The Pittsburgh Press (October 27, 1940)
WILLKIE TELLS NEW YORKERS HE CAN UNITE THE NATION
By Joseph L. Meyer, United Press Staff Writer
New York, Oct. 26 –
Wendell L. Willkie said tonight that he wanted to substitute for the New Deal “Doctrine of divide and rule,” the other “doctrine of unite and serve.”
Returning briefly to his home town to bid for the millions of votes which may determine which presidential candidate gets New York State’s 47 electoral votes, the Republican nominee declared:
Without any regard for myself personally, but because of the crusade I lead, I stand before you tonight as the only candidate for President in 1940 who can unite all the elements of American life in one common purpose.
Mr. Willkie, who earlier has predicted his election November 5 after a long distance telephone talk with his running mate, Senator Charles L. McNary, scheduled six speeches for New York City in one afternoon and evening before returning to his special campaign train and departing for Illinois at midnight. Between speeches he attended part of the Fordham-St. Mary football game at the Polo Grounds.
Charging that President Roosevelt and the New Deal had set the various elements of American society to warring against each other, Mr. Willkie in a speech at Jamaica High School in Queens County asserted:
The political doctrine of the New Deal is an old doctrine – the doctrine of divide and rule – Our doctrine id the doctrine of unite and serve.
He promised, if elected, to pick for his administration “the ablest men that can be found,” men who “understand production.”
Mr. Willkie promised to build American defense but added the further promise that “we shall centralize authority and responsibility for this program so long – and only so long – as this defense emergency lasts.”
In this connection he cautioned:
The American people will pay for their defense program with taxes and debts and their efforts. It is a burden that we must bear – a false prosperity, not a real and enduring prosperity.
Cities Increase in Strikes
Declaring that the New Deal “does not understand the issues” and has never “acknowledged the great problems that now confront America,” Mr. Willkie made the charge that:
Under the New Deal we have set aside a whole group of citizens whom we call the unemployed,. We have shut them out from our working lives and from the fullness of their own lives.
Labor and employers have been at strife…in the seven years of the New Deal there were 2,552 strikes each year. This is an increase of over 200%.
Everywhere in this land groups have formed to promote their own interests – at the expense, if necessary, of any other group. Even our states, which created our national government to promote free trade among themselves, are today erecting barriers that amount to tariffs.
Sees Hatred Growing
Surely he is blind who has not observed in recent years the formation of groups with special hatreds – racial, religious and political hatreds.
Mr. Willkie accused the New Deal of keeping on the payroll in Washington “men who do not believe in our form of government – Communists and near-Communists and neo-Communists and pseudo-Communists – and their dupes.”
It also, he said, has “encouraged labor to fight capital and encouraged capital to attack labor” and has even “encouraged labor to fight labor.”
Under the New Deal, Mr. Willkie said, the farm problem has been treated separately “as if farmers were off somewhere on an island by themselves” and youth has been “divided from us” by the doctrine that “America can no longer grow.”
'Can’t Live on Armaments
For his cabinet, if elected, Mr. Willkie promised to pick men “who know labor’s needs,” “men who know industry,” men who “are real farmers,” men who “know finance” and men “who are familiar with our political problems.”
If we are to save America, we must promote our other industries at the same time (that defense is building). We cannot live on armaments alone. We must establish a firm foundation of production in every branch of industry.
His voice strained but his spirits high, Mr. Willkie told several thousand persons who greeted him on his arrival at Pennsylvania Station that “we’re on the march – we’re going to win.”
Trade Hope of World
At the World’s Fair court of peace, amidst the pavilions of fallen France, Belgium, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Norway, Mr. Willkie told a throng of thousands:
I call upon you people here to join in the great crusade to restore America to industrial strength, to industrial vibrancy, and vitally, so that all of our people may find work and fulfill the great American dream.
Any leadership that does not offer to America the hope of development of the things represented here is a false leadership. Trade – Trade is the hope of the world. Trade carries with it the seeds of peace.
The America of tomorrow must not measure its strength in terms of armies, navies and air forces – it must measure its strength in terms of how it spreads throughout the world trade, peace and liberty.
Europe is falling today because we failed to spread these things through the world.
The new leadership must bring about a restoration of trade, peace and liberty to all the world.
Earlier in the day, before entering New York State, Mr. Willkie had stopped at Bethlehem, Pa., a stronghold of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, to tell a crowd of 6,000 persons:
I stand for unity in America. If you look across the sea at the democracies which have fallen, you will discover they failed because they were engaging in war among themselves and were crushed like an eggshell when a superior power came along.