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At a press conference last week United Pressman Fred Storm, whose questions Mr. Roosevelt often expects and is prepared for, asked whether the testimony about Governor Murphy gave the President concern. Mr. Roosevelt said extemporaneous remarks on the subject might not be printable, proceeded to issue an extraordinary written statement for quotation: "I was very much disturbed . . . because a Congressional committee charged with the responsibility of investigating un-American activities should have permitted itself to be used in a flagrantly unfair and un-American attempt to influence an election. . . . On the threshold of a vitally important gubernatorial election, they permitted a disgruntled Republican judge, a discharged Republican city manager and a couple of officious police officers to make lurid charges against Governor Frank Murphy.'' Mr. Roosevelt then complimented the Governor for postponing forcible action while negotiations to end the sit-down strikes without bloodshed were in progress, added: "For that act, a few petty politicians accuse him of treason: for that act, every peace-loving American should praise him."
None other than Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt also spoke up. Her sounding board was the Republican New York Herald Tribune's annual Forum on Current Problems (which also heard Mr. Dies). She spoke by radio from Cincinnati, Ohio, a State where an able Democratic wife could be useful in offsetting the campaign efforts of an able Republican wife. Mrs. Robert A. Taft (see p. 9). Said Mrs. Roosevelt by radio: "I am very much disturbed . . . more women than men write to me suggesting that Communism may be gaining a real hold. There is stress laid upon what to fight against rather than what we should be trying to accomplish. I deplore that attitude. . . ."
All of which served to heighten the display of Dies news in the U. S. press, whose front pages already had demonstrated that whatever political sophisticates might think of the inquiry, the voters of the U. S. were reading about it. Unabashed, Mr. Dies promptly made more news by retorting that the President had not read the record and didn't know what he was talking about. Bellowed the chairman: "I shall continue to do my duty, undeterred and unafraid."
Despite the vain objections of absentee, campaigning Democratic committeemen, Mr. Dies's duty next led him into California affairs. Chief witness from that State was Harper Knowles, who is chairman of the State American Legion's Radical Research Committee. Mr. Knowles is on leave from his job as secretary to the Associated Farmers, an antiunion organization headed by Philip Bancroft, Republican candidate for Senator. Mr. Knowles declared that John G. Clark, Democratic State Campaign Committee chairman, and Ellis Patterson, Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor, are Communist Party members; that Culbert Olson, Democratic candidate for Governor, and Sheridan Downey, for Senator, loyally subscribe to the Communist "Party Line." Whereupon Senator La Follette's Civil Liberties Committee vigilantly awoke from quietus, announced that it would investigate reports that Mr. Knowles's Associated Farmers is window dressing for union-busting bankers, utilities, railroads.