THIRD PARTIES: The Happiness Boys

As 1,116 delegates to the Progressive Party's second annual convention headed for Chicago last week, their chattering political machine seemed on the verge of disintegrating in a cloud of steam like a vaudeville Ford of the 1920s. A faction headed by former Assistant U.S. Attorney General O. John Rogge was threatening to yank the Communists out of the driver's seat—an operation which seemed likely to shatter the weakened chassis and send Henry Wallace flying skyward in a spray of worn piston rings.

But as it turned out, the Progressive flivver was spared. The Communists diplomatically ooched over on the seat—not out of grabbing distance of the hand throttle, but far enough to look like passengers. When Henry Wallace announced that Soviet Russia was capable of making mistakes in policy, not a soul in the drab, smoky hall so much as booed him.

Wallace asked the party to abandon its "narrow range of support" and become "a broader forward-looking party." It could not tolerate "any organized factions or groups" within it. "Our principles are vastly different from those of the Communist Party," he said. ". . . We believe in progressive capitalism, not socialism."

"We must not allow anyone the slightest reason for believing that any working member of our party puts Rome, Moscow or London ahead of the U.S. We stand ... as Americans, first, last and all the time." As he approached his conclusion he said: "The U.S. and Russia stand out today as the two big brutes of the world. Each ... in the eyes of other nations, is guided by force, and force alone." This was received in silence, but when he finished speaking, he was applauded heartily.

In the following two days the party's left wing was—comparatively speaking—as sweet as pie. Paul Robeson busied himself with nothing more provocative than singing 01' Man River. Manhattan's leftist firebrand, Congressman Vito Marcantonio, emitted a few wild yips, but concentrated on a routine target—Harry Truman, whom he described as a "little alderman in a big house."

For all this, Progressives still acted as though everything Russia did was right, everything the U.S. did was wrong: during the convention the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, the Atlantic pact, the arms program and U.S. courts and U.S. selective service were vehemently denounced (no mention was made of the U.S.S.R.'s conscript army or secret police). But, to soothe the public, the party-liners went along with two paragraphs of policy statement which accused both Russia and the U.S. of blame in the cold war.

Thus, when the convention broke up the Progressives could still boast that their machine was trundling toward their own special sunlit horizon. But as it rolled offstage, a good many members appeared to be pushing—the engine still didn't seem to turn over very well.