Wallace warns against slip into Fascism
Labor, business, farmer must cooperate after war to avoid it
Los Angeles, California –
The central problem of post-war democracy for labor business and agriculture will be “to work together without slipping into an American Fascism,” Vice President Henry A. Wallace said in an address here last night.
A post-war struggled among “big business, big labor and big agriculture” might bring Fascism, he warned at a Win-the-War rally in Shrine Auditorium in which he predicted a “serious conflict” of “the Big Three” unless they all recognize “the superior claims of the general welfare of the common man.”
Mr. Wallace said:
Such recognition of the general welfare must be genuine, must be more than a polite mouthing of high-sounding phrases.
He added:
Each of the Big Three has unprecedented power at the present time. Each is faced with serious post-war worries. Each will be tempted to profit at the expense of the other two when the post-war boom breaks. Each can save itself only if it learns to work with the other two and with government in terms of the general welfare.
Discussing the post-war aims of workers, businessmen, farmers and returning servicemen, Mr. Wallace said they all merged into a general desire for pursuit of happiness.
Scores big businessmen
Organized labor has become of age and has become a responsible partner of management in operating industry and trade, he said.
He scored big businessmen who “put Wall Street first and the nation second” and warned they “will fight with unrelenting hatred through press, radio, demagogue and lobbyist every national and state government which puts human rights above property rights.”
Farmers, seeking bargaining power equivalent to that of labor and industry, have learned the art of lobbying, he said.
He declared:
They intend to use federal power to hold up farm prices after the war.
Mr. Wallace praised businessmen more interested in serving humanity than in making money for money’s sake.
Small man wants chance
He declared:
The small businessman wants a fair chance to compete in a growing market with fair access to raw materials, capital and technical research.
…and demanded that big business not be allowed to control Congress and the executive branch of government so as “to make it easy for them to write the rules for the post-war game.”
Discussing the returning servicemen, he said:
These young men will run the country 15 years hence.
He warned that:
Their disgust with pressure group politics wrongly channeled could lead to a new kind of Fascism. But, rightly directed, it may result in a true general welfare democracy for the first time in history.