Love That Man

The night was misty. The bright moons of floodlights beat down on the speaker. For ten minutes he stood there, waving his arms, gesturing helplessly to quiet the crowd. He looked a little awed. From the stands the acclamatory roar of 48,000 people swept over him.

To the 48,000, Henry Wallace, standing near second base in New York's Yankee Stadium, was a hero returned. Only a few days before, he had braved eggs, tomatoes and Southern inhospitality (TIME, Sept. 13). He had left the South answering a newsman's question with one last provocative statement: state laws should be amended, he said, to permit intermarriage between whites and Negroes. Although his campaign in the South had been more incendiary than heroic, his followers thought they knew a symbol when they saw one. To them Henry Wallace symbolized the fight against those things which were wrong with the U.S.: prejudice, intolerance, economic maladjustment.

$650,000 Take. His appearance at the stadium was the Progressive Party's biggest rally. Receipts from tickets (50-c- for bleacher seats to $3.60 for grandstand) totaled $70,000. An hour of whipped-up fund raising produced another $60,000, which ushers carted out of the stadium in baskets. Since expenses cost $40,000 for the evening, the net was $90,000. Before the Stadium rally the Progressive Party's national committee had raised $451,000, spent $670,000. Campaign Manager C. B. Baldwin announced that the party intends to raise and spend $2,500,000 on the campaign.

The party's best talent, with the exception of Vice Presidential Candidate Glen Taylor, was on hand. For three hours before Wallace appeared, they had exhorted and entertained the crowd. New York's Communist-minded Congressman Vito Marcantonio went through his forensic routine, stamping his foot, convulsively clawing the air. His target was New York's Mayor William O'Dwyer, whom he attacked as "FlipFlop Willie" because the mayor, having once praised the American Labor Party, now called it Communist-led.

The crowd, predominantly young with a sprinkling of greyheads, rose to its feet, cheering wildly. It clapped to hot music and spirituals sung by a Negro quartet. It listened, hushed, as Paul Robeson sang Ol' Man River, and applauded the Negro baritone when he declared: "I want to share with you the spirit of triumph I feel in the strength of Henry Wallace. He has marched into the Southland and given hope to Negroes all over the land."

The roar reached a climax as Henry Wallace appeared.

Theme of Hate. Whatever qualms he might have had about demagoguery, Wallace responded by reading one of the bitterest speeches he has yet delivered. He ad-libbed at the start: "We condone neither German stoning nor Russian shooting"--which brought forth mild applause. Then he launched into his main theme.

He had seen, he said, "the ugly reality of how hate and prejudice can warp good men and women, turn Christian gentlemen into raving beasts, turn good wives and mothers into Jezebels . . . victims to the catchwords of prejudice and the slogans of hate."

He saw, he said, "a young college student--a Progressive Party worker--who was severely cut across the back and arms by the agents of hate." He had heard it said in the South: "Down here to believe in the Constitution means you are automatically called a Communist."

It was not the "good people of the South" who were to blame. "It is the owners of the mines and mills, the great plantations and newspapers who incite violence . . . They have had others do their dirty work." But "the workers and farmers and independent businessmen of the South are turning from the false leadership of those who have been styled 'Southern liberals'--they are turning from those who have preached the tolerance of intolerance, tolerance of segregation, tolerance of murderous Jim Crow. They are learning that such men are only slightly to the left of Hitler and Rankin."

From a political standpoint, judging by the crowd's reception, Wallace's Southern tour had been a great success. He and his speechwriters had whipped 48,000 New Yorkers into a state of near frenzy. But had they done more than deepen the prejudices which they were trying to overcome?

Henry Wallace does not quite suit Moscow yet. Writing in the Kremlin mouthpiece, the New Times, high-ranking Soviet Writer V. M. Berezhkov noted some ideas of a "naive and Utopian character" in Wallace's book, Toward World Peace. Particularly naive, thought Berezhkov, is Wallace's idea that capitalism can be reformed and made "progressive." Berezhkov thought, however, that the forces behind Wallace would continue to play "a very essential role" in U.S. politics, even after the election.

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