The Pittsburgh Press (October 25, 1940)
WILLKIE DARES PRESIDENT ON ‘FOURTH TERM’ VIEWS
By William H. Lawrence, United Press Staff Writer
Aboard Willkie Train, En Route to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Oct. 25 –
Wendell L. Willkie demanded today that President Roosevelt tell the nation his views on fourth and fifth presidential terms “because there is no argument that can be advanced for a man serving three terms that I cannot make more persuasive for a fourth term and still more persuasive for an fifth term.”
The Republican presidential nominee told a Jamestown, N.Y. crowd, estimated at 12,000 persons, that if one accepted the argument that experience in office was qualification for a third term, then 12 or 16 years n office would make a President even more qualified.
Mr. Willkie stopped at Jamestown while ne route to Wilkes-Barre, where tonight he will deliver a formal speech.
After the Wilkes-Barre speech, Mr. Willkie plans a radio “chat” with the voters. The “chat” will be broadcast at 10:30 p.m. by Stations KDKA and WJAS.
Mr. Willkie concentrated his extemporaneous remarks from the rear platform of his campaign train on the reasons why Mr. Roosevelt sought a third term. He said that if the President assumed to seek re-election because of the critical international situation he (Willkie) wondered why Mr. Roosevelt did not prefer Secretary of State Cordell Hull as the Democratic nominee.
Mr. Willkie asked:
If the President desired some candidate sympathetic to social legislation, why didn’t he permit the nomination of your fellow townsman, Bob Jackson?
Jamestown is the home of Attorney General Robert H. Jackson.
If experience is the test, he continued, why did Mr. Roosevelt fail to support the candidacy of James A. Farley, former Postmaster General and veteran politician.
'Wanted Job Himself
Mr. Willkie concluded:
He wanted the job himself.
The Republican nominee said that Mr. Roosevelt had claimed to have seen the war looming. He asked the crowd whether the President had told Congress that war was coming and demanded appropriation of sufficient funds to build an adequate defense, Some in the crowd answered that Mr. Roosevelt had not discussed the situation with Congress.
Why, he told Congress to go home declaring, “I can handle the international situation.”
Yet, if Congress had not stayed in session there wouldn’t be a dollar appropriated for defense.
Wants 100 Billion Income
Of domestic questions, Mr. Willkie said he wanted to bring about a United States with an income of more than $100 billion. He said there was no issue about social security, collective bargaining, wage-hour legislation or relief, “except that I want to preserve these social gains by making the government solvent.” These gains would be wiped out, he said, if the nation “goes down the road of bankruptcy.”
When Mr. Willkie had completed his remarks, his Campaign Special pulled out to continue the swing through upper New York state and Pennsylvania, the two richest electoral prizes which have 83 of the 266 electoral votes necessary for election.
Earlier, his campaign aides had announced that Mr. Willkie would debate the President – not from the same platform as Mr. Willkie would prefer – but by radio, 24 to 48 hours after Mr. Roosevelt delivers each of his four scheduled political speeches.
“Wendell L. Willkie, Republican presidential candidate, announced this morning that he will discuss each of President Roosevelt’s ‘political speeches’ within 48 hours and probably within 24 hours, depending upon the availability of suitable radio time,” said the formal announcement handed to reporters aboard the Willkie special train as it headed out of Ohio in top New York for today’s campaigning.
Mr. Roosevelt speaks Monday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Friday night, November 1, he speaks at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn and November 2 in Cleveland’s Public Auditorium. Mr. Roosevelt also speaks on Election Eve, November 4, from Hyde Park, but a reply would be unlikely unless Mr. Willkie decides to make an unusual Election Day appeal.
In Anthracite District
Mr. Willkie began his replies to Mr. Roosevelt at Harbor Creek, Pa. yesterday, answering the President’s Philadelphia speech.
His train takes him to five industrial cities in New York and Pennsylvania today. He will speak in Elmira and Binghamton this afternoon, and in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., both anthracite towns, this evening.
His Wilkes-Barre formal speech, which will not be broadcast nationally, is scheduled for 9 p.m., just as the coal miners’ leader, President John L. Lewis of the United Mines Workers of America (CIO), goes on the air over all three major networks to announce his choice for President. It is believed that Mr. Lewis will denounce Mr. Roosevelt and back Mr. Willkie.
Mr. Willkie will return to his train after the Wilkes-Barre speech for a “chat” with the voters from his private car from 10:30 to 10:45 p.m.
Pledges Industrial Harmony
The Republican nominee returned to his old hometown of Akron, Ohio last night to pledge that he would make America “a land where there is no wrong side of the railroad tracks” and to promise to “put an end to this era of bad feeling” between labor and management so that workers and employers together can bring about “a growing economy.”
Collective bargaining as conceived by the New Deal is not true collective bargaining. The New Deal concept is reactionary concept.
The true purpose of collective bargaining is to achieve a co-ordination of effort by the American people and co-operation between them.
Other democracies have failed simply because their leaders despaired of solving problems by the voluntary co-ordination and co-operation of their people. The defeatism of their leaders resulted in abject surrender to Fascism.
Let us not, by perpetuating the New Deal in office, run the risk that our democracy shall likewise fail. Let us unite to make effective our democratic life.
Addresses Three Audiences
He spoke to three Akron audiences, and delivering his prepared speech on labor to a crowd of more than 6,000 at the Goodyear Hall, he chatted informally with crowds of several thousand at the Akron armory and at the Firestone Club.
He recounted his early life in Akron where he practiced law for 11 years after the World War and told how he learned his best financial lesson.
He said he made $30,000 “speculating” in real estate, borrowed another $30,000 and followed the advice of a friend and bought Firestone stock, then at $190 a share, which the friend said would go to $500. It didn’t, Mr. Willkie said, and he wound up with a $12,000 debt, which forced him to put a chattel mortgage on his furniture, rent the lower floor of hid house, and apply himself to the law to pay off the indebtedness.