Here is an important remembrance of politics past …
This rare booklet published by the International Workers Order excerpts portions of a 1942 speech by FDR’s vice president, Henry A. Wallace. As the poet Carl Sandburg wrote in the foreword, “His speech transcends partisan causes and petty ambitions. As a speech, it deals with living history and may long be remembered.”
What’s interesting about Wallace’s arguments (which can be heard here), each highlighted by illustrations produced by the social realist-idealist Hugo Gellert, is that they attempt to tie the United States more closely to the Soviet Union in the face of a common enemy, Nazi Germany. “It is no accident that Americans and Russians like each other when they get acquainted,” Wallace said. “Both people were molded by the vast sweep of a rich continent.” He further noted that “thanks to the hunger of the Russian people for progress, they were able to learn in 25 years that which had taken us in the United States a hundred years to develop.” The quintessence of liberal thinking.
The speech further addressed the issue of “ethnic democracy,” which Wallace insisted was vital to the “new democracy, the democracy of the common man … the different races and minority groups must be given equality of economic opportunity.” And he continued, “President Roosevelt was guided by principles of ethnic democracy when in June 1941 he issued an executive order prohibiting racial discrimination in the employment of workers by the national defense industry.”
An additional point: “From the Russians we can learn much, for unfortunately the Anglo-Saxons have had an attitude toward other races which has made them exceedingly unpopular in many parts of the world. … We have not sunk to the lunatic level of the Nazi myth of racial superiority, but we have sinned enough to cost us already the blood of tens of thousands of precious lives.”
Gellert (1892–1985), who was born in Hungary, underscored Wallace’s theme through graphics that echoed other lithographic work he did for progressive causes. (I had the pleasure of being on a panel about political art with Gellert a year before his passing—he was committed to “ethnic democracy” until the end.)
The images here are selected from the 1943 booklet Century of the Common Man, with points in Wallace’s speech illustrated and titled by Gellert.
