Reading Eagle (October 3, 1940)
NATION FACES BANKRUPTCY, SAYS WILLKIE
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No Social Security Will Be Paid If New Deal Is Elected, He Asserts
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SPEAKS IN OHIO
G.O.P. Candidate Starts Tour of Pennsylvania; Greeted by James
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Aboard Willkie Train En Route to Pittsburgh, Oct. 3 (AP) –
Wendell L. Willkie asserted today on a campaign tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania steel centers that if the Roosevelt administration is reelected,
No social security will ever be paid because this nation will go bankrupt.
“Remember this statement ten years from now if you make the mistake of re-electing the present administration,” he solemnly told an audience in Youngstown, where he toured by auto through a street throng, which threw balloons and confetti around his car.
The Republican presidential nominee, who charged in Cleveland last night that President Roosevelt’s administration was playing “politics with preparedness,” said in the Youngstown public square that a party trying to divide American citizens betrays the interests of the United States.
Assails Administration
Willkie said:
Day after day, week after week, the men holding the highest positions in the New Deal party have by insinuation and innuendo sought to divide the people into classes.
Willkie declared that he sought to close the mind of no man and added:
When any man closes his mind to hearing discussion, that man is no longer an American citizen. He merely becomes a tool of somebody else.
Speaking in a brisk breeze under a foggy sky, the nominee said he wanted “to stimulate domestic economy so that this great city can move forward again instead of remaining static.”
Saying he was speaking “as an American citizen,” the nominee declared that the country now is “surrounded on all sides by hostile belligerent nations.”
In Danger ‘From Within’
He added that the country was in danger too “from within” and that thus a strong domestic economy should be coupled with a powerful military defense.
Gov. Arthur H. James of Pennsylvania was among those with Willkie on the punting-draped platform as the Willkie train entered Pennsylvania.
While cheering men and women who filled the 28,000 seats of Cleveland’s public auditorium waved a multitude of small American flags, Willkie declared last night:
I say that we are now exposed to the aggressors because of the political theories and the political ambitions of a few men. We are not prepared and we are not getting prepared.
The Republican presidential nominee, interrupted time after time by applause, described the defense job as “appalling in magnitude” and offered this program in event of his election:
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Aid to Great Britain “even if it means the sacrifice of some speed in building up our own air fleet;”
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Coordination of American preparedness with that of Canada;
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Selection of the “most experienced and the ablest men” for defense posts, using the Army and Navy plans and limiting the newcomers’ authority to the term of the emergency;
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Revision of the tax system and other steps “to remove every possible obstacle that stands in the way of new investment;”
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Economic cooperation with Latin America, “giving these neighbors every incentive to rid themselves of the German fifth column.”
Auditoriums Crowded
Willkie spoke from a low platform between the auditorium’s two big halls, both of which were crowded to capacity. His arrival set off a demonstration that finally was quieted by Rep. George Bender (R-OH) because it was time for a national radio broadcast of the speech.
“The people of America do not want war,” Willkie said almost at the outset and the audience waved its flags and cheered.
Neither, the candidate added, do the people want “any more international incidents (…) dramatic gestures (…) swashbuckling words.”
Until I had built up the strength of America, I would refrain from inviting aggressive pacts against the American people.
‘Unpleasant Facts’
After describing the German-Italian-Japanese Pact as “aimed at the United States,” as he did in earlier talks yesterday, Willkie declared that a survey of American military equipment shows “unpleasant facts.”
It will take seven years to acquire a two-ocean navy, he said, and six years to build a second set of Panama Canal locks. The largest completely-equipped army that could be put into the field today is 75,000, he continued, asserting that “all but a few of our airplanes are obsolete.”
Willkie’s speech followed a dinner-time parade through the Cleveland business district, where crowds jammed the streets, threw confetti and shouted greetings.
At noon, the nominee had driven through industrial and business sections of Toledo, Ohio, getting mixed boos and cheers in the former and applause in the latter.
In Western Pennsylvania
Talks at Youngstown, Ohio and New Castle, Pa., were on his program this morning. A four-hour tour of Pittsburgh’s industrial area was scheduled for the afternoon, followed by a labor speech tonight at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.
Willkie took a few minutes from his campaign duties yesterday to telegraph school officials at Pontiac, Mich., asking a modified punishment for a boy expelled after an egg was thrown into the candidate’s car there Tuesday.
Willkie said today the hope of American industry is in a “rising standard of living and not a static society.”
The Roosevelt Administration, he declared at Niles, Ohio, has attempted to represent itself as the friend of the working man.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” added the Republican presidential nominee to a crowd which stood on a bridge above his train.
Willkie, pausing only briefly at Niles, asked local Republicans to place a wreath for him on a memorial to former President William McKinley, who was born and is buried there.