Evening star., 1939-08-11
Bark|ey Asserts
Repub|icansAre
Cropping in Dark
Williams Tells Young
Democrats Relief Was
Free From Politics
(Tert OF Roosevelt message on
Page A-5)
BY the Associated Press,

BY the Associated Press.
PITTSBURGH, Aug. 11.-Senator
Barkley of Kentucky, the Senate
majority floor leader, brought the
Young Democrats national conven-
ton to its feet today when he de-
clared, Our Republican friends have
nowhere to go and nothing to stand
on and are searching around in the
darkness for an issue of some sort"
Speaking extemporaneously to a
convention moving two hours be-
hind schedule and after Aubrey
Williams, national youth admin
istrator, had denied there was ANY
politics in relief" Senator Barkley
said instead of my kingdom for
horse" Republicans are shouting:
An issue, an issue, my country
Tor an issue. In an effort to find
and make an issue some of them
have been willing to sink their coun-
try IN order that they might find
an issue"
Recounting the history of the
Democratic party, he asserted its
accomplishments had laid the foun-
dation for the accomplishments of
the present administration and the
party had always been a New Deal
party
He said the Republicans SAY
they favor the objectives of the New
Deal but object to the methods.
They do not tell us what their OBJ
Jective would have been had they
been in power"
Lauded on Relief View.
Loud applause greeted his state
ment that relief rolls would have
been materially reduced if the ad-
mlnlstration had had the whole
hearted cooperation of those en-
ploying labor"
Whether we have reached the
point in our history where we are
confronted with permanent unem-
ployment of several million men
do not attempt here to say" he
continued, but we have done every
thing within human possibility to
create and to preserve the jobs of
men and women
Defending Government spending
Senator Barkley said ITO hear Re-
publican breast-beaters you would
think the public debt was a peculiar
invention of the Democrats"
Hoover started that" he said
adding his administration jumped
the debt $4,000 100000 land there is
not courthouse, nor a sidewalk nor
street nor waterworks from
Hyde Park to Palo Alto to show for
that $6O00,O0o .00O."
Delegates, still weighing the full
import of President Roosevelt S
statement that he would not support
a conservative for the presidential
nomination, heard Williams declare
Nobody is playing politics with
relief. The people know we have
kept the record clean. No one ad-
ministering these measures today
can write check in four figures
and the critics know it."
Major Officials Held Blameless.
He said not in single instance
has the finger of suspicion pointed
to major official spending these
funds. The people know the money
is in honest hands"
Mr.. Williams said a recent in
vestigation of w. P. A. showed that
out of expenditures of millions by
thousands of Government workers
only II instances of irregularity had
been turned up and one of these
was "a man told friend at mid
night he was going to support some
one for the Senate"
That is the degree of our cul-
pability,' he shouted as the audience
applauded.
In a carefully-worded message to
the convention here last night, Presl-
ident Roosevelt said:
If we nominate conservative
candidates, or lip-service candidates,
on straddlebug platform, 1 per-
sonally, for my own self-respect and
because of my long service to, and
belief in, liberal democracy, will find
1t Impossible to have any active part
in such an unfortunate suicide of the
old Democratic party"
The President still kept his own
(See DEMOCRATS, Page A-5.)