The Pittsburgh Press (February 10, 1944)
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.
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:
Saw no reason for a federal work program to absorb unemployment after the war.
Was supremely confident that the Republicans would win the Presidency in November regardless of who the nominee may be.
Thought the Republicans were better equipped than the Democrats to handle post-war problems.
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.
Denounced the administration’s food subsidy play as “unsound.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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:”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Governor Bricker of Ohio went to Washington last night to make a campaign speech. His indictment of bureaucracy and of concentration of power in the President was effective.
He read the record: Relegating Congress to an inferior position, attempting to pack the Supreme Court, moving into fields of state and local administration, expanding authority of the White House at the expense of coordinate branches of government. This process, he said, operates on pap and patronage – particularly the deficit financing of spend-waste-borrow-tax. Unless checked, it can destroy the autonomy of state governments, the federal system, and free enterprise.
Apparently, the President himself is aware of the public reaction on this subject, or he would not be so anxious to bury the New Deal label, which now evokes more moans than cheers.
Governor Bricker, for his domestic policy would eliminate overlapping boards and bureaus. He favors “a sound constructive post-war tax policy,” including simplification of returns stabilization, taxation for revenue rather than for social changes, adequate revenue sources for the states, encouragement of venture capital and private enterprise, and reduction of federal taxes “as soon as possible after victory.”
His foreign policy was hardly mentioned. To say that “we want no super-government,” but membership in a cooperative organization among sovereign nations, is clear so far as it goes.
But to say “an international cooperative organization, whatever precise form it may take, can solve the problems which lead to war and fulfill the hopes of our people for a peaceful and better world” means little or nothing. If he has knowledge of foreign affairs or conviction on foreign policy, he is keeping it quiet. Maybe he will speak out as the campaign progresses.
Republican manipulators whose money and activity have out them in positions of party leadership have decided against risking a primary fight in a year when they think they have a chance to carry Pennsylvania.
Specifically, they have decided against opposing U.S. Senator James J. Davis, who will be a candidate for renomination in the April primary, although they have consistently been against Mr. Davis in former elections.
Credit for this development must go to Governor Edward Martin and, from the standpoint of party interest and discipline, it was a magnanimous and intelligent decision. Mr. Martin has now love for Senator Davis, whom he fought for the governorship nomination in 1942.
The other two manipulators, Joseph R. Grundy, who symbolizes and directs the bulk of the so-called Old Guard faction of the party, and Joseph N. Pew of Philadelphia, who has contributed a disproportionate share of campaign expenses in recent years, also sacrificed some pride on coming to this conclusion – because they likewise haven’t had much time for Mr. Davis.
But the whole maneuver, despite the mutual buttering-up, was founded on expediency. It didn’t stem from any respect for Senator Davis’ statesmanship, but from fears that a vigorous primary battle might so cleave the party as to imperil success in the November election.
This type of thinking, which also characterizes the leadership in the Democratic Party, probably takes its roots from the 1938 primary when the Democrats, riding high up to that time, split in a bitter campaign and subsequently were decisively beaten in the November election.
But it wasn’t the mere fact that the Democrats disagreed over candidates in the primary which led to their downfall in Pennsylvania. Not even the vindictive mudslinging in which they engaged could be held solely accountable.
The Democrats were beaten in 1938 because they tried to scuttle the grand jury system. They were beaten because they abused and wasted the WPA. They were beaten because they became unreasonable and arrogant.
They would have been beaten, under these circumstances, even if their preceding primary had been a model of harmony and unity.
They beat themselves, but not because they indulged in a primary contest. That’s what primaries are for.
There is just as much reason for a party to get licked if it doesn’t put up its best candidates. And when the so-called party bosses grease the machinery so that all opposition is skidded out the door, the best candidates are seldom nominated.
A primary contest is a healthy thing. No party can long maintain virility without differences of opinion. And the place to settle those differences is in a free and open primary, not among a few self-constructed leaders in a backroom.
The primary need not degenerate into a mudslinging contest. Issues can be debated, constructively and informatively, as well as in a general election campaign.
The candidates who are nominated by the Republican Party in Pennsylvania – and the Democratic Party, too – should be nominated by the registered voters in that party, not by two or three scrapping leaders who get together and make a deal.
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
C. Arthur Watson, 48, brother of Claude Watson, Prohibition Party candidate for President, began two years of probation today following its conviction on charges of intoxication and drunken driving.
Watson, who said he was sorry to have caused any embarrassment to his brother, admitted in court that he had taken three alcoholic drinks early in the evening of Nov. 21, and said he had been taking codeine tablets for dental ailments. He said he did not know what effect the combination would produce.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 12, 1944)
Congressmen think time unripe for action at present
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
Prohibition of strikes in time of war, as recommended here by Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, has not changed that majority Congressional disposition to move slowly on this subject, according to opinion samplings today.
Even some of the Ohio Republican Congressmen expressed privately a regret that the Governor had unveiled this dynamic issue at this time. Another Republican from the Midwest, who has been active in efforts at union-regulatory legislation, took the same stand, but said he thought Governor Bricker had expressed a demand that exists among a substantial number of plain citizens and men in the Armed Forces.
Reasons for apathy
Reasons for the Congressional apathy on the subject are two: No serious strikes are going on now; the House would probably pass such legislation, but the Senate would probably let it die.
A bill to prohibit all wartime strikes is in the House, but until the situation changes it will be “just another bill.” The bill introduced by Rep. Howard W. Smith (D-VA) provides penalties of revocation of rights under the National Labor Relations Act and other labor-protective statutes for any union whose members strike in wartime, whether or not the disturbance is “wildcat” or authorized by the union’s officers.
Political factor
The subject is linked up with the presidential campaign. Republicans see a chance to divide the administration’s labor support this year. Among the leading Republican possibilities, Governor Dewey has made no labor pronouncement, nor has Mr. Willkie.
On the Democratic side, the labor-politico picture may be affected by two oncoming developments:
The Department of Justice will find it necessary to make a statement eventually on its investigation of charges that the War Labor Disputes Act has been violated by a collection of a $700,000 political campaign fund under direction of CIO president Philip Murray.
Congressman Dies (D-TX) says he will tell the House within two weeks what his investigating committee has turned up regarding alleged cultivation of un-American subversive elements by the CIO’s “Political Action Committee.”
Miners’ protest
Criticism of the administration from the American Federation od Labor and the non-affiliated unions has increased. Among the latter is the United Mine Workers, headed by John L. Lewis, who supported Mr. Willkie in 1940, but might find it hard to do so in 1944. This union’s magazine says in the current issue:
There are any number of honest American labor leaders willing and anxious to vote the Republican ticket if the Republican Party can and will furnish the assurance that it is ready and willing to become the party of the people.
Roosevelt’s nomination for fourth term expected on third night; battle for Vice Presidency expected
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s nomination for a fourth term can be expected with some confidence to become an accomplished fact at about 9:30 p.m. ET Friday, July 21 next.
But if you want to bet and play it safe, make it not later than the same hour on the following day, Saturday, July 22, Chairman Robert E. Hannegan of the Democratic National Committee announced yesterday that the streamlined Democratic National Convention would meet Wednesday, July 19, in Chicago.
The committee, which chose the site at a meeting here last month and solicited Mr. Roosevelt to run again, left to Mr. Hannegan the fixing of a date.
Must reach soldiers
Mr. Hannegan would have liked to delay the convention until August but the hare facts of the soldiers’ ballot compelled a July selection.
The ballots cannot be distributed to the armed services until it has been officially established who the Republican and Democratic candidates will be. And if the Democratic nomination were delayed much beyond mid-July, it probably would not be possible for the troops to vote and get the ballots back to be counted.
By ordering the convention to start in mid-week, Hannegan sought to assure a short meeting. His announcement said it was expected that all proceedings would be completed in the remainder of that week – four days. The Republican Convention will begin Monday, June 26, in Chicago.
Vice-presidential battle
Barring a knockdown battle over the vice-presidential nomination, which is more than likely, the Democrats could nominate their ticket and adopt a platform in a couple of days. But both political parties have learned to arrange their convention schedules to take advantage of the best evening radio hours.
Therefore, it is expected that the Democratic keynote speaker – still to be named – will do his stuff on the first night, July 19. The permanent chairman could speak his piece on the evening of July 20 and the Resolutions Committee come in with the platform late Friday afternoon.
Adoption of the platform will probably be the prelude to the nomination of a presidential candidate.
Rayburn mentioned
Then, provided Mr. Roosevelt did not insist on having Mr. Wallace as a running mate again, the vice-presidential nomination could be given quickly to any one of a dozen party stalwarts, especially House Speaker Sam Rayburn. If the convention had serious vice-presidential problems, there would still be Saturday for their solution.
The convention could be run off that fast, or faster, provided good, gray Charlie Michelson does not again decide that each state should have an opportunity to make a seconding speech to Mr. Roosevelt’s nomination. Good, gray Charlie did it that way in Philadelphia in 1936 and it ran into a great deal of oratory.
All in confidence
The seconders clamored to be heard because Mr. Michelson, wily as he is good and gray, passed the word in confidence to everyone in the hall that the platform microphone was connected with a nationwide hookup and that the second speakers would be heard everywhere, including back home.
Some of them even signed off with a “Good night, Myrtle” after reporting that their state, too, was honored and then some to second the nomination of and so forth–.
The fact that there was actually no nationwide hookup always delighted Charlie and he felt that the seconders had just as much fun out of it as though they really had been on the air.
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
A real issue developing within the Republican Party on foreign policy was projected into sharp relief during the two-day visit here of Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio to promote his campaign for the party nomination for President.
It does not revolve about old-fashioned “isolationism,” as such, which Governor Bricker said is not an issue in the campaign. He added that anybody who charges isolationism in this campaign will be raising a “phony” issue.
The issue concerns how far the “international cooperation” to which the party had pledged itself in the Mackinac declaration of last September shall do, how it shall be implemented, and in this important question there is a basic cleavage within the party, one which must be fought out at the convention.
Governor Bricker is for international cooperation and collaboration, which he says should be implemented, but does not say how. He wants no superstate to “direct the course of American destiny,” but this country must remain free in international affairs and all nations must retain their sovereignty.
This raises the question, which is stressed by the other viewpoint within the party, as to how any country, including the United States, can associate itself in an international organization to keep the peace without giving up some of its freedom of action, or “sovereignty.”
This viewpoint is represented by Wendell L. Willkie; former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, who favors a United Nations organization with a parliament and an international police force; Senator Joseph Ball (R-MN) and others.
The Republican Post-War Advisory Council confronted the issue at Mackinac and compromised with its declaration for:
…responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to attain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world.
Knoxville, Tennessee (UP) –
Former Kansas Governor Alf M. Landon last night called for a union of Republicans and Democrats in the November election to oust President Roosevelt and “clean house” in Washington.
In a Lincoln Day speech, the 1936 Republican presidential candidate asserted that:
It is painfully evident to an increasing number of real Democrats that they must turn their back temporarily on the political party of their fathers in order to keep American faith with their sons and daughters.
Mr. Landon attacked the President’s “win-the-war” slogan and said the claim of one man that one party had a monopoly on such a slogan was “the cheapest and sleaziest kind of politics.”
Called an insult
He said:
The President’s attempt to substitute “win-the-war” for the “New Deal” as a campaign slogan is an insult to every member of our fighting forces.
Mr. Landon said the issues which will be decided in the November elections can all be summed up as:
Will our country continue to move toward the national socialistic state which is the objective of the New Dealers, or will we keep the faith? – the faith of our fathers; the faith of our sons and daughters who fight the war.
He asserted:
Fascism is here in America and its name is the New Deal.
‘Hypnotic ringmaster’
Already the big and the petty bureaucrats of Washington are developing all the facets of an arbitrary regime. And that is fascism – no matter by what name it is called by its genial and hypnotic ringmaster.
He charged that Mr. Roosevelt had entered into agreements with foreign representatives without consulting the State Department and added that:
It is a matter of common knowledge that there are entirely too many agencies studying problems, arguing abstract issues, bickering among themselves and interfering with the miracle of production by farmers, labor and business.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin (UP) –
“Jobs will be our number one economic problem the moment peace comes,” Vice President Henry A. Wallace said in an address here last night in which he proposed the creation of a jobs authority with responsibility and power subject only to the President and Congress.
He told an audience of 2,000 persons in the municipal auditorium:
We should have some sort of organization that can get at least as prompt action on behalf of jobs as the War Production Board got on behalf of fighting material.
Tacoma, Washington (UP) –
The Roosevelt administration has forfeited its right to moral leadership because “it has lost the sense of the importance of unity which has saved us in previous national crises,” Wendell Willkie declared last night.
Mr. Willkie told the Pierce Country Republican Club at a pre-Lincoln Day observance:
Only in the Republican Party can the nation reforge a feeling of national unity, strong enough to stand the tests that lie ahead of us.
He assured the administration of promoting disunity and cited as an example the recent railroad strike call which he said was brought on by the President’s “equivocal answers, broken promises and delaying tactics.”
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Robert R. McCormick, publisher of The Chicago Tribune, said today he has sent Secretary of State Edward J. Hughes a formal request to withdraw his name from the presidential preference primary in Illinois April 11.
Lafayette, Louisiana –
Congressman James Domengeaux (D-LA) said today that he had passed an Army pre-induction examination and will return to Washington to resign as representative from Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional district before entering the Armed Forces.
Since it was first proposed some months ago that foreign policy be taken out of the political campaign by Republicans and Democrats accepting the same foreign plank in their platforms, more and more politicians have shied away from the idea.
It is not orthodox. Anyway, the old-line bosses cannot make up their minds which party it would help most – and, as usual, they put partisan considerations first.
The people are more intelligent; they are thinking about the country first. At least that is the indication of the recent Gallup Poll of Republican voters.
They were asked:
Do you think that both Republicans and Democrats should take exactly the same stand for an active part in world affairs in their party platforms in 1944?
With 21% undecided, 58% answered Yes and only 21% No.
The reasons given by the majority were as significant as the vote:
First, world affairs should be treated by a complete nation, not by political parties;
Second, if our political parties squabble among themselves over foreign policy, other nations may take advantage of the disunity in such a way as to harm American interests.
What can the politicians say to that?
Some time ago, the U.S. Senate passed the Eastland “states’ rights” soldier-vote bill.
Last week, the House amended the Eastland bill and passed it, sending it back to the Senate.
This week, the Senate vote to lay aside the Green-Lucas soldier-vote bill, which provided for a federal ballot and take up the House-amended Eastland bill.
Senator Barkley, the Democratic Leader, then offered the Green-Lucas bill as an amendment to the House-amended Eastland bill.
Senator Ferguson of Michigan then offered an amendment to Senator’s Barkley’s amendment – in other words, an amendment to an amendment to an amendment. It was adopted.
Senator Taft of Ohio then offered an amendment to the Barkley amendment. It was rejected.
So, the Senate adopted the Barkley amendment, as amended by Senator Ferguson, thus writing the Green-Lucas bill, which had been laid aside, into the Eastland bill.
Senator Taft then reoffered his amendment as an amendment to the whole works, and was defeated again.
Then, for the second time, the Senate adopted the Eastland bill, which now included the Green-Lucas bill, which the Senate previously laid aside, after both the House and the Senate had amended the Eastland bill.
The whole business then went back to the House which rejected it. Now delegates from each house are trying to determine where they stand.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 13, 1944)
Governor Martin makes plea for ‘American way’ for veterans
GOP Lincoln Day orators called on dissident Democrats last night to help Republicans unseat the Roosevelt administration, win the war, abolish bureaucratic restrictions, and “restore” constitutional government.
They accused President Roosevelt of bungling foreign and domestic affairs, destroying American liberties, and creating a set of conditions which only Republicans can correct.
Not a few hurled the word “fascist” at him, all said he was seeking a fourth term, and all predicted a Republican victory in November.
Governor Martin speaks
Only once did the soldier vote issue rate a prominent place in the Republican discussions.
Speaking from the same platform with Ohio Governor John W. Bricker, Pennsylvania Governor Edward Martin said that:
This is no time to play politics with the Armed Forces who are fighting on nearly 100 fronts and have fought a thousand battles in the air and on the land and sea.
Governor Martin said:
They are not thinking of political alignments. They want and we want a free government of men. There will be times when peace can be maintained only by force. It may be necessary for America to supply that force to save ourselves from another day of blood, terror and tears.
Insolvency to be avoided
A government to win the war and also win a lasting power must be financially strong with budgets balanced and debts under control, the Pennsylvania executive said.
Governor Martin continued:
Our federal debt is alarming. On June 30, 1933, it announced to $22,500,000. It promises, by the end of the war, to reach the astronomical total of $300 billion, an amount greater than the combined debt of all our Allies and all our enemies.
Great sums for making war are imperative, but prudence and patriotism demand elimination of all waste and unnecessary governmental activity. This war must be won without national insolvency.
Generals, admirals praised
Governor Martin found no fault with the conduct of the war in the field. He said:
Our war strategy has been magnificent. This has been in the hands of our high-ranking military and naval men. The President deserves full credit for selecting them. But our home front strategy has not been magnificent. Chaos and confusion have marked our policies.
The Pennsylvania executive pointed out that the government has been taking over the lands of the people and that “federal tax-eaters and drones are overwhelming us.”
He said:
In June 1930, we had 500,000 federal employees. Today we have more than three million, or three times the peak number in the First World War.
The federal government is doing more labor “feather-bedding” and is hoarding and wasting more manpower than any industry or group of industries. Administration labor policies have broken down. Buying off strikes is un-American.
We all want to win the war quickly and decisively, but we intend at the same time to keep our American way of life.
Speaking at Wheeling, West Virginia, House Republican Leader Joseph W. Martin Jr. (R-MA) said Republicans had to assume the burdens of reconstruction after the war last and, having done it before, “We can do it again.”
Calling for stripping the war effort of “political maneuvering,” Mr. Martin pledged Republicans to winning the war, defending the Constitution, abolishing waste, tax simplification, employment and care for veterans, preservation of free enterprise, reduction of bureaucracy and regimentation, better care of the aged and elimination of “class prejudices and class preferences.”
Called failure
Speaking at Columbus, Ohio, Senator Chapman Revercomb (R-WV) accused the President of “dismal and tragic failure” in the field of foreign relations and of failing “in any step that should have been taken to avert war.”
Mr. Revercomb denounced “government by group” and accused the administration of playing politics with organized labor. Once the war is over, he added:
OPA must end and the bureaucrats at Washington must fold their tents and seek employment elsewhere.
Senator E. H. Moore (R-OK), speaking at Charleston, West Virginia, accused President Roosevelt of being “a fascist at heart.” Senator Moore, a Democrat until he ran for the Senate, called for a coalition campaign against the administration.
Federal vote assailed
Like Mr. Martin and Mr. Revercomb, Mr. Moore denounced the administration’s efforts to set up a federal soldier vote ballot. Such a ballot would be an unconstitutional invasion of states’ rights, he said, and the administration is proposing it in “an effort to steal this election.”
Senator Kenneth S. Wherry (R-NE), speaking at Huntington, West Virginia, said, “We must break this reign of Franklin D. Roosevelt” and called for lifting of “regimentation” and business restrictions the moment the war is over.
Novelist Clarence Budington Kelland, speaking as Republican National Committeeman for Arizona, declared at Dallas, Texas, that the administration has debauched American self-respect.
God and the New Deal
If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, Mr. Kelland told Lincoln Day dinner guests:
The thing that would arouse him to rage and denunciation would be the deliberate undermining of the American people by the New Deal administration. It would be the vicious teachings of this administration whose purpose it to destroy the self-reliance of our people and substitute for it a helpless, hapless, despicable belief that God, in the guise of the New Deal administration, will provide.
In New York City, Governor Thomas E. Dewey declared that the American people are rallying to the Republican Party to rescue the constitutional system of government from a menace as grave as that which faced it during Lincoln’s administration.
Governor Dewey said:
The menace Lincoln faced was violent; ours was subtle. He faced secession by the states. in our time, we have seen abdication by the states.
The New York executive declared the people were turning to the Republican Party before the war, and have been turning to it “at an accelerated pace since” because they are “desperately anxious” that “we built well and strongly in international cooperation after this war.”
Governor Dewey concluded:
The people realize that the only hope for America for world peace is that it be won by an administration which they know is not seeking power for the sake of power.
One speaker, however – Connecticut Governor Raymond E. Baldwin – warned his party against “wishful thinking” and told it bluntly that it has not thus far offered the nation an election-winning program.
Speaking at Boston, Governor Baldwin urged Republicans to explore the home front for constructive policies that would win votes. He suggested, for example, that the party “can offer a better and sounder method” for preventing inflation than the Democrats have been able to produce.
Palmer Hoyt, publisher of the Portland Oregonian, who has just returned from a six-month stay in Washington as head of the Domestic Branch of the Office of War Production, shared the platform with Wendell Willkie, at a Portland dinner.
Mr. Hoyt declared:
The Republican Party must know what its leaders are thinking and it can follow no leaders who lack the courage to face the problems of the day.
Too many Republican candidates today lack faith, both in themselves and in America. I refer to no candidate in particular, but it is obvious that too many candidates today with “rather be President than right.”
Mr. Willkie announced that he would file as a Republican nominee in the Oregon preferential primary May 19, and told northwest party leaders that “now is the time to change horses in the middle of the stream.”
Mr. Willkie declared:
Now is the time and not in the post-war era. Right now, the war is being waged under expert guidance of the Army and Navy. It would be easy to change horses now but it would be difficult after the war when conditions are bound to become uncertain.
Just calls him ‘Governor of Ohio’ in stories sent overseas
Washington (UP) –
The Office of War Information covered Governor John W. Bricker’s press conference here Thursday, but for policy reasons did not identify the Ohio chief executive in the reports sent abroad as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Director Elmer Davis said today.
He was simply referred to as a “prominent Republican and Governor of Ohio” in the OWI dispatches sent to Africa, Britain and Australia.
The press conference was covered by an OWI editor and his story was cleared personally by Mr. Davis. It was transmitted to OWI outposts in London, Algiers and Sydney for redistribution.
Political angle cited
Mr. Davis said the omission of any reference to Mr. Bricker’s announced candidacy was in line with the agency’s policy in handling political news the last few months when it was difficult, he said, to ascertain who presidential candidate actually were.
The OWI chief said:
That was the period when a lot of men were standing around waiting for lightning to strike and it was considered best not to mention political aspirations in our reports.
Now that the elections are drawing closer and the political picture is coming into sharper focus, Mr. Davis said, a new policy in this matter will be drawn up soon by himself and other OWI officials.
Must announce candidacy
Under the new policy, Mr. Davis said that if a candidate has publicly announced his candidacy, it will be mentioned in OWI overseas stories.
Mr. Davis said:
In some cases, of course, it will be necessary to say “considered by many to be a candidate for the office.”
The OWI story began by saying that Mr. Bricker “favored a foreign policy ‘along the general lines’” of the Mackinac Republican Conference statement.
It also included Mr. Bricker’s comment on a recent article in a British newspaper suggesting the reelection of President Roosevelt.
‘None of their business’
Mr. Bricker said in that connection:
I think we ought to elect our own President and it’s none of their business. I think we ought to take care of that matter without outside interference.
The story ended by quoting Mr. Bricker as saying that he differed with “the whole philosophy of the New Deal.”
The dispatch also carried Mr. Bricker’s stand in favor of state ballots for soldier voting but made no reference to his views that there should be a law which would outlaw wartime strikes.
By leaving it exclusively to the states to provide ways and means of enabling members of the Armed Forces to vote, as a majority in Congress seems determined to do, the statesmen in Washington are deciding that the hardest way is the right way.
The contrary is true. Voting is an inherent right, provided in the Constitution, the same Constitution which created Congress and details what it may and may not do.
Since voting is a basic right, it follows as a fundamental corollary that the qualifications for voting, the methods for voting and the rules for voting should be as simple as possible.
Democracy functions through free suffrage. If suffrage is not free, the functioning of democracy is restricted if not actually endangered.
Any obstacle thrown in the way of full opportunity for suffrage on the part of any group of free citizens is an interference with democracy.
The opponents of a uniform, simply ballot for use of the Armed Forces claim any regulation of voting, save the 48 different systems set by the states, is unconstitutional.
But the Constitution does not say so. It says laws governing the election of members of Congress shall be prescribed by the states, but it also says Congress may “at any time” alter such regulations.
It also says that neither Congress nor the states may abridge the right to vote because of race, color or “previous condition of servitude.” And in another amendment, it forbids abridgement of the right to vote because of sex.
In both articles, Congress is charged with the duty of enacting legislation which will make these prohibitions effective.
Isn’t it logical, then, that Congress also has the power to enact legislation which will prevent the abridgement of the right to vote for other reasons, such as the conglomeration of state regulations which will prevent hundreds of thousands of voters in the Armed Forces from exercising their franchise?
If the opposition Congressmen will read the instructions issued the other day by the Army for the benefit of voters in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Nebraska and Louisiana, they will find an irrefragable example of how to keep the Armed Forces from voting.
Pennsylvania voters in the military and naval forces must apply for a military ballot within the 20-day period which occurs not more than 50 days before the election and not less than 30 days before the election. Election officials must then mail these ballots at least 15 days before the election “to the address furnished by the elector in his application.”
With Pennsylvania voters scattered in hundreds of places around the world, many of them bound to change addresses between the time they apply and the time ballots are mailed, it is manifestly impossible to provide more than a fraction of them with ballots, even if they were thoroughly acquainted with the law.
Nebraska is even worse, for the elector from that state also must apply for a form on which to apply for a ballot!
As the Army suggests:
It is not desirable to burden overseas airmail with applications for ballots where the time interval is manifestly too short to accomplish receipt, execution and return of the ballot.
There is nothing more constitutional than the right to vote. Let’s make the Constitution work by providing a simple, uniform method by which the Armed Forces may exercise their constitutional franchise. Let’s make it as easy as possible for them to vote, not as hard as possible.