The Pittsburgh Press (September 30, 1944)
Vice President in city –
Wallace urges ‘cooperation’
Unity for prosperity termed U.S. need
Post-war prosperity will depend on the “utmost coordination and cooperation” between business, labor and industry, Vice President Henry Wallace declared here today.
This cooperation, he said, would include a matching of federal government efforts with those of cities and counties in setting up peacetime projects.
Praising this area as the “backbone of the war effort,” Mr. Wallace said:
The prosperity of Pittsburgh, like that of the rest of the nation in the post-war era, will depend on the utmost coordination and cooperation of all.
Confer with mayors
He made the statement at a press conference in the office of Mayor Cornelius D. Scully, where a few minutes earlier he had concluded a conference with the four mayors of the county’s first-class cities.
Speaking in rapid-fire fashion, Mr. Wallace said the mayors’ conference dealt with “grave” post-war municipal problems. He mentioned specifically Mayor Scully’s pet project, the improvement of the city’s water supply.
The Vice President said:
That’s quite a sizable project and will serve as a case in point, illustrating the necessity of coordinated effort between the county and municipality with the federal government matching their efforts.
Silent on plans
He was smilingly evasive on the question of his plans for his personal future.
“I have no plans for after Nov. 7,” he commented when asked if he expected to remain with the New Deal if President Roosevelt is reelected.
“That’s why he’s so interested in this unemployment question,” interjected Mayor Scully with a smile.
Mr. Wallace warned labor representatives at the Mayors’ conference that labor faces its biggest struggle – the problems of conquering unemployment and increasing labor’s purchasing power.
Mr. Wallace said:
As labor comes of age, and it is coming of age, it must concern itself with more things than just its fair slice out of the national pie.
He expressed the thought that labor, whose earning “represent more than two-thirds of the national income,” must inject itself more deeply into national problems.
‘Welfare of people’
Asked if it were true that “various interests” were seeking to control the New Deal, a thinly-veiled reference to the CIO’s Political Action Committee, Mr. Wallace retorted:
Various interests are always seeking to take over control of both parties. The main concern for the future should be the welfare of the people. It should not be a political concern.
The mayors’ conference was attended by Mayor Scully, McKeesport Mayor Frank Buchanan, Duquesne Mayor Elmer J. Maloy, Clairton Mayor John J. Mullen, County Commissioner John J. Kane, and representatives of the Independent Citizens Committee. Representatives of the United Mine Workers, the AFL, the CIO, the Railway Brotherhoods and Arthur Starr Brown (one of the two Negro electors from Pennsylvania) also attended.
Goes to Clairton
Bareheaded, Mr. Wallace strode from his room at the William Penn Hotel to the conference in the City-County Building so fast that his police escort almost had to run to keep up with him. He was apparently unrecognized on the street.
After the press conference, Mr. Wallace left for Clairton, where he spoke at an honor roll dedication at 11:45 a.m. A luncheon in McKeesport was followed by a visit to Duquesne.
He was to attend commissioning ceremonies of an LST at Dravo’s Shipyards, Neville Island, at 3:00 p.m., and will deliver a major speech at Carnegie Music Hall tonight at 8:30 p.m.
Speaking to a street audience of an estimated 3,500 persons in New Kensington late yesterday, Mr. Wallace said that his purpose in coming to Western Pennsylvania for a two-day speaking tour was plain: to urge the reelection of the President, and a great outpouring of voters.
He spoke in Johnstown, New Kensington and McKeesport yesterday.
He is jovial
If the Vice President bore any resentment over the party shuffle in which Senator Harry Truman replaced him as President Roosevelt’s running mate, it was not apparent yesterday.
His talk was jovial throughout, even when he referred to the refusal of the New Kensington School Board to permit him to speak in the High School Auditorium because he was to make a political address.
He said with a smile:
I’m glad it’s a nice day for the educational process can go on in the open air occasionally. Pennsylvania is truly a great state. One can find the most reactionary of reactionaries, and also the most liberals of liberals.
Record reviewed
In pleading for support for the President, and for “other party candidates,” Mr. Wallace reviewed Mr. Roosevelt’s record in both peace and war eras.
The Vice President contended:
He has done an outstanding job of a great which history will record. There may be some now who try to take credit for his work, but they will recover from that strange malady on Nov. 8.
Yet there isn’t so much actual difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, he said, for both are concerned with “men and dollars.” But he added:
Of course, the Republicans are concerned with the dollars first and the men second, and the Democrats usually put the men first and the dollars second.
‘Unions grow’
Mr. Wallace declared that as a result of the policies of the Roosevelt administration “there are five times as many, maybe seven times as many, dues paying members in unions as there were back in 1932.”
He continued:
When labor unions, with their own engineers, meet on equal terms with management in the formation of industrial policies there will be real democracy in the United States.
Immediately after the speaking program, Mr. Wallace left for Uniontown for a similar address.
Others to address tonight’s meeting in Carnegie Hall include CIO President Philip Murray, James L. McDevitt (president of the AFL, State Federation of Labor) and Congressman Francis J. Myers of Philadelphia (Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate).