Election 1944: Democratic National Convention

[NormanStewart]

Roosevelt speech broadcast from West Coast naval base

President crosses nation leisurely in special train; stops at Hyde Park and Chicago
By Merriman Smith, United Press staff writer

With President Roosevelt at a Pacific Coast naval base –
President Franklin D. Roosevelt began his formal fourth-term campaign here last night in the heavily armed might of this Navy base in a manner that underlined his plans to seek reelection as a wartime Commander-in-Chief.

Mr. Roosevelt came cross-country by train, traveling in strictest wartime secrecy and broadcasting his acceptance speech to the Chicago Democratic Convention from his special train. He was surrounded only by his top military and naval commanders and, aside from a special train, his leisurely transcontinental trip had none of the usual campaign year trappings.

Wartime security regulations prevent exact description of the President’s whereabouts, but he explained to the convention and a nationwide radio audience in his address that he was at a West Coast naval base “in the performance of my duties under the Constitution.”

His broadcast was made tonight from a spacious railroad car. The President’s microphones were placed on a small table at one end of the car. When he finished his speech, he ran through the highlight passages again for newsreel cameramen.

Because of the secrecy surrounding the trip cross-country, there were no crowds at waystations except a few railroad people.

Members of the President’s party included his wife, Adm. William D. Leahy (chief of staff to the Commander-in-Chief), VAdm. Ross T. McIntire (Mr. Roosevelt’s physician and Surgeon General of the Navy), Maj, Gen, Edwin M. Warson (secretary and military aide), RAdm. Wilson Brown (naval aide), Judge Samuel I. Rosenman (counsel to the President), Elmer Davis (Director of the Office of War Information), and Miss Grace Tully (the President’s private secretary).

White House correspondents for the United Press, Associated Press and International News Service were also with the President.

Fala is a giveaway

As in previous secret wartime trips, Fala, the President’s Scottie, was a dead giveaway. People staring at the train during service stops got the idea quickly when they saw Fala trotting up and down beside the train. At the stop in Chicago, a railroad yard worker said to a member of the President’s party, “If I’m getting nosey, tell me, but isn’t that Fala?” The word spread quickly that Mr. Roosevelt was aboard.

As an added precaution against premature disclosure of the President’s whereabouts, the name of the railroad company was painted off the cars. This is because the train consisted of Baltimore & Ohio equipment and it would have seemed strange to see a B&O train on the West Coast.

It required 30 tons of ice every 24 hours to operate the air conditioning system on the presidential train.

Stops at Chicago

Mr. Roosevelt left Washington July 13 and swung through 16 states at a loafing 30-mile clip, resting and handling a lot of paperwork, including the composition of his address. During the trip he made two major stops – one on July 14 for nine hours at his Hyde Park, New York, home and again in Chicago on July 15 for a few minutes when he saw Robert E. Hannegan, National Democratic Chairman.

While traveling, Mr. Roosevelt remained in constant touch with Washington and probably Mr. Hannegan, too. Special telephones were put aboard his car several times a day.

The President’s activity at this base, aside from working on his speech, included few official engagements. One was inspection of training activities in the vicinity. Mr. Roosevelt arrived here before dawn on July 19 and a cordon of sentries quickly took up positions around the train. Otherwise, there was little to indicate his presence.

[NormanStewart]

Army works out ballot details

Rome, Italy (UP) –
U.S. Army authorities have completed preparation for conducting a presidential election among the soldiers in all commands of the North African and Italian theaters of war.

Three hundred voting officers have been appointed and by Tuesday, it was said, there will be 500 commissioned officers prepared to handle the many complications of conducting an election more than 3,000 miles from home. Each officer will receive two days of special training in the soldier ballot and voting procedure.

Army authorities are maintaining the strictest of political neutrality in making certain that every soldier learns how to properly cast his ballot. In this connection, it was announce, “the first big job will be the distribution of postcard applications for state ballots during the first week of August.”

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Candidate Roosevelt accepts

Mr. Roosevelt can be either a wartime President and Commander-in-Chief above partisanship, or he can misuse that position as a candidate for a fourth term. Last night, he took advantage of his office to launch a political campaign from a naval base. For months the Republicans had predicted that he would do something like that. We did not believe he would be so crude. We were wrong.

Not that there was anything new in his formal acceptance speech. He used the same I-am-above-politics pose in his advance acceptance from the White House earlier this month, the same Commander-in-Chief excuse for his candidacy. But that he would time a military inspection trop for a partisan appeal to his party convention did not seem quite up to his protestations as expressed in his letter to Chairman Hannegan.

“I shall not campaign in the usual sense for the office,” he said last night. “In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting. In these days of global warfare, I shall not be able to find the time.”

But he found time to route his military train through Chicago for a secret conference with his political chief of staff. He found time to dictate the party platform. He found time from his naval base inspection to run the partisan convention by phone through his party henchmen. He found time to make a partisan campaign speech.

Fortunately, the conduct of the war will not suffer too much. For our real military commanders are forbidden to be political candidates and do not run parties for personal power.

Of course, Mr. Roosevelt does not think he is being partisan. Granted the indispensable idea, the only partisanship is opposition to him. If you vote for him, you transcend party. As he said last night, “in the last three elections the people of the United States have transcended party affiliation.” Or as his spokesman, Convention Chairman Jackson, put it in warning against a Roosevelt defeat: “We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon.”

Certainly, that is not a “campaign in the usual sense.”

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Playing politics with war

If you hadn’t heard or read it, you could hardly believe it.

Senator Samuel D. Jackson, Democratic Convention Chairman, went the full limit to make a party issue of the war. Here are his exact words:

A change in national administration in time of war… is frightening to contemplate. It is dangerous to make… [It] might well prove to be the tragedy of this generation… Our people will not gamble with the lives of their sons…

But how many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tōjō? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Adolf Hitler? Frankly, could Goebbels himself do better to bolster Axis morale than the word that the American people had upset this administration… We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon!

There it is. If you dare vote against a fourth term, you “gamble with the lives” of our sons, you give aid to the enemy, you make the election “Hitler’s secret weapon.” Treason?

Isn’t that going just a little too far even for a spokesman of the indispensable Commander-in-Chief?

[NormanStewart]

Jackson calls change now ‘dangerous’

Says enemies of U.S. would profit by it

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Senator Samuel D. Jackson, Democratic nominee for Governor of Indiana, told the Democratic National Convention yesterday that a change in national administration in time of war was “frightening to contemplate” and that it was “dangerous to make.”

Mr. Jackson said the Republican Party, “to counteract the disadvantage of having such an unusually young and unpracticed candidate” (New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey), was attempting to make “an asset of a liability” by stressing Mr. Dewey’s youth against the “decadence” of the present administration.

Mr. Jackson said:

That last word “decadence” is an indecent slander, if intended for the President. Roosevelt is in full vigor and in the flower of his energy. He has more rugged vitality in him today than any two men the opposition has to offer.

The opposition offered weak and unwholesome pap to the American voters three campaigns in succession. The American voters would not take it from Hoover in 1932. They would not take it from Landon in 1936. They would not take it in 1940, and they will not take it in 1944.

‘To carry New York’

Mr. Jackson asserted that Mr. Dewey was selected as a nominee in the hope that the 47 New York State electoral votes would carry the Old Guard back to the White House.

“What a fantastically vain hope that is,” he declared. “But in that hope, they are willing to take the risk of his obvious inexperience…”

‘Wisdom is needed’

He said:

What the Presidency demands now, is not so much a bright young man, as a man of wisdom and experience with depth and breadth of vision.

America will win this war finally and completely, no matter who is elected President of the United States next November.

But how many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tōjō? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Adolf Hitler?

Frankly, could Goebbels himself do better to bolster Axis morale than the word that the American people had upset this administration – the administration that made it possible for the Russians to drive the Nazis back to the Prussian border?

We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon.

[NormanStewart]

Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller wins equal rights fight

Constitutional amendment battle won against Mrs. Roosevelt’s, Frances Perkins’ opposition
By Robert Taylor, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, sister of U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey and Democratic National Committeewoman for Pennsylvania, won a hard-fought victory in the drafting of the 1944 Democratic platform. She obtained the adoption by the Platform Committee and the ratification by the party convention late yesterday, of a plank advocating approval by Congress of a constitutional amendment on equal rights for women.

Her opposition included Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt (wife of the President), Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, half a dozen leading women’s organizations, and a sizable part of the Platform Committee itself, who preferred to duck the issue.

Mrs. Miller, however, had taken steps to see that she got a voice on the Platform Committee. The Pennsylvania delegation had designated Mrs. Miller and Senator Guffey as the state’s representatives on the committee.

Senator Guffey was busy handling details of Vice President Wallace’s campaign for renomination during most of the platform discussions, but Mrs. Miller sat in on committee discussions and also appeared as a witness before her own committee.

Mrs. Miller, active in political affairs for years, is a legislative chairman of the National Woman’s Party, chief proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, but said she appeared in her witness role as a national committee member.

The National Woman’s Party contends that, despite legal guarantees, women still don’t have equal rights under many state laws in matters regarding property, employment, jury service and marital affairs, and that the way to correct the condition is by constitutional amendment.

Opponents objected that the amendment would sweep away laws for the protection of women in industry. Mrs. Roosevelt sent a message saying that, until they were more highly unionized, it would be a hardship on women in industry. Secretary Perkins called the proposed amendment “drastic and ill-considered.”

Mrs. Miller, however, pointed out that the Republican Convention last month adopted an equal-rights-for-women plank, and although other committee members tried to develop an acceptable substitute, she stood her ground.

“This is the happiest day for me,” she said as the convention approved the platform with her plank in it, saying:

We favor legislation assuring equal pay for equal work, regardless of sex. We recommend to Congress the submission of a constitutional amendment on equal rights for women.

[NormanStewart]

Helen Gahagan accuses GOP of doubletalk

Says Democrats are conservative party

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Mrs. Helen Gahagan Douglas, national committeewoman from California, said last night in an address to the Democratic Convention that the Democratic Party is “the true conservative party” and the Republican leaders “are the dreamers.”

Mrs. Douglas, actress wife of movie actor Melvin Douglas, accused the Republicans of “doubletalk” and said the Democratic Party had conserved hope and ambition “in the hearts of our people.”

She said:

We have conserved the skills of their hands. We have husbanded our national resources. We have saved millions of homes and farms from foreclosure and conserved the family stake and democracy.

Conserve faith in government

We have rescued banks and trust companies, insured crops and people’s savings. We have built schools. We have checked the flooding rivers and turned them into power.

We have replanted the forest, re-fertilize the soil. Ours is the conservative party. We have conserved the people’s faith in a people’s government – a democracy.

‘GOP leaders are dreamers’

Mrs. Douglas said that because they are the conservative party, the Democrats reject “the hazy Republican dream” that the nation can get along “with its government dismantled, its housing programs destroyed, its wage and price controls thrown out the window.”

“The Republican leaders are the dreamers,” she said. “They have no contact with the people or with the realities of their wants and needs.”

Mrs. Douglas said the Republican program is a dream, “a nightmare of muddle and confusion.” She said there are not enough Democrats to elect a President, nor enough Republicans.

Best friend of GOP

She said:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been elected President for three successive terms – and each time the Republicans have helped put him into office.

The last three elections have shown that the Democratic Party has been the best friend the Republican rank-and-file voter has ever had: He knows it, and he has voted accordingly.

‘It’s doubletalk’

Criticizing the Republican presidential nominee, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, and the Republican platform, Mrs. Douglas said:

The Republican candidate has pledged himself to carry to Japan a defeat so crushing and complete that every last man among them will know that he has been beaten.

And at the same time, the Republican platform does not indicate by a single line – or a single word that there is any need for further sacrifice. That is doubletalk.

The Republican Party has pledged itself to reduce taxes to the normal expenditures of the government as soon as the war ends, and also has pledged itself to reduce the national debt. It has not explained how taxes and debts can be so reduced at the same time. That is doubletalk.

The Republican Party declares that it is the party of the Constitution, but its nominee declares that he will not participate in the active management of the war.

Argument called inept

This thoughtless and inept argument ignores the fact that our Founding Fathers carefully provided for civilian control of the military as the only possible safeguard of democratic life. The Constitution gave the people the right to elect a civilian Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

Yet the Republican nominee runs for the office of Commander-in-Chief on the solemn pledge that, if elected, he will not fulfill his duties. That is doubletalk.

[NormanStewart]

It’s no foreign war, Reynolds tells conclave

Correspondent replies to Clare Luce speech

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
War correspondent Quentin Reynolds told the Democratic National Convention last night that American servicemen have learned “this was no foreign war,” and on foreign soils have discovered “an outpost of America where there are no barriers.”

“They learned this was no foreign war when they first landed in England,” he said.

There, he said, when American men saw the scars of war on the House of Commons, which “has always been the symbol of free speech in Britain,” and Westminster Abbey, which “has been the symbol of the Christian way of life,” they knew that Hitler was waging war against “our ideals and our way of life.”

Answer to Mrs. Luce

Apparently referring to Rep. Clare Boothe Luce’s “G.I. Jim” speech at the Republican Convention, Mr. Reynolds said:

I do not propose to speak for your son abroad, and I never would commit the unholy sacrilege of speaking for his dead brother who has been killed in combat. No man – or woman – can speak for him. We can only accept his sacrifice humbly and not presume to speak for him with our unworthy tongues.

No barriers at fronts

Mr. Reynolds, who has toured many of the battlefronts, said American men overseas had found out one thing about war… “There are no barriers at the front.”

He said:

Kids here at home grow up surrounded by barriers… all man-made.

Neighborhood barriers, city barriers, state barriers, social barriers, racial barriers, political barriers, barriers of wealth. You climb over one barrier only to find another ahead of you.

Then you find yourself at the front, thousands of miles from home. And suddenly, perhaps for the first time in your life, you realize that here on American soil, as an outpost of America, where there are no barriers. This was always the dream you’d had of America, a dream that never before has come quite true.

There are no Democrats or Republicans at the front; there are no Italian-Americans or Polish-Americans; there are no New Yorkers or Californians or Texans or New Englanders… Only Americans… Only Americans purged of the artificial barriers we still make so much of here at home.

A ‘G.I.’ has the answer

Mr. Reynolds warned that the nation’s fighting men abroad are so proud of their country they would “hate to see it tarnished by the sad spectacle of fellow Americans indulging in the childish pastime of name calling.” He said the reaction of men in uniform to a “smear campaign” by either party would be unfavorable.

Aboard a troopship on the way into Salerno last September, Mr. Reynolds said, a soldier best expressed what Americans are fighting for when he said:

“Added all together, and it means we’re fighting for the right to bawl out the umpire.”

[NormanStewart]

GOP, Democratic platforms have great deal in common

Comparison shows that trend of times has put its mark on both parties’ policymakers
By Raymond Lahr, United Press staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
The Democratic Party hopes to win the 1944 campaign on its record of 12 years in power during war and peace and on a terse platform of 1,200 words set against a 4,000-word Republican declaration.

The party platform, adopted by the National Convention yesterday, began:

The Democratic Party stands on its record in peace and in war. To speed victory, establish and maintain peace, guarantee full employment and provide prosperity – this is its platform. We do not here detail scores of planks. We cite action.

That contrasted with this paragraph of the Republican platform:

Four more years of New Deal policy would centralize all power in the President, and would daily subject every act of every citizen to regulation by his henchmen; and this country could remain a Republic only in name.

Contain common pledges

The two platforms contain some common pledges, some divergent ones and some in sharp conflict. Here is a comparison of some of the planks.

Foreign policy

DEMOCRATIC: The party pledged “to join with the other United Nations and the establishment of an international organization based on the principle of sovereign equality of all peace-loving states… to make all necessary and effective agreements through which the nations would maintain adequate forces to meet the needs of preventing war and of making impossible the preparation for war and which would have such forces available for joint action when necessary. Such organization must be endowed with power to employ armed forces when necessary to prevent aggression and preserve peace.”

REPUBLICAN:

We favor responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to attain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world. Such organization should develop effective cooperative means to direct peace forces to prevent or repel military aggression.

Race problems

DEMOCRATIC:

We believe that racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution. Congress should exert its full constitutional powers to protect those rights.

REPUBLICAN: The party endorsed a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, anti-poll tax and anti-lynching legislation, and an inquiry into discrimination in the Armed Forces.

Agriculture

Both parties endorsed support prices and crop insurance. The Democrats promised “to foster the success of the small independent farmer” and “to aid the home ownership of the family-sized farm.” The Republicans endorsed measures “to make life more attractive” on the family farm. The Republicans condemned the Roosevelt administration for “confused, unreliable, impractical price and production” policy during the war and implicitly accused it of regimenting farmers.

Labor

DEMOCRATIC: The Democratic platform contained no specific plank on labor, but promised adequate compensation to demobilized war workers and enactment of additional legislation or the amendment or repeal of existing laws as experience indicated the need.

REPUBLICAN: The Republicans charged the administration with “selfish and partisan control” over government labor agencies, with perverting the National Labor Relations Act, emasculating the Labor Department and undermining collective bargaining. They “accepted the purposes” of the labor relations, wage-hour, Social Security and other laws for the protection of workers.

Miscellaneous

Both parties pledged to support submission of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women; equal pay to women for equal work; free access to world news; encouragement for risk capital; liberal benefits for war veterans; reduction in wartime taxes as soon as possible; encouragement for little business; expansion of foreign trade through reciprocal agreements (with the Republicans adding a proviso requiring approval by Congress); development of self-government in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and the opening of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration.

[NormanStewart]

Defiant Texas delegates assail ‘power politics’

‘Regulars,’ pushed around in convention, say CIO and Communists ousted them

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
“We ran into a buzzsaw of power politics,” members of the Texas delegation at the Democratic National Convention who walked out of the convention said today.

They made the comment in a statement addressed through Texas Democrats. A copy was sent to the Democratic National Committee. It was signed by the dissident members of the delegation who left the Chicago Stadium yesterday after the convention voted to split Texas’ votes between the “Regular” (anti-fourth-term) delegation and the rump delegation, which supported President Roosevelt.

Hot under the collar

The Texans said:

The bureaucrats, the CIO Political Action Committee, and a liberal sprinkling of Communists joined forces to tell Texas Democrats where they stand in national politics. The action of the Texas convention was thwarted by the Hillman, Tobin, and Browder followers who carried the ball behind the perfect interference of an army of bureaucrats.

The action of the Credentials Committee [which recommended splitting the state’s votes] was a deliberate slap at duly constituted authority. The trouble was the Regulars were not under the domination of the powerful elements that had control of the National Convention.

For this reason, it was necessary to discipline the Regulars and show Texas Democrats the consequence of disobedience to boss rule. That is exactly what the convention proceeded to do in a most arrogant and dictatorial manner.

A complaint was made that the convention’s Rules Committee turned “thumbs down” on the reinstatement of the two-thirds rule for nominations, and that the platform adopted by the convention was written “designed to secure the support of Negroes, the CIO, the Communists, and other radical groups.”

Texas planks turned down

Noting that every plank proposed by the Texas delegation was rejected, the statement complained specifically of refusal to recognize “reserved power of states to determine qualification of voters and to regulate public school attendance without interference from the federal government.”

“Worst of all,” it said, was refusal to approve passage of a law to prohibit management-labor contracts from requiring any war veteran to join an organization or pay a fee to get employment.

A special train leaving tomorrow will carry most of the Texas delegates from both Texas factions.

[NormanStewart]

Pegler: Democratic Convention Day 2

By Westbrook Pegler

Chicago, Illinois –
Up on the flying bridge which juts out from the platform where the giants sit to watch the antics of the little people, Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky, according to ancient formula, was viewing with pride and pointing with alarm.

The little people stirred restlessly like things on the quiet surface of a harbor. Down in the alley, beneath the stands, amid the picnic little of that ribald and yet solemn American political rite, the national nominating convention, the members of the band were disappearing around the bend to fall in for the great spontaneous ovation to the man-than-whom. The statesman on the bridge had been going on for a long time and the surprise was due any minute.

Senator Barkley is a man roughhewn like a preliminary study of one of Gutzon Borglum’s monumental great stone faces. He was standing to the microphones, gleaming with the sweat of his devotion and reading in enormous roars the script of a fateful act of American history, already confirmed by Frank Roosevelt’s demure acceptance of his fourth nomination. He was now getting around to the painful part in which he had to humiliate himself by eating the most awful words of his entire career, blurted last winter in honest anger at an insult to Congress delivered by the man whom he now had the privilege to nominate for an honor without precedent in the life of the American nation.

On that occasion, Mr. Roosevelt, rejecting the tax bill, for once went so far that even the docile Barkley, dull but hitherto always reliable, snarled back with an angry speech and, for a few hours, quit his position as Majority Leader of the Senate. In this sharp and sudden test of courage and conviction, both quit miserably.

The President, having fetched a calculated insult, crawled back, denying his obvious intention. And Barkley, reconsidering, accepted a sorry excuse instead of an apology.

Dispute well back in oration

Barkley was coming to that now. He had postponed the issue well back into his oration so that, in the published accounts, it would occur far down the text where few would read it.

Senator Barley might hesitate with his great leader on minor matters, he was explaining, in general terms, and he might disagree on procedure or method, for, thank God, in this great democracy, a man had a right to hold and express an opinion. As Voltaire had said, he might disagree with what you said but he would defend to the death your right to say it. A few words more and the insult to the legislative branch had been swallowed with a muscular gulp in public, diluted to be sure, with prideless phrases, in a scene so abject that a stranger could pity the man and fear for a country in such hands.

He whopped on now and, at the close, his nomination of “Franklin Delano Roosevelt” left the little people momentarily unprepared. They were not allowed to cheer a nomination. They could only cheer a fact accomplished long ago and acknowledged by the President in a letter last week to Robert E. Hannegan, the puppet chairman of the party, an affable handshaker in an empty job.

The music came on with a crash and they began to stretch in the aisles, carrying their blue and white legends on the winning of the war and the winning of the peace with Mr. Roosevelt, and bouncing their state standards on high in a trudging procession whose duration the reporters began to clock from force of habit. Barkley swabbed his face, stepped back and then stepped again to the fore to pose for the photographers standing on the press benches and clamoring, “Senator, this way, Senator. Just one more, Senator.”

Jackson gets into pictures

Barkley was good at this. He would throw out his right hand in an oratorial sweep and part his rugged features in a reasonably convincing grin. Now to the left of the bridge, for the photographers over there. Now back to the fight, with a different placard in his left hand. “Hold it higher, Senator, it hides your face. A little this way, Senator.”

Sam Jackson, another obscurity like Hannegan, hailing from Indiana, crowded the old hack for a place in the pictures. He is new and this convention gave him a miraculous chance to get into the papers. He smiled importantly, imitating Barkley’s wave and, once when Barkley paused for a drink of water, pulled our a low-comedy brown derby which he cocked on his head to solemnize a historical even while the little people shuffled by below.

The little people do not know how very little they were. Many of them never had seen a convention before and they came determined to enact their spontaneous demonstration. They seemed to believe literally that they were deciding nominations and policies not knowing that Sidney Hillman and Philip Murray long ago determined that they should nominate Henry Wallace for Vice President and were insisting on this choice against any other preference of the little people.

[NormanStewart]

Allen: Texas afraid Roosevelt will steal Lone Star title

Good thing GOP held convention first, may not be Stadium when Democrats finish
By Gracie Allen

Chicago, Illinois –
Wow… It’s a good thing the Republicans held a convention first… There might not have been any stadium left for them to meet in. Those Democrats really lifted the roof and made the walls bulge when Senator Barkley nominated President Roosevelt for a fourth term. But for some reason, the Texas delegation didn’t exactly approve. In fact, they got up and walked out, led by Mr. Moody. As they filed past, I got to look at Mr. Moody – and he certainly was.

I don’t know enough about politics to be able to tell you just why the Texas delegation doesn’t approve of Roosevelt, but maybe they’re afraid he’ll steal their title. After all, if he’s President for 16 years, he’ll have been the “Lone Star” almost as long as Texas.

Democrats livelier

It’s a shame that President Roosevelt couldn’t have been here in person to make his acceptance speech. But then I guess he could make a fine acceptance speech from almost any place – he’s had so much experience.

As a reporter, I’m completely nonpartisan and nonpolitical. But I must say the Democratic Convention is much livelier than the Republican Convention was. The donkey is giving a more exciting show than the elephant did. In fact, one Democrat told me he had a new answer to the old question – “Where do elephants go to die?” The answer – “Chicago.”

Very disquieting rumor

There are some wonderful personalities here for the convention. I was particularly interested in talking with Helen Gahagan Douglas. She’s the wife of movie star Melvyn Douglas. Believe me, I know what it’s like to have a career and also be married to a handsome, talented star… Mrs. Douglas told me. By the way, I just heard a very disquieting rumor. Someone said that if Dewey wins the election, the Roosevelts will have to move to Hyde Park. My goodness, I didn’t dream they were so bad off they’d have to live in a park.

That’s all for now – more political news tomorrow.

[NormanStewart]

In driver’s seat at convention –
Hillman must give the nod before wheels turn at Chicago

Political Action chief holds court and Democratic bigwigs seek favor
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
Sidney Hillman is granting no interviews here. “No publicity about Mr. Hillman,” is the word passed along by Clark Foreman, secretary of the Political Action Committee.

The man who vetoed President Roosevelt’s blessing of James F. Byrnes for Vice President, who allowed Senator Harry S. Truman to enter the race by agreeing not to oppose the Missourian if Henry A. Wallace could not make the grade, and who must give the nod before any wheels really move inside the Democratic National Convention, is operating in privacy at the Ambassador Hotel.

Mr. Hillman enjoyed similar privacy in the 1920s when he was in Russia learning about Russian peasants by living in a villa on the bank of the Moskva River opposite the Kremlin.

Associate of Browder

Earl Browder was Mr. Hillman’s associate then and Earl Browder is closely related to Mr. Hillman’s work today. So was Paul Robeson, then a Communist speaker between performances at Moscow’s Metropole Theater and now a leader in Mr. Hillman’s committee and chairman of the Communist-surrounded African Affairs Council in the Institute of International Democracy in New York.

That was a return trip to Russia for Mr. Hillman. He was born in 1887 at Žagarė, Lithuania, then part of Russia. He first came to the United States in 1907 at the age of 20. After organizing immigrants and refugee garment workers from Middle Europe into the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, which now has 325,000 members, the man who is saying “yes” and “no” to the convention here really got rolling in American politics.

Collects $2 million

President Roosevelt appointed him to work closely with Mrs. Anna Rosenberg in a series of New Deal executive posts. Mrs. Rosenberg and Mr. Hillman quarreled, she reportedly feeling that Hillman double-crossed her, and ousted her from the White House inner circle. But Mr. Hillman went on.

A year ago, he founded the Political Action Committee at the CIO’s Philadelphia convention. The fruit of that work gave him the Democratic leadership he is exercising here today. In Philadelphia, he outlined his plan to raise $5 million to defeat certain members of Congress. Mr. Hillman had his own clothing workers pledge $102,000 the first day. Before the convention adjourned, he had $2 million in hand collected by union officials, and he had made no statement of how much money he has collected since.

Group changes name

On June 14, appearing before the Senate Campaign Investigating Committee, Mr. Hillman conceded the illegality of union contributions to the election or defeat of federal officers. Out went the words CIO. Mr. Hillman changed his committee into the National Citizens’ Political Action Committee, as it is called today.

Mr. Hillman hands over no contributions. He spends where and when he wants to spend. Mr. Hillman uses $50,000 in one Congressional district, $70,000 in another, for newspaper advertising, organizing in the wards, operating political clubs on behalf of Mr. Roosevelt’s fourth term as the No. 1 declared objective, and supporting a corps of heavily-handed troubleshooters who filter through local areas visiting local voters and candidates alike. Mr. Hillman never delivers anything. He keeps control of the support he lends. And as both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wallace know, you can’t call on Mr. Hillman once for help and have it over with. You have to keep calling back.

Leaders come to call

The coming-back process is in full swing here, with Mr. Hillman holding court at the Ambassador Hotel. On a telephone message from Hillman, Mr. Wallace paid a two-hour call. Attorney General Francis Biddle, of Montgomery Ward fame, followed suit. Secretary Harold L. Ickes followed Mr. Biddle.

Calls went out and the others came: National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, Senator Harry S. Truman and Sam Rosenman of Hillman’s own inner circle at the White House, and numerous others of the favored few. Mr. Hillman likes to stay cozy at the Ambassador.

Guffey in attendance

Senator Guffey of Pennsylvania and Senator Claude Pepper of Florida are acting as Mr. Hillman’s right and left bowers in the apartment. You’ll find it a spacious place with a beige-carpeted sitting room, deep red draperies and paneled walls, which are a soft white under the indirect lights. Visitors sit in heavy red leather chairs or on an empire sofa covered with striped silk, waiting for Mr. Hillman to get off the telephone. This is no smoke-filled room. It is air conditioned.

Spreading from top down, Mr. Hillman roots his influence in weird assortment of political action groups similar to the Institute of International Democracy. And the men on his Political Action Committee know their business, which is how to organize to deliver the vote. Here are the few leading members of the CIO Political Action Committee who supply the steam behind the decisions Mr. Hillman makes in the Ambassador Hotel today.

• Zlatko Balokovic functions as president of “the United Committee of South Slavic Americans,” New York City. His division operates mostly around the coal mines and steel mills.

• Zarko M. Bunzick operates the “Serbian Vidivdas Congress” from headquarters in Akron.

• John D. Butkovich works mostly in Pennsylvania as president of the Croatian Fraternal Union.

• Leo Krzycki, headquarters in New York is president of “the American Slav Congress” for that state. Dr. W. T. Osowski has the same job in Michigan, while V. X. Platek is president of “the National Slovak Society” with headquarters in Pennsylvania.

• James Loeb, as press secretary of the “Union for Democratic Action”, ties in at New York with Clifford T. McAvoy (president of the “Council of Pan-American Democracy”), who was forced to resign as New York City Deputy Welfare Commissioner after his Communist-front activities were exposed.

The assembly point here for such of the group as are in Chicago, is Room 1889 and adjoining rooms at the Hotel Sherman. Mr. Hillman is not mingling there. He calls them, when convenient, to the Ambassador.

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: Wallace gives rare demonstration of honesty

He disregards foes to speak his mind
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
Somebody throws a bomb at Hitler. The Japanese Cabinet falls. The deadly circle closes in on the dictators.

Beating in on them too, are the shouts from assemblies of free people, such as that in Chicago’s great stadium. There a great political party goes through those contortions typical of a democracy in its trial-and-error method – a method which seems crude and cumbersome, but which leaves men free.

A man stands before them. He is the antithesis of Hitler and Tōjō. He grins shyly. He raises his hand as the crowd roars, in an awkward sort of wave. There is nothing mechanical about it. It is grateful.

He looks like Iowa

His hair is lopping, and he presents that ruffled appearance, which causes a wife always to say afterward, “Why didn’t you comb your hair? I wanted you to look nice before all those people.”

His tie straggles.

Henry Wallace is from Iowa, and he looks every inch of it.

He stands there and he talks, talks in simple, direct sentences, and suddenly you feel that you are hearing the voice of the plain people – the plain people of this country and of the world.

Here is honesty

And as you watch and listen, something tightens in you. You brush at your eye, and something cold chases up your spine.

Here, you think, is honesty. Here is decency. And as he goes on, here is a demonstration of “guts.”

This man is doing no ordinary thing. He is Vice President. He wants to be renominated, for in that way he can best carry on the fight for human justice, but not at the sacrifice of any convictions.

There are some sitting before him who hate him for the things he believes. But Wallace is no politician. He nits clean from the shoulder, and he smiles as he strikes – a friendly smile, not a taunting or belligerent smile. The iron is not on the surface. That’s underneath.

If telling the truth as he sees it means the end of political hopes, well and good.

“This is the way I see it,” he says in effect. “Do with me what you please.”

There are Southerners sitting before him, many of them. They don’t like him. There are others before him who represent economic interests that would be disturbed by the things Mr. Wallace would do. He knows that, he knows his political fate is in their hands, but he strikes:

In a political, educational and economic sense, there must be no inferior races. The poll tax must go. Equal educational opportunities must come. The future must bring equal wages for equal work, regardless of sex or race.

Then he says – what many realize who sit there before him – many who saw the party go down to defeat because it took the easy way and stood for nothing.

The Democratic Party cannot long survive as a conservative party.

I go away knowing that this is the greatest speech I have heard in 20 years of covering national political conventions.

[NormanStewart]

South’s revolt given new life by convention

All-out drive mapped to avert fourth term
By Marshall McNeil, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
This one-man Democratic convention has given enthusiastic new life to the Southern revolt which can now conceivably result in the defeat of President Roosevelt in November.

It has refused the demands of Texas’ Regular Democrats.

As a result, the Democratic presidential electors of Texas are instructed to vote against the President in the Electoral College.

If the election is close enough, Texas’ 23 electoral votes – to say nothing of the possibility of nearly as many more from other Southern states – may hold the balance of power and throw the election to the House of Representatives.

Looking toward that end, Southern Democrats who detest the fourth term were to begin laying their plans here today.

Their nucleus is the Texas group, which was so incensed in the convention’s decision to seat their pro-Roosevelt opponents that they walked out of the stadium in disgust.

All-Southern convention

Around this group, now prepared to go home and fight throughout the state against the reelection of the New Deal, an all-Southern convention will be called within a few weeks, perhaps at Shreveport, Louisiana.

That convention will nominate its own presidential ticket, headed perhaps by Senator Harry Byrd (D-VA).

The large majority of the Texas “free” electors, if elected in November, will cast their votes for the Byrd ticket.

This, at least, is the plan which anti-fourth-term Democrats – among them E. B. Germany of Dallas and former Mississippi Governor Mike Connor – were scheduled to discuss today.

They’re determined people

These anti-Roosevelt Democrats of Texas and the South are determined people. In the face of the convention’s action, they have dispelled the feeling, current before this meeting began, that the Southern revolt might peter out.

One reason it didn’t was the inept handling of the convention’s Credentials Committee by Senator Abe Murdoch (D-UT).

It was his job to lead his colleagues toward a decision on whether to seat the Texas Regulars or the Texas rump delegates. Obviously, national party leaders here wanted the Regulars seated, for they knew the danger of adding to the discontent in Texas.

Senator Murdock chose to compromise by voting to seat both delegations, dividing Texas’ 48 votes between them.

Tempted to march out

The Regulars came here backed by their convention’s pledge that if any rump delegates were seated, their (the Regulars’) presidential electors would not support the nominee of this convention.

At the convention hall, the Texas Regulars, learning of the decision, were tempted to march out of the hall at once, but at the insistence of state chairman George Butler of Houston, they decided to act in an orderly way.

Texans cry ‘insult’

How the national party leaders felt about the situation was shown when Chairman Bob Hannegan sent word through Ed Pauley of California that “he hoped no matter how your deliberations end, that your conduct on the floor will be orderly.”

“Insult!”, several Texans cried. Mr. Pauley said he meant no insult.

Finally, the decision was reached: If the convention upheld the Murdock Credentials Committee report, each Regular Texan could decide individually whether to stay in the convention – or leave.

Boos and applause

The issue was taken to the platform. Hart Willis of Texas appealed to the delegation to seed the Regulars from their own legal convention in Texas. He told what seating of the rump delegates would mean in freeing Texas electors from voting for FDR. There were boos and applause.

The convention voted to approve the seating of both delegations – and the Texas Regulars, with very few exceptions, walked out.

Later, the joint Regular and rump delegation cast 36 votes for Roosevelt and 12 for Byrd.

[NormanStewart]

DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOMINATES ROOSEVELT-TRUMAN TICKET

Franklin Delano Roosevelt for President!

Missouri Senator Truman for Vice President!

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (July 22, 1944)

Präsidentschaftskandidat Roosevelt

Stockholm, 21. Juli –
Am Mittwoch wurde Roosevelt auf der Tagung der Demokratischen Partei auch formell zum Präsidentschaftskandidaten aufgestellt.

Wallace ausgeschaltet

Wie United Press meldet, sandte Roosevelt, der eine Wiederernennung von Wallace zum Vizepräsidenten offensichtlich für unmöglich halte, dem demokratischen Konvent in Chicago einen Brief, in dem er sich mit dem 60 Jahre alten Senator aus Missouri, Harry Truman, dem die Überwachung der Kriegsproduktion obliegt, als Amtskollegen einverstanden erklärt.

Roosevelt setzt also seinen langjährigen „Amtskollegen“ Wallace kurzerhand den Stuhl vor die Tür. Wahrscheinlich in Vorbereitung dieses Schrittes hatte er Wallace kürz vorher die mehr als undankbare Tschungking-Reise übertragen, mit der der Vizepräsident bekanntlich kläglich Schiffbruch erlitt.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 22, 1944)

After Truman wins –
Move toward unity made by Democrats

CIO, South, bosses rally behind ticket
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was off today on his fourth-term campaign with running mate No. 3 after a bruising final session of the Democratic National Convention which rejected Vice President Henry A. Wallace and nominated Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO) for his job.

Mr. Roosevelt’s first running mate was John Nance Garner of Texas, who was elected Vice President in 1932 and 1936 and then broke with the President.

The Democratic nominees plan a late campaign, conforming to Mr. Roosevelt’s standard and effective practice. Neither is expected to begin major speeches until late September or October.

Senator Truman appears to have been the handpicked choice of the President, whose wishes were carried out here by a strategy board consisting of half a dozen men. Top honors for beating down the effort of left-wingers and others to keep Mr. Wallace on the ticket goes to National Committee Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, a 40-year-old from St. Louis who was chosen by Mr. Roosevelt to administer party affairs.

Senator Truman, nominated yesterday for Vice President about 24 hours after Mr. Roosevelt was named for a fourth term, is a second term member of the Senate who is chairman of the committee investigating munitions production and contracts. He is reckoned to have saved for the taxpayers a great many millions of dollars which might have been spent to no purpose.

Mr. Wallace was ahead on the first ballot, 429½ to 319½.

Stampede gets started

The remainder of the votes were scattered among other candidates, most of whom had been nominated to provide various state delegations with safe places to cast their votes pending some indication who might be the winner.

The Wallace drive began collapsing on the second ballot when little Delaware switched to give its full eight votes to Senator Truman. When Maryland was reached on the roll call, the delegation abandoned favorite-son Governor Herbert R. O’Conor to give Senator Truman 18 more votes.

Oklahoma Governor Robert S. Kerr then withdrew from the race and the state’s 22 votes went to Senator Truman. Virginia switched her 24 from Senator John R. Bankhead (D-AL) to the Missourian. By that time, the stampede was on and states were clamoring for a chance to change their votes.

A close contest

But even with the changes effected during the roll call, Senator Truman and Mr. Wallace were only three and a half votes apart when the last delegate was polled and before changes began being made for the record. Senator Truman had 477½ votes at the end of the roll call and Mr. Wallace had 473. Eleven other candidates were still in the contest at that time, but not for long.

By the time all the changes had been announced, the score, subject to minor correction, was:

Truman	1074
Wallace	66
Cooper	26
Douglas	4
Absent	6

Only 589 votes were required for a bare nominating majority.

Behind those figures is a story of angry disputes which foretells trouble for the New Deal-Democratic coalition. The strain of conflicting interests was evidenced in bitter language and boos in the convention yesterday.

Goes back four years

The story goes back to four years ago in the same stadium when Mr. Roosevelt compelled the sullenly reluctant 1940 Democratic Convention to accept Mr. Wallace as its vice-presidential nominee. That compulsion angered the south but was made effective with the support of the big northern Democratic organizations controlled by Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly, Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, Pennsylvania’s David Lawrence, and others.

This year, the big organization leaders balked. On the advice of his associates or under their pressure, Mr. Roosevelt failed this time to insist on Mr. Wallace.

He said he would vote for him if he were a delegate. But he also advised National Committee Chairman Robert E. Hannegan that he would welcome either Mr. Truman or Mr. Douglas on the ticket, explaining that he thought either would add strength.

A bitter session

It was a bitter session beginning at noon and ending at 8:21 p.m. CT. The moment the results were announced most of the principals began to move again toward unity, especially Sidney Hillman of the CIO. Mr. Wallace and Mr. Hillman both sent congratulatory messages to Senator Truman.

The rebellious South will go along with Senator Truman – a factor which makes persuasive the argument that the Missouri Senator was the man Mr. Roosevelt wanted from the first, despite his letter saying he would vote for Mr. Wallace. Much of the South was bitterly opposed to Mr. Wallace. Party members from that region expressed fears here that organized labor, notably the CIO, might take over the party if Mr. Wallace were renominated. They wanted a Southerner for Vice President but compromised on Senator Truman because he could lick the Vice President here with Mr. Roosevelt’s support.

So, it will be President Roosevelt and Senator Truman against Tom Dewey and John Bricker this November. Mr. Roosevelt is 62 and Mr. Truman is 60. Governor Dewey is 42 and Governor Bricker is 50.

[NormanStewart]

CIO takes political licking –
Both Guffey, Lawrence lose prestige in convention fight

Senator managers to keep state from riding front seat on Truman bandwagon
By Kermit McFarland, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
The CIO took a licking, politically, in the Democratic Convention which ended here last night, but it and Senator Joseph F. Guffey managed to hold off the Pennsylvania delegation long enough to keep their intramural rivals from riding a front seat in the Truman bandwagon.

The defeat of Vice President Henry A. Wallace was a serious blow to Senator Guffey’s political self-respect, as well as it was to the political potency of the CIO.

But the fact that the Pennsylvania delegation failed to time its conversion to Senator Harry S. Truman’s nomination served to diminish somewhat the prestige accumulated by Democratic State Chairman David L. Lawrence by his long and arduous efforts on behalf of the Missouri Senator.

On the second ballot for the vice-presidential nomination, which Senator Truman carried, the original Pennsylvania vote stood 46 for Mr. Wallace to 24 for Mr. Truman – two of the 72 delegates being absent.

On this original count, Senator Truman only had 477½ votes, while Mr. Wallace polled 475, the rest being scattered among sundry favorite sons. Then the favorite-son delegations began to switch to the Missouri Senator.

But Pennsylvania remained silent. Among the delegates and in the press row, they began to think of the 1940 Republican Convention, when the Pennsylvania delegation missed the Willkie bandwagon.

It was West Virginia which really sank the final shot for Mr. Truman. When the Mountaineer State’s delegation changed its second ballot vote by switching 13 votes for Mr. Wallace and Senator John H. Bankhead to Senator Truman, the nomination was clinched.

Twelve other states had changed over before Senator Guffey himself, usurping the floor microphone from the delegation’s chairman, former Judge John H. Wilson of Butler, arose to move that the nomination be made unanimous. He was ruled out of order. Eight more states shifted and Mr. Guffey got up again, this time to record 72 Pennsylvania votes for Mr. Truman.

By that time, Senator Truman had 350½ votes – only 589 were needed for the nomination.

Massachusetts saves them

On the first ballot, Pennsylvania voted 48½ to 23½ for Mr. Wallace against Senator Truman. This resulted from a closed caucus taken just after the nominating speeches were completed.

Right there, in fact, Pennsylvania almost missed the boat, as per the Republicans in 1940. The roll call was well underway while the Pennsylvanians were in caucus. But a poll of the Massachusetts delegation took so long that the Pennsylvania delegation managed to untangle its caucus confusion and scramble back to the auditorium in time to register the vote.

Scully switches

On this first ballot, delegates voting for Mr. Wallace included Senator Guffey, his sister Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, CIO President Philip Murray, Attorney General Francis Biddle, Clerk of Courts John J. McLean, McKeesport Mayor Frank Buchanan, Register of Wills John M. Huston, Coroner William B. McClelland, Record of Deeds Anthony J. Gerard (an alternate voting for delegate Marguerite McNaughton, who was absent), Irwin D. Wolf, and Mayor Cornelius D. Scully.

Voting for Mr. Truman were County Commissioner John J. Kane, Postmaster General Frank C. Walker, Mr. Lawrence, County Commissioner George Rankin, chief clerk of the City Public Safety Department Edward D. Johnson, and City Treasurer James P. Kirk.

On the second ballot, Mr. Scully switched to Senator Truman, while Matthew H. McCloskey, Philadelphia contractor and a delegate-at-large, changed his half-vote from Mr. Truman to Mr. Wallace. This made a net change of a half-vote in the Pennsylvania delegation.

Kane seconds Truman

Prior to the first caucus, Mr. Kane had made a seconding speech for Senator Truman and Mrs. Miller had seconded the nomination of Mr. Wallace.

In his speech, delivered extemporaneously, Commissioner Kane declared:

We didn’t have to come to Chicago to learn about the greatness of Senator Truman. We learned about him by following his record.

We had a wholesome respect for the splendid contribution he made to the protection of our sons and daughters in the fighting forces all over the world.

Mr. Kane referred to the senatorial committee investigating the war effort, which Senator Truman heads.

The commissioner said the Missouri Senator had “made the greatest contribution toward the protection of the Armed Forces of any man in the United States.”

Mrs. Miller, in her praise of Mr. Wallace, said:

As a thoroughgoing Democrat, I never have been one to accept the advice of the reactionary Republicans when it comes to nominating Democratic candidates. Neither have I been an advocate of appeasement. No party nor government ever gained thereby.

This was a crack at the chief Truman backers whom the Wallace forces called “reactionaries.”

Sees Republican plot

Mrs. Miller said:

The knees of the Old Gray Mare of Pennsylvania [meaning herself] may have grown stiff from a quarter century of service, but she still knows which road to take to victory. And that road is the road of positive and active liberalism from which the standpat and machine Republicans are not attempting to drive the Democratic candidate for the Vice Presidency [Mr. Wallace].

When the opposition saw how successful he was [as Secretary of Agriculture], they immediately set about through Republican-controlled farm organizations and papers to thwart and ruin his plans. We Pennsylvania Democrats know this to be a fact, for Joe Pew, the high priest of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, has spent millions toward this end.

[NormanStewart]

Delaware started trickle that led to Truman flood

Its eight votes switched to Senator only drop in bucket, but nobody stuck finger in dike

How they climbed on Truman bandwagon

	Before changes	After changes
Truman	477½	1032
Wallace	473	104
Cooper	26	26
Barkley	40	6
Douglas	1	4
McNutt	28	1
Lucas	38	0
Broughton	30	0
Bankhead	23½	0
O’Mahoney	8	0
Pepper	3	0
Kerr	1	0
Absent	7	3
—	—	—
TOTAL	1176	1176

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Nobody knew it then, but the trickle that became the flood was tiny Delaware’s eight votes.

On the first ballot, Delaware cast its then-not-particularly-precious eight votes for Vice President Henry A. Wallace. In that first ballot, the Democratic Convention gave Wallace 429½ votes for renomination – far short of the 589 required, but still a handsome testament.

Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO), the man who seemed to be a great many delegates’ second choice, got 319½ votes, and the dope was that – if certain states did what was expected – he might win, if the Wallace people weakened, on maybe the third or fourth ballot.

Senator Truman himself said, “No,” as loudly as Senator Truman ever says “No,” when somebody asked him if he had a chance to win on the second ballot.

Breach is widened

So, the second ballot started at 6:49 p.m. CT, and the history of the first ballot was repeated until undersized Delaware came along. Here and there an eyebrow went up when Delaware’s chairman announced, “Delaware casts eight votes for Truman.” But eight votes are only a drop in the bucket at political conventions.

At any rate, nobody stuck his finger in the dike, and 11 states later the breach widened when Maryland, switching from Governor Herbert R. O’Conor, its first-ballot favorite, cast 18 votes for Truman.

Still nobody knew it, but the damage was done. Oklahoma followed Maryland’s suit and, dropping her man, Governor Robert S. Kerr, tossed 22 hefty second-ballot voted to the Missourian.

No candidate has majority

With the end of the poll a long way off, somewhere between Oklahoma and Vermont, Senator Truman edged into a precarious, indecisive lead over Wallace. After Vermont, the count stood at 365 for Wallace and 367 for Truman.

Even then, the Wallace people didn’t guess what was happening to them. nor did the Truman forces know that they were in. True, Virginia switched her 24 votes from Senator John H. Bankhead (D-AL) to Truman. But 24 plus 367 was still far from the 589 votes required for nomination.

The balloting went on to the end with the Virgin Islands, last on the list, casting its two votes for Wallace. No candidate had a majority, and the bulletin went out that the second ballot, like the first, had ended without a decision.

Mississippi tipoff

But before the count reached the Virgin Islands, something had happened which had a profound effect upon the jury. On the roll call of the states, Mississippi had passed. Later, while the count was still proceeding, Mississippi swiped a second or two over the loudspeaker to announce that it now wanted to throw all of its 20 votes, previously cast for Bankhead, to Truman.

The chairman said Mississippi was out of order and would have to wait until the roll call was finished to announce its stand. But the other states, particularly the other Southern states, had got the idea.

Alabama switches

Hardly had the word gone out that the second ballot had failed to produce a candidate – the count standing at 477½ for Truman and 473 for Wallace – when Alabama changed its vote to 22 for Truman and two for Wallace.

At almost the same time, the Indiana delegation withdrew the name of Paul V. McNutt from the contest. Two minutes later, Maine upped its Truman count, and the flood was on.

In a space of three minutes, 11 states revised their vote in favor of Truman. Eleven minutes after Alabama started the bandwagon rush, a bulletin cleared announcing that the Democratic National Convention had nominated Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri for Vice President.