Stage star outwitted Nazis in occupation
By Helen Kirkpatrick
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Smaller, self-supporting towns well off, but big cities reported facing crisis
By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Order received with relief by citizens but it isn’t due to patriotism
By Paul Ghali
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Yanks battle in mountains of Italy
By Eleanor Packard, United Press staff writer
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Mistake may send letter 30,000 miles out of way and long delay results
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Lack of defenses speeded Jap conquest
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
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General cheered by Filipinos as he tours capital’s suburbs; jeep bogs down in mud
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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Bareback shoe is style note
By Betty Byron
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Reds given important war posts in spite of previous sabotaging of defense efforts
By Frederick Woltman, Scripps-Howard staff writer
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the sixth and last in a series of articles describing how American Communists, by utilizing their technique of infiltration, have burrowed into American unions, kidnapped the American Labor Party in New York, dominated the CIO Political Action Committee and made strong inroads into the New Deal administration.
Washington –
Not even the Army or Navy were left inviolate by the Roosevelt administration in its policy of coddling America’s Communists after the latter got orders to stop sabotaging America’s defense program in the summer of 1941.
The coddling process reached a high point last spring when the Navy Department scrapped the efficient and specialized “Communist desk” of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Officer-experts, who had learned to spot the difference between a Communist, whose allegiance lies outside the United States, and, say, an honest union leader or a Socialist, were dispersed to new assignments, chiefly foreign. The “Communist desks” were dissolved, and in at least one naval district headquarters – New York – some invaluable files were ordered destroyed.
There were reports that the Army had also started to destroy its Communist files.
Communist gets war post
A striking example of this new policy came to light when Navy, as well as Army, Intelligence subsequently cleared for an important, secret war job a well-known Communist who had previously been dropped by the Office of Strategic Services after an investigation by the FBI.
Although barred from federal employment as a Communist, Leonard Mins is now working for a government war contractor, Walter Dorwin Teague, and is in charge of compiling a Navy manual on the closely-guarded techniques of operating anti-aircraft and other artillery.
Only three years ago, Mins, who has held many party posts since the 1920s, was marching in the Communists’ May Day parade, under banners denouncing the “imperialist war,” Lend-Lease aid to Britain, Selective Service and this country’s rearmament plans.
Dropped from the Teague job when the Provost Marshal’s office questioned his loyalty, Mins was cleared in a War Department hearing and ordered reinstated. The Navy concurred.
Reds fight Hatch Act
Almost immediately after President Roosevelt opened the gates of Atlanta Prison for Earl Browder, America’s Red mahatma, the Communists started putting the heat on federal agencies to lighten up on the Hatch Act which prohibits Communists and Nazis from holding federal office.
The U.S. Civil Service Commission, which conducts the government’s “loyalty” investigations, has been subjected to steady pressure from the small, Communist-led CIO Federal Workers Union, which was combating “loyalty” checks by the FBI, the Navy and the Army as well.
Last November, after conferences with the union, the Civil Service Commission hamstrung its own investigators by drastically restricting their freedom to inquire about the Communist affiliations of job applicants.
It was the Federal Workers Union which announced the new policy and the union announcement was sent out even before the Commission sent revised regulations to its 600 investigators.
Wartime ban rescinded
The union report praised the Commission and triumphantly promised its members that “quick and clear action” would be taken against federal investigators who violated the new policy.
The Communists achieved one of their greatest triumphs when the administration ordered the Navy to rescind a wartime emergency ban on Communist radio operators in the Merchant Marine.
During the Hitler-Stalin pact, high Navy officials were worried about filling these key posts aboard ships carrying Lend-Lease goods to Great Britain. The American Communications Association, one of the CIO’s most tightly controlled Communist unions which has never deviated from the party’s dictates, was placing its own operators aboard the ships.
At the same time, with Hitler ravaging Europe, the union officially joined the Communists’ sabotage measures against our defense preparations. The official ACA News of Feb. 17, 1940, parroting the Browder party’s pronouncements said:
Keep America out of war. The only war in which we should participate is the war to wipe out the causes that lead to unemployment.
Opposed national defense
That June 22, it added: “We examine with suspicion the expenditures of billions for battleships.”
Joseph Selly, international ACA president, reported a six-week tour of the South in the ACA News in this message:
America speaks and here’s what it says… We don’t want any part of war. Don’t give us any baloney about “patriotism” and “national defense” being reasons for dropping our demands. We know plenty about patriotism – a lot of our fathers, brothers, husbands and sweethearts went to the last war “to make the world safe for democracy,” and what did they get… We hear a lot of words spoken about “necessary sacrifices” and “national unity”…
Congress passed a Navy-sponsored bill authorizing the Secretary of the Navy to keep Nazi, Communist, Fascist and Japanese operators off U.S. vessels. Some 40 Communists were dropped after investigation, along with a number of Nazis.
Navy changed policy
With the invasion of Russia and the change of party line, the pressure campaign started with a blast. According to the July 12, 1942 Daily Worker, the Communist paper now edited by Earl Browder:
The ACA almost tore the roof of the Navy Department off with its protests… and the Navy Department had a change of heart.
The Secretary of the Navy, the late Frank Knox, called a conference of high officers and told them the Communists had to be reinstated. They were, almost immediately and with backpay.
Secretary Knox was asked the reason for this reversal of policy. He replied, according to the testimony before a Congressional committee of Adm. Stanford C. Hooper (Ret.), one of those present: “That is a command from the White House and you have to obey it as well as I do.”
THE END
Rank-and-file turns deaf ear to Lewis
By William Forrester
With a great majority of Western Pennsylvania miners, it is still “Lewis for president of the UMW, Roosevelt for President of the U.S.”
That’s the summary resulting from queries directed to union officials, rank-and-file miners, mine town store and tavern keepers and others who follow the trend in the bituminous fields.
Lewis backs Dewey
And it holds true despite three major factors in favor of Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s candidacy:
Support of Governor Dewey by United Mine Workers Union President John L. Lewis and Vice President John O’Leary, and such local and state officials as John P. Busarello, president of District 5, and Abe Vales, state director of District 50.
Constant hammering in the UMW Journal, the semi-monthly publication of the union, against the administration in general and President Roosevelt and Solid Fuels Administrator Harold L. Ickes in particular.
Dissatisfaction among the miners over the “kicking around” they believe their wage case received at the hands of federal officials and agencies.
These factors may have swung some former Roosevelt adherents into the Dewey camp.
Sample viewpoint cited
But considering the fact that the recent UMW convention in Cincinnati passed a resolution bitterly assailing the administration, the preponderance of Roosevelt support might be thought surprising.
The general attitude of a majority of mine workers seems to be that the convention action came as a result of the Roosevelt-Lewis feud, and will be paid little heed by the rank and file.
Here’s a sample viewpoint from a Russellton bartender, who hears hundreds of miners talk:
They’re as strong for Roosevelt as ever. I don’t think the Republicans will get any more votes out here than they did before.
Others quoted
And another of a woman store clerk in a small Allegheny River mine town: “There are a few around here for Dewey, but most all for the President.”
Or as a minor UMW official explained:
Sure they’re for Roosevelt. A lot of them aren’t saying much around the union offices, because of what the convention did, but they haven’t changed a lot.
Busarello for Dewey
Of the three district presidents in this immediate area. Mr. Busarello of District 5 here, William Hynes of District 4 at Uniontown, and Frank Hughes of District 3 at Greensburg, only Mr. Busarello has come out for Dewey.
District 5, however, is taking no active part in the campaign, and Mr. Busarello was giving his own opinion, he said.
Both Mr. Hynes and Mr. Hughes said they planned to make no political commitment whatever, but that their offices would carry out national UMW policy.
Journal backs Dewey
As for the UMW Journal, it is conducting a full-scale campaign on behalf of Governor Dewey, The current Oct. 15 issue has no less than 14 articles. editorials or cartoons which are open attacks on President Roosevelt or the administration.
Two stories praise Governor Dewey’s stand on security for servicemen and stabilization of the coal industry. An article, much more bitter than anything which has appeared in daily newspapers, links Sidney Hillman and Earl Browder with the administration.
Ridicule for Ickes
Others attack various phases of the New Deal, with special ridicule for Mr. Ickes.
And every issue of the Journal dwells on the “shabby treatment” accorded miners by government agencies.
Yet the best estimates throughout the district by Republican leaders are that the Republicans will let “some” of the miners’ votes. Not a single person close to the field is willing to predict any large-scale defection from the Roosevelt banner the miners have followed again, and again, and again – and again.
Nation divided along occupational lines; fewer unskilled workers backing President
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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There was no choice but the hard way
By Royal Arch Gunnison, North American Newspaper Alliance
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By Robert Taylor, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
It has almost passed public notice, but this year’s presidential election is the first to be held since the Federal Clean Politics Law, more familiarly known as the Hatch Act, went into full effect.
There was a Hatch Act in 1940, too, but it didn’t take full effect until the middle of the campaign, when much of the Democratic National Committee’s campaign fund had been raised, so it wasn’t as important a factor that year as it is now.
The law has been amended in a number of respects since then. Also, its enforcement has been standardized to the point where the U.S. Civil Service Commission is ready and willing to crack down on any federal employee who steps out of bounds to do some politicking. In Pennsylvania, the Commission now has cases pending against both Democratic and Republican state officials, charging macing of payrolls supported partly with federal funds.
What this means in terms of campaign work is that the major sources of Democratic campaign funds are closed and the bulk of the Democratic workers – those rewarded with jobs for their services in past campaigns – have been “graduated” out of politics.
Democrats built on payrolls
This accounts for the relative weakness of the Democratic organization, both here and elsewhere, in contrast with the Republican organization which gets its political strength from local and State payrolls not subject to the Hatch Act, and contributions from individuals who can give up to the limit of $5,000 for any one committee or campaign.
From 1932 on, the Democrats built their state organization on payrolls, chiefly federal, and their chief sources of campaign funds were the same payrolls, until the Hatch Act stopped that form of money-raising.
The WPA and other Depression-era federal agencies provided a lure and a reward for political workers, funds and votes for the organization, and the power of that form of political activity was great enough to provide safe majorities in presidential years and challenge the majority Republicans in state elections.
Today, if an aspiring precinct worker or ward heeler turns in consistently good performances for the party and is finally rewarded with a federal job, he is immediately removed from politics and assured of freedom from political pressure as long as he holds it.
Party workers must be replaced
That makes it necessary to replace the worker in the next campaign – not an easy task in a wartime manpower shortage. In Philadelphia, where Democrats have little local patronage, this system of rewarding and replacing faithful party workers is spoken of as comparable with that of the U.S. Air Forces: 25 trips over the enemy lines and a furlough. In at least one county, a federal official had to resign so his party could have a campaign chairman.
The CIO Political Action Committee, with its un-Hatched but untrained political workers, is filling in the gaps this year for the Democratic organization, but the effects of the Hatch Act are noticeable in Pennsylvania where local payrolls are in the hands of Republicans.
Not only is the Hatch Act hampering the Democratic organization this year, but it is being demonstrated, now, that it will be a curb on any party organization in the future which uses the federal payroll to reward its faithful workers.
By Sgt. Mack Morris, Yank staff correspondent
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By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
Washington –
The question of whether or not American industry can or should guarantee an annual wage or steady work the year around to wage earners isn’t exactly an election issue, but at the same time it has some connection with the balloting Nov. 7.
Neither major party platform covers the subject, nor has it been dealt with specifically by either the Republican or Democratic candidate for President. But with the increasing attention being given to the right of the man who works for wages to some assurance of a dependable income, it is conceivable that the post-war period will include a real drive toward an objective that authorities agree would represent a great advance in the industrial and economic life of this country.
So, the question related to the election is whether President Roosevelt or Governor Dewey would be most likely to espouse this idea and give effective national leadership to it.
Mr. Roosevelt’s friends will argue that he is the man for this particular job, because of his labor record.
Mr. Dewey’s supporters will counter with the argument that their candidate is more likely to be successful in assuring steady work for all, as the full sympathy and cooperation of business would be required to reach this objective without government coercion; that Mr. Dewey could be relied on to enlist business support, and Mr. Roosevelt couldn’t.
Nunn-Bush plan
Recent evidence of interest in the guaranteed wage or steady work idea was a discussion by radio on America’s Town Meeting of the Air.
One of the two speakers on the “pro” side was Henry L. Nunn, shoe manufacturer of Milwaukee.
He said:
On July 3, 1935, management and the workers in our Milwaukee factory signed what might be called a share-the-production and 52-paychecks-per-year agreement.
Over good times and bad, it was found that production wages had maintained a more or less constant percentage of the value of business done, so it was agreed that this share, determined by experience, should be the basis for dividing the value of production between the workers and the company. We established drawing accounts for our workers, based on estimated annual income – one fifty-second to be withdrawn each and every week. Adjustment with actual earnings is made monthly.
Nine years in effect
It was a thoroughly new concept. No longer was the company buying labor as a commodity. The innovation made a common enterprise of the business, Sharing the value of production with the workers.
For more than nine years these workers have received an annual income which, we have reason to believe, is much more than the average for the industry. For 482 consecutive weeks, these workers have received a paycheck, regardless of how many hours were worked.
The Nunn-Bush Shoe Company’s plan varies from others in various enterprises that have found it possible and practicable (and according to what they say, very wise) to guarantee steady pay or steady work. The Procter & Gamble Company in Cincinnati has a different plan, and the Hormel Packing Company’s plan is different from both. There are plenty of plans, but so far they have been applied only in individual enterprises, and no attempt has been made to adopt the idea for huge industries such as coal mining or steel manufacturing or auto production.
CIO speaker
The other favoring speaker on the Town Meeting program was Harold J. Ruttenberg, research director of the CIO United Steel Workers, who gave most of his attention to the annual-wage demand in the current wage case of that union before the War Labor Board. He noted that his union “took the annual wage off the shelf of idle talk and put it into the arena of collective bargaining.”
However, the WLB panel was much less certain that this federal wartime agency could legally and with propriety order such a drastic step in American industry. Some opinion is that the problem will be solved eventually only through an overall organization of American industry, working voluntarily to level out the peaks and valleys that now disfigure the peacetime chart of industrial production.