The Pittsburgh Press (August 1, 1944)
Pegler: Dewey in Pittsburgh
By Westbrook Pegler
Mr. Pegler, traveling with Governor Dewey and his party, wrote his column in Pittsburgh yesterday.
Governor Tom Dewey came to Pittsburgh from New York during Sunday night with Mrs. Dewey and a lot of others, bound for a conference in St. Louis tomorrow and Thursday of 26 Republican governors, including himself and John Bricker of Ohio.
For some obscure reason, possibly of political delicacy or through intent to deceive the Democrats, someone has tried to create an impression that this is not a campaign trip, which it is nothing else but, and that the train of nine cars on the Pennsylvania Railroad, which is waiting in the yard at this writing, is not a special but just another section of a regular train.
In some technical meaning, known only to railroad men and the Interstate Commerce Commission, it may not be a special train, but in all other respects, it is.
There are 45 reporters and photographers along, for newspapers, press associations and news magazines, each of whom pays his own way and picks up his own tabs for his meals and drinks, and one who can speak from considerable experience will say that political life is austere by comparison with travel on the World Series specials, which in the pre-war days, at any rate, were luxurious and gay.
Union politicians know each other
Mr. Dewey spent a large day meeting Pennsylvania Republicans here, including a number of professional unioneers of the opposition, or anti-CIO-Communist movement, and it appears the Republican Party is gathering a rather substantial labor wing of its own whose speakers will cry up various grudges against Mr. Roosevelt.
These include a charge that he is an enemy of free labor because he has been partial to the CIO which, in turn, has become a holding corporation for his own Democratic Party. They are saying he created this CIO arrangement as a shrewd and deliberate plan whereby the labor movement would become a device for collecting campaign funds to keep him in office, with the eventual intention to strip it of its original guise and run it, himself, as a party, as Mussolini ran the Fascists.
This fight will develop as the campaign warms up and should be interesting because the professionals of union politics all know each other of old and have plenty on each other. Unlike the machine politicians of the conventional type, they call each other crooks, murderers, racketeers and Communists out loud when they get going, instead of keeping their old business secrets to themselves.
Mr. Dewey is in a unique position as a candidate because he sent a lot of boss racketeers to prison during his spell as District Attorney and he knows the background of many of those who are still at large, including the relationship between the union of Sidney Hillman, the boss of Mr. Big’s CIO-Communist wing, and the late Mr. Lepke of New York and his team of professional murderers.
Deweys survive handshaking
The conferences of a hot and busy day included meetings with businessmen and representatives of the servicemen and women’s organizations of the last war and this one. Then, late in the afternoon, the Deweys toed a line in the ballroom of the William Penn Hotel and for an hour and 40 minutes, without a break, shook hands with a passing line of visitors – Republicans, they dared hope – who filed by at the rate of 40 a minute. This was a serious physical ordeal and Paul Lockwood, Mr. Dewey’s handyman, hurried downstairs after an hour of it to get them salt tablets.
The Deweys came through it with their right hands in good shape, thanks to a trick which now seems to be common property among statesmen of using a quick, firm grab in shaking hands and letting go quickly. This gives the subject command of the situation, for he has taken his hold and let go before those energetic, clear-eyed, firm-jawed bone-crushers can take the initiative.
The Deweys say “How do you do?”, “How are you?” and “Nice to see you,” varying the repertoire so that seldom are two successive individuals given the same greeting. It seems a hell of a way to choose a President.
On baseball trains, usually there is something to speculate about in the press cars at night, such as a pitcher’s sore arm or hangover, or a heavy hitter’s split finger which prevents his taking a firm grab on the stick. On this little journey, however, the head man seems to be in good shape for his conferences with the other governors in St. Louis and the visit to the tomb of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, neither of which should be any great physical trial.
Inasmuch as it is not a speechmaking trip, it comes under the head of strange business in the experience of most of those on board. The meaning of it all may not dawn for days and days.