Board should get the question to the President not later than next Monday.

Thus “the heat” is increased on Mr. Roosevelt.

Nothing like this has ever faced a President running for reelection, for the reason that never before has there been a system of wage control running up to a climax just before the voters go to the polls.

Could have been averted

The climax could have been averted if the War Labor Boards labor members had been agreeable to going along with the Board’s policy of exhaustive inquiry, probably meaning a delay of several weeks more in proceedings now a year old.

But they were not agreeable, and thus some of the President’s strongest supporters plan to put up to him two weeks before Nov. 7 a decision of such importance that it might swing the election. If he turns down or defers the labor plea, he may lose support in quarters that have been regarded as strong for him; if he grants the plea, without insisting upon the routine processes, the Republicans will charge him with buying the election – and may influence a lot of conservative middle-of-the-roaders.

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Hillman attacks GOP Old Guard

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Sidney Hillman, CIO Political Action Committee chairman, charged last night that the Republican Party and its candidates stand for “another return to normalcy – to do-nothing Hooverism at home and narrow, stupid nationalism abroad.”

Mr. Hillman, who spoke to delegates at the CIO Shop Stewards Union convention, asserted:

The Old Guard has recaptured control of the party – the Old Guard of Herbert Hoover, Robert Taft, William Randolph Hearst, Robert McCormick, Joe Pew and Joe Grundy.

Mr. Hillman, attacked by Republicans as favoring Communistic ideology, said that “because Earl Browder wishes to see President Roosevelt reelected, the Old Guard smear artists argue that anyone who opposes their candidate is a Communist or a fellow traveler.

He continued:

By the same reasoning, we might say that since Gerald L. K. Smith and all the Fascist vermin in this country wish to see Mr. Roosevelt defeated, anyone who votes the Republican ticket is a Fascist or a Fascist follower.

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Battle of Statler cloaked in silence

Washington (UP) –
The so-called “Battle of the Statler” remained among the capital’s unsolved political mysteries today as spokesmen for the Senate Campaign Expenditures Committee continued their determined silence on the incident.

Chairman Theodore F. Green (D-RI) and Committee Counsel Robert T. Murphy refused comment on their “exploration” of the tussle in the Statler Hotel here just after President Roosevelt’s speech to the AFL Teamsters Union. Two naval officers were involved in the fight.

Mr. Green, who has said all known facts of the dispute have not been published, told reporters no decision had been reached on the question of a formal committee investigation. He refused to divulge the unpublished findings of his investigators. He said a formal statement on the committee’s position “may” be forthcoming Friday, or, he added, the “whole thing may go up in smoke.”

2690

Editorial: Tops in Washington – Stokes

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Editorial: From Wayne to Sidney?

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2692

Editorial: The Aachen test

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Edson: Once again, the ‘lunatic fringe’ is with us

By Peter Edson

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2694

Ferguson: Moral standards

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

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2695

Background of news –
Burden of the public debt

By Bertram Benedict

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2696

Millett: Joint checking account is keeper of ‘our’ money

Returning serviceman and his wife must assume right places in life
By Ruth Millett

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Woman admits kidnapping baby

Abduction laid to mother impulse

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2697

Simms: Wilson’s advice

By William Philip Simms

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2698

Hell on a bit of earth –
Japs’ butchery revealed by Scot who survived occupation of Guam

Axis ‘allies’ treated roughly along with massacre of natives
By Henry C. Anderson

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2699

Stokes honored by capital press

Colleagues recognize fairness, reliability

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2700

Bing Crosby captures town in Germany – for a minute

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2701

Navy doesn’t favor wholesale release

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americavotes1944

Gracie Allen Reporting

By Gracie Allen

Hollywood, California –
It’s politics, that’s what it is. Here I’ve been waiting around for two months to get one single solitary plumber, and now I read there’s a whole army of plumbers, painters and plasterers cleaning up the buildings of Congress during the present recess.

Goodness, I know Governor Dewey has asked for a housecleaning in Washington, but I didn’t think the Democrats would pay any attention to him.

I understand the favorite pastime of the cleaning men is to sit in the empty chairs of Congress and pretend they’re Senators and Representatives. They even make up laws and “pass” them.

Hey, if we can keep Congress adjourned long enough, we may get some great laws.