The Pittsburgh Press (January 29, 1944)
Clapper: Sailors talk
By Raymond Clapper
Aboard an LST – (by wireless)
We came aboard this LST from a small naval craft which brought us out to a rendezvous at sea.
The captain of the small craft was Ens. David Chase of West Haven, Connecticut. He used to be a high school teacher and he has been in the Navy only 15 months. He has a most interesting crew.
A few minutes after we were underway, they began to gather around to talk, as happens everywhere when a stranger from home appears.
We talked of strikes and presidential politics, the only two public-affairs subjects that get into conversations out here, where everyone is absorbed in his duties and at other times is reading or wondering when he’ll get home.
These men, as most others out here, favor Roosevelt, but not in any blind or slavish fashion. Aubrey Gibson of Waco, Texas, said that if Roosevelt would do more about strikes and inflation, he would get more votes. He said a majority of the crew of this craft were for Roosevelt, with Willkie and Dewey the first and second Republican choices.
Men concerned about strikes
But the men are more concerned about strikes than politics.
That is where they always begin to show heat whereas the presidential campaign seems remote to them.
John L. Lewis has become a symbol for bitterness among servicemen here, the same as I found him to be in Africa and England last summer. His name is used as a symbol for all the union leaders who put strikes above war production.
Remember, these were not normally anti-labor men I was talking with, but the run of the crew – farm boys and workmen, some of them union members.
There were three union men in the group I chatted with while going out to board this LST. Robert Loma of Lorain, Ohio, was a CIO welder at the American Bridge Company plant in Lorain. He said:
I think what John Lewis is doing is close to treason. I don’t see how he gets away with it.
Pro-Roosevelt and anti-strike
Another was a member of the Typographical Union but did not wish to be identified, as he worked in a non-union shop. He said he would like to see the government take over the railroads in order to end strike threats.
He said:
We have to have unions. We can’t let the big corporations run things. But I’m against strikes.
There was more about John Lewis from James C. Jones of Houston, Texas, of the AFL Iron Workers in the shipyards. He said he was sure Roosevelt was the man for the place – speaking of the 1944 campaign. I asked him why the men felt that way. He said it was because Roosevelt was for the working man.
I don’t know how it would add up if I could take a complete canvass, but everything I have found thus far is pro-Roosevelt and anti-strike.
One of the crew, named Gibson, was in the Navy before the war, and when his enlistment ran out in 1940, he took a job in an aircraft factory on the West Coast. In a short time, a strike was pulled.
Gibson said:
I was disgusted, and I reenlisted in the Navy.