Election 1944: Pre-convention news

[NormanStewart]

Democrats willing to end their fight with Roosevelt

Era of good feeling may result if both sides profit by week’s lessons

Washington (UP) – (Feb. 26)
Congressional Democrats believed tonight that an “era of good feeling” may be in prospect between President Roosevelt and his party colleagues in the House and Senate if both sides profit by this week’s lessons.

If the President adopts a more conciliatory attitude – if there are no more White House blasts charging legislative fraud and bad faith – if Mr. Roosevelt will work more closely with Congress on war and post-war programs, the recent exchange of blow may prove beneficial in the long run to all involved, many observers believed.

Willing to end row

Democratic legislators appeared willing, now that they have proclaimed their independence, to make peace with the President. And his message to Senate Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley last Wednesday appeared to indicate belated realization on the President’s part that the tone of his tax bill veto message was unpalatably tart.

There appeared little doubt, however, that Mr. Roosevelt – having taken one major beating when Congress overrode his veto of the tax bill – must swallow at least one more cup of defeat before getting back on an even keel with Congress.

Soldier vote bill

Congress still has a score to settle with him on the soldier-vote bill, and the odds are that it will settle the score by refusing to enact any form of the administration-supported federal ballot measure.

It was the “states’ rights” ballot bill passed by the House which touched off the showdown battle climaxed this week with Congressional enactment of the tax bill. Mr. Roosevelt called the House measure, banning federal machinery for conducting balloting among service personnel, a “fraud.”

The Senate subsequently squeezed through a compromise measure, providing for limited use of a federal ballot, but House and Senate conferees have since been unable to reach an agreement. The result probably will be no bill at all.

Two factors faced

For the future, however, there was reason to believe that efforts will be made to heal the breach and bring about peace between the President and the Congressional majority. Uppermost in Congressional minds was realization that:

• This is a campaign year, and Mr. Roosevelt is admittedly the party’s strongest possible candidate for President, despite whatever liability there may be in the fact that he will be seeking a fourth term.

• Wartime cleavage between the President and Congress can only be harmful to the nation, and could be disastrous.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: OWI’s ‘mistake’

Just after Elmer Davis, director of the Office of War Information, settled a family row with his Overseas Branch and admonished that branch to keep out of public trouble, the Republicans jumped all over the same outfit for failing to identify Governor Bricker of Ohio as a candidate for President.

Mr. Bricker was one of two men in United States about whom such a mistake is unpardonable.

He is an announced candidate. So is Wendell Willkie.

But if OWI had failed to mention that Governor Dewey, for instance, is a candidate, it could easily have been forgiven. Or if it had omitted saying anything about President Roosevelt being a candidate, no fault could be found with it.

Presidential aspiration is no longer a matter of thumped chests, bellowed challenges and brass bands. The modest blush, the averted eye, the indecisive answer, the coy humor seem to be the marks of a candidate.

[NormanStewart]

Taylor: New Deal stronghold

By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent

Washington –
By a strange political development, traditionally Republican Pennsylvania has become one of the last remaining strongholds of the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party, while the Solid South, except for a smattering of votes, has slipped away.

The rock-bottom strength of the New Deal in Congress was ascertained last week by the roll calls in the House and Senate on President Roosevelt’s veto of the new tax bill – a showdown brought about by the President himself when he trampled on Congressional sensitivities in his veto message.

Pennsylvania has 13 Democratic Congressmen and 12 of them voted to sustain the veto, a total exceeded only by New York. The State’s Democratic Senator, Joseph F. Guffey, a New Dealer all the way, not only remained staunchly in the President’s corner, but also reiterated his prediction that Mr. Roosevelt will be reelected for a fourth term.

If the Congressional vote represents adequately the sentiment of the constituents – and this is a campaign year – it means that Mr. Roosevelt, as the Democratic nominee, will be supported in the South because he is on the Democratic ticket and because he is the only Democrat with a chance to win.

In Pennsylvania, however, Mr. Roosevelt will be the one big candidate, with other party candidates comprising only a sort of supporting cast and the whole campaign waged on a pro-Roosevelt or anti-Roosevelt basis. Pennsylvania Democrats, with a single exception, remain firm in the conclusion that their success depends on Mr. Roosevelt.

That policy was plainly enunciated at the meeting of the Democratic State Committee three weeks ago, when a harmony program was ratified to prevent a primary fight, and Republican leaders promptly accepted the issue with a similar harmony program, formed for the same reason.

In Pennsylvania, party managers know they’ve got to get Republican votes to win, and every statewide election since 1932 has proved that Democrats can carry Pennsylvania only when Mr. Roosevelt runs or on the high tide of a strong New Deal issue, as in 1934.

The rupture between the President and Congress, therefore, caused Pennsylvania members considerable concern, not because of fear that their constituents won’t approve their stand on the tax bill veto but because it marks a new low in the steadily worsening relations between the Executive and Congress.

The vote against the President may have political repercussions next November that can mean the difference between victory and defeat for some of the Pennsylvania Congressmen who have continued to support him throughout his fencing with Congress on such issues as the anti-strike bill, which was passed over his veto, and the food price subsidy issue.

How rapidly Mr. Roosevelt’s Congressional support deteriorated is shown in two House votes to override presidential vetoes. The first, on his veto of a bill that would eliminate food price subsidies, was 226–151 with a Republican-Democratic coalition failing to override. The second, less than a week later, on his veto of the tax bill, was 299–95.

While the issues differed, in each case the House was voting on whether to override a presidential veto. The food price subsidy issue was one that gathered widespread popular support for the President from labor, consumer and other groups. Even with the help of an unofficial consumer committee of Congressmen, headed by Rep. Thomas E. Scanlon (D-Pittsburgh), and strongly backed by labor, the administration forces managed to sustain the veto only by a narrow margin.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 28, 1944)

Graham candidate for Congress race

Butler, Pennsylvania – (special)
Attorney John C. Graham today announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for Congress at the April 25 primary.

Mr. Graham has sought election to Congress several times, the last two years ago when he polled Butler County over Congressman Louis E. Graham, but lost the nomination in the results from the other two counties in the district, Beaver and Lawrence.

Mr. Graham said his candidacy gives Butler County a chance “to have a representative in Congress for the first time in 20 years.”

[NormanStewart]

Democrats in House

Nashville, Tennessee –
Tennessee Republican leaders at their 1944 Lincoln Day dinner to hear an address by Alfred M. Landon, GOP candidate in 1936, were somewhat surprised, to say the least, at the selection of background music. Among the songs selected were “Donkey Serenade” and “Night Train to Memphis” (Memphis is the stronghold of Edward H. Crump, Democratic political boss).

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: President and Congress

Now that Congress has overridden the President’s unprecedented veto of a tax bill, and Senate Democrats have endorsed Leader Barkley’s revolt against Roosevelt usurpation, where do we go from here?

The answer is far more important than the political fortunes of any man or party. Winning the war and winning the peace are at stake. There can be no national unity and no efficient war government as long as the President and Congress are fighting each other. Teamwork between the White House and the Hill, in the letter and spirit of coordinate constitutional powers, is the most acute need in America today.

Such cooperation will not be easy to achieve. Congress has been alternately ignored, smeared and bossed for so long by the President that its human temptation is to pay him back now that he has so grossly-overreached himself. Freedom that comes from successful revolt is a heady wine – Congress could get drunk on it.

Cooperation is even harder for the President. By temperament and habit, he is a one-man show. Moreover, as wartime Commander-in-Chief he is in a spot where even the humble Lincoln found it necessary to be dictatorial at times.

But above all other causes of growing conflict between the President and Congress is the fourth-term election. It is hard for him to divorce War President Roosevelt from Candidate Roosevelt, and still more difficult for Congress to do so. Even when he speaks with wisdom and selfishness, he is heard as a clever politician maneuvering for 16 years’ rule. And when he loses his poise – as in his recent insulting messages – he is jumped on as a blundering candidate, rather than helped out as a national leader who sometimes stumbles under the world’s heaviest load.

Despite all barriers, the President and Congress must get together.

Congress must forget and forgive his past usurpations, remembering its own frequent defaults of responsibility.

The President must learn, from the humiliation which he has just brought upon himself, that he no longer can drive the elected representatives. He must reason, if they are to follow. He must reason, if they are to agree. He must respect their constitutional function, if they are to work with him.

The present tax and foreign policy disputes are typical. The Constitution makes Congress chiefly responsible for taxation, and the President chiefly responsible for foreign policy, but both responsibilities are to be shared. We repeat here the proposals we and others have made so many times for joint executive-legislative committees. Unless the President and Congress can get together on a simplified program for increased taxes, the nation is threatened with inflation and worse. Unless they can get together on a foreign policy, the nation is threatened with another Wilson tragedy and loss of the peace.

They can get together, if they will.

[NormanStewart]

Background of news –
Divided Democratic Party

By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports

In the House vote last Thursday to override the veto of the revenue bill, about 80% of the Representatives who stuck by the President come from urban areas. With the President were all but two of the Democrats from New York City, a large proportion of those from the West, a considerable number from Oklahoma and Tennessee, but only five from the Solid South (two on pairs).

The Democratic Party is an uneasy amalgam of the South and the large cities of the North and West. About one-half of the Democrats in Congress are Southerners; about one-third urban Easterners and Westerners, about one-sixth non-urban Easterners and Westerners.

In 1924, the party delegates split 50-50 at the national convention in New York on condemning the Ku Klux Klan by name, with most of the Southerners against condemnation, most of the Easterners for it. The convention deadlocked for over 100 ballots between the candidacies of Alfred E. Smith, supported chiefly in the East and in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and of William G. McAdoo, supported chiefly in the South and the rural West.

In the election of 1924, the Smith states gave little support of John W. Davis, the party’s compromise candidate. When the Smith camp demanded and got the nomination for their man in 1928, half of the Southern states voted for Hoover.

Alliance is nothing new

Today, the Northern and Western Democrats yearn to retain the labor vote and Negro vote, necessary to party success in many parts of the North and the West. Southern Democrats in Congress usually can expect reelection whatever the fate of the presidential ticket.

From its very beginning, the Democratic Party was a union of the South and large cities of the North.

Thomas Jefferson rode to power by dint of an alliance with certain urban political organizations of the North, notable Tammany Hall. The alliance ultimately came to grief, despite Jefferson’s attempt to hold the Northerners in line with patronage, and by the end of Jefferson’s administration, he had all but lost control over his party in Congress.

Even at the time of the Civil War, the Southern cotton planters were in close political alliance with Northern cotton manufacturers, and most of the considerable vote in the North against Lincoln for reelection in 1864 came from large cities and towns.

In Grover Cleveland’s second administration, he turned ultraconservative, according to the prevalent views in the South and West during the long depression of the ‘90s, and the South and West took control of the Democratic Party at the 1896 convention. Over Northern opposition, they put across a Free Silver plank and the nomination of Bryan, and the convention even rejected a proposal to commend the Cleveland administration.

Labor turns to GOP

With the Democratic Party in the hands of Southerners and Westerners, Eastern labor turned largely to the Republican Party, especially since the GOP “sold” labor, as we say today, on a protective tariff.

Woodrow Wilson managed to keep the Southerners in line for the pro-labor program of his administration, but in those days, industrialization had made few inroads into the South, where the trade union movement was still more of an abstraction than a reality.

Today, the South has come to know at first hand the attempt to organize both industrial and farm workers for higher wages and shorter hours, and the South is cold to pleas of the Northern and Western Democrats that they need the labor and Negro vote for political success.

The South, on its side, insists that the Northern and Western Democrats don’t appreciate the excesses in Reconstruction days, when voting restrictions in the South were largely relaxed.

[NormanStewart]

Barkley still a progressive –
Revolt gives little comfort to anti-Roosevelt forces

By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
A second look at the “Barkley Affair” indicates that the anti-Roosevelt forces have perhaps drawn mote comfort than is justified from it. Already the Senate Democratic Leader’s deft of President Roosevelt has been toned down somewhat by the exchange of friendly letters between the two.

In judging the incident, this has been overlooked: Senator Barkley has never been among the conservatives, is not among them now, and is not likely to be found among them.

Anybody who expects him to abandon the progressivism that he has followed during his 31 years in Congress and overnight step out as the front man of the conservatives and anti-Roosevelt forces is due for a letdown. That is, unless the basic character of the man is other than it has appeared to close friends and associates for years.

“Alben Barkley was a progressive long before President Roosevelt,” is the wat one of them out it, pointing back to the Kentucky Senator’s record years ago in the House.

He has never aligned himself in the Senate with the Byrds, the Georges, the Baileys, the “Cotton Ed” Smiths.

Nor does he seem to possess the temperament of other outstanding men who, along the war and through the years, have “broken” with President Roosevelt and become deeply embittered as a consequence – Al Smith, James A. Farley, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, to mention three. They have joined up with the anti-Roosevelt forces to topple the President from the White House.

Learned to adjust himself

Senator Barkley has weathered all the vicissitudes of politics. He’s been in the minority and in the majority. He has learned to adjust himself, to roll with the punch, to compromise personal differences of opinion, to take orders and to accommodate himself to party discipline.

The difficulties of his job as leader during the last few years can be appreciated only by those who are familiar with the day-by-day, week-by-week ordeal.

There are two things that might work to sour Senator Barkley, a naturally genial gentleman, and throw him into the camp of the enemy.

One would be an attack of ambition, and that means one ambition, the Presidency. That was at the back of the clash between President Roosevelt and Al Smith, and between the President and Jim Farley, though other factors were also involved. This ambition seems to change the whole scheme of a man’s thinking – toward himself and toward others.

Mentioned for Presidency

Senator Barkley is being mentioned for the Presidency now. How seriously he takes it has not been revealed.

The other thing would be the species of persecution of which some of the zealous New Deal aides have shown themselves capable when someone raised his hand against the President. They work up a vengeance that the President himself undoubtedly never felt.

One disagreement on fundamental policy with the President, one speech of protest, and this group classifies the dissenter as 100% in the enemy’s camp.

This noisy and vicious little claque thus carried on their vendetta against Jim Farley and Burt Wheeler and others. It might happen with Senator Barkley.

[NormanStewart]

Willkie hits veto message

Blames administration for ‘inadequate’ tax bill

New York (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, today assailed President Roosevelt’s veto message on the tax bill as “violent and ill-tempered” and said that the administration is to blame for the “inadequate” tax bill.

In a speech here Feb. 3, Mr. Willkie said that if President Roosevelt meant by a “realistic” tax program the $10-billion plan proposed to Congress by the Treasury, then the administrations fiscal estimates for paying the costs of the war were “far too low.” Mr. Willkie proposed instead a tax program “more than double” that of the administration.

Need additional revenue

Mr. Willkie said in a statement today that the administration:

…has so extravagantly and wantonly wasted the people’s money that many Americans see the payment of additional taxes as merely providing additional funds for more profligate government spending.

If it had not been for this record of extravagance, the need for additional taxes now would be both obvious and accepted by all Americans. The American people recognize that a hard war must be fought the hard way – that it must be an all-out war. They are eager to match at home, as best they can, the sacrifices being made by our fighting men who are risking and giving their lives.

The additional income that the war has created should be taxed and taxed heavily. For we need this additional revenue to pay for the war – to pay for as much of the war as possible while we fight.

Must pay now for war

But we need additional revenue now for another basic reason. We must pay now so that after the war is over, taxes may be lowered in order to give that stimulus which lower taxes always give to our economy – the stimulus necessary to provide jobs and opportunities after the war for our present war workers and our returning soldiers.

The violent and ill-tempered presidential veto message advanced none of these causes.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 29, 1944)

Votes lined up right and left for Roosevelt

‘Doc New Deal’ may be dead but Hannegan’s alive and ‘merging’
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
President Roosevelt is going to be riding so many different colors of political horses in this coming campaign, all at once, that before it is all over, he will look, figuratively, like one of those circus equestrians.

At the same time, he is going to provide some neat sleight of hand so the audience won’t know whether it’s the right or left hand which is holding the reins.

His right hand was showing a few weeks ago when he dropped the term “New Deal,” a move pleasing to conservatives, in and out of his party. Lately his left hand has been showing in messages to Congress carrying such blistering phrases as “not for the needy but for the greedy,” speaking of the tax bill, and “a high-cost-of-living measure, a food-shortage measure,” speaking of the anti-subsidy bill.

Catch-all program

While the President is indulging in the higher strategy, his chief political lieutenant, Democratic National Chairman Hannegan, is working at a “catch-all” program on the lower level of practical politics.

Mr. Hannegan gave public notice of this on his recent scouting trip when he laid plans in Minnesota for a fusion of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties there, which is exactly the trick the President, himself, arranged there during the 1936 campaign.

Mr. Hannegan not only approved plans for this fusion, but also said this would be a model for merger of other political groups with Democrats in other states.

Wilson’s experience

The Democrats are not going to overlook any little batch of electoral votes anywhere. Woodrow Wilson lost Minnesota by 392 votes in the very close 1916 election, but was saved by his 3,806-vote victory in California.

This year may be a replica of 1916 in its closeness.

An example of political amalgamations which will bring together all sorts of groups this year is New York, where the American Labor Party and the Communist Party will unite with Democrats behind President Roosevelt, and New Jersey, across the river, where the Communists have thrown in with Boss Frank Hague.

Poor grace in 1936

The Minnesota Democratic Party, which has been distinctly a third party in rating, did not take with too much grace the 1936 fusion which Mr. Roosevelt arranged while campaigning there. One Democratic leader, Rep. Elmer J. Ryan, spread his spleen all through the campaign train as it pulled out of the state.

Republicans now control the state, thanks to the political capabilities of former Governor Harold Stassen, now in the Navy, who left a handpicked crew in charge.

The Democrats need help now, and so do the Farmer-Laborites who ruled the state for a number of years under the late Floyd Olsen. They do not seem inclined to ask too many questions about a merger this time.

[NormanStewart]

Note to Congress on soldier vote

London, England –
NOTE TO CONGRESS: If you want the soldiers to vote, you had better take a tip from Flying Fortress bombardier Adam A. Mackow of Newark, New Jersey, and start mailing ballots out now.

Today’s issue of the Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, reveals that Mackow has just received his New Jersey absentee ballot for the gubernatorial election. The election was held last November.

The ballot was mailed to Mackow on Oct. 11, carefully marked, “For Speedy Delivery.”

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Hurry up on soldier ballots

Senate and House conferees on the soldier-ballot bill are wasting precious time. Whatever the final form of the legislation enacted by Congress, action will have to be taken by the state legislatures before there can be complete assurance that the ballots of the troops will be counted. And the legislatures are waiting for Congress to finish its work.

[NormanStewart]

Background of news –
Other presidential spats

By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports

Senator Barkley’s charge, and Mr. Roosevelt’s denial, that the President has impugned the integrity of Congress recalls a similar incident during the administration of the first Roosevelt.

On Dec. 8, 1908, Theodore Roosevelt, then a lame-duck President, sent his last annual message to Congress. In it, he declared that a law of the previous year curtailing the activities of the Secret Service “was of benefit to no one except the criminal classes.” Recalling that the Secret Service had been “partly responsible” for the indictment and conviction of a Senator and Representative for land frauds in Oregon, the President blandly observed:

The chief argument in favor of the provision was that the Congressmen did not themselves wish to be investigated by Secret Servicemen.

Congress hit the roof. On Dec. 17, the House called upon the President, by resolution, to submit evidence that in restricting the Secret Service Congress had been actuated by fear of being investigated the resolution also called for proof that any representative was guilty of corruption.

The President came back on Jan. 4, 1909, with a long message insisting that the House had misinterpreted his words, and citing the Congressional Record to prove that in limiting the Secret Service Congress had considered its investigation of Congressmen.

‘Invasion of its privileges’

That only added fuel to the flames. The House solemnly passed a new resolution. This one called the Secret Service section of the annual message a “reflection of the integrity” of the House membership. It said that the President’s denial of any such intent would be judged “according to the accepted interpretations of the English language.”

Calling the Secret Service section of the annual message a “breach of the privileges of the House,” the House voted to lay on the table not only that section but also the presidential message of Jan. 4, 1909, as unresponsive to the inquiry of the House and as an “invasion of its privileges.”

Earlier Presidents had had similar experiences. In March 28, 1834, the Senate by vote of 24–20 resolved that President Andrew Jackson, in ordering federal funds removed from the Bank of the United States, after dismissing Secretary of the Treasury Duane for refusing to remove them, had acted illegally and unconstitutionally.

Jackson’s followers managed, over the opposition of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, to get a later Senate to vote to expunge the resolution. On Jan. 16, 1837, a line was drawn around the resolution in the Senate Journal, and across the words of censure were written” “Expunged by order.”

Tyler disowned by Whigs

In 1841, on the death of President Harrison, anti-Jackson Democrat John Tyler found himself at the head of a Whig administration. When he vetoes a bill for re-chartering the Bank of the United States, the Whig leadership in Congress disowned him, and all members of his Cabinet resigned in a body except Secretary of State Daniel Webster.

When Tyler vetoed a tariff bill in 1842, the House, on motion by ex-President John Quincy Adams, referred his objections to a committee. The committee submitted a report, adopted by the House, impugning the President’s motives and declaring that he ought to be impeached for opposing the clear will of Congress. Tyler submitted a firm protest to the House against its censure of him; the House refused to let the protest be entered on its journal.

Among the few defenders of the President in the Congress was a Representative from New York City named James Roosevelt (D), uncle of an uncle of Theodore Roosevelt.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 1, 1944)

Soldiers’ vote hits new snag

Compromise reached once, but debate goes on

Washington (UP) –
Senate and House soldier-vote conferees – who yesterday voted 9–1 for a compromise federal war ballot plan – ran into another snag today.

Today’s meeting was to have been merely a routine windup to straighten out technical language of the compromise bill before issuing a conference report to the two chambers. But the morning session ended in what appeared to be merely an extension of the argument which has kept the conference deadlocked for nearly three weeks. The conferees agreed to meet again this afternoon.

Senator Carl A. Hatch (D-NM) told reporters the House conferees are now balking on extending the restricted federal ballot to service personnel within this country as well as overseas. Yesterday’s agreement provided that the federal ballot should be given all men who certify that they have applied for, but by Oct. 1 had not received, a state absentee ballot.

Senate conferees understood this was acceptable to the House, and regarded the 9–1 vote as binding.

He said:

We don’t know where we are. The Senate thought yesterday that everything was settled, but now it apparently isn’t.

Rep. John E. Rankin (D-MS), leading opponent of any federal ballot plan, had declared he would fight vigorously to defeat the once-approved compromise.

[NormanStewart]

A moral victory –
New York vote heartens GOP

Democrats squeezes by with ALP and CIO aid
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington –
New York City’s Tammany-controlled 21st Congressional district remains Democratic today after a presidential year byelection that cut machine majorities from a fat two-to-one to a skimpy fraction.

Republicans claimed everything from a moral victory to evidence that the country will “repudiate the Democratic leadership next November.” They estimated a 12% GOP gain in the byelection.

With the help of ALP

Democrats could point out that their men won. Yesterday’s returns had been awaited for indications of New York State political trends. The aggregate vote was light. By percentages, the trend definitely and substantially was against the Democrats.

James H. Torrens, Democrat and American Labor Party candidate, polled 11,707 votes to 10,136 for Republican William S. Bennet. Democrats suffered some intraparty differences, but both the Wendell L. Willkie and Governor Thomas E. Dewey factions of the Republican Party backed the GOP candidate. Of Torrens’ aggregate. 3,226 votes were from the American Labor Party. His majority was 1,571.

What interested politicians here was a comparison of Mr. Torrens’ margin yesterday with the votes by which Democrats have won in the past three elections. Here are the figures:

	Democratic	Republican	Majority
1938	84,000	36,000	48,000
1940	108,000	46,000	62,000
1942	60,000	30,000	30,000

Campaigning on a pro-Roosevelt platform and to win-the-war, Mr. Torrens charged Mr. Bennet’s election would send to Congress an opponent of the administration. Mr. Bennet also campaigned for win-the-war and bore down heavily on tax simplification.

A normal vote

The small number of votes case was normal for such a byelection but it seemed to support the American Labor Party contention that it holds a balance of power in New York City. Furthermore, some political observers believe that the sharp reduction in the ratio of Democratic victory is an indication that President Roosevelt’s hold on his home state has been broken where it was strongest.

The vacancy was created by resignation of Democrat James A. Gavagan. The 21st is an Upper Manhattan district going deep into Harlem and about 35% of its voters are Negroes. It is an area in which a Democratic supporter of Mr. Roosevelt should be as safe as any statesman seeking office could expect to be anywhere.

Had left-wing backing

Metropolitan papers except the liberal and left-wing press uniformly supported the Republican candidate.

The Daily Worker, New York organ of the Communist Party, has been conducting front-page editorial campaign for Mr. Torrens, warning its readers that “it would be a fatal mistake for labor and other supporters for FDR to take this byelection casually or to be at all overconfident because the district happens to be Democratic.

The Worker also emphasized the opportunity for the American Labor Party to roll up a comparatively large vote for Mr. Torrens to “give it added weight in the political councils of the state and greater prestige among the people.”

The returns show that the ALP did very well.

Mr. Torrens was further aided by support of the Congress of Industrial Organizations Council. The Republican candidate, however, had support of the Central Trades and Labor Council.

Democratic House membership will total 217 when Mr. Torrens takes the oath. It would have totaled 218 except for the death last night of Rep. Thomas H. Cullen, Democrat from New York’s 4th district.

Republicans now number 209; Progressives 2; Farmer-Labor 1; and ALP 1. There are five vacancies, four of them formerly held by Democrats in New York, Illinois, Colorado and Oklahoma.

The fifth vacancy, in Illinois, was held by a Republican.

GOP expects gains

Republicans confidently expect byelection gains in Oklahoma and Colorado and to retain the Republican seat in Illinois. The other Illinois vacancy was created this month by death of Repo. Leonard W. Schuetz, a Democrat from the 7th Congressional district in Cook County, the political domain of Mayor Edward J. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly has a powerful machine, but Mr. Schuetz won last time by only 1,975 votes out of 357,837 cast.

Mr. Cullen’s death gave the Republicans another opening to fight for an additional seat. He polled 21,456 votes to 10,070 for his Republican opponent in the 1942 elections.

Jukebox candidate leads in Louisiana

New Orleans, Louisiana (UP) –
James H. “Jimmie” Davis, jukebox song composer and actor in Western movies, piled up a commanding lead and appears assured of the Democratic nomination for Governor of Louisiana today, after one of the most bitter campaigns in the political history of this one-time kingdom of the late Huey P. Long.

Mr. Davis of Shreveport held more than a 27,000-vote lead over his opponent, Lewis L. Morgan of Covington, in a runoff primary. Democratic nomination is tantamount to election.

With 1,639 of the state’s 1,864 precincts reporting, the unofficial vote was:

Davis	204,940
Morgan	175,292

Not only was Mr. Davis apparently headed towards the Governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge, but he was also handling the old regular machine bossed by New Orleans Mayor Robert Maestri the worst beating in its recent history.

Fred Leblanc, mayor of Baton Rouge, running on the Davis ticket for state’s attorney general, was leading State Senator Joe T. Cawthorn of Mansfield. J. Emile Verret, running mate for Lieutenant Governor, held a lead of almost 20,000 votes in his race against former Governor Earl K. Long, brother of the late “Kingfish.”

[NormanStewart]

Dewey seeks peace based on fellowship

New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey said last night that the peace which follows this war “must not be a rigid, inflexible thing,” but must “provide peoples everywhere with simple, understandable means of bringing an end to the horror of war.”

Mr. Dewey, speaking before 18,000 persons at a Red Cross rally opening the New York City drive for funds said the peace “must not be the dictated result of personal conferences.”

He said:

It must be the constant, daily beneficiary of the labors of men of goodwill, striving to make it work and sacrificing to make it endure. Most of all, it must be based on a growing sense of fellowship between peoples.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: So soldiers may vote–

Governor Martin has announced he will call a special session of the Legislature to amend Pennsylvania’s military ballot law so members of the Armed Forces may vote in this year’s election.

The Governor thus is taking rightful notice of the obvious need for a simplification of the election laws in this respect. And he is recognizing the basic justice of giving the Armed Forces a maximum opportunity to cast a ballot.

Mr. Martin also exercised his common sense in deciding to withhold his call for the special session until Congress either enacts a federal soldier-vote law or abandons the project altogether.

Some states have already held special sessions and passed soldier-vote laws of their own.

But it would seem wiser to await Congress’ action, if there is to be any, since it then will be easier to make the state’s law dovetail with the federal statute.

Prompt action is essential, so full preparations may be made for handling the immense job of getting ballots to the Armed Forces overseas, marked and returned in time for tabulation after the November election.

But the Governor believes, with apparent justification, that the Legislature can amend the Pennsylvania law in no more than two weeks.

Mr. Martin is practical and wise in deciding to call the special session, in delaying the call until Congress makes up its mind and in keeping the legislative program restricted to this issue.

When the Governor does call the special session, he plans to have ready for the lawmakers a program of legislation which will meet the needs and coincide with the federal law. This should expedite the session.

In developing amendments to the military ballot law, the Governor, the Attorney General’s office, the State Elections Bureau and the Legislature should keep uppermost in mind one main objective: Making it as easy and simple as possible for the man in the Armed Forces to vote.

The present Pennsylvania law is inadequate even for the use of voters in the military and naval forces in this country. It was written for peacetime mobilization when there was no immediate prospect of more than a relatively small number of voters being called into the services.

But with hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters in training camps, its cumbersome procedure is far too involved, both for the men in the services and for the agencies at home which must handle the job.

As a wartime voting measure, with many thousands of Pennsylvania voters in scattered and distant posts overseas, it is impossible.

The law needs drastic simplification, in accordance with a mandate of the Pennsylvania Constitution which says that electors in the military services shall be provided with the means of exercising their suffrage “as fully as if they were present at their usual places of election.”

[NormanStewart]

Edson: Washington unity at lowest ebb as need is greatest

By Peter Edson

Washington –
Up to the time of Kentucky Senator Not-So-Dear Alben W. Barkley’s histrionic resignation as leader of the Democratic majority in the upper chamber of Congress, the two 1944 pre-election bets most frequently offered around Washington have been (1) the President will be reelected for a fourth term; (2) both Houses of Congress will go Republican.

In capital cocktail it has been difficult to get takers for either of these offers, but since the Barkley incident, maybe the odds will come down.

The political prospect which this Roosevelt-Republican Congress election result would offer is, of course, one of continual strife between the White House and Capitol.

From 1945 to 1949 is admittedly going to be one of those things the editorial writers call “the most critical period in American history.” The pitfalls of this period of reconversion and readjustment after World War II will be broader and deeper than were those after World War I, after any of the great panic years of the 1800s, or in the terrible times of Reconstruction after the Civil War between the states.

Big question raised

Faced by this tough outlook, the need for cooperation between legislative and executive departments would appear to be greater than it ever was before, and it raises the embarrassing pre-election question of whether the country would not be better off with a President and a Congressional majority of the same political party, than it would be with a President and a Congressional majority of opposing parties – even thought that might mean swapping hoses in the middle of the well-known crick by retiring from office a Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief under whose leadership a foreign war is being fought to a victorious end.

Naming a name, would Mr. Roosevelt with a Republican Congress be worse for the country than four years more of Mr. Roosevelt with a Democratic Congress? Following the Barkley affair, it might appear that four years more of Mr. Roosevelt with a Democratic Congress couldn’t be worse than anything.

Cooperation between President and Congress perhaps has never been at a lower ebb. On every important domestic issue today – taxes, the soldier vote, food subsidies, taking the excess profits out of war through renegotiation of contracts, the stabilization program – Congress seems determined not to give the President what he recommends and the President seems unwilling to accept what Congress gives him.

Even where they do see eye-to-eye, they look daggers.

And while the American system of government is based on the principle of free speech and full argument on every controversial question of public interest, it is hard for a sideline rooter in Washington to see how this present capital turmoil helps win the war or solve the perplexities of peace.

Recommendations

In the Baruch report on war and post-war adjustment policies there are three short sentences that today might well be postered on the walls of every executive office, printed in headletter type on the cover of the Congressional Record every day, billboarded in boxcar letters along the malls and on the lawns at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, where public servants might look out of their broad windows to read:

We recommend unifying the government forces dealing with the human problems of demobilization on two fronts – the Executive and Congress.

Everything being done by the executive branch of the government should be brought together under a single, unforgetful mind; the Congress to merge the activities of its many committees into a single committee in the Senate and in the House, or, if it can be effected, into a joint committee of both Houses.

The unified executive and Congressional groups should then work together on a combined program of legislation and operation that will carry out the objectives that all of us share.

Sure. Why not?

[NormanStewart]

Background of news –
Costs of soldier voting

By Burt P. Garnett

In connection with the Soldier Voting Act of 1942, Congress appropriated $1,200,000 to assist the states in meeting the cost of handling the large number of absentee ballots expected from servicemen and women in the Congressional and state elections of that year. The final enactment of the soldier voting bill, however, was held up until September and relatively few votes were cast by servicepeople in the November election.

The President said in his recent message to Congress, in which he urged provision of a federal ballot for the election of 1944, that “out of 5,700,000 men in our Armed Forces at the time of the general election of 1942, only 28,000 servicemen’s votes were counted under the federal statute.” The President’s figure was off about one thousand; records of the War and Navy Departments show that the actual number of servicepeople who voted under the federal law in 1942 was only 27,074.

Total payments to the states out of the $1,200,000 provided by Congress to meet extra expenses under the 1942 Soldier Voting Act came to $71,907.99 – or about $2.65 per service vote. States were reimbursed for printing of special instructions and payment of extra clerical help; they were required to meet the cost of printing extra ballots for servicepeople out of their own funds. Three states – Louisiana, South Dakota and Wisconsin – paid their own expenses in full. Of the $1,200,000 appropriated by Congress, $1,128,092 remained unexpended after all expenses chargeable to the federal government had been met.

State cost to be low

No estimate can yet be made of the cost of polling the very much larger number of servicepeople expected to participate in the presidential election of 1944. The total cost will depend not only upon the number of votes cast by members of the Armed Forces, but also upon the nature of the ballot to be provided under the revised Soldier Voting Act now awaiting final action by Congress. If it turns out to be a federal ballot, as desired by the administration, permitting a vote only for candidates for federal office, the state share of the cost of soldier voting will be negligible.

If a combination scheme using both state and federal ballots is finally adopted (as now seems more likely), the cost will be higher, but still far from prohibitive. Assuming that Congress follows the precedent established in 1942., the direct cost to the states will be confined in the main to the expense of printing extra absentee ballots.

Indirect costs will include the expenses incident to holding special sessions of state legislatures to ensure new soldier voting legislation. Here the chief cost will be payment of mileage to legislators for an extra trip to the state capital. Total direct and indirect costs of soldier voting to the states should not exceed 10% for each man and woman from the state serving in the Armed Forces.

O’Daniel voted down

A proposal advanced by Senator O’Daniel (D-TX) while the tax bill was before the Senate, would have made soldier voting a source of revenue to the eight Southern poll tax states. Senator O’Daniel pointed out that the poll tax as a voting requirement had been written into the Texas Constitution and could not be waived by the legislature. If Congress was going to exempt servicepeople from payment of poll taxes, he said, it should provide for payment of such taxes on their behalf out of the Treasury. He offered an amendment to the tax bill for this purpose, but it was quickly rejected by the Senate.

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (March 2, 1944)

Die gigantischen Schulden der USA –
Willkie mit der Steuerschraube

dnb. Stockholm, 1. März –
Willkie hat, wie die Time vom 14. Februar meldet, in einer Rede in Neuyork die Steuerpolitik der USA angegriffen. Er fragte:

Was sollen wir den Soldaten sagen? Während sie draußen kämpfen, häufen wir zu Hause Schulden an, und zwar so gewaltig, daß die Soldaten, wenn sie heimkommen, ihr ganzes Leben lang die Zinsen für diese Riesenschulden tragen müssen.

Willkie verlangte dann, daß noch über die von Roosevelt geforderten großen Steuererhöhungen hinausgegangen werden solle und daß jeder Dollar bis zu einer Maximalgrenze besteuert werden müsse. Diese ungeheuren Steuern seien unbedingt notwendig, denn sonst würden die USA nach dem Krieg eine öffentliche Schuld von 300 Milliarden Dollar haben. Allein die Zinsen würden dann 6 Milliarden Dollar ausmachen, also fast ebenso viel wie der gesamte Haushalt des Jahres 1943. Die Amerikaner müßten dann ihren Lebensstandard auf ein Minimum herabschrauben.