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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 28, 13 July 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghanfor ETOL.
The mutilation (fortunate or unfortunate) in the printshop of my article dealing with the Republican party convention, which appeared in the last issue of the Appeal furnishes me with an excuse to touch on certain aspects of the convention that were not mentioned in last week’s article.
One of the most striking features of the nomination of Willkie is the fact that he is not an agent of Wail Street in the same sense that Taft or Dewey or Vandenberg are agents of Wall Street. In Willkie we have one of the Wall Street boys himself. If he doesn’t come from the innermost circle he is certainly close to it.
As director of one of the biggest utility holding companies in the country and one of the biggest banks in New York he mingles with the select few who hire and give orders to politicians but rarely participate openly in politics.
Of course he went through the motion of resigning his post in the companies in which he holds office, but only the most gullible will pay any attention to this kind of mumbo-jumbo. Willkie the candidate for President of the United States remains Willkie the head of one of the biggest utility companies. Some smart fellow may find that he forgot to resign from some company or other and try to make a point out of it. To us it makes no difference whatever that he resigns or fails to resign. He is the same Willkie.
It is in the sense that Willkie is not a mere agent but one of the principals that he constitutes an open challenge to the working class. Instead of nominating some one who can try to pose as a “friend of Labor,” the Republican party proceeds to throw the gauntlet into the face of Labor by nominating one who has become the champion spokesman against the New Deal and all social reforms.
Not that such reforms as the New Deal brought will remain even if Roosevelt is elected. The war situation and the defense program will result in the loss of a good many if not all of the social gains achieved by Labor during the hey-day of the New Deal. Roosevelt, however, will try to convince the worker-voters that these social gains will remain intact. Not so Willkie. Himself one of the big business men, he knows exactly what they want and will try to get it with the least amount of hooey.
How is it that the Republican party dared nominate a man so openly a member of the ruling class? The first and most important reason, it seems to me, is that the Republican party cannot and does not hope to obtain the support of Labor. The time has gone by when even Republicans could pose as friends of the workingman. The men behind the Republican party rightly felt that under the circumstances the labor vote was lost to them anyway. No matter whom ‘they nominated the labor vote could not be depended upon.
Moreover Willkie was obviously the best man for the Republicans in so far as getting the vote of the middle class is concerned. There can be ho denying the fact that Willkie is a far mare colorful and able person than Taft or Dewey or Hoover. Granting that the newspapers were consciously determined to give him a buildup it must nevertheless be recognized that the man has enough in him to furnish the basis of such a build-up.
It must be recognized that the press has succeeded in creating quite a following for Willkie from middle-class layers of the population. Willkie’s rise from a middle-class environment to the head of a huge utility company and his nomination for the presidency still has an appeal to a great many amongst the middle-class elements.
That his nomination was supported not only by his own fellow-capitalists but also by the lower ranks of the middle-class Republican voters was made clear to the old wheelhorses of the Republican party who looked askance upon a newcomer and wanted one of their own number to get the nomination. It is this overwhelming support which made the old-line politicians capitulate.
Big Business is fortunate in having him as a candidate for other reasons, too. What is most important is that Willkie’s attitude on questions of foreign policy coincides with that of Roosevelt. With his nomination, the “isolationist” plank in the Republican platform becomes meaningless. The aggressive foreign policy of Roosevelt, a policy which the captains of banking and industry support whole-heartedly, will be carried on by Willkie should he be elected.
In fact if Roosevelt should decide to refrain from, running for a third term we shall be safe in attributing his decision partly to the nomination of Willkie. For now he can rest assured that his foreign policy will be in safe hands, even if the Republicans win the election.
For the class-conscious workers the danger is not so much from the Republicans with Willkie as from the Democrats with Roosevelt or some other demagogue. The working masses will readily recognize what Willkie means for them: longer hours, lower wages, no relief, loss of every gain they have, made in the last seven years. But it will be difficult for the conscious workers to convince the masses that essentially the Democratic party with Roosevelt will mean the same as the Republican party with Willkie.
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