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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. II No. 51, 26 November 1938, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
CHICAGO – What was obviously a middle-class revolt against the New Deal throughout the country hit Illinois as well. The sharp drop in the price of corn and wheat created resentment amongst the farmers; the generally bad business conditions for the lower middle class of the cities engendered dissatisfaction in the ranks of that class. The result was a loss of faith by those two elements of the population in the ability of the Roosevelt New Deal to solve their problems and the only place they had to turn was to the Republican party. This once more illustrated the Marxian maxim that if the middle class gets no decisive leadership from the left it turns to the right.
The Republican sweep did not, however, succeed in winning the important contest for the United States Senate. The Republicans recaptured four seats in the House of Representatives and apparently have gained control of the State Legislature. But their march to victory was stopped by the powerful Democratic machine of Chicago.
Scott Lucas, running for Senator on the Democratic ticket, lost to his Republican opponent by 100,000 votes outside of Chicago but obtained a plurality of more than 200,000 in Chicago. The majority of over half-a-million which the Democrats obtained in Cook County in 1936 was whittled down to about 40 percent of that figure.
If the Republicans didn’t win, neither did the New Dealers. In any contest for first place for reactionary politics most of the Democratic candidates would have nothing to fear from the Republicans. The successful candidate for the U.S. Senate, Scott Lucas, is as reactionary as they make them. The Republican newspapers attribute his victory to the fact that, while a member of the House of Representatives, he voted against Roosevelt’s Supreme Court Bill. Behind Lucas stood the Horner-Courtney faction of the Democratic machine, representing respectable Big Business. Courtney, the present State’s Attorney of Cook Country, delights in raiding all labor unions not controlled by men who do his bidding.
Lucas was also supported by the notorious Kelly-Nash machine, closely allied with the underworld and in charge of the police who murdered striking steel workers for exercising their right to picket. These two factions, though fighting like cats and dogs in the primaries, for the right to control the lucrative business of governing the people, found no difficulty in getting together during the election.
There isn’t a single New Dealer in the whole Democratic crowd of Chicago but for the sake of a victory a most cynical partnership was entered into between the respectable Horner faction, the underworld of the Kelly-Nash group and the Roosevelt New Dealers. One can judge the liberalism of the Kelly-Nash group by the fact that the reactionary Chicago Tribune, after the election, contained an editorial expressing gratification over the victory of that group on the local scene.
The workers undoubtedly supported the Democrats. In the first place they were told to do so by Labor’s Non-Partisan League largely under the influence of the Stalinists. Not that the League carried on an extensive campaign; it hasn’t enough belief in its own program to do that. Whatever the Communist party could do to help along the unholy combination of Horner, Kelly and the New Dea! was done.
However, the C.P. was somewhat impartial. The astute leadership of that party looked very carefully and found good-men-and-true to the ranks of the Republican party and since the C.P. is really serious about the Democratic front it acted logically and endorsed the good Republicans.
It must be admitted that even without the urgings of Labor’s Non-Partisan League and the C.P., the workers would have voted for
the Democratic party. To them the Democrats represented the New Deal, and between the New Deal and the reactionary Republicans they chose the former. The presence of a real Labor party with a program meeting the needs of the workers would have made a tremendous difference in Illinois and elsewhere. Not that victory would have been assured but there would have been a far different spirit arising from an independent struggle for independent candidates on a militant program. The so-called Labor party in Illinois consists of not much more than the local leaders of the decrepit Socialist party, supported by a number of local trade unions. The party was unable to get on the ballot because the Democratic politicians feared the possibility of losing some votes to it. At that and without any campaign, some thousands of workers must have written in the name of the Labor party candidate for Senator. The Socialist Workers’ party supported the write-in for the Labor party candidate. The Chicago S.W.P also issued a special 2-page election edition of the Socialist Appeal.
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