The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-07-22
BY WEsTBRooK PEGLER

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By WEsTBROOK PEGLER
CHICAGO.-The old-line, partisan, American
democrat at this convention is bewildered
and pathetic specimen who has an acute sense,
of a burr in his britches that he is being
played for a gullible fool by few smart and
tricky individuals, but can't do anything about
it.
This refers to Ed Kelly, Frank Hague, Ed
Flynn and the machine democrats of Con-
necticut, Kansas City and the South, and to
Jim Farley, as an individual, as well as to
the unpretentious little people of the party,
as they are often called in the patronizing
jargon of their superiors who Enthusiastically
regard themselves as the big people.
1t has been several years since anyone with
any political knoW-how in Chicago believed
that the working arrangement between Mayor
Kelly and President Roosevelt was anything
more than practical, political deal and sor-
did on both sides. Not even personally are
they compatible, as politicians often are, who,
nevertheless, fight another at every turn
in the spirit of rough, and often painful.
but sporting game. Kelly is machine man
whose machine has gears and wire and con-
QUITS reaching down into the underworld of
handbookS and union rackets and tapping the
rake-off on government contracts and legal
handouts from the federal courts to politically
deserving lawyers. He is what he is and he
has never pretended to be a social worker
a bleeding heart or statesman of world
vision. 1t was Kelly who, so to speak, drew
deadlne with his toe across sooty SUBJ
urban field on a sunny Memorial day few
wears ago dared the cOrn r11Ilnist 1aho Lon orc
to cross it as they had during their successful
reign of terror in Ohio and Michigan
And when they did cross it, smashed the
challenge to the authority of government with
toll of dozen lives. Captain Mooney of
his police department. took the immediate re-
sponsbility and the main blow of the abuse,
but he acted on Ed Kellys authority Kelly
upheld him, and the challenge has never been
repeated in Chicago
Kelly, like Hague in New jersey remains
the boss in Chicago and he is running the
festivities and arrangements of the actual con-
vention. Like the rest of the old-style machine
BOSSES he is concerned only with his own
interests in his own jurisdiction and, like
Them he Ignores the old sneers, now expedi-
emily silenced, of the poseurs and biologists
of the new deal about the uncouthness of
his political character and his methods He
has no reason to respect any of them from
Roosevelt down to Hopkins and Ickes for,
though they have damned him and all his
political kind they earned his contempt, and
Hague's too, when at campaign time they
came back to the same old smoke filled rooms
to do business in the same old way.
If such men Kelly and Hague opposed
Henry Wallace however, their decision was
strictly POLITICAL not personal or philosophical
Their function is to get out the votes and
elect the ticket and all the machine politicians
who have turned down Wallace did so only
because they believed he would be e d
weight. Their calculations do not extend be-
You'd their functions as regional bosses. The
best foreign policy, the best labor policy, the
best economic policies to such politicians are
those which will catch the most votes. But
actually, it may be seriously doubted that,
when they enter their polling booths next fall.
they will personally vote for Roosevelt.
There are many less prominent Democrats
at this convention who reveal an inner doubt
and fear of the future should their own party
win again. They try to balance in their minds
the glib catalog Of new deal achievements
compiled a few months ago by Senator Alben
Barley, of Kentucky to take the sting out
of his furious denunciation Of President Roose-
welt in the tax law dispute, and find it alarm
ngly outweghed by invasions of their free
DOM
If Roosevelt gave unions the right to bar
gain with employers, he also robbed the peo-
pie, Who after ALL the true, living body
of American labor of their right to work
without submitting themselves to the private
codes, laws and taxing powers OF the unions
and to their brutal erratic and overbearing
discipline Moreover, these Americans, even
Kelly and Hague and the little people wearing
the badges, know that nowadays, under pre-
text of the war emergency but without au-
thority in law Mr.. Roosevelt has decreed that
no American male civilian may take new
job in any line, whatever, except by perrnls-
sion Of the United States Employment Serv-
ice.
Here they find a furtive and mysterious
stranger Sidney Hillnan, continental ideol-
ogist, holding forth in an official political COM
rnand post as boss of the Political Action
Committee of the CO. which is largely COM
posed of New York communists, and issuing
DEGREES to their own partys convention, IS
suing DEGREES to them, with the blessing Of
the President and Mrs. Roosevelt
These bosses and little people of the Demo
cratic party do not know Sidney Hillman or
accept his authority or leadership and, though
thew may play cut the game in the big hall
for lack of any alternative, they will not nee
essarily 90 home pleased or confident. They
NAV be specifically impressed by the per-
sona1 presence of ,ostentatious. pushful night
club celebrities from New York, billed as au-
thors and thinkers and "glamorous' Holly
| wood personalities but that need not mean
that thew will accept them and Hillman as
eminent Americans, qualified to rule their old
Danoocra+ic narty and regulate their employ