Election 1944: Dewey’s tour stepped up to double tempo (9-16-44)

The Pittsburgh Press (September 16, 1944)

americavotes1944

Dewey’s tour stepped up to double tempo

Two conferences set for one day

Aboard Dewey campaign train (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, having promised a first-class fight from now until November, doubled the tempo of his Western campaign trip today.

Instead of the customary single stop for a conference with local business and political leaders, the presidential candidate scheduled two meetings today, one at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and the other at Spokane, Washington.

One of the principal subjects of his conferences appeared to be the greater development of the West.

Scores ‘defeatism’

He took that line in a rear-platform speech at Livingston, Montana, last night when he assailed what he called “New Deal defeatism” and told a crowd at the station that:

You have only begun to develop the western half of the United States. we have a glorious development ahead of us and jobs and opportunity for more Americans than have ever seen this part of the United States.

First of all, we have got to get an administration which comes out and knows the problems of you people and says we are going ahead and not going back to the 10 million unemployed we had in 1940.

Talks with cattlemen

Mr. Dewey has spent the past week talking with cattlemen, agricultural experts, wool producers, labor leaders and other group leaders, gathering first hand material for his major farm speech. However, it was not known whether that address would be delivered from the West Coast.

Mr. Dewey said he had come to the conclusion that:

Never in the history of our country or of any other country did agricultural and livestock producers rise so heroically to the necessities of war under so many handicaps placed upon them by their own government.