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.