Rail union paid Flynn $25,000, Dewey claims
Fee is for pay boost Roosevelt granted
By Kermit McFarland
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican candidate for President, came to Pittsburgh last night to charge that Edward J. Flynn, friend of President Roosevelt and third-term Democratic National Chairman, received a $25,000 legal fee for representing the railroad brotherhoods when Mr. Roosevelt granted them a wage increase of eight cents an hour.
This was the most spectacular angle in a labor speech Mr. Dewey delivered at an audience estimated at 12,000 which jammed Hunt Armory, despite a downpour of rain, to hear the Republican candidate in a major bid for Pennsylvania’s 35 electoral votes.
‘What happened?’
Mr. Dewey, to the hilarious applause of his audience, went into meticulous detail in describing the manner in which the railroad wage, increase came about.
When the controversy began, he said, the mediation laws which apply to railroad unions were operating successfully.
“But what happened?” he asked.
He answered that by saving Economic Stabilization Director Fred M. Vinson “destroyed the effectiveness of the Railway Labor Act by setting aside the recommendation of the mediation board for an increase of eight cents an hour.”
‘Uncertainty and tension’
Then, he charged, after the railroad workers had threatened a strike, “the grasping hand of one-man rule reached in and set itself above the law.”
While uncertainty and tension increased, Mr. Roosevelt did nothing but wage a war of nerves against the railway workers. Finally, he decided the stage was set for making political capital… Finally, Mr. Roosevelt seized the railroads to forestall a national disaster which he himself had prepared. After he did that, he graciously gave the very wage increase to which the railway workers had been entitled for over a year.
Then he charged that the railroad unions “had to be represented by special legal counsel” and that Mr. Flynn was the attorney they “had” to hire.
“The price of his services to the railroad workers,” Mr. Dewey alleged, “was $25,000.”
Interruptions
“That sort of business,” he went on, “must come to an end in this country.”
Mr. Dewey, whose half-hour speech was interrupted 24 times by noisy applause, promised his listeners that if he is elected, he stands committed to a program “that will ensure to American labor the guarantee of free collective bargaining through the National Labor Relations Act, and with freedom from government dictation.”
The Republican candidate’s speech not only was a straight-out bid for the labor vote in this industrial area, but also an appeal to the “white collars.”
15 months delay
He cited the case of a white-collar worker whose employer proposed to give him a pay raise.
He said:
More than 15 months after the original request, the New Deal settled the case by the old kangaroo court method of splitting the difference.
He said the New Deal is a “bankrupt organization” and that Mr. Roosevelt “has not offered to the people of this country even the pretense of a program for the future.”
Mr. Dewey said Democrats “resent the kidnaping of their party by the Communists and the Political Action Committee” and that a change in the Washington government “will speed total victory and will also speed our work for a just and lasting peace.”
One-man rule
He charged the New Deal “distrusts the people” and claims the social gains of the 1930s “as its private property.”
He accused the Roosevelt administration of “playing with the rights of labor for political power and political cash” and charged that the President is attempting to establish “one-man rule” over working men and women.
Mr. Dewey said that “playing with the rights of labor for political power and political cash is bad enough,” but “there is something even more dangerous in what the New Deal is doing.”
He then quoted Robert J. Watt, an AFL official, as saying:
Even as we fight for the survival of basic freedoms, we find that the democratic process in many ways is being hog-tied and rendered subordinate to the dictum of a one-man boss…
His pledges
The candidate reiterated pledges to appoint a Secretary of Labor from “the ranks of labor,” to abolish agencies he said are “strangling collective bargaining,” to establish the Fair Employment Practices Committee on a permanent basis, to give the Labor Department greater authority, to do away with “special privilege" and to expand unemployment insurance to all groups, including 20 million he said now are denied old-age and survivors’ insurance.
Mr. Dewey had a responsive crowd for his speech, which was carefully staged.
The audience not only gave him a prolonged ovation on his initial appearance, but, besides the applause, frequently required him to pause by breaking out with boos for “my opponent” and for “Boss Flynn of the Bronx” and laughs and yells of encouragement.
Some partisan kept hollering, “You tell ‘em, Tom!”
Plea for Davis
Mr. Dewey was introduced by Governor Edward Martin who also received a roaring ovation when he entered the hall on a carefully-timed arrival under the escort of a squad of State Police.
The Pennsylvania Governor, who made a special plea for U.S. Senator James J. Davis, his opponent for the gubernatorial nomination in 1942, said, “We want to bring our boys back to an America like they are fighting for.”
Crowd in tumult
Gauging his time by the hour Mr. Dewey was to start speaking over a radio network, the Governor completed his speech, paused briefly, looked a bit anxiously toward the entrance through which the presidential candidate was to enter, then said:
I want to give you that courageous young Governor of New York, the next President–
But the words were lost in the tumult which followed as the crowd, 9,500 of them seated but the others standing, rose with an outburst of applause, cowbells and other noisemakers to greet the smiling and dapper presidential nominee as he strode up a side aisle to the platform, accompanied by Mrs. Dewey and an escort of police.
Mr. Dewey’s speech was delayed at the start as the audience broke into a noisy chant, “We want Dewey, we want Dewey.”
Mr. Dewey began:
It is good to be in Pennsylvania and to hear from Governor Martin that your state is in the Republican column and for Senator Davis.
Other speeches
Before the presidential candidate’s appearance, the crowd heard speeches by Warren Atherton, former commander of the American Legion, Republican County Chairman James F. Malone, Supreme Court Justice Howard W. Hughes, and Superior Court Judge Arthur H. James.
Mr. Dewey, neatly dressed in a brown suit, smiled and waved to the crowd from both sides of the speaking stand both before and after his address.
Mrs. Dewey, wearing a simple black coat, decorated by an orchid, and a red-feathered turban, sat between Governor and Mrs. Martin smiling shyly while the candidate delivered nis address.
Mr. Dewey, after his arrival at noon yesterday, held several conferences, among them one with a delegation of United Mine Worker officials.
‘He is against us’
After the UMW meeting, John O’Leary, vice president, said “We’re against President Roosevelt because he is against us.”
The Republican candidate was escorted to the East Liberty armory by City and State Police. He was sirened back in ample time to catch his. special train, which returned to Albany the way it came, via Ashtabula, Ohio, Erie and Buffalo.
Members of the Pennsylvania Reserve Defense Corps (Home Guard) were on duty at the armory and the unit’s band provided the music.
