SWATANTRA—JULY 12, 1947
AN American chronicler with a reputation as a careful
reckoner of crowds, gives these reports of Mr. Wallace’s reception:
In Cleveland—“A cheering capacity audience of 3,000 in the
public music hall; more than a thousand were left standing outside. Tickets
cost 60 cents to $2.40.”
I Chicago—“A frenzied, cheering crowd of more than 20,000
overflowed the Chicago Stadium. It was a sell-out, and the scalpers even did
some business at the doors.”
In Detroit—“Five thousand Detroiters paid 50 cents to a
dollar to hear the former Vice-President, and an overflow crowd of 4,000 heard
him through a public address system in a park across the street.”
In Los Angelos—“Twenty-seven thousand tickets were sold for
the mass meeting. Top price was lifted to $3.60.”
And so on.
* * *
Of Wallace’s visit to England, “which began as a private
affair and turned into an international event,” Critic wrote thus in “New
Statesman”:
“I can recall no other private visit to this country which
has been so fully reported and discussed. One rather naïve reporter made the
odd comment that we were justified in saying that Wallace’s visit had roused
public attention by the fact that 2,000 tickets had been sold for a Central
Hall meeting (London). Actually, the 3,000 tickets for the Central Hall meeting
were sold out in a few days as a result of one annual advertisement in this
journal (New Statesman). Subsequent enquiries and complaints showed that we
could have sold out the Albert Hall three times over if it had been obtainable.
There were 5,000 people (on cup-tie
afternoon) at the Manchester meeting; crowded meetings were held at Liverpool
and Stoke; and, judging by enquiries from all over the country, similar crowds
were anxious to hear Mr. Wallace in a score of English and Scottish cities.”
Yet Wallace is no spell-binding orator. Of his Central Hall
speech in London referred to in the paragraph above, an English journal
reported, “Wallace’s delivery was dull. He read his speech, mostly with his
eyes on his prepared script. Once he stumbled badly, and had to correct what he
had misread . . . He seemed taken aback by the brilliance of Crossman and
Priestley who preceded him.” The political value of public gatherings is
proportionately increased when they meet to hear speakers that have little to
offer them by way of oratorical thrills. As the entertainment value of a speech
diminishes, the public importance of the crowd listening to it tends to
increase. When people gather in large numbers to listen to the dull platform
performances of non-brilliant lecturers, (even paying a fee for it!) it is an
indication of popular sympathy for the ideas associated with them, without
reference to skill in presentation or any gifts of forensic artistry.
* * *
Little minds in his own country have reproached Wallace as a
“starry-eyed idealist,” but Wallace really is one of the very few true
internationalists of our time with a vision of world welfare extending beyond
his own native country’s frontiers. One central idea runs throughout his
political thought. It is that the root of famine, misery and strife all the
world over lies in the fact that far too many men are struggling with primitive
tools to gain a wretched living from refractory uneconomic holdings. They have
to be relieved through the pressure on land being relieved and alternative
employment in industry found for some of them. Realising the need for a
worldwide balance between agriculture and, industry, Wallace holds that the
biggest social objective of mankind at the present day is to raise the standard
of tillers of soil everywhere to the level of living of industrial peoples.
Wallace would have America’s dollars used in the promotion of industrialization
to raise the standard of life of primary producers in backward countries,
rather than to buy allies as Truman has been doing in Greece and Turkey.
* *
*
But Wallace has neither a party machine nor the support of
any organized interests in his attempts to win public response for his ideas.
To politicians in modern times bent on winning public support, the Press next
day is even more important than their immediate audience, but Wallace, with
none to pull strings for him in the underworld of manoeuvre and intrigue from
which the daily Press of America draws its guidance and inspiration, found his
speeches ignored in the papers after his break with the President, and his
avenues of approach to the judgment and conscience of American voters cut off.
From this isolation he has won back Press publicity, partly with an adventure
of his own in journalism by taking up the editorship of the weekly, New Republic, but mainly by forcing
world attention on his views with a European tour. He is no longer neglected by
the Press of his country and substantial coverage is being given of late to his
political tours.
* * *
When the Press denies fair reporting, the equilibrium of
responsible government is gravely disturbed. The outbursts of hostile sentiment
that have been so frequently greeting our Madras Ministers when they make their
appearance on public platforms nowadays,
are a form of reaction to many a resented deviation of the daily Press from the
strict proprieties of impartial reporting. Perhaps because most of the editors
of our newspapers are themselves immersed up the neck in intrigues behind the
scenes to promote the fortunes of this or that combatant for honours or
leadership, there is nothing like objective fairness in the reporting columns
of the papers controlled by them. Space is allotted not in proportion to the
public importance of speakers or the merit and worth of their speeches, but in
accordance with a table of preferences and exclusions got up by the man in
control very often with far from creditable motives completely divorced from
professional journalistic standards. The effect of the shady system of bans and
boosts that prevails in many a newspaper office (to the hurt and degradation of
conscientious reporters that are sought thereby to be turned into hacks) is a
source of constant exasperation to the public whose helplessness against the
authors of the system drives them to seek other ways of letting the steam off.
The orderliness of social behaviour all the world over would seem to have a
direct relation with the quality of the Press; and if we had newspapers of
greater integrity in our midst it is not unlikely that there would have been
less of violence and disturbance in public meetings and social life.—(SWATANTRA
July 12, 1947) S A K A.
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