DEMOCRATS: Don't Let Them Give It Away

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After licking its election wounds in comparative quiet for six months, the Democratic Party began prowling and growling again last week. Items: ¶ In the Missouri legislature at Jefferson City, Harry Truman made his first speech since leaving the White House, promised that he would "be of some use to the Democratic Party in the future." Confining his jabs at the Republicans to the home front, he urged his hearers to "get behind the President" in foreign policy. ¶ At an Alabama League of Municipalities gathering in Montgomery, Senator John Sparkman loosed a full-blown political oration entitled "The First Hundred Days: 1933, 1953." Comparing the "dazzling brilliance" of Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days with the "lack of firm leadership" during Eisenhower's, Sparkman accused the Administration of concocting a "Giveaway Program" (e.g., offshore oil) for "the few" and a "TakeAway Program" (i.e., hard money) for "the many." ¶ At a Democratic Party fund-raising luncheon in the capital, Washington's Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson cried: "They began with the giveaways . . . They backed away from any number of their campaign programs . . . They want to dream away the Russian menace . . . The giveaway, back-away, dream-away of 1953 will become the vote-away of 1954." ¶ Ex-Agriculture Secretary Charles Brannan told 200 newspaper editors assembled in Boulder, Colo.: "You can't produce prosperity through scarcity, but it looks as if the present Administration is going to try it." ¶ Democratic National Chairman Steve Mitchell, off on a twelve-day speaking tour through the West, said in Tacoma, Wash, that by helping elect a "giveaway" Government in November, independents who voted Republican had "helped to turn the clock back to Hoover." ¶ An unofficial party auxiliary, the C.I.O. Political Action Committee, reported that it was keeping a record of how much time Dwight Eisenhower spends golfing and fishing. "We are not implying any criticism or any suggestion that he isn't working hard enough," a P.A.C. spokesman ex plained. "All we're interested in is results.

We're just keeping track of this for the hell of it."