WASHINGTON CALLING
Washington Calling... Washington, D. C. PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S continued popularity is little short of remarkable. A seasoned correspondent who lately made a swing through 11 states found vocal...
...THE ILLS OF DEMOCRACY The incredibly sordid story of graft, corruption, bribery, and judicial chicanery which unfolded in Washington last week with the investigation of Federal Judge A. W. Johnson of the Middle District of Pennsylvania, was no new story to Washington insiders, including former Rep...
...One of the hardest-hitting attacks on the Ball-Burton-Hatch "industrial peace" bill—which has been denounced by virtually all branches of organized labor—came last week from Father Raymond Mc-Gowan, assistant director of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference...
...Perhaps that is why his one major boner stands out like a sore thumb...
...More democracy, not less, is the cure for the ills of democracy...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Texas Democrat, charged that though these civilian employes "have built and are repairing a large part of the fleet that has driven the enemy from several oceans," they are nonetheless treated as "stepchildren" of the Navy...
...The President's biggest test will come at Potsdam where he goes up against the Messrs...
...HANNEGAN President Truman's biggest worries in the months just ahead may well come from his Postmaster General, Robert E. Hannegan, who is spending most of his time in the suite of rooms at the Mayflower Hotel where he doubles as chairman of the Democratic National Committee and dispenser of party patronage...
...We predicted then that James F. Byrnes "will succeed Secretary of State Stettinius, some time after the San Francisco conference ends...
...Stalin and Churchill in a meeting whose decisions might well be more important for the future peace of the world than the San Francisco conference...
...A LEFT-WING APPRAISAL One of the most sardonic judgments on the outcome of the San Francisco conference was pronounced by-Britain's left-wing peer, Lord Winster, member of the Labor Party...
...Honeymoons, except those made in Hollywood, have a habit of ending, and in politics the characters are just as human as they are in marriage...
...The question of making our Federal district courts more responsive to the people has interested me for many years...
...An outstanding authority on labor relations, Father McGowan charged that the Ball-Burton-Hatch measure would deprive labor of many of its hard-won gains...
...Moran is a former Congressman with liberal convictions, but the CIO had demanded the appointment of a CIO man to the post...
...Truman will soon accept the resignations of Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, Secretary of Labor Perkins, and, perhaps, Secretary of Agriculture Wickard...
...He has made it clear that his Cabinet salary of $15,000 a year does not enable him to support his family "in the style to which they have become accustomed...
...Let us hope this case will dramatize for the American people," said Sauthoff the other day, "the fundamental weakness of our appointive Federal judiciary—its utter lack of responsibility to the people...
...They want to penalize by law people who are already penalized by the systematically unjust and pagan facts of the 20th Century," Father MacGowaa said...
...The scandalous war-fraud cases of the last war, when Federal judges demonstrated incredible leniency with large defendant corporations, first attracted my attention...
...A seasoned correspondent who lately made a swing through 11 states found vocal criticism just about negligible...
...All of this adds up to one of the most blissful political honeymoons in American history...
...Hannegan, by the way, is managing to find some time to replenish his own personal treasury...
...After reviewing- the Johnson case in detail as an example of the worst type of Federal justice, Sauthoff called on Congress to take fundamental action...
...Louis ward boss sharpens his axe for all but the party faithful...
...Truman is none too well prepared for his meeting with his colleagues of the Big 3, that he spent altogether too much time on his barnstorming trip west and too little time soaking up the day-today developments in the intensely explosive situation in Europe...
...Louis are working out ways and means of cutting him in on an automobile agency, a finance company, and a soft drink venture.'When he accepted the Cabinet appointment, Hannegan shrewdly gave up the $20,-000 a year salary as chairman of the Democratic National Committee...
...The double standards of justice—one for the little fellow and f/uite another for the big corporate interests-were being brought out in court by the judges themselves...
...Truman...
...There is a feeling here that Mr...
...Perhaps the most eloquent testimony of all, whether you like it or not, is the simple fact that, except during the opening days of the San Francisco conference when the leaders got bogged down in petty bickering and recriminations, there has been almost no publicly expressed feeling that we would today be in better shape if President Roosevelt had lived...
...THE DOINGS OF MR...
...President Truman's ¦public relations have been extraordinarily successful thus far...
...On June 18, too, our crystal ball was in...
...But to men like Sauthoff, who were in the forefront of the battle to expose Johnson, the closing of the case does not end the fight for a cleaner and more responsive Federal judiciary...
...Secretary of the Interior Ickes and Secretary of Commerce Wallace, two of the most progressive members of the Administration, are reported fixtures for the present, and Secretary of WTar Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Forrestal are said to be safe enough until the war against Japan is concluded...
...Early in this rear it became apparent that the same practices were to be followed in the ivar-fraud eases...
...PROGNOSTICATION RECAPITULATION Most of the columnists who deal with predictions have a neat way of reminding their readers when one of their prophecies comes true and forgetting all about it when subsequent developments make a liar out of the prognosticator...
...Some of the Roosevelt-appointed officials who have managed to survive the first reshuffling are muttering about "Hannegan and Shenanigan" as the former St...
...The AFL is represented, CIO spokesmen point out, by Dan Tracy, of the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers, in the post of assistant secretary...
...As a result, his friends in St...
...You remember the day he announced that at his press conference in his home town, Independence, Mo., he would make the most important announcement of his career...
...His friends insist that he will be a much stronger bargainer coming fresh from his meetings with the people, but the cynics doubt 1) that he had much of an opportunity to discuss the tricky problems of Europe with the people of Independence, Mo...
...Will it last...
...Last week a subcommittee of the House Naval Affairs Committee issued a report which was almost universally suppressed by the press...
...Only time and the outcome of the conference will prove whether he went to Potsdam as well equipped and informed as he needed to be...
...or Seattle, or San Francisco, or 2) that if he did, the spoils-minded members of the Big 3 will care very much what report he has to make on public opinion in the United States...
...The House investigators, headed by Rep...
...Stettiniu.i will probably be named American delegate to the projected international organization...
...good repair...
...Truman made public an announcement which had been predicted by every columnist in the nation— including this one—that Ed Stettinius was resigning as Secretary of State to become the American delegate to the proposed United Nations Security Council...
...Newest champion of the Ball-Burton-Hatch bill is Wrestbrook Pegler, venomously anti-labor columnist...
...The almost total absence of complaints in Congress is a useful indicator of the tone of the mail reaching Senators and Representatives...
...Came the anxiously-awaited press conference, and Mr...
...On May 14, for instance, this column tapped its grapevine for the prediction that "Mr...
...The report accused the Navy Department of maintaining far more backward labor relations among its 750,000 civilian workers than private industry...
...The press, of course, gave that advance billing a front-page ride, and for 2U hours there was animated speculation on whether he was on the verge of announcing a decisive development in the war against Japan—perhaps the imminent end of hostilities...
...Said he in the Baltimore Sun: "The upshot (of San Francisco) seems to me to be that in the future only peace-loving nations may make war, others being told, as father tells junior when requesting permission to smoke: 'You're too young.'" * * * STEPCHILDREN OF THE NAVY The Navy Department is the nation's biggest industrial employer...
...There is only one way to put an end to high-handed practices by Federal judges and that is by making them responsible to the people...
...While our batting average is still high, we want to direct our readers' attention to the fact that we have called the turn perfectly on the reshuffling of the Truman Cabinet...
...And that, of course, is precisely the present situation...
...Harry Sauthoff, Wisconsin Progressive, who led the fight more than 3 years ago for investigation of this crooked jurist Johnson, whose 20 years on the Federal bench was marked by a fantastic' sale of justice to the highest bidder, resigned last week under fire, and when House investigators decided to go on with their inquiry, Johnson also abandoned his life-time pension, thus bringing the investigation to a close...
...The news came as a painful anti-climax...
...This can be done by changing the law so that Federal judges are elected by popular vote for a definite term instead of being appointed for life by the Chief Executive...
...LABOR NOTES FROM THE PRESS GALLERY CIO officials are making no secret of their anger at Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach's appointment of E. C. Moran, Jr., Maine insurance man, as second assistant secretary...
...Some of the shrewd-e s t observers in Washington, including several who are close to the Administration, see sterner days ahead for Mr...
...A Gallup Poll showed more than 85 per cent of the people applauding his efforts thus far...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 30
