Kidney: Western Democrats yell for Wickard, Black scalps
Fourth term, Wallace, Hopkins and farmer-labor issues due for blowup at meeting
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Western and Midwestern Democrats are making plans for some hellraising at their national committee meeting here Jan. 21.
Invitations for the Westerns to gang up before the meeting and present a program of demands have been sent to state chairmen and national committeeman and chairman of the Western States Democratic Conference organized at Omaha in 1942.
“No holds will be barred” when the Westerns caucus here, Mr. Quigley said over the long-distance telephone from his home. Topics will include the fourth term, Vice President Wallace, Harry Hopkins, post-New Deal planning, and farmer-labor problems.
Wickard, Black must go
Here in Nebraska, the Democrats want “a complete housecleaning in the Department of Agriculture,” he said.
He said:
Secretary Wickard should resign and take A. G. Black, governor of the Farm Credit Administration, with him. We can never again win votes in the farm belt with those two staying on the job.
Mr. Black is the man who sold Wallace the idea of killing the little pigs. Now he is just a stooge for Wickard, who is running things all wrong.
Our No. 1 plan is for them both to get out.
Hull, McNutt, Farley
Mr. Quigley had just talked to a “prominent Democrat” who told him he didn’t mind a fourth term for the President “if the war is still on,” but felt that “a strong Democratic leader should replace Wallace on the ticket.”
Should the President choose not to run, there is talk in Nebraska about Messrs. Hull, McNutt and Farley – in about that order – Mr. Quigley reported.
There is no complaint about the war on the international conferences, he said, and aside from the farmers wanting things run differently, the main criticism is the lack of a labor policy.
Little talk of Hopkins
Mr. Quigley said:
We haven’t much industrial unionism out here, but what union men we have never have struck in wartime, and they are just as much against strikes as are other citizens.
There has been little criticism there of Harry Hopkins, he declared, and added:
You just hardly ever hear of him or Wallace.
In fact, he would prefer Mr. Hopkins to Mr. Wickard as Secretary of Agriculture, he indicated.