HEAVY LOSSES FOR DEMOCRATS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26266, 10 November 1950, Page 7

HEAVY LOSSES FOR DEMOCRATS

Blow Seen To Mr Truman’s Far East Policies

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 12.30 a.m.) NEW YORK. Nov. 9. With sadly wilted majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Democrats face mounting criticism of the foreign policy of the Truman Administration, leading to demands for Mr Dean Acheson's resignation as Secretary of State.

Republicans interpret their heavy gains in seats—which still leave the Democrats in nominal control—as a positive repudiation of the Administration's Far Eastern policy. Latest figures cut the Democratic majority in the House from 89 to 34, with one seat still undecided. In the Senate the majority drops to two, the smallest held by any party in power since 1931.

In the House of Representative! there are now 234 Democrats and 199 Republicans, with only one undecided seat, in Missouri, where the Republicans have a lead of 815 votes. labour Ijjses Ground Organised Labour’s political forces, which poured more money and energy into the Congressional mid-term election campaign than ever before, gloomily acknowledged big set-backs to-day. Many union leaders declined to comment publicly, but in both the American Federation of Labour and the Congress of Industrial Organisations there were ready admissions that the victories of Senators Robert Taft • Republican. Ohio) and Eugene Milliken (Republican. Colorado), plus the defeats of such Senate Democrats as Mr Scott Lucas (Illinois), Elbert Thomas (Utah) and Francis Myert (Pennsylvania), would hurt organised Labour’s aims generally. Mr Thomas had been chairman of the Senate Labour Committee and one of Labour’s sympathetic members.

The biggest blow was Senator Taft’s one-sided victory over Mr Joseph Ferguson in Ohio, where Labour groups were concentrated as never before to defeat the Republicans. Prices on the New York Stock Exchange jumped one to two dollars a share to-day on the news of the Republican gains. Some special issues went up as much as five dollars a share. It was in sharp contrast to-day after the last national election in 1948, when prices tumbled after Mr Truman's victory. Fear of War Another factor in the voting was the intensive propaganda designed to support the official civil defence plana against atomic bomb explosions in the United States. The Korean war. reports of re-arming at home and abroad, the pinch of higher taxes to meet the Arms Bill, the effect of inflation, all of these turned the clouds of doubt into a sleet of fear. California proved by its votes that this fear worked on I voters’ minds. With their State the chief staging point for reinforcement®, supplies, equipment and returning wotmded, and the centre of revived war factories. Californians see at first hand the effects of war.

The Republican vote almost swept the board for Federal State and local officers.

The Republican top policy-maker (Senator Taft) fought mainly an antiSocialist campaign in Ohio, but he never neglected an opportunity, eipecially before audiences of women, to drive home the danger of supporting policies that the Republicans claimed resulted In Korea and might end’ op wider battlefields.