Nelson, Ball urge return of Roosevelt
Former WPB head says he has ‘knowhow’
Washington (UP) –
The reelection of President Roosevelt as the man with the “knowhow” on both foreign and domestic questions was urged last night by Donald M. Nelson, former chairman of the War Production Board, and Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN).
In his radio speech, Mr. Nelson said that the nation “cannot afford to take chances on the Presidency,” and that he therefore would vote for Mr. Roosevelt because he has “the knowhow to lead the nation to swift and absolute victory in this war, to a firm and lasting peace, and to higher living standards for all.”
Stating that he had voted the Republican ticket more often than the Democratic, Mr. Nelson said that he also had “enthusiastic” support for Senator Harry S. Truman, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate.
Senator Ball, who announced earlier this week that he would back Mr. Roosevelt because of Governor Dewey’s asserted failure to take a stronger stand on international collaboration, charged that the Republican candidate had failed to offer a constructive program on domestic issues as well.
He also criticized Governor Dewey and other Republican campaign speakers for their attempts “to scare the American people into believing that reelection of Mr. Roosevelt would mean a Communist dictatorship in the United States.” This, he said, has “seriously weakened the chances of a Dewey administration being able to cooperate with Soviet Russia.”
Charging that it is ridiculous to present Communism as a serious menace now, Senator Ball said:
The rights and liberties of the American people are in far less danger from the little handful of Communists on the outer fringe of the New Deal than they are from the rabid isolationists and labor haters who unfortunately occupy positions of much greater influence in Governor Dewey’s campaign.
Carpenters’ head blasts Democrats
Hutcheson charges ‘labor runaround’
New York (UP) –
William L. Hutcheson, president of the AFL United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, asserted last night that a “decisive percentage of labor voters are seriously considering casting their votes for Thomas E. Dewey,” because of the “dismal record of labor runarounds” of the Roosevelt administration.
Mr. Hutcheson, one of Mr. Dewey’s strongest supporters in the ranks of labor, charged that the Democratic Party “has persistently evaded a head-on facing of any of the fundamental domestic issues which will confront post-war America.”
He said labor, before it votes, wants an answer on six specific questions:
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Will the next President take the “straightjackets off collective bargaining and restore it to its former free status?”
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Will he get md of the incompetent “bureaucrats” who are “now staffing the federal agencies dealing with labor?”
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Will he halt the “dismantling of the Department of Labor” and restore it to its intended importanceship under male leadership?
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Will be put a stop to political “one-man rule” over labor policies?
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Will he end favoritism for particular unions and discontinue personal interference in internal affairs of organized labor?
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Will he pledge himself to “general economic policies which will assure labor and the returning servicemen an after-war job at adequate and progressive wage levels, in private industry?”