$5,000,000 for Term IV

The first big money for the 1944 presidential campaign was laid on the line last week--by C.I.O. At their annual convention in Philadelphia, C.I.O. leaders made a modest announcement that they had earmarked $700,000 for political "education." In private, they were less modest: they made plans to spend up to $5,000,000 of local and State organization funds, if necessary, to put U.S. labor squarely in politics.* Their unofficial platform:

> To stop the right-face of the Democratic Party and force it back to its crusading New Deal days.

> To elect a pro-labor Congress.

> To elect a pro-labor President.

In public C.I.O.'s policy makers carefully avoided any commitments on a Fourth Term for Franklin Roosevelt. President Philip Murray blamed the President and Congress equally for the raw deal that labor leaders insist that labor has been getting, added bluntly: "I don't like Washington as it is today." Agile Sidney Hillman, chairman of the new committee for political action, hedged with a prudent : "We will make our commitment for 1944 in 1944."

But nobody, down to the rawest delegate, was fooled by this coy talk. In deciding to make politics their No. 1 business, C.I.O. leaders were making a $5,000,000 gamble that they could forge the 12,000,000 U.S. labor union members into a solid voting bloc; that they could then offer these votes to Franklin Roosevelt in return for another New Deal, and that the President would run and be reelected.

One Purpose. For all labor's griping at wage controls (see p. 17) and White House rebuffs, C.I.O. leaders still believe privately that Franklin Roosevelt is their man. They also believe, as realists, that votes talk. With $5,000,000 and enough energy, C.I.O. hopes to "rescue" Franklin Roosevelt from his present necessary policy of appeasing conservative Southern Democrats and a balky Congress.

The plans laid last week will shove U.S. labor deeper into politics than ever before. Sidney Hillman, making a comeback after his unhappy experience as a Government official in OPM, won the consent of all 40 C.I.O. unions to draft all the men he wants. Henceforth he can reach into any union, pick out the best administrative, research, publicity or speechmaking talent.

Under the Connally-Smith-Harness act, Hillman cannot give any C.I.O. money to party campaign chests. But he can spend what he likes--with an eye to the Hatch Act limitation of $3,000,000 for any one committee in any one campaign--in his own private efforts to elect candidates who look good to C.I.O. As a founder of New York's American Labor Party, which delivered 300,000 votes to Roosevelt in 1936 and 417,000 in 1940, he knows the business on a small scale. He has a rich field to work in: besides C.I.O.'s 5,285,000 members, he can try to harvest votes from A.F. of L.'s 6,100,000, the Railway Brotherhoods' 350,000, the uncounted thousands of sympathetic farmers, white-collar workers and little businessmen.

*Official party campaign funds in 1940: Democrats, $2,634,154; Republicans, $2,812,003. The Hatch Act limits individual campaign contributions to $5,000.

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