Stokes: Dewey on labor
By Thomas L. Stokes
With Dewey party, Seattle, Washington –
Governor Dewey made a bold bid in his Seattle speech for labor votes, a major factor in the election, on the theory that enough of labor, particularly of the conservative type undoubtedly enlarged by war prosperity, is ready to break away from the New Deal if approached with a sound progressive program.
That is what he offered. He talked in New Deal accents. Right-wingers could get no comfort from his speech, nor could extreme left-wingers.
He proposed to take nothing from labor that it now has in guarantees written in law by the New Deal. He promised better and more direct administration of these laws. He offered labor higher wages in an expanding economy, which has become his major theme.
Two aspects of New Deal labor administration and policy are vulnerable for indictment. The Republican presidential candidate seized them and made a bill of particulars to which realistic New Dealers themselves must subscribe privately.
One is the multiplicity of agencies through which labor cases have to go, often, as Governor Dewey so strikingly illustrated, creating confusion doubly confounded, and causing delay from which labor groups suffer.
Favoritism for CIO
The other is the obviously political complexion of some New Deal labor decisions, with favoritism for the CIO, illustrated by the CIO plump for President Roosevelt, taken so far in advance that that section of labor lost some of its political effectiveness.
This was shown by two defeats – the dumping of Vice President Wallace at Chicago, and the passage of a reconversion bill in Congress which it finds most unsatisfactory.
Very cleverly the Republican candidate exploited the controversy and delay in the steel case before the War Labor Board, centering about the attempt to break down the “Little Steel” formula.
“The strategy of delay,” he said, “sets the stage for a great gesture – a big favor to labor before Election Day,” but he added pointedly this is something to which “labor is justly entitled” without representing it as “a special gift from on high from the New Deal.”
When he went on record against the Smith-Connally Act, which labor so detests, he neglected to mention that President Roosevelt had vetoed it, only to have Congress pass it over his veto.
The difficulty that Governor Dewey faces in trying to win labor over to the Republican side was revealed in his speech. All he could find of labor reforms in the last 30 years which he could credit to Republicans was President Taft’s creation of a Cabinet post for labor and the Railway Mediation Act of 1926.
Filibuster recalled
And the latter was sponsored first by Alben Barkley, present Senate Democratic leader, then a House member. The Republican leadership of the House fought it.
The writer recalls sitting in the House Press Gallery through one night when a Republican filibuster, engineered by then Speaker Longworth, scuttled that measure for the time being.
Republican difficulties have been further emphasized on this transcontinental tour. To his labor conferences held at every stop, the Republican candidate has been able to attract only small-fry figures. Everywhere, too, his aides have received reports of effective registration by CIO’s PAC in the cities.
It was significant that Governor Dewey did not even mention the PAC. Lesser Republican lights will do that job.
The Republican Party was once the party of labor. The exodus to the Democratic Party began in 1916.
After that, the Democrats slowly improved their standing with labor and it was ready for its big parade to the Democrats when President Roosevelt capitalized the lack of attention to labor by Republicans during the ‘20s and created the New Deal party.
Governor Dewey thus has a handicap in party heritage. But he could not have gone much further in trying to overcome it.