The Pittsburgh Press (October 28, 1940)
DRIVE STARTED BY ROOSEVELT
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Thousands Cheer Him On Visit to New York
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New York, N.Y., Oct. 28 (UP) –
President Roosevelt carried his campaign for a third term into New Jersey and New York City today bidding for the votes of the Metropolitan area and scheduling a conference with a union leader to strengthen his drive for support from the CIO.
A rally in Madison Square Garden, including an address by Mr. Roosevelt, will be broadcast by KDKA beginning at 10 o’clock.
Swinging through North Jersey and all five boroughs of New York City, Mr. Roosevelt will confer with R .J. Thomas, vice president of the CIO and international president of the United Auto Workers Union this afternoon.
Thousands Cheer Him
The conference was arranged, apparently, to offset the endorsement of Wendell L. Willkie by CIO president John L. Lewis last Friday.
Entering Lower Manhattan from Brooklyn, Mr. Roosevelt spoke briefly before a non-day crowd of several thousand massed in Roosevelt Park. He uttered a prayer for happy union of the multitudinous races and people of the United States, ending his address with the words, “God bless America.”
I am very glad to stop back here. I shall never forget my visit here four years ago when thousands of school children repeated that splendid oath to the U.S. flag.
Reminded of Old Prayer
Whenever I come back into this part of New York City – and I have been coming here for more than a quarter of a century – I am reminded of that old prayer – “Oh God, fashion into one happy people the multitude brought hither from many kindreds and tongues.”
Every time I come here I get a choking feeling – something that grips my heart a little more. And so I join with you in saying: “God bless America.”
Mr. Roosevelt, after a two and a half hour swing through Jersey, broke grounds in Brooklyn for an $80 million Brooklyn-Battery vehicular tunnel. The ground-breaking ceremony followed his tour through Newark, Jersey City and Bayonne, during which his car passed along streets packed solidly with tens of thousands of cheering people.
Army engineers decided to construct a tunnel rather than a bridge to connect the Battery and Brooklyn, Mr. Roosevelt said, because of the greater national defense potentialities of the former.
Consider ‘Attack’
The Army engineers told us they had to look far into the future – In hope so far that none of us live to see it – and foresee the possibility there might be an attack on the United States.
On the basis of that possibility, he said, it was decided to construct a tunnel for defense reasons, and the plan to construct a bridge was discarded.
Mr. Roosevelt was introduced by Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia of New York, who told the crowd at the ceremonies that construction of the tunnel will require four years, and he officially was inviting Mr. Roosevelt to attend four years hence “in his capacity as President of the United States.”
Delay Acceptance
“I can’t say I’ll accept the Mayor’s invitation four years from now, but I hope to next week,” Mr. Roosevelt replied, acknowledging that his third term drove will be determined at the polls a week from tomorrow.
Gov. Herbert H. Lehman of New York, Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones, Senators Robert F. Wagner and James Mead of New York joined Mr. Roosevelt on the Brooklyn platform to support his third term campaign.
Mr. Roosevelt, however, made no direct reference to politics, reserving his major offensive for his address tonight at Madison Square Garden.
When he had finished his brief speech, the President pulled a cord which rang a bell. This was a signal to a workman operating a steam shovel. As the machine scooped the first earth from the ground the Presidential party left for Manhattan.
Cost $80 Million
The tunnel, when completed in 1941, will be two miles long, the longest sub-aqueous project in the world. The Reconstruction Finance Corp. granted the New York Tunnel Authority $57 million for its construction. With its approaches, the total cost of the project will be $80 million. The tunnel will make it possible to drive from New York to Brooklyn in four minutes.
A busy day of campaigning was in store for the President. He was schedules to visit all five boroughs of New York.
The President began a 14-hour day at Newark, N.J., at 9 a.m., where he met mayors of a dozen New Jersey cities, including Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City, vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, before proceeding to New York.
To ‘Shoot From Hip’
Discarding his custom of speaking only from carefully-prepared texts, Mr. Roosevelt will “shoot-from-the-hip” with extemporaneous addresses during his swing through the metropolitan area.
Today’s trip opens the final drive of Mr. Roosevelt’s campaign. He plans to present his final case for a third term in addresses at Boston October 30; the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Nov. 1; Public Hall, Cleveland, Nov. 2; and to offer his campaign summation in a nationwide radio speech from Hyde Park, N.Y., on Nov. 4 – Election Eve.
Before leaving the White House last night, Mr. Roosevelt conferred with Joseph P. Kennedy, Ambassador to Great Britain. Reports were current on the campaign train that Mr. Kennedy would join him on the platform at Boston Wednesday to dissipate rumors that he might join the ranks of dissident Democrats.
Big Crowd Greets Him
A big crowd which greeted the President almost stampeded and the start of the presidential tour was delayed at Newark.
When the official meetings were completed, the Roosevelt party prepared to start the motor trip through northern New Jersey, but the crowd, estimated by police at 50,000, refused to budge and shouted “We Want Roosevelt!”
Finally, it gave away and the motorcade went to Kearny, where the President inspected shipyards working on government naval contracts.
About 1,000 workers cheered the president at the Federal Shipbuilding Drydock Co. yards in Kearny. At points in the yards were signs, some of them saying, “We Are For Roosevelt, Out With Lewis,” “We’re 100 Per Cent Behind President Roosevelt.”
Bombs burst high in the air as Mr. Roosevelt entered Jersey City. Streets through which he passed were packed solidly with cheering, flag-waving crowds. Several groups along the route held big banners proclaiming, “The Lewis endorsement is the Kiss of Death,” referring to the endorsement of Mr. Willkie by Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Roosevelt paused in Jersey City at the A. Harry Moore School for Crippled Children. He told the children he himself “knows what it feels like” to have such an affliction.