War on Straddlebugs

One of the few things "Uncle Dan" Roper did for the New Deal, besides afford unintentional comic relief as Secretary of Commerce, was help Jim Farley organize the Young Democratic Clubs of America. Young Democrats are aged 21 to 39 and some 5,000,000 of them are now enrolled. They held conventions in 1933 (Kansas City), 1935 (Milwaukee), 1937 (Indianapolis), but not until last week, when 10,000 of them assembled at Pittsburgh for a war dance in Duquesne Garden, did they have much national significance. Then they suddenly seemed very important indeed, because their seniors in the New Deal organized and used the meeting as the first big sounding board for their 1940 campaign to prolong Franklin Delano Rooseveltism.

Claude Pepper, 38, the drawling, slick-haired junior Senator from Florida, had his last word drowned in thunderous cheers when he keynoted for a "third term for Roosevelt's ideals." Josh Lee, the junior Senator from Oklahoma, caused pandemonium by yelling: "Now is the time to unleash the devil dogs of democracy and set them baying on the trail of the Wolf of Wall Street! America, now is the time to unsheathe the sword of human rights! Now is the time to raise the banner of Roosevelt for 1940!"

Solicitor General Robert Jackson got an ovation when he cried: "They [Republicans] have struck at Roosevelt. But what they have hit is the American people. . . . The third-term demand is the people's answer to the efforts of reactionary politicians to eliminate the Roosevelt ideas from the 1940 campaign. . . ."

But the noisiest demonstration of all followed the reading of a message from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By his own account, he chose his words with extreme care so that their meaning should be pikestaff plain:

". . . The Democratic Party will not survive as an effective force in the nation if the voters have to choose between a Republican tweedledum and a Democratic tweedledummer.

"If we nominate conservative candidates, or lip-service candidates, on a straddlebug platform, I personally, for my own self-respect and because of my long service to, and belief in, liberal democracy, will find it impossible to have any active part in such an unfortunate suicide of the old Democratic Party."

When Al Smith bolted the Democratic Party, he simply said he would "take a walk." Analysts of Franklin Roosevelt's straddlebug epic could find in it, beyond the threat to bolt if he does not like the 1940 nominee, no threat to found a third party. But it did definitely, for the record, announce that Franklin Roosevelt will dictate the next nomination, or else.

By the spot accorded him on the program, by the tenor of what he was allowed to say, the leading White House heir apparent (if any) was last week seen to be Paul Vories McNutt, the white-haired Apollo of Indiana. Pennsylvania's Senator Guffey, Senate Majority Leader Barkley, National Youth Administrator Aubrey Williams, Assistant Secretary of War Johnson, all had a go on the rostrum, but Mr. McNutt was given feature billing after the message from Mr. Roosevelt. He identified himself solemnly as a Modern Liberal ("who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most wise depository of the public interests"). He promised that the "most important" Federal Security Agency which Mr. Roosevelt gave him to run shall be expanded to cover "economic loss due to physical disability," to public health and medical care.

Mr. McNutt was careful to repeat, off stage, that he is a candidate only if Mr. Roosevelt decides not to run. And Chicago's Mayor Kelly, whose political life depends more & more heavily on Mr. Roosevelt's good will, wound up the three-day fireworks with this starburst: ". . . You [Mr. Roosevelt] told us once that you had enlisted 'for the duration'. . . . Mr. President, we demand that you continue as Commander-in-Chief. . . . You have lost the right to your own personal life. You do not belong to yourself. You belong to the People. . . . Mr. President, the young democracy will not take 'No' for an answer!"

Forbidden to plump for a candidate before their seniors nominate one, the Young Democrats resolved resoundingly in favor of Franklin Roosevelt's "liberal, enlightened and humanitarian objectives," urged him to "press forward" toward them anew, promised to support only such candidates as would "clearly come within such category." Killed in committee was a resolution condemning Congressmen who voted against Mr. Roosevelt last session.

>> Elected new president of the Young Democrats, after a squabble with Harry Shank, Ohio's candidate, who complained about the rule whereby each $100 of membership dimes buys a delegation another vote (up to the number allotted each State at senior party conventions), was Homer Matt Adams, 28, assistant director of Illinois' finance department under New Dealing Governor Horner. New vice president: Mrs. Verda Barnes, 31, of Idaho Falls, who resigned her job as secretary to Assistant Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman so as to qualify under the Hatch Act for a political job.

>> Efforts to organize the convention against the New Deal were made halfheartedly last month by Virginia's Senator Byrd and Vice President Garner's friends from Texas. They centred around long, lean John Neff, 38, an apple-grower from Staunton, Va. John Neff's maneuvering to get elected Young Democratic president flopped. He did well to be elected secretary.

Only conspicuous Old Dealer on the scene was John O'Connor, the purged Congressman from New York. Uninvited, he prowled around town looking for infractions of the Hatch Act, growling against the convention's Rooseveltian hoopla. To one reporter he said: "It has been prearranged in Washington by Corcoran, Cohen and Ishansky. . . . Since John L. Lewis is pushed out of the picture as the most powerful man in the country, Ishansky is running the country." Inquiry revealed that by "Ishansky" Mr. O'Connor meant "someone who looks like" Constantine Oumansky, Ambassador to the U. S. from Soviet Russia.

>>On hand to watch proceedings was Treasurer Oliver A. Quayle Jr. of the Democratic National Committee. He took occasion to state that his party had received only a $50,000 loan (since repaid) from John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers for the 1936 campaign. Mr. Quayle next day admitted he did not know what he was talking about. U. M. W.'s 1936 gifts & loans, as reported to Congress, totaled $469,668.91.

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