Reading Eagle (November 4, 1940)
THOMAS ENDS HIS CAMPAIGN
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Socialist and Communist Candidates Appeal For ‘Peace’ Vote
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New York, Nov. 4 (UP) –
Norman Thomas, Socialist, and Earl Browder, Communist, wound up their campaigns for the presidency today with appeals for the “peace” vote.
Both charged that the country would be in danger of war with either President Roosevelt or Wendell Willkie in the White House. Each said that a vote for this minority party would serve as pressure against war upon the next administration.
Thomas addressed 2,000 persons in the final speech of his fourth consecutive presidential campaign Sunday evening. He said that "there is a practically even division between those who think we must be saved from Roosevelt. The mathematics of the case alone should lead those tortured souls to vote the Socialistic ticket rather than to cancel each other out.
He said while he held no brief for Communism he was ashamed “for my country” that Mr. Roosevelt had made “political capital” out of Attorney General Robert H. Jackson’s order for the deportation of Mrs. Browder. He pointed out that Mr. Roosevelt’s Brooklyn speech, denouncing the “unholy alliance” between radicals and reactionaries, was made on the day after Jackson’s order.
Browder’s Name Barred
Browder, whose name has been barred from the ballot in New York and several other states and who has been forbidden to leave the jurisdiction of the Federal Court here because of a conviction for passport fraud, made his final campaign speech to 20,000 persons at Madison Square Garden last night.
He criticized Mr. Roosevelt’s reference in his Brooklyn speech to the Republican advertisement in the newspaper The Daily Worker. “The party is no longer the official organ of the Communist Party” and it has the right to “accept advertising as it saw fit,” Browder said. The paper recently was transferred to non-party ownership.
Browder said Mr. Roosevelt was “angry” because “Boss Flynn blundered in trying to steal the Communist vote for him.”
Mr. Browder said:
We Communists are not agents of Stalin. We are, however, emulators of Stalin. The achievements which Stalin has led in gaining for the Soviet Union we would strive to gain for the United States and its people. The Communist Party would save America from catastrophe by emulating the policy of Stalin.