America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

Mine workers rebuff Lewis, remain idle

800 at Frick Coke Company continue strike

americavotes1944

‘Dewey Smear’ charged by Ickes

New York (UP) –
Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes last night charged that Governor Thomas E. Dewey was waging a campaign which has been a “sly but deliberate effort” to capitalize on anti-labor and anti-Semitic sentiment in the United States.

Mr. Ickes asserted that the “Dewey Smear” was “in the Republican tradition” and was the method used to defeat the late Al Smith for President in 1928.

Secretary Ickes said:

Governor Smith happened to be a Catholic. It was in that same year and on that issue that I left the Republican Party never to return. A Protestant myself. I resented the injection into a political campaign of a religious issue.

Speaking at a Madison Square Garden rally sponsored by “Everybody for Roosevelt,” the secretary said Mr. Dewey and his followers have reiterated that CIO Political Action Committee Chairman Sidney Hillman was “Russian-born or Lithuanian-born” and have referred to his “rabbinical training.”


Anti-Roosevelt talk booed off air

Houston, Texas (UP) –
Senator W. Lee O’Daniel (D-TX) was booed off the air last night in an anti-Roosevelt speech at the Houston City Auditorium.

Mr. O’Daniel, speaking over a Texas chain of stations, was interrupted throughout the speech by boos, catcalls and hisses from the audience.

Toward the end of his address, Mr. O’Daniel was forced to surrender the microphone to John H. Crooker, a leader and spokesman for the Texas Regular (anti-Roosevelt) Democrats.

Mr. Crooker shouted:

I am ashamed of the people of Harris County [Houston] for this disgraceful conduct. This is the most disgraceful scene I’ve ever seen in my life. This gang of ruffians came here to break up this meeting.

You can guess for yourself who sent them, but the right of free speech shall prevail.

Senator O’Daniel said he was not campaigning for the Dewey-Bricker ticket. He was on the last lap of a Texas-wide anti-Roosevelt tour.

americavotes1944

How world feels –
Roosevelt’s backing laid to Lend-Lease

Foreign nations hear little of Dewey
By Jay G. Hayden, North American Newspaper Alliance

Washington –
Judging by the foreign newspaper coverage of the American presidential campaign, folks abroad are due for a great shock if on next Wednesday they should receive the news that Governor Thomas E. Dewey has been elected.

The point of the matter is that foreign correspondents in the United States are giving more attention to American politics than ever before, but with a distinctly one-sided slant.

Among the newspapermen accompanying President Roosevelt to New York and Chicago were representatives of Reuters, TASS and the Chinese Central News Service, the government-controlled or subsidized press services respectively of Great Britain, Russia and China.

Dewey almost ignored

Correspondents of several individual British newspapers toured New York and Philadelphia with the President and at least one of them rose the presidential train to Chicago.

No comparable attention has been paid to Mr. Dewey; in fact, his speeches have been reported abroad scarcely at all. One London correspondent relates that he sent a 500-word condensation of Mr. Dewey’s New York foreign policy speech, only to draw a reprimand from his editor for reckless waste of telegraph tolls.

In contrast, several foreign correspondents following Mr. Roosevelt on his New York and Philadelphia tours were sending spot bulletins on how he was received by the crowds.

‘Crazy about Roosevelt’

Explaining the attitude of his editors, one of these correspondents said:

They don’t care what Dewey Says because they don’t think he’s going to be elected, but they’re crazy about Roosevelt. We can’t send enough about him.

This foreign interest in Mr. Roosevelt’s political fortunes is not difficult to fathom.

First and foremost, of course, is the fact that he spurned neutrality, and began helping Britain and France as much as he could from the very start. And when Russia was attacked by Germany, he immediately announced that the same aid would be extended to Russia as to other members of the anti-Axis alliance.

Shipments listed

But there is another matter that presently may be even more in the minds of our foreign friends.

According to the latest report, as of June 30, 1944, goods valued at $21,534,870,000 had been dispensed by the United States under Lend-Lease.

Great Britain received $9,321,549,000; Russia, $5,931,944,000; China and India, §1,402,426,000; Australia and New Zealand, $1,011,885,000; Africa and the Middle East, $3,070,229,000. The rest is scattered among a score of other nations, including those of South America.

Now the time is approaching when the Lend-Lease accounts must be cast up and the final settlement made, and the foreigners are concerned to whom they will be required to settle with. They remember that Republicans led in urging payment of debts after the last war.

americavotes1944

Perkins: UMW anthracite leader throws support to Dewey

By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania –
What Jonn Kmetz has to say is important when you’re trying to learn how this section of the coal country is going to vote next Tuesday.

Although there are some new manufacturing industries here coal mining is still the predominant way of the great mass of wage-earners in this district to make a living.

And John Kmetz is the International representative of the councils of the United Mine Workers from one of the anthracite districts, and he is also president of the United Mine Workers District 50 – its catchall department.

Longtime miner

Mr. Kmetz is a big and personable man who was born in Czechoslovakia and was brought to this country as a child. He went to work as a mine breaker boy when he was seven, went into underground work at 11, and spent 20 years at it until he became an aboveground official of the miners’ union. Mr. Kmetz got his education by night work.

He was chairman in 1936 of the Newer Nationalities Committee which had a part in producing a pro-Roosevelt gathering estimated at more than 100,000 persons. Mr. Roosevelt addressed the throng, under the sponsoring of John L. Lewis.

Works for Dewey now

But now, says Mr. Kmetz:

I ask all my friends – Poles, Italians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Slovaks – to vote for Thomas E. Dewey. The New Deal is favoring our union opponents.

How many of his friends Mr. Kmetz may take with him into the Dewey camp is, of course, problematical.

Thomas Kennedy, International secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, and thus a sidekick of John L. Lewis, has been silent in this campaign. His office at nearby Hazleton said today he contemplated making no statement. Mr. Kennedy is a former Democratic lieutenant governor of this state.

Mr. Kennedy, although closely connected with Mr. Lewis in administration of the United Mine Workers, did not appear in last night’s Dewey meetings in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.

americavotes1944

How to figure wage schedule on Election Day

Washington (UP) –
From today’s crop of Labor Department press releases:

Election Day next Tuesday may not be counted as a day worked for the purpose of computing double-time payments for employees who have the whole day off unless it is observed as a holiday in lieu of Memorial Day, May 30, 1945.

It’s all in connection with interpreting Executive Order 9240 and deciding what does and what does not violate the economic stabilization policy. For the benefit of the uninitiated, Executive Order 9240 provides that under the Wage-Hour Law, double time shall be paid for the seventh consecutive day worked in a week.

So if you have all day off next Tuesday, but work the six other days, you’ll be paid double time for the sixth day – but only if Tuesday is counted as a holiday and next Memorial Day isn’t.

americavotes1944

Bricker wants government out of business

Says Roosevelt has dodged this question

Wilmington, Delaware (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker brought his campaign into Delaware today after accusing President Roosevelt of silence on what he termed “the big question” of the day. “When is Washington going to get out of business?”

The GOP vice-presidential nominee came here with Senator C. Douglass Buck (R-DE); Governor Walter W. Bacon and Rep. Earle D. Wiley (R-DE) to address a rally at Rodney Square.

Governor Bricker accused the New Deal today of resorting to “devices of sordid desperation” in its efforts to “perpetuate” itself in power for 16 years.

He again read the letter which he said Albert A. Horstman, Ohio Democratic National Committeeman, addressed to civil service employees in his state asking for financial support of the Democratic campaign.

Charges corruption

It is not enough, Bricker said, for “Sidney Hillman and his Political Action Committee” to “take over” the New Deal. It is not enough, he added, for Mr. Hillman to form an “alliance with Earl Browder and the Communists” to “to make up for the dwindling support of the New Deal.”

He said:

Now, on top of all these reprehensible practices, the New Deal is resorting to downright political corruption of the most obvious sort in order to get votes.

There you have it, the New Deal expects not only to receive but demands, in cold and brazen terms, financial tribute for its favors. No administration ever stooped lower in American history.

The candidate’s party left for Philadelphia and a series of conferences. A major speech will be made in the Metropolitan Opera House at 9:00 p.m. EWT. Between his afternoon conferences and his night speech, he will cross the Delaware River to speak in the Walt Whitman Hotel at Camden, New Jersey, at 8:00 p.m.

Attacks Roosevelt

Governor Bricker’s attack on Mr. Roosevelt for failing to say when the government would release business to private industry was made last night in Paterson, New Jersey.

Governor Bricker said in his broadcast speech:

Today, the vast network of government-owned war plant constitutes the nucleus of state socialism. The big question is: When is Washington going to get out of business after the war? Mr. Roosevelt said nothing about that in Chicago.

The President, he added, was “simply employing a familiar campaign device” through his “expression of goodwill toward business.”

Governor Bricker quoted Mr. Roosevelt as saying at Chicago that he saw “an expansion of our peacetime productive capacity,” and recalled that in 1932, the President had said that “our industrial plant is built… our last frontier has long since been reached…”

Admission of wrong

The Republican candidate said:

His present statement is at best an admission that the New Deal economic policies during these last 12 years have been dead wrong.

Governor Bricker termed “news” Mr. Roosevelt’s Saturday statement that his administration “had been mindful from its earliest days… of the problems of small business.”

He said:

The truth is that for 12 years, small business has been stunted in growth by arbitrary and restrictive New Deal policies.

The Republican Party under Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Mr. Bricker said, “presents a practical and constructive program to strengthen business and provide jobs.”


UAW head speaks –
Bricker called ‘new Harding’

Thomas says GOP lacks ‘progress’

Jersey City, New Jersey (UP) –
R. J. Thomas, president of the United Auto Workers (CIO), asserted last night that the Republican Party has attacked the CIO Political Action Committee because “they have no forces of their own which stand for progress and courageous action.”

Speaking at the Hudson County PAC meeting, he said Governor John W. Bricker, whom he characterized as “the new Harding of the Old Guard,” had left a trail “of smears and lies” in his campaign tour of the West.

Communist claim cited

Mr. Thomas charged that Mr. Bricker had based a claim of Communist domination of the Democratic Party on the fact that PAC Chairman Sidney Hillman was born in Lithuania, then a part of Russia.

He added:

Therefore, according to Bricker logic, Sidney Hillman is a Communist. Therefore, President Roosevelt, because Sidney Hillman supports him, is also a Communist.

Mr. Thomas recalled that Mr. Bricker told a Detroit audience that Mr. Hillman, who came to the United States in 1907, went to Moscow and talked with Lenin at the Kremlin.

Interview cited

Mr. Thomas continued:

Well, publisher Roy Howard of the miserable Scripps-Howard newspapers also went to Moscow and talked with Stalin at the Kremlin.

Roy Howard published his interview with Stalin in all the Scripps-Howard papers on their front pages. Therefore, Governor Bricker, Roy Howard must be a Communist. He must be planning to overturn the U.S. government. He is supporting you, Governor Bricker, and your running mate, Governor Dewey, and therefore you, Governor Bricker, and your running mate, Governor Dewey, must be Communists.

U.S. fliers bag destroyer off coast of China

Jap transport hit by Chennault’s planes

British in Italy reach airfield

Doctors perform miracles in Leyte Army hospital

By Richard W. Johnston, United Press staff writer


Why you can’t get tires –
Marine unit with 230 trucks has 226 flats in one day

By Marine Pvt. Stanley Fink

Nations split on post-war air control

Battle for support opens at conference

americavotes1944

Editorial: Twisting facts

Editorial: Eisenhower moves

americavotes1944

Editorial: Is it honest?

americavotes1944

Editorial: ‘All right so far’

americavotes1944

Edson: President and Dewey cater to photographers

By Peter Edson

Ferguson: Antiques

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

americavotes1944

Background of news –
New York and the election

By Bertram Benedict

In the election, the state of New York has 47 (17 percent) of the 266 electoral votes necessary to elect a President. This is more than the combined electoral vote of 12 other states.

Governor Dewey has been a good vote-getter in New York. In 1938, he ran against Governor Lehman, another good vote-getter, for the New York governorship and came within a hair’s breadth of winning. Mr. Lehman received 1,971,000 votes on the Democratic ticket and 420,000 on the American Labor Party ticket, for a total of 2,391,000. Mr. Dewey, receiving 2,327,000, was defeated by only 64,000 votes out of more than 4,700,000 cast.

In the same year, the two Republican candidates for U.S. Senator from New York (one for an unexpired term) lost by 438,000 votes and 355,000 votes, respectively. Two years before, the Republican gubernatorial candidate had lost by 521,000 votes.

But in 1942, Mr. Dewey defeated the Democratic candidate and the American Labor Party candidate by a clear majority of 245,000.

Opposed by Willkie in 1942

Mr. Dewey received the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1942 over the ill-disguised opposition of the late Wendell L. Willkie. When the state Republican leaders obviously were about to swing the party nominating convention over to Mr. Dewey, Mr. Willkie came out for a free-for-all nomination race, although disclaiming any ambitions for himself or any participation in a Stop-Dewey movement.

Mr. Willkie himself had run well in New York against President Roosevelt in 1940. There Mr. Willkie had 48 percent of the major party vote, as against 45 percent in the nation as a whole. If one in every 25 New Yorkers, net, who voted for Mr. Roosevelt in 1940 should vote for Mr. Dewey this year, the Republican will carry the state – provided he holds the Willkie voters.

However, the fact that Mr. Dewey ran well for Governor does not necessarily mean that he will run as well for president in the Empire State. Alfred E. Smith was also a great gubernatorial vote-getter, but the state which sent him to the Governor’s Mansion at Albany four times (once in a Republican landslide year, 1924) would not vote to send him to the White House in 1928.

And in 1928, while New York was voting against Mr. Smith as the Democratic presidential candidate, it was voting for Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

The New York vote in 1916

In 1916, the Republicans nominated for the Presidency Justice Charles E. Hughes of New York, largely because he was expected to carry, in what looked like a close election, the state in which he had been elected Governor in 1906 and 1908. The expectation was realized, for Mr. Hughes carried New York by a substantial margin, but he lost the election by 23 electoral votes.

That was really the only time since the Civil War in which the country did not vote as New York voted. True, in 1876, New York voted for its Governor, Samuel J. Tilden, only to see Hayes elected, but probably Tilden was unfairly counted out. As it was, he had a popular majority.

With Dewey vs. Roosevelt, it is the second time since 1904 (Theodore Roosevelt vs. Alton B. Parker) that both major party candidates have been New Yorkers. Four years ago, Mr. Willkie was a resident of New York City. He was a native of Indiana rather than the Empire State, but neither is Mr. Dewey a native New Yorker. He was born in Michigan.

Kirkpatrick: Pétain regime will be tried in absentia

Verdict of treason expected
By Helen Kirkpatrick

Personality only reason in Stilwell move, China says

Foreign Minister asserts recall had nothing to do with policy of two countries


Liberty ships to honor Norris, Smith, Willkie

Simms: Why make issue now out of century-old situation in China

Far East victory may be delayed unless Washington and Chungking recover tact
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor