THE MOOD OF AMERICA
Neuberger, R. L. & Lasch, Robert & Revell, Aldric & Marshall, Rachelle
THE MOOD OF AMERICA Mayor Kelly's Ghost By Robert Lasch Chicago WHEN Ed Kelly retired as mayor of Chicago few liberals considered that within a few years they would be thinking of him wistfully...
...One feels like saying, "Here's where I came in...
...But farm members, having seized dominance in legislatures, refuse to relinquish it...
...The last time legislative reapportionment was taken to the polls occurred in the state of Washington in 1930...
...was defeated, ending a 46-year span in which a LaFollette was Governor or Senator or both...
...Oscar Rennebohm, Republican, defeated Carl Thompson by more than 123,000 and polled more votes than Truman...
...It was a calculated risk taken by former Progressives and labor—and it is paying off...
...What's a constitution among friends, especially when the friends might lose some of their political power...
...The agrarian radicalism of "Old Bob" around the turn of the century was something over which the farmers could get excited, since they could understand that railroad regulation and control of the utilities would help them...
...The party has come out squarely for national health insurance, the Brannan plan, civil rights, expanded social security, etc...
...Advocates of dynamic policy in these fields think fondly of the days when Ed Kelly used to hammer the table and say: "This has got to be done...
...In Chicago as elsewhere the real estate people have tried for many years to hobble or curtail public housing...
...RACHELLE MARSHALL, librarian of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, samples public opinion in that state by reading 40 to 50 dailies and weeklies...
...More recently, Klan organizer Tommy Panther announced that an attempt would be made in the near future to organize a Klavern in Chapel Hill, a town long suspected by conservative North Carolinians radical elements...
...Whether these tactics will work in solving the housing and race relations problems is questionable...
...On several occasions the city has been close to a riot situation which might have been avoided had the City Hall made it plain not only that violence would not be tolerated, but that the full strength of municipal authority backed the right of Negroes to live where they please...
...It may be significant that while the subject has been ignored by almost none of the state newspapers, some of the most vociferous editorial blasts have come from conservative papers which have been equally vehement in defending segregation— even white supremacy—and damning the civil rights program...
...These leaders are in their 30's —young, liberal, enthusiastic and capable...
...On the contrary, he shook many people's confidence in him by assuming personal leadership of the fight to defeat an ordinance which proclaimed the principle of non-discrimination for housing built by private capital with public assistance through land subsidy and otherwise...
...Now, however, it is clear that public housing, also, faces strong aldermanic opposition precisely because it does operate on the principle of non-discrimination...
...Regardless of the outcome, pro-gressivism is back in harness again ALDRIC REVELL, political correspondent and columnist for the Madison (Wis...
...actually St...
...Taxation without representation is tyranny...
...Many other communities, in addition to metropolitan Portland, are entitled to more legislative seats...
...Yet a negligible 8% of gasoline taxes was allocated to help cities maintain streets...
...On the basis of population, St...
...Mayor Victor Shaw, who admitted that his father had been a Klans-man after the Civil War, termed present day members "a bunch of hoodlums" and the Klan itself "a subversive organization...
...Louis should have 131 representatives in the General Assembly of Missouri...
...We don't wear no robes or masks except at big parties...
...Ed Kelly was Democratic boss as well as mayor...
...City traffic jams vex all of us...
...Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Klan's return to North Carolina has been the attitude of state and local governing officials toward pronouncements by Klans-men Tommy Panther and Thomas L. Hamilton (each, incidentally, representing a rival Klan organization) that North Carolina would prove to be a happy hunting ground...
...Capital Times, is a vice president of the Wisconsin CIO and a prominent member of the Socialist Party of that state . . . ROBERT LASCH is chief editorial writer for the Chicago Sun-Times . .. RICHARD L. NEUBERGER, The Progressive's correspondent in the Northwest, covers that area for most of America's leading publications...
...Most state legislatures are supposed to be divided up on the basis of population...
...while discussions were being held...
...The Chicago Housing Authority had repeatedly warned that failure to agree on sites might delay construction beyond 1951, or even cost Chicago its share of Federal funds...
...cried a speaker at the recent annual conference of U. S. Mayors...
...It means that each sagebrush voter possesses 10 times the voice in the Senate of his fellow citizen in Portland...
...There is no United Counties of Illinois or United Counties of Idaho...
...After the Young Progressives and labor moved in, however, something new was added, and today the Democratic Party is unrecognizable...
...Many aldermen oppose public housing sites in their wards because they are afraid that the non-discrimination policy will mean that a few Negro families may move in...
...Anybody who has looked coolly at the situation knows that there is no possible solution for the housing problem and no hope of cleaning up the blighted areas that surround the Loop unless Negroes are permitted to live somewhere besides the teaming Black Belt on the South Side...
...If the editorial writers have been making solemn attacks on what they see as a return of the night-riders of the '20s, the front pages have shown present Klan leaders to be comic-opera buffoons with a penchant for atrocious grammar...
...Bob's defeat on his return :^HI Republican Party left the 'ffl gressive forces in the state confusM and leaderless...
...It was in Charlotte, on the night of Aug...
...Seattle, Tacoma, and Spe kane wearied of being denied the seats to which they were entitled by the constitution...
...Truman carried Wisconsin by 56,000 votes, but Gov...
...These men forget that this issue was fought out long ago when the states were organized...
...At present the Democratic leadership is seeking to entice into its fold the older Progressives and the farm element which for years served as the backbone of LaFollette strength...
...Another factor operating against the latest membership drive in North Carolina is that the modern Klan simply isn't what it used to be...
...a nearby rural county has one Representative for each 3,000 people...
...In 1948 Pres...
...Thus, the Klan has had to contend with a barrage of opposition from almost the entire press...
...Mayor Kennelly has given Chicago "good guv'ment" and tight budgeting, but he has been a severe disappointment to many people who regard housing and race relations as the two most important civic issues of his term...
...Consequently many have almost welcomed the return of the Klan as an opportunity to let loose with righteous wrath at a group which "preaches oppression of minorities" and "takes the law into its own hands...
...Although the constitution of this state specifically orders a reapportionment every 10 years, the Oregon legislature has not been re-districted since 1910...
...in Wisconsin—it's a horse of a different color, but it is headed in the same direction...
...Yet today the aldermen's tactics of procrastination and delay are seriously endangering the city's first comprehensive attack on the slum problem, thus giving the real estate interests support in a battle which they could not win alone...
...Chicago counted on him to deliver it from the evils of machine government in the City Hall...
...Bob, have nothing to do with this new trend...
...What is interesting about the Wisconsin Democratic Party today is that it has gone all-out for Truman's Fair Deal program, including the dots on the i's and the crosses on the t's...
...Attorney General Harry McMullen prophesied publicly that Klan activity "will be short-lived and won't amount to much," and promised to keep the police alerted for any criminal violations by Klan members...
...He could knock aldermen's heads together when the occasion demanded, and he used to do it for public housing and for equality in race relations...
...It was on those issues that Kelly was strongest, and it is on them that Kennelly's leadership has been weakest...
...As a way of avoiding reapportionment, some country legislators are suggesting that state legislative bodies be composed along the line of the national Congress—in other words, the House on population but the Senate according to counties...
...And others are just against public housing because it is public...
...The inhabitants of these places comprise a majority of the state's population, so the measure has an excellent chance of adoption...
...On Dec...
...Sensitivity to Northern accusations of discrimination, nerves rubbed raw by growing agitation for passage of the civil rights bills, have put all but the most reactionary Southerners on the defensive...
...All this makes a pleasant situation for the real estate interests which have always opposed public housing...
...But by late February not even the sites for the first projects had been accepted by the City Council...
...Backwoods control of our legislatures—control not warranted on the basis of population—has ip-suited in some amazing special-interest bills at the expense of urban consumers...
...Gaylord Nelson, Madison, co-chairman of the Democratic Organ** ^ Lommittee and one of the rty's coming leaders...
...Yet, with fewer votes, the Republicans elected 10 Senators, the Democrats only eight...
...The Democratic Party historically had played a supine role in the state, being composed of patronage-hungry hacks, without vision, intelligence, or liberalism...
...Still the City Council dawdled, and still Kennelly failed to galvanize the aldermen with the kind of all-community leadership that was clearly needed...
...But a restive stirring is evident...
...Nor do counties enjoy the same independent standing that states have within the Union...
...For many years "Old Bob" LaFollette, starting before 1900, led the progressive forces in this state under the aegis of the Republican Party...
...labor, determined that the Democratic Party should be the vehicle...
...Both are problems which grow more rather than less explosive with the passage of time...
...They have devised a complex and detailed program for doorbell ringing and house to house canvassing, adequately financed...
...To be sure, organizers have boasted of wholesale initiations in such cities as Charlotte, Gastonia, and Greensboro...
...The city of Raleigh promptly adopted an almost identical ordinance when Hamilton announced that city the next center of operations...
...The Klan Returns By Rachelle Marshall Chapel Hill, N. C. AFTER a lapse of 25 years the Ku Klux Klan is again attempting to ride in North Carolina—and getting a cool welcome...
...Constitutional mandates are defied daily, as legislatures decline to reapportion districts and seats...
...It sometimes appears that the Democrats are wasting too much energy seeking to woo the former Progressive farm element, forgetting that this element deserted the LaFollettes long before the eclipse of the Progressive Party and in a large measure contributed to this eclipse...
...Louis has a mere 18 seats...
...When the Federal housing legislation was passed last year, delegations of citizens called upon Mayor Kennelly to take the lead in pushing the local program to take advantage of Federal funds...
...Horace Wilkie...
...The initiative car ried overwhelmingly even in many rural districts...
...What does this mean...
...as to whether Progressives should* return to the GOP and seek to liberalize it, a large bloc of liberals, the Young Progressives (not to be con-5 fused with the Wallace variety) and...
...The Chicago Housing Authority remains a vital and dynamic agency, one of the best in the country and certainly one of the cleanest municipal authorities in Chicago...
...W. Kerr Scott, accused by Hamilton in an interview with reporters of "leaning to the Communists and the Negroes," shrugged off the statement by saying, "We don't need that type of organization in North Carolina...
...In 1938 Phil's defeat for a fourth term as governor weakened the Progressive Party, and it died in 1946...
...Legislative reapportionment, if we are to follow the old Northwest Ordinance, should be founded on people and not on the artificial plan of county lines...
...For the first time in years the electorate will have a real choice at the polls...
...Even...
...The police got nothing to worry about," he told reporters...
...Martin H. Kennelly, the tremendously popular business man who succeeded Kelly, looks like a walking exemplification of clean living and personifies the kind of civic rectitude summed up by the phrase "good guv'ment...
...13, 1935, that almost the entire police force turned out to carry on systematic mayhem in the Negro districts, during which scores of Negroes were severely beaten, in reprisal for alleged advances made by a colored man to a white girl...
...It is for this reason that their philosophies don't stand up over an election...
...The taking over of the Democratic Party and its transformation into the liberal vehicle in the state was not fortuitous...
...But the Welfare State is something else, which farmers can't relate to themselves...
...These elements still flirt with the Republican Party for Auld Lang Syne...
...That year, running once again as a Republican, Bob Jr...
...2) The LaFollettes, former Gov...
...When it takes 10 times as many people on pavement to install a Senator or Representative as people on sod, the dominance of either Democratic members or labor policies becomes practically impossible...
...8 the first of the recent Klan meetings was held, that the strongest denunciation came...
...Last year more than 50% of the country's auto mileage was traveled inside city limits...
...Yet one Senatorial district in Portland has 78,178 inhabitants, while a district in the sagebrush has 7,269 inhabitants...
...The labor support of the LaFollettes has gone over lock, stock, and barrel to the Democratic Party, and three of the executive committee members are active trade unionists...
...Under persuasion from County Chairman Jacob M. Arvey, the organization took him as a candidate for mayor because, in the dark days following the Republican resurgence in 1946, it badly needed an impeccable front...
...2 of last year the Republicans cast a total of 536,348 votes for State Senator in Oregon, and the Democrats cast 573,765 votes...
...Indeed, the only outstanding individual in the party's new young leadership today who has always been a Democrat is James Doyle, formerly of Oshkosh, now a law partner of Phil LaFollette's in Madison...
...In 1934 the LaFollette brothers jumped off the Republican wagon and formed the Progressive Party, and for four years pushed forward the Wisconsin Idea in state and nation...
...Kennelly lacks this political clout and his tactics have been different...
...A Risk Pays Off By Aldric Revell Madison, Wis...
...This dictum is flouted in dozens of state legislatures, as reapportionment is refused...
...This fact does not worry Klans-man Panther...
...And lack of positive leadership from the mayor's office is a contributing factor...
...They know that they are talking through their hats but somehow they find it comforting...
...Democrats will depend upon growing enthusiasm and the gloves-off organizations of the CIO-PAC and the AFL's political arm...
...The Oregon State Federation of Labor has just decided to initiate a bill by petition which will reapportion Oregon's poorly-balanced legislature...
...This year, Democrats will have more than 60 counties organized with full county tickets compared to about 30 in 1948...
...Phil and former U.S...
...They are inherently lousy spellers...
...In George Washington's time, only 5% of people lived in cities...
...Meetings held throughout the state have been enthusiastic and reminiscent of the evangelical fervor which marked the Progressive Party during its heyday...
...Americans are leaving the farm...
...The reason is lack of legislative reapportionment...
...This is why desperate liberals, fretting at the snail-like progress in slum clearance and a perilous flabbiness in City Hall attitudes toward racial tensions, talk desperately about bringing Kelly back as a "reform" candidate...
...Nelson was S&nnerly a militant LaFollette Progressive who ran on the Republican ticket with Bob LaFollette in 1946...
...This year democracy should function well in Wisconsin...
...The same is true of State Sen...
...ALTHOUGH a great liberal surge has occurred in America during the past two decades, comparatively little of this popular sentiment has been translated into action at the state level...
...How the Country Rules the Cities By Richard L. Neuberger Salem, Ore...
...TWO GLARING highlights blaze out of the murky political haze in Wisconsin these days: 1) For the first time since the century began the LaFollette progressive tradition is being carried forward in the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party or a third party...
...The city was told that Chicago would practice its nondiscrimination in the case of public housing, which does not depend directly on private capital and which, Operates under a statute requiring |qual treatment regardless of race fr creed...
...In other words, the state has been gerrymandered so that Democratic voters are "second-class citizens" compared to Republican voters, when it comes to electing a legislature...
...It is clear that the Democratic Party in Wisconsin today is playing the role once played by Progressives...
...Its constitution orders all legislative districts to be of approximately equal population...
...This stems from the inequitable distribution which legislatures make of highway revenues...
...Often the implacable tide creates local frictions which, unless firmly dealt with by municipal authority, blossom into nasty tensions and even violence...
...On Nov...
...Madison, candidate for Congress from the 2nd district in 1948, Miles McMillin, Madison, editorial writer for the Capital Times, John Lawton, Madison labor attorney, are all former Young Progressives now active in the Democratic leadership...
...It was pointed out that in view of urgent housing needs and the slow rate of private building within the city proper, all possible speed should be applied to public housing construction...
...Today 60% of the nation dwells inside city limits...
...He was referring to the fact that city residents must pay taxes, yet are denied equal representation in the legislative bodies where taxes are levied...
...Periodically Wisconsin Republicans feel the need of spelling out their philosophy...
...as venal or as contemptuous of the state constitution as were farm legislators...
...The members of trade unions are concentrated within city boundaries...
...There will be no tweedledum and tweedledee as in the past decade...
...Lack of receptiveness to the Klan in North Carolina may be attributed to several factors aside from moral indignation at its principles of bigotry and violence...
...Less than a week after Grand Dragon Hamilton came to Charlotte, the city council unanimously passed an anti-mask ordinance...
...By sheer force of population pressure the Negroes have begun to spill over into other sections...
...The mayor was never against this program, and he thought the first steps could be quickly taken...
...Gov...
...Oregon offers a case in point...
...Most of them vote the Democratic ticket...
...But they were not tjl remain leaderless for long...
...When you talk of Thomas E. Fairchild, only Democrat to win a statewide office in 1948, as attorney general, you are talking about the former chairman of the Young Pro-s gressives...
...His sons carried on after he died and until 1934 the GOP was still the carriage in which they galloped forward on the progressive road...
...Approaching the end of his third year in office...
...Chester Bowles of Connecticut claims that seats in his House of Representatives are so "rigged" that it is impossible for the cities of the Nutmeg State, no matter how populous they become, ever to win a majority of the membership...
...Wherever the battle has been fought in the open, they have lost...
...For the most part they were in college when the LaFollettes launched their new party in 1934 and embraced LaFollette progres-sivism with great ardor...
...Because city dwellers are the principal sufferers from lack of legislative reapportionment, the burden of unequal representation falls most heavily (1) on labor and (2) on the Democratic Party...
...When confronted with a touchy issue, he usually lets the aldermen exhaust themselves in lengthy wrangling, then steps in at the last minute with a compromise which he puts over by the force of his personal prestige...
...It knows where it stands, and the public knows where it stands...
...Republicans recognize this and are squaring off to meet the challenge...
...People are just beginning to discover why this is so...
...But where reporters have succeeded in attending the ceremonies, they found only a handful in the audiences...
...He is a Democratic member of the Oregon Senate...
...Many states have milk control acts which keep milk and cream at an artificially high price by forbidding grocery stores to sell at less than the home-delivery tolls charged by the big creameries...
...The Klan's old appeal of secrecy and mumbo-jumbo combined with the pseudo-serious crusade for "Christian Americanism" simply cannot survive leadership that is more laughable than august...
...Sociological and economic processes explain the phenomenon...
...Because the State Federation of Labor is determined to get the issue on the ballot, the question of reapportionment will be tested again, in Oregon in November of 1950...
...No one took that party seriously...
...Upstanding and incorruptible, he was an outsider to the inner clique of the Cook County Democratic organization...
...In other words, each House or Senatorial district must have the same number of people...
...The explanation is obvious...
...When you mention Carl Thompson, Stoughton, national committeeman of the Democratic Party and one of the men most responsible for building up Democratic strength throughout the state, you are talking about a former Young Progressive who supported the LaFollettes...
...Indeed, it more closely resembles the defunct Wisconsin Progressive Party than the old Democratic Party when it hung on to Roosevelt's coattails for patronage...
...Both demand strong and positive leadership which represents the interests of the city as a whole rather than those of any particular ward...
...THE MOOD OF AMERICA Mayor Kelly's Ghost By Robert Lasch Chicago WHEN Ed Kelly retired as mayor of Chicago few liberals considered that within a few years they would be thinking of him wistfully as a fine, strong character who got things done...
...It is no coincidence that today's Wisconsin Democratic leaders, the men giving it direction and personality, are mostly from Dane County (Madison), birthplace of the LaFollettes and the outstanding liberal county of the state...
...It was from Charlotte, where on Dec...
...Panther's announcement brought a quick answer from Mayor Edwin S. Lanier, who promised to ask the board of aldermen to enact "an anti-mask ordinance, an anti-cross burning ordinance, and any other ordinances which we need to stop their activity...
...Others fear that public housing will bring into their bailiwicks low-income families, white or black, who will change the social structure in which they have learned to get elected...
...San Francisco and Los Angeles have 48% of California's population but only a niggardly 5% of the membership of the State Senate...
...They are moving to town...
...The world moves too fast for them...
...Mayor Kennelly is, of course, opposed to violence, but he has never yet clearly told the people of Chicago that racial discrimination in housing cannot be tolerated...
...Gov...
...Small wonder that our communities are unable to cope with their myriad of automobiles...
...In contrast, Republicans in Wisconsin are again going into a huddle to devise a program on which the party can stand...
...Most North Carolinians in the larger cities, whether conscious or not of the state's reputation as the stronghold of southern liberalism, have been reacting to the Klan's organizing drive with feelings ranging from amused indifference to indignation...
...The old Northwest Ordinance, handed down from our frontier statesmen, dictated that population should form the basis of popular government...
...This provision, strictly provided for in state constitutions, has been deliberately flouted in recent years...
...Atlanta has been given one State Representative for each 131,000 people...
...Racial relations and housing are tied up together because of the great migration which swelled Chicago's' Negro population during the war and at the same time created a-serious deficit in places for everybody to live...
...These startling examples spread all the way across the continent...
...New York has since adopted such an ordinance, but Chicago defeated it on the ground that imposing nondiscrimination on privately operated housing projects would drive away capital, particularly that put up by the big insurance companies, which otherwise might participate in slum clearance...
...9, Charlotte's police chief, Frank L. Littlejohn, warned that his men had been ordered to crack down on any attempts at terrorism by the Klan within his jurisdiction, and added, "Every person who pledges himself to the Klan is a dupe who permits himself to be fertilizer for Communism...
...Farm voters were not...
Vol. 14 • March 1950 • No. 3
