Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Berlin, the
Russians stopped food shipments from the Soviet zone of the city to
the Western zones, about a third of the food supply. Food had
already been blocked from the Western zones into the Western sectors
of Berlin. Food reserves would last a month.
Thomas Dewey became the Republican nominee for the presidency
the previous night on the third ballot, after falling 33 short of
the required 548 for a majority on the second ballot during the
afternoon. The third ballot was unanimous after Senator Taft threw
his support behind Mr. Dewey and the other candidates followed.
Indiana's Charles Halleck, House Majority Leader, had, on the second
ballot, thrown that state's 29 delegates behind Mr. Dewey to start
the bandwagon rolling toward the majority. The vote on the second
ballot had been 274 for Senator Taft and 149 for Harold Stassen to
Mr. Dewey's 515. At that point, it became clear that it was all over
but the shouting. Senator Raymond Baldwin of Connecticut then gave
Connecticut's 19 delegates to Mr. Dewey and teamed with Senator
Irving Ives of New York to obtain the votes from Michigan, committed
to Senator Vandenberg, and of California, committed to Governor Earl
Warren, to give Mr. Dewey the necessary majority, and the other
delegations fell into line to make it unanimous.
This date, the convention in the morning nominated and
selected by acclamation Governor Warren as the vice-presidential
candidate on the ticket. (To allay suspicions, that is not Jacob Leon Rubenstein standing to his left and behind him on the podium as he accepted the nomination.) Governor Warren was the only nominee for
the vice-presidency. He had delivered the California delegates to Governor
Dewey at around 6:00 p.m. the previous evening.
The delegates departed in high spirits, believing that they
would surely win in the fall, for the first time in 16 years.
The President signed the draft bill into law the previous
afternoon.
Army Secretary Kenneth Royall ordered that recruiting be
stopped forthwith for the National Guard, as enlistments had climbed
above requirements in an effort to avoid the draft by way of exemption for service in the Guard. Once the draft
bill went into effect at midnight the previous night, the exemption
had expired.
John L. Lewis and the UMW signed an agreement whereby the soft coal miners would receive an additional dollar per day in wages, thus averting the prospect of a July 6 strike.
North Carolina gubernatorial contestants in the Democratic
primary run-off, Charles Johnson and Kerr Scott, provide their
respective statements to the voters. Mr. Scott, who would be the winner,
suggested that the political machine would finally be eliminated by
his election and reminded that 60 percent of the voters in the first
primary had voted against the machine. Mr. Johnson favored better
roads and schools, a better health program and more aid for the
elderly, removal of the sales tax on restaurant food and a
well-rounded agricultural program. Both candidates claimed victory.
Polls would be open from 6:30 to 6:30. Vote early and often.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells of some war veterans
from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and elsewhere touring their old
Army training center at Morris Field near Charlotte, finding their old barracks
serving as housing for veterans. One of the visitors is depicted
wearing a helicopter beany cap. You might get one of those for a
dollar to wear while you ride around in your Cadillac.
The mercury hit the high nineties in Charlotte for the third
straight day. The record for the date was 98, not yet reached. It
was 97 in Columbia and Myrtle Beach, S.C. Be sure to wear your
mittens and drive carefully on the bridges.
On the editorial page, "Dewey's New Look for 1948" finds Governor Dewey, 46 years old, different from 1944 when he had
also been the GOP nominee. His Republicanism was more significant
than four years earlier as he was now more aligned with the party
philosophy, which had decidedly swung toward internationalism under
the Senate leadership of Arthur Vandenberg since the end of the war.
He was progressive, that tendency stemming, however, not from
liberalism but responsible conservatism. He was, above all, an
efficient administrator and could unite the Republicans behind the
Vandenberg foreign policy.
It finds his campaign to have displayed thus far a genius for
organization and qualities of leadership. His acceptance speech the
previous night had been promising of bigger things for Mr. Dewey and
his party.
"The Draft and the Peace" comments on the letter
on the page from Reverend J. Charles Reichard of Charlotte to the
200 Protestant ministers who had protested the draft and urged
noncompliance. The piece agrees with Reverend Reichard's objection
to that approach and his favoring instead working for peace so that
the draft would not be necessary. The Protestant clergymen who had
protested, it finds, would only weaken the security of the country
and ultimately harm the cause of peace by undermining the
institution of the draft.
"In 'A Smoke-Filled Room'—Phew!" finds the
phrase "smoke-filled room" to be overworked at the
Republican convention just concluded. The usage had been coined in
1920 when Warren G. Harding was nominated. Journalists, it thinks,
ought become more creative and eliminate the stock phrase. With
women entering the political arena in prominent roles, it might be
more prudent, it opines, for journalists to find a "perfume-filled
room", to frustrate the free advertising otherwise provided to
the cigar industry.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled
"Operation Democracy", discusses the adoption of several
towns in Europe by American towns, which included letter-writing
campaigns, carrying on long-distance games of chess, and exchange of
political views between mayors. There had been so much participation
that "Operation Democracy" had been set up in New York
to coordinate the activities.
It appeared as the fulfillment of the vision of Walt Whitman
who had belonged to universal humanity in the Nineteenth Century.
The piece provides lines from his "Salut au Monde": "Health
to you! Good will to you all, from me and America sent! ... I have looked for equals and lovers and
found them ready for me in all lands." It suggests that as
long as that type of optimistic vision prevailed, rather than
looking for objects of charity, there would always be a response
from the peoples of the world.
A short piece without a by-line provides a biographical
synopsis of Thomas Dewey's career.
Drew Pearson, in Philadelphia, provides several notes on the
GOP convention, including the fact that blacks had picketed the
convention for the reason that the Republicans had killed the
President's civil rights program.
Governor Warren, he suggests, was the best of the candidates,
but had no advance buildup. To become the nominee, one had to have
glamour and money and be willing to engage in horse-trading in the
smoke-filled rooms where the nominations were decided. Before the
convention was over, part of the prospective cabinet had already been determined
in exchange for delegate support.
A Chicago banker alleged that there was bigamy among some of
the candidates. Mr. Pearson does not relate who it was or whether
any particular candidate was so identified.
Mrs. Dewey was asked whether her husband's mustache tickled,
to which she had no comment. The mustachioed Mr. Pearson suggests
that she might have said: "A kiss without a mustache is like
an egg without salt."
Whether he was inspired to conjure that thought by the last sentence of Governor Dewey's acceptance speech, we cannot say. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Parenthetically, Mrs. Worthington Scranton, hostess of the convention, as referenced at the end of Governor Dewey's speech, was the mother of William Scranton, Governor of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1967 and GOP presidential candidate in 1964, running as the moderate alternative to Senator Barry Goldwater, the eventual nominee.
Senator Taft had left for the convention 30 minutes after
arriving home following the conclusion of the last Senate session
the previous Saturday night. Upon arrival in Philadelphia, he was
confronted by Bill Hutcheson of the Carpenters Union, who declared
that the GOP could nominate anyone but Mr. Taft. Then John L. Lewis
said essentially the same thing, save that he was for Speaker Joe
Martin. Then the big "Taft for President" banner fell on
the Senator's head while he was being photographed shaking the trunk of Little
Eva, the GOP elephant. Mr. Pearson concludes that Senator Taft was
one of the nicest guys in the world but one of the unluckiest.
He says that it had been a great show and the Elks would be coming to town the following week, after which the Democrats would arrive for their affair.
The Reverend Charles Reichard, pastor of the St. James
Methodist Church in Charlotte, responds to the 200 Protestant
clergymen who wrote a letter protesting the peacetime draft, urging non-compliance. Reverend Reichard tells them that they were
performing a disservice to the young men of the country, encouraging them
to undertake action which could land them in jail. Instead, he urges
that they join with other Americans in working toward peace rather
than compromising national security in the meantime and sowing the
seeds of confusion among many young people.
James Marlow, in Philadelphia, tells of Thomas Dewey winning
the Republican nomination through the efforts of campaign manager
Herbert Brownell and advisers J. Russel Sprague and Edwin Jaeckle,
all New York lawyers who had also run his campaigns in 1940 and 1944.
Squads of Dewey supporters were assigned to each of the 48
delegations, as many as five to each state. They operated as pros at
garnering delegate support.
During the recess before the evening session after the first two ballots the previous
day, Governor Warren, Harold Stassen,
and Senator Taft had a conference to determine what they would do on
the third ballot, with Governor Dewey only 33 short of the 548
needed to nominate. Senator Taft had conceded that only Governor
Dewey could win on the third ballot and so he declared that he was
withdrawing and directing the Ohio delegation to vote for Mr. Dewey.
After he did so, the other candidates followed suit and so the third
ballot was unanimous for Governor Dewey.
A letter writer favors Charles Johnson over Kerr Scott in the run-off primary
for Governor the next day. Mr. Scott would win.
A letter writer insists that the United States was a
"Christian nation" and inveighs against banning the
Bible from the public schools. He asks who was sovereign, the people
or the Supreme Court.
Try to take a gander at the Constitution sometime and realize that no one is requiring you not to adhere to your religious beliefs in the public schools. The Constitution, however, prevents, in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the Government, i.e. the public school system in this instance, from establishing a religion by proselytizing, inculcating particular religious beliefs. The public schools are open to all people of all faiths or without. We do not have a test of adherence to Christian faith or any other faith or faith at all before entry to the doors of the public schools, any more than we do at the doors of the courthouse for access to the courts or the voting booths for exercise of the franchise. That would be kind of silly and despotic, don't you think?