Porky b@$t@rd should get out more 
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Martin group may yield to Senator Davis
Move seen as serious attempt to avoid GOP primary squabble
By Kermit McFarland
Influential figures within the Martin administration at Harrisburg are making a serious attempt to avoid a party squabble in the April primary.
They are willing to hand the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate to Senator James J. Davis “on a silver platter.”
While there is no love lost between Governor Edward Martin’s camp and the 70-year-old senior Senator from Pennsylvania, these administration officials profess to believe the Republicans have a real chance to carry this state in November and that a primary battle would dangerously menace that prospect.
Grundy not sold yet
To date, the move to let Senator Davis win with a fourth senatorial nomination by forfeit is restricted to the Governor’s circle. Joseph R. Grundy, 80-year-old Bristol manufacturer and the most effective single influence in the state administration, has not been sold on the idea.
Mr. Grundy has opposed Senator Davis every time the Senator has become a candidate.
In 1930, when Mr. Grundy was holding a temporary appointment to the U.S. Senate, Mr. Davis beat him for a two-year nomination. Senator Davis was renominated for six years in 1932, this time over the opposition of the late Gen. Smedley Butler, put up by former Governor Gifford Pinchot, with whom Mr. Grundy had a working arrangement.
Livengood a possibility
In 1938, Mr. Davis defeated one of Mr. Grundy’s fair-haired boys, former State Senator G. Mason Owlett, now president of Mr. Grundy’s Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association. And two years ago, Mr. Grundy was the prime factor behind the defeat of Senator Davis’ ambition to become Governor.
Whether the Governor can prevail on Mr. Grundy to suppress his bitter feeling toward Senator Davis remains doubtful. If he can’t the Senator will have opposition in the primary, Secretary of Internal Affairs Williams S. Livengood of Somerset is the leading possibility at the moment.
Lieutenant Governor John C. Bell, favorite of Joseph N. Pew, Philadelphia oil millionaire, for the senatorial nomination, has been edged from the picture in the backroom manipulations going on the last few weeks. Mr. Livengood, however, is acceptable to Mr. Pew.
The only catch in the Livengood plan is that the Secretary of Internal Affairs, only 43, now serving a second term, is a reluctant candidate. He has his cap set for the governorship race two years from now.
Pegler: More on Dewey’s record
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
Some of Tom Dewey’s friends and neighbors are beginning to mutter he owes it to them to say now, somehow, that he will accept the nomination so they will have something to offer the Republicans around the country in competition with Mr. Willkie.
I agree that this bashfulness can be overdone and has just about served its purpose, but I take it for granted that Dewey will not only accept, but put up a fight for the nomination because to his kind of Republican, Willkie is just an imitation Roosevelt and his policies a plagiarized New Deal.
It has got to be Dewey or Willkie for no other Republican running against Mr. Roosevelt would be worth the investment in train fares, wire tolls and printing. Moreover, Dewey is so sore at Willkie for cutting him down in 1940 that you may be sure he would be very happy to accept if only to square matters.
Of course, he should be grateful because Mr. Roosevelt was a bull for strength that year and would have knocked the brash young man right through the skylight, but politicians are peculiar and he thought he had a good chance and was cut off by an interloper.
Willkie evasive on labor
But if Mr. Dewey is being coy, I submit that Brother Willkie is also simpering on an important issue while tearing around to meetings and pelting himself with compliments at close range.
How stands Brother Willkie on labor? That is one of the greatest domestic issues and grows graver day by day. It is not a mere matter of wartime strikes which may abate under the pressure of public opinion communicated to Congress and the bosses of the big organizations, and, in some cases have undoubtedly been provoked by dumb and stiff-necked or incompetent industrial management.
It involved fundamentals, the right of the citizen to join a private lodge, his right not to pay an income tax to a political organization as Sidney Hillman has had the effrontery to propose that he should, his right to bargain through the agent of his own choice as proposed in the Wagner Act and not through an agent thrust upon him by either his employer or the government.
These rights have been flouted in the most cynical way for several years and will wither away if they are not reestablished soon. Another four years of Mr. Roosevelt’s policy would cancel them entirely and if we can assume his administration would continue its creeping encroachments on the freedom and dignity of the individual, we can also foresee a convincing imitation in the country of the labor controls which Mussolini founded in Italy and Hitler adopted in the land of the chosen, but faceless people of the master race.
Dewey fair to labor
I will concede that Mr. Dewey has not declared himself strongly. But, for one thing, not being a candidate thus far, he hasn’t had to and, for another, he did prove as prosecutor in New York that he is at least opposed to criminality in union leadership and that he has a wide knowledge of those union practices which are not criminal but are antisocial.
And notwithstanding his prosecution of crooks in union office, the intelligent labor men have been glad to admit that he was fair and not in any sense the enemy either of unions or labor. In politics he has had the support of many such men.
Willkie’s thoughts on taxes and the American standard of living which he would debase, though reluctantly, in the interests of war efforts, and his foreign policy have been very bold and interesting. He will be accused of a number of sinful ideas against that which we call the American way, but it will have to be allowed that he has not trimmed on those politically dangerous issues.
Therefore, it is hard to understand why he ignores the whole great problem of labor and unionism as though it didn’t exist. It is there all right as prominent as something extremely dead and I can assure him on the basis of, I should say, at least 100,000 letters from laborers and other American toilers in the last few years that it is no minor concern.
These people and many more are thinking of some very precious liberties that have been taken from them at home by a government which has been glib with promises of unwonted and, in some areas, unwanted freedoms, everywhere else in the world.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 8, 1944)
SENATE PASSES FEDERAL SOLDIER VOTE BILL
States’-rights group beaten in showdown
Administration forces, however, face another fight in House
Washington (UP) –
The Senate today approved the administration’s federal ballot soldier vote bill after rejecting repeated last-ditch efforts by a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats to impose at least restrictive amendments.
The measure was sent back to the House, where a similar coalition succeeded in defeating a federal ballot plan last Thursday.
The federal ballot provision was written into previous House and Senate soldier vote legislation by a Senate vote of 46–40, on motion of Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY).
Taft’s plan defeated
Mr. Barkley’s motion carried after the Senate rejected, 45–41, restrictions on federal ballot use proposed by Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH) and the Republican-Democratic coalition.
The Taft amendment would have authorized a federal ballot only for absentee voters whose home states failed to make available, upon application, a lightweight state ballot.
After the adoption of Mr. Barkley’s motion, Mr. Taft made another attempt to keep his amendment alive by moving that it be taken to conference between the House and Senate. He lost again, by the same vote of 45–41.
House must act
With the defeat of this motion, Senate action on the federal ballot plan – in the form of an amendment to the varying state ballot plans passed by both Senate and House – was automatically completed without further votes. It was an unusual thing for the Senate to amend a bill it had previously passed, but the parliamentarian ruled it could be done.
The House now must act on the Senate federal ballot provisions. In view of last week’s overwhelming vote for state ballots, it will presumably reject the Senate plan and throw the matter into conference.
Separate bill approved
However, to guard against the possibility that the House would kill the federal ballot provisions in the pending measure, the Senate also put its federal ballot provisions into an entirely new and separate bill. This was passed, 47–38.
The new measure also goes to the House, where the administration hopes to keep it on tap as a final resort to keep federal ballot legislation alive. No federal ballot legislation can become effective without affirmative House action on the Senate provisions in one bill or the other.
Davis ‘willing’ to run again for Senate post
Washington (UP) –
Senator James J. Davis (R-PA) today announced his willingness to run for reelection.
Mr. Davis said:
If the Republican Party leaders feel that by reason of my years of experience I can be of service to our country and Pennsylvania at this critical time, I am willing to be a candidate for reelection.
Mr. Davis was first elected to the Senate in 1932 and reelected in 1938.
Editorial: Soldiers must vote
There is still hope that the Senate can work out some practicable compromise in the soldier-vote fight.
The so-called states’-rights measure passed by the House does not do the job. Under it, most servicemen abroad would be disfranchised, because not all states can or will make the necessary changes in their laws and constitutions to facilitate absentee voting. There should be a federal ballot as a substitute, leaving to the states their constitutional function of counting all ballots.
The issue will be determined chiefly by the Republicans. Their almost-solid party vote – more than 9 to 1 – put over the states’-rights bill in the House. Some Republican leaders in the Senate have been more farsighted in seeking a compromise. Such a compromise probably would become an amendment to the House bill, and would permit both state and federal ballots.
Why should Republicans in the House suddenly become the states’-rights party, and at the risk of alienating soldiers? There seem to be three reasons for this paradox:
One is the real constitutional difficulty in any federal ballot, and the possibility that this will invite contested elections. But some of the suggested compromises eliminate most, though not all, of this danger.
A second reason probably arises from the harsh language used by President Roosevelt in trying to force Congress to act. While what he said about the need for an adequate law and the descriptive terms he applied to the House bill were apropos, his statement was received by many as an unjust smear and as a partisan campaign blast.
The third reason is the Republican fear that the President is accurate in his guess that the soldier vote will be heavily pro-Roosevelt. Of course such partisan considerations do not touch the inalienable right of the eligible soldier to vote. But, unfortunately, both the President and House Republican leaders seem to be thinking more about party politics than about the soldiers’ rights.
There is probably no way to make soldier voting absolutely fair as between a Republican candidate and Mr. Roosevelt. As Commander-in-Chief, and as one far better known to the troops than any Republican candidate can be, Mr. Roosevelt will have an advantage.
That should force the drafters of any federal ballot law, and the War and Navy Departments in handling the ballots, and the states in facilitating absentee voting and counting the results, to lean over backward to prevent the result from being rigged.
But it does not provide reason for disfranchising servicemen.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 9, 1944)
Soldier vote bill sent to conference
House rejects federal plan adopted by Senate; deadlock seen
Washington (UP) –
The House today rejected the Senate’s federal ballot amendments to the soldier vote bill and sent the disputed legislation to conference for attempt at some final settlement.
The action, by voice vote, had been predicted inasmuch as the House last Thursday rejected by a vote of 215–164 an attempt to write federal ballot provision onto the states’-rights bill which it subsequently passed.
In view of that House margin against federal ballots, the House conferees were expected to stand steadfast against the Senate efforts to incorporate such a system into the bill.
House conferees named
Chairman Eugene Worley (D-TX) of the House Elections Committee, although a proponent of federal ballot legislation, moved to bring the bill before the House and then asked that the House turn down the Senate amendments.
The House agreed, and Speaker Sam Rayburn named the following House conferees: Mr. Worley, John E. Rankin (D-MS), Herbert C. Bonner (D-NC), Karl M. LeCompte (R-IA) and Harris Ellsworth (R-OR).
The House conferees stand 3–1 in favor of a purely states’-rights bill. Mr. Worley and Mr. Bonner are the only two administration supporters.
Second bill to committee
The Senate in addition to amending the state’s-rights bill had passed a separate federal ballot measure. Chairman Rayburn said he would send this second bill to the House Elections Committee. This would be merely a formality, inasmuch as it was expected no effort would be made to bring it out of committee unless the administration, if defeated in conference, decides to make a final attempt to provide a federal ballot.
There were indications that the amended bill was headed into a tangle that might block final passage of any new system of voting by members of the Armed Forces.
Something must give
If any legislation is to be enacted either the House or Senate will have to give in. it appeared that if there is any yielding it more likely would be in the Senate. The margin against the federal ballot in the House was considered large enough to defeat any compromise attempt there.
In adding the federal ballot to the House-approved Eastland-Rankin states’-rights bill yesterday, the Senate vote was 46–40.
Some quarters believed that eventually Congress would merely pass legislation amending the 1942 soldier-vote act to provide that the Army and Navy shall expedite transmission and return of state ballots. But both administration and coalition groups said such proposals would be premature at this time.
How they stood up to be counted
Washington (UP) –
The roll call vote on a motion by Senator Alben W. Barkley (D-KY), by which the Senate wrote the federal ballot provision into the House-approved “states’-rights” soldier vote bill was:
YEAs – 46
Aiken (R-VT)
Andrews (D-FL)
Austin (R-VT)
Barkley (D-KY)
Bone (D-WA)
Burton (R-OH)
Chandler (D-KY)
Chávez (D-NM)
Clark (D-ID)
Clark (D-MO)
Danaher (R-CT)
Davis (R-PA)
Downey (D-CA)
Ellender (D-LA)
Ferguson (R-MI)
Green (D-RI)
Guffey (D-PA)
Hatch (D-NM)
Hayden (D-AZ)
Jackson (D-IN)
Johnson (D-CO)
Kilgore (D-WV)
La Follette (PR-WI)
Langer (R-ND)
Lucas (D-IL)
Maloney (D-CT)
Maybank (D-SC)
McFarland (D-AZ)
Mead (D-NY)
Murdock (D-UT)
Murray (D-MT)
Pepper (D-FL)
Radcliffe (D-MD)
Stewart (D-TN)
Thomas (D-OK)
Thomas (D-UT)
Tobey (R-NH)
Truman (D-MO)
Tunnell (D-DE)
Tydings (D-MD)
Vandenberg (R-MI)
Wagner (D-NY)
Wallgren (D-WA)
Walsh (D-MA)
Walsh (D-NJ)
Wiley (R-WI)
NAYs – 40
Bailey (D-NC)
Ball (R-MN)
Bankhead (D-AL)
Bilbo (D-MS)
Brewster (R-ME)
Bridges (R-NH)
Brooks (R-IL)
Buck (R-DE)
Bushfield (R-SD)
Butler (R-NE)
Byrd (D-VA)
Capper (R-KS)
Caraway (D-AR)
Connally (D-TX)
Eastland (D-MS)
George (D-GA)
Gerry (D-RI)
Gurney (R-SD)
Hawkes (R-NJ)
Hill (D-AL)
Holman (R-OR)
McClellan (D-AR)
Millikin (R-CO)
Moore (R-OK)
Nye (R-ND)
O’Daniel (D-TX)
Overton (D-LA)
Reed (R-KS)
Revercomb (R-WV)
Reynolds (D-NC)
Russell (D-GA)
Shipstead (R-MN)
Smith (D-SC)
Taft (R-OH)
Thomas (R-ID)
Wherry (R-NE)
White (R-ME)
Willis (R-IN)
Wilson (R-IA)
GOP gives Davis an open field in Senate race
State leaders fear fight in primary would impair strength of party
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania –
Governor Edward Martin, in a statement here last night, disclosed that his campaign to prevent a Republican fight in the April primary had been successful.
He said the Republican organization, led by himself, Joseph R. Grundy and Joseph N. Pew, will not oppose U.S. Senator James J. Davis for renomination.
This will be the first time in the five campaigns Senator Davis has made that he has not been opposed by one or more potent factors in the Republican Party.
Primary fight feared
The Governor for weeks has been arguing against trying to defeat Mr. Davis in the primary. The Senator and the Governor were primary opponents in the 1942 primary for the governorship nomination, Mr. Davis losing for the first time in his career.
Mr. Martin’s main objective is to carry Pennsylvania over the New Deal ticket in November – something the Republicans haven’t done since 1932 – and he fears a primary fight would imperil that objective.
The Governor also announced that the Republican leadership (meaning Messrs. Martin, Pew and Grundy) had agreed to support former Governor Arthur H. James for one of two nominations for the State Superior Court. At the same time, Mr. Martin disclosed his appointment of Mr. James to this bench to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Judge Joseph Stadtfeld. The appointment will run until January.
Justice Hughes endorsed
Also included in Mr. Martin’s announcement was Old Guard endorsement of Justice Howard W. Hughes of Washington for the State Supreme Court nomination and Common Pleas Judge J. Frank Graff of Armstrong County for the second Superior Court nomination. Justice Hughes is now serving by appointment.
He and Republican State Chairman M. Harvey Taylor, who held a joint press conference, declined to name the candidates on the rest of the Martin-Pew Grundy slate.
But it is apparently well settled that City Treasurer Edgar W. Baird of Philadelphia will be on the ticket for the State Treasurer nomination, and State Senator G. Harold Watkins of Frackville, Schuylkill County, will be picked for Auditor General.
Decision ‘almost unanimous’
The Governor said the decision to drop all opposition to Senator Davis was “almost unanimous.” He did not identify any who did not approve the plan, although obviously Mr. Grundy accepted it reluctantly.
Mr. Martin said:
I am for Senator Davis for reelection because we need in Congress men who are imbued with sound American ideals and who believe in the American way of life.
The Democrats have already rounded out a slate consisting of Congressman Francis J. Myers of Philadelphia for the U.S. Senate, Federal Judge Charles Alvin Jones for the State Supreme Court, Superior Court Judge Chester H. Rhodes and Auditor General F. Clair Ross for the Superior Court, State Treasurer G. Harold Wagner for Auditor General, and Ramsay S. Black, third assistant postmaster general, for State Treasurer.
Judge Graff slated for GOP race
By Kermit McFarland
Common Pleas Court Judge J. Frank Graff of Kittanning will be a candidate for the State Superior Court on the Grundy-Pew ticket now being formulated for the Republican primary in April.
This will be his second try for the Superior Court. He served a few months on this bench by appointment of the late Governor John S. Fisher in 1930, but was defeated in the ensuing primary and reappointed by Mr. Fisher to the Armstrong County Common Pleas Court.
Judge Graff is almost as well known in Allegheny County as in his own district, since he has been one of the most frequent visiting judges on the local Criminal Court bench.
To run with James
As an organization candidate for the Superior Court, Judge Graff will run with former Governor Arthur H. James of Plymouth, who yesterday was appointed to the vacancy on this court caused by the death of Judge Joseph Stadtfeld in December. Mr. James sat on this bench six years before he became Governor in 1939.
Two judges will be elected to the Superior Court this year because of the vacancy and the fact that the term of Judge Chester H. Rhodes of Stroudsburg, the only Democrat on either appellate bench, expires.
The Democratic organization has already slated Judge Rhodes for renomination and Auditor General F. Clair Ross for the vacancy.
May fill vacancy
Judge Graff is 56, graduated from Princeton University and the University of Pittsburgh Law School, was a major in the 28th Division in the last war and became a judge in Armstrong County in 1924.
In 1930, after the death of President Judge William D. Porter, Judge Graff was appointed to the vacancy. He served from Feb. 18 to May 22, in the meantime losing the Republican nomination at the May 20 primary, and when Judge Graff was defeated, reappointed him to that bench. He was elected to a new 10-year term in 1931 and reelected in 1941.
The Pew-Grundy organization will back Supreme Court Justice Howard W. Hughes of Washington for nomination to a full 21-year term. He was appointed by Governor Martin last month. The Democrats have slated Federal Circuit Judge Charles Alvin Jones of Pittsburgh for this post.
Guffey denies he sought job for physician
Says he wanted doctor to be given work after he had been appointed
Washington –
U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA) today explained that those letters he sent to District of Columbia officials in 1942 were not for the purpose of getting his personal physician a job, but to get some work for him to do after he got the job.
Mr. Guffey came under fire of some of his Senate colleagues when it became known that he had threatened an investigation of the District’s hospitals and used “pressure” on behalf of Dr. Eugene de Savitsch, in two letters to DC officials, authorship of which Mr. Guffey admitted. The Senator issued a statement today to clear up “misstatements and a large amount of misinformation concerning these letters.”
He said:
In the first place, the letters were not written in any effort to get anybody a job. At the time they were written, Dr. de Savitsch was and had been for two years a consulting surgeon at Glenn Dale Sanitarium, a position to which Dr. [George C.] Ruhland [district health officer] appointed him.
In the second place, there was no question of getting anyone on the payroll. In the three years of his association with Glenn Dale Sanitarium, Dr. de Savitsch drew three checks for $15 each and in each case, he turned the checks over to indigent patients. Dr. de Savitsch has a large private practice and doesn’t need to get on a public payroll.
Mr. Guffey added that the physician was never given anything to do, because of Dr. Ruhland’s policies, and the letters were written in an attempt to correct the situation. He cited Dr. de Savitsch’s medical qualifications.
Sinclair Weeks takes Lodge’s Senate seat
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
Sinclair Weeks, treasurer of the Republican National Committee, prepared today to fill the vacancy in the U.S. Senate caused by the resignation of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. until a successor is elected next November for the unexpired four-year term.
Governor Leverett Saltonstall, in announcing Mr. Weeks’ appointment last night, also disclosed his own intention of running for Mr. Lodge’s unfilled term at the November elections.
Mr. Lodge retired from the Senate last week to become an Army officer after serving only two years of his six-year term. Mr. Weeks was defeated by Mr. Lodge for the Republican nomination in 1942. He is a supporter of Wendell Willkie.
Mr. Weeks is the son of the late John W. Weeks, a Boston banker, former Representative and Senator from Massachusetts and Secretary of War in the cabinets of Presidents Harding and Coolidge.
President’s ‘no’ only fourth term bar
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
U.S. so sensitive, London editor says
London, England (UP) –
The London Daily Mail carried a large cartoon on its editorial page today depicting a gymnasium in which President Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie and Governor Thomas E. Dewey were training.Mr. Roosevelt was punching two bags bearing the likeliness of Hitler and Hirohito. Mr. Willkie was punching a bag labeled “McCormick.” Governor Dewey was in a corner skipping rope, standing by the door, Uncle Sam, in gym clothes, was telling a man peeking in to “Scram – This Is Private.”
In an adjoining column, the paper advised Britishers that:
If we want Roosevelt to carry on in the White House, we should shun advice-giving to the American electorate.
It said:
You have no idea how sensitive the people are.
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt’s progress toward a fourth-term nomination is gaining such momentum today that only an abrupt and public disavowal from the White House could stop it.
Under those circumstances, Mr. Roosevelt’s refusal to reveal his political plans is accepted generally by politicians and political writers here as demonstrating his willingness or desire again to be drafted by the Democratic National Convention.
Asked directly at his press and radio conference yesterday whether he would accept renomination, Mr. Roosevelt replied there was no news on that subject. But the fourth-term campaign conducted by his associates has been making news for some time.
The Democratic National Committee last month did some precedented-smashing itself in adopting a resolution soliciting the President to stay on the job.
New Hampshire and California party leaders have nominated slates of Democratic National Convention delegates pledged to Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination. That gives the President a head start of 62 convention votes.
The Illinois Democratic organization announced yesterday it would enter Mr. Roosevelt’s name in the state’s April 11 presidential preference primary. Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City, who rules the New Jersey Democratic machine, is out for a fourth term.
Vice Chairman Oscar R. Ewing of the Democratic National Committee told Portland, Oregon, questioners this week that Mr. Roosevelt’s reelection to a fourth term had been assured within the past six weeks by public realization that the war would last for a long time.
Vice President Henry A. Wallace held a San Francisco press conference this week and said:
I suspect President Roosevelt will run for a fourth term. As for me – I am in the lap of the gods.
Washington gave Mr. Wallace top marks for accuracy on both statements. The facts are that the Democratic organization with a few notable exceptions
Former Governor J former Senator James A. Reed of Missouri are trying to raise the anti-Roosevelt battle standard in the Midwest. James A. Farley is struggling against powerful Roosevelt forces in New York. Senator W. Lee O’Daniel (D-TX) and some other Southerners are off the fourth-term reservations.
There are mutterings in Ohio and elsewhere. But the President had similar pre-convention opposition in 1940 and his fourth-term campaigners promise that he will roll it flat again. There seems to be willingness to concede, however, that the 1944 presidential nomination will be considerably closer than any since 1916.
Willkie tour opens in Idaho
Twin Falls, Idaho (UP) –
A change of administration would be “less disturbing in wartime than during the Reconstruction period,” Wendell L. Willkie declared last night in an address in which he charged the present government with keeping the people ignorant of foreign affairs t increase the impression it is indispensable.
Army officers are directing the war, he said, and they would continue to do this with a new administration.
Mr. Willkie’s address was the first of his tour of the West, generally recognized as a test of his popularity as the GOP standard-bearer this year.
He said:
As a matter of fact, our relations with other nations would be strengthened and clarified through new leadership – leadership not grown too tired and cynical to lead; leadership less enamored of the panoply and show of power; leadership fresh from the people.
Mr. Willkie, scheduled to confer with Republicans in Boise today, will continue to Portland, Oregon, and Tacoma, Washington. He will deliver a Lincoln Day address at Tacoma Saturday.
Wallace advocates high peace aims
Portland, Oregon (UP) –
This world was made to be one world, and unless a lasting peace is evolved, the newly developed destructive forces of warfare will make it unsafe to live anywhere, Vice President Henry A. Wallace told a Jackson Day dinner audience in Portland last night.
Mr. Wallace said:
My trips through western war plants, and what I am hearing about rocket planes and high-powered explosives, has convinced me we must set our sights high at the peace table to avoid another war.
Mr. Wallace left last night for Seattle and then Wisconsin.
Fourth term market gets bullish again
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Every flick of President Roosevelt’s cigarette, every flicker of the eyelash, the tone of his voice – all these little signs are interpreted these days when he is asked at his press conferences about a fourth term.
Therefore, it may be reported today the market is bullish again for a fourth-term try.
Not that the President said so. But he didn’t deny it. No longer, as a month ago, did he dismiss it as a “picayune” question.
He enjoys repartee
It was one of those things, he said, and there was no news on it.
But he was not blunt or brusque, as sometimes in the part, to the political inquiries put by reporters when they saw that he did not mind them. Instead, he seemed to welcome them and enjoy the repartee.
The inevitable question was raised again in connection with Vice President Henry A. Wallace’s statement in San Francisco that he “suspected” Mr. Roosevelt would run again.
Mr. Wallace’s “suspicions” are worth nothing. For he boasts that he knew in March 1940, before even the President himself knew, that Mr. Roosevelt would be a candidate for a third term.
Soldier-vote victory
Mr. Roosevelt may have been elated at his press conference by the Senate action in tacking the Green-Lucas federal ballot bill on the House’s “states’-rights” measure, which assures at least consideration of a short federal ballot for soldier voting in the conference between the two branches.
It was a partial victory for the administration.
Smith: Roosevelt secret weapon – Double talk
By Merriman Smith, United Press staff writer
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt has unveiled his secret weapon for use against those trying to pry out his 1944 political plans – double talk.
In 1940, reporters who asked him about his third-term intentions were told to wear dunce caps and go stand in the corner. His strategy this year, however, is to talk all around the lot, leaving the reporters breathless from the chase and more than mildly confused.
Like something from the realm of snasafran and biddleclip was his reaction to fourth-term questions at his news conference yesterday. A woman reporter sounded the keynote when she frankly told the Chief Executive: “I’m confused.”
So is everybody else, the President agreed.
Another victim of the cruppletub and blimplerip was a reporter who planned to ask the President for his views of the Democratic vice-presidential possibilities. Instead, he said “presidential.” But Mr. Roosevelt got the idea, anyway.
The reporter noted that Vice President Henry A. Wallace had been touring the country making what some people construed as political speeches. In view of these statements, the newsmen asked, what did the President think of the Democratic candidacy for the Presidency?
The air was heavy with quirmadil and falantopery as the President started to speak. When he finished it was strictly pluddlestan and number four.
Well, the President started out, those people–. He paused for a split second as if to let his drummolt sink in. he continued by saying there was only one thing for him to do and that was get out and make a speech. Of course, he added, all this criticism about Henry Wallace–.
Somebody in the back shouted “louder.” Raising his voice, Mr. Roosevelt said: Read the sermon on the Mount – is that political? Then he answered his own question by saying that some people would say that it was.
Clearing the tropodgas from his mind and brushing the hornstrawp from his notes, this correspondent asked Mr. Roosevelt: “Would you accept a fourth-term nomination?”
With an expression that seemed to say “I-realize-you-have-to-do-this-sort-of-thing-for-a-living,” the President explained that that was one of them things. It goes back, he said, to the killer of stories – there’s no news on that today.
It was here that the young lady injected her classic cry: “I’m confused.” The President agreed with her.
This seemed to make everybody feel better. Most of the newspapermen thought the doubletalk would be more pleasant to cope with until the President’s fourth-term candidacy is an official fact than the old dunce cap and stand-in-the-corner routine.
As one veteran correspondent put it, “the geigensplock will hemdurndyl better than ever.”
The Pittsburgh Press (February 10, 1944)
Nunan is nominated to succeed Hannegan
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt today nominated Joseph D. Nunan Jr. of Douglaston, New York, to be Commissioner of Internal Revenue, succeeding Robert E. Hannegan of St. Louis who resigned to become Democratic National Chairman.
Mr. Nunan has been collector of internal revenue in Brooklyn, New York.
Bricker favors Army vote by states
Ohio Governor tells capital questioners he’s for more federal economy; thinks GOP will surely win
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, bringing to the capital his campaign for the 1944 Republican presidential nomination, today put himself on record as favoring regular state ballots for service personnel and called for drastic reduction in federal payrolls.
Displaying his political wares to a press conference shortly after arriving here, he described the soldier vote controversy as strictly a political issue which he thought should be solved by using regular state ballots rather than the federal ballots advocated by President Roosevelt.
Wants no outside help
He also took occasion to protest against interference with the coming presidential campaign by foreign sources. One of the 50-odd political writers present asked what he thought of recent comment in the British press that Mr. Roosevelt should be reelected.
Mr. Bricker replied:
I think we ought to elect our own President. It is none of their business. We can take care of our own affairs.
Governor Bricker declined to say how much taxes he thought Congress should impose at this time, saying only that he hoped the measure recently approved by Congress a few days ago would be adequate. The need, he added, is not now so much for additional taxes as it is for effecting a drastic saving in government.
Federal payroll too big
“Where would you cut first?” he was asked.
He replied that there are roughly 3.5 million employees of the federal government, and hundreds of thousands of them could be dispensed with.
Governor Bricker said he was also opposed to federal housing, declaring that he saw no reason why the government should go in competition with private builders. Asked if he believed that there could be effective slum clearance under the direction of private enterprise, Governor Bricker replied:
Yes. If there can’t be, then the country is hopeless. We would have to change our system of government. and I certainly don’t want to do that.
‘Any Republican can win’
On other subjects, Governor Bricker:
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Saw no reason for a federal work program to absorb unemployment after the war.
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Was supremely confident that the Republicans would win the Presidency in November regardless of who the nominee may be.
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Thought the Republicans were better equipped than the Democrats to handle post-war problems.
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Said the Republican Party foreign policy plank – would probably be formulated along the lines of the policy drafted by GOP leaders last year at Mackinac Island.
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Denounced the administration’s food subsidy play as “unsound.”
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Described the winning of the war as the most important single issue in the coming political campaign, and said the war is being conducted in a way which all Americans can be proud.
Gives Roosevelt credit
“Do you give Roosevelt any credit for that?” he was asked.
He replied:
Certainly. And I believed the armed services should be allowed to continue to wage the war as they are doing now.
Governor Bricker will speak tonight at the first of some 2,000 Lincoln Day celebrations scheduled throughout the nation by Republicans to spark their effort to regain control of the White House and Congress.
The Ohio Governor goes to the National Press Club tomorrow for a luncheon speaking engagement.
Tonight’s appearance is in effect a trial run for Governor Bricker before the appraising eyes of top drawer party leaders, some of whom have other favorites but are willing to be convinced. He will speak at a $5-a-plate dinner which, the GOP emphasizes, is not a money-raising affair.
KDKA will broadcast the address at 10:30 ET tonight.
Wallace standards are 40% higher
Seattle, Washington (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace said last night America’s biggest job after the war will be to supply a standard of living at least 40% higher than ever before.
This can be done only through full employment of resources, manpower and skills, Mr. Wallace said in an address in the civic auditorium in which he denounced the “scarcity economics” of “the American fascists of Wall Street.”
American fascists, he added, are those “who believe that Wall Street comes first and the country second.”
He cited Russia as a country where nearly everyone feels:
He is directly working for the welfare of the whole nation.
Mr. Wallace said post-war taxation should be aimed more skillfully at economic objectives and implied that heavy taxes should be applied to large corporate reserves.
He said:
By our taxation system, we must encourage the small and rapidly growing enterprise because such enterprises are the seedbed of the employment of the future.
In an impromptu address to the Washington Press Club earlier in the day, Mr. Wallace predicted further development of Alaska after the war and advocated the construction of another Alaska highway.
He said:
Our transportation routes to Alaska should be continued across the Bering Sea to Russia and the Orient.
Willkie outlines his farm program
Boise, Idaho (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie today took President Roosevelt has not made known his plans for a possible fourth term.
Mr. Willkie told Idaho Republican leaders at a meeting here:
The President in press conferences kids, dodges and laughs. About what? On a question involving your future happiness, your life, your wellbeing.
The 1940 Republican presidential nominee who is aspiring for the GOP bid again this year said that:
If I have the power – and perhaps I won’t – I am going to force a discussion in America of the questions America had to decide in 1944.
I find some people talking about evading the issues, when what America does at this time will determine not only her future, but the future of mankind.
Many of the Idaho Republican Party officers to whom Mr. Willkie spoke have already gone on record as favoring New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey for this year’s GOP nomination. However, after the meeting, Governor C. A. Bottolfsen praised Willkie’s “fine, straight-forward talk” and said he thought Mr. Willkie “made many friends.”
Writing in the March issue of Successful Farming, Mr. Willkie outlined his own farm program for the first time in the 1944 campaign.
Briefly, it is:
First, correct the glaring administrative weaknesses in the war effort on the farm front.
Then move onward to a program based on expanding markets.
Drop production control and produce to the limit.
Develop a sound national conservation program.
Support farm prices at a fair level and maintain basic-commodity loans.
Pursue every scientific possibility to expand the farmers’ market.
Finally, cooperate with the world to make a prosperous agriculture at home.
Dewey petitions started
Morristown, New Jersey –
Petitions were being circulated today to enter the name of Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York in the New Jersey presidential preference primary on May 16. Petitions must have 1,500 signatures.
In Washington –
Soldier-vote conferee list shows 5 and 5
Three federal ballot backers placed on Senate lineup
Washington (UP) –
The Senate today unanimously agreed to a compromise slate of conferees on soldier-vote legislation after anti-administration forces protested proposed selections which would have been four to one for a federal ballot measure.
The compromise slate included three Senators who voted for the federal ballot plan in the numerous Senate tests of the last two weeks and two who voted for a state ballot plan.
The compromise slate finally agreed upon after almost an hour of floor wrangling included Senators Warren R. Austin (R-VT), Hugh A. Butler (R-NE), Tom Connally (D-TX), Theodore F. Green (D-RI) and Carl A. Hatch (D-NM).
Senators Green, Hatch and Austin voted for the federal ballot in the Senate tests, and Senators Connally and Butler against it.
They will meet with five House conferees in an effort to settle differences between House and Senate versions of soldier-vote legislation.
Three House conferees are states’ rights proponents – Reps. John E. Rankin (D-MS), Karl M. LeCompte (R-IA) and Harris Ellsworth (R-OR). The other two – Chairman Eugene Worley (D-TX) of the House Elections Committee and Rep. Herbert C. Bonner (D-NC) – are federal ballot backers. In the conferees lineup, this shows five on each side of the question.
Labor headed for wide split in 1944 election
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
Feelers of the national political pulse are beginning to note symptoms of an extension into the 1944 presidential campaign of the AFL-CIO split in organized labor.
The CIO is steadily becoming more identified with a fourth-term drive for President Roosevelt, while the AFL is repeating and expanding criticisms of the administration.
For instance, the AFL’s weekly news service today, following up an attack by John P. Frey, president of the federation’s Metal Trades Department, blamed wartime labor troubles on the lack of “a clear and consistent national labor policy.”
The blunt truth
It continued:
The public should understand that most disputes which lead to strikes these days do not involve quarrels between management and labor. The blunt truth is that the fight is between labor and the government’s policy, as it is contradictorily administered by federal agencies.
The article concluded:
We still think that strikes under any circumstances are indefensible in wartime. But when workers are driven to strike under such conditions, the blame should be put where it belongs – on the government.
The CIO has made no such inclusive charges, although it has joined with the AFL in an attempt to discredit the cost of living figures of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and to force an upward revision of the War Labor Board’s wage-freeze formula.
Now the MESA
Criticisms of the Roosevelt administration have also been made by spokesmen for large groups of organized workers not members of the AFL or CIO. These include the railway brotherhoods and John L. Lewis’ United Mine Workers.
A third group which asserts it isn’t being treated right is made up of independent unions built around the Mechanics Educational Society of America, now in a row with the War Labor Board over that body’s policy of confining labor representation in its membership to representatives of the AFL and the CIO.
These developments have produced the opinions in the minds of political observers that Mr. Roosevelt, if he is a nominee, cannot be sure of the great mass of labor support he has had in three campaigns; that if the labor-sponsored criticisms continue, the support for the two major candidates may be in approximate balance.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 11, 1944)
Strike ban urged –
Bricker extends a friendly hand to Congressmen
Reversing Willkie’s tactics, Ohio Governor seeks to play legislators against a ‘weak’ executive
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Governor John W. Bricker’s Lincoln Day speech proposal for absolute prohibition of wartime strikes aroused top interest here today among the issues discussed by the Ohioan in his pre-convention campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
But Governor Bricker’s bid for consideration in this political hotspot proved to be a combination of bitter denunciation of the Roosevelt administration and of significantly kind words for Congress. He pegged his appeal on domestic issues, but did propose that the United States “should take her place in a cooperative organization among sovereign nations after this war.”
Differs from Willkie
His tactics were in contrast with those of Wendell L. Willkie, the Ohio Governor’s most active opponent, who occasionally undertakes to shake Congress by the ears, losing more than a few friends thereby.
Governor Bricker challenged “weakness of the New Deal in handling labor relations” and said:
A law should be enacted by Congress laying down fundamental principles for the administration and adjudication of labor disputes and the prohibition of strikes in time of war.
He said it was too late now to consider a national service act as proposed by Mr. Roosevelt.
In a final major appearance here today, Governor Bricker told the National Press Club at a luncheon that he proposed that the term of the President be limited to one six-year term or two four-year terms. He preferred the latter, he said, but in any event believed that the tenure “must be restricted.”
Express Democratic help
Rep. Joseph W. Martin (R-MA), introducing Governor Bricker to the Mayflower Hotel audience, said it was the largest Republican gathering held here in a dozen years. He predicted victory in this year’s elections, but said it would not be Republican victory alone.
He said:
Victory will come because millions of honest, sincere, patriotic Jeffersonian Democrats will submerge part to the welfare of their country and because independent voters will unite with us.
He told last night’s audience that Mr. Roosevelt’s policies were leading the country to socialism, if not communism.
Proposes fiscal program
In his prepared text, he proposed a new fiscal program linked with early post-war balancing of the budget art a rate of spending approximating $15 billion a year. Here is Governor Bricker’s substitute for what he termed Mr. Roosevelt’s policy of “spend, waste, borrow and tax:”
- Simplify and stabilize the tax laws.
- Use the tax power to raise necessary revenue and not “as an undercover method of effecting social changes.”
- Limit federal taxation so that adequate revenue sources will remain to the states and local governments.
- Adhere to fiscal and tax policies which will stimulate private enterprise and venture capital.
- Reduce federal taxes as soon as possible after victory.
We’re all in the war
Charging that the Roosevelt administration has “bewildered and oppressed” the people, Governor Bricker said:
The New Deal is the American counterpart of the sweep of absolutism which has destroyed so much liberty around the world.
He sought to rebuke Mr. Roosevelt for personifying his administration as “Dr. Win-the-War.”
Mr. Bricker said:
Winning the war is not a partisan opportunity. It is an American responsibility.
Governor Bricker’s bid for Congressional friendship and support was direct and full of sympathy. He said:
The time has come to take the policymaking of government out of the hands of the arrogant bureaucrats and return it to the hands of the elected representatives of the people.
Willkie wants party to look forward
Seattle, Washington (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie, 1940 Republican presidential candidate, accused the administration of “fighting a soft war” last night and said the people would willingly bear an increased tax burden if the government made an effort to halt the “reckless expenditure of their money.”
Mr. Willkie told a Lincoln Day audience of 2,500 persons:
After the war, we should reverse our taxation system in order to stimulate our economy and prove the largest possible national income.
If the Republican nominee is a forward-looking leader, the rank and file of the party will rally as a unit in his support.
Statement is explained
He confirmed a statement attributed to him at Baker, Oregon, earlier in the day in which he was quoted:
I’m going to be nominated for the Presidency on the Republican ticket.
He smilingly recounted the incident, saying about 300 persons gathered at his train when it stopped in Baker briefly.
He said:
I made a few remarks and among other things said, “I’m going to take you into my confidence – I’m going to be the Republican nominee for President.” You wouldn’t expect me to tell them I was not going to be the nominee, would you?
Program outlined
Mr. Willkie revealed that following an address in Tacoma today and an appearance in Portland, he would fly to Sacramento Sunday and have lunch with Governor and Mrs. Earl Warren and make a radio address there Sunday afternoon. Mr. Willkie has agreed not to enter the California primary, in favor of Warren.
Denying to reporters that the Republican Party is divided, Mr. Willkie said it was natural for the party out of power to have leaders with diverse ideas, and added that the election of 26 governors and additional members of both houses of Congress had given the party “new vigor.”
Sees Roosevelt handicap
In support of his charge that the Democratic Party is divided, he cited refusal of “a committee of Democrats” to support the Treasury Department’s tax program, which he said was itself “wholly inadequate,” and the fact that the states’-rights soldier vote bill was prepared “by members of the President’s own party in opposition to the administration-supported federal ballot bill.”
The Democratic Party is “decadent and falling apart” and President Roosevelt, if reelected, would be frustrated by the division in its ranks, he insisted.
He said:
I am going to break this power in Washington if I can, for if I don’t, everything I hold precious will disappear.
Wallace puzzled by Johnston plaint
Minneapolis, Minnesota (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace said today that he had not talked to President Roosevelt regarding his candidacy for Vice President in the November elections.
Mr. Wallace, who stopped in the Twin-Cities for several hours when his Seattle to Chicago plane was grounded by storms southeast of here, said:
But then I did not consult with him in 1940 either.
Mr. Wallace said that he had found “an unusual sentiment in the West for a fourth term for Roosevelt.”
When informed that Eric A. Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was critical of his speech at Seattle last night. Mr. Wallace said he could not “see any reason for that.” Mr. Wallace had labeled certain business interests as fascist in tendency.
In Washington, Mr. Johnston said Mr. Wallace was sowing “seeds of disunity… on the event of an invasion which will bring our most crucial military test.”
Mr. Johnston said:
Name calling by the Vice President of the United States is the wrong way to get national unity in this hour of crisis…
American business despises fascism. If there is a threat of it in this country, it is not to be found in big business, but in big government.
Stokes: Bricker roars at the New Deal in its den, and (obviously) it was planned that way
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, who has been browsing around the outlying precincts as a sort of Ferdinand-the-bull candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, came to the capital, to the lair of the New Deal, to change all that – and how!
He shook his big frame – and he’s a husky specimen – and began to roar in all directions – at the White House, where that man still resides, at the government buildings, where there are too many folks, as he sees it, busy about “bureaucracy,” and he even had a few suggestions for Congress.
‘Go get ‘em’
No longer was he the careful, cautious gentleman, a little timid about issues, spouting generalities.
The unveiling of the new Bricker was carefully arranged in advance, perhaps a shade too obviously, for it was a bit of a shock to see the once-amiable fellow come out talking so loud, somewhat as if he had been studiously instructed and shoved out before the footlights. You could almost hear the stage whisper:
Now get out there and tell ‘em!
He did.
Strikes at hot issues
He stepped right into the midst of the middle on Capitol Hill, which has got President Roosevelt down for the moment. He came out for state ballots in soldier voting, which President Roosevelt has called “a fraud.” He came out against subsidies, over which the Senate is wrestling, taking direct issue with the President.
He demanded that Congress pass a law to prohibit strikes in time of war and laying down “fundamental principles for the administration and adjudication of labor disputes.”
Jumping right into current controversies, while they are not, is somewhat unusual for candidates for presidential nominations, even for Wendell Willkie, who spoke up about taxes after Congress had already acted, and espoused a federal Ballot for soldier voting too late for any effect.
Strictly Republican!
Governor Bricker’s credo is strictly conservative, old-school Republican, entirely acceptable to the Old Guard element which is backing him, including Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. He abhors the New Deal, lock, stock and barrel, and makes no bonds about it. He disagrees, he said, with the whole philosophy of the New Deal. He did not temper his Lincoln Day speech here to concede anything to the Roosevelt dispensation.
The two-day Bricker show here was quite an event for the candidate and the entourage which came on from Ohio to celebrate his launching here in the deep waters of national affairs.
Advance agents arrived days ago to pass out photographs of the candidate and his wife and their schedule to newspapers, to arrange for the press conferences of the Governor and Mrs. Bricker and for the Lincoln Day dinner last night.
Taft stands by
Republican members of House and Senate, as well as a few Democrats, filed by to shake his hand in a reception in the capital. The candidate beamed on all comers, and his henchmen glowed.
Senator Taft stood to one side, smiling. He has a stake in all this. If the Governor doesn’t make the grade, then the Senator is presumed to inherit back the organization which he has turned over for the Governor’s candidacy to use for himself at the convention.