Election 1944: Democratic National Convention

[NormanStewart]

Wallace happy loser; says cause gained

Claims ‘victory’ in liberalism’s advance

Wallace wires his congratulations

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Vice President Henry Wallace sent a telegram of congratulations last to Senator Harry S. Truman, the man the Democratic Convention selected to succeed him as Mr. Roosevelt’s political partner.

Text of the telegram:

Congratulations upon your enlarged opportunity to help the President and the people. Both of us will do our maximum for Roosevelt and for what Roosevelt stands.

Sincerely,
HENRY A. WALLACE

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Henry A. Wallace today proclaimed himself a happy loser in his unsuccessful fight for renomination as vice President because, he said, the cause for which he really was fighting – liberalism – was advanced.

And most observers believed he was sincere in the statement.

Mr. Wallace will give up his job as Vice President Jan. 20. What he plans to do after Jan. 20 is problematical. Guesses are that he will go back to Iowa and resume his career, interrupted 12 years ago when he went to Washington to become Secretary of Agriculture, as editor of a farm paper.

He still has his adoring faith in President Roosevelt, whom he regards as the Western world’s mainstay of liberalism, despite some charges that Mr. Roosevelt scuttled him during the convention.

Will support ticket

He declared:

Of course, I’ll support Roosevelt and Truman in the campaign. Mr. Roosevelt is the symbol of liberalism in the Western world; he must be supported in the war, and in the emergencies that come with the peace.

His own defeat in the convention? That’s not important, he said, recalling that when he first reached Chicago last Tuesday he said, what happens to me, personally, is unimportant.”

No loss to cause

Smiling broadly and brushing aside a graying lock and hair that fell toward one eye, Mr. Wallace said:

My own defeat is not a loss to the cause of liberalism. That is obvious in what happened here at the convention – in all that happened at the convention.

He remembered the throngs of younger people who filed into his Sherman Hotel headquarters, the thousands who almost stampeded the convention Thursday night with the chant of “We Want Wallace.”

Demonstration his victory

Mr. Wallace told those youngsters who he said were liberals:

The ovations you give me are not for me personally. I know that. I know that in me you find a concentration of the liberalism for which you fight, the liberalism that’s now on the march like a fresh new wind blowing across the nation.

The “demonstration for liberalism” that swept the stadium was Wallace’s victory in his convention fight, he believes. He was so satisfied with that “victory” that he stayed in his hotel rooms throughout yesterday’s balloting for the Vice Presidency.

Sleeps during oratory

He even fell asleep during the height of the pre-voting oratory and slept through the first half of the balloting itself which a group of personal friends heard on a radio in his adjoining sitting room. Eventually he joined those friends and listened for a short time to the roll call. He was leading Truman then, and he went back to his bedroom and lay on his bed again.

Finally, the radio reports indicated Senator Truman had won. Without waiting for the official announcement, Mr. Wallace called in newspapermen who had “covered” him here and told them that he was “very happy about it.”

His immediate plans call for a trip to his Iowa home. He leaves Chicago today. After a brief rest in Iowa, he will return to his Washington office to get back to work as Vice President.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Political news for soldiers

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The removal of Col. Egbert White as director of the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, in the Mediterranean area, may bring to a head the issue of what political news should be presented to overseas soldiers. It is reported from Algiers that he was relieved of command “because of differences with higher officials over political censorship,” and the dispatch refers to a New York Herald-Tribune news article on coverage of the Republican National Convention by service papers.

Col. White was trying to get more facts about political events into the Stars and Stripes. He lost his post for a cause that should have the support of every American who believes in a free press.

The Herald-Tribune correspondent in Rome pointed out that the Stars and Stripes report of Governor Dewey’s speech contained very little about his criticism of domestic policies, for the Psychological Warfare Service, one of the news sources, deleted all comment by the Republican candidate on the administration’s conduct of home affairs. The Army News Service, another source, carried a curtailed report on these points in the Dewey speech, and this was included “to get the idea across that the Republicans disapproved of the way the country was being run.”

Such political censorship is, of course, intolerable. Every American at home hears both sides of the campaign arguments, and surely the millions of men overseas are entitled to the same privilege. It is true that some of this electioneering, by both sides, will be biased, but surely men in foreign service can be trusted to exercise as much discrimination about accepting it as civilians or men in military camps at home.

The overseas men are legal voters. Why should they be denied the full information, for both sides of the political fence, that is required for casting an intelligent vote?

The law forbids the sending of biased news to soldier newspapers, but it makes clear that this does not apply to the statements of political personages. If overzealous officials at home are trying to blue-pencil unfavorable comments about the administration, it is up to Army editors to protest vigorously. The home front, Democrats as well as Republicans, will support them if they do.

[NormanStewart]

Pegler: Democratic Convention

By Westbrook Pegler

Chicago, Illinois –
The party of unity, tolerance and justice went primitive in the last sessions of the convention called to ratify Mr. Roosevelt’s prior acceptance of his fourth nomination.

The legions of those who would enforce brotherly love with the heavy end of a sawed-off pool cue found themselves mere plaything of passion in an ecstasy of the old party spirit. They wound it up in a magnificent exhibition of double-crossing and trimming merrily reminiscent of the long parliament of 1924 in which Tammany Hall packed the old Madison Square Garden and wooed the proud and sensitive Southern brethren with the strains of “Marching Through Georgia.” Hatred and suspicion were unconfined and half-a-dozen sulky aspirants for the vice-presidential nomination were walking around today asking old friends to be good enough to remove that dagger from between their shoulder blades and only half-confident that a trusted hand wouldn’t shove it in deeper.

The Democrats of the Southern tier and the urban bosses of the North were responsible for the first great political beating ever given the CIO and the American equivalent of the French Popular Front at the hands of the party which gave it being. This group, represented by Sidney Hillman as leader of a collection of Communist organizations and individuals, set up convention headquarters and boldly undertook to dictate the selection of Henry Wallace to succeed himself.

The South is afraid of the CIO because of its memorable violent insurrections in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania which President Roosevelt condoned and Frank Murphy, now of the Supreme Court, tolerated as Governor of Michigan. The Southern politicians had noted Wallace’s expressed impatience with “Bill of Rights democracy” and his open fellowship with manipulators of the Communist conspiracy in the United States, all in the name of military unity with Russia although Russia had professed to disown them.

Reminder of gory riots of other years

And, in the actual convention, the picket-line methods of the direct actionists of the CIO were reproduced in subdued but disturbing version by the Wallace clique, obviously organized according to the radical or Communist system of intimidation.

Ed Kelly, the Mayor of Chicago and the one Democratic local machine boss who had slugged it out with the CIO Communists in a bloody riot and beaten them, was in technical command of the actual convention. He had the tickets, the ushers were his, and his police around Chicago should have been able to anticipate Hillman’s plans.

Nevertheless, the stooges who packed the hall on two occasions were not Kelly’s people but Wallace’s and Hillman’s. The sight of their big placards, mounted on sticks, was a reminder of gory riots of other years, when the CIO, under many of the same organizers, also carried placards which were quickly removed from the sticks which then became handy clubs.

Victory for old-time machines

Had Wallace been selected, the Communists truly could have claimed that they had named the man who would succeed to the Presidency in the event of President Roosevelt’s demise or retirement during a fourth term. True, the Political Action Committee supported the President, too. But there were in his adherence, so many other factors that it could not claim sole responsibility for his success. The Democrats of all groups had to accept Mr. Roosevelt. But Wallace lacked even the unqualified approval of the boss, and the Hillman group’s support was so arrogant and contemptuous of all other sections of the party that it became at once Wallace’s greatest strength and his fatal weakness.

By contrast with the Democrats’ pleas to the nation and the whole world to live in peace and trusting friendship, their own convention was a spectacular revival of its own old, quarrelsome trait.

Truman’s selection was a victory for the machines of Ed Kelly, Frank Hague of Jersey City and other old-style urban bosses of the type for whom the pretentious idealists of the New Deal expressed such pietistical abhorrence a few years ago, only to rely on them at election time, and for those conservative Democrats of the South who were able to submit to a fourth term. The party may be united in action for this campaign but in spirit it is seething with suspicion and many personal resentments.

[NormanStewart]

Allen: It’s too bad the country can’t be run like a bank

Then all those 12 nice men the Democrats wanted to nominate could be Vice Presidents
By Gracie Allen

Chicago, Illinois –
Well, I didn’t think it was possible, but the third day of the Democratic Convention was even more exciting than the second. In fact, I got so interested that I completely forgot I was supposed to write about it.

I was sitting there in the Stadium with my ears – and probably my mouth – wide open, when a newspaperman tapped me on the shoulder and said he would like my column. Well, I thanked him and said I was sure I would like his column too if I know where to read it. Then he told me that he was there to pick up my column and get it to the newspapers and that I had just five minutes to get it written.

Well, that got me to nervous I just sat there and chewed the point off my pencil. I couldn’t write a single word.

Thank goodness for George

But thank goodness for my brilliant husband, George. Quick as a flash he grabbed that pencil out of my hand and went to work. Well, in two minutes he had that pencil sharpened for me and I was writing the column.

Of course, it wasn’t all my fault that I didn’t have the column written. The Democrats just couldn’t make up their minds whom they wanted to nominate for Vice President. There were 12 candidates to choose from. All wonderful men. Too bad the country can’t be run like a bank. Then they could all be Vice Presidents.

Anyway, as long as they had to choose one, I thought it would have been much quicker to just line the 12 men up on the stage and have the chairman walk behind them and hold a handkerchief over each man’s head… Then the one who received the most applause would be winner. On second thought – that’s what they do at amateur shows and I guess you can’t exactly call the Democrats amateurs, not after all those repeat performances.

That man again

Well, I certainly would like to be able to tell you who won the nomination for Vice President but that man keeps tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Gimme the stuff, gimme the stuff.”

George told him to stop it or somebody would get a black eye. George is out now looking for a piece of steak.

This is my last column from the convention. Thanks for reading them and I hope you’re learned something about politics…

Goodbye now.

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: Truman selection marks swing of pendulum from left wing New Dealism to conservatism

City bosses aligned with South does it
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
The swing of the Democratic Party pendulum away from blue-ribbon New Dealism was certified publicly today with the dropping Henry A. Wallace and the substitution of Senator Harry S. Truman as the candidate for Vice President.

How far this will go – whether eventually it will mean the capture of the party by the conservatives – depends on events.

The conservatives won a substantial victory in the convention, and both sides know it. This does not inhere in the person of Senator Truman, who cannot be catalogued with the conservatives, but in the fact that the conservatives rallied about him successfully to beat Vice President Wallace.

In 1932, Garner

What has happened to the party can best be illustrated by the history of President Roosevelt’s running mates.

In 1932, he accepted John N. Garner of Texas, then Speaker of the House, in order to get the block of Texas and California votes that sealed his own nomination. Mr. Garner and the Southern conservatives who looked to him as leader went along with the early New Deal program of correcting financial abuses and of helping small farmers and businessmen by not-too-harsh reforms.

Everything being fairly serene, in 1936, President Roosevelt took along Mr. Garner for another ride.

Garner and backers balk

In the second administration, the southerners began to get restive when the reforms went deeper and threatened the preserves of the industrial and financial overlords in the South through government regulation of private power companies, through the Wage-and-Hour Act, and through the encouragement of labor unions in a section hitherto almost free of them.

Mr. Garner balked. He and the Southern conservatives formed a coalition with Republicans that began to be successful occasionally in Congress against the President. Mr. Garner got ideas of his own. He decided to run for President. Mr. Roosevelt dumped him.

In 1940, Wallace

The President had no intention or going back. Instead, he went forward and made the party completely New Deal by literally ramming Henry Wallace down the throats of the 1940 convention. Conservatives became really alarmed with the rising power of labor and its political organization into the CIO Political Action Committee, and the Southerners also by New Deal agitation for greater economic and civil freedom for Negroes, with all of which Mr. Wallace became identified.

This grew into a veritable storm, before which Mr. Roosevelt finally yielded in a series of compromises that came to their climax last night with the official abandoning of Henry Wallace. However, the decision to drop the Vice President – if possible. without too much injury to his left-wing support – was made months ago.

City and South alliance

It is significant that the defeat of Mr. Wallace was achieved by the combination that was the nucleus of the old Democratic Party before the New Deal came along, that strange alliance of the South and the big-city bosses. Ed Kelly of Chicago, Frank Hague of Jersey City and Ed Flynn of the Bronx were in on this game here from the start. And when the proper time came, the Southerners put the knife to Mr. Wallace and twisted it, as was manifest in that hectic convention hall drama last night when the Southern delegations began to switch from favorite sons to Senator Truman.

The rebirth of this alliance is an important event. The big-city machines, which have been following along with the New Deal – for their good health, to be true – seem to be returning to their conservative base.

CIO has Roosevelt

For the immediate campaign, the Roosevelt-Truman ticket will meet the necessities of a straddle to include the wild horses on the right and left. The CIO has Mr. Roosevelt at the top of the ticket, and nowhere else to go.

The Wallace ouster has mollified the south and conservatives elsewhere. Likewise satisfying to conservatives is the inclusion of a representative of Congress who gets along well with both wings of the part at the Capitol, and which will help to meet the Republican criticism of one-man government by presenting the picture of a balance between the President and Congress.

[NormanStewart]

City bosses show upstart Hillman

Veteran scrappers defend reputations
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
Mayor Frank Hague, pearl stickpin in figured cravat and dressed like a banker, was unperturbed. Ed Flynn of the Bronx was bland and confident. Mayor Ed Kelly, in soft, double-breasted brown and bowtie, and keeping his own counsel.

America’s three biggest political-machine bosses, veterans of a thousand rough-and-tumble scraps from precinct clubhouse to the White House, were fighting for their reputation against Sidney Hillman and the CIO political newcomers with him who were leading the drive to renominate Henry Wallace for the Vice Presidency.

The bosses sit tight

All day long, the convention had heard reports Mr. Wallace was gaining. But Flynn and Hague and Kelly sat tight. All week they had worked quietly in the red-carpeted suites of the Blackstone Hotel, and they hoped they had done their work well. There was a hint of revolt in the big Illinois delegation, and of some dissension elsewhere, but the word went out that the lines must be held.

Behind the bosses worked Robert Hannegan (Democratic National Chairman), his predecessor in that job (Postmaster General Frank Walker), Foreign Economic Administrator Leo Crowley, and others. Mr. Walker was supposed to have been on the telephone for hours, putting out the word to delegation chieftains that Senator Truman (D-MO) was OK with President Roosevelt and that he would strengthen the ticket.

Propaganda attacks

All kinds of stories flew about as to who had the final word with Mr. Roosevelt. Mr. Hannegan had talked to him. So had Mayor Kelly. So also, it was claimed, had Senator Guffey, generalissimo of the Wallace forces.

Both sides peppered each other with propaganda they hoped would make a dent on delegates. Harry Truman, said Wallace men, was a fine fellow – but it was a shame the way he had been tied up with the foul Pendergast machine in Missouri. Mr. Truman had even praised this boss to whom he was beholden, in a speech in the Senate – and what Tom Dewey could do with that!

The other side attacked the Wallace movement for Mr. Hillman’s alliance with the Communists in New York, and said it would cost the Democrats that state, perhaps others, if Mr. Wallace were nominated. Mr. Wallace, it was argued, didn’t have the confidence of the country, and the people wouldn’t vote for him because of fear that he would be no fit man to step into the Presidency.

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Perkins: Hillman joins – after he’s licked

Biggest CIO venture results in failure
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Chicago, Illinois –
Sidney Hillman, chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee, adopted the customary political tactic just after the defeat of Henry A. Wallace, whom he had backed without reservation for the Vice Presidency.

Mr. Hillman declared in favor of the Roosevelt-Truman ticket – thus carrying out the adage: “If you can’t lick ‘em, jine ‘em.”

Mr. Hillman had nothing else to do, for he and his associat4es had pledged themselves so thoroughly in favor of a fourth term for Mr. Roosevelt that they would have had no other place to go even if the Democrats had named Tom Girdler for Throttlebottom.

Biggest adventure fails

Politicians analyzed the Wallace defeat as being partly due to his identification with Mr. Hillman and his political committee.

This was the biggest adventure into American politics of a labor group – bigger even than that unsatisfactory 1936 endeavor of John L. Lewis, then head of the CIO, which included the lending or giving to Democratic campaign funds of about $500,000. It results in failure in its first phase – the attempt to force the renomination of the Vice President.

GOP win embarrassing

If Mr. Roosevelt should be defeated in November, the CIO politicians would be expected to revamp their political methods.

The older and more conservative American Federation of Labor will not be embarrassed, no matter which party wins in November, but the CIO will be in a delicate position if the decision goes to the Republicans.

[NormanStewart]

Running mate congratulated by Roosevelt

Happy to have you run with me, he wires
By John L. Cutter, United Press staff writer

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO) today received “heartiest congratulations” from President Roosevelt on his nomination for the Vice Presidency and a promise that they would get together soon on campaign plans.

The President wired to Senator Truman, his fourth-term running mate:

I send you my heartiest congratulations on your victory. I am of course very happy to have you run with me. Let me know your plans. I shall see you soon.

Committee aim to be his

Senator Truman’s only immediate plan was to resign the chairmanship of the Senate War Investigating Committee which for three years has been his substitute for inability at the age of 60 to assume his World War I role as commander of an artillery battery.

He will retain as his personal platform, however, the basic aim of the Committee – to win the war as speedily as possible with the minimum cost in lives and money.

It was on such a program that he launched the Committee, commonly known was the Truman Committee. It was his personal creed as he went into the campaign as the running mate of President Roosevelt in the latter’s “win the war and preserve the peace” program.

To resign Aug. 1

Senator Truman set Aug. 1 as a tentative date for resigning the committee chairmanship after other committee members asked hi to wait until Congress reconvenes. He said the other members apparently wanted him to retain the post until his successor was decided. He said he felt the work of the committee is far from done and that it should be continued under another chairman.

In response to the President’s telegram, Senator Truman telegraphed to the White House:

Thank you, Mr. President. I am happy to be your running mate. I will be in Missouri until Aug. 1, our primary day. I am at your command and I want to see you soon.

Wire from Wallace

From Vice President Henry Wallace, whom he beat for renomination, Senator Truman received the following telegram:

Congratulations upon your enlarged opportunity to help the President and the people. Both of us will do our maximum for Roosevelt and what Roosevelt stands for.

Senator Truman said he will wire his thanks to Mr. Wallace, whom he tried to reach by telephone this morning.

Senator Truman said at a press conference:

He is my friend and I like him. He is still Vice President and if he were here, I would call upon him personally. The only thing I don’t like about it is that I had to beat Henry for the nomination.

War costs lowered

The Truman Committee has been credited with keeping high the quality of war material, speeding production and lowering costs by at least a billion dollars. Senator Truman hopes he can do even more along that line as the second high elective officer of the nation.

That was the theme of his acceptance speech last night to the convention.

Senator Truman said:

It’s been my privilege to be a U.S. Senator for 9½ years. I expect to continue the efforts I have been making in that capacity to help shorten the war and win the peace under the leadership of our great President – Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Senator Truman, who said he had not sought the nomination, told reporters he had been far more interested lately in the German upheaval than in the vice-presidential contest.

He planned a visit with the Democratic National Committee today before leaving by auto with his family for Kansas City, to stay there until after the Missouri primary Aug. 1.