Bricker calls OPA ‘inept, confused’
Denounces ‘politics’ in rationing
Sacramento, California (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker declared today that the Office of Price Administration was inept, confused and devoid of planning and was being operated for political advantage.
Opening his California campaign, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, in a speech prepared for delivery here, blamed OPA for “keeping the people in the dark” on the entire rationing program. However, he admitted that rationing itself was necessary to combat wartime shortages.
But he asserted that handling of rationing by the OPA had been incompetent in eight ways:
- Planning was obviously poor.
- OPA had no understanding of the “psychology of rationing,” actually encouraging hoarding.
- Irregular rationing periods created confusion.
- Rationing was not coordinated with pricing.
- OPA had not always know how many rationing coupons it had issued.
- Responsibility was divided.
- Unnecessarily complex systems and forms were adopted.
- Black markets flourished and the pleasure driving ban was bungled.
Hits ‘political implications’
Asserting that the Republican Party believes in the principle of wartime rationing as an “instrument of war,” Mr. Bricker said:
The party does object to ineptness, the confusion, the lack of elementary planning and vision with which the New Dealers have administered the program… it particularly condemns the political implications of rationing.
Mr. Bricker illustrated the “political implications” remark by citing the recent order of OPA making “farm machinery ration-free” the very day after an OPA official dismissed as “astonishing” rumors of the removal. He said “we cannot know what the policy should be” because while OPA has the facts it insists upon “keeping the people in the dark.”
Influenced by election
He said:
But this we can be sure of the new policy undoubtedly was facilitated by the fact that Election Day is approaching.
Mr. Bricker makes his first major California speech tonight in San Francisco, which will be broadcast over MBS beginning at 8:30 p.m. PWT (5:30 p.m. EWT).
Mr. Bricker came to California after a tour of Oregon as the Republican Party’s assigned collector of its 25 electoral votes. Governor Thomas E. Dewey made only two speeches in the state, and party generals handed Mr. Bricker the job of winning over the voters for the entire ticket.
Wallace attacks Dewey as puppet
Calls him ‘front’ man for reactionaries
Cleveland, Ohio (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace last night attacked Governor Thomas E. Dewey as a “front” man who “cannot go back” on reactionary Republicans “as Hitler handled Theissen.”
“They pay the piper – they call the tune,” Mr. Wallace declared.
That is why, he said:
“The young man on the flying trapeze” spends part of his time talking like a liberal, part of the time like an old-fashioned reactionary and part of the time pretending that he really believes Roosevelt is a Communist.
The young, but vague Republican governor may be expected any night now to describe Governor Bricker as a New Deal Democrat.
Puts GOP in two classes
Speaking at a rally here, the Vice President divided Republicans into two classes, local Republicans, “usually fine people,” and national Republicans, “the Pews and Grundys of Pennsylvania, the Gannetts and Ham Fishes of New York, the Hearst-Patterson-McCormick newspapers axis, the Tafts, Gridlers and Hannas of Ohio.”
He said:
National Republicans are like the famous bird which always flew backward and thus could see where it had been, but never had any idea where it was going.
Their election would mean a soft war, a soft peace and a reactionary post-war period.
‘Fear a full vote’
Mr. Wallace charged:
The reactionary national Republicans fear a full vote. They have placed one obstacle after another in the way of the voter this year, and “outstanding leaders in this effort are the governors of Ohio and New York” whose “secretaries of states have lent themselves to efforts to restrict voting.”
He said:
The national Republicans voted against Selective Service, against an adequate Army Air Force, against Lend-Lease, against the arming of merchant ships, against repealing the arms embargo.
If the Republican candidate were a true liberal, he would tell the American people that it was the Republicans in Congress who are blocking adequate emergency unemployment compensation during the transition from war to peace.