The Pittsburgh Press (November 3, 1944)
Bricker wants government out of business
Says Roosevelt has dodged this question
Wilmington, Delaware (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker brought his campaign into Delaware today after accusing President Roosevelt of silence on what he termed “the big question” of the day. “When is Washington going to get out of business?”
The GOP vice-presidential nominee came here with Senator C. Douglass Buck (R-DE); Governor Walter W. Bacon and Rep. Earle D. Wiley (R-DE) to address a rally at Rodney Square.
Governor Bricker accused the New Deal today of resorting to “devices of sordid desperation” in its efforts to “perpetuate” itself in power for 16 years.
He again read the letter which he said Albert A. Horstman, Ohio Democratic National Committeeman, addressed to civil service employees in his state asking for financial support of the Democratic campaign.
Charges corruption
It is not enough, Bricker said, for “Sidney Hillman and his Political Action Committee” to “take over” the New Deal. It is not enough, he added, for Mr. Hillman to form an “alliance with Earl Browder and the Communists” to “to make up for the dwindling support of the New Deal.”
He said:
Now, on top of all these reprehensible practices, the New Deal is resorting to downright political corruption of the most obvious sort in order to get votes.
There you have it, the New Deal expects not only to receive but demands, in cold and brazen terms, financial tribute for its favors. No administration ever stooped lower in American history.
The candidate’s party left for Philadelphia and a series of conferences. A major speech will be made in the Metropolitan Opera House at 9:00 p.m. EWT. Between his afternoon conferences and his night speech, he will cross the Delaware River to speak in the Walt Whitman Hotel at Camden, New Jersey, at 8:00 p.m.
Attacks Roosevelt
Governor Bricker’s attack on Mr. Roosevelt for failing to say when the government would release business to private industry was made last night in Paterson, New Jersey.
Governor Bricker said in his broadcast speech:
Today, the vast network of government-owned war plant constitutes the nucleus of state socialism. The big question is: When is Washington going to get out of business after the war? Mr. Roosevelt said nothing about that in Chicago.
The President, he added, was “simply employing a familiar campaign device” through his “expression of goodwill toward business.”
Governor Bricker quoted Mr. Roosevelt as saying at Chicago that he saw “an expansion of our peacetime productive capacity,” and recalled that in 1932, the President had said that “our industrial plant is built… our last frontier has long since been reached…”
Admission of wrong
The Republican candidate said:
His present statement is at best an admission that the New Deal economic policies during these last 12 years have been dead wrong.
Governor Bricker termed “news” Mr. Roosevelt’s Saturday statement that his administration “had been mindful from its earliest days… of the problems of small business.”
He said:
The truth is that for 12 years, small business has been stunted in growth by arbitrary and restrictive New Deal policies.
The Republican Party under Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Mr. Bricker said, “presents a practical and constructive program to strengthen business and provide jobs.”