THIRD PARTIES: Love That Man

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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¢ 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."