Glass industry fights raises in salaries
Pittsburgher argues case before WLB
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Dan Tobin scoffs at libel suit
Navy officers’ case called ‘ridiculous’
New York (UP) –
Daniel J. Tobin, president of the Teamsters Union, today termed “senseless and ridiculous” libel suits totaling $400,000 filed against him by two Navy officers involved in the “Battle of the Statler” and asserted that the actions “are published now for political purposes.”
Mr. Tobin said:
First, they were the ones that gave the stuff to the papers and that wasn’t until a week later. And we didn’t publish it in our magazine until two weeks later.
Now, they wait to press the suit just before election and it looks to me like politics. You can say this for me I hope they don’t withdraw the suit.
LtCdr. James H. Suddeth and Lt. Randolph Dickins Jr. charged that an article in the November issue of The International Teamster, union publication of which Mr. Tobin is editor, subjected them to “public ridicule, contempt and disgrace.”
The article falsely accused them, the suits said, of drunkenness, attacks on union members and using profane language against President Roosevelt following the President’s Sept. 23 address to the Teamsters. That last charge would make them liable to court-martial and probable dishonorable discharge, the suits added.
Murray suggests Dewey-Klan ties
New York (UP) –
CIO President Philip Murray yesterday referred to Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential candidate, in connection with “a fiery cross” and “hoods.”
Mr. Murray told 1,200 members of the Women’s Division of the National Citizens Political Action Committee at the Commodore Hotel:
Tom Dewey might go to Boston and burn a fiery cross. Oh, yes, and other leaders may resort to the use of filth to create confusion and divide the people, but you here will not fall into such pits of immorality. You have other things to do… to serve the people of this country and the peoples of other countries…
On Nov. 8 when you go out through the country looking for those men who have been riding about under hoods you will probably find a little hood on the ground and under it you will find a little man named Dewey.
Murray did not clarify his remarks further.
He said of the Democratic presidential candidate:
If ever a human being was created by God who rendered the people a more useful service than Franklin D. Roosevelt I would like to know who he is.
Hillman charged with Communism
New York (UP) –
Republican National Chairman Herbert Brownell Jr. asserted today that CIO Political Action Chairman Sidney Hillman was a founder of an organization that contributed almost two million dollars to Communist causes in America.
Mr. Brownell said in a prepared statement:
Mr. Robert Hannegan, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, spent a good deal of time on the radio Thursday night in an attempt to prove that Mr. Sidney Hillman had no Communist connections. Mr. Hillman himself in a speech to the Washington Press Club challenged the boys to prove that he was a Communist.
Mr. Brownell said that a Democratic Congressional Committee had stated that Mr. Hillman was “mixed up with” the American Fund for Public Service and described the Fund as “a large project to finance Communistic subversive activities in the United States.”
Mr. Brownell charged that Mr. Hillman was a director of the project and that the Fund contributed to the Communist Federal Press and to The Daily Worker among other causes.
Norman Thomas asks $500,000
New York (UP) –
Norman Thomas, Socialist Party candidate for President, has filed suit for $500,000 damages against Daniel Tobin, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (AFL), charging that references to Mr. Thomas in the union magazine constituted “malicious libel.”
New Deal’s goal for jobs stressed
New York (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace said last night that both President Roosevelt and Governor Thomas E. Dewey have stated that they are “for full employment” but the President, he said, unlike Dewey, has been specific in setting a post-war goal of 60 million jobs.
Mr. Wallace said the “single fact” to emerge from Governor Dewey’s “thousands of campaign miles” is that “he is mad at Roosevelt and wants his job.”
Good weather expected Tuesday
Washington (UP) –
Election Day weather in 10 East Central states, including pivotal New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, will be clearing and cold with snow flurries in mountainous areas, the U.S. Weather Bureau reported today in a tentative forecast.
The forecast also embraced West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
There will be rain throughout the area on Monday, but Tuesday should be generally clear except for light snow in mountainous areas of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Western Maryland.
The Weather Bureau emphasized that the forecast was only tentative. A comprehensive state by state prediction will be issued later.
Poll time extended
Lansing, Michigan –
Governor Harry F. Kelly last night signed a bill passed by a special session of the Legislature giving cities and townships optional permission to extent voting hours from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. CWT for Tuesday’s election.
Casanova Brown on Stanley screen
Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright starred in film but Frank Morgan steals show
By Dick Fortune
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Millett: Merely having baby isn’t being a good mother
Child study clubs prove awareness of need for special training
By Ruth Millett
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Will luck run out?
Unbeaten Irish 6–5 underdogs against Navy
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Air conference delegates expect OK from Russia
Soviet influence, despite absence, figured to help win support for American stand
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GOP secretary, H. W. Mason, dies
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1945 Lend-Lease program calls for little change
But when and if Germany falls, revisions are expected in what U.S. gives Britain
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Discharged veterans may reenter service
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Nazis boost repression of slave labor
Workers kept in plants during raids
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Mitscher: Japan open to sea attack
Admiral hints enemy lost seven carriers
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Truman to end campaign tonight
Independence, Missouri (UP) –
Senator Harry S. Truman, Democratic vice-presidential candidate, will wind up his campaign in his hometown of Independence today as Missouri remains a political enigma three days before the general election. He will speak here tonight.
Heading for a celebration here, Mr. Truman arrived in Kansas City last night, still holding to his prediction that President Roosevelt would carry the Show Me State “by more than 100,000 votes.” Unbiased observers contended, however, that Missouri’s 15 electoral voters were still a tossup.
very interesting coming from the liar bircher known as Pegler the rotting in hell man.
Remarks by President Roosevelt
November 4, 1944
Delivered at Springfield, Massachusetts
I had hoped to be able to motor up here from Hartford, but I thought to myself that the gasoline would be of more use in a tank in Germany than in my car.
Somebody tells me that there is a political campaign on.
I think we all agree that it is probably one of the important political campaigns in our history.
But – here in Springfield – I cannot refrain from suggesting that there is also a war on, a war which, I very deeply believe, will decide the fate of our America and of the whole human race for generations to come.
You good people here in Springfield know a great deal about war. You have known about munitions for years, since long before I was born. You know about our preparedness, and you knew about it long before Pearl Harbor.
This city – located on one of the most beautiful rivers in the United States – it isn’t quite so refined as the Hudson – this city has always been the center of experimentation and production of the weapons of defense against aggression.
The Springfield rifle – the Garand rifle – they have proved themselves, in one battle after another, essential weapons of war.
Here in Springfield, great history has been made. As your President during these eventful years, I am proud to be here and proud to be looking into the faces of all of you who did so much for America, and for the cause of civilization.
And also, I might add, because I have known publishers for a great many years – this city is the home of a great newspaper. And I wish that we had more papers throughout the nation like the Springfield Republican.
It has been four years – four eventful, stirring years – since you people gave me the last mandate in an election. And here I am, back again.
For many American homes they have been years of personal heartbreak and tragedy, about which any words that I could say would be idle.
Yet, even for them – I would say, for them above all others – there is the proud sense that America has come greatly through a dark and dangerous time. The ship of state is sturdy and safe, and with continued courage and wisdom we can bring it into a harbor where it will not be whipped by the storms of another war within any foreseeable period.
But we are going to remain prepared. I take it as a matter of wisdom that we should not dismantle the Springfield arsenals. This time we are not going to scuttle our strength.
Four years ago, many of us knew that this war might come. We sought to prepare America for it, often in the face of mocking gibes from those who said that we had nothing to fear from Germany or Japan.
We went about the work of building the national defenses and of setting up a system of selective service. We had the stern resolve – that I expressed many times four years ago – that we meant this for defense and not for offense – and that we would not send our boys to fight abroad unless we were attacked.
The attack came – treacherous, deadly attack.
Our pledge was kept. We fought back when we were attacked – obviously, rightly.
We fought back – as our forefathers had fought. We took the offensive – and we held it. The kind of America we inherited from our fathers is the kind of America we want to pass on to our children – but, an America more prosperous, more secure – free from want and free from fear.
It was to save that America that we joined in a common war against economic breakdown and depression – and we won that war.
It was to save that America that we joined in a common war against the Fascist ruthlessness and brutality of Germany and Japan. And we are winning that war.
It is to save that America that our sons are fighting gloriously on battlefields all over the world.
You and I have been through a lot together. And we are going to go ahead together – until we have finished this tremendous job of winning the war and building a strong, enduring peace.
So, sometimes I really honestly do forget politics. Regardless of what happens on Election Day – I assure you that I shall be the same man you have known all these years, and I am still dedicated to the same ideals for which you and I and our sons have been fighting.
I am very glad to have had this all too brief opportunity to be back here – I might almost say to chat with you.
I am glad to be back here in Springfield now, and I am coming back again. And being half from New England myself – up the river here in Northampton – I have a hunch – as lots of people do in Western Massachusetts and Eastern New York – I have a hunch that I shall be back here again soon as President of the United States.
In any case, as your President, I want to say to you – thank you for coming here. I have never spoken from here before – I think it’s a pretty good spot. And thanks particularly for the magnificent job you have been doing in this city towards winning the war.
Address by President Roosevelt
November 4, 1944, 9:00 p.m. EWT
Broadcast from Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts
Broadcast audio:
This is not my first visit to Boston. I shall not review all my previous visits. I should have to go on talking for several days to do that – and radio time costs a lot of money.
But I want to recall one visit, back in October 1928, when I came here to urge you to vote for a great American named Al Smith.
And you did vote for that eternally “Happy Warrior.”
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts – and your good neighbor, Rhode Island – both went Democratic in 1928, four years before the rest of the nation did.
This year – and I am making no predictions, I just have a little hope – this year we would like to welcome into the family Maine and Vermont.
And while I am speaking of that campaign of 1928, let me remind you that, having nominated Al Smith for the second time for the Presidency, I was then running at his request for the Governorship of New York. And people were then — even then – saying that my health would not permit me to discharge the duties of public office.
Well, you know, I think that it is by now a pretty well-established fact that I managed to survive my four years as Governor of New York. And at the end of that time, I went elsewhere.
In this connection, in 1928 – that first year that I ran for Governor – Al Smith remarked publicly that the Governor of New York does not have to be an acrobat. And not many months before his untimely death, he remarked to me in my office in Washington, “It is perfectly evident that you don’t have to be an acrobat to be President either.”
When I talked here in Boston in 1928, I talked about racial and religious intolerance, which was then – as unfortunately it still is, to some extent – “a menace to the liberties of America.”
And all the bigots in those days were gunning for Al Smith.
Religious intolerance, social intolerance, and political intolerance have no place in our American life.
Here in New England, you have been fighting bigotry and intolerance for centuries. I reminded a genealogical society – I think they are called “ancestor worshippers” – I said to them that they knew that all of our people all over the country – except the pure-blooded Indians – are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.
Today, in this war, our fine boys are fighting magnificently all over the world and among those boys are the Murphys and the Kellys, the Smiths and the Joneses, the Cohens, the Carusos, the Kowalskis, the Schultzes, the Olsens, the Swobodas, and – right in with all the rest of them – the Cabots and the Lowells.
All of these people, and others like them, are the lifeblood of America. They are the hope of the world.
It is our duty to them to make sure that, big as this country is, there is no room in it for racial or religious intolerance – and that there is no room for snobbery.
Our young men and our young women are fighting not only for their existence, their homes, and their families. They also are fighting for a country and a world where men and women of all races, colors, and creeds can live, and work, and speak and worship – in peace, and freedom and security.
If we can shorten this war by one month – even by one minute — we shall have saved the lives of some of our young men and women. We must not let our comforts or conveniences, our politics or our prejudices, stand in the way of our determination to drive – to drive relentlessly and unflinchingly – over the hard road to final victory.
You and I – all of us who are war workers – must stay on the job!
Although victory over the Nazis and the Japanese is certain and inevitable – and I for one have never had one moment’s doubt of our ultimate victory – the war is still far from over. There is tough, hard, bloody fighting ahead.
We got into this war because we were attacked by the Japanese – and because they and their Axis partners, Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, declared war on us.
I am sure that any real American – any real, red-blooded American – would have chosen, as this government did, to fight when our own soil was made the object of a sneak attack. As for myself, under the same circumstances, I would choose to do the same thing – again and again and again.
When our enemies flung the gauge of battle at us, we elected to fight them in the American way, which meant that we went after them, and we started punching – and we are still punching. And we have driven our enemies into their own corner.
One of the tyrants, Mussolini, has been knocked out for the count. And the others are getting groggier and groggier every day.
We are made happy by the fact that the Italian people – our longtime friends – are started once again along the paths of freedom and peace.
I think that history will say that we were better prepared for this war than for any previous war in all our history.
On the day of Pearl Harbor, for example – the day before the declaration of war – we had more than two million men in our Armed Forces.
Our war production, started a year and a half before that, was rolling toward the gigantic volume of output that has been achieved.
Our Navy was building – indeed, it had been building ever since 1933. And we know why it went down. It started to build up again – when I first used PWA funds to start a naval building program – that included our first modern carriers. One of those carriers, by the way, that you have read of, authorized ten years ago, was the Enterprise - a name well known throughout New England, the original Enterprise being the hero of the War of 1812 – but this new Enterprise, a grand and gallant ship, has also covered herself with glory all through this war, and was in there fighting last week in the great victory in Philippine waters.
But, in addition to our physical preparedness, we had something far more important – spiritual preparedness.
The American people were ready for it. On the day of Pearl Harbor, they rose up as one man with a mighty shout – a shout heard ‘round the world – the shout of “Let’s go!”
And we went!
Everywhere I go I find that the American citizen is doing some hard thinking these days about what sort of government he wants during the next four years.
The memory of our people is not short. The years from 1929 to 1933 are thoroughly and grimly remembered by millions of our citizens – by workers who lost their jobs and their homes, by farmers who lost their crops and their farms, by families who lost their savings.
Since those dark days early in 1933, many fortifications have been built to protect the people of this country – just as we promised that there would be.
What kind of fortifications? Well, fortifications, for example, which have provided protection for your bank deposits and your investments – your standard of living – your right to organize unions and to bargain collectively with your employers.
Your fortifications protect your soil and rivers and trees – your heritage of natural resources. They provide you with protection against the hazards of unemployment and old age – they protect you against inflation and runaway prices.
These fortifications are now manned by zealous defenders – and these defenders are not Communists, and these defenders are not fossils.
Can the citizens of the nation now afford to turn over these bulwarks to the men who raised every possible obstacle to their original construction?
Does the average American believe that those who fought tooth and nail against progressive legislation during the past twelve years can be trusted to cherish and preserve that legislation?
Can it be that those who financed the bitter opposition to the New Deal through all these years have made an about-face and are now willing and able to fight for the objectives of the New Deal?
We have all heard Republican orators in this campaign call this administration everything under the sun, and they promise that they, if elected – and oh, my friends, what a big “if” that is – they promise that if elected they would institute the biggest housecleaning in history. It sort of brings to my mind that that is just the thing that the “outs” always say.
What a job that would be, that housecleaning! It would mean, among other things, sweeping out with my administration the most efficient and most patriotic Republicans that could be found in the whole country.
But – despite these campaign promises of wholesale housecleaning – have you heard one word of specific criticism of any of the progressive laws that this administration has proposed and enacted?
Have you heard any talk of sweeping out any of these laws or sweeping out any of the agencies that administer them?
Oh, no, on that subject the Republican politicians are very uncharacteristically silent.
This administration has made mistakes. That I freely assert. Assert. And I hope my friends of the press will not change that to admit.
But, my friends, I think it is a pretty good batting average. Our mistakes have been honestly made during sincere efforts to help the great mass of citizens. Never have we made the inexcusable mistake – we know some who have – of substituting talk for action when farms were being foreclosed, homes were being sold at auction, and people were standing in breadlines.
I thank God that it cannot be charged that at any time, under any circumstances, have we made the mistake of forgetting our sacred obligation to the American people.
And, I might add, never will we make that kind of mistake.
Is it conceivable to you that this administration with its record of very deep concern for human welfare could ever be guilty of neglect of the welfare of our fighting men?
When your sons, and my sons, come home from the battlefronts – and they are coming home just as quickly as they are no longer needed for the essential job of this war – we are going to see that they have work – honest, self-respecting jobs.
We are going to see to it that those of them seeking farms get a real chance to settle on land of their own.
We are going to see to it that those who hope to establish businesses have a legitimate and fair opportunity to do so.
The American people are quite competent to judge a political party that works both sides of a street – a party that has one candidate making campaign promises of all kinds of added government expenditures in the West, while a running mate of his demands less government expenditures in the East.
You know – just as an aside, and I think I can speak freely to my old friends here in Boston – this is really a funny campaign.
I think I heard some campaign orator say that Secretary Hull and the rest of us had done such a fine job with the Good Neighbor Policy and our plans for world peace – that it is time for a change.
I believe I heard some campaign orator say that the “incompetent” administration had developed a program that was so good for the farmers and the businessmen and the workers of the nation – that it is time for a change.
I think I heard some campaign orator – you can identify him – say that we have so thoroughly shifted the control over the banks from Wall Street and State Street to Washington, DC that it is time for a change.
And I am quite sure that I have heard somebody say that this “chaotic” administration has done such an amazing job of war production – that it is time for a change.
I think I even heard somebody say that these “tired, quarrelsome” old men – are waging such a victorious war- that it is time for a change.
Well – if it is time for a change – the way to get it in this democracy is by means of votes. Whether I win or lose, I want to see a turnout next Tuesday of the biggest vote in all American history.
And I am hoping to see 50 million American voters go to the polls.
We could not find a better way to tell our boys overseas that the country they are fighting for is still going strong.
Just the other day you people here in Boston witnessed an amazing demonstration of talking out of both sides of the mouth.
Speaking here in Boston, a Republican candidate said – and pardon me if I quote him correctly – that happens to be an old habit of mine – he said that, “the Communists are seizing control of the New Deal, through which they aim to control the government of the United States.”
However, on that very same day, that very same candidate had spoken in Worcester, and he said that with Republican victory in November, “we can end one-man government, and we can forever remove the threat of monarchy in the United States.”
Now, really – which is it – Communism or monarchy?
I do not think that we could have both in this country, even if we wanted either, which we do not.
No, we want neither Communism nor monarchy. We want to live under our Constitution which has served pretty well for 155 years. And, if this were a banquet hall instead of a ball park, I would propose a toast that we will continue to live under this Constitution for another 155 years.
I must confess that often in this campaign, I have been tempted to speak my mind with sharper vigor and greater indignation.
Everybody knows that I was reluctant to run for the Presidency again this year. But since this campaign developed, I tell you frankly that I have become most anxious to win – and I say that for the reason that never before in my lifetime has a campaign been filled with such misrepresentation, distortion, and falsehood. Never since 1928 have there been so many attempts to stimulate in America racial or religious intolerance.
When any politician or any political candidate stands up and says, solemnly, that there is danger that the government of the United States – your government – could be sold out to the Communists, then I say that that candidate reveals – and I’ll be polite – a shocking lack of trust in America.
He reveals a shocking lack of faith in democracy – in the spiritual strength of our people.
If there was ever a time in which that spiritual strength of our people was put to the test, that time was in the terrible depression from 1929 to 1933.
Our people, in those days, might have turned to alien ideologies – like Communism or Fascism.
But our democratic faith was too sturdy. What the American people demanded in 1933 was not less democracy but more democracy, and that’s what they got.
The American people proved in the black days of depression – as they have proved again in this war – that there is no chink in the armor of democracy.
On this subject – and on all subjects – I say to you, my friends, what I said when first you conferred upon me the exalted honor of the Presidency: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
And today I can add a corollary to that. I do not think that you will ever cast the majority of your votes for fearful men.
We face the enormous, the complex problems of building with our allies a strong world structure of peace.
In doing that historic job, we shall be standing before a mighty bar of judgment – the judgment of all of those who have fought and died in this war – the judgment of generations yet unborn – the very judgment of God.
I believe that we Americans will want the peace to be built by men who have shown foresight rather than hindsight.
Peace, no less than war, must offer a spirit of comradeship, a spirit of achievement, a spirit of unselfishness, and indomitable will to victory.
We in this country have waged war against the wilderness, against the mountains and the rivers, against droughts and storms. We have waged war against ignorance, against oppression, against intolerance.
We have waged war against poverty, against disease.
We fought the Revolutionary War for the principle that all men are created equal – and in those days we pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
This war, which we are now fighting, has been an interruption in the story of our forward progress; but it has also opened a new chapter – a chapter which it is now for us the living to begin.
At the end of this war this country will have the greatest material power of any nation in the world.
It will be a clean, shining America – richer than any other in skilled workers, in engineers, and farmers, and businessmen, and scientists.
It will be an America in which there is a genuine partnership between the farmer and the worker and the businessman – in which there are abundant jobs and an expanding economy of peace.
All around us we see an unfinished world – a world of awakened peoples struggling to set themselves on the path of civilization – people struggling everywhere to achieve a higher cultural and material standard of living.
I say we must wage the coming battle for America and for civilization on a scale worthy of the way that we have unitedly waged the battles against tyranny and reaction, and wage it through all the difficulties and the disappointments that may ever clog the wheels of progress.
And I say that we must wage it in association with the United Nations with whom we have stood and fought – with that association ever growing.
I say that we must wage a peace to attract the highest hearts, 'the most competent hands and brains.
That, my friends, is the conception I have of the meaning of total victory.
And that conception is founded on faith – faith in the unlimited destiny – the unconquerable spirit of the United States of America.
Address by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey
November 4, 1944, 10:30 p.m. EWT
Broadcast from Madison Square Garden, New York City
All over the world tonight Americans are fighting for the might of free men to govern themselves. Here at home, we are waging a political campaign to secure the liberties for which they fight.
Openly and in plain words John Bricker and I, in the name of the Republican Party, are dedicated to these propositions:
To speed total victory and the prompt return of our fighting men by putting energy and competence in Washington behind the magnificent effort of our military command.
To provide American leadership in the world for effective organization among all nations to prevent future wars.
To direct all government policies in the peacetime years ahead to achieving jobs and opportunity for every American.
To these ends, we shall restore honesty and integrity to our national government; we shall put an end to one man rule; we shall unite our people in teamwork and harmony behind a President and a Congress that can and will work together to realize the limitless promise of America.
These are no partisan objectives. They are in truth the objectives of the American people. They can never be attained under the tired and quarrelsome administration that has been in office for 12 long years. They can only be attained under a new, vigorous administration that comes fresh from the people. That’s why all over the country the people are saying it’s time for a change.
America is determined to win a speedy and overwhelming victory in this war. All of us have perfect confidence in our military and naval commanders. But this war cannot be won alone upon the battlefronts. It must also be won at home. And each of us must play his part.
As recently as Sept. 1, Gen. Eisenhower renewed his earlier prophecy that Germany could be beaten in 1944 if everyone at home would do his part. Yet last Thursday, and again one hour ago, Mr. Roosevelt decided to tell us that the war had still a long way to go.
What happened in two months to cancel Gen. Eisenhower’s prediction? Mr. Roosevelt has not told us the whole story but part of it we know.
Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill held a conference in Québec. Our Secretary of State was absent. Our Secretary of War was absent. In their stead Mr. Roosevelt took with him that master of military strategy and foreign affairs, the Secretary of the Treasury, with his private plan for disposing of the German people after the war. The plan was so clumsy that Mr. Roosevelt, himself, finally dropped it – but the damage was done.
The publishing of this plan while everything else was kept secret was just what the Nazi propagandists needed. That was as good at ten fresh German divisions. It put fight back into the German Army; it stiffened the will of the German nation to resist. Almost overnight, the headlong retreat of the Germans stopped. They stood and fought fanatically.
Here is how the military expert of Newsweek described the tragic consequences of this blunder. “This necromancy ruins Gen, Dwight D. E1senhower’s campaign… Now he finds himself faced by resistance he never expected and which, in my opinion, would never have materialized had Allied political warfare been astute instead of idiotic.” So says the military expert.
Here’s the report from the front by the United Press:
The home front talk about stern treatment for a defeated Germany has inspired bitter and fanatical resistance among German troops, in their sector at least, and the G.I.’s are a little bitter about it. Sometimes the Doughboys who are fighting and dying in the mud on this side of the Moselle wish people at home would quit announcing what they think should be done about a defeated Germany. Some soldiers said today that they thought it might be better to win the war first.
What does this mean? It means that the blood of our fighting men is paying for this improvised meddling which is so much a part and parcel of the Roosevelt administration. And at the very moment when his own confused incompetence has thus prolonged the war in Europe, Franklin Roosevelt goes on the radio and claims for himself the credit for everything our engineers, our war workers, our industry, our farmers and our fighting sons have done.
We are advancing and we shall reach our goals. Once rid of capricious, personal government, once we give our whole, our united thoughts to victory, we shall reach Berlin and Tokyo quicker – with less cost.
Let me make one thing clear: Your next administration will never claim personal or political profit from the achievements of the American people or from the sacrifices of their sons and daughters. But it will put a stop to the incompetence in Washington which is costing the lives of American men and delaying the day of final victory.
The people of this country are determined that we shall not again go through the heartaches and sacrifices of the last three years. This war must be the last war. We shall take the lead in the formation of a world organization to prevent future wars. And we know that effort can never be the work of one man or of one nation. It can never be the product of secret agreements worked out in secret conferences between two or three rulers. For the United States, this great effort must have the support and understanding of all our people. And it must, under our Constitution, have the support and approval of the people’s representatives in Congress.
Yet Mr. Roosevelt, year after year, has systematically abused and insulted the members of Congress. Having already alienated his own leaders im Congress, he has now gratuitously insulted the Republican leaders of the Senate and the House. Those leaders join with me in an effort to lift the program for a lasting peace above partisanship.
They publicly pledge themselves to support the program for world peace on which Secretary Hull and I have cooperated. But this harmonious, non-political approach Was not politically profitable to Mr. Roosevelt, so he denounced the Republican members of Congress and accused them of erecting “a party spite fence between us and the peace.”
The time has come to bring an end to this name calling and abuse. American participation in a world organization for peace can only be built by a President and a Congress – Republicans and Democrats alike – working together in harmony and mutual respect. To achieve that harmony, we must have a new Chief Executive who believes that fundamental principle and practices it. That’s another reason why it’s time for a change.
When victory is won, 11 million Americans will return from our fighting forces. They will be looking for jobs and opportunities.
They will want to marry, go to work and get ahead. Twenty million war workers will be looking for jobs in peacetime industries. If we are not to betray those who have fought and worked for victory in this war, we must have here in America, the land of opportunity, a land of full employment and high wages, with a rising standard of living.
My opponent talks once again of jobs in the future, but he offers us nothing except a repetition of the New Deal policies which failed for eight straight years. This administration took office when the worldwide depression was nearly four years old. No previous depression in 100 years of our history had lasted more than five years. Yet Mr. Roosevelt contrived to make that depression last 11 years – twice as long as any depression in a century. He had unlimited power; spent $58 billion; yet in March 1940, there were still 10 million unemployed. Under the New Deal, it took a war to get jobs.
We dare not, we must not risk the future of our country in the hands of those who never succeeded in eight peacetime years in even approaching full employment. We need to sweep away the strangling mass of rules and regulations, of petty bureaucratic interferences. We need to sweep away the old, dank, wretched atmosphere of hostility and abuse. We need once more to Jet the American people – industry, labor and agriculture – know that their government believes with them in the American tradition of opportunity for all.
We need an administration that cares more about official business than it does about big government. We need an administration that will not be afraid of peace – that will want to bring our fighting men home when victory is achieved – and will keep its promises to do so. And that’s another reason why it’s time for a change.
There are other reasons, For 12 years we have watched the shifting, slippery nature of the present national administration. It has stood for no principle except self-perpetuation of its power. The result has been decay of the moral fiber of government. That decay reached its logical result when Franklin Roosevelt was compelled to admit that it was he, himself, who sponsored the $1000 Club. This is the scheme which offered in writing for $100 “special privileges” and a voice “in the formulation of administration policies.”
Never in our history has corruption been so brazen. Never before has a President admitted sponsorship of such a scheme.
All this is the inevitable result of too many years in power – and the desire for perpetual office. It is exactly what every American beginning with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson warned against. It is inevitable that it should have produced political leadership which today publicly defines politics as the science of “how who gets what, when and why.” I say the young men of America are not fighting and dying for these corrupt and decadent practices. In the name of those men, the American people will rise up and repudiate that whole philosophy of government. The time has come to put an end to government by “who gets what, when and why.”
That’s why it’s time for a change.
They, the great Democratic Party, weakened by 12 years of one-man rule, is being leased out to men who Vote that they owe no allegiance to that party for its principles. It has been put on the auction block for sale to the highest bidder, and the highest bidders are Sidney Hillman’s Political Action Committee and Earl Browder’s Communists. There is only one way for the real members of the Democratic Party to win in this election. That is to join with Republicans in defeating the New Dealers, the Political Action Committee and the Communists. That’s why those who believe in our system of government, Republicans and Democrats alike, agree that it’s time for a change.
In this campaign I have set forth a constructive program for the years ahead, built soundly brick by brick. It shows how we can achieve our objectives – each of them, including full employment, high stable income for labor, agriculture and business, broader old age benefits, tax reduction with an increased national income and freedom of both labor and business from crippling government regimentation.
My opponent has offered no program because the New Deal has nothing to offer save more of the same quarreling and vacillation which has marked its career for 12 long years. We can no longer afford the luxury of a government which spends half its time quarreling among itself and the other half quarreling with one segment or another of our people. In the years immediately ahead, we need new hands to steer the ship of state steadily through the balance of the war into quiet peacetime waters where we can again make progress. We need to learn how to work together again in unity. We need above all to renew our faith; faith in the goodwill of our fellow men regardless of race, color or creed; faith in the limitless future of our country.
Our nation was founded and built by men of great faith and goodwill, who came here to do great things. They created our institutions in the image of their beliefs. First of all, they believed in Almighty God. That was the rock on which they built. They believed in the moral law; they believed in the dignity of man. In the Bill of Rights, they consecrated and established that dignity of man without distinction of race, creed or color. They believed that man should be free – free to worship after the dictates of his own conscience, free to live in his home, to raise a family – free to speak his own mind without fear or favor, free to get ahead in the world. They believed that government would be the servant, not the master of the people. Because they believed these things and built upon them this nation has been richly blest of God.
Our people have known hardship but they have never despaired. They have faced great odds, but they have never known defeat. To them the difficult is never too difficult. With them the impossible can be brought to pass.
Let us in this election send a ringing affirmation to all the world that the love of freedom is still strong in the hearts of the American people. Let us register our faith that in America there is no indispensable man. Let us prove that free government still lives. Let us send the thrilling message round the world that America has changed administrations in der to speed victory and ensure lasting peace – that freedom is the most vital thing in the world – hat we intend to have it – to hold it forever.