SAWSA SUBJECT FILE Meredith, Ellis From the Democrat & Chronicle - Rochester NY July 19, 1946 "Also of interest, announcement was made in the Pathfinder, a news magazine, July 17, that Virgil Thompson is working on an opera about Susan B. Anthony. He is the music critic of the New York Herald Tribune, 'one of the best in America, and one of the few who compose.' His music is considered simpler and more melodious than that of many other moderns. It will be finished in time for presentation at Columbia University in New York City yearly in 1947. The opera will dramatize the life of Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and there will be a series of duets with famous contemporaries such as Daniel Webster for instance. The high point will be the passage of the suffrage amendment, which means the libretto of the opera will extend beyond Miss Anthony's life time - as that was passed in 1920. Mr. Thompson himself says of the opera: 'Except for having five acts, our new opera will use standard technique. In the last act, the disembodied voice of Susan B. Anthony will be heard meditating on current events from behind her statue in the Capitol.' " [*Ellis Meredith*] [*May 1900*] A COLORADO WOMAN ON MR. DANA. "Ellis Meredith" ( Mrs. L. M. Stansbury, of Denver), editor of the Western Club Woman, reviews Mr. John Cotton Dana's article on equal suffrage as follows, in the Colorado Springs Gazette: Mr. John Cotton Dana, city librarian of Springfield, Mass, used to be librarian of the public library of Denver. In a recent issue of the New York Times there is a column article by Mr. Dana. It was written as a plain statement of the status of equal suffrage in the State of Colorado. It is free from partisan bias, and in many ways is as entirely fair as any statement could be. And yet it is being quoted by suffragists and antis with the utmost freedom. There is only one way on earth to arrive at Mr. Dana's exact idea as to woman suffrage, and that is to get a statement of his views on a republican form of government generally, and what he thinks has actually been accomplished by the male voter, as evidenced in the various sections of the United States to-day. The only logical way to compare the results of suffrage up to the present time, is to find out what men have done with their "little vote." Mr. Dana says women have "proved that they can make almost any polling place clean and decent; that they can mitigate the horrors of caucus and convention ; that they can, sometimes, compel the machine to pick its candidates with a keener eye to the respectable element." Man is apparently too emotional, too excitable to be safely freed from the restraining influences of home. When he goes to the convention by himself he knocks objectionable delegates down if so disposed, and his language is forcible and inelegant when he is displeased. Man has had the political situation all his own way, and every one who hasn't run has had to read. Within the last ten years the militia and regulars were called out and in the field in fourteen different States. From Tweed to Boss Croker and Boss McLaughlin, the city of New York has never been long without a boss. Last year there were senatorial deadlocks in five States. Every one knows the situation in Montana to-day, and only a few people have forgotten the details incident to the elections of Quay and Hanna. About two years ago to Associated Press carried the glad tidings to the palpitating earth that Chicago had at last put up a bar in her city hall, to enable her to keep a quorum of her City Council. At about the same time that the remonstrants were telling Congress what a terrible thing it would be if woman suffrage prevailed in Kentucky, the Kentucky women were holding indignation meetings over certain events in Kentucky politics. In the light of events it would seem as if, had the "little vote" accomplished nothing whatever except decency in the caucus, the primary, the convention, and the election, the reputable and patriotic men of this nation would be more than justified in besieging Congress to pass a 16th amendment compelling women to take part in the franchise. It was Kingsley who said, "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever." According to Mr. Dana, the women of Colorado have followed this advice. So far, they are no cleverer that their fathers, husbands, and brother, who have sought in vain to make politics mean the science of government. They did not expect they would be. They have honestly tried to do a good many things, and have failed very often ; not as often as they failed without the suffrage, however, and this they very well understand. Success in politics is preeminently "the long result of time." It is too early to ask for results, and yet in the past seven years women have done more for themselves, more for Colorado, than in five times that number of years before they had the suffrage. The first law they asked for made them co-equal guardians with their husbands of their children ; another raised the age of consent to 18 years ; another furnished a State Home for dependent children ; they have established an industrial school for girls; they have secured many city ordinances that have added to the health and cleanliness and beauty of Denver ; they have taken off the emblems, they have secured the indeterminate sentence, they have stood first, last, and all the time for whatsoever things were true, honest, just, lovely and of good report ; if there was any virtue they have tried to uphold it, and if there be any praise for doing one's duty it belongs to them, for they have done this in their parties and out of them. They haven't made a new heaven and a new earth, but they are doing the best they can with the world as they find it. The greatest weakness of woman, in politics or out, is her innate tendency to believe in what man tells her. She has a natural genius for faith, and a splendid capacity for loyalty to what is wholly undeserving. When she achieves the masculine ability to believe what she knows, and know what she has found out for herself, at infinite cost, mayhap, there will not be such a heavy premium on man's mendacity as at present. A man would have to be a little higher than the angels if he didn't lie more or less to the average woman ; she makes it so easy for him. But the time is coming when both men and women will find that it is better to be true, even in politics, better to be loyal, even in love, better to be just, even to the weak, better to render and receive respect than empty compliments, better to acknowledge a common humanity than to contend for sex superiority. Carlyle says, "Man's life was never a sport to him ; it was a most stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive," and the general somberness of life has not altered materially since he said this. If there is a rift in the clouds, a glint of silver, it is to be found in the growing sense of true friendship, real camaraderie that is springing up between men and women. The nearer we come to a perfect comprehension of each other, the nearer we come to the highest ideals the world can ever know. FROM WOMAN'S BUREAU, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE. Ellis Meredith, Director Publicity. —————————————— THE WOMEN'S PARTY AND ITS MOTTO--NOT VOTES FOR WOMEN BUT "LET US HAVE TROUBLE" Two years ago the so-called "Woman's Party" was organized, superseding the "Congressional Union," a small organization of militant suffragists who had endeavored to introduce to this country the tactics which had failed in England. Their idea has been to hold the dominant party responsible, regardless of the fact that our elections are entirely different from English elections, and theory of our government is also wholly dissimilar. They have one principle only, the passage of the Federal amendment for the enfranchisement of women, and regardless of the fact that no constitutional amendment can hope for passage by a partisan vote, since it requires a two-thirds vote of both house and senate, the Woman's Party has wages ruthless war upon all Democratic members of house and senate, no matter how staunchly they have supported the suffrage amendment. They did this first as the Congressional Union, without accomplishing the defeat of any candidate, and two years ago they formed a party for this express purpose, and spent tens of thousands of dollars among the states of the far West, with the signal result that, with the exception of Oregon, every equal suffrage state cast its electoral vote for Wilson. Undiscouraged, the militants began operations in Washington. They kept a small squad of women at the Capitol and another at the White House. Many people who regarded the picketing of the House as a joke were not disposed to treat the White House pickets so tolerantly; still there was no great opposition until the Russian mission visited Washington. The day that the Russians were to be received at the White House, the militants appeared in force, carrying a banner bearing this inscription. "To the Russian Envoys. "President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia. They say, 'We are a Democracy. Help win a world war so that Democracy may survive.' "We, the women of America, tell you that America is not a Democracy. 20,000,000 American women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement. Help us make the nation really free. Tell our government that it must liberate its people before it can claim free Russia as an ally." The crowd resented the banner; it was torn from its standard and the women would have fared badly but for the protection of the police. Beginning with this demonstration, there were arrests, jail sentences, and finally a number of women who refused to pay their fines were sent to the Workhouse. Among them was Miss Anne Martin, now a candidate for the United States Senate in Nevada. These tactics were kept up until winter, the arrests affording the publicity upon which the militants rely to fill their coffers. Both in the jail and the Workhouse they conducted themselves in such a way that the relative of one of them told her she "ought to be ashamed of herself," and several newspaper women, who were inclined to sympathize, transferred their pity to the matrons and superintendents. One colored habitue announced, "I done been here thirty times, and I ain' nebber seen no sech goin's on befo!" However, they continued to march and to carry banners which grew more offensive. Two of them were as follows: "Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten your sympathy with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? 20,000,000 American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye." "I tell you solemnly, ladies and gentlemen, we can not postpone justice any longer in the United States. Woodrow Wilson, Oct. 29th, 1912. "The President is the elected representative for 20,000,000 women. Wilson is not a president. The Kaiser is the autocratic ruler of 20,000,000 women. Wilson is a Kaiser." Finally, not at all to their liking, the President issued a blanket pardon, and the picketers were again at liberty. By this time the feeling was high enough so that the enemies of the suffrage cause judged that it was a good time to force it to a vote in the House, and Mr. Webb, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, learning that the bill would probably be taken from his committee and referred to the newly created Woman Suffrage Committee, reported it out. December 17th was set for a vote and it was only by the most strenuous effort that the suffragists secured a postponement to January 10th. Everything was done that was possible, but the day before the suffragists knew that they could not win unless something more weighty than any argument they had been able to make was produced. It was that evening that a small group of Democrats had a conference with the President. Their votes carried the amendment the day following. But for the President it would surely have been defeated. All suffragists know this, and the honest ones admit it. Then the measure went to the Senate and its friends began a careful canvass, determined that a vote should not be precipitated there until they were sure of its passage. In every way within his power the President assisted them. The real [text cut off] and they would no longer have any excuse to continue operations with "Let Us Have Trouble" for their only motto. These facts, which can be verified by the police records of Washington, D. C., are set forth that those who have given money to these self-made martyrs may know to exactly what base uses it is turned. These women are the only group of people in the United States who go about reviling the President and sneering at the Senate. They deliberately trade upon their womanhood to do what no group of men would dare to do—what any group of men would be mobbed for attempting to do. For far less men have been interned. No Anti-suffragist ever made so many enemies for suffrage as these women. No German propagandist ever devised a scheme so cunningly calculated to breed distrust of popular government. And yet because the President has not failed and will not fail to do all he can; because there are many Senators who are devoted to this cause; because the loyal women who have made its support their life-work are easily distinguishable from the turbulent sisterhood, no suffragist doubts the passage of the amendment in the near future. —— THE WOMAN'S PARTY CANDIDATE. Little Annie Martin has gone out West to play At bein' lady senator, an' if she has her way, Of all the other candydates she'll make a good clean sweep— An' then th' hull blame country'll have to pay her board an' keep. She's gatherin' folks around her, where she finds it can be done, An' tells 'em how she's runnin', butit's the mostest fun A'listenin' to the fairy tales 'at Annie tells about How the Picketers 'ull git you, Ef you Don't Watch Out. Onct they wuz a President; he heerd the women's prayers, And tried to git th' Senators, a settin' in their chairs, To listen when he told 'em 'at when it come next Fall, An' election day was over, they'd not be there at all, 'Less they was standin' by him, doin' all that could be did For the cause of human freedom, stid of settin' on th' lid. But Annie an' her party said they hadn't any doubt The President could get 'em, Ef he'd Just Watch Out. Now, Annie an' her party would always sneer and jeer, Because they liked to go to jail, an' be a picketeer. An' onct when they're was company an' Russian folks was there, They mocked him, an' they shocked him, an' said they didn't care. The President forgave 'em, but they kep' on, jest th' same, A-flauntin' lying banners sayin' how he was to blame— Well—here's hopin' in Nevada the voters hear about How the Pickets told the President He Must Watch Out! It's said that since she's runnin', little Annie's feeling blue, 'Bout this sassin' of th' President, which ain't the thing to do, An' the Picketers in Washington ain't helpin' Annie win By jawin' at the President, an' gettin' all run in; An' clear across the country folks look out Nevada way To see if doin's sech as that, can win election day, An' us that knows Nevada expects to hear a shout That'll tell the Woman's Party It Had Best Clear out! —— MRS. IDA HUSTED HARPER WRITES THE HISTORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY. I wonder if you are familiar with the history of this small organization. Its leaders, Miss Alice Paul and Miss Lucy Burns, while studying in England joined Mrs. Pankhurst's organization and were among those who were put into prison. They returned to the United States in 1912 with the intention of starting a "militant" movement here, but the idea being coldly received they proposed to the National Association that they should organize a suffrage parade in Washington similar to those that had been held in London. They were appointed a committee to do this and also to assist the work for the Federal amendment, whose prospects had been advanced by the recent victories in Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas. While working here they conceived the idea of forming a rival organization that should do more aggressive [continued on another page] FROM WOMAN'S BUREAU DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE Ellis Meredith, Director Publicity —————————————— THE WOMAN'S BRANCH OF INDUSTRIAL SERVICE AND GENERAL ORDERS No. 13. There used to be a poem in the old readers which was read or declaimed with much gusto on the Fourth of July, for it described the first Fourth of July, for it described the first Fourth when "there was tumult in the city, in the quaint old quaker town" and the eager crowd beat upon the state house door, and there were mingled cries— "Will they do it," "dare they do it?" "I am stifling!" "Stifle then, When the nation is in peril There's no time to think of men!" That was the ancient view, and between it and "General Orders number 13" there is not only a century and a half of time but a wider difference in the sense of values. Since this nation has felt itself in peril it has thought of men as it never did before. With millions marching away to hardships, many of them to suffering and death, there has come a keener consciousness of the meanings of life, a determination that it shall be safe guarded and made easier. And so Gen. William Crozier issued the now famous order for the guidance of those who wish to do business with Uncle Sam. Employers are expected to read these requirements and govern themselves accordingly. The abbreviated form of the order, as it applies to women and children, is as follows: STANDARDS FOR EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 1. HOURS OF LABOR.—Existing legal standards should be rigidly maintained, and, even where the law permits a 9 or 10 hour day, efforts should be made to restrict the work of women to eight hours. 2. PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK.—The employment of women on night shifts should be avoided as a necessary protection, morally and physically. 3. REST PERIODS.—No women should be employed for a longer period than four and a half hours without a break for a meal, and a recess of ten minutes should be allowed in the middle of each working period. 4. TIME FOR MEALS.—At least 30 minutes should be allowed for a meal, and this time should be lengthened to 45 minutes or an hour if the working day exceeds eight hours. 5. PLACE FOR MEALS.—Meals should not be eaten in the work rooms. 6. SATURDAY HALF HOLIDAY.—The Saturday half holiday should be considered an absolute essential for women under all conditions. 7. SEATS.—For women who sit at their work, seats with backs should be provided, unless the occupation renders this impossible. For women who stand at work, seats should be available and their use permitted at regular intervals. 8. LIFTING WEIGHTS.—No woman should be required to lift repeatedly more than twenty-five pounds in any single load. 9. REPLACEMENT OF MEN BY WOMEN.—When it is necessary to employ women on work hitherto done by men, care should be taken to make sure that the task is adapted to the strength of the women. The standards of wages hitherto prevailing for men in the process should not be lowered where women render equivalent service. The hours for women engaged in such processes should, of course, not be longer than those formerly worked by men. 10. TENEMENT HOUSE WORK.—No work shall be given out to be done in rooms used for living purposes or in rooms directly connected with living rooms. STANDARDS FOR EMPLOYMENT OF MINORS. 1. AGE.—No child under 14 years of age shall be employed at any work under any conditions. 2. HOURS OF LABOR.—No child between the ages of 14 and 16 years shall be employed more than 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week, and night work is prohibited. 3. FEDERAL CHILD-LABOR LAW.—These and other provisions of the Federal Child-Labor law must be strictly observed. 4. MINORS UNDER 18.—Minors of both sexes under 18 years of age should have the same restrictions upon their hours as already outlined for women employes. To better insure the carrying out of these provisions the "Women's Branch of the Industrial Service Section of the Ordinance Department" was created and Miss Mary Van Kleek, who has just been appointed the director of the Women's Division of the Department of Labor, was put in charge. The primary purpose of the Women's Branch" however deals very definitely with labor, hours, etc. The idea is that employers should provide the best possible working conditions not as a bit of philanthropy but as an act of justice, and incidentally one of the best methods of increasing their output. "We find that what is called 'the turnover' of labor is very great," explained Miss Olga Halsey, who is one of the supervisors of the Women's Branch. "It is estimated by the Federal Employment Service that from 25% to 40% of the unskilled labor of the country is idle at any one time because of the constant shifting form job to job. This is a waste in every way. Workmen who are dissatisfied leave and that means taking time to train new men. In the present crisis we haven't the time or the workers to spare. Everyone must be kept in the best condition to do his work. "In England, when the war came upon them, they were compelled to exert every energy to meet the demands, and they worked nights and Sundays, and long hours. Presently they found that the weary workmen had little powers of resistance to disease and 'overtime' was frequently offset by the worker having to lay off. We are trying to take advantage of what we have learned from the English. "But when we asked munition plants to employ women to supervise the women workers they asked where they were to be found, because there are not many women capable of supervising workers who know enough of the work to do so intelligently. To meet this need training courses for employment managers are being offered under government auspices. Women who have had no previous industrial experience go to a factory and spend a month or six weeks there studying the plant and different processes going on there. Sometimes they take up some of the lines of work and acquaint themselves with the routine of production. Then, when they have acquired this general knowledge, they go to one of the various schools that give the actual training, taking up the details, showing time-saving methods and suggesting ways of dealing with all sorts of problems likely to arise where hundreds of men and women are at work at high pressure and oftentimes with highly dangerous materials. "Some of the materials employed are poisonous. That is one of the reasons why we urge women to wear a uniform that they leave at the shop when they go home. It is also one of the reasons why we do not want women to eat their lunches in the rooms where they work. It is not safe for them to do so. Of course it is much better for them to get the change of air and scene involved in going out for their midday meal, but that is really only a secondary consideration. "If the war lasts a long time, it is sure that many women will have to work in munition works and for that reason we are trying to throw every reasonable safeguard around them. In addition to securing good working conditions, and opportunities for rest and recreation, we are taking steps to teach hygiene, and exercises that will aid in maintaining good health. It is cheaper and better to keep people well than to let them get sick and then appear with the stretched and ambulance. "This 'Training Course for Health Officers' is given at Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass., and the woman who desire to take it must have, first, good health; second, graduation not later than 1915 from a college of approved standing or an equivalent training in a professional school, or practical administrative experience in labor problems or an industrial plant. The course of training is short and intensive, and there are many factories close at hand, which the students visit that they may see some of the problems they are to meet later. There are forty students taking this course now. "All this, you see," concluded Miss Halsey, "get clear away from the 'Welfare' point of view, and belongs to the order of efficiency. It is not the giving of gifts but doing justice, and regarding workmen from the human, rather than the mechanical standpoint. We say to employers, practically, 'You have a national responsibility not to wear out your employes by the unwise expenditure of energy,' and the vast majority of them are co-operating with us as well as we could desire." These are a few significant straws that show how the wind is being tempered to many industrial lambs so new to all this unexplored field of endeavor that they might turn back but for the strange, new beautiful spirit of unity in the service of our country that meets them with out-stretched hands, guides them along unaccustomed paths, explains intricate processes and helps them over hard places. "The Women's Branch of the Industrial Service Section of the Ordnance Department" is a long title, but not a bit too big for the inspiring work it is doing, work which is going to tell wonderfully in the reconstruction days that will come after the war. —— A SMALL BOY'S PRAYER. At twelve o'clock Washington observes the Angelus in many offices and shops. For a few minutes everyone stops and makes a prayer for the President, the army and navy and victory. Many churches are open and hold noonday services for this purpose, and in many homes short prayers are offered. In one of the suburbs of the city, the children got interested, and a wide-awake boy, aged seven, impressed his playmates with the solemnity of the situation and prevailed upon some fifty of them to join him in prayer. Not having been brought up on the stately petitions of ritualistic faith, he made his prayer according to his own traditions. "But what do you say at your noonday prayers?" asked his mother. "We kneel down and shut our eyes and put up our hands, and then I say, 'Now I lay me down to sleep'; but Oh, God, help us to lick the Germans!" —— THE SOUTH, THE SENATE AND SUFFRAGE. The South is actually waking up to the fact that Woman Suffrage is coming, that it is coming soon, and that it is coming because it ought to come, and no amount of dilatory tactics will long delay it. Arkansas has the honor of being the first state in the Solid South to break away from tradition. Last year it gave women primary suffrage. Its constitutional convention, now in session, has adopted a plank giving them full suffrage. From all indications it will carry hands down. Texas has given the primary suffrage to women, and the Louisiana legislature has submitted [??] it to her voters. The plank in the Democratic platform, while in no way going on record in regard to the Federal amendment for woman suffrage, seems to be taken seriously in some of the states that are overwhelmingly Democratic. The plank recommends the extension of the vote to women by the several states. Three Democratic states have acted on that recommendation, and the Connecticut Democratic state convention has endorsed the Federal amendment. The Republican plank of 1916, while announcing its belief in the justice of votes for women, goes on to say it favors the extension of the suffrage to women "BUT recognizes the right of each state to settle this question for itself," and fails to make any recommendation. There are a few states that are conceded to be Republican, but so far none of them has taken the Republican declaration of 1916 to be intended as something which should be regarded in the light of an instruction. There are recalcitrant Democrats in the Senate, who are opposed to the Federal amendment, but the only senators representing women constituents who are unalterably opposed to it are Senators Borah, who insists that he is a suffragist, and Senator Wadsworth, who is at least consistent, since he is a well-known "anti." Senator Borah owes his seat to women voters as well as men, and it is safe to say that he does not represent the opinion of one-tenth of one per cent of them. The extreme "States' rights" point of view in connection with a great principle of government, like the franchise, is no longer tenable. It is like saying, "Yes, we like to have water in the house, but want it brought in a pint at a time." —— THE RATTLE OF THE RIVET. The Kaiser waked one morning from a brief and troubled dream, He thought that somewhere in the West he heard an Eagle scream. He called his captains to him and he said, "What's this I hear? I do not mind the groans of men or woman's bitter tear. But there's a new and threatening sound across the waters green That makes me shake and shiver like the Banshee's fearful keen; I see long troops of men in brown a-walking o'er my grave Whene'er I hear that rattling sound a'rippling o'er the wave." Von Hindenburg looked sour and glum, Von Ludendorf looked grave, For well they knew those sounds resound to ocean's farthest cave. "All Highest, I regret to state," Von Hindenburg began, "If on this drive we don't arrive, I'm sure we never can. That horrid sound we also hear, it's getting on our nerves, As to the Front we're hurrying our very last Reserves. We called our foemen 'Schweinhund," we called them 'pig' and 'dog'— All Highest, dear, those sounds you hear are from an isle called 'Hog.' "It's the rattle of the rivet, it's the clash of iron and steel; Before one ship is off the ways they start another keel. We hear that crashing, driving sound above the battle's din And every rivet that they drive is helping them to win. They have ships upon the ocean, they have ships just leaving the shore, And every rattling rivet tells they're building more and more. It's the rattling, battling rivets that have stayed our last advance— All Highest—it's those rivets that will drive us out of France!" —ELLIS MEREDITH. [***stamp at the bottom that says 000271***] demonstration, there were arrests, jail sentences, and finally a number of women who refused to pay their fines were sent to the Workhouse. Among them was Miss Anne Martin, now a candidate for the United States Senate in Nevada. These tactics were kept up until winter, the arrests affording the publicity upon which the militants rely to fill their coffers. Both in the jail and the Workhouse they conducted themselves in such a way that the relative of one of them told her she "ought to be ashamed of herself," and several newspaper women, who were inclined to sympathize, transferred their pity to the matrons and superintendents. One colored habitue announced, "I done been here thirty times, and I ain' nebber seen no sech goin's on befo!" However, they continued to march and to carry banners which grew more offensive. Two of them were as follows: "Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten your sympathy with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? 20,000,000 American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye." "I tell you solemnly, ladies and gentlemen, we can not postpone justice any longer in the United States. Woodrow Wilson. Oct. 29th, 1912. "The President is the elected representative for 20,000,000 women. Wilson is not a president. The Kaiser is the autocratic ruler of 20,000,000 women. Wilson is a Kaiser." Finally, not at all to their liking, the President issued a blanket pardon, and the picketers were again at liberty. By this time the feeling was high enough so that the enemies of the suffrage cause judged that it was a good time to force it to a vote in the House, and Mr. Webb, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, learning that the bill would probably be taken from his committee and referred to the newly created Woman Suffrage Committee, reported it out. December 17th was set for a vote and it was only by the most strenuous effort that the suffragists secured a postponement to January 10th. Everything was done that was possible, but the day before the suffragists knew that they could not win unless something more weighty than any argument they had been able to make was produced. It was that evening that a small group of Democrats had a conference with the President. Their votes carried the amendment the day following. But for the President it would surely have been defeated. All suffragists know this, and the honest ones admit it. Then the measure went to the Senate and its friends began a careful canvass, determined that a vote should not be precipitated there until they were sure of its passage. In every way within his power the President assisted them. The real suffrage leaders have said so repeatedly. Twice it seemed as if a vote might be taken. The second time, June 27th, the date was actually set. By a clever trick, the result of an agreement between the opponents of the measure on both sides of the chamber, a pair was demanded, which would have resulted in its defeat, since on a constitutional amendment there must be two yeas to equal a nay. Senator Jones, chairman of the Woman Suffrage Committee, announced in the face of the filibustering tactics adopted by the opposition that the vote would be indefinitely postponed. Shortly after this the Senate began a series of three day recesses; many of the Senators went home, and some of those opposed to this measure heard from their constituents, and several of them received letters from the President, calling their attention to the necessity of passing the amendment, to the end that the nation should stand squarely for complete democracy. It is well known that he has seen and talked with many of the Senators. In the face of all these facts, better known in Washington than anywhere else, the Woman's Party announced that it would begin demonstrations, aimed primarily at the President. Tuesday, August 6th, armed with banners, and carrying an American flag, the Woman's Party marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to Lafayette monument. On their banners appeared the following inscriptions: "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" "We protest against the continued disfranchisement of American women for which the President of the United States is responsible." "We condemn the President and his party for allowing the obstruction of suffrage in the Senate." "We deplore the weakness of the President in permitting the Senate to line itself with the Prussian Reichstag by denying democracy to the people." "We demand that the President and his party secure the passage of the suffrage amendment through the Senate in the present session." They were arrested and when arraigned in court a number of them refused to plead, averring that since they had no voice in making the laws or electing judges they were not answerable to any authority. As nobody in the District of Columbia has any more voice in their government than the prisoners at the bar this argument did not make a profound impression, and a number of the women were sent to jail, where they went on a "hunger strike," and succeeded in making themselves ill; whereupon they were turned loose, and a permit to hold a meeting which they had announced was given them. As soon as their meeting was to be lawful, they called it off. They have been told by some of the Senators most friendly to them that their tactics are injuring the suffrage cause. Others challenge their loyalty, saying they do not really desire the passage of the amendment, since then their occupation would be gone, Just Watch Out. Now, Annie an' her party would always sneer and jeer, Because they liked to go to jail, an' be a picketeer. An' onct when they're was company an' Russian folks was there, They mocked him, an' they shocked him, an' said they didn't care. The President forgave 'em, but they kep' on, jest th' same, A-flauntin' lying banners, sayin how he was to blame— Well—here's hopin' in Nevada the voters hear about How the Pickets told the President He Must Watch Out! It's said that since she's runnin', little Annie's feeling blue, 'Bout this sassin' of th' President, which ain't the thing to do, An' the picketers in Washington ain't helpin' Annie win By jawin' at the President, an gettin' all run in; An' clear across the country folks look out Nevada way To see if doin's sech as that, can win election day, An' us that knows Nevada expects to hear a shout That'll tell the Woman's Party It Had Best Clear Out! MRS. IDA HUSTED HARPER WRITES THE HISTORY OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY. I wonder if you are familiar with the history of this small organization. Its leaders, Miss Alice Paul and Miss Lucy Burns, while studying in England joined Mrs. Pankhurst's organization and were among those who were put into prison. They returned to the United States in 1912 with the intention of starting a "militant" movement here, but the idea being coldly received they proposed to the National Association that they should organize a suffrage parade in Washington similar to those that had been held in London. They were appointed a committee to do this and also to assist the work for the Federal amendment, whose prospects had been advanced by the recent victories in Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas. While working here they conceived the idea of forming a rival organization that should do more aggressive work with Congress and cut out all State campaigns. They used the Association's letterheads for this purpose, and as soon as its officers learned what was being done they were removed from the committee and thereafter devoted themselves to building up their own organization. In 1914 they adopted Mrs. Pankhurst's policy of "fighting the party in power," and went into the equal-suffrage States to organize the voters against the Democratic candidates for congress. Their action was strongly repudiated by the National Association, which always had been absolutely non-partisan. In 1916 they changed their name from the Congressional Union to the National Woman's Party, thus confusing the minds of the public still more as to the identity of the two organizations. They worked against the Democratic candidates throughout this campaign also, and it would have been practically impossible for the National Association to retain the friendship of the Democratic Party had it not been for the election of President Wilson by the vote of the equal-suffrage States. In 1917, because President Wilson had been thus elected, the leaders of the National Association saw an opportunity to carry out their long-cherished plan of securing for women a vote for presidential electors in various States, and had bills introduced in their legislatures for this purpose. The Congressional Union having again lost its fight against the Democratic Party, and fearing that it might disappear from the spotlight, conceived the idea of "picketing" the White House. I need not enter into that unfortunate action further than to say that it contributed largely to the defeat of the suffrage amendment in Maine that autumn, and came very near losing it in the State of New York. This so-called National Woman's Party is less than five years old, and nobody has the slightest idea as to the size of its membership. Any one who ever gave it twenty-five cents in enrolled as a member forever. It goes into a State, holds a meeting, appoints a committee and then announces that it has organized the State. It assures the women that the National Association is working only for State amendment and that it alone is working for a Federal amendment. The National American Suffrage Association was founded in 1869 for the expressed purpose of obtaining a Federal amendment. It took up State work only because it saw that Congress would not act until the experiment had been made in a number of States. Every State is auxiliary to this association, which has an estimated membership of 2,000,000, and its work has always been constitutional, legal, conservative, and dignified. Every particle of suffrage which the women of the United States possess today has been gained under the auspices of its State branches. It enjoys the full confidence of the Administration, and, we trust, of Congress and we earnestly hope that its efforts of nearly sixty years will not be thwarted by this small body of irresponsible women. 6 Mrs Rubenette Lee Fleet 4117 Bromley Lane Richmond Va 000272 FROM WOMAN'S BUREAU, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE. Ellis Meredith, Director Publicity. May 20-- THE SENATE AND SUFFRAGE It is a source of regret to suffragists, especially those connected with this administration, including President Wilson, that the Federal Woman Suffrage amendment has not passed the Senate and gone to the states for ratification. Now there is an added danger in the attempt of some of its recent friends to make it a political asset. Years ago Susan B. Anthony foresaw this peril and warned suffragists that the amendment must come through the votes of both parties, and never would come through one party alone. Now comes Mr. Will Hays, chairman of the Republican National Committee, and announces that this amendment is to be made an issue in the coming campaign, and places the responsibility for its not yet having passed upon the Democratic party, and Senator Curtis, Republican whip, claims that there are thirty-two Republican Senators for it, one doubtful and eleven opposed. Senator Curtis quotes figures to show that the Republicans have gained three votes since January, the Democrats four, and both parties together can poll 61 votes for the amendment, 64 being necessary for its passage. Suffragists who want the amendment are willing to wait to get the necessary votes. Those who wish to push the amendment to a vote now are seeking not votes for women but a little cheap political advantage of the flimsiest character. The simple fact is that if every Republican in the Senate voted for this bill now it would not alter the other fact that the Republican party could have passed this amendment long since had either its leaders or the rank and file wanted to do so. Nor is there any use in trying to blink the further fact that Democratic opposition comes mainly from the bitter experience that followed the adoption of the Fifteenth amendment by methods so disgraceful that they were denounced and repudiated by Republicans in many northern states. When the Fifteenth amendment was pending the women who had done so much to sustain the Union army implored Congress to give them the ballot. Instead it was thrust into the hands of those who had not asked for it, and could not read it. At that time the Republican leaders promised the women that they should be considered next. Now, fifty years afterward, having thirty-two votes which they can count upon, which is just three more than the Democratic Senate majority, they have the effrontery to say "The Democrats face the responsibility of having postponed this measure of justice and progress!" After fifty years of masterly inactivity their sudden and self-righteous anxiety on behalf of the women to whose oft reiterated appeals they have so long been deaf would be funny were it not so brazenly impudent. According to Senator Curtis there are eleven Republican Senators opposed, and one doubtful. Only three more votes are needed. Of course they should come from the Democratic side, but if it is suffrage they are thinking of, why do not these Republicans produce three more votes from their own ranks? they have gained three since January. On the other hand, no Republican state has come through since then with a blanket suffrage measure for all its women, like the Texas primary law which enfranchised hundreds of thousands of women in the Lone Star State. There is one thing further to be said for the most of the Democratic Senators who oppose the suffrage amendment. They are not opposed to the principle itself. They are even disposed to approve of the votes of women in the western states, and are not ungrateful for the electoral votes they turned over to the Democratic leader in 1916. They have left abuse of the women and their cause to Mr. Meeker of the House and Senator Brandegee. Their party leaders believe that this amendment will be passed before adjournment. Three Republicans have decided that it is time this became a true Republic and four Democrats have grown more democratic since January first. If hardening of the arteries is a serious matter, hardening of the imagination is scarcely less so. When Senator Lodge says he "made up his mind on the woman suffrage question forty years ago, and is unalterably opposed," one can only regret that ossification should have set in so early. This is a case for pity rather than condemnation. Even if Democracy has not wholly lived up to its name in our legislative halls, its great leader, the President of the United States, has spoken again and again in unmistakable terms; most of the members of the Cabinet have done the same, and the Democratic National Committee has urged Democratic Senators to pass the suffrage amendment and turn this question over to the states which must finally settle it. THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES IN CONVENTION ASSEMBLED-- Berlin Papers Please Copy WASHINGTON, D.C. DEAR GIRLS: This really should be written from Hot Springs, Arkansas, which from the 29th of April to the 8th of May was a great camp where the womenfolk of the nation were mobilized in a kind of national experience meeting. The Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women's Clubs is always a notable gathering, but this year more was expected than ever before. The natural, hospitable instincts of the club women of the hostess state were sternly repressed, when they suggested automobile rides, luncheons and other methods of entertainment dear to the feminine heart, but dearer still to the family purse which is apt to be somewhat flattened after the continuous procession of "drives" over it that have marked the past year, with more of them in sight. But everybody had a good time and if any woman failed to take away inspiration and pleasant memories it is her own fault. Parenthetically, it should be said that one of the advantages of these meetings is that they teach a lot of local geography and this is a by-product that will last. We have had it brought home to us that Uncle Sam's one lone health resort is at Hot Springs, and if one had the staying powers to climb to the top of the hill where the observation tower is located, she took away a picture of wood-crowned hills, receding away into vistas of blue instead of the purple that veils the Rocky Mountains, winding roads and a town that is beginning to grow into a city with fine substantial public buildings. The view is really one of surpassing loveliness. There are a lot of folks who don't know a thing about Arkansas except "The Arkansas Traveler" and they don't know more than two bars of that. They don't know that it has the only diamond mine in the United States, and they don't know that if they have any aluminum in their kitchens that it probably comes from Arkansas, which produces about three- fourths of the world supply. Even if we never wear a beautiful and lustrous Arkansas diamond or one of her wonderful freshwater pearls, having invested all spare change in Thrift Stamps, it is a great comfort to reflect that every club woman in the United States can have an aluminum saucepan made from Arkansas "bauxite." The Hot Springs newspapers devoted columns and even pages to the meetings. Today, when all editors are smothered by the output of press-agents, and preserve a kind of armed neutrality between the "local" room and the clicking telegraph the amount of space devoted to the Federation was most impressive. The meeting began with a truly fine address by Governor Charles H. Brough who then administered an oath of allegiance to the United States. The problems discussed were not specially women's problems. They dealt mainly with war, the many conditions brought about by it and the inscrutable future that faces us individually and nationally. Considering that this meeting came at the close of the third Liberty Loan drive in which women played such a phenomenal part, considerable surprise was occasioned by the absence of any reference to the great part which women have been called upon to play in connection with the actual financing of the war, through the Liberty Loan and the War Savings Stamps. Probably it is true that the average woman does not care very much for financial undertakings when presented in the average technical way, but the story of woman's connection with the Liberty Loans is really one of surpassing interest, and full of novel and unusual incidents. A group of the State Chairmen present, finding that their work had no place on the regular program, called a conference and asked Mrs. George Bass, who is one of the Woman's National Liberty Loan Committee, and the only woman member of the War Savings Committee, to go over various phases of their work with them. They spent a profitable hour if one may judge from the expression of one of them who said with a sigh of relief, "Now, I feel that I really do understand just what is expected of us, and it never has been perfectly clear before!" For years the women of this country have been assured that the woman of the South is the one unchanged and wholly feminine individual left, with no aspirations beyond the front gate and a natural antipathy to politics. If you have really believed that-- forget it! The Southern woman has made a sun-dial out of her pedestal, stuck an American flag up along side of it and is taking up the burdens of the good citizen in a way to give Hindenburg the horrors. Arkansas women will cast their vote in the primary to be held this month. Texas women will do the same in July, and when they learned that Mrs. George Bass, chairman of the Woman's Bureau of the Democratic National Committee, was a delegate to the convention, they promptly got up a first voters' meeting and asked Mrs. Bass and Mary Garrett Hay of New York to address it. They asked Mr. John A. Riggs, who got their suffrage bill through the legislature, to speak, but being an editor, with all the shrinking diffidence that characterizes writer-folk, he was content to put in an appearance. However, three Arkansas women, Mrs. Drennan, who presided, Miss Miller and Mrs. J. A. Cottnam, chairman of the Woman Suffrage State Central Committee, all spoke with such grace and eloquence that it is easy to see that the South will lose none of its traditional reputation for oratory by the advent of its womenfolk in the political arena. To tell the truth, those of us who have been voting for the past decade or two and are accustomed to thinking of this duty as a matter-of-course, did not look for a large gathering. We rather expect that about a hundred women would be lost in one corner of the great Hotel Eastman dining room. Instead it was filled to capacity. Do Southern women want to vote? If that meeting meant anything, and the questions asked afterward, with urgent requests that Mrs. Bass go elsewhere in the State and speak for the women, who are practically all of her party, have any significance there are no women in the country more eager to do their part toward choosing wise and conscientious officials to go on guard during these troublous times. Similar sentiments were voiced by many other women of the South, some of whom predict that Louisiana will follow Arkansas and Texas and give suffrage to her women before the summer is over. Of the many, many phases and the long program of the Biennial itself it is impossible to speak. There was too much of it, literally as well as metaphorically, but as all gatherings have a dominating overtone this one struck the full chord of service. There is no kind of doubt that women hate war and love peace, but when Jane Addams, foremost pacifist of this nation, rose to speak on The World's Food Supply there was no single tone of submission or non-resistance, and she spoke with a fire and feeling never excelled in all her public work. All during the sessions the knitting needles clicked steadily, and between times, even when sheeted figures were stretched out in the rest rooms of the many bath-houses, the talk was of war, of conservation, of gardens and made-over gowns, and each heart voiced its longing to help. Probably the most envied woman speaker was Dr. Esther Lovejoy, notable leader in the Democratic counsels of Oregon, for in her trig uniform, that carries with it the title of lieutenant, she told them of work actually done in France, and the work to be done. There were not many men at this convention. Kenneth Clark, who conducts the music at Camp Meade, and half a dozen speakers of note, with a few scattered through the evening audiences, make up the list, but there was one great unseen individuality omnipresent at all times, and it is safe to say that as he saw that noble army of women our Uncle Samuel thanked God and took courage. --ELLIS MEREDITH. A CHILD'S SMILE. You may think you have a heart of steel, And long for battles wild, But that heart of yours will melt away At the smile of a little child; And the blood within, which you thought was cold, Through all your veins will race, When you sit and watch some child at play With its happy, smiling face. Your brow may be marked with wrinkles deep, Your eyes be filled with tears, But these pass away, you are happy too, When a smiling child appears. As a growing man to a spar will cling When tossed on billows wild, I cling to the picture of light and love In the face of a smiling child. --JOHN D. HOWARD, 143rd Field Artillery FROM THE WOMAN'S BUREAU DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE. Ellis Meredith, Director Publicity. -------------------- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -------------------- WOMAN'S DIVISION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR. Secretary Wilson has created a Woman's Division of the Department of Labor to handle all the varied problems affecting women in industry and has appointed Mrs. Hilda Muhlhauser Richards superintendent. It is an ideal appointment, for Mrs. Richards is known as an authority on everything concerning women workers. She has written much and is a profound student of labor conditions in this country and the causes of the unrest which is so painfully evident. It is a long time since Mrs. Richards began planning for a fundamental enterprise in connection with the women wage-earners of this country. She began to think about it when she was in one of the Cleveland Social Settlements, and when that city established a Bureau for Women and Girls she was put in charge, and, like Kipling's sentinel she "learned about women" from the constant stream that passed through her office. When Secretary Wilson appointed a committee of twelve to consider the problem of unemployment she was the only woman on it, and later at the request of her chief she drafted an outline for a Federal Employment system. This is the first time that women workers have been accorded so signal a recognition, and the best of it is, that this work is not war work in the sense that it will terminate with the war. It seems quite certain that hereafter women will occupy a larger place in the industrial world in America, as well as in the European countries now involved in the war. Of course, the future of this work is not the main thing now. It has been taken up in response to many calls for something of the kind, and in the hope that Mrs. Richards will be able to coordinate the work of women, tabulate it, make some kind of registration that will make it possible to know just what labor is available in any particular field, and also that she may be able to open many new avenues of profitable employment to the women of the country. "What are we doing now," says Mrs. Richards, "is emergency work, and for the present we shall work through the existing agencies, vocational bureaus and similar institutions where efforts are made to place women. In many places there are no free employment bureaus, and where the demand seems to warrant it, we shall establish them. We have already opened such an office in New York City, and hope to start others in Kansas City, somewhere in New England and probably one in the far South later on. "And we have no wish to rush women into men's jobs until there is an urgent necessity to do so. So long as there are men to be found they ought to do the heavier work but there are many fields that are open to women and it will be part of the work of this bureau to help the women to find the places where they can be of most service. "We hope we shall find a good many women willing to do some kinds of farmwork. There is no field where work is more needed or where the laborers are so few, relatively speaking. If we succeed in getting a list of women who are willing to do this work, there will be an effort made to secure them employment in the vicinity where they live. If farmers are to keep up the production demanded of them they must have help, and we believe women can be prevailed upon to give it. "Then we want to have a Service Reserve Corps of women volunteers, ready for any service that the government may demand of them. In all this work we mean to cooperate with Dr. Shaw's committee and the local Councils of Defense and the women on the ground who know the conditions." Mrs. Richards is not willing to take the poet's chance and dip "into the future far as human eye can see," but she is a woman of such inspiring personality that she creates an impression that from this beginning which, by the way, is by no means a small one, there may be wonderful developments. No one can now estimate the part this department may play in the future, in all phases of women's work, with industrial training and vocational schools, and "opportunity schools," like the school that is doing such remarkable work among Denver grown-ups, and other features worked out as a result of the demands that will be made upon this newest government undertaking in behalf of women. -------------------- THE HUMBLE HEN Keep a hen. If you can, keep several. If chicken feed is a item in these days when the clean plate has become a gospel and there is nothing to scrape out, keep Leghorns, white or brown. They are very small, and lay phenomenally large eggs--the kind that cannot be bought in many of the cities where just plain eggs are bringing from sixty to ninety cents a dozen. Eggs are a highly concentrated food, much needed by the sick and the old, and much wanted by every housekeeper who likes to set a good table, even if it is a very plain one. Anyone who wants them can have pamphlets from the United States Department of Agriculture telling them all about poultry, chicken houses and successful methods for keeping eggs. This is one of the branches of food production that can be very profitably expanded to a much greater extent than has yet been done. Don't take it for granted that you know all about chickens because you have always seen them either "from a car window" or in your own back yard. The American hen can put up a gallant fight against the double-headed freak eagle of the Prussians, and she should be reminded that America expects every hen to do her duty. -------------------- DOLLAR THREAD Everyone who returns from Europe implores the American people to realize that so far, we have no idea of the privations that are being endured by the people in the stricken countries. Think of being unable to mend one's clothes because a spool of thread costs a dollar. Think of cooking ones food, and then pouring water into the kettle in which it was cooked and cooking the kettle that nothing may be wasted. And if this is not bad enough, thinking of having no food to cook and no kettle to put it in, if some kind person should give it. These are the hardships that are being endured in Flanders and France. Professor Stoughton Holborn, of Oxford, told a Washington, D.C. audience a week ago that the English woman who appears in a new dress apologizes for doing so, and that his first impression in this country was of extravagance and waste in food and clothing. "Only three quarters of a pound of butter has come into my British home in the last three months," he says. A year ago one of the Y. M. C. A. speakers assured us that "Americans have not begun to learn the meaning of the word 'sacrifice.' Anyone who has food to eat, even of the plainest, and fuel to burn, and clothes enough to keep warm, ought to celebrate Thanksgiving Day every morning." -------------------- THEN AND NOW "When I was fighting Hessians," Said the shade of Washington, "There was one man I could count on To do what could be done. He didn't grumble either, But worked both night and day, And as he worked for Liberty He looked to her for pay. "He knew the men at Valley Forge Had nothing and to spare-- Their food was very scanty And their feet were well-night bare; And so he drank his sassafras, And thought of me and mine; As we were fighting for him He worked in rain or shine." "I too had troubles of my own," Said Father Abraham; "I might have been discouraged, If I was'nt what I am. But I had the common people, And that helped me quite a lot, For no matter what I wanted They were always on the spot. "No rich men came to aid me At a dollar per the year, But I had the common people And they held the Union dear. Some fought and died for Liberty And some worked by the day, But they fought and worked for Freedom, Because they knew she'd pay." "I could not have whipped the Hessian Without the working man," Said Washington and murmured, "I doubt if these folks can." "I could not have saved the Union," Said Lincoln, "But you see, I had the common people, And they loved their Liberty." Then the Fathers of our country Looked down on us below-- So quick to strike for wages, For Liberty so slow. While from those far off trenches There comes a bitter cry-- "O strikers, strike for Liberty, Or Liberty must die!" Ellis Meredith. 000274 FROM WOMAN'S BUREAU, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE. MRS GEORGE BASS, Chairman Mrs. Ellis Meredith, Director of Publicity. -------------------- STATUS OF THE FEDERAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT. When the Suffrage Amendment failed to pass for lack of two votes, October 1, 1918, Senator Jones, Chairman of the Womans Suffrage Committee, changed his vote, and the following Thursday gave notice of reconsideration. This means that the Resolution is back on the calendar and may be called up at any time. It is confidently expected that sufficient votes will be secured to pass it before the end of the present Congress, March 4, 1919. There has been a Womans Suffrage Committee in the Senate since 1882, and a vote was taken January 25, 1887, and defeated more than two to one. March 19, 1914, another vote showed 35 yeas and 34 nays. In the fall of 1917 a Woman's Suffrage Committee was appointed in the House, and the vote set for January 10. Finding that it was going to be dangerously close, some of the House members called on the President on the 9th, and it was conceded that but for his statement to them, urging the passage of the Resolution, it would have failed. It passed by but one vote. Soon after it went to the Senate, the Democratic National Committee adopted a resolution urging its passage. A careful poll of the Senate, made by Senators friendly to the cause on both sides of the chamber showed a number of Republicans for it, and a smaller group unalterably opposed. In order to pass the resolution it was necessary to make converts among the Democrats. Western Senators and members of the Suffrage Committee undertook this work. Various men who had taken no open and aggressive stand were won over. As occasion offered Senators who favored the measure took those who were undecided to the White House, and the President brought every possible argument to bear upon them, from abstract justice to sheer gratitude to the voting women of the country who had retained the Democratic Administration in power. Members of the Democratic National Committee, fully aware of the political importance of a favorable vote before the fall elections, discussed the subject with Democratic Senators. Several members who had been very insistent upon state action finally accepted the fact that the changed conditions affecting every aspect of life in the civilized world have made the tedious process of state action inexpedient in any event and practically impossible. Early in the spring there seemed a chance for a successful vote but it was postponed on account of untoward circumstances, and finally set for June 27. At that time, finding themselves facing defeat, and involved in a filibuster of indefinite duration, the Committee withdrew the resolution. In August after the death of Senator Gallinger, a staunch suffragist during the thirty years of his service, Senator Lodge was elected Republican floor leader, and the Republican caucus agreed to vote on the resolution without delaying it whenever it was brought up. [*Meredith*] After this, privately and in the press, various Republicans charged the Democrats with "blocking" the vote, and asserted that *they* had "not only two-thirds, but a generous three-quarters" of their votes--i.e., 33 out of 44 for the amendment. Relying on this representation, the Democrats made strenuous efforts to secure as many votes as possible--not "two-thirds" or three-quarters, but all they could and believing that they had 31 favorable votes, asked that the resolution be brought up September 26. Victory seemed assured, but it was arranged that in case of defeat the chairman of the Suffrage Committee should change his vote from year to nay for the purpose of moving a reconsideration. To the amazement and dismay of the Democrats, when the discussion had been in progress for two days, they were informed that the Republicans had but 32 votes. Immediately Senator Pittman of Nevada, on the floor of the Senate, charged the Republicans with acting in bad faith. That was Friday. The following Monday the President came to the Senate and made an appeal of such sincerity and eloquence that it should have been irresistible, as it was unanswerable. When the vote was taken, with every member voting or paired it was two short of the required two-thirds vote. There were 30 Democrats and 32 Republicans for it, 64 being necessary for passage. Unless these two votes can be won between now and March 4th, when the new Congress convenes, the work will all have to be done over again. But none believes this will be the case. Regardless of party the suffragists acclaim their new leader, Woodrow Wilson, and believe that he will make come true the words of their old leader--Susan B. Anthony-- "Failure is impossible." -------------------- THE WOMAN'S BURDEN. -------------------- By Ellis Meredith. -------------------- A "Special" to the Rocky Mountain News says: "Back with woman to the hearth, the cooking stove, the cotside; back with her to the knitting-needle, the baking board, the flat-iron. Let her hope no more to be president of a life insurance company, head of an oil corporation, or even manager of a packing house. "The Barber Asphalt Paving Company, one of the largest of its kind in the United States, and employing thousands of women, has spoken, and it has sounded the doom of woman in business, provided the other great employers of the country follow its lead. The company announced today that every woman in its employ must leave by July 1, and that women henceforward will not be hired by the company. " 'Women are all right making worsted slippers, but their capacity is limited,' said one official." -------------------- Take up the woman's burden! Send forth the best ye breed, In neat blue suits of home-spun Instead of stylish tweed. Put on the good old flat-iron; 'Twill not your men-folks hurt To wear once more the home-made, Home-laundered linen shirt. Take up the woman's burden Your grandmothers laid down, And go to piecing carpets From ancient coat and gown. Put by the factory blankets And piece ye Album quilt, Odd-Fellow and Log-Cabin, Such as your grandmas built. Take up the woman's burden-- Let your ambition cease To be a woman doctor, When you can nurse in peace. Apply the leech and purge him; If this don't stay his need. Call in an old-style doctor Who's not afraid to bleed. Take up the woman's burden, The iron rule of things, The toil of tub and sweeper, The tale of common things; Quit clubs and woman suffrage, Go knit and dye and brew; What satisfied your grandmas Should be enough for you. Take up the woman's burden, And win her old reward: The right to work twelve hours a day And get her bed and board; The cry of those she humors, "She is my anything, My household goods and chattels; I bought her with a ring." Take up the woman's burden-- The old, well-known duress, Nor call too loud on freedom To ease your weariness. Leave to your stronger brother The right to do and be, And ask for nothing better Than serving such as he. Take up the woman's burden-- Have done with dreams and plans; These things, and you should know it, Are always, only, man's. Why can't you be contented, Nor ask a greater boon Than reigning o'er the kitchen, Your sceptre and iron spoon? Take up the woman's burden-- Your men will proudly wear The shirts that you will make them; They'll let you cut their hair, And it, perchance, they falter, (For men are ofttimes vain), Be womanly and tender, And weep a flood of rain. Take up the woman's burden-- And, if they make complaint, Meet it, old woman fashion, And go off in a faint. Just teach these men a lesson, And once more let them see A vision of the woman They think you ought to be! --Union Signal EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Ernest L. Williams, Pres. A.J. Fowler, A.D. Wilson, H.G. Fisher, F.J. Haffner, M. A. B. Conine The Independent Citizens Party HEADQUARTERS PHONES Main 7171 — Main 7173 APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF DENVER. From the time the women of Colorado were given the franchise it is a well-known fact that the independent vote in this state has steadily increased. Less bound by party ties, the women have been more impatient of the makeshifts and sophistries by which men are brought into line by the party whip. The most successful revolt against the old parties ever made in Denver was organized and carried out by women, regardless of party. You have only to look about you to find excellent examples of non-partisanship among those who are considered our leading citizens. Long ago the women had for a slogan "municipal government is business, not politics." At the present time, if you will examine into the issues before us you will find that certain corporations in this city have reversed this watchword, and declare to the world that "municipal government is our business, not your politics." These same public utility corporations come before us asking for the gift of franchises worth many millions of dollars in the city of Denver, and more millions still to them. They beg for these grants in the name of "a greater Denver." They have had control of Denver for two years last past. Let them stand to the bar and answer what they have done to give us a BETTER Denver, that they should be intrusted with greatly increased powers that are but vaguely defined in the proposed ordinances. Have they been so faithful that they should be called to rule over our city? Have the men elected by them, in a method so disgraceful that no citizen needs to have it recalled to mind, given Denver the kind of an administration that deserves the indorsement of conscientious women and patriotic men? Denver is almost the only city in the civilized world that tolerates open gambling. That it exists no one will deny. That it exists because of a monthly blackmail paid into the hands of a few officials no one aware of the facts can doubt. That it is an evil is no longer a mooted question. That it leads to the ruin, disgrace and death of many young men cannot be denied. Yet this abomination is practically a part of the administration of this city. Years ago the women of Colorado secured certain statutes for the protection of their children. One of these prohibited the sale or gift of liquor to children. This statute is violated every day of the year. They also secured a statute against wine-rooms that are a menace to society and an open trap for young people, too ignorant, perhaps, to realize the nature of such resorts. These places are running night and day, without let or hindrance from the police force of the city. It is only a few weeks since murder was committed in a saloon, by a policeman, at 1 o'clock in the morning, while a fellow officer stood by and did not so much as attempt to interfere. For many years there has been a closing at midnight and Sundays ordinance upon the statute books. Yet the saloons run day and night, seven days in a week, and no effort is made by the constituted authorities to place any check upon them. These are conditions that should arouse the righteous wrath of every good citizen. They cannot be justified under any specious plea of "business." THE BUSINESS OF HONEST OFFICIAL IS NOT TO PASS UPON LAWS, BUT TO ENFORCE THEM. The Independent Citizens' ticket stands for honesty in elections and public officials. It stands for a square deal. It has no disposition to arraign corporations merely because they are corporations, but when they take a decisive part in our elections they must stand or fall by the record of those whom they have chosen to represent them. That they have renominated a number of men who represent nothing, and nobody else, is sufficient proof that they consider their interests and those of the general public inimical. Within the next few days the legal committee of our organization will make certain recommendation in regard to the franchises. No franchise will be opposed without good and sufficient reasons, which will be clearly stated. This organization does not indorse the principle of municipal ownership, but it does believe that special grants should not be given without the most careful investigation and a just equitable consideration for the values received. The candidates nominated or indorsed by this ticket are men of clean records, pledged to the enforcement of the laws and to the policy of dealing out even-handed justice. We are not radicals or extremists, and without in any way criticising those who think differently or take a more advanced position than we are willing to at this time, or possibly in any event, we believe that there is a place in this campaign for a ticket that represents conservatism and a platform of law enforcement and integrity, with the rights of all preserved and special privileges given to none without an adequate return. We believe especially that this program will appeal to the many women who have sought, even before they were crowned with citizenship, for a better Denver, a better Colorado. ERNEST L. WILLIAMS, Chairman A. D. Wilson, H.G. FISHER, A. J. FOWLER, F. J. HAFFNER, M. A. B. CONINE. The Democratic Digest The Skipper June-July 1944 THE DEMOCRATIC DIGEST Vol. XXI JUNE-JULY, 1944 Nos. 6 and 7 -------------------- PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE WOMEN'S DIVISION, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE BUSINESS AND EDITORIAL OFFICES: Mayflower Hotel, Washington 6, D. C. Telephone DIstrict 1717. -------------------- MRS. CHARLES W. TILLETT, Assistant Chairman Democratic National Committee -------------------- LORENA A. HICKOK. Executive Secretary, Women's Division -------------------- VIRGINIA RISHEL, Editor GERTRUDE STEWART, Editorial Assistant -------------------- Digest By-Lines SENATOR SAMUEL D. JACKSON is Permanent Chairman of the convention and Democratic nominee for governor in Indiana. (Page 12.) SENATOR ELBERT D. THOMAS, of Utah, is Chairman of the Senate Labor Committee and was one of the delegates from this country to the recent International Labor Organization Conference in Philadelphia. (Page 14.) SENATOR HARRY S. TRUMAN, of Missouri, is Chairman of the Senate Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. (Page 16.) JOSEPHINE SCHAIN is Women's Division consultant on international relations and was the first U. S. woman delegate to a United Nations Conference—the Conference on Food and Agriculture held at Hot Springs, Virginia. (Page 18.) C. MILDRED THOMPSON is Dean of Vassar College and recently returned from London where she attended the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education as a U. S. delegate. (Page 27.) RILLA SCHROEDER is a widely known Washington newspaper woman and magazine writer who is especially well informed on post-war planning. (Page 24.) ELLIS MEREDITH has been an active and articulate Democrat since the 1890s. A Denver newspaper woman, she was at the press table at the 1908 Democratic convention in the Colorado city. (Page 26.) BETTY GOODWIN, a former National Broadcasting Company editor and commentator, is handling radio in the Women's Division Publicity Department. (Page 28.) FRANCES G. SATTERFIELD is Director of Research and Materials for the Women's Division and has charge of exhibits and Campaign Schools for the convention. (Page 9.) CORNELIA K. TOWNLEY is now on the Women's Division staff and was formerly assistant editor of the Adjutant General's School Bulletin. (Page 22.) -------------------- In This Issue Women's Hearts Will Tell Them..... 3 Presenting the Permanent Chairman and the Convention Hostess..... 4 Meet the Keynoter..... 5 Mark "X" on the Spot..... 6-7 Convention Headlines From the Past..... 8-9 Milestones in Democratic Women's Progress..... 10-11 The Farmer . . . Yesterday--Today and Tomorrow..... 12 The Working Man . . . Yesterday--Today and Tomorrow..... 14 The Business Man . . . Yesterday--Today and Tomorrow..... 16 The A, B, C's of Our Foreign Policy..... 18 Program for Chaos..... 21 Every Chance to Live..... 22 No Street Corner Apple Stands..... 24 Inches of Liberty..... 26 Education for the Youth of Europe..... 27 New York State Women Open '44 Campaign..... 28 News From the States..... 29-30-31 Frieda Miller Heads Women's Bureau..... 31 At the Women's National Democratic Club..... 32 Alabama's Woman Secretary of State..... 33 Who Are the Bureaucrats?..... 34 Calendar of Events for Women..... 35 On Your Mark!..... 36 -------------------- PHOTO CREDIT LINES Page 4--Harris & Ewing. Page 5--Roy Christian. Page 6--Harris & Ewing, Underwood & Underwood, Corboy Studio. Page 7--Underwood & Underwood, Bachrach. Page 9--Chase-Statler. Page 10--Harris & Ewing. Page 11--World Wide Photos. Page 18--Signal Corp Photo. Page 19--Harris & Ewing. Page 28--Syracuse (N. Y.) Herald-Journal. Page 31--Press Asso. Inc. Page Two The Democratic Digest Women's Hearts Will Tell Them . . . This is the first war in which the women of America have had the vote. It was just twenty-five years ago--only a year or so after American women had at last gotten their husbands and sons back from the trenches of France, where they had gone to fight a war to end all wars--that Congress passed the National Suffrage Amendment. And it was just twenty-four years ago that Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Suffrage Amendment, and women everywhere in this broad land could, for the first time, cast their ballots. IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN . . . Perhaps, had the women been able to vote in that momentous election of 1918, there might have been no second world war. Perhaps women, whose sons and husbands were dying in "No Man's Land," might have had the foresight to realize that to win a war, and to win a peace, a Commander-in-Chief must have support--the support of the people of his country. Perhaps women might have given him that support, might have sent back to Congress men of his own party who believed as he did and who would back him up in those beliefs. Perhaps, if the women had been voting, the Republicans would not have gained control of the Senate by one vote, and would not have been able to make Henry Cabot Lodge head of the Foreign Relations Committee--Henry Cabot Lodge, whose bitter, unrelenting hatred of Woodrow Wilson made him a bitter, unrelenting foe of everything Woodrow Wilson stood for, and especially of Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, the only plan which could have prevented World War II. Perhaps . . . but we can never know. Today, we can only look back on the closing years of the last war and murmur, "It might have been . . ." Today, we can only look forward to the closing years of this war and say, with emphasis, "It must not be . . . again." THE ONLY ISSUE . . . To women, there is only one issue in this campaign. It is this: "Which leaders, which part, can get this war over quicker, and with the least loss of life, and bring my son, my husband, my sweetheart back to me? "And, once this war is over, which leaders, which party, can best prevent this dreadful thing from happening again?" Women are not going to be fooled when they hear Republican leaders say: "Let's take the conduct of the war out of the campaign. Wars belong to the military." They know the conduct of this war has been superb. They know that the Republicans want to take it out of the campaign because--on the whole--there is nothing about it to criticize. They know that the Administration works hand-in-hand with the military leaders--leaders, incidentally, chosen for their jobs by the President--and that back of our burgeoning victory on the battlefronts lies not only the precision planning and shining strategy of the military, but the boundless vision of an Administration which set the wheels of industry whirring on weapons in the amounts needed to win this war. Women are not going to be fooled when the Republican leaders say: "Our foreign policy is not the policy of any party. It is the policy of the American people." They know that our foreign policy has been brilliant. But they know, too, that it has been built up step by step, stone by stone, by a wise and skillful Secretary of State and by a President who has had the dash and daring to fly to the ends of the earth to shape it and give it meaning by talking with the leaders of the great countries fighting with us in this war. They accept our foreign policy--it is the policy of the American people--but they give credit for it where credit is due-- to this Administration. WOMEN WON'T BE MISLED . . . Nor are the women going to be swayed when the Republicans parade their bogey men of bureaucracy. They reply: "It's a big war. Millions of our boys are overseas. We need millions of workers to back them up. We don't want one worker less in Washington--or anywhere else-- if it will in any way endanger the lives of our men or the swiftness of our victory." To the Republicans cry of waste, the women of this country declare: "Get the guns to our boys. If a better gun is invented than the one they have--get the better gun to them. Give them the best parachutes, the best life rafts, the best bombers. Give them everything you can, as quickly as you can, to protect them . . . to save their lives. If speed makes waste--we still want speed." No--American women are not going to be misled in this campaign. Women keep their eye on the ball. When they go to the polls this fall to cast their first vote in wartime, to cast the vote which marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of their coming of age as citizens, to cast the majority of the votes for the first time in the history of the country, they are going to be asking only one question: "What is best for my man in uniform?" Deep in their hearts the women of America know there is only one answer to that question: "Keep on the job the men who are running this war and fighting to win this peace. They've got everything on their cuff. They know what it is all about. Give them every support. Send men to Congress who will back them up. But keep them on the job. This is no time for a change." June-July, 1944 Page Three Presenting the Permanent Chairman SENATOR JACKSON A COMPARATIVELY new name in national politics— but no novice at either politics or government— Senator Samuel D. Jackson of Indiana has been named Permanent Chairman of the Democratic National convention. The choice of Senator Jackson for this position was the first act of the newly created convention Executive Committee, and his name, of course, will be presented to the convention, along with the names of the other permanent officials, before he actually takes over the gavel. Senator Jackson is the Democratic nominee for governor in Indiana. At the present time he is serving out the unexpired term of the late Senator Frederick Van Nuys which ends next January. Still in his forties, Senator Jackson has been active in Hoosier party work for many years. He was chairman of the Democratic State Convention in 1936, and before coming to Washington as a Senator was Indiana's Attorney General. Senator Jackson is a veteran of World War I and now has two sons in the service, Pfc. James W., who is in New Caledonia, and Pfc. Robert I., who is stationed at Fort Jackson, Columbia, South Carolina. His youngest song, Samuel, Jr., is 10. Senator Jackson was married to Anna Fern Bennett in 1914. . . . and the Convention Hostess MRS. CONKEY A WARM welcome to the Windy City—and comfort and entertainment as far as war-time restrictions make them possible—this is the hospitality program for the hundreds of women who will attend the Democratic National convention in Chicago toward which Mrs. Conkey, Convention Hostess, and her staff have been working for many weeks. Mrs. Conkey, who is Illinois National Committeewoman, was likewise the Convention Hostess in 1940, and out of the experience of that convention she is putting into practice many ideas for better service. She is now serving her third term as a member of the Board of Commissioners of Cook County, and in this position she directs the welfare work of the county. The last time she ran for the office she received strong endorsement from many civic and philanthropic groups, and from many individual Republicans. This past year Mrs. Conkey has been in the national limelight through her appointment by President Roosevelt as a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations Conference on Relief and Rehabilitation held at Atlantic City in November, 1943. She recently spoke before the White House Conference of women's non-partisan organizations who met to make up a roster of women qualified to serve at conferences on post-war. Page Four The Democratic Digest Meet the Keynoter . . . And His Family . . . Kay, 12; Bill, 6; Breene, 15; Mrs. Kerr, and Bob, Jr., 17 There are two subjects on which Oklahoma's genial Governor Robert S. Kerr is especially articulate— politics and his family. As keynoter at the National Convention he will tell delegates, alternates and other Democrats there—and the rest of the country by radio—what he thinks about the momentous campaign ahead, and set both its pitch and its pace. And any time, anywhere, he likes to talk about his four children and his wife and their part in his political life. All the Kerrs Campaigned When he ran for governor two years ago the whole family was in the campaign until the last precinct was in. That is, all but Bill, who was then only four, and who toppled off to sleep on the couch in headquarters about midnight murmuring "Kerr still leading." Bob, Jr., drove miles during the campaign throughout the countryside putting up placards and posters for his father. Breene turned out sticks on his electric machine to nail up the posters. Kay and Bill both attended rallies and begged to make speeches. Though they all worked hard they were confident right from the first that their Dad would win because their Dad, of course, can "do anything." They all entered with zest into life in the Governor's Mansion, which, however, has not proved too different from their life on their big farm six miles outside of Oklahoma City, since the big entertainments and gatherings which usually become the lot of a Governor's family are curtailed because of wartime. Recently, though, Bill, who is now six, and is both enterprising and quotable, got his fingers into the state's official business. When Bob, Jr., was home this Christmas from military school, Bill became fascinated with his big brother's memorandum book in which he keeps the names and phone numbers of the young ladies of his acquaintanceship, and Bill deviled his mother until she dug up a memorandum book for him. Two days later he proudly showed it to his father and he not only had in it the names of most of the little girls in his own room, but some in the second and third grades as well. It was not until several days later, when heads of the various departments and institutions in the state told the Governor that they never could get through to him on the private line he had reserved for official business at the Governor's Mansion, that he discovered his covered number was the one Bill had exchanged with his girl friends. So heavy was the traffic on this line that when the Governor wanted to put in a private call he either had to go to the office or hunt up a phone booth. Scrambled Eggs and Business Mrs. Kerr campaigned extensively with the Governor, visiting almost every county in the state, and since they have moved to the Governor's Mansion, she has been busy meeting again the people they met. She says they never knows whether there will be three or thirty for a meal, but is usually able to manage. Much of the state's business, she reports, "is carried on over scrambled eggs and apple fritters." As a girl, Mrs. Kerr was ambitious for a musical career. It was at a civic club in Ada, Oklahoma, when she was the soloist, that she met young Bob (continued on page 31) June-July, 1944 Page Five Mark "X" On the Spot . . . Seven women have already won the Democratic nomination for Congress. Four others— as The Digest went to press—had announced themselves as candidates, but their state primaries or conventions had not yet been held. On these pages are the women who have been nominated, and will ask the voters to mark "X" after their names November 7. MRS. MARY T. NORTON, Thirteenth Congressional District, New Jersey, is rounding out her twentieth year in Congress. "Aunt Mary" to the reporters on Capitol Hill, she's always good for a story and is one of the most frequently quoted members of Congress. "Elder Stateswoman" to her colleagues and her party, she's active and effective both on the floor of the House and in Democratic councils, and her opinions are respected and her advice sought. She's the first Democratic woman elected to Congress, was head of the District Committee and unofficial "Mayor of Washington," and is now Chairman of the important House Labor Committee. MRS. RUTH G. FILLINGHAM, Seventeenth Congressional District, Illinois, owns a 400-acre farm settled by her great grandparents, and though she hasn't work in the fields "since year before last" she knows how to run a tractor or handle a plow. When she was in Norfolk, Virginia, recently to visit her Navy son before he set off again on a destroyer escort, she worried about the soy beans. She's widely known for her work to reduce the number of one-room schools in Illinois—she attended one herself—and to generally improve rural education, and for the many positions she has held in state organizations. EMILY TAFT DOUGLAS, Congressman-at-Large, Illinois, is the daughter of the famous mid-Western sculptor, Lorado Taft, and the wife of a former University of Chicago professor, Paul Douglas, who is now a fighting Marine Captain in the South Pacific. Many trips abroad pushed back her horizons and taught her in a compelling way what Nazism and Fascism meant. Back in Illinois, her knowledge of foreign policy won her a statewide reputation, and the state chairmanship in international affairs for important organizations. Nevertheless, when the men leaders of the party asked her to run for Congress, she was so surprised she could only murmur: "This is so sudden." MRS. ELSIE STANTON, Tenth Congressional District, Ohio, believes that perseverance pays. Defeated when she ran for Congress is '38, she's trying again. Mrs. Stanton says she's a Democrat "because it's the party of the rank and file—the party that has for its chief aim better living for all the American people and not for just a few." She is a member of the Wellston Civil Service Commission, is Jackson County Chairwoman, a member of the State Executive Committee, and President of the County Democratic Club. There are five Stanton children—one of them in the armed services. Page Six The Democratic Digest MABEL GILLESPIE, Second Congressional District, Nebraska, is the first woman to be elected to the Nebraska Legislature, and was four times reelected. Reared on a farm, she knows what 10-cent corn and 2-cent hogs do to the farmer's pocketbook and to his standard of living, and she wants to represent him in Congress. She has also worked in the past for labor legislation. Her first political meeting, when she was a candidate for county chairman, was attended by only three people. She won the election by two votes. In 1940 she as named delegate-at-large to national convention by 57,000 votes. HELEN GAHAGAN DOUGLAS, Fourteenth Congressional District, California, is a liberal leader and one of the most glamorous figures in American politics. Wife of Melvyn Douglas, screen star, who is now an Army captain in the Burma-India-China theatre, she made her own name distinguished on Broadway and on the concert stage. Miss Gahagan defeated seven men for the nomination with support which came from such amazingly assorted groups as the CIO, the Railway Brotherhoods, housewives and organized women's groups, foreign language blocs, and Hollywood celebrities. Her neighborhood meetings, where she talked to women in their house-dresses, won her many votes. MARIE M. BICKERT, Eighth Congressional District, Pennsylvania, comes from a family that has been Democratic for over one hundred years. Almost since the day she could vote she has been working for the Democratic party, and has been a Precinct Committeewoman for sixteen years, a member of the State Committee for eight, a member of the Philadelphia City Committee for four, and until recently was State Vice Chairman, a post she held for four years. Her district is one of the largest in Pennsylvania, has a big farm vote, and, since the war brought defense plants to the area, a growing labor vote. The four Democratic women who are running for Congress whose state primaries had not been held as The Digest went to press are: MRS. HATTIE W. CARAWAY of Arkansas (primary August 8), is a candidate for reelection to the Senate. She's the first woman ever elected to the Senate, and has been twice reelected. She is opposed by four men in the primary. MRS. ELIZABETH BELEN, Sixth District, Michigan (primary July 11), was a member of her state legislature for one term, and also served as State Vice Chairman. Three men oppose her. MRS. CECILIA GARVIN, Third District, Wisconsin (primary August 15), is Juneau County Democratic Chairman, a post traditionally held by men, and is also her husband's partner in the real estate business. She is unopposed. MISS ELIZABETH HAWKES, Tenth District, Wisconsin (primary August 15), is a practicing attorney. She plans a vigorous campaign. She is unopposed in the primary. June-July, 1944 Page Seven Convention Headlines From the Past... By FRANCES G. SATTERFIELD MRS. CHARLES W. TILLETT Assistant Chairman of the Democratic National Committee DEMOCRATIC women will start this biggest of all women's campaign years at the Chicago convention. Approximately 500 women will be delegates and alternates. The women of the party have been given equal representation on the Executive Committee--the Committee which plans and directs the convention. And they have been assured an equal voice with the men on the important Platform and Resolutions Committee, as well as participation on all of the other major convention committees. Playing a leading role in national politics is no new story for them, for Democratic women were active in party work years before they could all vote, and women have been attending conventions as delegates for thirty-six years. This year, however, pre-convention indications are that women's opinions will count for more, and their influence will be more widely felt than ever before. First, they will again sit in equal numbers with the men on the Platform and Resolutions Committee. Democratic women won this right for the initial time in 1940, although they had been admitted as alternate members to the platform deliberations in 1936. It was not until this year's convention--1944-- that the Republican party permitted a woman from each state to serve on this significant, policy-making committee. Second, two women have a major part in the business of the convention--Mrs. Charles W. Tillett, first woman elected Assistant Chairman of the National Committee, who will head women's participation both at the convention and in the campaign, and Mrs. Dorothy McElroy Vredenburgh, 28-year-old Alabama Young Democrat, who is the first woman ever named Secretary of any National Committee. At the present time, Mrs. Vredenburgh is also National President of the Young Democrats. She has been in Chicago for weeks arranging for the convention. Both Mrs. Tillett and Mrs. Vredenburgh will likewise be Temporary Officers of the convention when it opens. This will be the first time that a woman has served as Assistant Temporary Chairman or as Temporary Secretary at a convention. And finally, women in equal numbers with the men sat on the Arrangements Committee which planned the convention. These women met with the men members of the committee in Chicago several weeks before the convention opened to choose the keynoter and help decide other matters. 1908 Opened the Door Women's role in 1944 is a far cry from that momentous convention day in 1908 when five women delegates appeared in Denver to present their credentials. The women who paved the way were Mrs. Sarah H. Ventress and Mrs. H. J. Hayward of Utah; Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford and Mrs. Catherine Cook of Denver; and Mrs. Harriet J. Hood of Wyoming. They represented Western states which allowed women to vote long before a national suffrage law gave all women that privilege--and responsibility. In 1912 Mrs. Anna B. Spitzer of Colorado Springs was a delegate and Miss Gene Kelly an alternate for Colorado when the convention which nominated Woodrow Wilson met in Baltimore. Miss May Awkwright Hutton of Washington State was likewise a delegate at this convention. When 1916 came around people had become aware of the rising demand of women for suffrage. Already Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, California, Kansas, Oregon, Arizona, Montana, Nevada and Alaska had granted women the right to vote, and Illinois has yielded on presidential voting at least. As a result, when the convention met in St. Louis 16 women delegates and 8 alternated voted in the balloting that nominated President Wilson for a second term. Miss Mary Foy of California had the distinction of serving on the important Credentials Committee. "Women's States" Won in '16 Among the ardent women workers in the party at this time was Mrs. George Bass, who was among those sent to notify President Wilson of his renomination, and who had become chairman of the new Woman's Bureau of the Democratic National Committee in 1916. Since only women in the Western states could vote, Mrs. Bass was in the Chicago headquarters during the campaign, but in 1917 established offices in Washington, D. C. Incidentally, it was the Western states--Mrs. Bass' "women's states"-- which won the election for President Wilson. The Democratic convention had gone on record in 1916 favoring woman's suffrage, and on September 30, 1918, President Wilson himself made a personal appeal to the Senate to pass the resolution making the Nineteenth Amendment a possibility. Republican Senators Borah and Wadsworth were the only Senators representing suffrage states who voted against it. When it was finally passed, it was too late for the 1919 legislatures to act on it, and the women despondently wondered whether they would have any real say-so in the 1920 convention and election. A Say in Party Affairs by 1919 In January, 1918, however, Mrs. Bass had offered a resolution at the meeting of the Democratic National Committee Page Eight The Democratic Digest to appoint women as associate members from each state, and at the 1920 convention in San Francisco the gallery just above the platform was assigned to these associate members of the National Committee. Mrs. Bass sat on the platform below them. One day the gavel was handed to her to preside over a session--a distinct tribute to the "Lady Democrats," as many then called them. Twenty-five states and territories had sent women as delegates and six others had sent women alternates--about 300 in all. Fifteen women were on the roster of officers of the convention, and about 30 had places on committees. It was also at this convention that Mrs. Izetta Jewel Miller seconded the nomination of John W. Davis for the Presidency--another first for women. Among other contributions, the women had drawn up and submitted four planks for the Platform Committee. When Senator Carter Glass read the platform with these four planks he leaned forward and shouted, "And if there is anything else the women want, we are here to give it to them." Unfortunately, it was not as easy as that. This same convention, however, was urged by Attorney General Homer S. Cummings to go home and adopted the "50-50" plan of organization, giving women equal representation with men in all party councils. Throughout the convention there was an undercurrent of excitement as the women worked for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, impressing upon all the delegates the necessity of having their states ratify it if they had not already done so. One of the most active workers was Miss Charl Ormond Williams, delegate from Tennessee, who had been elected to serve with Cordell Hull on the Democratic National Committee, and who was later the first woman Vice Chairman of any major political party. After the convention she went on to Dayton, Ohio, to attend the notification ceremony of Governor John M. Cox, and it was there that she received a telegram from the Governor of Tennessee telling her he was afraid Tennessee was not going to ratify the amendment and to come at once. By then, thirty-five states had ratified, and one more would give women of the United States the vote. Miss Williams hurried home and became chairman of a steering committee which pushed the amendment through to victory on August 18, 1920. Thus, sixteen million women achieved voting status. "None—Thank God!" In the spring of 1922, Mrs. Emily Newell Blair came into the Women's Division of the National Committee to build up an organization for the coming congressional campaign. As is often the case in political organizations, all of Mrs. Bass' records had been destroyed, and Mrs. Blair began to build from scratch. She wasn't exactly swamped with encouragement. Out of 3,000 letters she sent to county chairmen asking for the names of women on their committees, she received seven replies. Of these, one said, "None, thank God!" while another said "We haven't any, and don't propose to have any." It was the Democratic women's clubs that got to work and got out the women's vote that year. Mrs. Blair refused to be discouraged easily, however, and so at a meeting of the National Committee which preceded the 1924 convention she asked that the states name eight MRS. DOROTHY McELROY VREDENBURGH Secretary of the Democratic National Committee delegates-at-large to the convention, each with one-half vote, and that half of these delegates be women. Her resolution was passed and a total of 492 delegates and alternates were on hand when the convention opened at Madison Square Garden that June. Ideas on Issues? Of Course! The women had their own Platform Committee, and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was chairman. She tells the story of sitting all night outside the closed door of the room where the Platform Committee was meeting, waiting to get some man to take her sheet of paper inside to present the women's suggestions to the committee. It was at this convention that many precedents were broken. Mrs. LeRoy Springs of South Carolina was not only made Chairman of the Credentials Committee, but her fellow delegates placed her name in nomination for Vice President. Mrs. Blair was the first woman to be elected First Vice Chairman of the National Committee and she served as head of the Women's Division from 1922 till 1928. Before the convention at Houston in 1929, a resolution was passed by the National Committee asking that women be admitted to membership on the Platform Committee, but that was still more than the men were willing to grant and nothing came of it. Ex-Governor Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming, now Director of the United States Mint, was elected First Vice Chairman in 1928 and succeeded Mrs. Blair as Director of the Women's Division. With her came Miss Sue White of Tennessee as Executive Secretary. The women who were active in party circles became (Continued on page 33) June-July, 1944 Page Nine VOTES FOR WOMEN?—Twenty-five years ago scenes like this were not unusual as women campaigned earnestly for the right to cast their ballot. Milestones In Democratic Women's Progress— In Their Party . . . . and Their Government 1869—Wyoming gave women the vote for the first time. The bill was introduced by William H. Bright, President of the Democratic Council, at the instigation of his wife and her friend, Mrs. Esther Morris. This was at the very first Territorial council session— 21 years before Wyoming was admitted to statehood. 1908—Women attended Democratic National Convention in Denver as delegates for the first time in either political party. 1914—Colorado became first state to give women equal representation with men on political party committees. Law passed after statewide campaign waged by Democratic women. 1916—Women's political influence recognized by Democratic party when Woman's Bureau of Democratic National Committee was established to work with women in the Western states where they had the vote. President Wilson made a number of outstanding women's appointments, most important of which were: Mrs. Annette Abbott Adams, Assistant, Attorney General; Miss Mable Boardman, Commissioner, District of Columbia; and Mrs. Helen Gardener, Commissioner, United States Civil Service Commission. (Mrs. Lucille Foster McMillin now holds the post of U. S. Civil Service Commissioner.) 1918—September 30. President Wilson made a personal appeal to the Senate in favor of woman suffrage. 1919—The executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, anticipating the ratification of the Constitutional Amendment permitting women to vote, voted on September 27, 1919, to admit women to membership. It was not until four years later that the Republicans gave women this recognition. 1920—Women became associate members of the Democratic National Committee, and had a special reserved section at the San Francisco convention—four years ahead of the Republicans. At one session Mrs. George Bass presented. Women delegates served on committees and as convention officers, and Mrs. Izetta Jewel Miller seconded the nomination of John W. Davis for President. Women also presented their platform planks to the convention. Miss Charl Ormond Williams was elected Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee- the first woman of any political party so honored. August 18. Nineteenth Amendment became law when Tennessee ratified the amendment, making it possible for 16 million women to vote. 1924—Democratic National Committee passed resolution asking states to send eight delegates-at-large to convention— half of them to be women. First Democratic woman elected to Congress—Mrs. Mary T. Norton of New Jersey. Later (1931) she was first woman to serve as chairman of a House Committee. Since 1937 she has been chairman of the powerful House Labor Committee. Page Ten The Democratic Digest Mrs. LeRoy Springs of South Carolina served as first woman chairman of Credential Committee, and was also the first woman presented for the Vice Presidency. At this convention the women had their own Platform Committee, with Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt as chairman. 1925—First woman elected governor of a state—Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross, Wyoming. 1932—First woman elected to United States Senate—Mrs. Hattie W. Caraway, Arkansas. First woman named member of Platform Committee— Mrs. Jean Springstead Whitemore, Puerto Rico. 1933-1944—Firsts for Women in Federal Appointments Under Roosevelt Administration: First woman member of a President's Cabinet—Miss Frances Perkins. First woman U. S. Minister (to Denmark)—Mrs. Ruth Bryan Owen Rohde. (Second woman U. S. Minister to Norway—Mrs. J. Borden Harriman.) First woman Director of the U. S. Mint—Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross. First woman Assistant Secretary of U. S. Treasury— Miss Josephine Roche. First woman U. S. Assistant Treasurer—Mrs. Blair Banister. First woman appointed to U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals—Miss Florence Allen. First woman member of Social Security Board—Miss Mary W. Dewson. (Second woman, Mrs. Ellen S. Woodward, now holds the post.) Chairman, Consumers' Advisory Board, NRA—Mrs. Emily Newell Blair. First woman named U. S. Delegate to United Nations Conference—Miss Josephine Schain, Conference on Food and Agriculture. Mrs. Ellen S. Woodward and Mrs. Elizabeth Conkey named U. S. Delegates to United Nations Conference on Relief and Rehabilitation. Dean C. Mildred Thompson named U. S. Delegate to Conference of Allied Ministers of Education in London. Only woman member of the National Defense Advisory Commission, first defense agency set up by the President in 1940—Miss Harriet Elliott. First woman member of U. S. Court of Tax Appeals— Miss Marion Harron. First woman member U. S. Employment Compensation Commission—Mrs. Jewell W. Swofford. 1936—Philadelphia convention passed resolution requesting each state to appoint a member and alternate to Platform Committee—of opposite sex. 1940—Chicago convention passed resolution asking each state to appoint two members of Platform Committee— one to be a woman. For the first time a woman made a major speech to a national convention—Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. For the first time the Director of the Women's Division addressed a national convention on policy—Mrs. Thomas F. McAllister. 1943—Mrs. Charles W. Tillett elected Assistant Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, the first woman so honored. 1944—Mrs. Dorothy McElroy Vredenburgh appointed Secretary of the Democratic National Committee, the first woman to hold this post. VOTES FOR WOMEN!—In November scenes like this will be enacted millions of times over as women—outnumbering men for the first time in history—cast the majority of the ballots. VOTE HERE June-July, 1944 Page Eleven The Farmer... Yesterday–Today and Tomorrow By Senator Samuel D. Jackson of Indiana The Democratic party has taken the farmer off the road to ruin. It has returned him to the highway which leads to freedom and prosperity and it will keep him on that way. Platform Promises ... and Performance At the turn of 1932, the American farmer, affording to the nation its basic industry, yet sorely distressed, looked beseechingly toward the Democratic National convention and hopefully awaited its agricultural platform. He was not disappointed. He was offered constitutional measures that could bring him, for his basic farm commodities, prices in excess of cost. He was assured complete restoration of agriculture, better financing of farm mortgages, the extension and development of the farm cooperative movement, and efficient control of crop surpluses. The spirit of these pledges was made the letter of their fulfillment. Four years later, the farmer approached the portals of the Philadelphia Democratic National convention with confidence. The agricultural plant of the 1936 platform favored judicious commodity loans on seasonal surpluses and assistance, within federal authority, enabling the farmer to adjust and balance production with demand, at a fair profit. These objectives, too, were achieved. The 1940 Democratic platform dealt at length with "the land and the farmer." It emphasized that the economic survival of the family-sized farm was of paramount importance. It recognized that although the existence of the American farm is affected by the vicissitudes of the market, crop rotation and diversification, weather hazards, insect plagues, and the like, still all farmers could be aided and millions saved by the strong arm of our party, extended with sympathetic purpose through the processes of governmental administration. Time proved these concepts to be sound. Yesterday ... Disaster Ahead Twelve years ago, agriculture was on the brink of ruin. All of our citizens were then crowded to the precipice, but the farmer stood nearest the edge. His prices were at ruinous depths–only 62 per cent of what they had been before World War I. His cash receipts were down to four billion plus–less than one-half what they had been three years previously. Farm foreclosures were rampant. The farmer's family was forced from the furrow to the bread line. Many of those who remained on the soil earned a bare subsistence. Farm fertility was drained. Conservation and fertilization were unthinkable. Mountains of cheap cotton, corn and wheat, did neither the farmer nor the city man any good, for hungry masses could not buy. Uncontrolled surpluses were waste rather than abundance. Everything was gone except the strong heart of the American farmer and his faith in the Democratic party. That dozen of years ago, what eye could have seen the war clouds of World War II? What ear could have heard the cannon's roar? What prophetic vision could have told us what lay in our path? Some have said this is a war of the factory and the production line. But when the war shall have been won, as won it will be, the American farmer will be entitled to the first and best of the glory for victory on an equal footing with our heroic men-at-arms and our valiant production workers. Today ... A New High in Prosperity Agriculture has shattered all records for war food production. The millions in our armed forces are the best fed and clothed in the world. The farmer has sent food for our Allies overseas in quantities that meant salvation. Meanwhile, civilians have had better diets than ever before. The Democratic party is justly proud of its well rounded national farm program. By it, the farmer has life himself out of that worst depression. He has regained his firm footing in the national economy. His soil and his production resources are in order. By means of this program, he has not only met the challenge of war, but he has fortified himself against the years ahead. He is ready for the reconstruction and the peace! Last calendar year, the agricultural production was nearly 30 per cent higher than the average for the last five previous pre-war years, and nearly one-half larger than the average during the first World War. The average of all farm prices in 1943 was 182 per cent above that of 1932, and greater than the 1917-18 average. The farmer's cash receipts reached the all-time record of 19 billion dollars plus, an increase of more than 300 per cent above 1932, and nearly 60 per cent above the 1917-18 average. Because of national price control, the buying power of 1943 farm income was 75 per cent higher than in 1917 and 1918. A Sound Program ... Striking Results The secret of the farmer's comparative prosperity has been the fact that the program of this Administration was directed toward fundamentals. It aimed at helping the farmer build a sound, productive and flexible system of agriculture. True, some of the early measures were temporary emergency steps; some were outmoded by fast-changing world patterns. But as a whole, our program was centered constantly at one target; namely, balanced abundance of production and fair returns to the farmer in the market place. The blueprints called for equality of opportunity and a just basis of cooperation with industry and labor. We built a permanent nationwide farm program, including conservation of resources. Soil conservation and soil fertility walked with seven-league boots. New seedings of legumes and grasses were made on more than 38 million acres in a single year. Application of lime and fertilizer involved 20 million tons. The farmer made better use of his land. By the spring of 1944, over 1000 democratic, locally controlled soil conservation districts had been established. They covered over two and a half million farms with a combined area of more than half a billion acres. Fertility stored in the soil by conservation programs brought the harvest of farm production for present war years. This conservation work, in contrast to what occurred through page Twelve The Democratic Digest World War I, enabled the farmer to care for his soil while producing nearly half again as much as he did during that war period. Cash ... and Credit The program reached for needed cash and placed it back into the farmer's pocket. Meanwhile, this Administration was finding good markets for him at protected prices. Government payments to the farmer supplemented his income, helping him to make adjustments in his farming patterns, the while improving the good earth. Commodity loans enable farmers to hold surplus production off the markets in time of plenty and save these surpluses for the time of need. This is the ever-normal granary principle at work through our governmental processes. Corn and wheat in the farmer's granary enabled him to make the first great upward surge in meat, milk and egg production when the world plague of war engulfed us. The fact is that through the end of 1943, commodity loans had totaled more than three and three-fourths billion dollars. In 1933 farmers were in desperate need of credit of all types. Emergency financing was the first step. Mortgage foreclosures had to be stopped and working capital was requisite to further existence. This Administration met the challenge of those cruel circumstances. The Farm Credit Administration made production loans and long term loans to farmers on a sound business basis at fair interest rates. This system is now a vital part of this nation's armament for war and assurance for peace. During World War I, there was a devastating increase in long term debts–too late appreciated. Now with the encouragement of the Farm Credit System, the farmer is reducing his mortgage indebtedness out of his improved income. He is ready to meet the post-war period. Not all farmers were in a position to obtain commercial loans. Agencies of the Farm Credit System offered many of these farmers needed emergency loans. The farmer is back on his feet, and, like the good citizen he is, is paying off his debt with regular and easy stride. Up to the beginning of this year, the Farm Security Administration made loans totaling over 800 million dollars to nearly one million farmers who were unable to get credit elsewhere. These farmers were good risks. More than 86 per cent of the principal has been repaid. During the recent war years, this Administration's loans and purchase program has walked step by step at the farmer's side. Electricity Extended During the early 1930's, everyone had electric power, it seemed, except the farmer, and if anyone in our economy needed it, it was he. By the end of last year, nearly half the farmers of this country were equipped with electric lights and power. This can be largely credited to the efforts of this Administration through its Rural Electrification program. The government advanced 480 million dollars in loans. These were used to build 400 thousand miles of distribution lines, servicing well over 100 million rural consumers. This extension of power is realized by the farmer far beyond his power to express appreciation. This work of the present Administration alone would merit the farmer's vote of approval and demand for its uninterrupted continuation. Wider Markets at Home and Abroad Throughout all the twelve years of the Administration of the Democratic party, ways have been found to increase markets for farm production. Research was intensified in both production and marketing fields. The result outstrips the magic and the miracles of the ancients. Programs to enlarge both home and foreign markets developed into enormous efforts such as the food stamp plan, school lunch programs, direct purchases for Lend-Lease, and the line. Through all of this, it has been brought about that the farmer has had the major voice in running his own affairs and controlling his own destiny. From the beginning, the farmer and his organizations have helped build the national farm program, have participated in its decisions, and have played a major role in administering it. The American farmer has risen. This he has done on his own power. But his rise was made possible by the national farm policy of the present Administration in Washington. The farmers of that policy, placed in a position of governmental authority by the instrumentality of the Democratic party, had learned and understood the farming problem. They recognized the principle of equality for agriculture. The same sound policies that enabled the farmer to meet the test of war will enable I'm to meet the problems of the years ahead. There is no more patriotic citizen in this Republic than the farmer. He has given his sons to the wars. He has sent his daughters to the industries. He has bought War Bonds. He has prospered his country by his industry, he has honored it by his integrity, and he has strengthened it with his fidelity. The Farmer Will Not Forget Some men fear that the American farmer is ungrateful to this Administration for what it has given him. We do not believe that. The American farmer will remember the Democratic party and its co-partnership with him when election day rolls around in November. Memo to the American Farmer– During these war years you've not only fed America– and fed her well–but you've gone a long way toward sustaining her fighting Allies. The amount of food you've harvested have been stupendous–almost unbelievable. And you've done it with manpower and machinery shortages, and under wartime handicaps. You deserve full credit for this magnificent achievement. But–weren't you better able to reach these greatest production goals in history– and as a result double farm income–because nine years of the Roosevelt Administration had: Give you a backlog through the Ever-Normal Granary Program? Protected the fertility of your land through soil conservation? Found markets for your products? Saved thousands of your homes from mortgage foreclosures, and reduced mortgages on your farms to their lowest point in years? Put thousands of acres of arid land under irrigation? Furnished you credit at a rate of interest you could afford to pay? Made it possible for thousands of you who were tenants to own your own farms? Resettled and rehabilitated many of you who needed assistance? Electrified hundreds of thousands of your homes and barns? And right now, you have a post-war guarantee, through the Commodity Credit Corporation, of support prices for at least two years after the war, and, because of this Administration's foreign policy, of world markets for your products. THE WORKING MAN ... Yesterday- Today and Tomorrow By SENATOR ELBERT D. THOMAS of Utah. THE war and post-war problems are of such vital interest to us all that we are prone to be thoughtless of the past. That is especially true for those of us who have steady jobs, good wages and healthful working conditions. But, after all, the present and the future can be but a promise. It is from the past that we must get our assurances and from which we must plan our accomplishments When people are thoughtless of the past and not worried about the future, they are generally content with the present. That contentment may cause us to forget. What shall I say, therefore, is said "lest we forget." The Working Man in '33 Contentment among workers was completely lacking in 1933. There was unemployment. There was the kick-back. There were long hours and low wages. Industry, agriculture and mining were, in the sight of the law, of purely local concern, and the federal government seemed to have no interest in the problems of workers in any fields excepting those of foreign and interstate commerce. A legalistic attitude had tied our minds to such an extent that we thought it more important to have respect for a legal fiction which had no basis in fact than to provide for the general welfare of the people. Then, with a change in our national leadership, there came, in rapid succession, a change in attitudes. The kick-back was prohibited. The National Labor Relations Act, which gave workers the right to bargain collectively, and the Wage and Hour Act, which put a floor under wages and a ceiling on hours, came into existence. Social Security laws were enacted. All were sustained by the Supreme Court. The theory, therefore, that something could be done to provide better attitudes, better wages and hours, better working conditions and security for collective bargaining became a reality. Sentiment was brought to focus against company-controlled unions, and civil liberties were made a fact in our national life instead of an oft- forgotten theory. The worker was "freed," if I may use that expression, by having his labor and tools recognized as capital which should be protected. It is a far cry back to the day when the eight-hour law for miners was contested no the score that not to allow a miner to work twelve or fifteen hours a day, if he chose, was destructive of his liberties. Other person's liberties were forgotten. Freedom for one is only proper and possible in society so long as such freedom does not interfere with the freedom of others. It is now recognized by the state and by society that a tired worker is a hazard to his fellow workers. Society believes, too, that it is well to measure labor by its results, production and accomplishments. Labor as a War Asset It is in the light of those accomplishments that I want to measure labor as an asset to our great country in this time of stress. Never has a country produced as America has done in getting ready for and in fighting this war. Never has a country responded as the 130 million Americans have responded to a unified endeavor to destroy the wrongdoers among nations and the aggressive leaders in those nations. No one can, therefore, doubt the ultimate outcome of this great war. When President Roosevelt called the Industry-Labor Conference following Pearl Harbor and my motion in the conference that there should be no strikes or lockouts and that all disputes should be settled by peaceful means became the order of the day, a new type of unity came into our land -- a unity which can only be recognized by a deep student of history who knows its great lack in times before the present, even during war times. I can hear someone say, "But the promise not to strike has not prevented strikes." Of course it hasn't! There have been "quickies," there have been the equivalents of the "sit- downs" and there have been some major strikes. Human nature, our economic life, the complexities of industrial labor relations and advantage-taking among leaders can never be overcome by a promise. But certain ideals were set, and those ideals have been respected by large majority of the workers. The strikes that have occurred have made headlines, and some people in this country have tried to make political capital out of them. Everyone agrees there should be no strikes in wartime. But when we consider strikes, let us consider them against the whole picture of labor's record in wartime. When we do that, we find that man-hours lost on account of strikes, taken all together, are a very small fraction of the total man-hours worked in war industries. We find that less than one-fourth of one per cent of the manpower actually used in war production has been lost by strikes in this war. And at the same time we find that labor has increased its productive hours by more than 75 per cent. Few people realize how well the machinery for settling wartime labor disputes without strikes or lockouts has been working. The National War Labor Board, created by the President after the Pearl Harbor Industry-Labor Conference, and entrusted by Congress in the War Labor Disputes Act with the administration of the program for settling disagreements between labor and management, has quietly settled more than 6,700 dispute cases since it was established. But these are not figures for headlines. I think it can be said -- and said unhesitatingly -- that labor has made a tremendous contribution to the success of this war. To the working man -- together with the men of industry and of government -- goes the credit for the magnificent number of planes and tanks and guns that are flowing out to all battlefronts to the soldiers of all of our Allies as well as our own. I think it can be said, too, that the Roosevelt Administration helped unite the worker with his employer in this tremendously great war effort, and thus helped to make the production record possible. Page Fourteen The Democratic Digest Labor's Rights Are Secure Labor's problems no longer concern the gaining of certain rights. Those rights are with us in law, and now, thank goodness, in custom. It was interesting to note how a great gathering like the International Labor Conference at Philadelphia said so little about the problems of collective bargaining, and wages and hours, and the rights of labor; yet said so much, in contrast, about the welfare of the laborer, about his education, housing, social security, his leisure time and vocational guidance, health and general welfare. The year 1944, when compared with 1933, viewed in the light of attitudes as far as the worker is concerned, is as different as day is from night. All of the problems are not settled, but the 50 million American workers know what they did not know in 1933. They know that under the Roosevelt Administration their rights have been made secure. They know that their welfare is of vital concern to their government. They know, too, that the welfare of labor is a concern of most of the other governments of the world. And because of all this, they know that such an objective as full employment, for example, is no longer considered an idle dream; it is now in the definite realm of possibility for the future. Labor Has Come Through When this war came on, labor, like every other group of patriotic Americans, put aside many of its peacetime standards. They have stayed long hours at jobs that have been hard, have been nerve-wracking, having been back-breaking. They've done it without complaining. And they've done it not without sacrifice. Have you ever consulted anyone who knows about the hazards of industry under war pressure when untrained employes come into industrial life? If you have, I think you discovered that since the war began there have already been over 30,000 persons who have lost their lives in war industry and over 200,000 more who have been permanently injured. Those persons represent quite a sacrifice in the war effort. Let us give credit where credit is due. Without those sacrifices, the tremendous production which has assured victory for us could not have been accomplished. We have used the term "total war," and every speaker who advocates the sale of War Bonds points out to us, who are potential Bond buyers, that our money is needed to support the boys at the front. Just how long would those boys at the front last if they didn't have the home support? What good is an army without its reserves? What good is a navy without its home-manufactured supplies? Where can we draw the line between the person who is giving his all in the war effort and the person who is holding back? The line must be drawn between individuals. It is the only one that should separate a slacker from one who is willingly doing his duty. What of Tomorrow? There are going to be many problems for the worker to face after this war is over -- big problems. The question, of course, which is uppermost in the minds of everyone who is now in a war plant is "what about my job when we stop making planes and tanks and guns?" The Administration has done a great deal of thinking and planning for the days after the war. The Baruch plan, for instance, draws up a full demobilization blueprint for the change-over of both men and machines from war to peace. Any plan which provides for the speedy reconversion of industry from war to peacetime production provides from the speedy making of jobs. As war plants shut down, of course, there are bound to be lags in employment as we tool up for peace. For this period there is already one big accomplished fact for the workers --- unemployment insurance. Under which philosophy of government do you think a working man and woman would be safer in post-war America -- the philosophy of the Roosevelt Administration which made possible the unemployment insurance which is going to tide him over the reconversion period ahead, or the philosophy of the Republican party which demonstrated in 1931 and 1932 that its solution for a problem of this kind was to turn the worker over to community charity--- to the breadlines and the soup kitchen? In the last twelve years the people of America have gained back confidence in their government. It has accomplished much for their welfare, and they have faith that it can accomplish more. Particularly does the working man have faith in his government today. He remembers that in 1933 the cries of the unemployed and distressed were not uttered in vain. He remembers that when they asked for bread they were not given a stone. He knows that under this Administration the working man has gone forward to new horizons and to greater self-respect. The Roosevelt Administration has remained constant in its endeavor to expand the people's welfare. The people, I believe, will remain constant in support of that Administration. Memo to the Working Man ---- Tojo and Hitler guessed wrong. They did not know that free labor--- working hand in hand with free industry --- could out-work and out-produce the men and women of any dictatorship. They know now how wrong they were as the tanks made in Detroit and the airplanes made in Seattle and the guns made in Rock Island are blasting them into retreat in Normandy and Russia and on Saipan. American labor has delivered in this war. All America realizes this. But, isn't it true --- you working men and women ---- that you have been better able to deliver because this Administration had: Bettered your working conditions? Abolished the sweat shop? Furnished you with bargaining tools? Put a floor under wages and a ceiling on hours? Given many of you better housing? Translated civil liberties into reality? Assured you security in your old age, and unemployment insurance when you need it? Made your paycheck go further by holding down the cost of living, and made your savings safer by its unrelenting battle on all fronts against inflation? And finally --- Given you new and increased self-respect? There are two philosophies of government in this country. One --- the philosophy of the Democratic party --- has given more to those who had too little. The other --- the philosophy of the Republican party --- has given more to those who already had an abundance. Today, the Democratic party looks to the future in terms of the right of all to a remunerative job, to adequate food and clothing, to a decent home, to protection from the economic fears of old age. The Republican party, keeping very quiet about its past, says it looks to the future in the same terms as the Democratic party, but that "it can do everything better." Under which party --- and which philosophy --- do you think the working man and woman of America could face the future with the most confidence? June-July, 1944 Page Fifteen THE BUSINESS MAN . . . Yesterday-Today and Tomorrow By SENATOR HARRY S. TRUMAN of Missouri FOR twelve long years this country of ours has heard the reverberations of warnings of disaster to our economic way of life. These warnings have proved to be only the echoes of the voices of the princes of privilege who exploited America under the protective wings of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Let us pause and look back to March 4, 1933. On that day a man of destiny became the President of the United States. When he took office the industrial giant which is America was shackled in the chains of economic chaos and depression. Tools of production which had made this nation great were idle. The business was bankrupt. Farm prices were at rock bottom. People were starving in the midst of plenty. The greatest army of unemployed in our history was walking the highways and byways of our land. There was fear that democratic government could not survive in the face of economic crisis. Stability and Economic Security With inspired leadership, Franklin Roosevelt proceeded on the foundation that the only thing to fear was fear itself. Boldy and almost overnight he restored the financial structure of this nation and brought the real meaning of free enterprise into being once again. Out of the dark shadows of the conditions that necessitated the banking holiday he guided this nation to financial stability and for the first time provided economic security for all-producers and consumers alike. By rescuing the farmers from bankruptcy, by putting millions of people back to work, he restored to the business man his greatest market. Legislation was immediately passed revamping the whole banking structure and insuring deposits up to $5,000. The Securities and Exchange Commission was created to assure investors and legitimate business that they would no longer be a prey to speculators and the manipulations of special interests. Direct loans were made to business, both large and small, through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Long-term, low-interest loans stimulated private investment, particularly in the construction industry. In every possible way this Administration strengthened the entire economic structure upon which business rests. What About Free Enterprise? Yet for twelve long years we have heard that industry and free enterprise have been strangled by this Administration. What are the facts? In the nine years immediately preceding this war the rate of growth in number of business enterprises was greater than in any period since 1900. The number of business firms per capita was at an all-time high. We hear much about the good old days of the 1920's and about the prosperity of those years. If we look back now we realize all too well that it was prosperity for the few, and pittance for the many. The American people will never again put up with that for the simple reason that they cannot afford to-either as a nation or as individuals. The Democratic party has always stood for the principles of free enterprise, for the belief that all men should have the same equal chance in this nation of ours to share in the good things of life to be earned through hard work. Free enterprise does not mean that the privileged few are free to exploit the many. Free enterprise does not mean that the privileged few may be free to charge exorbitant prices and to pay substandard wages. The Democratic party has always stood for a good, sound economic business system for the United states, based upon the principle that each individual is free to have his own business and enjoy the fruit of his endeavors and labor. Every care has always been taken in setting up our tax programs so that business would be given a chance to grow and that funds would be available for future development. These things the Democratic party intends to incorporate in any legislation to be written in the future. We want to protect business. But we shall not grant special privileges to monopoly. Was This Ruin? In restoring confidence and prosperity the President with his sound leadership has overlooked no segment of our society. the interests of every group were considered and aided. There are those who assert that business under Roosevelt has been ruined. Just what form did this "ruin" take? Business activity in 1933 increased 10.5 per cent over 1932. In 1934 another increase do 8 per cent was made. In 1935 business was 4.5 per cent higher in the early months and stepped up in the later months to 17 per cent over the same months in 1934. Business in 1936 showed further progress with an increase of 16 per cent over 1935. Again in 1937 a 6 per cent increase was shown. The past five years have shown so much business expansion that it is not necessary to quote statistics to any reasonable man. Our national income in 1943 reached the staggering figure of 150 billion dollars, almost four times the 40 billions in 1932, the last year of the Hoover Administration. Does this sound like ruin? The magnificent record of this Administration cannot be discredited by the carping of a small group of selfish men. The facts cannot be denied—the record speaks for itself. Capital has been provided for the stimulation of all branches of industry; banking and finance have been put on sure footing. The small business men of the nation have been given loans on a businesslike basis. Under the provisions of the RFC Act, individual loans had been made to approximately 19,000 loans were for amounts of $100,000 or less. Page Sixteen The Democratic Digest That Post-War Reserve Question Some corporations have tried to convince the American people that taxation will not leave them enough to stay in business after this war. Witness the recent testimony of the Under Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson. He testified that by the end of next year the large corporations will have a post-war reserve of more than 42 billion dollars. Think of it! Two billion more than our national income of 1932! This reserve is larger than the public debt was at the time the President was using public funds to put this country—including the corporations—back on its feet. Industry Was Ready for War Because of the leadership of a great President it was possible for American industry to regain strength and economic vigor following the dark days of 1932. It was upon this strength and vigor that our production has been built—a production which has given us such fabulous figures as 184,000 airplanes, 60,000 tanks, almost 37 million tons of shipping, and 31 billion rounds of small arms ammunition—a production that spells doom to our enemies. Friend of Little Business Throughout this period of war this Administration has been watching out for the interests of the little business man. The war has been a difficult time for some small businesses. For this reason the Administration has made grants available to those plants which could not produce war products. These grants have come from the RFC, the Defense Plants Corporation and the Smaller War Plants Corporation. The Smaller War Plants Corporation was set up by legislation with the one thought in mind of keeping the little men going through these difficult times when small plants manufacturing for civilian needs have suffered. But this Democratic Administration is determined that this small business will be given every opportunity to get back on its feet and become again one of the solid foundations of America. Determined also that small business shall not be discriminated against in the conversion from war to peace production, the Administration has already provided that government loan agencies shall provide assistance to small business for war demobilization, contract terminations and conversion to peacetime operations. Unwinding America From War The problem of converting America from war to peace is one to which this Administration has given deep thought and study. The Special Senate Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, which I have the honor to head, has made extensive studies in this field. The reports of the National Resources Planning Board, which the President sent to Congress, make special recommendations on the transition period. The Baruch Report, which was made public in February of this year, charts a course for us to follow. Every effort is being made to prepare to swing America's vast war machine from wartime to peacetime production in as orderly and systemic a way as possible—and as soon as reports from the battlefronts make it safe for us to do so. For example, war contracts will be rescinded as soon as goods are no longer needed, contracts already under way or partly completed will be paid for immediately so business will have working capital for pay rolls and purchasing material, surplus war property will be disposed of, and provisions will be made for liberal credit to manufacturers resuming civilian production. This Administration has already set up machinery to do some of these things. Legislation now before Congress will enable it to do others. You can be sure that the Administration which wound America up to war with such speed and efficiency can be trusted to unwind it for peace. Business Confidence American business has every reason for confidence in the Democratic Administration and its proud record of twelve years of achievement under President Roosevelt. That achievement has heartened our Allies and put strange fears in the heart of the Nazi and Japanese aggressors. They had not believed that America could turn from peacetime production with such speed to become the arsenal of democracy. Business, management and labor are to be congratulated on this all-out effort that is now sending into the battlefields of the world the finest equipment to the fighting men of America and our Allies. Memo to the Business Man— When business was completely prostrated in 1933, it called loudly to the government for help. And it got that help, bth by such direct methods as a revamped banking system and loans to business, and indirectly by increased foreign trade, and increased consumer purchasing power. In 1936 we had what the newspapers were calling "Roosevelt Recovery," and by 1940 financial pages were commenting that never had there been three successive years when the average profit of industry had been as high. Then came the war. And American business and industry, strengthened and revitalized after nine years of the Roosevelt Administration, were ready for a production job that will go down in history as one of the miracles of these fighting years. To the men and women of business and industry who blueprinted and directed them, and to the men and women of labor who turned them into the weapons that are winning the war—the entire world is grateful. Even in a democracy at war it has been necessary to place upon you, as upon the whole country, many restrictions. And yet these restrictions—including price control—have not hurt business. Your profits are at an all-time high, after taxes. Business failures are at an all-time low. In many ways, in fact, price control has helped you. For example, it has kept down the cost of many of the materials you must buy to turn out tanks and planes and guns. It has kept down the prices of the necessities everyone must buy. But, most important of all, price control and the whole Administration program to prevent inflation and the resulting post-war deflation is one of your best guarantees of continued prosperity after the war. One more thing. When President Roosevelt asked business and industry to take on the stupendous production job needed to win the war, he called many of your own leaders to Washington to direct it. They are still here. They are not only directing the job of producing for war, but they are helping to make the plans that will reconvert your business or your plant to peace. Your balance sheets don't lie. How would they tell you to vote? June-July, 1944 Page Seventeen The A, B, C's of Our Foreign Policy Built on the Past, Apace with the Present, and Keyed to the Future, This Administration's Record in International Relations Has Been Courageous, Forthright, and Clearly Defined. By JOSEPHINE SCHAIN ON D-Day the thoughts and prayers of all America were with the fighting men of our invasion forces as they splashed out of the Channel waters onto the sands of Normandy. They knew that in establishing a beachhead these men were paying the great price that freedom might be maintained in the world. Stores closed, sports events were cancelled -- all sensed that it was no time for bands and hurrahs. It was a time for heart searchings and resolution. A heavy responsibility rested upon the shoulders of the middle-aged because millions of young men were again paying with their lives for the failure of the present generation to organize the world on a basis of law and order. The words of Woodrow Wilson challenged the nation: "I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it." Shall this happen a third time? Shall the price that these young men and women are paying in Europe, in Asia, on a score of fronts, be tragically paid in vain? The foreign policy that we choose to pursue is our answer to that question. From the day President Roosevelt first defined the Good Neighbor Policy in his inaugural address on through to the recent announcement that the United States is ready with a plan for world peace and security, this administration has hewed a clearly-defined path for the nation to follow. Our Neighbors to the South The Monroe Doctrine forbidding interference by European powers in the affairs of this hemisphere has been a corner-stone of this country's policy since it was pronounced by President Monroe in 1823. We paid little attention, however, to the international relationships that were being molded until 1889 when an Inter-American Conference was held in Washington. From 1889 to 1933 the United States dominated relationships in the Western Hemisphere. The "big stick" came into play and bitterness and conflict resulted. When this Administration took office in 1933 to supplant Republican imperialism with the Good Neighbor Policy, the attitude of South America toward the United States was mainly one of antagonism. President Roosevelt promptly announced that in the future the United States would be opposed to armed intervention in Latin American affairs. The Inter-American Conferences for the Maintenance of Peace held at Buenos Aires in 1936 agreed on fundamental principles basic to an enduring peace. Chief among these was the understanding that when peace was threatened the governments would consult together to prevent war. The crucial test came September 3, 1939, when war broke out in Europe. A meeting of Foreign Ministers followed immediately, and plans were outlined for the joint defense of the Americas. At later meetings policies were adopted forbidding the transfer of territory on this continent from a European power to a non-American power, controlling Fifth Column activities and recommending that the republics sever relations with the Axis powers. The Good Neighbor Policy paid dividends many times over after Pearl Harbor. An unfriendly South America, with its vast shoreline, would have been a severe liability to the United States. Instead, all but one country—Argentina—worked and consulted with us for the defense of this hemisphere. Our Neighbor to the North The traditional friendly cooperation between Canada and the United States has been advanced under the Roosevelt Administration by exchange visits between the two heads of governments. Joint defense plans have been worked out and other forms of cooperation developed. The results can best be measured in the words of W.L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, in an address before the British Parliament on May 18, 1944. He said: "The extensive military works undertaken in Canada in conjunction with the United States have provided a remarkable instance of close and friendly cooperation. ours is surely the supreme example of a smaller nation living in the fullest security and harmony side by side with a powerful one." The Problems of the Pacific The beginning of our association with the Far East dates back to the days of the clipper ships. The first vessel bearing the flag of the United States, the "Empress of China," sailed for Canton in 1784 in search of the fabulous riches of the Orient. Thus began a commerce which built the foundation for Sino-American relations and consolidated our interest in the doctrine of the freedom of the seas--- the WHEN JAPAN'S FATE WAS SETTLED--- President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo Conference, Nov. 22-26, 1943. Page Eighteen The Democratic Digest right of ships to travel unmolested on the oceans of the world. Japan kept her doors closed to the world until the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1854 Admiral Perry negotiated a treaty with the Japanese and opened her doors to the world. Our Open Door Policy was fashioned through a hundred years of negotiations with the East. Under this policy we have endeavored to keep the doors open to trade with all the nations in that part of the world. The purchase of Alaska in 1867 and the acquisition of the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War gave us an added concern in the Pacific area. The airplane has now given great importance to Alaska as a route to the East. Today's war has, of course, highlighted our interest in the Pacific. This Administration has already stated many of its policies aimed toward the establishment of order in this area: It has upheld the doctrine of the freedom of the seas in the Pacific. It has stood for the maintenance of the Integrity of China, thereby blocking Japan in its desire for a stronghold on China. The Oriental Exclusion Act has been amended so that it no longer discriminates against the Chinese. The United States has signed a treaty with China abolishing its former extraterritorial rights under which foreigners were given the right to live and work in China exempt from the law of that country. The Philippine Islands have been promised independence as soon as the war is won. Friendship with the Soviet Union has brought into the Pacific area a powerful force for the development of international cooperation. A closer relationship has been built up with Australia and New Zealand. At the Cairo Conference in 1943, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek agreed on a policy for the Pacific after the war is won. Japan will be stripped of the islands which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the first world war. These include the islands mandated to Japan by the League of Nations as well as those taken by force—such as the Philippines and Dutch East Indies. All territory taken from China is to be returned. Korea is to become independent. Recognition of Russia The Roosevelt Administration recognized the government of the U.S.S.R. after sixteen years of severed relations, thus adding another chapter to the traditional friendship between the two countries. Russia's dramatic campaign against the Nazis has fully proved the wisdom of friendly Soviet-American relations. In contrast, Mr. Dewey, with characteristic lack of vision, said on January 20, 1940: "Insofar as the present Administration has adhered to the policies of its predecessors it has met with the general approval of the American people. But it has occasionally strayed from the path. A conspicuous and most unfortunate departure was the recognition by the New Deal of Soviet Russia." Economic Causes of War One of the first acts of the Roosevelt Administration was to substitute economic cooperation for economic welfare in the world of trade. The Smoot-Hawley all-high tariff passed during the Hoover Administration added a serious handicap to the already depressed condition in the country. Foreign concerns could not afford to sell their goods in the United States and as trade is a two-way street, we could not sell abroad. Hence unemployment mounted. The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act advanced by Secretary Hull, first passed in 1934 and since thrice extended, opened the avenues of world trade and increased foreign markets for the products of the United States. This Administration has demonstrated that economic cooperation is the best basis for friendship between nations. The trade agreements have now become an essential bulwark of the kind of peace that Americans desire. WHEN GERMANY'S FATE WAS SETTLED— President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin at the Teheran Conference, November 27-December 1, 1943. The Atlantic Charter An unprecedented meeting of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill took place "somewhere in the Atlantic" on August 14, 1941. On that day they signed the Atlantic Charter in which they outlined their hope for a peacetime world in which greater justice would prevail for all men. The Charter states these principles: (1) No aggrandizement, territorial or otherwise; (2) No territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned; (3) The right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; (4) The enjoyment by all states, great and small . . . of access . . . to the trade and to the raw materials of the world; (5) Improved labor standards, economic adjustment and social security; (6) To all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries; (7) All men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance; (8) The abandonment of the use of force. This Charter became part of the Declaration which, in 1942, created the United Nations as a bulwark against the Axis powers. Conferences of the Big Four At Moscow in October, 1943, the foreign ministers of the four Great Powers met and announced a Joint Four Nation Agreement. Plans for an international organization of all peace-loving states were outlined; close cooperation, not alone to shorten the war but to see that peace is secured, was agreed upon, and a number of political questions of importance settled. this cleared the way for the Cairo and Teheran meetings. At Cairo the fate of Japan was settled. At Teheran determination was expressed to finish the war shoulder to shoulder and to work together to fashion an enduring peace. There the representatives of the three Great powers agreed upon three constructive points. 1. the timing of military operations. 2. A bid to the German satellite nations to leave the Nazi camp 3. The assurance to the Iran of her freedom They also recognized the necessity of jointly seeking a solution of the causes of war. The Four Freedoms In an address to Congress on January 6, 1941, the President concluded with a masterful appeal for the Four Freedoms as the basic to the new world order. He said: "In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. "The first is freedom of speech and expression-everywhere in the world. "The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-everywhere in the world. "The third is freedom from want-which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world. "The fourth is freedom from fear-which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments * * * (so) that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression * * *." Conferences of the United Nations In May, 1943, the first United Nations Conference was called to order at Hot Springs, Virginia. There representatives of the forty-four nations met in the Conference on Food and Agriculture to outline recommendations to bring Freedom from Want to people everywhere. In November, 1943, representatives of the same nations met at Atlantic City in the Conference on Relief and Rehabilitation to work out plans for the relief of areas devastated by the war. A Conference of Allied Ministers of Education was held in London in April, 1944, when again representatives of many nations considered restoration of educational facilities destroyed by the Axis. Delegates to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference met July 1 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to frame plans for international stabilization of monetary matters and organization of a world bank. The Cooperation of Congress From the days of George Washington there has been discussion between the Senate and the Executive Branch of the government over foreign policy because authority overlaps under the Constitution. The Roosevelt Administration has worked diligently through conferences with members of Congress to develop a cooperative spirit to prevent differences between the two branches of the government in planning for peace. One result of the effort has been the embodiment in the Connally Resolution of the wording of the Moscow Agreement. Page Twenty Pattern for a New World Order As the war blasts on to its final chapter, our foreign policy proposals draw a pattern for a new world order. The President announced the middle of June that the United States was ready with the first draft of a post-war organization for world peace and security. Secretary Hull has sent invitations to China, Great Britain and to Russia to begin conferring on the outlined plan. The President said: "It is our thought that the organization would be a fully representative body with broad responsibilities for promoting and facilitating international cooperation, through such agencies as may be found necessary, to consider and deal with the problems of world relations. "It is our further thought that the organization would provide for a council, elected annually by the fully representative body of all nations, which would include the four major nations and a suitable number of other nations. The council would concern itself with peaceful settlement of international disputes and with the prevention of threats to the peace or breaches of the peace. " * * * We are seeking effective agreement and arrangements through which the nations would maintain, according to their capacities, adequate forces to meet the needs of preventing war, and of making impossible deliberate preparation for war, and to have such forces available for joint action when necessary." What of the Republicans? Events have demonstrated again and again the vision and wisdom of the conduct of our international relations by President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull. The evolving foreign policy of this Administration glows in contrast with the utter failure of the Republican Administration in the twenties. A plank has been adopted by the Republican National convention which follows strikingly their pattern of 1920. Let Mr. Willkie speak: "The Republicans won the election of 1920. A Republican President, claiming that he in no way repudiated the party's platform, immediately after the election announced that the League of Nations was dead. A Republican President elected under the proposed platform of 1944 could, with equal integrity, announce that the United States would not enter any world organization in which the nations agreed jointly to use their 'sovereign' power for the suppression of aggression. And every effective world organization proposed could be rejected as a 'world state'." Who Built This Foreign Policy? Today we all know we are winning this war. Victory will come to us more quickly and more surely because it is built on the eleven years of brilliant and skillful foreign policy of this Administration - a foreign policy consistent and farsighted from the day the Good Neighbor Policy was inaugurated in March, 1933, to the day in May, 1944, when Secretary Hull announced that with the President's approval he has invited representatives of Great Britain, Russia and China to Washington to begin discussions on the kind of peace structure we need after the war. This Administration's foreign policy, and the test it has stood in the world crises, is its most important accomplishment. It is easy now to say that it is the policy of all the American people and not of any political party, but someone had to build that policy, and the Roosevelt Administration is the administration that did it. The Democratic Digest Program for Chaos Newspaper Columnists and Democratic Leaders Comment on the Republican Platform and Candidate SENATOR JOSEPH C. O'MAHONEY, Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, on the keynote speech: "One will search the speech in vain for any realization of the hopes that might have been aroused by this appraisal of the times. Definitely Governor Warren laid down no program for the future, and unless the platform committee of the Republican convention does the unexpected, the country will again be invited to a change of leadership upon the specious promise that the Roosevelt policies can be carried out better by the critics who don't believe in them anyway than by their originators under whose leadership America has actually reached its highest standard of production and achievement. "Certainly the over 22 million who voted for Willkie in 1940 find nothing to arouse their enthusiasm in the declaration of Governor Warren that the Republican party wants a 'just and lasting peace.' Governor Warren has told the assembled delegates that 'whatever the exact procedures' for such a peace, he does not believe any sound American political party should say more. "The hearts and minds of America demand more. And what the Republicans apparently offer will be of little satisfaction to the soldiers now fighting this war and for whose right to vote in the coming election the Republican governors, notably the prospective nominee, did little to protect. Nor will it provide any hope for their parents and families who anxiously await their return to a world which offers some promise of a positive program to banish war." One the acceptance speech: "Except for the formal attacks upon the President and the Administration in the conventional manner of a party spokesman, the acceptance speech of Governor Dewey was a rather strong endorsement of the President's course. 'Thank God for General Marshall and Admiral King' says the Republican candidate. The people, I think, will be inclined to say 'Thank God for Roosevelt who put them there.'" WALTER LIPPMANN, Columnist, on the platform: "* * * This platform, quite apart from its intentional ambiguity on foreign policy, is as regards domestic affairs as reckless and as mischievous as irresponsible politicians dared to make it. It is a blueprint for post-war inflation. It is an invitation to all the pressure groups, a permit to all weak-minded and chicken-hearted candidates for office, to plunge the country into the chaos of an uncontrolled and uncontrollable inflation of prices and wages. "The authors of the platform pledge themselves to 'maintain the values of the American dollar' and to 'regard the payment of government debt as an obligation of honor which prohibits any policy leading to the depreciation of the currency. We shall reduce that debt as soon as economic conditions make such reduction possible.' June-July, 1944 "But how do Senator Taft and his colleagues propose to discharge this obligation of honor and to reduce the debt? "They propose to reduce the debt by reducing taxes: 'as soon as the war ends' - mark the words - all the present rates of taxation are to be brought down to the level to cover - again mark the words - 'the normal expenditures of government in the post-war period'. Thus they do not intend to reduce the debt. Moreover, they do not intend to maintain tax rates capable of exercising any control of that vast accumulation of inflationary purchasing power which will be most dangerously explosive precisely in the period just after the war ends. As the platform pledge of a party allegedly devoted to sound money, this demagogic promise about taxes is a disgrace." * * * "These deadly dangerous promises to reduce taxes and to raise wages and farm prices are set in a platform which promises by implication to remove all the wartime controls before demobilization and reconversion are completed. There is not one line, not one word, in the whole platform which recognizes honestly the need of civilian control and sacrifice in wartime. Only the soldiers, it appears, are expected to sacrifice their convenience to the nation. "If this is the spirit and the substance of the Republican post-war domestic program, Mrs. Luce will have some explaining to do when GI Joes come home to find a country so selfish, so sunk in its own materialism, that it did not have the discipline and decency to deal with the obvious danger of a post-war inflation." EARNEST LINDLEY, Columnist, on the acceptance speech: "In the conduct of a great war, military affairs are intertwined with international politics and diplomacy. The coordination of all these activities to achieve victory and gold it can be achieved only by the head of the government. This is not, as Dewey implies, civilian "intervention' in the military conduct of war. His use of the word might in itself be taken as an indication that he does not grasp the nature of war or the duties of the President." GOVERNOR ROBERT S. KERR, Democratic keynoter, on the platform: "The Republican platform is the great unsolved mystery of 1944. They've covered practically everything that they've had in platforms as far back as 1920 and they've established a new world's record in talking about a single sentence showing how they intend to achieve it." On Governor Warren's withdrawal from the GOP Vice Presidential race: "Being a member of the family, he appeared to be willing to act as one of the pallbearers but he sure walked out on them when they tried to put him into the casket." Page Twenty-one EVERY CHANCE TO LIVE... Your GI Goes Into Battle With All of America's Inventive Genius and Enterprise Protecting Him By Cornelia K. Townley From the day our boys put on their first GI uniforms, they have had the best training, the best equipment, the best food, and the best care of any fighting man in the world. When American boys hit the sandy beaches of Normandy or the rocky shores of Saipan, they were equipped with every device that American mechanical and inventive genius could give them to protect their lives, and they were thoroughly and completely trained to use that equipment. When our airborne troops floated down into France, each man had with him enough K-ration to last five days, and he knew that back of him were tremendously efficient and well organized facilities of the Quartermaster Corps keyed to the split-second accuracy to keep him fed. When a GI is injured, he not only has medicines to treat himself, but a "pill roller" frequently reaches him almost as soon as he falls. The Best Training and Equipment... While our enemies have talked about secret weapons and threatened us with them, our fighting men have been equipped with the best weapons modern science has been able to devise, and they are trained to make the best use of them. General Marshall has a demonstration team in each war theater showing troops how to operate the new weapons, while here at home other teams are being trained to demonstrate still other new weapons soon to be issued. Indicative of the attitude of those who train our fighting men is a sign in one of the Army Air Forces' training buildings at Yale University which reads: "Be damn sure that no American soldier is killed or injured because you failed to instruct him properly." The Best Supply System... But no amount of training could have been sufficient to bring about the wonderful record of successes on the far flung battle fronts without the splendid supply job that is being done by our Army - the greatest military supply and service job in world history. In four years, the United States has built enough cargo tonnage almost to double the size of the world's fleets, and those ships have been getting the stuff to our men where it is needed, when it is needed. The first great test came with the invasion of North Africa and the Mediterranean. One reason that operation caught the Germans off balance was that they did not believe we could organize the supply for such a huge expedition so quickly. That campaign not only taught them how Americans can fight, but how fast American materials can flow across ocean, mountain, and desert. During the past winter, the Army Service Forces were busy day and night preparing for the greatest task of all, the invasion of Western Europe. This is a test of supply as well as men, both in the initial landings and in how fast our supply depots can be set up to enable our armies to push deep into Europe. Precision supply is just as important to success in modern warfare as precision bombing. And precision supply means that, in addition to guns and the weapons of war, our fighting men are getting the food, equipment, and medical supplies that are so necessary. General Somervell, head of the Army Service Forces, is justifiably proud of the supply job the ASF has done in meeting the needs of the greatest and most far-flung organization that any people has produced at any time on earth. When we read of bulldozers and tanks being landed on invasion beaches, the landing strips being laid within a few hours after our men go ashore, we believe the General when he says, "The impossible we do at once; the miraculous takes a little longer." The Best Food... Concentrated,. fortified, and packaged to withstand moisture, insects, and decomposition, U.S. Army invasion rations are the most nourishing and sustaining fighting foods on any front. If one of our boys bails out of a plane or is lost behind enemy lines, he has right in his uniform a full five days' supply of concentrated rations of the highest quality. Even in combat, the soldier can have hot food. With their K-rations, combat troops are supplied with chemical pills which, when lighted, produce heat without giving off flames or smoke to reveal their position to the enemy. Mobile field kitchens are set up behind the fighting lines where, in temporary mess tents or mess halls, troops beyond range of the actual fighting areas eat meals similar to those served in this country, except that they utilize dehydrated and non-perishable foods. Special Service units and mobile post exchanges follow immediately behind the fighting men and provide them with the semi-necessities of life- razor blades, shaving soaps, toothpaste- which are free to the men whenever they are in combat. ...And Letters From Home... Knowing that, next to food, mail from home is the greatest morale factors to our fighting men, the Army Post Office takes the mail right to the battle fronts. Besides ships, planes and trains, our Army Postal Service has regular mail routes using canoes, rowboats, dog teams, reindeer teams, camels, and native runners. For the first time in history, it has worked mails on planes, sacking and pouching while in flight, and has even developed a parachute route in Greenland. On D-Day, some of those men who stormed the beaches of Normandy received letters from home, and before we had established our beachheads in France equipment for processing V-mail had been landed and was in operation. The Best Medical Care... Our fighting men today have a much better chance of being fit when they go into combat, and of being restored to health if wounded, however severely, than did any of our predecessors. At home and abroad, our Army has been free of the epidemics which crippled previous armies. The Army is taking every step known to science to prevent disease from winning any campaign against our soldiers. There were only three cases of typhus in the entire North African campaign, and tetanus has apparently been wiped out. Special efforts are made to reduce accidents by education, training and safeguards, and the fatality rate from disease and injury is lower than it has ever been. At the front, the proportion of those recovering from wounds has been at a record high. Official records show that less than 1 percent of the American wounded on D-Day who reached medical stations died-the figure for the last war was 8 percent. Safeguards unknown in 1918 have been provided against shock, mental breakdown, influenza, typhus, tetanus, gangrene. Even abdominal wounds, 60 percent of which were fatal in the last war, are being healed in a great majority of cases. Most deaths in World War I were caused by shock, loss of blood, and infection rather than by wounds. Now blood plasma stops shock before it can get started. Sulfa drugs defeat infection. Together they tide the patient over the first 48 hours, and when he reaches the evacuation hospital, the doctor has more time to consider treatment. The soldier takes the new medical weapons right with him into battle. An easily removable first aid packet, a package of sulfadiazine tablets to take, and sulfa powder to dust on open wounds are fastened to his belt. "Pill Roller" on the Spot... As each company goes into battle, it is accompanied by company aid men. The soldiers all sing the praises of the front-line "pill rollers," as they call them, who roam unarmed where the casualties-and bullets-are thickest. They give emergency aid to the wounded, administer an opiate to relieve pain, and attach an emergency medical tag to each casualty. This identifies the soldier and describes the nature of the wound and the treatment given. Litter bearers advance directly behind the attacking companies, direct the walking wounded to the nearest aid station, and pick up those who cannot walk. Battalion aid stations are established about four hundred yards behind each battalion, where records are made of all cases and their disposition, initial dressings are checked, splints applied, and blood transfusions administered. Dried plasma is applied, and blood transfusions administered. Dried plasma is easily portable, requires no refrigeration, and is packaged to be ready to use in four minutes. The greatest need of the seriously wounded is still and always time. Today ambulance tanks and planes, amphibian ambulances, motorized laboratories, mobile operating rooms, cross country hospital units, mean the difference between death and life. Field and evacuation hospitals provide adequate medical, surgical, and nursing care. When necessary, men are moved back to more specialized base hospitals. Back from Battlefields by Plane... The wounded from the Normandy landings have received magnificent care. The evacuation chain set up by Major General Paul R. Hawley, head surgeon of the European Theater of Operations, works smoothly. Giant "flying hospitals", equipped to accommodate 18 wounded men and make the cross-Channel flight in two hours, are flying casualties from the Normandy battlefields to England. LSTs are shuttling back and forth across the Channel, carrying much needed supplies to Normandy and bringing back their cargo of wounded men. Reporters found a minor epic in the return of the wounded to English ports on the day after the first assault. Some of them walked off the ships, with their uniforms torn and their bandages hastily applied, but swiftly and safely carried out of the battle zone. Others came on stretchers, carried by litter bearers. Many spoke of the fine work done by medical men on the beaches. Said one man: "They're right in there, giving morphine and bandaging wounds while the bullets whiz past their ears." Others told of difficult operations performed on pitching LSTs by the Army and Navy doctors. When recovery is uncertain or if convalescence requires at least 120 days, wounded men are brought back to military hospitals in America. But the wounded are returning from the battlefields of France in better condition than the medical officers ever expected, and the evacuation pace moved so swiftly that some patients were back in the United States within two weeks after D-Day. There have been cases of wounded men reaching the country faster than the report of their wounding, of a cheerful "Hi, Mom!" over a long-distance telephone informing a mother of her son's safe return. Our Wounded Get Well... The Army has been able to cut the convalescent period of wounded men in half, and return them to active duty in better physical condition than before. Convalescent centers have been set up in strategically located sections of the country. They retrain soldiers for return to military duty and do vocational, aptitude and functional testing in order to give men adequate guidance on the vocational possibilities open to them in terms of their disabilities. The Navy and the Marine Corps have an equally effective medical set-up. How superbly this machinery is working is told in recovery statistics. About 97 percent of the Army, Navy, and Marine wounded since Pearl Harbor have recovered, and 60 percent of all Marines wounded on Guadalcanal have returned to duty within a year. No injured man is mustered out until the medical authorities are convinced he is completely equipped to meet life. In great hospitals scattered throughout this country, battle scarred men of all services-Army, Navy and Marines-are being rehabilitated by the finest medical treatment it is possible to give them. Neuropsychiatric cases (Contd. on page 34) Page twenty-two The Democratic Digest June-July 1944 Page twenty-three NO STREET CORNER APPLE STANDS... This Administration Has Planned - and Acted - to Assure Your GI Every Break When He Is Mustered Out By Rilla Schroeder When a GI gets his discharge papers and packs his uniform away in moth balls, he is a veteran. One of these days there are going to be 10 million-odd of them. Already there are over a million. These are the men who, to quote the President's speech of July 28, 1943, "have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us." These are the men who have paid the price of war. The rest of us, perhaps, have had to put up with a few inconveniences, a few hardships, but our sacrifice has been picayune compared to theirs. In that same speech the President said that he had assured these men that we, the American people, were not going to let them down. That this time there would be no apple selling on street corners. That this time we would have plans ready, instead of waiting to do a hasty, inefficient and ill-considered job at the last moment. That promise is being kept. There are plans now that we, the people back home for whom these men have made their sacrifice, have put into law to take care of the veterans' special problems. Two Kinds of Sacrifice The men now being discharged and those who will be discharged in the future fall naturally into two groups: 1. The men who have made the sacrifice of health, of physical well being, those with "service connected disabilities." 2. Those whose sacrifice has been confined to loss of educational, business or employment opportunities. The first group is not necessarily limited to men who have seen action on the fighting fronts. A "service connected disability" is defined as any disabling injury or disease suffered by a man or woman in the armed forces while in the service, provided only that the injury or disease did not result from the man's or woman's personal misconduct. The definition is pretty broad. It takes in accidents, injuries, etc., suffered while on furlough or off duty. It includes disabilities aggravated by service in the armed forces, old injuries and ailments not considered serious enough at the time to exclude the man or woman from service. It includes, of course, those actually injured at the front, those whose disabilities are the direct result of action. For this first group we are all agreed there is nothing we can do that would be too much. There is not one of us, perhaps, who has not met one of these boys on the street and inwardly blessed ourselves out for the grumbling we have done from time to time. That boy without a leg, that lad with the empty sleeve - against the petty discomforts we have endured their sacrifice looms too great to be put into words. The second group may not, perhaps, have made so definite a sacrifice but their sacrifice is still far beyond anything that we, as civilians, have been able to give. There are the tangibles, the actual months or years they have put into the service, the separation from home and family. The intangibles are harder to define. There is something that military life does to a man or woman. It is a negation of much of his or her training from childhood up. Part of it is good, of course. It teaches discipline, builds the man or woman up physically. It does, however, unfit them even if only temporarily, for civilian life. Ask any veteran the readjustment is difficult even under the best condition. In helping the veteran make this readjustment the American people have a sacred obligation. It is, as the President has said, an American obligation, and we must meet it as Americans. Cash in His Pocket So... what have we done? First there is the mustering-out pay to which all veterans are entitled. It isn't a great deal but it gives the veteran a breathing spell before he has to go out and get a job. It means a few dollars in his pocket. It means a new suit of clothes. In his July 28 speech the President listed mustering-out pay as the first item on his six-point veterans' program. Acting on his suggestion, Congress passed the bill on January 26, 1944, and the President signed it February 3, 1944. The Act provides a graduated payment of from $100 to $300 for all veterans, depending on length of service. Not much, but it isn't intended to be more than a stop-gap. Its effect as a morale-builder has already been noted by those handling veterans' problems. An Income Until He Gets a Job The second item on the President's program was unemployment compensation. This item may seem out of place at the present time and in the light of the manpower shortages. Any veteran can get a job. Any reasonably able-bodied worker can get one. As war production is decreased, however, it will become increasingly important. Already there are cut-backs and areas with labor surpluses. Unemployment insurance, a vital part of the Administration's program since '32, has proven its value over and over again both to the individual and to the communities. Under the so-called GI Bill of Rights passed by a Democratic Congress on June 14, 1944, any honorably discharged veteran who has served for a period of 90 days and who is unemployed and registered with the United States Employment Service is entitled to an allowance of $20 a week for a period up to 52 weeks. There are some disqualifying provisions but they are minor. On the whole, they would exclude a veteran only upon reasonable grounds. A Chance to Go Back to School The GI bill covered the third recommendation of the President, i. e., education, with a broad program of education for the veteran who gave up his schooling to join the armed forces. It allows $500 a year tuition, expenses for lab fees and books, and $50 a month (if single) subsistence. Further allowances are made for the veteran's dependents. It is limited to veterans who were under 25 years of age when they joined the armed forces and is available for one year up to the length of time the veteran served since the passage of the Draft Act. This program is open to all veterans who qualify as to age and service - the question of disabilities does not enter into the picture. A Way to Learn a Trade For those with service connected disabilities, however, there are further opportunities and there are no disqualifying provisions as to age, etc. The only requirement is that the veteran must be pensionable: at least 10 per cent in line of duty. Congress has authorized the Veteran's Administration and provided the funds wherewith to do it, to offer to all veterans in this group the chance to learn a trade or profession. Practically the only limitation is that he must make application for this training within six years after the end of the war. Subsistence is provided and all expenses of tuition, etc., are paid by the Veterans' Administration. Within reasonable limits the veteran is allowed to a choice of the trade or profession he undertakes to learn. Training courses may last as long as four years but must be terminated within six years after the end of the shooting. Subsistence allowances are $80 a month if single, $90 a month if married, with $5 for each child and $10 for each dependent parent. There is no ceiling on these payments. For example, a man might have a wife, ten children and two dependent parents. That would be $90 plus $50 plus $20, or $160 a month altogether. The Office of Vocational Rehabilitation of the Federal Security Agency gives vocational rehabilitation to veterans whose disabilities are non-service connected. The mentally as well as the physically disabled are eligible for training under this program. This program is, also, open to families of veterans since it is available to all persons injured an industry or by accident or illness, or through congenital defects. Medical and Hospital Care In accordance with the President's recommendations for improved and liberalized hospitalization, rehabilitation and medical care for disabled members of the armed forces, the GI bill authorized an appropriation of 500 million dollars for the construction of hospital facilities for veterans - this in addition to those already available or under construction. All honorably discharged veterans are entitled to hospital and out-patient medical and surgical treatment for service connected disabilities and for non-service connected diseases and injuries if beds are available and the veteran is financially unable to pay cost of necessary treatment or care. A Loan for a Home, a Business a Farm As one step in the veteran's rehabilitation program, Congress, in the Gi bill, has provided that any honorably discharged veteran may secure rom the Veterans' Administration within two years after his discharge a guarantee of 50 per cent, up to $2,000, of a loan to be used in the purchase or construction of a home, for the purchase of a farm and farm equipment, and for the purchase of business property. Interest for the first year on that part of the loan guaranteed is to be paid by the Veterans' Administration. No security is required. Since the GI bill was designed primarily to return the veteran to civilian life, it takes into full consideration the matter of jobs. That is, of course, only a part of the Administration's larger program of jobs for everyone. Veterans, however, it is agreed, should come first. There have been a number of bills and proposals which would give them preference in government service as well as industry. Help in Finding a Job The GI bill created a Board of Veterans Placement Service which is to cooperate and assist the veterans employment service of the United States Employment Service in finding jobs for the ex-GIs. The Administrator of Veterans Affairs is chairman of this Board and has direct authority and responsibility for carrying out its policies. The Veterans Administrator is also head of the Retraining and Reemployment Administration set up by Executive Order of the President February 24, 1944. The agency has general supervision of the activities of all government agencies concerned with retraining and reemploying both war veterans and war workers, including everybody affected by the cessation of hostilities or reduction of the war program. It is also their job to advise with Congress on legislation needed for this program. Prior to passage of the GI bill this agency had begun work on an over-all veterans employment program. It had, among other things, outlined procedures to establish veteran's information centers in practically all communities. At these centers the veteran can get information on all his rights and benefits, and be told where he might, as well, get a job in the community. These centers, of course, will be primarily for advice and reference. Eligibility for benefits or special services will be determined by the appropriate agency. But such a center will give the veteran one place to which he can go and find out where he stands and will save him the discouragement of being sent from place to place. The need of such a central clearing house has been stressed by the various veteran's organizations and by individual veterans who complain of having received the "run-around" when in search of work or other help. A Pension for the Disabled The sixth point of the President's program - pensions - was not included in the GI bill. It had been covered in other legislation. Generally speaking, a World War II pen- (Contd. on page 34) Inches of Liberty. . . By ELLIS MEREDITH THE Jefferson Room in the Congressional Library has a frieze made of quotation from his writings. On the west side is this inscription: "The people of a country are the only safe guardians of their own rights, and are the only instrument which can be used for their destruction. Our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves-that too of a people with a certain degree of instruction." On the opposing east wall are these fateful words: "The ground of Liberty is to be gained by inches." Recall the dark days of 1918, when the Germans were driving steadily toward Paris, week after week, the Allies fighting as desperately as if they felt their liberty slipping from them with each inch lost. Think of that summer and of this one, for the Germans who were turned back 26 years ago are in Paris today. The fighting must be done over again. Truly, the ground of Liberty may be gained by inches, but it can be lost by furlongs. It can be gained in the field and lost in the forum. November 11, 1918, brought not victory but in truth an Armistice-"a brief suspension of hostilities a truce." The election in November 1918 scarcely caused a ripple of interest in the rest of the world. Yet had that election gone differently civilization might never have had to drink the bitter brew of this global war. Lost by One Vote Had the election gone differently in my own state-Colorado-the history of the last quarter of a century might have been changed. That year the control of the Senate and the powerful Foreign Relations Committee was at stake. The Democratic party was sure of its candidates in enough states to preserve the status quo IF Colorado returned John Franklin Shafroth. He remained in Washington to help carry on the fight for the Woman Suffrage Amendment, and when he got home campaigning was practically impossible because of the epidemic of flu. In the meantime Lawrence C. Phipps, a wealthy importation from Pittsburgh, had been putting on a well-financed campaign for months. Shafroth was defeated. The Democrats lost control of the Senate by one vote. It doesn't decrease the bitterness to recall that T.H. Newberry, who subsequently resigned to escape expulsion, and A.W. Fall, whose disgrace is part of the shameful Harding Administration, were both elected that year and added to the Foreign Relations Committee, of which Henry Cabot Lodge was made Chairman. Borah, Brandegee, Moses, Johnson and others who rejoiced in the name of the Irreconcilables were also members. A majority of the American people had expressed themselves in favor of a League of Nations. In the meantime, "a strange and ominous combination of Republican reactionaries and Progressive isolationists" had been formed. The former professed to fear "that the League might function to keep the United States out of necessary capitalist wars; the latter that it would function to draw the United States into them." To complete the confusion, each group offered reservations when the League came up before the Senate for ratification. Some of them may have been honest, but the net result was to scuttle the one hope of a better way for this weary world. The Harding Perfidy Harding had been a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This helps to explain his triangular position, in which he approved the League, with reservations, suggested some other kind of a League, and finally denounced any League at all. The Bitter-enders assured the voters that the election of Harding would put an end to the League. But 32 distinguished Republicans, including Hughes, Raft, Butler, Root, Hoover and other eminent men, basing their convictions on their interpretation of the 1920 Republican foreign policy plank signed an appeal for the election of Harding as "the surest way to bring America into an effective League to preserve peace." As a result, one of the 1920 campaign slogans which undoubtedly garnered many ballots was, "A vote for Harding is a vote for the League." Yet, the ink on the election returns was still damp when Harding told a group come to help him celebrate, "The League of Nations is now deceased." The loss of a League, not necessarily the League which failed because having put our hands to the plow we left it to rust in the furrow-that loss has sent us fighting for lost inches on all the continents of the Eastern Hemisphere and the islands of the seas. Only Five Votes a Precinct What rankles in the heart of this Colorado woman is the knowledge that a change of only five votes in each precinct in that state would have changed the election returns there. With what little extra effort those five votes could have been secured! The voting rate in Colorado is high. Colorado people would say they have the "instruction" Jefferson thought necessary. Having been a state vice chairman, I give much credit to the committeewomen who are generally depended on for getting out the vote. These precinct officials are elected on the Primary Ballot which nominates the state ticket. As elected officials they take their jobs seriously. Many a committeewoman has taken care of children, or sat by a sick-bed while the voter went to the polls. They have provided transportation for the disabled, and reminded the laggard that the polls were closing. We win or lose elections in precincts, sometimes by one vote. Will History Repeat Itself? This year's election parallels the election of 1918 and 1920. The party in office then and now was and is committed to world cooperation. The Republican National convention has again written a foreign policy plank which indicates they would favor some sort of world organization. Already their standard-bearer for 1940, Wendell Willkie, has labeled it as "ambiguous," and compared it to the foreign relations plank on which Harding was elected. Seventeen Republican governors have qualms about it. "If the trumpet (Continued on page 310) Page Twenty-six The Democratic Digest Education for the Youth of Europe . . . . By C. MILDRED THOMPSON When Miss Thompson, who is Vassar's Dean, was first asked on the long distance telephone by the State Department to go to London for the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education there, she was too overcome to give an immediate answer. She requested time to think it over while she was eating her lunch and call back. Miss Thompson is in her sixties, and rather frail. She knew that if she went she'd have to fly— probably in a bomber—and she'd never been up in a plane in her life. Then suddenly, as she was eating, the thought struck her, "Why, this is war. And here's the first really important thing I've been asked to do. Of course I'll go." So she called the State Department and said yes, and within two or three days she was out over the Atlantic in the biggest bomber she'd ever seen. She's now back in this country, and in this article she tells briefly about the machinery the conference set up to begin work on one of the most significant of post-war jobs— replenishing the educational resources of Europe devastated by the Axis. TO women, education has long been one of the functions of society closest to their interest and their competence. Women are concerned with education not only because they are the directors of the life of young children and in that way exercise great influence upon education, but they have also participated directly as professional workers in this field in this country and elsewhere for many years. Education is practically the oldest profession which women in any large numbers have entered. In post-war planning, especially insofar as that planning may concern peace, women are deeply and broadly interested. After the last war, as now, many women's organizations sprang up or developed out of existing organizations to discuss and plan terms of a peace both just and enduring. The Conference of Allied Ministers of Education was concerned with both of these subjects—education and planning for peace. It is full reason, therefore, why women should not only be interested but have part in any work which furthers education in the countries of our Allies and also which may promise to take us along the road toward constructive peace. I was proud and pleased, therefore, when the State Department asked me to serve, with five distinguished gentlemen, on the United States Delegation to collaborate with the Conference of the Allied Ministers of Education in London. Planning Now a Year Old The Allied Conference of Education was started in 1943 in London under the leadership of the British Board of Education. Meeting with the representatives of the British Board of Education and of the Foreign Office were representatives, usually the Ministers of Education of the Allied countries which had exiled governments or representations in London. The following countries constituted the membership of the Conference: Great Britain, with representatives also from the Scottish Board of Education, from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and India; France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, China and Russia were represented by observers—the same way the United States was represented until this year when the full delegation was sent over. The Chairman of the Conference was the brilliant young Minister of Education of Great Britain, the Right Honorable R. A. Butler. Work May Soon Be On United Nations Basis In the past year the Conference has been busy working through Commissions to determine the needs of various countries in rehabilitating their educational and cultural resources after liberation. These Commissions dealt primarily with the subjects of books and periodicals, scientific and laboratory equipment, films and visual aids. While the members of the American delegation were in London the Conference as a whole was primarily concerned with formulating a new plan to organize the work as an activity of the United Nations instead of leaving it to the Conference of Ministers of the special countries, as it has been in the past. Under the leadership of the American delegation a draft constitution was proposed and was adopted by the Conference in full enthusiasm for the proposal. This tentative draft was submitted by the Conference to each of the forty-four nations so that when and if the draft constitution is adopted the new organization for educational and cultural reconstruction will proceed. Congress to Be Asked to Act The main principle of such an organization was fully supported by the officers of the State Department who were responsible for the appointment of the delegation so that Americans might have a part in planning education in Allied countries as the invading armies are driven out. The plan is now in the hands of the State Department where it is subject to examination and modification. If the plan is approved it may in due time be submitted to our Congress for action. The whole work of the Conference seemed to me of first importance in our post-war planning for two reasons. First of all, it would mean that the United States would be participating, if the constitution is approved, with our Allies in trying to provide constructive bases of peace, since education is in itself one of the profound services for peace. In the second instance, the work of the Conference was important because it may mean, if the organization functions as we hope it may, that many students, professional workers and scholars for research may come to institutions of learning in this country to secure the training which their countries cannot provide for them. If the United States seizes this (Continued on page 31) June-July, 1944 Page Twenty-seven New York State Women Open '44 Campaign by BETTY GOODWIN When the Democratic women of New York State gathered in Syracuse on June 22 for their first big meeting since 1940 they got right down to business and no frou-frou. A highlight of the meeting was a half hour talk by Mrs. Roosevelt, who also participated in answering questions from the floor in the packed ballroom of the Onondaga Hotel. Other speakers were Miss Doris I. Byrne, new State Vice Chairman and former Deputy Secretary of State, who called the meeting; Miss Grace Reavy of Cohoes, who was presiding officer; Mrs. Charles W. Tillett, Assistant Chairman of the Democratic national Committee, who spoke on "Strengthening Our Democracy," and Miss Josephine Schain, the Women's Division's able adviser on international affairs, whose topic was "A New World Order." The round table discussion, peppered with lively questions from the audience, followed, and then there was a showing of the Democratic national Committee's campaign movie, "Lest We Forget." Guests on the platform, against a maroon curtain with the sparkling letters, "Syracuse Welcomes Mrs. Roosevelt," were Democratic state leaders and women candidates. Delegates attended from all over New York state . . . some of them, due to transportation difficulties, had not time to find hotel rooms nor to check into them. So the sight of women Democrats filing into the ballroom with their suitcases in hand was not unusual. Here and there in the audience were women who had brought small children rather than miss the meeting. A touch of glamour, which might well be picked up by others, was the use of the pink spotlights for the speakers' platform. And—the spotlights were arranged to shine up at the faces of those on the platform, not shine down on them. This is the piece of flattery well known in the theatrical profession and always makes faces look fresher and more youthful than any other type of lighting. And who are we to object to that result . . . despite our serious political interests? COUNTY LEADERS MEET IN MORNING While the official conference was confined to a single afternoon session there was a preliminary meeting of county leaders in the morning. Mrs. Tillett and Miss Byrne both attended this and among the comments made by the others in attendance were these: "Our duty is to hold the line for our boys until they get back from the war. We can't have a lot of gas to visit all our communities but we can keep in touch with each other by correspondence. That's what we're doing . . . writing a lot of letters." "If you have just ten good women workers in each county, that's all you need. Ten good, hard, earnest workers can turn the trick." "Our biggest asset is that we have a splendid group of young women. Wives and sweethearts of service men. Believe me, these women want to get out and work to preserve a fine world for their men. And their enthusiasm has given us all a lift." AFTERNOON SESSION FULL At the afternoon session Mrs. Roosevelt entered down the middle aisle, followed by a representative of the Camp Fire Girls. In her customary tireless fashion, our First Lady had spent the morning touring community projects in Syracuse. As one of the local papers said in a page one banner line, "Mrs. Roosevelt Tours Syracuse on Foot." Mrs. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., wife of the Secretary of the Treasury, accompanied Mrs. Roosevelt and sat on the platform. Here are some of the things Mrs. Roosevelt had to say on Women's Responsibility Now and in the Post-War World": "A democracy is never any better in the broad field than it is in each community unit. "The world is growing smaller—it is becoming a little world, in which the way people feel about each other is going to matter a great deal. American women must work to create friendliness among women in other parts of the world. We must not be suspicious of each other. "Before this war we, as a people, didn't really think about what was going on. Norman Davis, our delegate to the Disarmament Conference, once told me something I've never forgotten, although he may have forgotten he said it. He told me that he had hardly ever received AT NEW YORK CONFERENCE Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt arrives to address the statewide meeting of Democratic women at the Onondaga Hotel, Syracuse. Page Twenty-eight The Democratic Digest any communications from the people of this country telling him what they wanted him to do. "It is not enough to perform our individual duties as citizens. We must take it our job to see that everyone else in our communities register and then votes, and we must see that they are educated so they can vote wisely." Mrs. Tillett emphasized: "This year party work is more than party work. It is part of women's contribution to the war effort and the preparation for an enduring peace. It is part of women's contribution to the post-war world we want. "We women like to think that Ibsen's famous play, 'The Doll's House,' is out of date. In that play he shows how hard a woman had to struggle to become an independent thinking human being. Our views of a post-war world are no more real than a row of doll houses if we don't pitch in and see that the Democratic party wins—the Democratic party which represents our views on securing peace, our views on security benefits for all." Miss Schain made these points: "We are now determining what is going to be happening in the world for the next twenty-five or fifty years." "The republics of this hemisphere have faith in the foreign policy of this Administration. And I wonder if we really appreciate . . ." (At this point one of the eager photographers flashed a picture of Miss Schain, whereupon she chuckled and said in a sort of aside that pleased the audience: "This is rather disturbing, to have a camera come right up in front of you when you're thinking of hemispheric conditions." Then she continued . . .) "I wonder if we really appreciate what it has meant to us to have the cooperation and good will of these countries. We have not had to send an army or a navy to fight for us to the south. Think what it would have meant to have Axis agents sabotage the Panama Canal, for instance. "After the first world war we paid two billion dollars for relief in Europe. Now we are being asked to spend only one and one-third billions for relief in Europe—much less, because all the nations of the world are working together. As, for instance, in the United Nations Conference on Relief and Rehabilitation." Miss Byrne said: "The woman who stays at home is fighting the war, too. Her battle is the battle of the home front, an important part of which is the coming election. Only through our vote can we maintain the democratic institutions for which our boys are fighting and to which they hope to return. "Wives and sweethearts of service men in a great many counties in New York state are now engaged in distributing postcard applications to be mailed to service men and women by their families. We are giving out thousands of these cards because we believe every service man and woman, regardless of party affiliation, should be allowed to vote. The miles our women are walking seem little enough to do for men who may be deep in the foxholes of France or high in a palm tree chasing Jap snipers. These fighting men of ours have very little time for extensive correspondence with the War Ballot Commission in Albany. Nothing can make voting easy for them—under our difficult state law—but our postcard applications save them at least one dreary step in the routine." ——————— Jane Jeffersons Active in Colorado Promoting women of proven ability for public office has become one of the campaign aims of the Jane Jefferson Clubs of Colorado, according to their President, George E. Saunders, who is now serving her second term. Recently all members of the club, which is a statewide organization, received cards asking them to fill in the names of other members whom they felt had the experience and background to qualify them for public office. The club then plans to urge these women to seek Democratic nominations for the offices they can fill and will, of course, back them for election. "We feel that women are entitled to equal representation on party tickets," Mrs. Saunders says. "Particularly do we believe it is so this year, when women are serving in all branches of the armed forces, on assembly lines and in many other ways doing work to win the war." This past winter the Colorado Jane Jeffersons have been studying post-war problems. In recent months they have been devoting part of their program time to a discussion of issues of the coming campaign, and to reports of accomplishments of the Administration. The May program, for example, was a report on how the OPA has successfully held down the cost of living. The Program Chairman is Mrs. Reid Williams, and her committee consists of the following: Mrs. Florence Kramer, Mrs. Joan Medill, Mrs. John Griffith, Mrs. Allen Moore and Mrs. Lon T. Fidler. This year, Mrs. Saunders reports, the Jane Jefferson Clubs have done considerable volunteer war work. The Denver club was recently presented with a citation from the Surgeon General of the U. S. Army for having sold $13,500 worth of war bonds—enough to purchase a hospital car. The club publishes a quarterly bulletin under the editorship of Mrs. Irene Templeton. Two "baby Jane Clubs" have been organized during the past year—one at Greeley, the other at Glenwood Springs. MRS. GEORGE E. SAUNDERS ——————— Fund Raising In San Francisco The Northern Division of the California Federation of Democratic Women's Study Clubs sponsored a card party at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco recently, with a two-fold purpose: to give war workers an evening of relaxation, and to raise campaign funds. Miss Margaret Miriam Krsak, Vice President of the group, served as program chairman. Mrs. T. A. Burnett of Glendale is President of the Federation. ——————— Texas Club Voices Wholehearted Support The Houston-Harris County Woman's Democratic Association has sent its Democratic Women's Day check to national headquarters. Mrs. Verne P. Maddox, President of group, wrote: "Please accept this check for $133 as this club's donation to the National Democratic Campaign fund. It is a pleasure to know we are taking a small part in our Democratic Party. So I, in behalf of our club, pledge our full and wholehearted support." June-July, 1944 Page Twenty-nine Missouri First District Wins Contest The First Congressional District of Missouri is the first district in the state to complete the women's campaign organization in each of its sixteen counties. Mrs. Chester Hoover of Laclede, First District President, has been awarded the cash prize offered by Mrs. Lawrence McDaniel, Democratic National Committeewoman, and sponsor of the contest. Suggested by the Women's Division of the National Committee, the organization plan calls for the appointment of four women chairmen in each county to direct the following campaign activities in cooperation with their county leader--Registration, Public Information, Finance and Speakers. As The Digest goes to press, Missouri leads the country in number of counties completely organized under the plan. Ninth District Women Meet Democratic women of Missouri's Ninth Congressional District met in Fulton on June 13 to hear and meet national, state and county candidates. More than 200 men and women were present. Speakers at the sessions included Senator Bennett Champ Clark, William L. Nelson, and other candidates. Mrs. J. V. Billings, Missouri Federation President, was heard at the afternoon session. Mrs. Harry Sanders, former State Vice Chairman, was a principal speaker. She declared that women have the ammunition with which to answer critics of the Administration. They have the facts, she said--the record of this Administration's achievements. She quoted National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, saying: "We must bring the truth to the people so that in the November election America will choose a leadership consecrated to winning victory in the war, victory in the peace, and victory in preserving the stability of the country." Connecticut Federation Meets in New Haven Several hundred delegates and visitors attended the statewide convention of the Connecticut Federation of Democratic Women's Clubs held in New Haven late in May. The all-day session was opened with a welcome by Mayor John Murphy of New Haven. Other speakers on the program were J. Raymond Walsh, former Harvard professor, who stressed the necessity for getting voters registered; and Leigh Danenberg, publisher of the Bridgeport Herald. Page Thirty The Federation President, Mrs. Chase Going Woodhouse, presided at the meeting. She urged the women to keep themselves well-informed on campaign issues so they could refute Administration criticism. Federation officers elected were: Honorary President, Mrs. Fannie Dixon Welch; President, Mrs. Chase Going Woodhouse; First Vice President, Mrs. Ward Duffy; Second Vice President, Miss Mary Doyle; Third Vice President, Mrs. Alice Daskam; Fourth Vice President, Miss Margaret Connors; Recording Secretary, Mrs. David McCoy; Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. Louijune Moran; Treasurer, Mrs. Wilimena Reid. Wyoming Democratic Women Active A statewide, closely-knit women's campaign organization is the goal of state leaders in Wyoming. Mrs. Lucille B. Wiley, State Federation President; Mrs. Dean Covert, State Vice Chairman, and Mrs. P. J. Quealy, National Committeewoman, are cooperating to achieve this efficient set-up in this wartime campaign year. With club groups working side by side with the regular party organization, Mrs. Wiley feels the best results will be attained. At present special effort is being put forth for a successful Democratic Women's Day drive. Mrs. Wiley will send a monthly letter to all Democratic women workers in the state as a means of furthering the drive, and keep them informed on work being accomplished. Democratic State Chairman W. A. Norris plans to attend Federation meetings in every county before the primary election, and is lending his fullest support to the women's campaign organization. Over the Top Platte County, Wyoming, has met its Democratic Women's Day national quota of fifty cents a precinct. Mrs. Dorothy Holladay, President of the Platte County Democratic Women's Club sent the check in to National Headquarters. California Women Meet The Southern California Women's Division of the State Central Committee sponsored an all-day conference on June 28 to discuss national and state conventions and to present a program to help Democratic workers campaign more effectively for the November election. Pennsylvania Women Meet At Institute of Government Girding for the campaign, the Pennsylvania Federation of Democratic Women held an Institute of Government in connection with its eighteenth anniversary convention in Altoona, Pennsylvania, June first, second and third. Keystone state Democratic women, more than 500 strong, met in a pre-campaign conclave at which speeches by Judge Marion J. Harron of the United States Tax Court; Mrs. Ellen S. Woodward, Social Security Board member, and Mrs. Charles W. Tillett, Assistant Chairman of the Democratic National Committee were made on the "Post-War World." Senator Claude Pepper addressed the concluding banquet session. Accompanying him was Mrs. Pepper, who frequently makes speeches for the party herself. Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, the state's well-known National Committeewoman, was toastmistress. State Chairman David L. Lawrence and other state leaders attended the banquet. Mrs. Rhoda Awkerman, convention chairman, presided. Co-chairman of the convention was Mrs. Edith Oler Hannigan, President of the Altoona Club. Pennsylvania Democratic women subscribe to the policy of being fore-informed, fore-armed. Besides the various addresses on the post-war world, the home front and the war front, a panel discussion on the cost of living was held at which Mrs. Ruth Grigg Horting, recently-elected State Vice Chairman, presided. The youthful and efficient Mrs. Myrtle H. Beard of Reading was elected President of the Federation, succeeding Miss Marion Stone. Other officers elected for the coming year were: First Vice President, Miss Marie Bickert; Second Vice President, Mrs. John J. Kane; Third Vice President, Mrs. Ramsey Black; Fourth Vice President, Mrs. Jean Grove; Fifth Vice President, Miss S. Cecilia Dougherty; Sixth Vice President, Mrs. Rhoda Awkerman. Federation Regional Directors sponsored a luncheon as one of the main events of the convention. Discussions on organization, emphasizing especially the activities of fund-raising, registration, speakers' bureau and publicity were featured at this session. The Federation has cooperated actively in observing Democratic Women's Day --annual fund-raising drive sponsored by the Women's Division of the National Committee. Recently the Federation sent its check for $150 to National Headquarters. The Democratic Digest Convention Headlines From The Past (Continued from page 9) aware that there was much political education to be done among the women and set out to widen the scope of women's interests. Mrs. Ross was particularly interested in young voters and still considers herself a "godmother" of the Young Democrats. Work during these "out" years was unusually difficult, but more and more the women leaders became aware of a growing restlessness and the desire of the people for new leadership. A Voice in the Platform in '32 When the Democrats met in Chicago in 1932 for their convention, they came knowing that they had a good chance to win if they could get a strong candidate. They did. They nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt. Over four hundred women delegates and alternates were on hand and applauded loudly when Senator Barkley reminded the convention that "the Democratic party is made up of men and women." Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army delivered the invocation that officially opened the convention, the first women ever to officiate in that capacity, and Mrs. Jean Springstead Whittemore of Puerto Rico was the first woman member of the Platform Committee. Mrs. Caroline O'Day, the late Congresswoman from New York, offered the only amendment to the platform that was accepted. It put the party on record in favor of "continuous responsibility of government for human welfare--especially for the protection of children." Education to Responsibility After Governor Roosevelt's nomination Miss Mary W. Dewson came into the Women's Division to direct the women's campaign--and to set the pattern for Women's Division organization through the years of the Roosevelt Administration. It was she who through the reporter plan, and later through the six-point program, began the most intensive plan of educating women to their responsibilities of citizenship ever inaugurated by any political party. The Chicago convention had seen Democratic women continuing their political progress, and in Philadelphia in 1936 even greater strides were made. The women got to work early and at their request Governor McNutt of Indiana presented the resolution to the convention which they had written requesting that each state name both a member and an alternate member of the Platform Committee, to be of opposite sex. When the resolution was presented there was not a dissenting voice, and Miss Harriet Elliott wrote, "the walls of Jericho" had at last fallen. North Carolina immediately called a caucus of its delegates and elected Miss Elliott--who later became nationally known as the woman member of the President's National Defense Advisory Commission-- an alternate to the committee. The principles of seven of the eight planks prepared by the Women's Advisory Committee at this convention were written into the party platform that year. In addition, when sixteen Vice Chairman were named to the National Committee, eight of them were women. The Program Expands Women leaders at this convention, and in headquarters during the campaign which followed, were Miss Dewson, who had then become Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Women's Division; Mrs. James H. Wolfe, who became Director of the Division in 1934, and Mrs. June Fickel, who was Assistant Director. From 1936 to 1940 Mrs. Thomas F. McAllister of Michigan was Director and Mrs. May Thompson Evans of North Carolina Assistant Director of the Women's Division. They June-July, 1944 continued and strengthened the educational program set up by Miss Dewson and by 1940 women's participation in party affairs elected about 500 women delegates and alternates at convention. It was then that women made what political reporters called "the greatest advance in women's political history since suffrage" when they were given equal representation and equal say on the Platform Committee for the first time by either party. It was also at this convention that for the first time in history the wife of a President--Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt-- addressed the delegates, and that a woman--Mrs. Thomas F. McAllister--discussed a matter of general policy. Mrs. McAllister made a speech which presented to the whole convention the point of view of Democratic women. Women's role at the 1944 convention will be built on years of recognition in party affairs--recognition which in almost every case has preceded and superseded that given by the Republican leaders to the women of their party. Alabama's Woman Secretary of State Miss Sibyl Pool, youthful and attractive, is Alabama's new Secretary of State. She was appointed by Governor Chauncey Sparks to fill out the term expiring January 1, 1947, after the resignation of Howell Turner, who accepted a position as a member of the State Board of Pardons. Miss Pool, who was twice elected to the Alabama State Legislature, was its only woman member. She comes from Linden, in Marengo County, and was the secretary of the Farm Bureau there before she went to Montgomery, the state capital, as a legislative clerk. When a member of the legislature from Marengo County resigned, the County Democratic Executive Committee elected Miss Pool to fill the post. She became so interested in her work the short time she was in the legislature that she determined to run in the primary, which she did, and was elected to a four-year term in 1938. She was again elected in 1942. While in the legislature she concerned herself primarily with welfare and farm measures. As Secretary of State, her responsibilities are heavy. Especially during an election year is her office a busy one, as candidates both in the primaries and general elections must file with her their declarations for candidacy, expense accounts, and, of course, all general tickets are filed and final returns tabulated in the office of the Secretary of State. In addition to the details relating to codes, acts, reports, commissions, and other phases of the state's business which cross the desk of the Secretary of State, that office is more or less considered as a general information bureau, and thousands of inquiries are answered each year. Page Thirty-three NO STREET CORNER APPLE STANDS (Continued from page 25) sion is paid to any honorably discharged veteran who has a disability of 10 per cent or more of his disability resulted from disease or injury incurred in (or aggravated by) active service. The amount of pension ordinarily payable ranges form $10 a month to $100 (with an addition of 15 per cent recently allowed by Congress) depending upon the degree of disability; i. e., 10 per cent, $10 a month; 20 per cent, $20 a month, and so on up to 100 per cent or $100 a month. If a veteran is 100 per cent disabled and needs regular aid and attendance there is an additional allowance for that. Certain specific injuries draw a so-called statutory pension which is paid in addition to the amount allowed for the percentage or degree of disability. For instance, the statutory rate for blindness in one eye is $35 a month, but as that particular disability is rated at 30 per cent ($30 plus the 15 per cent increase), a veteran blind in one eye draws a total of $69.50 a month. Other statutory pensions are (with the exception of the two cases noted they are the total monthly allowance, statutory pension plus percentage or disability rate): Loss of both eyes...............................................$175 Loss of one leg (plus percentage rating of from 40 to 90 per cent)..................................... 35 Loss of two legs................................................. 150 Loss of one arms (plus percentage rating of from 40 to 90 per cent)..................................... 35 Loss of two arms............................................... 150 Loss of one arm and one leg........................... 150 Loss of two legs and one arm.......................... 175 Loss of two legs and two arms........................ 250 Loss of any two extremities plus one or both eyes............................................................ 250 Loss of "use" is considered the same as actual loss in specific disability payments. Certain diseases—tuberculosis, ulcers, nervous disorders, etc., also rate pensions, provided they were not acquired through the soldiers' misconduct. These may draw anything from 10 per cent ($10 plus 15 per cent) to 100 per cent ($100 plus 15 per cent). Pensions for deaths incurred in service in line of duty are payable to widows and minor children. Parents are pensionable if dependent, but dependency must be proven in their case, whereas wives and children are automatically considered dependent and no need or private income limitation is involved. Death pensions (to date there have been a limited number of such claims filed with the Veterans' Administration) are as follows: Widow but no child........................... $50 Widow with one child ($13 for each additional child.................................... 65 No widow but one child..................... 25 No widow but two children ($10 for each additional child)................... 38 Mother or father................................ 45 Both mother and father (each)........ 21 Non-service connected death pensions have been granted for a number of years to widows and children of World War I veterans. They were extended to the widows and children of veterans of World War II on May 27, 1944. These are for cases where veterans with service connected disability (they do not have to be of a pensionable degree) die from other causes. The rates are: Widow...................................... $35 Widow with one child ($5 for each additional child....... 45 Child........................................ 18 Two children.......................... 27 Three children ($4 for each additional child)..................... 36 Veterans of World War II have also been included, as of May 27, in the non-service connected pension ($50 a month) paid the totally disabled. These pensions are payable only to veterans who served 90 days or more and who are permanently and totally disabled and whose annual income, if unmarried, is not over $1000 a year, or, if married or with minor children, $2500. ——————— EVERY CHANCE TO LIVE. . . (Continued from page 23) are often hospitalized for a year or more before the men are discharged. Men with artificial limbs are taught fully how to use them before they go back to their families and friends. The blinded are taught some trade with which they can earn their living before they are sent out into the world. This story of rehabilitation is one of the great stories of the war. Speed and large scale production have been the primary characteristics of this global war but our leaders are not allowing the magnitude of our operations to obscure the fact that our armed forces of over ten million are made up of individuals. And they are doing everything possible to bring those individual GIs home quickly and safely to the wives and mothers who are so anxiously awaiting their return. Who Are the Bureaucrats? by CHESTER BOWLES, OPA Administrator Every one of us in government work here has been called "bureaucrats" at least once. It's a label that gets pinned on us whether we've just come to work in a new wartime agency or spent years here behind a desk in a peacetime bureau. What really worries me about crying "bureaucrat" is the attitude behind it. The fellow who pins that label on every one usually doesn't feel any responsibility or he thinks of us here in government as different from himself and from anyone else in the country. That means he thinks of government as separate from the people, something in which he has no part. That's not only a bad but a dangerous attitude. It means many capable men have no interest in serving their government. I believe the war has done a lot to change that attitude. There are men and women working down here in every war agency. Many of them left better paying jobs, homes, families and friends to help their government meet the war emergency. Work Far Into Night I've seen them, in OPA, and in every other agency, working far into the night. Most of them have learned for the first time what a tremendous job good, efficient government can be. We have also, some of us for the first time, come to have a new respect for government employees who in peacetime handled this tremendous job of government. We have seen how their efforts are often hampered by the very size of the job—and thwarted by needless red tape and unwieldy administrative techniques that can and should be corrected. * * * As the present emergency ends, the government's war agencies will be gradually disbanded. It is my hope that some of the able, efficient, public-spirited persons who served their government in war can be persuaded to continue serving it in peace. They will always be needed—if ours is to be, as it must be, an efficient, truly democratic government.—Washington (D. C.) Daily News. Page Thirty-four The Democratic Digest DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION Calendar of Events for Women (As of July 6, when Digest went to press) MONDAY, July 7—3:00 P.M. Meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Stevens Hotel. TUESDAY, July 18—3:00-5:00 P.M. Tea for women delegates and alternates, National Committeewomen and State Vice Women's Division Headquarters, third floor, Stevens Hotel. WEDNESDAY, July 19—9:00-9:30 A.M. Coffee and doughnuts will be served at Women's Division Headquarters, third floor, Stevens Hotel. 9:30-11:00 A.M. Democratic Women's Campaign School will be held at Women's Division Headquarters, third floor, Stevens Hotel. Topics and speakers are: "CAMPAIGNING IN WARTIME"—Mrs. Charles W. Tillett, Assistant Chairman, Democratic National Committee. "GETTING OUT THE VOTE"—Robert E. Hannegan, Chairman, Democratic National Committee. "REGISTRATION—FIRST STEP TO DEMOCRATIC VICTORY"—Mrs. James McGranery, Pennsylvania. "GETTING THE SOLDIER REGISTERED"—Miss Doris I. Byrne, New York. "YOU CAN'T RUN A CAMPAIGN WITHOUT MONEY"—Mrs. Albert E. Hill, Tennessee. "PUBLICIZING THE NEWS"—Mrs. Wayne Coy, Indiana. "RADIO—A CAMPAIGN TOOL"—Miss Betty Goodwin, New York. "CAMPAIGN TIME IS SPEAKING TIME"—Mrs. Thomas F. McAllister, Michigan. "THE DEMOCRATIC DIGEST"—Mrs. James H. Wolfe, Utah. 12:00 Noon Convention convenes. Stadium. 5:00 P.M. Mrs. Conkey will entertain National Committeewomen at an informal dinner. Crystal Room, Palmer House. 8:00 P.M. Convention session. Stadium. THURSDAY, July 20—9:30 A.M. Breakfast. Grand ballroom, Stevens Hotel. The Democratic women of Chicago will honor Mrs. Mary T. Norton of New Jersey. 12:00 Noon Convention session. Stadium. 3:00-5:00 P.M. Visiting Democratic women invited to Marshall Field & Company for a tea and fashion show. 8:00 P.M. Convention session. Stadium. FRIDAY, July 21—9:00-9:30 A.M. Coffee and doughnuts will be served at Women's Division headquarters, third floor, Stevens Hotel. 9:30-11:00 A.M. Democratic Women's Campaign School. Women's Division headquarters, third floor, Stevens Hotel. Topics and speakers are: "STREET CORNER SPEAKING"—Mrs. Charles Poletti, New York. "THE IMPORTANCE OF ELECTING A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS"—Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, Washington, D. C. "THE FOREIGN POLICY THIS ADMINISTRATION BUILT"—Miss Josephine Schain, New York. "WHY WOMEN WILL VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE IN 1944"—Mrs. Kathryn Malstrom, Washington. "BUREAUS AND BUREAUCRATS"—Mrs. Hale T. Shenefield, Washington, D. C. "WHY THE FARMERS SHOULD VOTE THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET"—Mrs. Hannah Weiser, Illinois. "NO APPLE SELLING FOR OUR RETURNING VETERANS"—Mrs. Roland Howell, Louisiana. "CAMPAIGNING IN NEIGHBORHOODS"—Mrs. Helen Gahagan Douglas, California. 12:00 Noon Convention session. Stadium. 8:00 P.M. Convention session. Stadium. June-July, 1944 Page Thirty-five On Your Mark! Are Each of These Four Campaign Committees a Going Concern in Your County? 1. Registration And Voting Only registered voters can vote and only ballots in the box count.... 2. Public Information You'll miss a bet if you don't make the widest possible use of the radio and newspapers... 3. Speakers' Bureau With tire and gas rationing, there'll be more small neighborhood meetings and you'll need more speakers than in the past.... 4. Finance Everybody knows you can't run a campaign without money.... Write for the Women's Division Campaign Handbook, "Tools For Victory" This Year.... There's more work to do .... It's harder to do... than ever before. And... It's Up To The Women To Do It TO THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION In Session at St. Louis, June 14, 1916 We, official representatives of the suffrage movement in every state in the Union, appeal to you in the name of justice and liberty to incorporate in your political platform a declaration favoring the extension of suffrage to the only remaining class of unenfranchised citizens, --the women of our nation. We make this request in behalf of millions of women, who not earnestly desire the vote, but who believe that the perpetuity of our National ideals, our patriotism and our Americanism positively demand that women assume the responsibility of full citizenship. No class of unenfranchised citizens in our own or any other country have asked the vote in such large numbers; none so patiently, yet so persistently, as have the women of America. We are not asking your endorsement of an untried theory, but your recognition of a fact. The men of eleven (11) states and Alaska have already fully enfranchised their women, and Illinois has granted a large degree of suffrage, including the presidential vote. Women help to elect almost one-fourth (1/4) of the United States Senate, almost one-tenth (1-10th) of the House of Representatives and to decide ninety-one (91) electoral votes. That woman suffrage is already here none can deny. That it has become a great National question is self-evident. We therefore urge you to give the protecting power and the prestige of your great party platform to the final struggle of women for political liberty. We urge you to grant us relief from a position which is daily growing more intolerable; for women whose national instincts hold to the traditional belief that ours is the most liberal government in the world find themselves classed among the politically incompetent; while one by one other countries who make no claim to liberality have lifted their women from this class and honored them with the vote. We make our request in the name of justice. But a great party may well consider the expediency of such a course, since the women of six states--Oregon, Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Kansas and Illinois--have gained the vote since 1912, and these women voters have their party affiliations yet to make. We call your attention to the fact that the Democratic party is the only political party in the United States which has no woman suffrage plank in its platform. We therefore ask you to incorporate the following plank in your platform:-- Believing that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we acknowledge the right of women to participate in government and favor their enfranchisement. NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION. Carrie Chapman Catt, President Anna Howard Shaw, Honorary President Jennie Bradley Roessing, First Vice-President Katherine Dexter McCormick, Second Vice-President Esther G. Ogden, Third Vice-President Emma Winner Rogers, Treasurer Mary Foulke Morrisson, Rec. Secretary Hannah J. Patterson, Cor. Secretary Helen Guthrie Miller, Auditor Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, Auditor Alabama--Mrs. Julian Parke Arkansas--Mrs. O.F. Ellington California--Mrs. Mary McHenry Keith Colorado--Mrs. Ellis Meredith Clement Connecticut--Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn Delaware--Mrs. Mary Brassington District of Columbia--Mrs. Mary O'Toole Florida--Dr. Mary A. Safford Georgia--Mrs. Harrison Munro Brown Indiana--Mrs. Richard E. Edwards Iowa--Miss Flora Dunlap Kansas--Mrs. W.Y. Morgan Kentucky--Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Smith Louisiana--Mrs. Sake Meeham Maine--Mrs. Deborah Knox Livingston Maryland--Mrs. M. LeM. Ellicott Massachusetts--Alice Stone Blackwell Michigan--Mrs. Orton Clark Minnesota--Mrs. Andreas Ueland Mississippi--Miss Pauline Orr Missouri--Mrs. Agnes Leighty Montana--Miss Janet Rankin Nebraska--Mrs. W.E. Barkley Nevada-- Miss Felice Cohn New Hampshire--Miss Martha S. Kimball New Jersey--Mrs. Lillian Feickert New Mexico--Dean H. Lindsay New York--Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse North Carolina--Mrs. Chas. M. Platt North Dakota--Mrs. Robert Clendenning Ohio--Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton Oklahoma--Mrs. Adelia Stephens Oregon--Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy Pennsylvania--Mrs. Mary T. Orlady Rhode Island--Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates South Carolina--Mrs. Harriet Powe Lynch South Dakota--Mrs. John Pyle Tennessee--Mrs. Guilford Dudley Texas--Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham Utah--Mrs. Emily D. Richards Vermont--Miss Grace Watson Virginia--Mrs. Lila Mead Valentine Washington--Mrs. Emma Smith De Voe West Virginia--Mrs. Ellis A. Yost Wisconsin--Mrs. Henry Youmans 44 The Appeal of Modern Democracy By Ellis Meredith The following article was written by request for The Woman Citizen by Mrs. Ellis Meredith, director of publicity for the Woman's Bureau of the Democratic National Committee. Mrs. Meredith was for five years a member of the Election Commission of the city of Denver, and as a Colorado woman has been a voter for many years. With the exception of the states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, woman suffrage has come with the twentieth century, and women voters are concerned mainly with twentieth century political problems. Mrs. Meredith has, therefore, limited the scope of her article to those things that make up the appeal of modern democracy to the woman voter. It does not pretend to be a philosophical treatise or an historical sketch of the Democratic party. All that can be done within its limits is to set forth some of the achievements of the party and of this Administration, which have a special interest for the women of this country. WITH the beginning of the new century in its 1900 platform, the Democratic party adopted this plank: "We favor an amendment to the Federal Constitution providing for the election of United States Senators by the direct vote of the people, and we favor direct legislation wherever practicable." Both of these reforms at once enlisted the sympathies of many women. The newly enfranchised woman usually turns her attention to legislation, that being the field where most is expected of her. Sometimes she is able to accomplish the changes she desires, but not infrequently she fails, and every such failure becomes an argument in favor of direct legislation. Women also learned long ago that the legislature which had a United States Senator to elect seldom accomplished much else if there was a contest for the senatorship. When this change in the election of Senators was actually brought about in 1913 it was heralded as the greatest political reform of the last half century, and their legislative experience made women especially enthusiastic in its praise. It was the first great step in the program if placing the powers of government in the hands of the people themselves. And the second was like unto it. The revolt against the autocratic powers of the speaker culminated in the election of a Democratic House in 1910. At that time for years the speaker of the House of Representatives had control of the entire machinery of legislation in that body. No one could get a hearing without his consent. The Democratic House amended its rules taking away these arbitrary powers and providing for a Calendar Committee representing both parties and all sections of the country The third reform was also purely political, but when rules were adopted by which the horde of lobbyists was driven out of the Capitol, the Congress of the United States was freed from influences which had long hampered its usefulness. These three radical changes in methods cleared the decks for action and made it possible to put through the legislation that has made the last six years notable. It may seem strange to speak first of the Child Labor law, which has been held unconstitutional, but the simple fact is that a bill of this nature had been introduced in several Congresses and had died with them while waiting for a responsive Congress and a courageous Chief Executive to make it a law. The court which set the act aside comments the purpose of the law, and other bills, drawn with the objections of the court in view, are now pending. More than that, last year there was promulgated what is known as "General Order No. 13." It deserves to be called the Great Charter of American labor and it sets standards which employers must observe if they expect to receive government contracts. It covers the main features of the Child Labor law and, in brief, makes the following requirements governing the employment of women and children and sets similar standards for men/; No employment of minors under 14 years of age. No employment of children under 16 more than 8 hours a day. An eight-hour day for women wherever possible. Saturday half-holiday. One day of rest in seven. Avoidance of night work and overtime. No tenement house work. Avoidance of extreme temperatures in work-rooms. Adequate light, ventilation, and sanitation. Protection against fire, industrial fatigue disease and accident. Adequate time for rest and meals. A place to eat outside the workroom. Equal pay for equal work. Wages commensurate with increased cost of living. Mothers of young children in the home rather than in industry. Co-operation of employer and employee All this is in line with the legislation that fixed the eight-hour day for all Government employees, for all employees of contractors doing Government work, for women employees in the District of Columbia, and for railroad men throughout the nation. The Farm loan law excites only a languid interest in states where money can be obtained at 5 per cent, but the in the far West it has been a veritable emancipation proclamation to thousands of farmers who lived in dread of losing their farms through inabliity to keep up exorbitant rates of interest. The fact that in the first year of its operation some 50,000 farmers borrowed one hundred million dollars, much of which was expended in taking up existing mortgages, is sufficient evidence that this law was actually needed. Another act much appreciated by country people is the Agricultural Extension law, which brings the advantages of scientific education to farmers and their families, teaching them how to get the best results and relieving farm work of must of its drudgery. The Good Roads Act, like the Agricultural Extension law, works on the principle of Federal aid for state enterprise, and under its provisions thousands of miles of turnpike have been constructed. These two measures designed to increase the output of farms and the facility of marketing products, are great socializing agencies and steps in preparedness for the present war conditions whose value can hardly be over-estimated. There are no sectional limitations upon the blessing brought by the Federal Reserve Act. When a man loses all he has his feelings are much the same whether he does business in Wall Street or Tin Cup, Colorado. In 1907 a few men had the power to precipitate a panic and did not hesitate to use it. The world has been at war since August, 1914, but there had been no financial flurry since the passage of the Federal Reserve law. When war brought consternation to thousands of business men and insurance rates for goods to be shipped began to soar, the administration assumed the risks, issued insurance at reasonable rates, paid all losses and found it financially profitable. These are the plain concrete instances of the way in which this Administration has brought the benefits of Government to the people. The constructive program has been somewhat interrupted by our entrance into the war, but the same general policy has been pursued. "Conscription" is a hateful word to American ears, yet there is an innate spirit of fairness that makes reasonable persons admit that part of the sons of America should not bear the brunt of her battles. The selective draft is the fairest way ever devised to raise a great army quickly, and it has been accepted in that great spirit by the American people. Having called her sons to the colors, Columbia has made such provision for them and those they leave behind as was never dreamed of before. The soldier can take out from $1,000 to $10,000 insurance specifying the beneficiary in case of his death, or it may help to rehabilitate him if he returns disabled, or serve as a nest-egg to give him a new start in life. Realizing that many men were leaving dependents, the Government provides that the wife of the private receiving $30 per month shall receive half of it and $15 more as a separation allowance. If there are children this is increased. If the soldier receives a larger amount he is expected to give half to his family. If he is injured or discharged or dies the allotments and allowances cease and the compensation and insurance features become operative. Nothing could do more to preserve the "morale" of the army than this knowledge that the loved ones are provided for, and it has done much to keep the fires of courage burning at home. But the Government has not stopped at "morale". It insists upon morals and a high standard of conduct. Evils which had existed so long that they have been accepted as ineradicable are finding their day of judgment. Several prohibitory measures have been passed in regard to liquor, and "red light" districts have been ordered to clear out, rather than to clean up. Most women would be content to know that their sons were brave and good, but Columbia is more ambitious. The draft called many men who could neither read nor write English. Some of them were of foreign parentage and some from regions where truancy laws are unknown. They are receiving an elementaryeducation. The "Questionnaire" filled out by all men of draft age was drawn with the intention that it might help them to find their sphere of usefulness in civilian life if they were not called to serve in uniform. It seems, indeed, a fitting supplement to the system of Vocational Education established by a law signed by the President in February, 1917. The Federal Prohibition Amendment was passed by votes on both sides of the chamber. It had strong backing from Democrats and Republicans, and strong opposition also. The same is true in the case of the Suffrage Amendment which is still pending at the time it is written. While the Income Tax Amendment and that for the popular election of Senators were submitted by a nonpartisan vote--as any Constitutional amendment must be--they had been planks in the Democratic platform and for that reason deserve to be classed among the achievements of the Democratic party. We are told that "the women of the West voted for Wilson because he kept us out of the war." Granted. That they voted an endorsement of the President's judgment, rather than for a peace policy is proved by the fact that when war was declared all those far Western states, with one exception, filled their quota before the draft went into effect. The Western women is no flaccid, shrinking advocate of peace at any price. The women of America want this war waged to a conclusive peace. Failure is impossible, but if we win and go our victorious way to build greater navies, more deadly weapons with which to keep the world an armed camp, piling the taxes ever higher against that future day when we shall again go forth to slay and be slain, then we shall have lost all democracy stands for and all for which humanity and civilization are struggling today. The immediate object of this war is to do away forever with the power of one man to bring about such woe and misery, but the ultimate aim for which we fight is the abolition of war and that the world shall be "Safe for the peoples who live upon it and have made it their own." Unless democracy means that we shall spend our millions for these things which are permanent, for life more abundant, for freedom of body and soul and in the realization, rather than the pursuit of happiness, it means nothing. If it means less than this to anyone who calls himself by its name, he does not know the meaning of the term. Kamokawa, Wahkiakum County, Wash. Meredith The Rattle of the Rivet The Kaiser waked one morning from a brief and troubled dream, He thought that somewhere in the West he heard an Eagle scream. He called his captains to him and he said, "What's this I hear? I do not mind the groans of men or woman's bitter tear, But there's a new and threatening sound across the waters green That makes me shake and shiver like the Banshee's fearful keen; I see long troops of men in brown a-walking o'er my grave Whene'er I hear that rattling sound a-rippling o'er the wave." Von Hindenburg look sour and glum Von Ludendorf looked grave, For well they knew those sounds resound to ocean's farthest cave. "All Highest, I regret to state," Von Hindenburg began, "If on this drive we don't arrive, I'm sure we never can. That horrid sound we also hear, it's getting on our nerves, As to the Front we're hurrying our very last Reserves. We called our foemen 'Schweinhund' we called them 'pig' and 'dog'- All Highest, dear, those sounds you hear are from an isle called 'Hog.' "It's the rattle of the rivet, it's the clash of iron and steel; Before one ship is off the ways they start another keel. We hear that crashing, driving sound above the battle's din And every rivet that they drive is helping them to win. They have ships upon the ocean, they have ships just leaving shore, And every rattling rivet tells they're building more and more. It's the rattling, battling rivets that have stayed our last advance- All Highest-it's those rivets that will drive us out of France!" -Ellis Meredith. Ships And Still More Ships. When good old Father Noah Began to build his ark The neighbors sat around and jeered From dawn till after dark. They said what Father Noah knew Of building deep-sea ships Could be told past peradventure By looking at his chips. They had lots of fun with Noah And they called the ark "a tub" And most likely they called Noah The Hebrew word for "dub." But when the floods descended And they saw the ark would float They begged old Skipper Noah To take them on his boat. Last year, when Edward Hurley Was put upon the job Of building ships and yet more ships The scoffers all raised hob. They said he'd never built a ship, Or even owned a yacht, And if he did he hired some one To run it, like as not. He didn't tell his critics Each day what he had done, So, as in the days of Noah, They started to have fun. They said, "He has no shipyards; He hasn't even slips; Without them we should like to know How he can build his ships!" But he started getting shipyards, And laying down shipways, And he kept himself too busy To hear either blame or praise. There are wooden ships and steel ships And some ships of concrete, And some are big and some are small But all of them are fleet. We'll have ships of Hurley's making On all the Seven Seas, With Old Glory flying from the mast Wherever blows the breeze; And when this war is over And the world has no more slaves, Columbia, not Brittania, Is going to rule the waves. -Ellis Meredith. The Horrible Hun. When the American knows as much about the part that America should play in the war as the Hun knows, the strength of the nation will be multiplied. France knows and England knows, Belgium, Italy, Serbia and Roumania know. Russia is fast learning. We still have only the hearing by the ear. Lest this be incomplete, it may help to repeat here a few extracts from first-hand contribution from an officer at the front to Hilary A. Herbert, former Secretary of the Navy: "I have been in France nearly three months, and since I left the United States I have gained an entirely new conception of the war, and to realize, as it was impossible to do in Washington, the absolute necessity for the struggle and its ultimate favorable termination for the allies. There is no middle ground that any American or any other self-respecting civilized citizen of the world can take at this time. "Many terrible things have been printed about the acts of the Germans in this war, but as terrible as the worst you have read may appear it is not possible when so far distant to give real values to such things. * * * It is only at first hand that you get the real living facts. I thank God that I have been given opportunity to serve in a humble way in helping to crush these supermonsters who would make the world their footstool, who would deflower the chaste womanhood of conquered communities and who would substitute German arrogance and military power for the nobler and finer qualities of courtesy and right. "It is my honest conviction that Christian civilization is at stake. The absolute destruction of the power of the present German autocracy to endanger the peace of the world must be accomplished, even though it takes years to do it." -Washington Post. How Does Your Garden Grow? If you don't know how or when or what to plant in your back yard write to the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., and ask for Farmers' Bulletin 936. It tells about "The City and Suburban Vegetable Garden," and unlike some government publications it is well illustrated and should be very interesting to all the millions of people who had gardens last year and are planning larger ones this year. It has a table to help the amateur count the cost of his garden and reckon up his profits, while the prices quoted are those of normal times they will enable the reader to determine just how much he is saving over the market prices at the present time. There are only about fifty pages, but it is worth at least fifty dollars to anyone with as much as a city lot to plant, and it costs a postal card. Sweaters and Socks. Dear girls: Have you got a beautiful pink sweater, or a blue one, or a gauzy lilac affair, or a gorgeous crimson one or a sunny yellow, or were you thinking of knitting one? And do you know that there isn't wool enough for socks for our soldiers? And that wool for one pair of socks costs $1.70? Every time you knit yourself a sweater you take the socks off the feet of two men who are fighting for you and your country. Quit! Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.