William
Lemke, the son of a prosperous farmer, was born in Albany, Minnesota,
on 13th August, 1878. After graduating from the University of North
Dakota in 1902 he studied law at Georgetown University, Washington
and was admitted to the bar in 1905.
Lemke
worked as a lawyer in Fargo, North Dakota. During the First
World War he became a member of the national executive committee
of the National Nonpartisan League. A member of the Republican
Party he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1932.
Although
a Republican, Lemke supported Franklin
D. Roosevelt in his campaign to become president. He became disillusioned
with Roosevelt and his New Deal and
remarked: "I look upon Roosevelt as a bewildered Kerensky of
a provisional government. He doesn't know from or where he's going."
In
May 1935 Father Charles Coughlin began
having talks with Huey Long, Francis
Townsend, Gerald L. K. Smith, Milo
Reno and Floyd B. Olson about a joint
campaign to take on President Franklin
D. Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential elections. Long was expected
to the candidate but he was assassinated on 8th September, 1935.
The
following year Coughlin's National
Union of Social Justice selected Lemke as the party's candidate,
but he won only 882,479 votes compared to Franklin
D. Roosevelt (27,751,597) and Alfred Landon
(16,679,583). Lemke polled 13 per cent of the vote in North Dakota
but less than 6.5 per cent in other areas such as Massachusetts, Minnesota,
Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where he was
expected to do well.
After losing his
seat in the Senate in 1940, Lemke returned to Fargo and worked as
a lawyer. Lemke was elected to Congress in 1942 and served from January
1943 until his death on 30th May 1950.
(1)
Charles
Coughlin, Principles of the National
Union of Social Justice (1936)
Establishing my principles upon upon this preamble, namely, that we
are all creatures
of a beneficent God, made to love and serve Him in this world and
to enjoy Him forever in the next; and that all this world's wealth
of field and forest, of mine and river has been bestowed upon us by
a kind Father, therefore, I believe that wealth as we know it originates
from the natural resources and from the labor which the sons of God
expend upon these resources. It is all ours except for the harsh,
cruel and grasping ways of wicked men who first concentrated wealth
into the hands of a few, then dominated states and finally commenced
to pit state against state in the frightful catastrophes of commercial
warfare.
With this as a preamble,
then, these following shall be the principles of social justice towards
whose realization we must strive.
1. I believe in the right
of liberty of conscience and liberty of education, not permitting
the state to dictate either my worship to my God or my chosen avocation
in life.
2.1 believe that every
citizen willing to work and capable of working shall receive a just
and living annual wage which will enable him to maintain and
educate his family according
to the standards of American decency.
3. I believe in nationalizing
those public necessities which by their very nature
are too important to be held in the control of private individuals.
By these I mean banking,
credit and currency, power, light, oil and natural gas and
our God-given natural resources.
4. I believe in private
ownership of all other property.
5. I believe in upholding
the right to private property yet in controlling it
for the public good.
6. I believe in the abolition
of the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking
system and in the establishment of a Government owned Central Bank.
7. I believe in rescuing
from the hands of private owners the right to coin and
regulate the value of money, which right must be restored to Congress
where it belongs.
8. I believe that one
of the chief duties of this Government owned Central Bank
is to maintain the cost of living on an even keel and the repayment
of dollar debts with
equal value dollars.
9. I believe in the cost
of production plus a fair profit for the farmer.
10. I believe not only
in the right of the laboring man to organize in unions but
also in the duty of the Government which that laboring man supports
to facilitate and
to protect these organizations against the vested interests of wealth
and of intellect.
11 . I believe in the
recall of all non-productive bonds and thereby in the alleviation
of taxation.
12. I believe in the abolition
of tax-exempt bonds.
13. I believe in the broadening
of the base of taxation founded upon the ownership
of wealth and the capacity to pay.
14. I believe in the simplification
of government, and the further lifting of
crushing taxation from the slender revenues of the laboring class.
15. I believe that in
the event of a war for the defense of our nation and its
liberties, there shall be a conscription of wealth as well as a conscription
of men.
16. I believe in preferring
the sanctity of human rights to the sanctity of property rights. I
believe that the chief concern of government shall be for the poor
because, as it is witnessed, the rich have ample means of their own
to care for themselves.
These are my beliefs.
These are the fundamentals of the organization which I present to
you under the name of the NATIONAL UNION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. It is
your privilege to reject or accept my beliefs; to follow me or repudiate
me.
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