Capital Comment
STOUT, JONATHAN
Capital Comment By JONATHAN STOUT Dewey* Aimed Speech At AFL - But Flopped WASHINGTON, D. C—It can be reported that Dewey's labor speech in Seattle this week fell with a dull thud in Capital...
...Americans are never, never to be slaves of the bureaucrats...
...It provides for unemployment insurance, education, industrial training and retraining and, finally, assistance in finding jobs...
...Without whitewashing the Administration's responsibility for the Smith-Connally Art through failure to make an aggressive fight agaiast it (as this calami pointed oat at the tme of its paaaage), the fact remains that the Smith-Connally Art never weald have passed if Tom Dewey accurately and heneetly stated the Republican position on such legislation...
...Everyone agrees that the returning soldiers and sailors should have every possible bresk...
...And ns a further precaution none of these rescued *irm»n has been permitted a furlough back home for *ear the newshawks will get at them...
...n. §*AiLtK>*o Political Standstill in Canada....................a.amdum The Famine Threat to India.....................j.p.d^siua The UAW Militant Mood...............*o«rt tovwind, j...
...Democratic Goals and World Order Reinhold Niebuhr Free Enterprise for Whom...
...Next come the great Industrial corporations...
...The French Political Shifts A Socialist Program Daniel Mayer tINRRAl SICRRTARY, HtlNCH SOCIALIST PARTY Will Gaullism Be Democratic . Boris Nfco/aevsfcy The Dewey-Bricker Tug-of-War Robert G. Spivack Food as a Political Weapon................h...
...Little businessmen get kind words...
...Dewey may have had in mind a general concept of ••rial security—for that was the context...
...There was sharp irritation in the reminder of labor circles here that the Democrats, Kep...
...If they don't believe their own words, it is a slight, an insult, a handicap...
...Hew Sif¦ of forty Lint Close observers here are interested in signs of a new world shift in the Communist Party line...
...Every care has been exercised to give them all the breaks...
...Monday, also, saw the last of a proposal to extend the benefits of unemployment insurance to some 2,000,000 federal employees who hsve been taken on during the present emergency...
...Each one is to be left strictly alone to grow rich as the result of his own lusty efforts...
...Stalin, the man who nade a scrap of paper of the Atlantic Charter, is prompting strange talk in Communist-front organisations about a "Pacific Charter...
...It was either bad luck or bad timing for Dewey **»t at the very moment Dewey was making that very nice sounding phrase in Seattle 8,000 miles away w Washington • solid Republican bloc in the House, famished lightlyLwith their tory Southern Democratic •Hies, were making a mockery of their phrase-makl»I standard-bearer by: Defeating, 239 to 90, a watered-down compromise •mendment to the George Reconversion Bill to render to war workers made jobless through no fsult *' their own by giving travel pay in hardship esses •inly to war workers who had earned less than 150 a wtek and were broke and prepared to sign a pauper affidavit...
...out of " sensitive retard for Churchill and Stalin...
...And the question being asked in labor circles here is: Can a Dewey, under obligation to and under the thumb of the Republican bosses, get tougher about such things than Roosevelt...
...But the War Department isn't passing aid ig its informatioi to the American people...
...They will get it...
...We must have protection ot the individual from loss of his earning power through no fault •f his own...
...A oJeaily denned principle—or perhaps it is a prejudice—runs through the whole network...
...The provisions of this Isw and the other New Deal interferences with free collective bargaining should never be renewed...
...For instance, Dewey's statement thai: "Democratic Congressman Smith and Democratic Senator Connelly produced the Smith-Connally Act whirh they promised would solve all problems...
...2—"We shall see that every working man and woman stands equally in that department created to serve kirn and not to rule him...
...and MiJthoilov/tch The Russians are awfully displeased with our War Department...
...oidera not to discuss publicly what they saw *ot tin mseiraa on the question of Mikhsilovitch's strength and Tito's largely-imaginary army...
...The little farmers will get precious little help...
...Capital Comment By JONATHAN STOUT Dewey* Aimed Speech At AFL - But Flopped WASHINGTON, D. C—It can be reported that Dewey's labor speech in Seattle this week fell with a dull thud in Capital labor circle...
...The phony baloney about Tito hasn't taken in our military intelligence...
...Roosevelt was unable to get the Republican's and their tory allies to change that position...
...But that is about the end of the tale so far as pampering and care and help are coneerned...
...Bo far aa the AFL la concerned, Dewey is due for the gri a disappointment when he discovers that aespite the AFL grievances which he stated ao shrewdly Ms Seattle labor speech offers pie in the sky whoa what ia aa everybody's issMediate mind ie aseat-ea-the-taWe...
...Despite all communist efforts, our War Department still maintains friendly relations with Gen...
...On Monday the House turned down amendmenta which would have furnished assistance to displaced war-workers, would have furnished them funds to tide them over as they return to their homes or seek new jobs...
...These airmen recently were braught back to Italy, where they were gfrtf...
...Howard Smith and Senator Tom Connally, are two of the tory Southern Democratic bloc which has made alliance with the Republicans against the Democratic Administration snd that these two gentlemen particularly were merely the Democratic false-faces on a Republican chassis...
...The reference, plainly, wae te the deeply-held feeling that White House policies have been responsible in part for helping to open the doors for the Communists in the labor movement and In important Government positions with a bearing on the labor movement...
...What are we to think of the exponents of free enterprise and individual initiative...
...That coincidence made sharper the reminder that it was the same solid Republican vote in Congress that killed the labor-supported Kilgore Reconversion Bill ana substituted the inadequate George Bill...
...Of course, the 3ritish are vulnerable on this point as a result of their colonial policy in India and other Asiatic possessions...
...Anyone who lays them end to end can easily figure out their general direction...
...The fight of workers to lesve their jobs individually or together—the right to strike-is one of the fundamental rights of free men...
...The sponsors of these measures sing both high and low of individual initiative, but the only group of cititens who sre not to be pampered with public help are . wags-workers and working farmers...
...And there will be no back door entrance to special privilege by one group over any ether group of Americans...
...And all within recent weeks...
...It waa recognised here that Dewey frankly aiased Ma reatarka at ike Asaerican Federation of Labor...
...and on at least mi* count wai received with irritation...
...War Dept...
...This is the upshot of a whole network of laws which will set our course for years to come...
...They have better sources of information...
...IN Congress the bi-partisan wing is riding high...
...It has not solved the problem . . . That law will eipire with the termination of the war, as it should...
...If the-free enterprisers believe what they say, this in the nature of a compliment, a favor, an advantage...
...Others are not...
...And on these other points BtWey seriously over-weighted the balance against himself...
...If reaction here is typical, the New York (iorernor is foinf to be a sorely puzzled Man by the disappointing results...
...But these will benefit exclusively the big farmers and the food processors...
...The reference, of course, is to the long-standing resentment of the AFL that the Secretary •f Labor was not drawn from the labor movement...
...And those least cared for—those left out in the cold— are the wage-workers...
...t. Defeating, 174 to 156, a proposal in the George Bill that unemployment compensation be extended to three million workers employed directly by the United States government...
...You may imagine what a laugh this got in Washington where there are thousands of eye-witnesses to what happened in this case...
...The move is being interpreted here as aimed at the British, indicating trouble ahead between Churchill and Stalin...
...For instance, Mikhaito»itch'i forces have rescued several hundred American fliers -.vh-.i have had to bail out over Jugoslavia...
...And as for tha workers - they are placed entirely on their own...
...When they take tender eare of certain classes—is it possible that they have no fear at all of weakening their fiber and turning them into vassals of a bureaucracy...
...and most of them f» the AFL...
...The record shows that the Dewey position in Seattle is the very opposite of the Republican Party position ia Washington...
...the workingmen themselves will drive . . . the Communists from positions of power in the labor movement...
...I—"American working people know that with the restoration of freedom...
...To balance this, Dewey made a couple of good pointi which were well received...
...But for millions of American workers...
...What goes on .here...
...They want no doles snd no directives...
...Some are helped...
...There we have it...
...Big farmers and food processors get price support, small farmers get big troubles...
...The measures pasaed and soon to be passed are complicated, detailed and carefully thought out...
...The bunk lies in Dewey's attempt to make it seem at though the Smith-Connally Act was a New Deal or even solely a Democratic baby...
...Its leaders constantly echo the Dewey song of free enterprise...
...Although it is highly probable that about two million of these workers will be made jobless by the war's end—a majority of them by the surrender of Germany...
...But it is interesting to note that for the Communist.* unity still remains a one-way street...
...Great corporations are to have every sort of help...
...And • Wage-workers are allotted all the advsntages of being left strictly on their own...
...Dewey had the misfortune to remark that: "There is no question where we want to go during peacetime yeara for which we are electing a new President...
...Can it be that these followers of the Dewey doctrine are hypocrites...
...Lobar Says: Smlfh Coaaaiiy As for moat of the remainder of Dewey's speech, the Washington labor reaction in both AFL and CIO circles was: "Bunk...
...The tax refunds, the easy and quick sale of surplus property, the rapid pulling of the government out of business, the generous arrangements for com'act termination—these and other similar provisions make of the big businessmen our most psmpered class...
...It is the best measure of the sort which we have adopted in our entire history...
...Out of the whole lot the only law that we all aupport is the G. I. Bill of rights...
...But, generally speaking, as en effort to win any widespread support from labor, the speech was a failure...
...Some provisions have been slipped in here and there to support farm prices...
...Theee measures affect millions of men and many billions of dollars' worth of property...
...Their moral fiber is not to be weakened by WPA handouts...
...OP Hoese Hoc Trips Da way But Dewey made aeveral points—addressed to American labor generally—which are of even greater and More immediate importance to the AFL than the three which were well received...
...Free enterprise—but • Returning veterans are—properly—to get every sort of break...
...the remark sent their minds leaping . to the very recent fact that a solid Republican Senate and House in coalition with a small group of tory Seathern Democrats emphatically and even violently "fused to give "protection to the individual from loss " his earning power through no fault of hia own...
...Calculated to make a special appeal to the A CI, were these points: 1—"For 12 straight years of New Deal bungling the Department of Labor has been left in the hands ef an estimable lady, Vho has been Secretary of Labor in name only...
...D«ja Mikhailovitch in Jugoslavia...
...We start with the veterans...
...The reference, obviously, is to the widely held convictiorf'that the CIO kai a backdoor entry to the White House...
...Congress has sdopted or is about to adopt measures desliog with termination of war contracts, disposal of what is called surplus property and demobilisation both civil and military...
Vol. 27 • September 1944 • No. 39
