Address by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey
November 1, 1944, 9:30 p.m. EWT
Broadcast from Boston, Massachusetts
Broadcast audio:
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1531945/m1/embed/
Governor and soon-to-be Senator Saltonstall, Speaker Martin, Governor Cahill, Lieutenant Governor […], my fellow Americans:
Once in every four years, late in October, my opponent announces that he believes in the enterprise system. Then for the remaining three years and 11 months, he wages war against the American enterprise system day in and day out. That is why there were still 10 million Americans unemployed in the spring of 1940. That’s why we had to have a war to get jobs. That’s why it’s time for a change.
Because of our magnificent military command, the heroism of our men in uniform, and the efforts of our war workers at home, victory is coming closer every day. And by installing a fresh and united administration in Washington, the day of total victory and the return of our fighting men will be speeded up greatly. Then, what do we face?
As I pointed out last night, if we go into the post-war period with nothing better than the New Deal has offered us in the past, we can expect no better results than we had under its peacetime years before.
But if we go in with a new and vigorous administration, pledged to a program of constructive action, we can and will succeed. With a government in which the President works in harmony and mutual respect with the Congress, we can unite America for effective world leadership in a world organization for lasting peace.
Now, one reason why the New Deal cannot provide jobs and opportunity after this war – one reason why it cannot give our country the unity we need – is because of the kind of people to whom it would owe its election. The New Deal is not a party. It is a collection of parties, all of which hate each other.
In my own state of New York, they hate each other so much that they won’t vote except under their own emblems, and Franklin Roosevelt is running on three different party lines in the state of New York.
No, the New Deal has become a collection of warring factions, tied together only by a consuming passion for power. That’s why my opponent is compelled to solicit the support of bigoted reactionaries on the one hand and of Communists on the other.
For 12 years, the great Democratic Party has been under the crushing dominance of one man. As a result, it is weakened and divided. It is vulnerable to capture by forces hostile to every tradition for which that party has stood. Beyond that, Mr. Roosevelt, in his overwhelming desire to perpetuate himself in office for 16 years, has put his party on the auction block – for sale to the highest bidder.
Who will buy it? Will it be the notorious 1000 Club which sponsored and paid for Mr. Roosevelt’s speech last Saturday? This is the organization, formed at the President’s own suggestion, which offers “special privilege,” a voice “in the formulation of administration policies” and a chance to visit with the President on Thursday afternoons, all for $1,000.
Will these purchasers of “special privilege” be the successful bidders for control of the captive Democratic Party? I doubt it. The 1000 Club members are being taken in. They will not get the “special privilege” or the influence they were offered. There are higher bidders in the market.
Those higher bidders are the Political Action Committee of Sidney Hillman and the Communists of Earl Browder.
In this campaign, the New Dealers attempt to smother discussion of their Communist alliance. They smear any discussion of this major question of our day. They insinuate that Americans must love Communism or offend our fighting ally, Russia. But not even the gullible believe that. In Russia, a Communist is a man who supports his government. In America, a Communist is a man who supports the fourth term so our form of government may more easily be changed.
No, the question of Communism in our country has nothing to do with our allies any more than it has to do with where a man was born. Every American – every one of us – traces his ancestry to some foreign land. As a nation, we owe our genius, our culture, our traditions, to nations all over the world. The keystone of the arch of American freedom is our opposition to intolerance. The foundation of our American system of civil liberties is an equal respect and an equal opportunity for men of every race, creed and color and regardless of national origin. The mighty bulwark of these liberties is the Constitution of the United States.
These are the things that have given America leadership in the world. These above all others are what America must continue to stand for if she is to give leadership to the world again.
The proof that Communism has nothing to do with national origin is the fact that Earl Browder, the avowed leader of Communism in America, was born in the United States.
Now, who is Browder? He is the man who was convicted of draft dodging in the last war. He was again convicted – this time of perjury – and pardoned by Franklin Roosevelt in time to organize the fourth-term campaign. Browder stands for everything that would destroy America.
Everyone knows that Communism is for state ownership, of all property, including your house, your farm and the factory, the shop, the office in which you work. It stands for absolute dictatorship, the abolition of civil rights and total political and economic bigotry. It stands for something else.
A few years ago, Mr. Browder wrote a book called What Is Communism? He said: “We stand without any reservations for education that will root out beliefs in the supernatural…” He concluded: “…We Communists do not distinguish between good and bad religions, because we think they are all bad for the masses.”
Now, Mr. Roosevelt in his recent speech from the White House very softly disavowed Communism. But the very next day, at a meeting right here in Boston, Earl Browder made a speech for Mr. Roosevelt and a collection was taken up for the fourth term. And not a voice in the New Deal was raised in protest. So much for Earl Browder.
Now, who is Sidney Hillman? He has held one official post after another in the New Deal, in addition to important duties as the head of a labor union. When the fourth term campaign came along, he went to New York to concentrate on politics.
There, in the primaries this year, he organized a movement to take over the previously respectable American Labor Party. And he succeeded with the help of Earl Browder’s Communists.
What is the American Labor Party today – the party whose nomination Mr. Roosevelt has accepted and whose votes he hopes will give him 16 years in the White House?
Listen to the words of another set of my opponent’s violent supporters. David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, was one of the founders of the American Labor Party.
Here is what he said last spring about that party as of today: “I regard the former American Labor Party as a Communist labor party… Mr. Hillman can act as a ‘front for the Communists; I never did and never will.” So said David Dubinsky.
The New York Post, formerly the mouthpiece of the labor party, says editorially that Mr. Hillman “fronts for the Communists by serving as chairman for their American Labor Party.”
The last candidate of that party for governor, who polled 400,000 votes in 1942, is another violent supporter of my opponent. But it was he who said last spring that he intended “leaving Mr. Hillman and his fellow travelers to stew in their own juice.”
“Political action by coercion is repugnant to our form of government…,” he also said, “Liberals throughout the country should beware of dealing with Mr. Hillman for he no longer comes to them with clean hands. He has set himself up as a new and dangerous type of political boss.”
Just four months after that statement was issued my opponent ordered the Democratic National Chairman to “Clear everything with Sidney.” The prophecy has come true. Sidney Hillman has become the biggest political boss in the United States, and in the words of David Dubinsky, Sidney Hillman is a “front for the Communists.”
In addition to being chairman of the Communist-controlled American Labor Party of New York, Mr. Hillman is also chairman of the Political Action Committee. This is the committee which summarized the degradation of New Deal politics in a pamphlet, two million copies of which were sent out on behalf of Mr. Roosevelt, That pamphlet, put out by Sidney Hillman’s PAC, began with the words: “Politics is the science of how who gets what, and why.”
Under that cynical motto, Mr. Hillman today operates the National Citizens Political Action Committee with his lieutenants who have taken leave of absence from high federal posts. He stalks the country squeezing dollars for the fourth-term campaign out of the working men and women of America, under threat that if they do not give the dollar, they will lose their jobs.
But the working men and women of America are rising in protest all over the nation. Letters have been pouring in to me denouncing this Roosevelt poll tax imposed by Sidney Hillman. As one of them said:
They can force my dollar out of me by threatening to take my job away, but they can’t force my vote because it is secret. I am going to vote Republican to save my own freedom.
It is not just his freedom that man will save when he goes into the secrecy of the voting booth. He and millions like him will exercise their precious right of a secret ballot and save the freedom of the American people.
Now, American liberty means that every man has a right to believe and vote as he will, even to vote Communist. But liberty involves a corresponding duty to defend our country from what we consider evil. I have never hesitated to expose and denounce the cynical alliance of the New Deal and the corrupt big city machines which depend on the most criminal and degraded elements in our big cities. And I do not propose to be silent when the New Deal, through the President’s political lieutenant, Sidney Hillman, strikes up a cynical alliance with Earl Browder’s Communists.
For a long time, it has been the fashion to brush aside the Communists as of little importance because of their small numbers. The Communists themselves have cunningly played upon our respect for the very civil liberties which they themselves hold in such contempt. Yet the fact is that the Communists wield an influence far out of proportion to their numbers.
They are not themselves a political party. They are a fanatical, secret conspiracy of well disciplined, highly trained zealots who work at their purposes every hour of the day. Falsehood, deception and smear propaganda are part of their technique. They are adept at working behind the false front of those they contemptuously describe as “innocents.”
They love to fish in troubled waters. They placed their members at strategic points where they can seize control of large organizations. Millions of Americans have seen this happen time after time. Liberal, intelligent organizations suddenly turn out to be Communist propaganda fronts.
Similarly, millions of workers have seen their union organizations captured by compact minorities who attend all the meetings, vote in a bloc and thereby seize the union machinery, Once in control they cannot be dislodged. It was by just such tactics last spring that the Communists were able to seize possession of the American Labor Party of New York which in 1940 provided the balance of power that carried New York for Mr. Roosevelt.
Now, by the self-same tried and familiar tactics and with the aid of Sidney Hillman, the Communists are seizing control of the New Deal, through which they aim to control the government of the United States. If they should succeed, the fundamental freedoms of every American would stand in gravest jeopardy.
Throughout the ages, man’s greatest struggle is the struggle to be free – free to worship God; to have a family and family life; free to educate his children; to live in economic security in his own home: to be able to have work of his own choosing, and to have a government which is a servant, not a master.
Our nation was founded by men and women who came here to achieve those things. They built their institutions in a deeply religious pattern, and by the Bill of Rights they bound their government to respect freedom of religion and the dignity of the individual. Because of what they did, we call America “The land of the free and the home of the brave.”
But we cannot take our freedom for granted, nor can we afford to stop being brave. There always have been and always will be, those who seek to destroy our freedoms.
Nazism and Fascism are dying in the world. But the totalitarian idea is very much alive and we must not slip to its other form – Communism. All of these concepts are enemies of freedom and we must equally reject all of them. They would make the state supreme, give political power only to those who deny the supremacy of God and use that power to force all men to become cogs in a great materialistic machine.
Under these systems, the individual cannot worship, vote, or think as he would, or conduct his life as his own. Slavish obedience to the will of the state is the first great command and the price of nonconformity is liquidation, either through violence or slow economic strangulation.
Today that pagan philosophy is sweeping through much of the world. As we look abroad, we see that in country after country, its advocates are making a bid for power. We would be fools not to look for that same danger here. We have not far to look. Even Mr. Roosevelt has felt he must say that he does not welcome the support of any person or group committed to Communism. That is as may be. The important facts are, first, that Mr. Roosevelt has so weakened and corrupted the Democratic Party that it is readily subject to capture, and, second, that the forces of Communism are, in fact, now engaged in capturing it.
That danger can be surely met only by ending a situation which leaves vast power in tired hands. The Republican Party is not perfect. But one thing at least is sure: Neither the Communist group which Mr. Roosevelt professes to repudiate nor any other totalitarian group is making an effort to capture the Republican Party. They know how useless it would be.
The Republican Party is young and vigorous. In 26 states, Republican governors are bringing alert, progressive, competent and honest administration to the affairs of two-thirds of the American people. First in local governments, then in the states, the people have turned to our party. Now it is prepared to assume the responsibilities of national government. It is rich in able leaders steeped in the American tradition. It is close to the people. It wants to continue the American way of life and to perpetuate American institutions founded upon the God-given right of individuals to be free.
Millions of Americans are voting Republican this year to save their own party and their country.
Under a Republican administration, there will be no danger that the power of government will slip through tired fingers into hands which would destroy that free America for which our sons are fighting and dying.
I have a letter from an American soldier fighting in the far Pacific. He says:
When we come home there will be flags waving and people will exult in victory and cheer, But the greater effort will only begin then. We here are only securing the bridgehead to freedom. Will our generation forget that fact? If we do, this victory will be only the beginning of defeat for us and our children.
Let us tonight resolve that we will be equal to the duty that we owe that soldier and his comrades. Let us at home seize and hold that bridgehead to freedom. Let us install on January 20 a government which, under God, will dedicate its purpose to the preservation of the individual dignity and freedom of every American.