Simms: Chinese Tito may emerge in Far East
Breaks go against Generalissimo Chiang
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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More money than weapons flown over hump to China
Chungking black market exchanges 185 to 200 national dollars for one U.S. dollar
By Darrell Berrigan, United Press staff writer
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Bogarts reunited
Hollywood, California –
Patching up their differences after a two-week separation, screen actor Humphrey Bogart and his wife, the former Mayo Methot, today announced a reconciliation. Neither offered an explanation of their breakup or reconciliation.
2,000 U.S. planes blast Nazi targets
Smashing attack on oil, rail centers
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U.S. fliers down 131 Nazi fighters
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Stettinius supports Roosevelt campaign
Washington (UP) –
Acting Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr. said today that he thought this country needed “the continued wise and experienced leadership of President Roosevelt to bring about a speedy victory and a sound peace.” He made the comment in response to a press conference question whether he supported Mr. Roosevelt for a fourth term.
Perkins: Dewey seeks miners’ favor in second bid
Surveys give GOP slim hope for swing
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
When Governor Thomas E. Dewey makes another invasion tonight of this key political state, with speeches in the “Twin Cities” of the hard-coal region – Wilkes-Barre and Scranton – he will be attempting to crack the coal miner vote which most observers believe has not yet been greatly affected by the anti-Roosevelt declarations of John L. Lewis.
Here in Western Pennsylvania, the soft coal region, surveys have produced opinions that the best the Republicans can hope for is a swing of 10 to 20 percent among the miners away from their old political love.
Pennsylvania’s governor, Edward Martin, who is campaigning daily for the Dewey-Bricker ticket, said today he was sure of a “large Republican vote” among the United Mine Workers in some sections, and also from AFL trades unions and the railway brotherhoods. He even predicted that Governor Dewey will receive substantial support from workers in steel mills, who are organized under the CIO, the labor organization most active in the fourth-term drive.
Martin optimistic
Governor Martin said:
I am certain that much labor support will be behind Governor Dewey in next Tuesday’s voting. That will be healthy for the country, because if labor votes all on one side it would encourage the evil of setting class against class. It would be a bad thing if labor were solidly Republican. I am sure it will not be solidly Democratic in this state.
One argument being used with the coal miners is based on the fact that their union will have to enter contract negotiations with coal operators next March. The present contract, which produced a long and bitter conflict in 1943, punctuated by four strikes and dramatized by government seizure of the coal mines, will end on April 1, 1945.
With the anti-Roosevelt attitude of Mr. Lewis a matter of record, the miners are being told that their hopes for higher wages and more favorable working conditions depend on Governor Dewey moving into the White House.
Signs for Democrats
Signs favorable to the Democrats have been found by investigators in all the important coal counties of Western Pennsylvania, But all of them have reported that the Republican presidential ticket will get “some” votes from the miners. The important question is how much is “some?”
Most of the United Mine Workers district officials support the Dewey campaign. But some district officers claim to be “neutral” and a few minor officials are openly backing Mr. Roosevelt.
The miner vote is most important in two states – West Virginia and Pennsylvania. In West Virginia, with only eight electoral votes, it bulks larger because the 110,000 coal miners are a larger proportion of the total population than the 190,000 are in this bigger state, with 35 electoral votes.
In West Virginia, this writer found symptoms of a considerable swing toward Governor Dewey in the southern section. Evidence of a swing diminished in the northern sections of West Virginia, and the same was true in the neighboring regions of Pennsylvania.
Voters removed, attorney to charge
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania –
U.S. Attorney Gerald A. Gleeson said he would present charges of the “wholesale removal” of voters’ names from Philadelphia voting lists to a special grand jury session tomorrow.
Mr. Gleeson made his statement as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents worked at the office of the Registration Commission checking reports that several hundred voters were disfranchised by removal of their names from the registration books in recent weeks.
The FBI, according to the commission, inquired on the status of 17 voters, divided equally among Republican and Democratic registrants.
Mr. Gleeson said approximately 100 complaints were received in his office. Earlier reports said that 10,000 voters were disfranchised.
Complaints to the FBI were that voters’ names were removed on the word of individuals that the persons named moved from certain districts or died.
Background of news –
When the electors bolted
By Bertram Benedict
A special session of the Mississippi Legislature is to be called, according to Governor Bailey, to amend the state’s election laws. This action will have been forced by three of the state’s nine presidential electors on the Democratic ticket. These three recently announced that they intended to vote for Senator Byrd (D-VA) for President instead of for President Roosevelt.
If any of the presidential electors elected Nov. 7 should vote on Dec. 18 for someone other than Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Dewey, they will be fulfilling the original intent of the Constitution. As every schoolboy knows, the framers of that document expected the electors to use their own judgment in electing the President and Vice President.
It was some time before the electoral system solidified into its present procedure. Some oddities in the procedure have been as follows:
1789: There were no votes from Rhode Island or North Carolina, because these states had not yet ratified the Constitution; or from New York, because the Legislature could not agree on the election procedure. Two electors chosen from Virginia and two from Maryland did not show up to vote. One of the two Marylanders was held up by ice in Chesapeake Bay, the other had the gout. Now most states provide that if any elector fails to vote, his vote shall be cast by his fellow-electors.
1800: The Federalists counted on the electors appointed by the South Carolina Legislature, but these voted for the Democratic-Republican candidate, Jefferson, and thereby elected him. But at the same time, they voted for a Federalist for Vice President. One elector picked in Pennsylvania to vote for Adams voted for Jefferson. Of the 15 electors from Pennsylvania, eight voted for Jefferson, seven for Adams. A majority of the states still had the electors picked by the legislature, instead of by popular vote. South Carolina did not end choice by the legislature until after the Civil War.
1808: Congress had passed a law requiring the states to pick electors within 34 days preceding the first Wednesday in December, but in New Jersey, they were picked 35 days before. If New Jersey’s vote had been challenged, it could have been ruled out.
1816: Maryland chose eight Democratic-Republican electors and three Federalist ones, but the three Federalists refused to vote.
1828: One elector chosen in Georgia on the ticket for Jackson favored John Quincy Adams, and resigned after being elected rather than vote for Jackson. The Legislature filled the vacancy with a Jackson man.
1836: In some states, the slate of electors opposed to Van Buren was not pledged to any candidate, but was labeled “Opposition.” The “Opposition” electors chosen, generally known as Whigs, split their votes among four different presidential candidates.
1860: With three tickets in the field opposing the Republican ticket, the opposition in some states presented fusion slates of electors. In New York, for instance, the anti-Lincoln slate was composed of 18 electors for Douglas, 10 for Bell, and 7 for Breckenridge.
1872: Greeley, the Democratic candidate for President, died after the election but before the Electoral College met; he had won 66 electoral votes. Three of the Greeley electors persisted in voting for him, but Congress would not accept votes for a dead man. The other Greeley electors gave complimentary votes to other Democrats.
1884: With the Greenbackers showing much strength, certain states had some Greenback and some Democratic electors on the same slate. In 1892 and 1896, certain states had joint slates of some Populist, some Democratic electors.
1912: In South Dakota, the electors for Theodore Roosevelt announced they would vote for Taft instead of Roosevelt if necessary to defeat Wilson. Sherman, the Republican nominee for Vice President, died before the Electoral College met; the Republican National Committee instructed the eight Republican electors to vote for Nicholas Murray Butler for Vice President.
Martin blasts Roosevelt on preparedness
Governor Edward Martin, charging that “there has been little common honesty in handling the federal payroll and in the administration of the Social Security Act,” maintains that President Roosevelt “failed to prepare the nation for war.”
“Warned as he was, it was the President’s great responsibility to lead this nation and make it ready to defend itself,” Mr. Martin said in a political speech at McKeesport last night. “That, on the record, he failed to do.
People not informed
Mr. Martin said:
Had we been prepared, or on the way to preparedness in 1939, we might have avoided war. At least our preparations would have been speeded up and this would have avoided many casualties and the expenditure of billions of dollars.
The conclusion cannot be escaped that the President did not take the people into his confidence; that he did not voice specific warnings until it was too late, and that he led the country to believe that neutrality would save us from war.
Referring to the federal payroll, Mr. Martin said, “It has been used to build up a solid phalanx of New Deal votes here in… every state in the Union.”
Mr. Martin asserted:
The Social Security Act as administered by the New Deal has been called the “Socia! Security swindle.” Its old-age benefits were to be paid out of funds from a tax on workers and a tax on payrolls. The money collected has simply gone into the general fund. It has been spent and all that is left of that trust fund is a bundle of IOUs.
11-point program
“The American program, as we Republicans see it,” was outlined by Mr. Martin in these 11 points:
- Use all our energy speedily to win the war.
- Work for permanent peace in collaboration with other nations.
- Preserve the sovereignty of the United States.
- Plan a program of veteran rehabilitation, reemployment and opportunity.
- Enforce economic government.
- Follow a system of free enterprise.
- Decentralize government.
- Return to the economy of plenty in this nation.
- Dispose of surplus war materials to private industry.
- Settle promptly all government contracts.
- Conserve natural resources for future generations.
Ickes: Dewey is foe of Negroes
Gains under New Deal cited in address
New York (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace and Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes told a cheering crowd of more than 2,000 in New York’s Harlem District last night that President Roosevelt is the best friend the Negroes have ever had in high public office.
The two administration officials spoke at the Golden Gate Ballroom where Mr. Ickes, speaking over a nationwide radio network, charged that Governor Thomas E. Dewey had “walked down the aisle hand in hand with the most vindictive enemies of the Negroes.”
Vice President Wallace, urging the Negroes to vote early next Tuesday, said he believed “the American people know a champion when they see one,” and promised that Mr. Roosevelt would establish economic prosperity in the United States after the war.
Defends Hillman
Mr. Wallace said the New Deal had always worked for the underprivileged and assailed those who are attacking CIO Political Action Committee Chairman Sidney Hillman.
“Sidney Hillman has been kicked, around most unjustly,” Wallace said. “Folks ought to take their hats off to him.”
In his speech, Secretary Ickes cited the “advance of the Negroes under the present administration, but said Mr. Dewey’s performance as governor of New York toward the Negroes “has been little short of iniquitous.”
‘Progress’ cited
He said:
During the 1944 session of the New York State Legislature, which Governor Dewey controls, five fundamental bills were introduced designed to aid the Negroes and other minority groups by eliminating discrimination. All of these measures were killed by the Legislature, but any or all of them could have been passed with Governor Dewey’s support.
He called the roll of Negro “progress” under the New Deal – increased employment, better housing, partial elimination of discrimination in the armed services – and said that the most “substantial developments of all have occurred in the field of Negro education.”