America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

The Pittsburgh Press (November 3, 1944)

BATTERED JAPS FLEEING LEYTE
Last of foe pocketed on west coast

MacArthur’s forces drive across island
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer

Yanks gain 2½ miles in Reich

First Army 27 miles from Cologne; British take city of Flushing
By J. Edward Murray, United Press staff writer

Superfortresses raid Rangoon heavily

B-29s carry record loads to Burma port

RAF heavies rip port of Düsseldorf

U.S. fliers destroy 208 Nazi planes

boooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooo! GET OUT OF HERE IDIOT!

americavotes1944

Gracie Allen Reporting

By Gracie Allen

Hollywood, California –
Well, I’ve never heard of so many election bets. Why, even Ann Sheridan has promised to go down Hollywood Boulevard made up in blackface if her candidate is defeated. But if she loses the bet, she won’t lose any “oomph.” It’s not the color of her skin that interests the men; it’s the way it fits.

President Roosevelt bets a quarter on each election and admits that he loses every time. My goodness, if he bets a quarter every time he runs, that could run into big money.

George and I have a bet on which candidate will carry California. If I win, George has to give me the money for a new hat. If I lose, I’ll just charge it.

americavotes1944

‘Send in the company’s name’ –
‘Get time off to vote or let me know,’ Roosevelt tells U.S.

President tempers advice with plea to employers, warns of possible GOP ‘trick’

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt requested today that any employee not allowed sufficient voting time away from his job next Tuesday “inform me of the circumstances together with the name of his company and any pertinent facts.”

Urging all employers to allow workers enough time off to vote, the President said certain companies with government contracts had raised the question of whether pay to their workers will be allowed by procurement agencies as reimbursable costs if the Election-Day time off is granted.

He said:

The agencies have ruled that such payments are legitimate expenditures under cost-plus contracts, may be considered for the purpose of making any computation or adjustment required by provisions of fixed-priced contracts, and also may be appropriately allowed as such expenditures in renegotiation of lump-sum contracts.

Asks vote for all

The President said that under these circumstances:

All firms having contracts with the government are especially urged to allow their workers to have full opportunity to express their choice in this election, whatever that choice may be.

And I ask that any employee not allowed enough time to vote, inform me of the circumstances.

Mr. Roosevelt stressed that the mandate of this election “should be as representative of the whole people as possible, irrespective of whom they vote for.” He added:

There has been much interest in the subject of soldier young. I am sure that there is an equal interest in facilitating the vote of civilian workers.

Works on speech

Meantime, Mr. Roosevelt was working on the remaining speeches that will carry him down the home stretch to Election Day, particularly the major address he will deliver in Boston tomorrow night after a day-long tour of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

All Pittsburgh stations will broadcast the speech at 9:00 p.m. EWT.

Questioned about various reports published today about his administration, the President recalled his warning in his radio speech last night that there would be “hysterical, last-minute accusations or sensational revelations” which should not be believed.

Wallace for Hull?

He was asked specifically about:

  • A statement by Rep. Walter H. Judd (R-MN) that Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, recently relieved as Far Eastern American commander, was an agent of the White House and gave Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek an ultimatum to turn over command of all Chinese forces to him.

  • That Vice President Henry A. Wallace would succeed Secretary of State Cordell Hull after the election.

The President said of both reports that maybe this was what he was talking about last night when he warned that “trumped up” accusations or purportedly “sensational developments,” “may come in an attempt to “panic” voters into the Republican camp.

‘No news’ about Hull

Asked whether he had any indication that Mr. Hull planned to resign, the President said no.

The President said he was praying for good weather tomorrow for his trip to New England. His first stop will be at Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he will speak briefly from his train.

The party will proceed by train to Springfield, Massachusetts, where the President will make another rear platform appearance, then leave for Boston.

‘Spite’ attempt charged

Accusing the opposition and some newspapers of campaigning with whisperings, rumorings and “wicked charges,” Mr. Roosevelt told his radio audience last night that he did not propose to “answer in kind.”

“This election will not be decided on a basis of malignant murmurings – or shouts,” he said. “It will be on the basis of the record.”

Speaking from the White House, Mr. Roosevelt also charged that the Republicans were threatening to build a “party spite fence between us and the peace” by saying that Congress will not cooperate in fashioning the peace unless Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the GOP candidate, is elected.

‘Busy days’ cited

The Chief Executive said that the exigencies of war had prevented him from making a personal swing to Cleveland, Detroit and Upstate New York as he had desired. He said: “Therefore, I am speaking to you from the White House… I follow the principle of first things first; and this war comes first.”

Declaring that the war against Japan is “many months ahead of our own optimistic schedule,” Mr. Roosevelt expressed satisfaction at the “record of our teamwork with our Allies,” and said this team work would prove a foundation for a “strong and durable organization for world peace.”

Plans for future

Without mentioning Governor Dewey by name, Mr. Roosevelt replied to the Republican nominee’s charges that the present administration had no adequate plans for the future.

“By carrying out the plans we have made we can avoid a post-war depression – we can provide employment for our veterans and our war workers – we can achieve orderly reconversion,” he said. And then, in an implied reference to the Hoover era, he asked:

Above all, we can avoid another false boom like that which burst in 1929 and a dismal collapse like that of 1930 to 1933.

Hannegan speaks

Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, speaking from New York on the same radio broadcast, said that his party had conducted a campaign “based on three simple issues – victory, peace and jobs.”

“On these three issues the Democratic Party was able to present to the American people not merely promises but a record,” he said.

Emphasizing that the Democrats were confident of “overwhelming victory,” Mr. Hannegan devoted a major part of his speech to answering, Republican campaign charges which he said were “falsehoods and designed primarily to create hate.”

Mr. Hannegan predicted that Mr. Dewey’s “smear” will prove offensive to many Catholics who believe Mr. Roosevelt’s doctrines of social justice are essentially those that Catholic leaders have been advocating since the time of Pope Leo XII.

Mr. Hannegan also hit at attacks on Sidney Hillman, the CIO Political Action Committee chairman. and asserted that Governor Dewey had not considered Hillman a threat when, running for office in 1937, Mr. Dewey “solicited and received a $5,000 contribution from him.”

Communist charge denied

Mr. Hannegan cited three publications to prove that Hillman is not a Communist. He said the three were America, The Commonweal and The Liguorian.

Mr. Hannegan said:

Here is what the Commonweal leader in the AFL ever hunted down Communists with more relentless zest than Sidney Hillman in his own union. In the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Communists are as inconspicuous as Nazis in liberated Paris. Sidney Hillman preaches and practices the theory of capital-labor collaboration for mutual interests.

After careful investigation of Mr. Hillman, The Liguorian reached the same conclusion.”

He also declared that “the Democratic Party is not for sale,” adding that a “well known labor leader discovered that in 1936 and is now in the Dewey camp,” obviously referring to John L. Lewis.

americavotes1944

Dewey charges secret deals by Roosevelt

Says New Deal’s afraid to tell truth

Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey returned to the Executive Mansion here today after his swing through Pennsylvania yesterday and last night during which he again accused the New Deal of selling “special privilege” through the “notorious 1000 Club.”

Mr. Dewey elaborated charges that the New Deal also was “selling something else – something it doesn’t dare put in writing.”

Letter is quoted

Governor Dewey was to spend most of today putting finishing touches on the speech he will deliver tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

KDKA and WJAS will broadcast the address at 10:30 p.m. EWT.

Speaking yesterday in Pennsylvania, Governor Dewey said he had a letter, written on stationery of the Democratic National Committee, which was sent “to a select list in Kansas.” He said the letter ended with the words:

Membership in this group will be a badge of distinction forever. There are other advantages which I can explain when we meet.

‘Special privilege’ hit

Governor Dewey continued:

Mr. Roosevelt’s club offers in writing to give “special privilege” to a select group of men who can afford $1,000 for a campaign contribution. Then it offers something more – something it doesn’t dare put in writing.

We can only guess what it is. Has this special privilege to do with war contracts? Or is it special concessions on income taxes? Or is ‘Mr. Roosevelt’s club peddling special influence with the War Labor Board or the National Labor Relations Board?

One thing I do know. We are not fighting a war for freedom in order to have a government of special privilege by a select few contributors or for the Communists.

Woos Democrats

Speeding northward from Baltimore, where he invited Democrats to vote the Republican ticket next ‘Tuesday as the only hope of saving their party from capture by “a coalition of subversive forces, including New Dealers, members of the Political Action Committee and Communists,” Governor Dewey made station stops at York, Harrisburg and Sunbury.

At Wilkes-Barre, he addressed a crowd estimated at nearly 20,000 and repeated many of his challenges of the Roosevelt administration’s record.

From Wilkes-Barre, Governor Dewey went by motorcade 20 miles to Scranton, passing through several mining towns where the streets were lined with crowds, In the Scranton Armory, Mr. Dewey delivered almost the same speech as at Wilkes-Barre to a crowd estimated at 11,500.

Appeal made to labor

Bidding for labor votes in Wilkes-Barre, an area dominated by the United Mine Workers, Governor Dewey promised, if elected, to “take the hand of government from free collective bargaining.” He said he would merge the 25 government agencies now handling labor matters into one and would choose “a Secretary of labor from the ranks of organized labor.”

He also proposed a revision of the tax system to relieve both low-income individuals and corporations. The goal, he said, should be “higher and higher national income,” “new jobs at high wages,” and “employment for every American.”

Returning to his attack on “secret deals” in international relations, Governor Dewey asserted that the country has never been told fully and completely what agreements President Roosevelt may have made with Premier Joseph Stalin of Russia.

“We don’t know where we’re going,” Governor Dewey said, “and we don’t know where we have been.”

MESA members strike in Detroit

Over 18,000 quit at 23 plants

Poll: Millions unable to name vice-presidential nominees

Bricker better known among Dewey backers than Truman is among Roosevelt followers
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion

americavotes1944

Navy officers sue Teamsters, Tobin

Washington (UP) –
The “Battle of the Statler” was carried into federal court today when the two Navy officers involved in the fracas with Teamsters Union (AFL) officials filed $200,000 libel suits each against the union and Daniel J. Tobin of Indianapolis, its president and editor of the union publication, The International Teamster.

The officers are LtCdr. James H. Suddeth of Washington, and Lt. Randolph Dickins Jr., now in Bradenton, Florida.

The suits charged that an article in The International Teamster falsely accused the Officers of drunkenness, attacks on union members, and using profane language against the President of the United States following Mr. Roosevelt’s Sept. 23 address to the Teamsters. The suits said the latter charge, if true, would subject the officers to court-martial and probable dishonorable discharge from the Navy.


Dewey for Roosevelt; Roosevelt for Dewey

Phoenix, Arizona (UP) –
Gazette columnist Bill Turnbow is certain that Dewey will go for Roosevelt and Roosevelt for Dewey in next week’s presidential election.

Dewey was for Roosevelt in the 1940 election and Roosevelt was for Willkie, Turnbow recalled. Dewey and Roosevelt are Arizona towns. The former was named after Adm. George Dewey and Roosevelt was named for Theodore Roosevelt.

I DARE SAY —
The crisis

By Florence Fisher Parry

americavotes1944

Truman raps GOP promises at rally here

Candidate headlines ‘variety’ program
By Kermit McFarland

Headlining a “variety” program offered by the Democrats as the closing rally of the election campaign, U.S. Senator Harry S. Truman, Democratic candidate for Vice President, last night in Syria Mosque charged that the best Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican candidate for President, had to offer is “promises that the Republicans will not destroy what they never would have created.”

Senator Truman asked:

Even if you could rely on the campaign promises of the Republican candidate, why should you? The best that he offers you is a belated acceptance of the great liberal program which we Democrats already had forced through.

Mr. Truman, making his last campaign speech before he goes home to Independence, Missouri, to vote, headed a speaking schedule which included such diverse personalities as the movie notable Orson Welles, former Republican Governor of Pennsylvania Gifford Pinchot, Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt (widow of the son of Teddy Roosevelt) and representatives of the CIO and the AFL.

Draws bobbysoxers

This was the third Syria Mosque rally of the campaign and the Democrats, in point of size, turned out the best audience (After all, they do control the City and County payrolls, and Orson Welles drew a humorous contingent of bobby-sox girls and checker-jacketed lads who stormed the platform for autographs when he finished speaking).

Mr. Truman dug up the Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations again, claiming all had “failed to carry out the campaign promises made to obtain their election.”

Phony prosperity

He alleged:

The attention of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover was lavished upon the bankers and Wall Street speculators. A phony prosperity was created for them at the expense of the working man and the farmer. Andrew Mellon and his favored friends made millions.

Senator Truman said the voters Tuesday must determine whether they want “the President and the Democratic administration which carried out those [liberal] reforms over the opposition of the Republicans in Congress to continue them or whether you want to elect the candidate of the Republican Party which so recently became converted to those reforms.”

He charged the Republican “reactionaries” don’t like “some of the things Mr. Dewey is saying,” but “they do not believe he means what he says.”

Charges ‘straddling’

“They have heard him talk out of both sides Of his mouth on foreign policy,” the vice-presidential candidate said, “and they know that he is an expert on straddling.”

To provide jobs after the war, Mr. Truman said:

We must see to it that all the great planta and facilities that were built to win the war are put to work producing peacetime goods to establish a better life for all of us.

Senator Truman inserted in his speech a special reference to U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey, who sat on the platform. He said Pennsylvania is “very ably represented” by the Senator from Pittsburgh, by whom he said he has sat in the Senate for nine years and nine months.

Pinchot speaks

Mr. Pinchot, twice governor of the state, charged that if Mr. Dewey’s “friends” had had their way, “America would have been helpless when Germany and Japan did attack us.”

And that is not the worst of it. The President’s opponent not only has the support of the isolationists, but he himself, according to the papers, has actually been backing some of the worst of them and urging their reelection to Congress.

Strange contradiction

Mr. Pinchot said there was a “strange contradiction” between Mr. Dewey’s promises and “some of the men who are trying to get him elected.”

He said:

Dewey promises everything the farmer wants. Yet the men who grow fat off the farmer are in is camp.

He promises everything labor wants. Yet the chief labor baiters of the nation are for him.

He promises to do away with monopolies. Yet the great monopolists are backing him up.

He says he is for little business. But the big business leaders are carrying his banner.

He tells us, although in very limited and guarded words, that he is for cooperation among the nations. Yet the leaders of isolation, and the isolation newspapers, are his supporters and have been from the beginning.

Defends Hillman

Mr. Pinchot belittled the Communist issue raised by the Republicans against Sidney Hillman, chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee.

He said:

In the first place, nobody runs Roosevelt. He paddles his own canoe. And in the second place, Hillman is not now and never was a Communist. Hillman is an old friend of mine and I know he’s not a Communist.

americavotes1944

Monahan: Orson, amateur politico, proves BO (box office)

Drama critic finds actor packs more appeal at rally than in stage realm
By Kaspar Monahan

As a self-confessed amateur politician, actor Orson Welles holds more box-office appeal in the hurly-burly realm of politics than as a practitioner in the sock-and-buskin trade.

That was demonstrated conclusively last evening at Syria Mosque which was jammed from top to bottom with folks who came to see and hear Mars’ most notable, not to say its most indispensable, citizen.

Of course, there were some high-ranking politicians on hand, including Senator Truman, who is running for Vice President on the Democratic ticket. But obviously, last evening it was Orson Welles who was the major drawing card, no matter what the program had to say about top billing, as they used to call it in the old vaudeville days.

In the words of the better drama critics, actor Orson wowed ‘em. He wowed ‘em so completely that even Mr. Dave Lawrence, an old and experienced gladiator of the political arenas, wound up the occasion by refusing to make an oration of his own.

Lawrence foregoes talk

Quoth Mr. Lawrence, slated as last speaker on the program:

It would be an imposition to keep you good folks here after you have listened to that orator of orators, Orson Welles.

The huge assemblage cheered at Mr. Lawrence’s succinct summary of the situation – then the young females on hand made a wild rush for the exits. They wanted to get Orator Orson’s autograph before he vanished from his scene of triumph.

This reporter couldn’t help but contrast this local reception for actor-orator Orson Welles to the one accorded him not many months ago when he made his initial entrance in Jane Eyre, which is a movie.

Then – in shadow – Mr. Welles was wearing a flowing, ebony cloak and he was riding a horse, a real horse. And by his side was a huge dog, the size of a small cow, and the dog was baying and snarling and scaring the daylights out of poor Joan Fontaine, who was playing the title role in this movie.

The audience – comprised solely of Dewey supporters, of course – snickered. Snickered, hell – they howled and guffawed.

Such uncouth conduct did not mar last evening’s triumphant debut of Orson the Orator. This time he did not wear his flowing, ebony cloaks. He had no horse and no wolfhound. Furthermore. he had – for him – a close-clipped haircut. Nothing bizarre about him, except, perhaps his big, bulging tie, tucked beneath his flaring collar points.

He was broad-shouldered, burly, impressive. And his Shakespearean voice boomed valiantly as he flung hefty verbal broadsides at Tom Dewey. Unlike the other major speakers of the evening, Orator Orson, the erstwhile boy wonder, spoke extemporaneously. No notes. He made it up, it seemed, as he went along.

It was a swell performance – his most effective in the opinion of this reporter, who has observed him, not always favorably, in many a movie and stage piece.

Right off he slashed violently at an editorial appearing in this newspaper the other day – an editorial which implied that, maybe, it would be better if Hollywood’s beautiful people would stay in Hollywood and just go on making endless variations of boy-meets-girl fables, instead of traipsing about the nation making campaign talks.

The slumberous eyes of Orator Orson blazed. One big hand shot out over the rostrum. And he tossed into this political rally a classic bombshell by bringing up the name of Pericles (At this point the party’s big shots on the stage stirred uneasily – for up to now Pericles’ name has not been made an issue in this campaign, and some wondered which side he was on).

“It reminds me,” boomed Orator Orson, “of Pericles speaking over the Athenian dead.” Now I don’t know Greek but he said something like this: “We hold those men who do not meddle in affairs of state as worse than nothing.”

Welles explains

That meant, as Mr. Welles was quick to elucidate, that plumbers, dentists, boilermakers and even movie actors had a right to get up on their hind legs and take sides in a political campaign.

There were cheers from the packed audience – more than 4,000 inside and a couple thousand outside. Pericles knows his onions – and no fooling.

“I suggest” (still quoting Orson) “the Republican Party doesn’t exist.” Then he swiftly sketched highlights of the 1940 campaign, commenting on “the men who scuttled the Republican Party in 1940,” and everybody looked sad and shook their heads over his skullduggery of four years ago.

His resonant powerful voice lit into the GOP claims of Communist infiltration into the Democratic Party, the alleged Hillman-Browner alliance, saying “Why, Hillman and Browder have never met each other.” And he said, “Isolationism isn’t dead – it haunts the speeches of Dewey and Bricker,” and he drew a parallel between Lincoln and Roosevelt, and bitterly blasted the “professional wreckers of peace.”

He would up for a stirring “curtain line” by calling not only for a Democratic victory but for a “Roosevelt landslide,” urging everyone to sit up with their friends who insist on voting for Governor Dewey. “They are sick,” he said. “Do something for them.”

americavotes1944

Truman ‘stumps’ to help friend’s bid for Congress

Vice-presidential candidate makes 4-hour tour of Fayette County with Snyder
By Robert Taylor, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Uniontown, Pennsylvania –
U.S. Senator Harry S. Truman, Democratic candidate for Vice President, included a four-hour trip through Fayette County in his Western Pennsylvania campaign tour yesterday to help a friend, Democratic Rep. J. Buell Snyder, in his campaign for reelection.

Mr. Truman praised the Fayette County Congressman in a speech yesterday afternoon at the Courthouse here in which he urged an audience of 1,000 not to “place an inexperienced man in office today.”

Earlier, Mr. Truman’s official party, escorted by a squad of Pittsburgh motorcycle policemen and a delegation of Allegheny County officials, had called at Rep. Snyder’s home at Perryopolis. The Congressman introduced Mr. Truman later to the Uniontown audience.

Speaks in McKeesport

Still earlier, the Missouri Senator told a McKeesport gathering that three members of Congress present – himself and Reps. Thomas E. Scanlon and Samuel A. Weiss – were not isolationists, and denounced the voting record of U.S. Senator James J. Davis, Republican candidate for reelection, against Democratic Rep. Francis J. Myers.

He said at a luncheon at the Penn-McKee Hotel:

You’ve got an isolationist running right here in Pennsylvania and I hope you won’t have another isolationist Senator after this election.

If the Republicans were to get control of the Senate, which won’t happen, Jim Davis would be chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. After the last war, the Republicans sank our Navy and Jim Davis was a member of the administration that sank it.

Raps GOP votes

Calling attention again to Republican votes against Selective extension and other pre-war measures, Mr. Truman told his audience: “If we had gone the way they wanted, we’d have been slaughtered by now.”

In little more than an hour, Mr. Truman yesterday spoke before audiences totaling some 9,000 persons in the Turtle Creek Valley – 5,000 in East Pittsburgh, 2,000 in Braddock and 2,000 in Wilmerding, at rallies at mill gates and a street corner location.

Thousands of persons lined streets in the industrial suburbs through which the campaign party passed, and the welcome Mr. Truman got was pronounced the best of his campaign trip.

Seeks seventh term

In Republican Uniontown, however, the crowd was smaller and less responsive, although Fayette County, with its large miner population, is counted on to produce a sizeable majority for the Roosevelt-Truman ticket.

Rep. Snyder, beneficiary of the side-trip by the vice-presidential candidate, is chairman of the subcommittee on War Department appropriations of the House Appropriations Committee, and is seeking his seventh term in Congress.

Last time he ran, Mr. Snyder narrowly escaped defeat in the light vote of 1942, winning by only 1,466 votes out of 65,494 over Carl H. Hoffman, Somerset businessman.

Mr. Hoffman is again the Republican candidate for Congress this year, and the 1943 Congressional reapportionment may better his chances of winning.

In 1942, the district consisted of Republican Somerset County and Democratic Fayette and Greene Counties. This year, Greene County, with its certain Democratic majority, is transferred to the old Washington-Greene district and the 23rd district now consists only of Somerset, certain to go Republican, and Fayette Counties.

Jap bullet hits near MacArthur

americavotes1944

State is safe, Martin tells Governor Dewey

GOP to win at least 50 counties, he says

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey headed homeward today from his third campaign swing into Pennsylvania carrying the personal pledge of Governor Edward Martin that the state’s 35 electoral votes will be “overwhelmingly” his in next Tuesday’s presidential election.

“Pennsylvania will be overwhelmingly Republican on Nov. 7,” Governor Martin said as he introduced Governor Dewey last night to GOP rallies at Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.

Confidence expressed

Governor Martin predicted that the 107,000 votes by which President Roosevelt carried Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) in 1940 would be cut to “less than 20,000.”

He said he expected to be able to talk more intelligently about Philadelphia after he visits there with Governor John W. Bricker, the GOP vice-presidential candidate, tonight, but predicted that “Philadelphia couldn’t possibly go bad enough for Roosevelt to carry Pennsylvania.”

He said it was mathematically possible for the soldier vote, which he expects to reach 300,000, to swing the state but he didn’t think the result would hang in the air until the absentee service ballots are counted Nov. 22.

Expects to win 50 counties

The Governor told a press conference that Mr. Dewey would carry “at least 50” of the state’s 67 counties.

It was at Governor Martin’s urging, in recognition of the possible close race for Pennsylvania’s 35 electoral votes, that Governor Dewey swung back into Pennsylvania for the third time. Governor Dewey had opened his campaign at Philadelphia on Sept. 7 and spoke again at Pittsburgh on Oct. 20.

americavotes1944

Miners, wives line tracks, all curious about Dewey

By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Albany, New York –
For a hundred miles along the railroad tracks in Pennsylvania as Governor Dewey’s presidential campaign train rode through the hard coal country yesterday and into Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, the people stood in little groups of twos and threes and fours.

They were working men and their families, farmers and miners and small townsmen; men in overalls and rough jackets and caps, their women in house dresses and aprons, children in sweaters that knew much wear.

Most of them had never seen a President or a presidential candidate. Washington was a place in the headlines and for many, even in a modern way, the world ended beyond the second range of hills.

But the train was a symbol to them. It was a piece of their America and so they stopped a moment to watch.

Curious about Dewey

Some of these men stood quiet, hands in pockets. For years a large section of them, men whose dollars came by hard work, had counted Franklin Roosevelt their friend. Many still do. About Mr. Dewey they were curious.

In the towns, there were big crowds and generally they were good natured and friendly, yet in this hard coal country there was more booing and more cries of “We Want Roosevelt” than had been heard anywhere else in the campaign.

Makes many talks

It was hard, tough campaigning, six meetings in a day that did not end until nearly midnight. Most of the time heretofore the Republican candidate had done little back platform speaking, but, fighting now for Pennsylvania’s 35 electoral votes, he came out repeatedly to address thousands gathered around his train.

At York, Harrisburg, Sunbury, Wilkes-Barre and Scranton there were big crowds, and repeatedly Mr. Dewey lambasted the New Deal. He talked about the “1000 Club” which he said represented a sale of power and influence by the Democrats, of the Hillmans and the Browders who would be the real victors if President Roosevelt is reelected, of the President’s conflicts with Congress.

But always he came back to the jobs-and-employment theme, the one which, probably more than the others, interested these thousands of workers and their families.

americavotes1944

If ‘Teddy’ did with Ickes’ aid, can Franklin?

Washington (UP) –
The White House today displayed evidence that Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party had something like a $1000 Club in 1912.

With a reference to “the pot calling the kettle black,” White House Secretary Stephen T. Early showed reporters a certificate of Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes’ honorary membership in Bull Moose “Founders’ Association.”

It was a green bond-like certificate with a large “$1000” engraved in each top corner against a dollar sign.

This year, the Democrats have a $1000 Club composed of persons who contribute that sum to the fourth-term campaign.

President Roosevelt told his press conference Tuesday that he had mentioned the idea to some people last summer after they had laughed at his suggestion first for a $100,000 Club and then for a $10,000 Club.

Mine workers rebuff Lewis, remain idle

800 at Frick Coke Company continue strike