THE RADIO PRIEST

Grey River Argus, 26 April 1935, Page 5

THE RADIO PRIEST

A WIDE MOVEMENT For Social Justice (Aus. and N.Z. C:ri>lo Assu.) (Received April 25 at 6.50 p.m.) DETROIT, April 24. Tn the first move towards mobilising his vast following into an active political agency, the Rev. Father Coughlin, the Radio Priest, addressed a local rally on his “National Union for Social Justice” here to-night.

According to the speakers at the meeting, similar gatherings will be held throughout the nation until organisation has been effected along the lines of a regular Political Party, although Father Coughlin insists that his only aim is to “lobby” for his Sixteen Point Legislative Campaign, and he has no aspirations to assume any political leadership himself. To-night seventeen thousand of the League members crowded the Olympic Stadium of Detroit. Thousands more were outside and heard the speeches through amplifiers. Representatives of the National Farmers’ Union and of the American Federation of Labour participated in the programme, as also did a number of Congressmen, including Senator Nye and Senator Thomas. The chairman made the startling claim that 8500 thousand voters have signed petitions supporting Father Coughlin’s Sixteen Point Programme, the principal feature of which is the abolition of Federal Reserve Bank System, and the substituting for it of a Governmentally-controlled Central Bank.

There were present several prominent New York cotton brokers. This fact is regarded as being a significant, indication that the opponents of the Administration’s crop curtailment policy may gather under Father Coughlin ’s banner in a determined attack on the A.A.A.