Raids ‘finish’ carrier-based Jap aviation
Mitscher cites blows at Formosa, Luzon
By George Jones, United Press staff writer
…
‘One lousy little old G.I. company’ beats off 3 German divisions
Troops on ridge for 38 days and nights fight on after Yanks conquer city
By W. C. Heinz, North American Newspaper Alliance
…
Survivor of ‘expendables’ reveals behind-lines war
By Frank Hewlett, United Press staff writer
…
Never look back, war widow warns
…
‘Dutch Country’ is mad –
Trend in Lehigh County indicates vote for Dewey
Considered good barometer for state in past; farmers are sore about government forms
By Kermit McFarland, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Allentown, Pennsylvania –
The trend in the Dutch Country is away from the New Deal.
Usually Democratic in presidential years, if not at other elections, the shift this year has worked up to such a stage that there is a real prospect of the Republicans winning Lehigh County, often a good barometer for the state.
Every year Pennsylvania has gone Democratic in a national or statewide election, so has Lehigh. In the recent state elections won by the Republicans, Lehigh went Republican.
While local Democratic leaders still profess to see a Roosevelt majority in this county, the more impartial observers are convinced the county will go Republican.
Two years ago, Governor Edward Martin won the county by 6,000. Four years ago, President Roosevelt carried it by 3,400.
GOP registration lead
This year, the Republicans hold a voter registration lead of 2,370, and four years ago, the Democrats led in voter enrollment by 691.
The Republican majority here, if the forecasts are borne out, probably won’t make so much difference in the grand totals, but the fact that this is a “swing” county makes the outlook here significant.
And the reasons underlying the evidence of a Republican trend are significant because they are common, although in varying degree, to other parts of the state.
The most vocal of the “new” opposition to the New Deal – that is, from groups which hitherto have been pretty sod for the President – comes from the potato farmers in this county. They are disgruntled because they say the OPA and other government agencies have kept them in a lather with regulations, rulings, forms, quotas and “regimentation.”
Resent federal forms
The potato farmers are particularly expressive because, as they look at it, the potato business was the victim of a special “bungle” on the part of the Government.
Other farmers in this county sound off about the New Deal and “regimentation” in much milder terms and concrete evidences of a Republican trend among them are more difficult to trace.
Government forms, however, have been taking a toll of hitherto Democratic votes among the small businessmen of this and neighboring Northampton County – which this reporter also explored.
Republican leaders in this area are keyed up about the Nov. 7 outlook far more than in the last presidential campaign.
The district workers are more zealous about their work, they are putting in longer hours, they are operating like a group which thinks it has a winner. In the last two presidential years, they had an air of hopelessness about them.
Big silent vote
There is a good deal of evidence to show that while there is a large “silent” vote which puzzles the political dopesters, here and elsewhere in the state, there is a heavy interest in the election.
Political leaders on both sides say they don’t know what the “silent” vote intends to do, but both sides are hoping for at least an even break.
The fact that Mr. Roosevelt is running for a fourth term, the prestige of the Martin Administration at Harrisburg, the natural bent of American voters to turn, sooner or later, against the “ins,” the plethora of government regulations which have harassed salaried workers as well as businessmen, the Communist issue to some extent and wartime strikes also are cutting ice in the campaign hereabouts.
The CIO Political Action Committee staged an intensive registration campaign here before Oct. 7, and an even more aggressive drive in Northampton County, where the CIO has heavily organized industry. But the Republicans managed to hold their own in voter enrollment in Lehigh County. Northampton, as hitherto, has a Democratic majority.
Northampton for FDR
President Roosevelt generally is doped to carry Northampton, but by a majority somewhat under his 1940 lead. Four years ago, he was 7,900 votes ahead of the late Wendell Willkie. The generally accepted figure this time is an estimate of 6,000.
The Republicans in this end of the state are not making use of the billboard signs erected by the Republican committee in Allegheny County, which read, “If you want bring the boys home sooner… vote for Dewey and Bricker.” Here all the billboard signs read, “For Peace-Time Jobs, 1945-1949, vote for Dewey and Bricker.”
In Scranton and Lackawanna County, the Democrats profess not to be alarmed about the possibility of President Roosevelt losing the county, which he has carried three times. In this position they seem to be supported by the Republicans, who display little real hope of turning the county in Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s column.
But the Roosevelt majority, which exceeded 30,000 in 1936 and 16,000 in 1940, will be pared still further Nov, 7. Most guessers put the figure at 10,000, which is fairly close in a county of some 230,000.
In exact reverse to the situation in neighboring Luzerne County, the Lackawanna Democrats are a smooth outfit, and the Republicans are not too happy among themselves.
Dewey turns to problem of voting time
New York City wants polls open until 1000
Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey turned today from campaigning to a New York State problem – voting hours in New York City – which may in itself affect his bid for the White House in the Nov. 7 election.
The New York Governor is scheduled to receive a report from Charles Breitel, his counsel, today on a proposal to keep New York City polling places open three hours longer this year to accommodate the heavy voter registration.
Under present law, voting hours are from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. EWT. Mr. Breitel met earlier this week with members of the New York Board of Elections. His report is expected to influence Governor Dewey’s decision on whether to call a special legislative session to authorize an extension.
Observers see handicap
Many political observers believe that an extension of voting hours would work to the disadvantage of the Republican presidential candidate. The belief is based on the idea that the heavier the vote in New York City, the greater margin Dewey will have to gain upstate in order to win the state’s 47 electoral votes.
Governor Dewey apparently doesn’t subscribe to that theory. He told a press conference in St. Louis last week that he was pleased with the heavy New York City registration.
Twice before in recent years, 1940 and 1942, the New York City polls were kept open beyond 7:00 p.m. President Roosevelt carried the state against the late Wendell L. Willkie in 1940. Governor Dewey, in winning the governorship, led the Republican Party to a state victory in 1942.
Has open date
Next Monday is an open date on Mr. Dewey’s schedule on which he could be on hand for an emergency session of the state legislature to extend the voting hours.
He is scheduled to resume campaigning tomorrow with a farm speech from Syracuse, New York, heart of the state’s agricultural district and scene of the annual state fair.
KQV will broadcast the speech at 12:30 p.m. ET.
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
Hollywood, California –
Well, if you ask me, what the field of international diplomacy really needs is a woman here and there to put some real common sense into it.
For instance, our country had been having a lot of trouble recognizing Gen. de Gaulle. Goodness, I’d know that big, handsome fellow anywhere.
And speaking of recognition, take Turkey.
If you’re talking about fancy diplomacy, there’s a smooth one.
In fact, Turkey has been so clever about being neutral during the entire war, that it’s hard to tell whether the Allies or the Nazis are getting the part that comes over the fence last.
Barmine: Communists support Roosevelt to push own future program
Democrats warned to fear subversive groups bearing votes – for cost will be heavy
By Alexander Barmine
EDITOR’S NOTE: Alexander Barmine, 44, fought in the Russian Army during the last war, and graduated from the Soviet General Staff College in 1923 as brigadier general. As a foreign trade office representative, he subsequently saw dictatorships supplant democracies in Europe, Asia and Africa. In 1933-34, he was president of Auto-Moto-Export the Soviet Union’s central trust for exporting all products of its auto, aviation and armament industries. While serving as charge d’affaires in Athens in 1937, he broke with the Soviet regime. resigned and found refuge in Paris. He came to the United States in 1940 and worked in a metal factory, entered the U.S. Army as a private in 1942 and subsequently became an American citizen. An article by him on “The New Communist Conspiracy” appears in the current Reader’s Digest.
New York –
**Despite President Roosevelt’s declaration that he does not welcome Communist support, the Communist leaders are continuing to back him for a fourth term in order to advance their long-range plans.
In his speech of Jan. 20 last, Earl Browder, Communist leader, complained:
The American people ae so ill-prepared for any deep-going change in the direction of socialism…
Browder meant ill-prepared for the Russian brand of socialism. He recognized that new means must be found for edging the American people into a state better prepared for totalitarian trends. The “indispensable man” idea – the permanent or semi-permanent leader idea – was made to order for the furtherance of their totalitarian aims.
Their next objective, ambitious though it may seem now, is the capture of the machinery of the Democratic Party.
Strategy described
They are extremely active among Americans of foreign extraction. Through Communist-influenced foreign language papers, they hammer home the idea that anyone exercising his right to vote against the party in power is disrupting American wartime unity.
Capture by a small group of camouflaged Communists of the American Labor Party, representing half a million New York State votes, was a successful test of strength and technique. In the same way they have captured many CIO unions. These captures were essentially tryouts.
Through their ally, Sidney Hillman, the Communists are delivering these captured. votes to the Democratic Party. But the Democrats should beware of this “gift.” The ultimate cost will be heavy.
PAC intends to stay
At first, the CIO Political Action Committee declared that its only purpose was to get out votes for this election, but Sidney Hillman has now announced that the Political Action Committee will be maintained after the elections.
With the key positions in the Political Action Committee occupied by Communists and fellow travelers, there has been established what may become a balance of power in the Democratic Party. If this balance of power can be established and maintained, the Democratic Party will be headed for oblivion or ultimate totalitarian domination.
Since January 1944, the Communists have proclaimed themselves to be enthusiastic supporters of democracy, capitalism and free enterprise, just as in June 1941, they became overnight “patriotic Americans.”
Browder quoted
In his Jan. 10 speech, Browder said:
We may compromise and do, on a hundred other questions, including the basic one of postponing all radical proposals for changing the social and economic system.
Postponing until when? Browder did not say. But Stalin has said. In his Foundations of Leninism, he wrote:
A revolutionist may sponsor a reform because he sees in it a means for linking up constitutional action, because he feels he can make use of it as a screen behind which he can strengthen his clandestine work, whose aim is to educate and prepare the masses for the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
Stalin’s advice cited
In a speech to the Comintern’s American Commission on May 6, 1929, Stalin said:
The American Communist Party is one of the few Communist parties in the world upon which history has laid tasks of a decisive character from the point of view of the world revolutionary movement… when a revolutionary crisis develops in America, that will be the beginning of the end of world capitalism as a whole. It is essential that the American Communist Party should be capable of meeting that historical moment fully prepared… every effort and every means must be employed in preparing for that, comrades.
In the light of this, it becomes clear that by “postponement” Browder meant until the Communists in America have got enough power to again come out into the open or “until a crisis develops in America.”
‘They stoop to conquer’
The Communists know they are certain to encounter desperate opposition when Americans awaken to the fact that their liberties are being threatened. That is why the Communists are stooping to conquer the respectable old Democratic Party, which they detest as thoroughly as they do the Republican Party.
The plot may sound fantastic to the American voter who takes as a matter of course his political liberty and his right to freedom to vote under a two-party system. But the program is neither fantastic nor impractical to the totalitarian planners.
Europe offers too many examples of what happened to democracies which were contemptuous of warnings such as are now being sounded in America. To ignore them is to flirt with disaster.
Club chairman calls Dewey’s charges false
Says accusations are based on ‘hearsay’
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Frank J. Lewis, national chairman of the 1000 Club, today said that Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential nominee, made false charges against the organization on the basis of “hearsay statements of two Arkansas gentlemen, neither of whom are members of the club.”
Governor Dewey, in a Chicago address Wednesday, said the club’s existence was proof of an attempt by the New Deal to sell political influence in exchange for campaign contributions.
Not formed in White House
Mr. Lewis said that the club, which was formed Sept. 11, in Chicago “and not the White House, as Governor Dewey claims,” is made up of Midwestern business and professional men “who are not actively identified with either major political party, and whose immediate objective is the reelection of President Roosevelt.”
Mr. Lewis said:
The 1000 Club is greatly indebted to Governor Dewey for the nationwide publicity given it in the Governor’s Chicago address. The club is sponsoring President Roosevelt’s Chicago broadcast tomorrow evening and is hopeful that the wide publicity will help the club to raise the funds to pay for this broadcast.
Mr. Lewis expressed surprise that “so able an investigator as the New York Governor” should have spoken “so authoritatively without consulting any members of the organization.”
Dewey’s sources questioned
“Had he done so,” Mr. Lewis asserted, “he could not, with any regard for the truth, have made the statements about the club he did make.” Mr. Lewis said neither H. L. McAlister nor Sam J. Watkins, quoted by Mr. Dewey as the source of his charges, "have been active in or authorized to speak for the club.”
Mr. Lewis said:
The policy of the club is to put the war above partisan politics. The interest of the club is the war, not party spoils. Since the group is nonpartisan, it has not sought and will not be entitled to receive patronage from any political party.
White House denies cut in war budget
Washington (UP) –
The White House today contested a charge by Governor Thomas E. Dewey that the Budget Bureau cut $552 million from an Army appropriation in 1939, asserting that the overall appropriation was actually increased 800 percent over the previous year.
The White House said:
The cut Mr. Dewey mentioned amounted to less than seven percent of the total, not the 23 percent cut inferred. On the other hand, the $8,038,550,718 recommended by the Bureau or the Budget for the War Department compared to $895,745,260 for the previous fiscal year, an increase of almost 800 percent.
Hannegan dared on club leaders
New York (UP) –
Republican National Chairman Herbert Brownell Jr. today challenged Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan to disclose the names of directors of the “1000 Club,” described by Governor Thomas E. Dewey at Chicago last night as an organization to collect $1,000 contributions for the Democratic presidential campaign in return for “special privileges” from the Roosevelt administration.
Mr. Brownell said the Republicans will have more to say about the project unless Mr. Hannegan and his associates “are ready to turn back the money.”
He said if the contributors were not receiving the “special privileges” promised in an alleged letter from Arkansas Democratic headquarters made public by Mr. Dewey, the Democrats were receiving donations “under false pretenses.”
Mr. Brownell said:
Hannegan said he approved the project. That was not a denial: That’s a confession. If he is sincere, he will make public the 48 state directors and demand that each list all contributors.
Dewey backers rapped by Guffey
New Brighton, Pennsylvania – (special)
U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey, (D-PA), in a speech here yesterday charged that the World Economic Conference at London in 1933 was a plot to shut off U.S. foreign markets “dreamed up by some of the very men who are today backing Governor Dewey.”
Answering charges of Mr. Dewey that President Roosevelt had sabotaged the Economic Conference, called to stabilize world currencies, Mr. Guffey, a leading Senate New Deal supporter, said it would have forced a 30 percent cut in world prices of U.S. farm and mineral products.
Mr. Guffey said:
President Roosevelt refused to accept this intolerable threat to our economic welfare – which, I may add, was put forward by one of the appeasing British Tory governments which were united only in a determination to keep Winston Churchill out of office – and dynamited the London Economic Conference.
That was nearly 12 years ago but ever since then there have been plenty of Wall Street Republicans and a few Wall Street Democrats who hold it against the President as a crime that he did not sell the American farmer into economic servitude to foreign masters and that he refused to subordinate the reemployment of American industrial labor to the convenience of international bankers controlled by the Bank of England.
Senator Guffey charged Governor Dewey with carrying on a campaign of falsification and added that Pennsylvania has been deprived of an effective vote on important national defenses issues because Senator James J. Davis (R-PA), now a candidate for reelection, opposed nearly every important measure, canceling out Mr. Guffey’s vote in favor.
Mr. Guffey said:
Vote for Davis and for Dewey if you want another return to normalcy, another boom for the bankers, another panic for the investors, another depression for the farmer and the worker, and another war for your children.
Bricker: Farmers for GOP
Foreign relations speech set for tonight
Wichita, Kansas (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker today said flatly that farmers, knowing themselves to be victims of “New Deal incompetence and bureaucratic arrogance,” will vote Republican in the national election a week from next Tuesday.
Tonight, the GOP vice-presidential nominee will turn the Republican spotlight of criticism on President Roosevelt’s record on foreign relations and national defense in a speech at Kansas City
KDKA will broadcast the speech at 10:30 p.m. EWT.
‘Victim of incompetence’
In a speech prepared for delivery here today, Mr. Bricker said:
The American farmer knows that during this war he has been a victim of New Deal incompetence and bureaucratic arrogance.
Declaring that farmers had established new production records “in spite of the New Deal,” the nominee said weather and fluctuating market prices were “bad enough” farm problems.
He continued:
But when the farmer is faced with the added uncertainties of government control of his prices, labor, machinery, transportation, and by policy shifts in the middle of the crop year, he winds up in a state of utter confusion.
‘Arbitrary control’
Mr. Bricker said it was because of “this arbitrary control” that the farmer “has turned against the New Deal.”
“He does not like it and he is going to vote against it on Nov. 7,” he said.
Last night, Mr. Bricker said at Enid, Oklahoma, that if the New Deal wanted to continue its wartime control grasp over the personal lives of American citizens, it would twist the language of laws with the help of its “New Deal Attorney General and Supreme Court.”
10 days before election –
Perkins: AFL demand for decision on pay formula perils WLB
Federation withdraws from board hearings; dispute may cost Roosevelt labor votes
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
Ten days ahead of election, the National War Labor Board was plunged today into apparently the most serious of its periodic crises, with the possibility that it may get worse and affect some labor votes for President Roosevelt.
The American Federation of Labor members have withdrawn from settlement of wage cases involving the “Little Steel” formula until the Board makes a report or recommendation to the President on the proposal of the Board’s labor members that this yardstick be broken.
The danger of further cleavage in this wartime agency was indicated by a statement of George Meany, secretary-treasurer of the AFL and a board member, that Chairman William H. Davis “invited us to withdraw, period.” The intimation was that the withdrawal might become complete, which would break up this 12-member agency organized on a basis of equal representation for the public, management and labor, and with the labor members divided between the AFL and the CIO.
But Mr. Meany declared:
We have not considered this invitation to withdraw and we are not considering it. We just haven’t done anything about it.
Chairman Davis said, “I certainly did not invite the AFL members to withdraw from the board,” but he added that members, including those representing labor, ought to abide by the majority decisions and accept their share of responsibility for the board’s actions.
Mr. Davis said he could see no similarity between this situation and the one in 1940, when John L. Lewis broke up the National Defense Mediation Board (predecessor of WLB) by withdrawing the CIO members.
CIO eases pressure
The background of the situation:
Both CIO and AFL members of the WLB pressed with full vigor until about a week ago to get the wage question to the White House, in ample time for Mr. Roosevelt to make a decision before election. The CIO members supporting the President for reelection, suddenly took off, the pressure, and then the AFL members, who are not declared supporters of Mr. Roosevelt, began to put it on.
The CIO members were informed, according to statements in labor circles, that their pressure for a presidential wage decision just before election was likely to lose votes for the candidate they are supporting.
Rank and file restive
The AFL members, led by Mr. Meany, seem to be under no such political inhibition, and would like the heat applied to the White House as far as possible in advance of the election.
Rank-and-file union members, in many states and of both CIO and AFL, are reported restive under the maneuvers by which the WLB has delayed a decision on the wage question for many months and now is in position to put it off until after election.
The WLB setup of equal representation from the public, management and labor is being challenged by some labor authorities who contend that labor questions as well as all others should be determined only by representatives of the public.
Labor ‘duped,’ UMW paper says
Washington (UP) –
The United Mine Workers’ Journal in a series of editorials in its last edition before the presidential election charged today that labor had been “duped and dumped by the Roosevelt administration” and “has been given no guarantee” of cabinet representation if Mr. Roosevelt is reelected.
The Journal, official organ of the UMW, also charged that Mr. Roosevelt if reelected may appoint Anna Rosenberg, New York, Secretary of Labor; that Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN), “deserted the Republican Party” to support Mr. Roosevelt in a “vote-getting deal at the White House” and that the War Labor Board “sought to perpetuate itself as a compulsory board of arbitration.”
The Journal identified Mrs. Rosenberg as a “personnel director for millionaire department store owners” who was appointed by the President to the CIO-AFL Labor Victory Committee and described her as “the President’s labor advisor.”