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Gideon's army

marches on

W Nd gressive Party was still a speech by Henry Wallace, a promise and a
fae pl oe said it would be a miracle if the new party got on the ballot

in 35 states.

‘bread cast upon the waters” for

1952. might herald the coming.

of a new political alignment in
the United States.

Well, the miracle did transpire.

The new party was on the: ballot
Not in 35 states, but in 45. Only
in Illinois, Nebraska and Okla-
homa were the voters confined to
a sterile choice between Truman
and Dewey.
An army of petition gatherers
broke down the barriers of law
against new parties erected after
the LaFollete movement in 1924
scared the old-line politicians.
Political amateurs without funds
established a party in every state
of the union. They held a na-
tional convention which impress-
ed with the great sweep of its
enthusiasm even the most cynical
of observers,

Against all the darts and ar-
Yows of outraged reaction, Henry
Wallace wagedsa campaign with-
Out precedent for its crusading
Spirit, its courageous trampling
On what Southerners sometimes
call thetr “peculiar institution,”

Wallace and his Gideon’s army
did more than grapple for the
Minds of the American people

With the bi-partisan’ jingoism of
They did more ~

Press and radio. :
than campaign for votes. In the
Process they built an organization.
They created a party not for

ne campaign but for the dura-

tion. And this was the greatest
Miracle of all.

But certain lesser miracles did
hot transpire. Ickes, the old
_ Curmudgeon, the veteran, of T.R.’s
Bull Moose campaign of 1912,
hever went beyond his hint of
Support for the Wallace move-
ment. In the end he turned
@gainst it, endorsed the Harry
Truman ‘he had once denounced
in incisive epithets, chose the
luke-warm compromise and the
Convenient lesser-evil to the icy
Waters of a great political ad-
venture, : ;

Ickes, and others who might

_, have thrown their influence be-
oe hind the Pressive Party, remained

1

If that miracle should transpire, said Ickes, the new t )
herit the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, its efforts in. 1948 might be

aloof, claiming it did not have
the traditional virtues of the
third parties us old nor the or-
ganized base for survival.
Solemnly the New York Times
came forth from its citadel of
conservatism to do battle for the
honor of the Progressive parties
of the past, attributed the Bull
Moose and LaFollette movements
to “the pressure of organized
farm or labor groups which were
dissatisfied with the economic

conditions of the times and in

revolt against what they con-

sidered to. be the too conservative |

leadership of one or both of the
old parties.” And asserting that
this pressure was now lacking,
it predicted the speedy demise of
the new party

Of course, the Progressive par-
ties of the past are now safely
dead. That is why the New York
Times comes .to praise them. If
it reserves sterner treatment for
the Progressive Party of today,
this is ‘because the new move-
ment is» alive and intends to

‘stay alive.

It has avoided precisely those
pitfalls which
integration of previous third
parties, It has inherited the
fighting, anti-monopoly traditions
of past movements, but not their
gnawing weaknesses And this is
the very reason it is considered
so grave a menace to the guard-

‘ians of the established order..

Like the Progressive Party. of

today, the Progressive Party of

1912 unfurled the banners of

struggle against the octopus of

monopoly. But it was a product

neither of labor nor farm revolt.

Indeed, Teddy Roosevelt was
strongly anti-labor, and was op-
posed, rightly so, by .most trade
union leaders. .
The Bull Moose movement ex-
pressed the discontent of the ur-
ban middle classes and
business with the rule of big
business. But it was penetrated
by spokesmen for the House of
Morgan. One of them even be-
eame chairman of its executive

committee. And there manipula-

led to the dis-—

small °

arty might well in-

»

tors for monopoly frustrated and
betrayed a movement with con-
siderable mass support.

Ickes has compared the Wal-
lace movement unfavorably with
the old Progressive Party. He
says it does not have the same
means of financial support, This
is true. But it is-also true that
the new party is not led by men

of the trusts. Its enemies are not.

Its protest
is authentic

inside the party.
against monopoly
and genuine.

The Wallace movement does in
part express the middle class re-
volt against monopoly, and Wal-
lace himself is a product of this
revolt. But far more fundamental
to the new party is the revolt of
growing numbers of workers
against big business rule of both
old parties. : :

No party in American history,
with the exception of the Com-
munist Party and the Socialist
Party in Debsian heyday, has
been more firmly .rooted in the
shops and factories of America,
among steel workers, longshore-
men, auto workers. And with the
same exceptions, no candidate has
more staunchly advocated the
cause of organized labor than
Wallace. ;

Unlike Teddy Rodésevelt’s Bull
Moose Party, the LaFollette
movement of 1924 did receive the
official endorsement of the AFL
and the railroad unions. But the
top Jabor leaders backed the new
party reluctantly and belatedly,
after knifing the promising third
party movement of 1920.

The labor leaders discouraged
state and local organization of the
LaFolette movement, and it never
became a real political party in
the sense of having a grass roots
precinct apparatus. Many AFL
‘big wheels turned against LaFol-
lette just before the elections.
And when LaFollette got almost
5,000,000 votes anyway, they
blocked every move to form a
permanent new party, They were
too firmly wedded to the two old
parties of capitalism.

In basing itself chiefly on the

_ still his detractors.

UAL vane eee A

trade union rank and file, the
Progressive Party is securing its
future against betrayal and is
building a firmer base for the
increased support from labor
leaders it will undoubtedly re-
ceive in the future.

Unlike Bob LaFollette, who
never made a fighting appeal to
the Negro people ‘and hedged on
the issue of jimcrow, Wallace and
the Progressive Party have been
utterly uncompromising on this
front. And this alliance the Wal-
lace movement has welded with
the Negro people distinguishes it
from past third party movements,
is one of the important reasons it
is destined for survival.

Teddy Roosevelt was, of course,

never red-baited. Indeed, he built
his Progressive Party as a bul-
wark against socialism. But La-
Follette was bitterly attacked by
the reactionaries as a Bolshevik
stooge. And if the attack against
him was not as sustained nor as
fierce as against Wallace, it was
strong enough to make him
buckle under the fire.

Of course, his retreat and his
own frantic red-baiting did not
But it did
weaken the LaFollette move-
ment. Similarly, Wallace could
not, except by abandoning the
fight, have silenced the red-bait-
ers. And since the Wallace move-
ment understood this simple fact,
it stood up to the red-baiters
fought them every inch of the
way, welcomed Communist sup-
port.
€

There is another decisive dif-
ference between the Wallace
movement and earlier third
parties. More surely than any
other popular political movement,
it has challenged monopoly not
only in its depredations of the
American people but in its as-
sauft on the freedom and inde-
pendence of other nations.

Other movements had challeng-
ed American imperialism. The
Populists looked with anger and
distrust on the adventures of
monopoly in the rich islands of
the Pacific. And the Democratic
Party under William Jennings
Bryan attacked . imperialism. in
its 1900 platform.

But never before has the scope

of American imperialism been so

vast. Never before has it so over-
shadowed every phase of Ameri-
can life, threatening not only
atomic war but all its domestic

Many who felt “it can’t hap-
pen here” are being shocked by
the contents of a letter smug-
gled out of Welland County jail
by a member of the Canadian
Seomen's Union. The letter has
been printed and distributed on
the streets of Vancouver by
seamen who are circulating a
petition to the Solicitor Gen-
eral of Canada asking remis-
sion of sentences levied on
striking. seamen, 13 of whom
are now in Kingston Peniten-
‘tiary, five in Bordeaux jail, 45
in Guelph and Brampton Re-
formatories and two in Don
jail. Trial is awaited by 125
others. Extracts from the let-
ter, which was addressed to
CSU president Harry Davis,
follow .> f ‘ ‘

“Tomorrow morning prison
guards are taking thirteen of
us to Kingston Penitentiary,

We want you to tell the Can-
adian people that we-were con-
victed under the Canada Ship-
ping Act which still reeks of
Captain Bligh. :

‘Inform the Canadian people
that under this law we were
not permitted to have a trial by
jury. ate

The Canadian people must be
told that we were showered
with live steam, about the
scabs that were issued clubs
and baseball bats, about the
hired gangster that was caught
caught with a loaded revolver,
about the time that our union
hall at Thorold was bombed.

And don’t forget to tell them

‘ courts will never free us. Time

~

consequences of militarism and
regimentation and intation.

if it had evaded this issue, the
Progressive Party might have es-
caped the hostile salvoes of the
press and radio. But if it had cho-
sen to double-talk on foreign
Policy, it might never have been
born at all, or it would have
wound up as a one-shot party. By
challenging the cold war and the
Marshall Plan and the Truman
Doctrine, the Progressive Party
has shown it grasps the plain fact
that no effective fight can be made
against modern monopoly without
resisting its. gargantuan schemes
for conquest abroad.
oS

There ‘is a final difference be-
tween the Progressive Party and
earlier third Party movements,
Not since before the Civil War
has the Situation been riper for
a new party. Never before has
the crisis of the two-party sys-
tem, as shown by the continuing
chaos and discord in the Demo-
cratic Party, been so critical. And
never have so many Americans
been So ready for a drastic poli-
tical realignment,

This is another
ferocity of the attack, precisely
because ° the Progressive Party
does have such roots in the poli-
tical realities anq the economic
discontents ang disclocations of
the day.

And because the Progressive
Party has safeguarded itself, with
an uncompromising program, and
with a grass-roots organization,
against corruption from within,
the assault from without has been
unprecedented in American poli-
tical history.

The attack on the Progressive
Party undoubtedly did have an
effect in limiting the Wallace
vote, in preventing it from reach-
ing anything like its full poten-
tial in 1948. But it did not prevent
more than a million people—some
800,000 of them in 10 states where _
the Progressive Party had its
strongest organization—from vyot-
ing for Wallaee on the strength
of the war-or-peace issue he pro-

reason for the

jected into the campaign and the __

‘€conomic and social program he _
brought forward. : ee

This is the real miracle of the
new party. It has not only gotten —
on the ballot. It is here to stay,
working now, as Wallace stated,
to organize “state by state, city
by city and district by district”
for the battles of the future.

It’s happening here

that amongst us is an 18-year-
old Fred Hilsen who is also go-
ing to Kingston for two years.
Tell them about the time that.
he was seized by the company
hired thugs, beaten until he
was/ unconscious and _ then
tobbed.

It is indeed a shame that we
are about to become convicts.
What makes us feel sorry is
that today when we fight for
the same principles that we _
went to war for, we are locked .
up in jail. :

Leaving for prison makes us
think of Greece and Spain, be--
cause’ in those two countries _
those who fight for freedom >
and trade union rights are also
locked up in prison, If the
shipowners can get away with —
doing a job on us, what is to
stop the rest of the anti-trade _
union employers? And then
watch out, because that is how
it started in Germany. :

“We know now that the

and time again, we have seen
the magistrates and judges ac-
cept all evidence given by
scabs but refuse to believe one
word given by our witnesses.
“Tf prisons are allowed to
serve as the answer to the
right to belong to a trade un-
ion of our own choice they can
answer the consumers and
housewives in the same cruel
manner. ‘ :
“Keep up the good work,
Harry, because they can sen-
cence us to jail but they can’t
sentence us out of the CSU.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 12, 1948 — PAGE 5 ;

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