A Modest Proposal

The position of Henry Agard Wallace was much like that of the man who pursued a girl until she caught him. As far back as April, he had flirted publicly with the idea of a third party in '48. He had carried on a cautious courtship all over the U.S. Last week she turned on him and he got a definite proposal.

The executive committee of the pinko Progressive Citizens of America (of which he is carefully not a member) urged him to run for President as an independent. If this move was calculated to set off a triumphal procession through the ranks of "liberals" and organized labor, someone had missed the cue. Actually, it started a spontaneous rush for the doors. Great segments of potential Wallace strength vanished in a storm of disaffection.

First to go was none other than P.C.A.'s cochairman, Columnist Frank Kingdon. At the closed meeting of P.C.A.'s executive committee in New York, ex-Preacher

Kingdon voted the only "no" and then resigned from P.C.A. He liked Henry Wallace, he said, but a "third ticket in 1948 is a pipe dream." Besides, Kingdon was out for the regular Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator in New Jersey.

In San Francisco, Lawyer Bartley Crum, one of the attorneys for the ten Hollywood writers cited for contempt by Congress, resigned as a P.C.A. national vice chairman.

Then the big C.I.O labor unions were heard from. The powerful Amalgamated Clothing Workers, which, under the late Sidney Hillman, was the bulwark of New York's American Labor Party (and still is), said it wanted no part of a third party. So did gravel-voiced Joe Curran, president of the National Maritime Union.

Fresh from trouncing Communists in his own United Automobile Workers, Walter Reuther got up at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington and spoke the mouthful of the week. With a boyish grin, he remarked: "I think Henry is a lost soul. People who are not sympathetic with democracy in America are influencing him. Communists perform the most complete valet service in the world. They write your speeches, they do your thinking for you, they provide you with applause and they inflate your ego as often as necessary."

At week's end, about the only supporters Henry had left besides the P.C.A. were the Communist Daily Worker, Vito Marcantonio, Harry Bridges, and a fringe of other left-wing labor men. Six days after the proposal was made, Henry had not yet said either yes or no. But it was painfully evident to Democratic politicians that if he did form a third party, it would be bad for them, although not necessarily fatal. Republicans were jubilant: it would do them no harm whatsoever.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.