Election 1944: Post-convention editorials

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Freedom of reading

No reading necessarily influences the reader.

But all reading, to some degree, affects the general attitudes of the reader, although the effect may be infinitesimal.

And no reading affects all readers alike, or even any two of them precisely alike.

Which is by way of saying that there is no way of proving how any political biased or “interpretive” writing will affect any given number of readers.

If such persuasive writing were possible, somebody would write it and the election would be over.

Even the most biased or the most expressive political “masterpiece” will have a highly diversified effect on any group. It will please most those already sold on the same idea. It will aggravate those opposed to the idea. It may stimulate thought on the part of others, but it may also puzzle them or simply leave them cold.

All of which made the Taft law “censoring” books, movies, newspapers and periodicals for the Armed Forces a futile measure.

But it was also a ridiculous measure because it attempted to prohibit the adult men and women in the Armed Forces from reading material which is available to every schoolchild in America. It treated those entrusted with fighting the war as if they were too immature to be trusted with reading for themselves.

It was further ridiculous because the law itself was open to divergent interpretation.

The War Department, going to an extreme, ruled out standard works on the mere mention of political subjects. The Navy Department, on the other hand, pursued an unperturbed course by giving the men in the Navy the reading they seemed to want, regardless of content.

Congress has approved amendments to the Taft law so it no longer bars reading material available to the general public.

President Roosevelt cannot act too quickly in signing the Senate amendments to this unmoral and insulting law.

Freedom of reading is as basic as freedom of speech.

[NormanStewart]

The Wilmington Morning Star (August 22, 1944)

Editorial: Joke wore too thin

The political censorship section of the Soldier Vote Bill was good for some laughs, but the joke was beginning to wear thin. So now the inevitable modification of the measure has been voted by Congress.

The Senate amendments do just what should have been done in the first place. They make certain that the soldier or sailor will get the same sort of reading matter available to him at home, limited only by the exigencies of war. They are going to let him see what movies and plays are available, listen to the radio, and receive his private mail – including political literature – without interference.

And they are going to dispel some unflattering undemocratic inferences that existed in the original measure as drafted by Senator Robert A. Taft. It was hard to escape the conclusion, under Army execution of the original law, that Congress regarded a citizen as radically changed when he put on the uniform of his country. Congress seemed to think that he abandoned all independence of judgment with his civilian clothes. It appeared, at least under the law’s application, that the man fighting his country’s battles should be protected from any writing inclined to excite discussion. Congress apparently felt that the servicemen’s diet of information should be extremely bland – no roughage, no condiments, and not much quantity.

Senator Taft consented to and cooperated in the Senate amendments to the political censorship law, which is to his credit. But in doing so he blamed the War Department for failure of the first measure, and suggested that the Army’s overliteral application of the law had been deliberately ridiculous, designed to discredit Congress and sway the election.

This seems unlikely. If the original law had not been vague, flexible and ill-advised, its interpretation would not have been so silly. If the original law had not carried some stiff penalties for violation, the Army probably would not have been so zealous.

Senator Taft also voiced some doubts about the War Department’s political impartiality. This also seems unlikely. The War Department is headed by a distinguished, respected Republican statesman. The Army Chief of Staff has never voted. Its officers are drawn from men of both parties.

No, the sad truth seems to be that Congress pulled a legislative boner.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (August 26, 1944)

Editorial: PAC shakedown

The bagman for Sidney Hillman’s Political Action Committee sees nothing illegal or even unethical in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union’s shakedown of employers for its campaign money chest.

Hyman S. Blumberg, vice president of the Hillman union, not only defends the solicitation of money from firms having contracts with the union, but asserts he would not be surprised if other meetings to further the collection of funds were to be held “throughout the nation” between now and November.

Mr. Blumberg’s bland assurance that “no high-pressure methods were used” is one of the most cynical statements yet made in the Hillman campaign to create a fund large enough to buy the election.

In bright contrast to Amalgamated’s activities, it should be pointed out that other unions, notably the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, have long recognized that the collection of funds by a union from its employers even for charitable purposes comes dangerously close to blackmail. In fact, David Dubinsky’s union establishes this principle in a strict constitutional provision absolutely prohibiting any such solicitation or collection. And Mr. Dubinsky himself made a noteworthy example of one union official whom he suspended for four weeks for having sold an employer tickets to a benefit in which the union was interested.

If there were any question about the threat to democracy embodied in the huge election fund the PAC is taxing out of its own membership – and now out of the employers – the latest revelations of Amalgamated’s shakedown and its threat of further shakedowns should answer it.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (August 29, 1944)

Editorial: Not political, eh?

Now isn’t this somethin’? Acting Secretary of War McCloy rules that President – beg pardon, Commander-in-Chief – Roosevelt’s address from Bremerton, Washington, after his trip to Honolulu and the Aleutians, was “not political.” It was instead a “report.” And so deciding, Mr. McCloy reverses a six-hour-old Army ruling that the law permitted the Socialist Party equal radio time for broadcast to soldiers overseas.

Okay, let’s take Mr. McCloy’s word for it. Now the thing to do to make everything fair and square is for the Navy to provide a warship and escort for Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate, to take a junket to our outposts and come back and make his “non-political report. Then provide the same conveniences and setting for Thomas Dewey, the Republican candidate.

Comrade Browder, having dissolved his Communist Party and joined the New Deal, will need no special reservation this year.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 1, 1944)

Editorial: Misnamed liberalism

A letter from a reader puts into words better than we have yet been able the danger to labor itself in the CIO-PAC drive to take over the Democratic Party.

That movement is being promoted in the guise of liberalism. Of that our letter says:

I think that a wholesale menace to all liberties is taking form under the name of liberalism; that it is trying to capture the labor movement and, through that movement, the government; that the CIO-PAC is its spearhead; and that its goal is government planning and management of the national economy.

If I could believe that a government-planned, government-managed economy would benefit the workers, the great majority, I should question my right to feel as I do. But I can find no evidence to justify such a belief. Under such a system the faults of bureaucracy – the muddling, inefficiency, arrogance, waste and extravagance – which irritate almost everyone in a time like the present, when a large degree of government planning and management is accepted as necessary to the conduct of a war, would continue and grow worse.

But, beyond that, such a system could not function long unless government used its power to MAKE people conform to the plan and submit to the management. Laborites who think that government power would be used only against the capitalists – against industry and business and employers – are simply deluded. As deluded as were the German bankers and industrialists who backed Hitler because they thought they could control him. Eventually the power would be used against the workers and their unions.

The CIO, of course, expects its philosophy to dominate the government. Administration of the Wagner Act under Madden and the two Smiths provided a preview of what would happen to labor if that expectation were realized. The law – the government’s power – was used not only against employers but against the rival form of labor organization. The CIO tried to destroy the AFL and, given the fuller opportunity it now seeks, probably would destroy it. But it wouldn’t stop there. The CIO would want government’s power used to prevent schisms in the CIO and to prevent people from organizing unions of their own choice, or joining them, if they were heretical from the CIO viewpoint.

When the labor movement, its leaders or members, start off, knowingly or ignorantly, toward the goal of a government-planned and government-managed national economy through political action, the liberal course in my opinion is to fight such a trend. Any labor leader or any rank-and-file union member who leads or follows a march in that direction deserves no praise.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: FD on ‘indispensable man’

We read Harry Truman’s speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination, hoping to find some new argument of the Democrats. But it was the same old refrain – that only Franklin Roosevelt has the experience, that only one man can handle the big job.

A very good answer to the indispensable-man argument is a statement made by Mr. Roosevelt himself before he entered the White House. Speaking at Madison Square Garden, Nov. 5, 1932, Mr. Roosevelt said:

The genius of America is stronger than any candidate or any party. This campaign, hard as it has been, has not shattered my sense of humor or my sense of proportion. I still know that the fate of America cannot depend on any one man. The greatness of America is grounded in principles and not on any single personality. I, for one, shall remember that even as President.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 5, 1944)

Editorial: Toward a labor party?

People occasionally speak of “the labor vote” in such a way as to suggest that all of labor is in the habit of balloting en bloc for a particularly political ticket. That is not true – fortunately, in our opinion, for the good of the country.

If substantially all of labor were to adhere to Party A, inevitably the other great elements of the electorate would align themselves with Party B. Elections would become competitions for supremacy between economic groups. A man’s politics would be determined not by his views on foreign affairs, or on the conduct of the public’s business in Washington, or on the personalities of candidates, but simply and strictly by his economic status.

The country would be split down the middle, politically, and the great body of independent voters who heretofore have wielded a corrective balance of power as between the Democratic and Republican parties, would shrivel up. The result would be domination of the country either by labor or by a combination of the other economic groups.

The objective of Sidney Hillman and his Political Action Committee is, of course, to turn out the labor vote as nearly unanimously as possible for the Roosevelt-Truman ticket. The operations of the PAC to this end have been energetic and ingenious. They have also been touched with something approaching ruthlessness, and there are scattered symptoms to indicate that not even all of the CIO, let alone the rest of organized and unorganized labor, is ready to have its nose held while Dr. Hillman pours his medicine down its gullet.

There were those two Utah locals of the CIO, and another one at Gary, Indiana, which said a flat “No” to the proposition that their members should kick in a dollar a head to be dispensed for Hillman candidates. There was that Boston member of the CIO’s Newspaper Guild who wrote in The Reader’s Digest that the PAC “is setting up a conflict between the labor movement and the free, independent political spirit.”

There was the warning of an AFL veteran Robert Watt, that “in every instance where the labor movement has become a front for a political party, it has eventually died.” And the expressed fear of Labor, organ of the rail brotherhoods, that the consequences of the PAC campaign “may be the most disturbing to the regular labor movement.”

Those are healthy symptoms, and if they turn out to be contagious, we think it will be a good thing for the long-haul fortunes of this country.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Mr. Dewey’s opportunity

Usually by this time in an election year, the presidential campaign is rolling and the oratorical guns roaring. But there has been little sound and fury from the hustings so far this season, in deference to the more deadly cannonading that has been deciding more fateful issues across the oceans.

But this week, Governor Dewey, the challenger, opens his campaign with a speech in Philadelphia Thursday night. Mr. Dewey must have been under tremendous pressure to start his stumping earlier. He has many disadvantages to overcome. National public opinion polls have shown him running second. He is undertaking to unseat an administration entrenched by 12 years in power and at a time when the country is “enjoying” a war boom and voters have plenty of money in their pockets.

Although he has a splendid record as Governor of New York compared to his opponent, Mr. Dewey is not well known to the electorate as a whole, and two months is a short time to acquaint the voters with his views and qualifications.

Mr. Dewey’s opponent has the prestige of the presidential office and the trappings of Commander-in-Chief, and is neither loath nor unskillful in exploiting them. So, Mr. Dewey probably has been both prudent and wise in holding back on his campaign until the end of the European War has come in sight. The people have not wanted to listen to politics. Their thoughts have been on what has been happening over there. Now that peace and the problems of peace seem to be in the offing, they will be more ready to listen to what Mr. Dewey has to offer in lieu of four more years of what they’ve got.

As much as he can Mr. Dewey has tried to eliminate the conduct of the war from the campaign. He has said that he will leave the completion of that job to the generals and admirals.

In the cross-country speaking tour, which he begins this week, Mr. Dewey will have an opportunity to tell the people what he proposes to do when the war is won.

This contest will not be decided by extraneous issues. Uppermost in the people’s minds are three questions, beside which all others pale. They are:

• How to keep the peace, so we won’t have this gory task to do all over again a generation hence.

• How to provide real jobs and a chance to get ahead for all Americans who are willing and able to work.

• How to get away from one-man government and evils of bureaucracy, and restore to vigor government-by-law.

Bearing on the big three issues, of course, are questions of international cooperation, military preparedness, policies relating to free enterprise, taxation, economy, social insurance, reconversion, home rule, separation of constitutional responsibilities – but they are all collateral to, and stemming from, the three important questions.

And on those paramount issues, Mr. Dewey is at no disadvantage to his opponent.

Mr. Roosevelt can claim no special knowhow on keeping the peace. He was in office nine years and vested with extraordinary powers – and granted that others may have been more to blame and that he did the best he could – still the fact remains that our country was attacked and the peace was not kept.

Mr. Roosevelt can claim no special knowhow in the making of real jobs and opportunities. Through those nine years before we entered the war, although he was given billions of borrowed dollars to spend, there remained eight or nine million unemployed, and the country was still crippling along with WPA, NYA and CCC.

As for one-man government versus constitutional processes, Mr. Roosevelt’s knowhow runs all in the wrong direction.

But Mr. Dewey cannot win this election merely by reciting Mr. Roosevelt’s failures. He can win only if he convinces the voters that he can do better – only if he lays out a program which the people recognize as being sounder and more hopeful than they can expect from four more years of Mr. Roosevelt. The people may want a change, but they’ll ask, “A change to what?” In answering that lies Mr. Dewey’s opportunity.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 8, 1944)

Editorial: Dewey-Hull felicitations

Most Americans will share the gratification expressed by Governor Dewey and Secretary of State Hull in their exchange of letters regarding the nonpartisan basis of their foreign policy consultations.

In commenting on the recent conversations between his adviser, John Foster Dulles, and the Secretary, the Republican presidential candidate said they showed that Democrats and Republicans are beginning “to wage peace as we wage war” on a plane above partisanship. Mr. Hull in reply hailed Mr. Dewey’s letter as “a heartening manifestation of national unity” on the peace problem.

We believe these Hull and Dewey expressions represent much more polite amenities. Unquestionably both men share the same sincere desire for a constrictive peace and the same determination to keep debate above the party level.

Of course, this does not mean that these should be no debate. The democratic process, which we are fighting to preserve, requires frank debate of honest differences in judgment as to the best route on the uncharted sea of international organization. As Mr. Dulles stated on Mr. Dewey’s behalf, their agreement with the Secretary of State reserves the right of “full public nonpartisan discussion of the means of attaining lasting peace.”

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 9, 1944)

Editorial: Dewey gets started

Governor Dewey, opening his campaign in Philadelphia, said he wanted to make it clear that:

This is not merely a campaign against an individual or a political party. It is not merely a campaign to displace a tired, exhausted, quarreling and bickering administration with a fresh and vigorous administration. It is a campaign against an administration which was conceived in defeatism, which failed for eight straight years to restore our domestic economy, which has been the most wasteful, extravagant and incompetent administration in the history of the nation, and, worst of all, one which has lost faith in itself and in the American people.

He pointed to the administrative chaos in Washington, the piling of agency on agency, the quarrels that no one in authority stops, the snarls that nobody untangles, the messes that are made of the people’s business at the people’s cost.

He cited the New Dealers’ fears for the future, their doleful prediction of difficulties and delays in reconversion and demobilization, their dismal preparations for another depression after the war – including Gen. Hershey’s shocking statement that after the war “we can keep people in the Army about as cheaply as we could create an agency for them when they are out.”

But, more than that, Mr. Dewey asserted his own firm faith that America can provide jobs and opportunities for all; that we have not even begun to build out industrial plant; that we have not exhausted our inventive genius or our capacity to produce more goods and an ever-higher living standard for our people; that we need not sacrifice freedom to achieve social security; that “we can achieve real social security only if we do keep our freedom.”

Of course, he said, we need regulation of the stock markets, bank-deposit insurance, price support for agriculture, unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, relief whenever there are not enough jobs, protection of labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively.

But we must also have a government which believes in enterprise and government policies which encourage enterprise… We must see to it that the man who wants to produce more jobs is not throttled by the government, but knows that he has a government as eager for him to succeed as he is, himself… Our place in a peaceful world can and will be made secure. But nothing on earth will make us secure unless we are productive and unless we have faith in ourselves.

It remains for Governor Dewey to prove to the country that, as President, he would know how to act on the beliefs he proclaimed in Philadelphia. Such action, as he said, involves many things – tax policies, regulatory policies, labor policies, opportunities for small business, the encroachments of bureaucracy – subjects which he promised to discuss in detail in future speeches.

We think that his emphasis on jobs and opportunities, on production and prosperity, on the need for vigor and freshness in the government during coming year of peace, got his campaign off to a hopeful start.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 10, 1944)

Editorial: Dewey’s foreign policy

For a man who is supposed to know nothing about foreign policy – to hear some of the fourth-termers talk – Mr. Dewey did pretty well in his Louisville speech Friday night.

Certainly, there was much more meat in it than in the evasive generalities which Mr. Roosevelt gives off so airily on those rare occasions when he breaks his habit of secret diplomacy.

Is such a comparison unfair to the President because he, at the moment, is carrying the responsibility of international negotiations and the Republican candidate is not? We don’t think so. Mr. Churchill has no hesitation in telling the British people what is British policy and, indeed, Allied policy. In this democracy should the people have less information about, or control of, official policy than in Britain?

Since the Dewey address in Louisville there is more hope of smoking the President out of his secrecy to approximate, if not match, his opponent’s frankness. If that happens, all Americans will be indebted to Mr. Dewey for a great public service. Because the Rooseveltian habit of fixing things up with Winnie and Joe behind a Tehran screen or over the personal phone – and never reporting to the American public – is one of the gravest dangers today to open covenants openly arrived at.

This is not the first time Mr. Dewey and the Republicans have prodded the administration toward a more enlightened foreign policy. The Republican Mackinac Declaration, in favor of American participation in an effective international organization for peace and security, forced the Roosevelt hand which for months had blocked Congressional action. Just as that incident, and the GOP platform and Dewey acceptance speech robbed the fourth-termers of their fake “isolation” issue, so Mr. Dewey on Friday night proved that he and his associates, far from being amateurs, have a thorough knowledge of foreign affairs.

Mr. Dewey’s foreign policy is genuinely international – and realistic. He is for continued cooperation among the big powers to enforce a peace of non-aggression on the Axis, and an international organization for the long haul.

But he is much more specific than the President on what to do with Germany, and about open diplomacy, and the rights of small nations, and the necessity of any lasting peace restraining the victors as well as the vanquished in the years to come.

The most striking difference between the Dewey policy and what little is known of the Roosevelt policy is the Republican candidate’s emphasis on the fact that building peace is not only a matter of treaties and organizations. It is a continuous, constructive process of creating a healthy world, politically and economically. He wants an American leadership that neither dictates to others nor keeps them on a Yankee dole. In this, his foreign policy is an inseparable part of his domestic policy, so different from that of “the Washington wasters” as he calls them:

To hear them talk Uncle Sam must play the role of the kindly but senile old gentleman, who seeks to buy the goodwill of his poor relations by giving away the dwindling remains of his youthful earnings. That is no lasting way to win friends or to influence people. Goodwill cannot be bought with gold. It flows to the man who successfully manages his own affairs, who is self-reliant and independent, yet who is interested in the rights and needs of others.

What has the fourth-term candidate to say to that?

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 11, 1944)

Editorial: The Ozarks can have him

No candidate for such a high office as President of the United States can be responsible for the conduct of all of his camp followers.

President Roosevelt has been handicapped by zealots, crackpots and political phonies and demagogues.

Governor Thomas E. Dewey, as the Republican nominee for President, is “blessed” with some of the same stripe.

One of these is Congressmen Dewey Short of Missouri, who calls himself the “hillbilly from the Ozarks.”

Mr. Short last Saturday delivered a speech here to inaugurate the Republican campaign in Pennsylvania. The speech was utterly devoid of persuasive and logical arguments on behalf of the Republican ticket. It was an abusive, offensive diatribe, replete with invective and vicious innuendo.

This election will be determined by public judgment of the personal abilities of the rival candidates and their basic politics and intentions, as revealed by their own words and records.

There are ample issues to be debated. They can be defeated logically and clearly.

The Republican State Committee conferred no favor on the voters of Pittsburgh – and won no votes for its cause – when it brought Mr. Short here Saturday.

Both camps have their Dewey Shorts. The less we hear of them, the better it will be for the candidates, for the parties, for the country.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 14, 1944)

Editorial: Count their votes

In Ohio, the Attorney General has ruled that military ballots marked by members of the Armed Forces who are subsequently, but prior to Election Day, killed in action cannot legally be counted.

Perhaps there is something in the Ohio law to justify that opinion. The Attorney General should know.

But here County Elections Director David Olbum says there is nothing in the Pennsylvania law calling for such invalidation. And he adds his opinion that voiding the votes of dead soldiers would be ridiculous.

Of course, it would. By necessity, military ballots may be marked by servicemen and women when they are received. They need not be marked on Election Day, to compel them all to vote on the same day would either deprive most of them of a ballot or require a stoppage of the war.

But once the ballot is marked, it is valid and should be counted.

We hope nobody in Pennsylvania thinks up any ruling like that of the Ohio Attorney General.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 15, 1944)

Editorial: What’s so remarkable?

The expressions by National Chairman Hannegan of the Democrats and Brownell of the Republicans against the exploitation of racial or religious issues during the campaign are well-timed and welcome.

We confess to some puzzlement, however, over the following passage in Mr. Hannegan’s statement:

I believe America’s unwavering purpose of holding a national election in 1944, regardless of war or the fortunes of war, will someday be looked upon as one of the greatest historical measures of the hardihood and integrity of our democratic way of life.

We will concede that hardihood and integrity, etc. but how in Heaven’s name these traits are proved by the fact that the country is simply fulfilling in the normal manner a constitutional mandate – a mandate which permits of no exceptions for whatever cause – is something that escapes us.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 17, 1944)

Editorial: Experience

A reader suggests that this is an appropriate time to reprint an editorial of four years ago, since it dealt with a theme that is likewise dominant in this political campaign. The editorial was published in The Pittsburgh Press Oct. 3, 1940 – more than a year before our country entered the war and the big spending began – under the title “Experience.” Here it is:

Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only living man who has had nearly eight years of experience as President of the United States, Therefore, we hear it argued, it is essential that he should have what no other President ever had – a third term.

This is, of course, an argument that will be even more forceful if Mr. Roosevelt, having had nearly 12 years of experience, decides to be drafted for a fourth term. But there’s no denying that, even now, Mr. Roosevelt has had vast experience, including:

• The experience of spending more money than any other President.

• The experience of incurring the biggest public debt in this country’s history.

• The experience of keeping spending always ahead of income, although federal revenue has been almost trebled.

• The experience of building the federal payroll to record size.

• The experience of expanding bureaucracy to unprecedented proportions.

• The experience of declaring more emergencies and exercising more power than any other peacetime President.

• The experience of seeing new enterprise remain stagnant longer than ever before.

• And the experience of seeing more Americans unemployed for more years than ever before.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 19, 1944)

Editorial: Dewey tells labor’s side

It has been assumed that the rank and file of labor is Mr. Roosevelt’s great and untappable reservoir of political strength – that however large the defections in other circles, nearly all members of organized labor could be counted on to mark the ballot in the same place a fourth time.

We’re not at all sure that will happen on Nov. 7.

Governor Dewey at Seattle last night gave some stout arguments why it should not happen.

Working men and women, looking to the post-war future, have a right to expect something better than what they’ve had. Something better than paternalistic benefactions passed down to them to buy their political loyalty. Something better than administration-sponsored strife between rival union leaders, and administration-sponsored class warfare between workers and employers. Something better than the chaos, delays and confusion of having their wages, working conditions and collective-bargaining processes tampered with and pulled and hauled about by 25 competing government agencies, bureaus, boards and commissions.

They are entitled to the full fruits of their labor, a full sharing of higher living standards which their productivity will make possible. They are entitled to gain it by free bargaining, under a government by law, administered speedily and evenhandedly, where rights are treated as legal rights and not as political favors.

Governor Dewey’s speech on labor was a good speech because it approached problems from the point of view of those who work for a living, especially union members. It spelled out why unions should not be blamed for all that has happened. It told their side of the story of troubled industrial relations, a side which needed to be told – of how just settlements of disputes have been delayed and prevented by bungling bureaucrats administering conflicting government policies.

Mr. Dewey asked:

Who gains by this planned confusion? The workers don’t gain. The public is always in the middle. The war effort has been constantly hampered. Who does gain? There can be no doubt of the answer. This policy of delay, delay and more delay, serves only the New Deal and its political ends. It puts the leaders of labor on the spot. It makes them come hat in hand to the White House. It makes political loyalty the test of a man getting his rights. Personal government instead of government by law, politics instead of justice prevails in the labor field in this country and I am against that kind of administration and always will be.

And Mr. Dewey told what he will do about it, if elected. Appoint an active and able Secretary of Labor. Build a real Department of Labor, with all the functions that belong in that department. Abolish the multitude of wasteful and competing bureaus now operating outside that department.

We shall see that every working man and woman stands equally in that department created to serve him, not to rule him. And there will be no backdoor entrance to special privilege by one group over any other group of Americans.

Our guess is that Mr. Dewey won some votes by that speech.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 20, 1944)

Editorial: Who pays for ‘prosperity’?

Democrats appear to be relying heavily on “Roosevelt prosperity” as a pro-fourth-term factor at the November polls.

Prosperity? Sure, many people not in uniform are making more money than they were before the war. (Mr. Roosevelt was President then, too, incidentally.) But where does the money come from?

An analogy might be the case of a man who borrows $1,000 from a friend and then throws a big party for the generous pal. Should the latter feel a warm glow of camaraderie – or should he start worrying about the money?

The recent tax report of the research committee of the Committee for Economic Development estimated that “after the war the average cost of supporting the activities of the federal government, if spread evenly over the entire population, would be more than $500 a year for a family of four.” And a footnote added:

This would not be the full picture… It is estimated that state and local governments, after the war, will have to collect around $12 billion a year in taxes. Accordingly, the total cost of government in the United States after the war, if spread evenly over the whole population, would be in the neighborhood of $850 a year for a family of four.

Or put it another way. The national debt today is some $211 billion. It certainly will go past $250 billion before the war is over. The total population is around 136 million. Suppose, for simplicity’s sake, that the population consisted entirely of four-person families – 34 million of them. A little arithmetic shows that the average share of that $250-billion debt will be $7,353 per family. This is an obligation that a good many of us have neglected to put down in our personal budgets.

In short, “Roosevelt prosperity” turns out to be a patty at our own expense. Guests will be presented with the bill as they leave the festivities. And they will have to settle it – through taxes, or through inflation of one kind or another which will chop down the value of their savings and their income.

Of course, most of the expenditures have been necessary, because of the war. But he who attributes the pleasant state of his bank account to economic wisdom on the part of the White House, and expects more of the same indefinitely from that same erratic economic fountain, is living in a fool’s paradise.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Dewey keeps the offensive

Governor Dewey is showing skill as a political campaigner who can take the offense and keep it.

The New Dealers were still sputtering denials to his charge that they fear the problems of peace and demobilization when he let go his haymaker indicting the “planned confusion” of their labor policies. And before they could think up the answers to that one, he hit again by challenging the indispensability of one man, which the New Dealers themselves have chosen as the campaign’s primary issue.

Mr. Dewey used the words of Mr. Roosevelt’s running mate, Mr. Truman: “The very future of the peace and prosperity of the world depends upon his reelection in November.”

And how, asked Mr. Dewey, is a fourth term indispensable to that?

The first essential to peace and prosperity, he said, is unity in our government and unity and strength among our people. But the record shows 12 years of setting “group against group, race against race, and class against class,” labor against employer and labor against labor. And 12 years of quarrelling and bickering among the high-up New Deal administrators.

“An administration which cannot unite its own house even in war can never unite the nation for the tremendous peace tasks ahead of us.”

A second essential to peace and prosperity is “joint, harmonious action between the President and the Congress. Is a fourth term indispensable to that?” Not on the record of 12 years of trying to bring Congress into popular disrepute, 12 years of “executive arrogance toward the elected representatives of the people.” For, said Mr. Dewey:

As a result, no bill which this administration can propose to Congress is today received with anything less than suspicion.

My opponent has demonstrated that he cannot work with the present Democratic Congress. How in the name of the future of our country can he be expected to get along with the Republican Congress which will be elected this fall?

A third essential is “a strong and vigorous America with jobs for all. Is a fourth term indispensable to that?” Not on the record of an administration which, after spending $58 billion through seven peace years, still had 10 million unemployed – and “we had to have a war to get jobs.”

We’ve a hunch the New Dealers will talk less about the indispensable man from here on to Nov. 7.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 21, 1944)

Editorial: Stalin electioneers for FDR

One of the current mysteries is how such busy men as Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin find time to mix in American politics for the reelection of President Roosevelt. Even harder to understand is how such intelligent men can fail to see that these efforts are self-defeating, that they boomerang in favor of Governor Dewey.

Nothing causes deeper resentment in Americans than attempts by foreign governments to influence elections here. That always has been so, and it is even truer today because of greater emotional tension.

Though Mr. Churchill had been warned by earlier hostile American reaction to such blunders by the British press and officials, he could not resist the temptation in his Québec statement last week to put in a few personal plugs for the fourth term candidate – without specifically mentioning the election.

Marshal Stalin is less subtle. He simply takes one of his Moscow party-line magazines, and a stooge writer, and cuts loose against Mr. Dewey and the Republicans. He has the GOP candidate and party smeared with all the lies and insults which pass for clever propaganda in a dictatorship, but which informed readers in a democracy find revolting.

According to War and the Working Class, the Republican Party “always has been a citadel of isolationism.” But the article slips in its list of alleged isolationists by including prominent Democrats and by admitting that Mr. Dewey “has attempted to shake off diehard isolationists like Hamilton Fish and… Gerald Smith.”

Extreme reactionaries, Fascist elements, and even Hitlerite agents are trying to use the Republican Party, it charges, which is supported by the National Association of Manufacturers, DuPont, Ford, General Motors. These firms are said to be trying to preserve their interests in Germany, Italy and Japan.

Of course, this poison pen stuff is not much different from that of Marshal Stalin’s Communist organization in this country, which is working so hard to reelect Mr. Roosevelt.

We do not suggest that Candidate Roosevelt approves of such blundering tactics by his Stalinite supporters in Russia and in this country. As a smart politician, he knows that the loving Red buss bestowed upon him is apt to be politically a kiss of death. And the Republicans know that many voters will judge Mr. Dewey by his enemies.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Dewey and MacArthur

Candidate Dewey probably did no good either to himself or Gen. MacArthur by his remark at a press conference that Gen. MacArthur’s genius should get more recognition through appointment to a post of higher responsibility. Gen. MacArthur pleads his own cause more effectively by brilliant actions like the landing on Morotai Island, 300 miles from the Philippines.

Asked whether Gen. MacArthur should be given supreme command in the Pacific, Mr. Dewey retreated to the position that this should be decided by the chiefs of staff. This is in line with Mr. Dewey’s earlier declarations that he would let the generals and admirals run the war. But the question of higher responsibility for Gen. MacArthur, in general terms, might be reserved for the general staff quite as appropriately as the question of higher responsibility in the specific role as supreme commander in the Pacific.

Mr. Dewey wishes to make it appear that if elected President he will not, in the constitutional role of Commander-in-Chief, seek to supersede the judgment of our real military chiefs. He does not strengthen that position by intimating that he would supersede their judgment in one particular only – namely, the promotion of Gen. MacArthur to higher authority.

It does a general no good to become the subject of political controversy. Leonard Wood, a Republican, and a candidate after World War I for the presidential nomination, undoubtedly suffered from political discrimination during World War I, when he was not permitted to go overseas.

Yet the close connections between him and Theodore Roosevelt, his known political ambitions and the ambitions his friends cherished for him, undoubtedly contributed to this result. The more the Republicans complained about the injustice done to Gen. Wood, the more difficult it became for the administration to use him in a place worthy of his talents.

President Roosevelt spoke in affectionate terms at Seattle of “my old friend, Gen. Douglas MacArthur,” but the eagerness of some of MacArthur’s other old friends to make a presidential candidate of him and the publication of his private letter attacking the administration, have tended to make a military problem child out of the general. Now Mr. Dewey, in the midst of his campaign, drags Gen. MacArthur deeper into politics and makes the problem more difficult.