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1) Wages & Hours Legislation. Most Southern whites are against this type of legislation, killed it in Congress last winter. Floridians think it would not only put Negro and white labor on an economic basis of equality, but also ruin the State's lumber business. The two candidates who have served in Congress are on record on Wages & Hours. Wilcox is against it. Pepper is for it. Sholtz is noncommittal.
2) The Townsend Plan, which naturally enjoys the most vitality in regions where voters have the least, is still a lively subject in a State which attracts hordes of retired oldsters. Shrewdest attitude toward the Townsend bill has been that adopted by Mr. Sholtz. When speaking to audiences in which he detected aged faces, he announced his strong support of "H. R. 4199," confident that only Townsendites would know what he meant. Said he: "As God is my judge, I promise you to do all in my power . . . for those old ladies and those old gentlemen who now have to live on the magnificent sum of $9 a month." In 1934, Mark Wilcox performed the feat of getting himself reelected, over famed Mrs. Beula Croker, widow of Tammany Boss Dick Croker, despite an anti-Townsend platform which he has since altered only to the extent of advocating larger old-age pensions. Claude Pepper, after being endorsed by Dr. Townsend, proclaimed renewal of his faith in the plan last week.
3) Relief. Florida's WPA rolls currently contain 32,500 names. Of this, 5,600 were added in March—when the
State quota was enlarged. Whatever responsibility Claude Pepper can thus claim for taking care of Florida's unemployed is not an unmixed blessing. Candidate Sholtz warns his audiences that the increase was a political dodge, and that the new WPA workers are likely to lose their jobs after election. Following the same line. Candidate Wilcox has charged that Florida's WPA was being turned into a Pepper political machine. Last week, the WTA's Deputy Administrator Aubrey Williams officially recognized Candidate Wilcox's requests for a WPA "purge," ordered a "thorough investigation."
4) Franklin Roosevelt. Of the 96 seats in the U. S. Senate, 34 will be refilled this year. Of the Senators seeking reelection, 17 are out-&-out followers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Of the 17, Florida's Claude Pepper is the first to face his constituents in a primary in which the President was a major issue. Thus, when the winning bird eventually emerges from the Florida political gaming pit, he will be heralded, rightly or wrongly, as a kind of weathercock indicating how the U. S. in general now likes its current Administration.
Again, the Congressional aspirants' record is clear. Representative Wilcox, who lives in West Palm Beach, just across narrow Lake Worth from Palm Beach, has taken his politics from his neighborhood. He has voted with conservative Democrats against all the recent Rooseveltian reform legislation: Court Plan, Wages & Hours, Reorganization.
Senator Pepper, from the less gilded purlieus of northwest Florida, stands by everything Franklin Roosevelt has ever done or presumably will do.