Full text of "High treason; the plot against the people"

A WARN I N G TO TH E NATI ON
BY THE CO AUTHOR OF THE SENSATIONAL BEST-SELLERS

SABOTAGE ! AND THE GREAT CONSPIRACY

HIGH
TREASON

THE PLOT AGAINST
THE PEOPLE

ALBERT E KAHN

WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF ARTHURKAHN

f THE COMPLETE ORIGINAL $3 BOOK

HIGH TREASON

By Albert E. Kahn

SABOTAGE! -The Secret War Against America *

THE PLOT AGAINST THE PEACE *

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY: The Secret War Against
Soviet Russia *

HIGH TREASON: The Plot Against the People

Pa7nphlets

Treason in Congress

Dangerous Americans

With Michael Sayers

HIGH
TREASON

The Plot Against the People

ALBERT E. KAHN

Research and Editorial Assistant, ARTHUR KAHN

LEAR PUBLISHERS

New York

to reproduce this book or portions

thereof in any form.

First Edition
Published May 1950

199

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY MOTHER

whose heart is with the people

None of the incidents or dialogue in High Treason
has been invented by the author. The material has
been drawn from various documentary sources
which are indicated in the text or listed in the
Bibliographical Notes.

The reader of this book is not to infer from the tide, High Treason, that
any person named in the book has committed treason against the United
States Government. The title is derived from the concept defined in the
author's foreword. In those cases where treason against the United States
Government has been committed by persons named in this book, the author
has specifically indicated this fact.

CONTENTS

On Treason—^ Foreuoord xi

BOOK ONE: DAYS OF TERROR

War in Peace

1. Grim Aftermath 2

2. Secrets of the Department of Justice 10

3. The Raids 14

4. Chambers of Horror 20

II Dark Tide

1. The Nature of the Crime 24

2. The Foulest Page 29

III Balance Sheet 34

BOOK TWO: LOOTING THE LAND

IV Incredible Era

1. The Making of a President 42

2. "God! What a job!" 45

3. The Ways of Normalcy 48

V Rogue's Gallery

1. "The real old times" 53

2. The Dome and the Hills 58

3. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 63

4. Sudden Death 68

5. Millionaires on Trial 71

vii

VI The Golden Age

1. "Aren't We All Rich Now?"

2. The Profits of Crime

3. *'Those anarchistic bastards!"

VII End of An Era

1. Debacle

2. Days of Reckoning

3. March on Washington

BOOK THREE: THE WAR WITHIN

VIII The New Deal

1. F.D.R.

2. First Term

IX Force and Violence

1. King of the Strikebreakers

2. Blackguards and Blacklists

3. Gas and Guns

4. Techniques of Terror

5. Lest We Forget

6. The General Staff

X Inside Ford's Empire

1. Man and Myth

2. The Little Fellow

3. "Bennett's Pets"

4. The Dallas Affair

5. Boring From Within

6. Final Drive

XI Dangerous Americans

1. The Secret Offensive

2. Abortive Putsch

3. Murder in the Middle West

4. Fifth Column in Congress

5. America First

XII The War Years

I. Gold Internationale

vui

2. "What price patriotism?" 229

3. People's War 234

BOOK FOUR: THE NEW INQUISITION

iciii Death of the New Deal

1. War's Legacy 242

2. Return of Herbert Hoover 248

3. Missouri Gang 251

4. Top Secret 256

5. Sound and Fury 260

Jciv Witchhunt in Washington

1. Loyalty Order 267

2. Behind Closed Doors 271

tv Pattern of Suppression

1. Grim Schedule 278

2. Fear Itself 281

3. Stormtroop Strategy 285

4. "Is this America?" 290

5. Method in Madness 297

tvi The Monstrous Fact

1. In Freedom's Name 306

2. In the Nation's Capital 311

3. Terror in Tennessee 315

4. By Trigger, Lash and Noose 320

XVII The Red Spectre

1. Theme and Variations 328

2. Trial of the Twelve 332

3. Peekskill 342
4- 1950 347

To the Reader 349

Bibliography 351

Index 356

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed.

]a?ne5 Russell Lowell

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People,
use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget
who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool-
then there will be no speaker in all the world say
the name: "The People," with any fleck of a sneer in
his voice or any far-oif smile of derision.

The mob— the crowd— the mass— will arrive then.

Carl Sandburg

A Foreword
ON TREASON

The greatest treason is not treason against governments but
against human beings.

Treason against the people is committed in many diverse ways.
Oppression through violence, terror and inquisition; the exploita-
tion, despoilment and impoverishment of millions of men and
women; despotic laws and the use of the courts as instruments of
repression; fraudulent propaganda a7id the artificial pitting of one
section of the public against another; the malting of wars and
the monstrous alchemy of converting mans blood into gold: all
these are forms of treason against the people.

And common to all of them is the fierce determination of a
privileged minority to retain their power and increase their advan-
tages at the expense and suffering of the great majority.

Treason against the people is not a new phenomenon in the
world. Its dar\ thread runs through the pattern of all recorded
history. But in our epoch, as the strength of the people has
achieved unprecedented proportions and their demand for a
better life has become implacable, the measures of the few to sub-
jugate the many have grown increasingly ruthless and desperate.
Fascism was a product of that ruthlessness and desperation. The
German citizen who actively opposed the Nazi regime was not a
traitor but a true patriot; it was the Nazi Government that was
traitorous.

This boo\ deals with treason against the American people. The
crimes and conspiracies it records do not ma\e for pleasant read-
ing, and much of its content will be deeply shoeing to the
average American. Yet there is every reason why Americans must
comprehend the treasonable devices employed against them in the

past and so gravely menacing them in the present. The main-
tenance of democracy in America, and of peace iri the world,
depends largely upon this understanding.

It is in the hope of increasing this understanding, and of acti-
vizing Americafis against the mounting danger in the land, that
this boo\ has been written.

Xll

BOOK ONE: DAYS OF TERROR

■>.>!^i',':^'.«:'i*i

Chapter i

WAR IN PEACE

Give me your tired, your poor.
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

FroTfi Emma Lazarus^ poem, The New
Colossus, inscribed on the base of the
Statue of Liberty,

I. Grim Aftermath

Shortly before dawn on a chill overcast December morning, one
year after the end of the war, a carefully guarded transport vessel
lying in the shadow of the guns of Fort Wadsworth lifted anchor
and slipped out of New York Harbor under extremely strange and
mysterious circumstances. Not even the captain knew where the
ship was bound; he was sailing under sealed orders, to remain un-
opened until he was twenty-four hours at sea. The only persons
aware of the ship's destination were a few highly placed officials
of the United States Government.

Through the long tense hours of the night a cordon of heavily
armed soldiers had stood on guard at the pier. Aboard ship, other
soldiers with fixed bayonets patroled the decks. A special detach-
ment of marines, several agents of the Department of Justice and a
top-ranking member of the Mihtary Intelligence Section of the
Army General Staff sailed with the vessel. Shortly before departure,
revolvers were distributed among the crew . . .

The ship carried an extraordinary cargo: 249 Russian-born men
and women who had been arrested by Federal agents in a series of
sudden nationwide raids and brought for deportation to Ellis Island

under armed guard. According to Justice Department spokesmen,
the prisoners were "the leaders and brains of the ultra-radical move-
ment" and "Soviet agents" who were ^'conspiring to overthrow the
Government of the United States."

While street lights blinked out in the hushed, still slumbering city
of New York, the ship bearing these men and women steamed
slowly away from the dimly-looming Statue of Liberty and headed
out to sea.

The ship was the Buford. More colloquially, the American press
dubbed it "The Soviet Ark". . .

For those readers who do not recall the banner headlines which
heralded the news that the Biiford had sailed, it should be mentioned
that this singular voyage occurred one year after World War I, not
World War II.

The date on which the Buford sailed from New York was De-
cember 2 1, 19 19.*

The Great War had ended but peace had not come with the
signing of the Armistice on November 11, 191 8.

On that long-awaited day which officially concluded the agony
and havoc of the four seemingly interminable years, as the momen-
tous word raced through the land, and every hamlet and town
resounded with the frantic clamor of whistles, horns and bells, and
tens of thousands danced wildly in the streets with joy, President
Woodrow Wilson sat at his desk in the White House writing a
solemn but exultant message to the American people:

"My Fellow Countrymen: The Armistice was signed this morn-
ing. Everything for which America fought has been accomplished.
It will now be our fortunate duty to assist by example, by sober
friendly counsel, and by material aid in the establishment of just
democracy throughout the world."

In Europe, as in America, President Wilson's quixotic pronounce-
ments were on all lips. Arriving on the Continent that December to
attend the Paris Peace Conference, the tall, lean, bespectacled pro-
fessor from Princeton was fervently acclaimed by the war-weary

* On January 17, 1920, after being escorted across the English Channel by a
British destroyer and passing through the Kiel Canal to the Baltic Sea, the
Buford deposited its human cargo at the port of Hango, Finland. The Finnish
Government immediately transported the deportees to the Russian border and
turned them over to the Soviet authorities.

millions as a modern Moses who had come to lead mankind into a
promised land of peace and brotherly love.

And yet, incredible as it seemed, within a matter of weeks, the
splendid visions conjured up by Wilson's magic words had vanished
into thin air, and in their place loomed ominous portents of tur-
bulent and tragic days to come.

"It is now evident," Colonel E. M. House, Wilson*s chief adviser
and closest confidante, noted apprehensively in his diary on March
3, 19 19, "that the peace will not be such a peace as I had hoped, or
one which this terrible upheaval should have brought about."

At the carefully secluded peace deliberations of the Big Four in a
conference room at the Quai D'Orsay in Paris, there soon emerged
the real reasons why millions of men had died in the mud of
Europe's battlefields. Bound by their secret treaties and commercial
pacts, and avidly impatient to redivide the world market and carve
up the German Empire, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill,*
Georges Clemenceau and Vittorio Orlando lost little time in by-
passing Wilson's high-sounding peace proposals and getting down
to the real business of the day.

"The old politicians," observed the famous British war correspon-
dent. Sir Philip Gibbs, "who had played the game of politics before
the war, gambling with the lives of men for territory, privileged
markets, oil fields, native races, coaling stations and imperial pres-
tige, grabbed the pool which the German gamblers had lost when
their last bluff was called and quarreled over its distribution."

There were other discordant notes at the Peace Conference.

The legacy of the Great War had not been limited to millions of
dead and crippled human beings, and to wreckage, plague, famine
and destitution. Out of the cataclysm there had come, unbidden and
unforeseen, gigantic upheavals of masses of humanity, revolting
against further suffering and bloodshed, demanding peace, bread,
land and an end to the old order.

"The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution ...,'*
Prime Minister David Lloyd George told the Peace Conference in a
confidential memorandum. "The whole existing order in its politi-

* Winston Churchill, then British Secretary of War, temporarily replaced
Prime Minister Lloyd George, as the British spokesman at the Paris Peace
Conference in February 1919.

cal, social and economic aspects is questioned by the masses of the
population from one end of Europe to the other."

How to stifle this "spirit of revolution" and maintain the status
quo? How to liquidate the Soviets in Berlin and Hamburg, in
Bavaria and Hungary? Such were the questions that obsessed the
peacemakers at Paris.

And dominating all other questions was this: how to crush the
revolution in Russia which had brought the Soviet regime to power
on November 7, 19 17?

As recorded by the semi-official History of the Peace Conference
published under the auspices of the British Royal Institute of Inter-
national Affairs:

The effect of the Russian problem on the Paris Peace Conference
was profound: Paris cannot be understood without Moscow. Without
ever being represented at Paris at all, the Bolsheviki and Bolshevism
were powerful elements at every turn. Russia played a more vital part
in Paris than Prussia.

"Bolshevism is spreading," the aging French "Tiger," Premier
Georges Clemenceau, agitatedly warned the Peace Conference. "It
has invaded the Baltic provinces and Poland ... we have received
very bad news regarding its spread to Budapest and Vienna. Italy,
also, is in danger. . . . Therefore, something must be done against
Bolshevism!"

Already something was being done. Although peace had been
proclaimed, tens of thousands of AUied troops, fighting side by side
with counter-revolutionary White armies led by former Czarist
generals, were waging a bloody, undeclared war on Russian soil to
overthrow the new Soviet Government.

"Bolshevism," Herbert Hoover, Chairman of the American Relief
Administration, told the Peace Conference, "is worse than war! " *

* By the summer of 19 19, without declaration of war, the armed forces of
fourteen states had invaded the territory of Soviet Russia. The countries
involved were: Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia,
Serbia, China, Finland, Greece, Poland, Rumania, Turkey and the United
States.

The intervention and the civil war in Russia lasted into the summer of 1921
and finally ended in the defeat and routing of the interventionist forces and
their White Russian allies by the Red Army.

Although receiving scant attention in most histories, the two and a half
years of intervention and civil war were responsible for the death through
battie, starvation or disease of some 7,000,000 Russian men, women and chil-

Point six of Wilson's Fourteen Points called for the "evacuation
of all Russian territory" and "the independent determination of her
own political development and national policy." But at Paris, Wilson
gave in to the advocates of intervention. The day before he was to
return to America, he said, *'I have explained to the Council how I
would act if I were alone. I will, however, cast in my lot with the
others."

Back in America, President Wilson placed the Treaty of Ver-
sailles before the Senate. Unwilling to admit to himself or to others
the tragic failure of his mission and the iniquity of the peace terms,
Wilson declaimed: "The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has
come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God
who led us into the war . . . We can go only forward, with lifted
eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision."

But Wilson's eloquence now fell on deaf ears. Under the leader-
ship of the elderly, die-hard isolationist. Senator Henry Cabot

dren. The material losses to Soviet Russia were later estimated by the Soviet
Government at $60,000,000,000. No reparations were paid by the invaders.

With irony and characteristic bluntness, Winston Churchill, who himself
supervised the Allied campaign against Soviet Russia, later wrote in his book,
The World Crisis: the Aftermath: "Were they [the Allies] at war with Russia?
Certainly not; but they shot Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as invaders
on Russian soil. They armed the enemies of the Soviet Government. They
blockaded the ports and sank its battleships. They earnestly desired and
schemed its downfall. But war— shocking! Interference— shame! It was, they
repeated, a matter of indifference to them how Russians settled their own
affairs. They were impartial— bang!"

On September 5, 19 19, Senator William Borah declared in the U. S. Senate:
"Mr. President, we are not at war with Russia; Congress has not declared war
against the Russian Government or the Russian people. The people of the
United States do not desire to be at war with Russia . . . Yet ... we are
carrying on war with the Russian people. We have an army in Russia; we are
furnishing munitions and supplies to other armed forces in that country . . .
There is neither legal nor moral justification for sacrificing these lives. It is in
violation of the plain principles of free government."

Under the direction of Herbert Hoover, the American Relief Administra-
tion channeled all possible food supplies into territory occupied by the troops
of General Nicholas Yudenitch and other ex-Czarist and White Guard com-
manders, while withholding supplies from Soviet territory, where hundreds of
thousands were starving. The ARA also arranged for the delivery of military
equipment to the White forces. Finally, after the end of the intervention and
civil war, public pressure in Anerica forced the sending of food to famine-
stricken Soviet Russia.

"The whole of American policy during the liquidation of the Armistice,"
Herbert Hoover wrote Oswald Garrison Villard on August 17, 1921, "was to
contribute everything it could to prevent Europe from going Bolshevik . . ."

Lodge, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proceeded to chop
apart and revise the Treaty, concentrating its attack on the Cove-
nant of the League of Nations.

Early in September 19 19, against the warning of his physicians,
Wilson set out on a coast-to-coast speaking tour to rally popular
support for his peace program. The strain on his already overtaxed
nervous system proved too great. On the night of September 25,
having dehvered forty speeches within three weeks, the President
collapsed while en route by train to Wichita, Kansas. He was
rushed back to Washington. A few days later, a cerebral throm-
bosis resulted in the partial paralysis of his left side . . .

For the remaining seventeen months of his term. President Wilson
was an ailing recluse in the White House. Bedridden for over a
month, and then confined to a wheel chair, he received scarcely
any visitors and attended to only the most elementary matters of
state. Day after day, wrapped in a shawl, lonely and gray-faced,
Wilson sat in his wheel chair on the portico of the Presidential man-
sion, brooding bitterly on the disintegration of his cherished dreams.

The atmosphere in the nation's capitol, as depicted by Edward G.
Lowry in Washington Close-Ups, was

one of bleak and chill austerity suffused and envenomed by hatred
of a sick chief magistrate that seemed to poison and blight every ordinary
human relationship . . . The White House was isolated ... Its great iron
gates were closed and chained and locked. Policemen guarded its ap-
proaches. It was in a void apart.

The rumor spread that Wilson was no longer in his right mind.
A number of congressmen urged that he be supplanted by Vice-
President Thomas R. Marshall, and the Senate dispatched Senators
Albert Fall and Gilbert Hitchcock to the White House to check on
the President's mental condition.

"Mr. President," Senator Fall unctuously told Wilson, "I am
praying for you."

The two senators reported back to their colleagues in the Upper
House that they had found the Chief Executive in full possession of
his mental faculties . . .

Such was the grim finale of Woodrow Wilson's crusade for
world peace.

As in Europe, so also in America, peace had not come with the
signing of the Armistice.

While President Wilson had been touring the land delivering im-
passioned speeches on his plans for world peace, his own country
was seething with violent unrest and bitter industrial strife.

The uneasy wartime truce between labor and capital in America
had terminated abruptly. With officials of the American Federation
of Labor still sanguinely echoing Wilson's slogan of "Industrial
Democracy" and predicting a "new era for American Labor," the
major industries launched a sudden intensive campaign to wipe out
labor's wartime gains and crush the trade unions,*

"I believe they may have been justified in the long past," Judge
Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the U. S. Steel Corporation, told a
meeting of stockholders. "But . . . there is, at present, in the
opinion of the large majority of both employers and employees, no
necessity for labor unions . . . The existence and conduct of labor
unions, in this country at least, are inimical to the best interests of
the employees, the employers and the general public."

The Minnesota Banker editorialized:

There is no question as to the economic value of the open shop. . . .
The closed shop is zealously fought for by the radical wing of labor
organizations. The open shop can be the most readily brought about by
the elimination of this element in organized labor. . . . where the radical
element is too strongly entrenched, there is, of course, but one final thing
to do, and that is to beat them by force.

WilUam H. Barr, President of the National Founders' Association
trenchantly summed things up with the words: "War-time wages
must be liquidated!" American workingmen did not submit quietly
to the concerted assault on their unions and living standards. A
storm of strikes swept the country.

In January 19 19, shipyard workers in Seattle, Washington,
walked off their jobs in protest against a wage cut, and within three

* As a wartime expedient, various concessions had been made to the labor
movement by industries which, in the words of the labor historians, Selig
Perlman and Philip Taft, "spurred on by war-time profits, staged a reckless
competition for labor." Wages had been increased, hours of labor shortened.
Workers poured into unions. Between 19 13-1920 the American Federation of
Labor membership rose from 1,996,000 to 4,078,000.

But despite the wartime gains of organized labor, the lot of most American
workers was still extremely arduous at the war's end. In the steel industry, for
example, there was a seven-day work-week in 1919, and many steel workers
put in twelve to fourteen hours a day. Commenting on working conditions in
the steel industry in 1919, a Report by the Commission of Inquiry of the Inter-
church World Movement stated: ". . . The 12-hour day is a barbarism with-
out valid excuse, penalizing the workers and the country."

weeks the entire city was tied up by a general strike. During the
following months, in one state after another, typographers and con-
struction workers, telephone operators and railroadmen, longshore-
men, teamsters and textile workers went on strike. The culminating
point of the strike wave came in September and October, when
close to 350,000 steel workers quit their jobs and half a million
miners walked from the coal pits, bringing the total number of
workers on strike in America to more than two million . . .

A headHne in the December 19 19 issue of The Employer, organ
of the Oklahoma Employers' Association, called the coal strike
"Nothing Less Than Open and Defiant Revolution." The same issue
of this journal posed the question: "Would Hindenburg and Luden-
dorff do less evil to the country than Lewis and Foster?" *

To smash the strikes, thousands of Federal troops, state militia,
municipal police, and whole armies of company-hired strikebreakers
and gunmen went into action. In many industrial centers martial
law was declared. Pitched battles were fought in the coal fields. In
one battle in West Virginia, some 1,500 armed deputies and more
than 2,000 Federal troops were used to disband a colony of striking
miners who had armed themselves against strike-breaking gunmen.

The dead and wounded in these fierce labor conflicts numbered
in the hundreds.

Bloody violence in postwar America raged not only in the arena
of industrial strife.

"That year [1919]," the noted scholar W. E. B. Dubois records
in his book. Dusk of Dawn, "there were race riots large and small
in twenty-six American cities, including thirty-eight killed in a
Chicago riot in August; from twenty-five to fifty killed in Phillips
County, Arkansas; and six killed in Washington."

Governor Hugh M. Dorsey of Georgia told a citizens' confer-
ence in Atlanta: "In some counties the Negro is being driven out
as though he wxre a wild animal; in others he is being held as a slave;
in others no Negroes remain."

The wholesale terror against Negroes reached its peak at Phillips
County, Arkansas.

* The Employer was referring to John Llewellyn Lewis, riien Acting Presi-
dent and later President of the United Mine Workers of America; and to
William Z. Foster, then Secretary of the National Committee for the Or-
ganizing of the Iron and Steel Industry and leader of the great steel strike, and
later the National Chairman of the American Communist Party.

Crushed under the peonage of the feudal plantation system,
Negro cotton pickers in Phillips County formed a Progressive
Farmers' Household Union in an effort to change their subhuman
working and living conditions. Immediately, the plantation owners
and local authorities launched a ferocious drive to destroy the or-
ganization. Members of the Union were systematically hunted
down, jailed, shot and lynched. With desperate courage, the
Negroes armed themselves, established "Paul Revere" courier sys-
tems to recruit new members to their ranks and fought back under
the slogan, "We've just begun."

Federal troops, equipped with machine guns, were rushed into
Phillips County. Hundreds of Negroes were arrested and herded
into jails. After trials lasting literally only a few minutes, eleven
Negroes were sentenced to death, nine Negroes to twenty-one years
imprisonment, and 122 more indicted on various charges.

The Progressive Farmers' Household Union was destroyed . . .

In Washington, on August 25, 19 19, Congressman James F.
Byrnes of South Carolina told members of the House of Represen-
tatives:

For any colored man who has become inoculated with the desire for
political equalit)% there is no employment for him in the South. This is
a white man's country, and will always remain a white man's country.*

There were other grim features to the postwar scene in America.
As Frederick Lewis Allen writes in his book. Only Yesterday:

If the American people turned a deaf ear to Woodrow Wilson's plea
for the League of Nations during the years of the Post-War Decade, it
was not simply because they were too weary of foreign entangle-
ments . . . They were listening to something else. They were listening
to ugly rumors of a huge radical conspiracy against the government and
the institutions of the United States. They had their ears cocked for the
detonation of bombs and the tramp of Bolshevist armies. They seriously
thought— at least millions of them did, millions of otherwise reasonable
citizens— that a Red revolution might begin in the United States the
next month or the next week . . .

2. Secrets of the Department of Justice

Toward the end of 19 19, the Assistant Chief of the Justice De-
partment's Bureau of Investigation,t Frank Burke, dispatched an

* For James F. Byrnes' activities as U. S. Secretary of State after World
War II, see Book Four.

+ The name of this division of the Justice Department was changed in 1924
to Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI.

urgent, highly confidential directive to Federal agents throughout
the country. The dii'ective revealed that the Justice Department
was about to stage scores of simultaneous raids in a nationwide
round-up of "communists" and "radical aliens."

"You will be advised by telegraph," wrote Burke, "as to the
exact date and hour when the arrests are to be made."

The Justice Department agents were instructed by Burke that
their spies, informers and agents-provocateurs within "communist
groups" should make every effort to have these organizations hold
meetings on the designated night. In Burke's words:

If possible you should arrange with your under-cover informants to
have meetings of the Communist Party and the Communist Labor
Party * on the night set . . . This, of course, will facilitate in making
the arrests.

Burke's letter concluded:

On the evening of the arrests, this office will be open the entire night
and I desire that you communicate by long distance to Mr. Hoover any
matters of vital importance or interest which arise during the course of
the arrests.

I desire that the morning following the arrests you should forward to
this office by special delivery marked for the ^''Attention of Mr. Hoover^^
a complete list of the names of the persons arrested ... I desire also that
the morning following the arrests you communicate in detail by tele-
gram, ''''Attention of Mr. Ho over, ^^ the results of the arrests made, giving
the total number of persons of each organization taken into custody,
together with a statement of any interesting evidence secured.

The full name of the "Mr. Hoover" who was assigned this re-
sponsible role in the raids was John Edgar Hoover.

A stocky round-faced young man with close-cropped dark hair
and expressionless dark eyes, who had attended night law classes at
George Washington University, J. Edgar Hoover had obtained a
job as a minor official in the Department of Justice during the war.
As shrewd as he w^as ambitious, he had advanced rapidly in the
Department. In 19 19, at the age of twenty-five, he was appointed
director of the newly formed, rather mysterious General Intelli-
gence Division of the Department's Bureau of Investigation. In this
capacity. Hoover had the important task of supervising the Bureau's

* The Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party were formed in
September 1919 after a split within the Socialist Party. The two groups later
merged and founded the Workers (Communist) Party of America. In 1928
the name became Communist Party of the United States of Ajnerica.

"counter-radical activities." His official title was Special Assistant
to the Attorney General.

A. Mitchell Palmer, the U. S. Attorney General at the time, was
a man with an eye to the future. Knowing the gravity of Wilson's
illness. Palmer was not averse to picturing himself as the Democratic
presidential candidate in the 1920 elections. The fulfillment of such
high hopes. Palmer knew, depended to a considerable degree on
keeping his name in the news; and how could this be more effec-
tively accomphshed than by leading a crusade against "subversive
elements" which threatened "the very life of the Republic".^

To millions of Americans, the handsome, immaculately groomed
Attorney General was known as the "Fighting Quaker." There was
no more voluble champion of democracy and civil rights. "The Hfe
of the Republic," declaimed Palmer, "depends upon the free dis-
semination of ideas and the guarantees of freedom of speech, press
and assembly ..."

Sweeping raids and wholesale arrests? The very reason they were
imperative, asserted the Attorney General, was to safeguard the
Constitution and protect the American people from "alien agitators
. . . seeking to destroy their homes, their rehgion and their
country."

In addition to his frequently expressed concern for the Constitu-
tion, and to the pubUcity value of the raids. Palmer had another,
quite personal interest in the anti-radical crusade. He was a director
in the Stroudsburg National Bank, the Scranton Trust Company,
the Citizens Gas Company, the International Boiler Company and
various other such enterprises.

Throughout the spring and summer months of 19 19, elaborate
surreptitious plans had been afoot in the Justice Department for an
all-out offensive against the "radical movement." Under the super-
vision of Attorney General Palmer, Chief of the Bureau of Inves-
tigation Wilham J. Flynn and General Intelligence Director J.
Edgar Hoover, hundreds of special operatives, spies and paid in-
formers had swarmed into organizations of the foreign-born and into
left-wing, progressive and trade union groups in every part of the
country. Sedulously compiling data on "radicals" and "labor agi-
tators" this underground network of Federal agents and labor spies
fed a steady stream of confidential reports into Justice Department
12

headquarters at Washington, D. C. Here the reports were carefully
classified and filed in Hoover's General Intelligence Division.

"There has been estabUshed as part of this division," Palmer was
soon able to report to a congressional committee, "a card index sys-
tem, numbering over 200,000 cards, giving detailed data not only
upon individual agitators connected with the ultra-radical move-
ment, but also upon organizations, associations, societies, pubUca-
tions and special conditions existing in certain locahties."

Justice Department spies were instructed to keep on the lookout
for "subversive" Hterature. Not infrequently, when unable to dis-
cover any, they themselves arranged for its publication and distri-
bution. In one typical instance, a private detective agency,
functioning in cooperation with the Department of Justice, printed
hundreds of copies of the Commimist Manifesto and had its opera-
tives plant them in appropriate places for seizure during the im-
pending raids . . .

Simultaneously, a special publicity bureau in the Justice Depart-
ment was blanketing the country with lurid propaganda about
Moscow-directed "Bolshevik plots" to overthrow the U. S. Govern-
ment. Scarcely a day passed without the bureau's issuing press
releases under such captions as: Attorney General Warns Nation
of Red Peril— U. S. Department of Justice Urges Americans to
Guard Against Bolshevik Menace— Press, Church, Schools, Labor
Unions and Civic Bodies Called Upon to Teach True Purpose of
Cormnumst Propaganda.

On May i, 19 19, the anti-radical crusade received a sudden,
spectacular impetus.

As workingmen in scores of cities celebrated the traditional labor
hoHday of May Day, U. S. Post Office authorities dramatically an-
nounced they had uncovered a far-flung "Bolshevik bomb plot" to
assassinate dozens of prominent American citizens. Already, re-
ported the Department, more than thirty packages containing
bombs had been intercepted. Among the public figures to whom
the packages were said to be addressed were Postmaster General
Albert S. Burleson, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan and Attorney
General Palmer himself.

The Attorney General issued a personal statement assuring the
nation there was no need to become panic-stricken— the Department
of Justice had the situation "well in hand . . ."

One month later, on June 2, simultaneous bomb explosions
occurred in eight different cities.

According to the press, "emissaries of the Bolshevik leader Lenin"
were responsible for the explosions.*

"It has almost come to be accepted as a fact," stated Attorney
General Palmer, "that on a certain day in the future, which we
have been advised of, there will be another serious and probably
much larger effort of the character which the wild fellows of this
movement describe as a revolution, a proposition to rise up and
destroy the government at one fell swoop."

As the summer drew to a close, the New York Tribune headlined
the news: "Nation-wide Search for Reds Begins."

The stage was set for the Palmer raids.

3. The Raids

On November 7, 19 19, the Department of Justice struck. The
date, according to an article in the New York Times on the follow-
ing day, had been selected by the Justice Department as the "psy-
chological moment" for the raids because it was "the second anni-
versary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia."

In New York, Philadelphia, New^ark, Detroit and a dozen other
cities, Federal agents stormed into meetings of "radical" organiza-
tions, arrested hundreds of foreign-born and native Americans, and
herded them off to jail.

Typical of the raids was one at the Russian People's House at

*The perpetrators of these conveniently timed bombings were never ap-
prehended, nor was any evidence uncovered establishing their identit\\ Alger-
non Lee, director of the Rand School, told a reporter from the New York
Tribime on June 4, 1919: "I am convinced that it is a frame-up . . . because
of its calculated effect upon the State Commission for the investigation of
Bolshevism, and upon Congress in the matter of legislation designed to curb
radical movements."

On September 16, 1920, a tremendous bomb explosion took place in Wall
Street, directly opposite the building of J. P. Morgan & Co. Thirty people
were killed in this bombing and hundreds injured. As with the previous
bombings, none of the culprits was apprehended.

Nineteen years later, on October 10, 1949, Life magazine printed an article
dealing with the atom bomb, entided "Can Russia Deliver the Bomb.^" Accom-
panying the article was a picture of the wreckage caused by the 1920 Wall
Street bombing with the caption: "In 1920 Reds Exploded Bomb in Wall
Street, Killed 30, Wounded Hundreds." However— despite Life's lurid cap-
tion—the crime, as historian Frederick Lewis Allen writes, "was never solved."

13 East 15th Street in New York City, a school and community cen-
ter for Russian-born Americans.

Classes in English, arithmetic and other subjects were in session
when suddenly, without warning, dozens of Federal agents burst
into the building. The astounded teachers and students including a
number of veterans recently discharged from the U. S. Army, were
harshly ordered to Hne up against the walls. The raiders then pro-
ceeded to hurl typewriters to the floor, rip up books, break pictures
and smash desks, chairs and other furniture.

Placed under arrest, the teachers and students were roughly
herded from the building. Those who moved too slowly to satisfy
the raiders were prodded and beaten with blackjacks. Some were
hurled bodily down the stairs. Outside, the prisoners were forced
to run a gauntlet of Federal agents and police officers wielding clubs
and nightsticks. They were then flung into waiting police wagons.
In the words of the ISlew York Times:

A number in the building were badly beaten by the police during the
raid, their heads wrapped in bandages testifying to the rough manner in
which they had been handled . . . Most of them had blackened eyes and
lacerated scalps as souvenirs of the new attitude of aggressiveness which
has been assumed by the Federal agents against Reds and suspected Reds.

Throughout the country, newspapers acclaimed the raids as a
death blow to the "Red Plot for revolution in America."

The November 7 raids, however, were only a preliminary to
what was to come. In the words of one prominent Government
official: "The November raiding was only tentative— in the nature
somewhat of a laboratory experiment."

Intermittent raids, dramatically highlighted by the deportation on
the Buford on December 2 1 of two hundred and forty-nine of the
arrested aliens, continued throughout November and December.

At the same time. Attorney General Palmer and a few of his
most trusted aides were making covert preparations for their next
move . . .

The November 7 raids had convinced the Attorney General that
the Alien Act of 19 17, under which he was theoretically operating,
presented unnecessary inconveniences. According to the provisions
of this Act, arrests of aliens, and searches of places and individuals,
could not be made without warrants. The Act also stipulated that
at deportation proceedings, aliens were to be given a fair adminis-

trative hearing and permitted to be represented by their own legal
counsel.

"These regulations," complained Attorney General Palmer, "are
getting us nowhere."

He decided to have the regulations changed . . .

To avoid possible objections from those who were overly scrupu-
lous about legal matters, the Attorney General was careful to pre-
vent his plans from becoming public knowledge. As he himself later
related:

Appreciating that the criminal laws of the United States were not
adequate to properly handle the radical situation, the Department of
Justice held several conferences with officials of the Department of
Labor and came to an agreeable arrangement for the carrying out of the
deportation statute.*

The conferences to which Attorney General Palmer referred
were conducted in the strictest privacy. According to the "agree-
able arrangement" reached between Palmer and John W. Aber-
crombie, the Acting Secretary of Labor, the regulations were al-
tered so as to facilitate the issuance of arrest warrants and to deny
arrested aliens the right to legal counsel. Palmer submitted to Aber-
crombie a stack of mimeographed forms as "affidavits" supposedly
establishing the guilt of persons to be arrested. In return, the At-
torney General was given several thousand arrest warrants.

One of Palmer's aides who participated in these clandestine con-
ferences between Justice and Labor Department officials was the
Attorney General's Special Assistant, J. Edgar Hoover . . .

At a subsequent trial concerning the illegal arrest of certain
aliens, Henry J. Skeffington, Commissioner of Immigration, was
asked by the Judge: "Did you have instructions as to this pro-
cedure?"

"We had an understanding," said Skeffington.

"Written instructions?" demanded the judge.

"No," replied Skeffington. "We had a conference in Washington
in the Department of Labor with Mr. Hoover."

At half-past eight on the evening of January 2, 1920, the coast-
to-coast raids began. In more than seventy cities. Justice Depart-

* The Bureau of Immigration operated under the jurisdiction of the Depart-
ment of Labor until June 14, 1940, when it was transferred to the Department
of Justice.

ment agents, accompanied by state and city police, swooped down
on public meetings and invaded private offices and homes. In New
York City almost a thousand persons were arrested. In Boston 400
manacled men and women were marched to jail through the streets
of the city. In Maine, Oregon, New Jersey, California, Ohio, Mis-
sissippi, Illinois, Nebraska and a score of other states, thousands
were rounded up . . .

Every\\^here, the raiders acted more like vigilante mobs than
guardians of the law.

In New York City, Federal agents, detectives and policemen
stormed into the Communist Party headquarters brandishing re-
volvers, arrested and photographed everyone on the premises, and
then proceeded to tear from the walls pictures of Eugene Debs,
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which they coverted into grotesque
masks and held over their faces as they boisterously paraded about
the premises. Government agents in a small New Jersey town who
chanced upon a committee of townspeople collecting funds to pay
for the funeral of an impoverished Polish immigrant, promptly
arrested the committee members and imprisoned them along with
the other "radicals" they had rounded up. Describing the raids in
Massachusetts, Judge George Anderson of the United States Dis-
trict Court in Boston subsequently stated:

Pains were taken to give spectacular publicity to the raids, and to
make it appear that there was great and imminent public danger against
which these activities of the Department of Justice were directed. The
arrested aliens— in most cases perfectly quiet and harmless working peo-
ple, many of them not long ago Russian peasants— were handcuffed in
pairs, and then for the purpose of transfer on trains and through the
streets of Boston, chained together. The northern New Hampshire con-
tingent were first concentrated in jail at Concord and then brought to
Boston in a special car, thus handcuffed and chained together. On de-
training at the North Station, the handcuffed and chained aliens were
exposed to newspaper photographers and again exposed at the wharf
where they took the boat for Deer Island . . .

As for the conduct of the raiding parties, Judge Anderson de-
clared:

... a mob is a mob whether made up of government officials acting
under instructions from the Department of Justice, or of criminals and
loafers and vicious classes.

Reports varied as to the total number of arrests. According to
the New York World of January 3, "2,000 Reds" involved in a

"vast working plot to overthrow the government" had been
rounded up. Banner headlines in the Neuo York Ti?nes proclaimed:
"REDS PLOTTED COUNTRY- WIDE STRIKE-Arrests Exceed
5000, 2635 Held." Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, a dis-
tinguished lawyer well known for the integrity and carefully
documented accuracy of his public utterances, later declared that
more than 6,000 men and women had been arrested in the raids. . . .

"Approximately 3,000 of the 3,600 ahens * taken into custody
during the recent nationwide round-up of radicals are perfect cases
for deportation," J. Edgar Hoover, the Special Assistant to the
Attorney General, told the press a few days after the raids. The
deportation hearings and shipment of "Reds" from the country, he
promised, would be handled as expeditiously as possible.

"Second, third and as many other Soviet Arks as may be neces-
sary," said Hoover, "will be made ready as the convictions proceed,
and actual deportations will not wait for the conclusion of all the
cases." t

Hundreds of aliens and citizens were taken into custody without
arrest warrants. Private homes were invaded and searched without
search warrants. Personal belongings were seized and carted off.
Many of the innocent men and women jailed were held incommuni-
cado and not permitted to secure legal counsel or even to contact
their friends and relatives.

"If I had my way," State Secretary Albert P. Langtry of Massa-

* This figure of 3,600 arrests was one of several figures given out by Justice
Department officials.

t In later years when J. Edgar Hoover as FBI chief had become a national
figure, he vigorously denied he had played an active part in the Palmer raids
and declared he had wholeheartedly opposed them at the time they occurred.
"I deplored the manner in which the raids were executed then, and my posi-
tion has remained unchanged," Hoover told Bert Andrews of the New York
Herald Tribune in a written statement which was published in that paper on
November 16, 1947.

Had former Attorney General Palmer been alive in 1947, he would probably
have been somewhat surprised at Hoover's statement. When Palmer appeared
in 1920 before the House Rules Committee and in 1921 before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, on occasions when both committees were investigating
the raids, his special assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, sat at his side and frequently
prompted the Attorney General on answers.

When Senator Thomas Walsh at the Judiciary Committee hearings asked
Attorney General Palmer how many search warrants had been issued for the
raids, Palmer replied: "I cannot tell you, Senator, personally. If you would
like to ask Mr. Hoover who was in charge of this matter, he can tell you."

chusetts said of the men and women who had been taken into cus-
tody, "I would take them out in the yard every morning and shoot
them, and the next day would have a trial to see whether they were
guilty."

The super-patriotic author, Arthur Guy Empey, declared:

*'What we want to see is patriotism reducing Bolshevik Hfe limit.
The necessary instruments can be obtained in your hardware store.
My motto for the Reds is S.O.S.— ship or shoot."

The terror, lawlessness and violence of the raids were accepted
with marked equanimity by most American newspapers. As an edi-
torial in Editor and Publisher subsequently stated: "When Attorney
General Palmer started his so-called 'radical raids' so many news-
papers entered into the spirit of that infamous piece of witch-hunt-
ing that the reputation of the American press suffered heavily."

Exemplifying the general attitude of the American press at the
time was an editorial in the New York Times on January 5, 1920,
which read in part:

If some or any of us, impatient for the swift confusion of the Reds,
have ever questioned the alacrity, resolute will and fruitful, intelligent
vigor of the Department of Justice in hunting down these enemies of
the United States, the questioners have now cause to approve and
applaud . . .

This raid is only the beginning. It is to be followed by others. With-
out notice and without interruption, the department will pursue and
seize the conspirators against our Government ... Its further activities
should be far-reaching and beneficial.

Just how far-reaching these activities of the Justice Department
became in the postwar period was described some years later in an
article in the New Republic magazine:

At that dark period, Hoover compiled a list of half a million persons
suspected as dangerous because of the "ultra-radicalism" of their eco-
nomic or political beliefs or activities. The equivalent of one person out
of every 60 families in the United States was on the list. Hoover beat
out Heinrich Himmler by 14 years.

The compilation of huge proscribed lists of "dangerous citizens"
was not the only way in which J. Edgar Hoover and his associates
foreshadowed techniques subsequently employed by the secret
police of Nazi Germany. There were other, even more sinister re-
semblances.

4- Chambers of Horror

If the treatment of the men and women arrested in the Palmer
raids was shockingly brutal, it was mild compared to what they
endured in the seclusion of the jails in which they were confined.

At hastily improvised "immigration board" hearings to determine
whether or not the arrested aliens should be deported, Justice De-
partment agents and Labor Department officials acted as witnesses,
prosecutors and judges. Accused of seditious acts by a motley assort-
ment of labor spies, agents provocateurs and Federal operatives,
deprived of legal counsel of their own, and frequently unable to
speak or understand the English language, the prisoners were wholly
at the mercy of their inquisitors. Many, without knowing what they
were doing, signed "confessions" that they had been plotting to
overthrow the Government of the United States. Others were com-
pelled by third degree methods to admit their "guilt." In some
cases, where prisoners steadfastly refused to be cowed, their signa-
tures were forged to incriminating documents. . . .

Appalling conditions prevailed at the local jails, military barracks
and "bull pens" where the prisoners were held. Invariably, the pris-
oners' quarters were squalid, frightfully overcrowded and lacking
in adequate sanitation facilities. The prisoners, young and old, men
and women, alike, were frequently compelled to sleep on prison
floors without bedding or mattresses.

Hundreds of prisoners were viciously beaten and tortured by
Justice Department agents and local police officials.

A group of sixty-three workers who had been arrested without
warrants in the raids at Bridgeport, Connecticut, and imprisoned at
Hartford, without even knowing the charges against them, were
kept in jail for five months. Fed on scanty noisome rations and
given no opportunity for exercise, they were allowed out of their
cells for three minutes each day to wash their face and hands in
filthy sinks. Once a month they were permitted to bathe in a tub.

Periodically the Hartford prisoners were "interrogated" by Fed-
eral operatives who beat them savagely and not infrequently threat-
ened to kill them if they did not confess to being "revolutionaries."

One of the Hartford prisoners, a thirty-three year old Russian-
born machinist named Simeon Nakwhat, subsequently related in a
sworn affidavit:

In the thirteenth week of my confinement Edward J. Hickey [a De-
partment of Justice agent] came into my cell and asked me to give him
the address of a man called Boyko in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I do not
know this man and told Hickey that I did not. Hickey thereupon struck
me twice with his fist, once in the forehead and once in the jaw, where-
upon I fell. He then kicked me and I became unconscious. Hickey is a
big man, weighing two hundred pounds. For three weeks after this I
suffered severe pain where I was kicked in the back . . .*

Another prisoner, a tailor from Bridgeport who had come to the
Hartford jail to visit an imprisoned friend and had been promptly
seized and locked up himself, later stated:

Six men, I presume agents of the Department of Justice, questioned
me and threatened to hang me if I did not tell them the truth. In one
instance, an agent of the Department of Justice . . . brought a rope and
tied it around my neck, stating that he will hang me immediately if I
do not tell him who conducts the meetings and who are the main work-
ers in an organization called the Union of Russian Workers . • •

There were four rooms at the Hartford jail which came to be
known with dread by the prisoners as the "punishment rooms."
Identical in construction, approximately nine feet long by four feet
wide, they were built of solid concrete, were without windows and
devoid of all furniture. Alleged anarchist or communist prisoners
were locked, often ten to fifteen at a time, in one of these Httle,
unventilated and unhghted rooms. The heating system was then
turned up, and the prisoners were kept in pitch darkness and almost
unendurable heat for periods lasting from thirty-six to sixty hours.
Every twelve hours the cell door was momentarily opened and the
prisoners given a glass of water and a piece of bread • . .

This is how Peter Musek, one of those tortured by the "punish-
ment room" method, described the ordeal:

On February 6 ... I was taken out of my cell and . . . brought to the
basement of the jail and put into a ceU high enough for me to stand up
in and long enough for me to make about two and a half paces. When
I was put in the cell, I heard the jailer say to somebody, "Give this man
heat." When I came into the cell it was quite warm. Soon thereafter
the floor became hot and I nearly roasted. I took my clothes off and
remained absolutely naked but the heat was unbearable. ... I heard the
man say again, "Give him some more heat." ... I could not stand on

^This and other sworn statements in this section are taken from the treatise.
To the American People-Report Upon the Illegal Practices of the Department
of the United States Department of Justice, which was made public in May
1920 by twelve outstanding American jurists. For further data on this Report,
see pages 27 ff.

my feet any longer and I remained on the floor up to eight in the
morning, when the door opened and a man handed me a glass of water
and threw a piece of bread into the cell. I asked him to bring me a
doctor for I felt that I was going to die. But he laughed at me, stating
that I was strong enough to hold out, and locked the door again ... I
felt terrible pain in my chest and half of my body was almost roasted
from contact with the hot floor. I remained in the cell up until about
eight o'clock of the night of February 8 • . . The cell was so dark I
could not even see my own hands.

Like a number of other prisoners, Peter Musek had been arrested
simply because he came to the jail to visit a friend. No charges
were preferred against Musek and on March i8, 1920, he was set
free . . .

At Detroit, 800 men and women who had been rounded up in
the raids were packed into a windowless corridor on the top floor
of the Federal Building. There was one toilet at the disposal of all
the prisoners. They had no bedding except newspapers, overcoats,
and other pieces of clothing. The only food the prisoners received
was that brought them by their relatives and friends.

On the seventh day of their imprisonment, 128 of the prisoners
at the Detroit Federal Building were taken to the Municipal Build-
ing and put in a cellar room measuring 24 by 30 feet. Their food
rations here consisted of coffee and two biscuits twice a day.

When Mayor James Couzens of Detroit informed the City Coun-
cil that such conditions were "intolerable in a civihzed city," the
bulk of the prisoners were transferred to an old army barracks at
Fort Wayne.

Among the most diabolic methods of torturing the men im-
prisoned at Fort Wayne was forcing them to witness the maltreat-
ment of their own wives and children who came to visit them.

One such case involved a prisoner named Alexander Bukowetsky.
Bukowetsky was taken from his cell one day and told that his wife
and two children, a twelve-year-old girl and a boy of eight, had
come to see him. He was instructed to report to an office in the
building. On reaching the office, Bukowetsky was seized and held
by a guard. Two other guards dragged Bukow^etsky's wife and
children out of the office and into the corridor. What then hap-
pened was later described by Bukowetsky:

My wife and children were pulled out of the room by their arms. • . .
They were pulled into the hall by Sergeant Mitchell and then he
brought my wife close to me and hit her with his fist both on her back

and over her breast. My wife and children began to cry, and I asked
Sergeant Mitchell what he was trying to do, if he was trying to provoke
me so that I would start to fight. Instead of answering me he struck her
several more times and made her fall to the floor. With that he grabbed
a gun and at the same time Ross took a club and then one other guards-
men, Clark, came in and he too with the butt of his pistol struck me
over the head ... I fell with blood streaming all over my body.

My little girl, Violet, saw this and ran to the guardsmen and with her
hand smoothed his face crying, "Please don't hurt my father and
mother," but with all this, seeing the blood on the floor from my head
and my wife and children crying, he paid no attention to us.

When Bukowetsky staggered to his feet and started to run up a
nearby stairway, one of the guards raised his gun and fired at the
fleeing man. The shot went wild, missing Bukowetsky and wound-
ing another prisoner . . .

Bewildered, desperate with anxiety, and distraught from constant
terrorization and torture, not a few of the men and women im-
prisoned during the Palmer raids inevitably broke under the fearful
strain.

At Deer Island, one man committed suicide by hurling himself
from a fifth floor window. Others at Deer Island and elsewhere
went insane.

Six of the prisoners at Ellis Island died.

One prisoner, after being held illegally and incommunicado for
eight weeks and tortured by Justice Department agents at the Park
Row building in New York City, flung himself to his death— or was
pushed— from a window on the fourteenth floor.*

The total number of deaths, permanently injured, and victims
of irreparable emotional shock will never be known.

No member of the Justice Department was ever brought to trial
or punished for these atrocious crimes committed during the Palmer
raids under the pretense of defending the Constitution of the
United States.

* This prisoner was an Italian anarchist printer named Andrea Salsedo. For
further mention of this case, see page 94.

Chapter ii
DARK TIDE

Mr. Chairman, the spectre of Bolshevism is haunting the
world. Everybody— statesman, businessman, preacher, pluto-
crat, newspaper editor— keeps on warning the world that it is
about to be destroyed by Bolshevism . . . But the worst of it
is that every movement, every new idea, every new sugges-
tion, every new thought that is advanced, is immediately de-
nounced as Bolshevism. It is not necessary to argue anymore
with a man who advances a new idea; it is enough to say
"That is Bolshevism."

Representative Meyer London, speaking
on the floor of the U, S, Congress,
February ii, ipi$.

I. The Nature of the Crime

"At present there are signs of an overthrow of our Government
as a free government," Louis Freeland Post, the Assistant U. S.
Secretary of Labor, wrote in his diary on New Yearns Day, 1920.
"It is going on under cover of a vigorous * drive* against 'anarchists,'
an 'anarchist' being almost anybody who objects to government
of the people by tories and for financial interests . . ."

Seventy-one years old, small and sturdily built, with an unruly
black beard and shaggy head of hair, Louis F. Post was a man whose
boundless energy and inquiring mind belied his age. During his
remarkably varied career, he had been in turn a lawyer, journalist,
teacher, lecturer, essayist, historian and politician. A nonconformist
in politics and former advocate of the single tax and other re-
formist movements. Post was a fighting liberal, an inveterate cham-
pion of progressive causes.

Panic and hysteria had no appeal for the elderly Assistant Secre-
tary of Labor. As far as Post was concerned, Attorney General

Palmer's crusade to rid America of "Reds" was a "despotic and
sordid process."

Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Post found himself in a posi-
tion to do something about it . . .

In March, John W. Abercrombie, the Solicitor for the Depart-
ment of Labor who had been serving as the Acting Secretary dur-
ing Secretary L. B. Wilson's illness, announced he was taking a
leave of absence.

Overnight, Post assumed the authority of Secretary of Labor.

The scholarly, liberal-minded septuagenarian immediately under-
took a thorough investigation of the Justice Department "Red
records" on which the issuance of arrest warrants and the deporta-
tion decisions had been based. "Upon plunging into this clutter . . .
I was amazed at the facts disclosed," Post later wrote in his book,
The Deportations Delirium of Niiietee?! Twenty, "The whole *red
crusade' stood revealed as a stupendous and cruel fake. Had the
facts as they were then thrust upon my attention been generally
known, public condemnation of the Department of Justice and its
cooperating agencies would have been sure and swift."

To supplement his findings, Post dispatched a number of Labor
Department investigators into the field to get first-hand information
on the treatment of persons jailed during the Palmer raids. He was
soon receiving one shocking report after another.

Two of Post's investigators visited Deer Island. Reporting back
to their chief, they described how the prisoners had arrived at this
place of detention. "The chains made a pile about that high," said
one of the investigators, holding his hand about three feet above
the floor.

"Pile of chains!" exclaimed Post.

The other investigator explained, "The Department of Justice
marched their prisoners through the streets of Boston in chains.
We know it, for we saw photographs of the chained prisoners
lined in a group." He paused, then added wryly, "Nothing was lack-
ing in the way of display but a brass band."

As soon as he had in hand detailed evidence of the illegality of
the arrests and the deportation proceedings, Post went into action.
He cancelled 2,500 of the warrants and ordered the prisoners set
free . , .

Immediately, Post was caught up in what he subsequently de-

scribed as a "hurricane" of Congressional politics and newspaper
vilification."

The New York Times, declared that the Assistant Secretary of
Labor had "let loose on the country pubHc enemies, some of them
fugitives from justice." Numerous newspapers demanded Post's
removal from office.

In Congress, the Chairman of the House Committee on Immigra-
tion and Naturalization, Representative Albert Johnson, charged that i
Post was the ringleader of "Reds" who were "boring from within"
the Labor Department. A group of congressman initiated impeach-
ment proceedings against the Assistant Secretary of Labor.

Old as he was. Post had lost none of his readiness to battle for a
good cause, no matter what the odds. But in connection with the
impeachment proceedings, Post knew he would need at his dis-
posal the very best legal talent. And how, he wondered, could a man
of his modest means afford a high-priced lawyer?

Late one afternoon that April, while Post was sitting in his office
at the Labor Department pondering his dilemma, a businessman
with whom Post was casually acquainted entered the room. His
name was E. T. Gumlach. On the previous evening, Gumlach ex-
plained, he had learned of Post's plight. He was himself of a de-
cidedly conservative bent, said Gumlach, not a man to espouse
radical causes— but he was an American who beUeved in justice . . .

Gumlach came to the point of his visit. "In these circumstances,"
he said, "you will need money, need it bad, and I am here to tell
you to draw on me at sight for ten thousand dollars.'*

Recovering from his astonishment, Post told Gumlach he would
accept the offer because he knew "the spirit in which it was
offered."

With funds advanced by Gumlach, Post retained as counsel
Jackson H. Ralston, one of the country's most eminent attor-
neys. . . •

On May 7, 1920, Post was called for questioning before the
House Rules Committee.

The hearing quickly took a dramatic and wholly unexpected turn.
In the person of the erudite mettlesome and passionately democratic
old man, the inquisitorial congressmen encountered far more than
their match. Deftly parrying their questions, speaking with a fer-
vent eloquence and incontrovertibly documenting every statement
he made, Post transformed his own trial into a trial of his accusers.
26

The members of the Rules Committee had less and less to say as
Post vividly recounted the numerous violations of constitutional
law during the Palmer raids, the hundreds of illegal arrests, the law-
less searches without warrants and the inhuman treatment of the
arrested. It was the duty of American citizens and particularly
Government officials. Post told the Committee, to protect the rights
of the alien. "We should see to it that no injustice is done him,"
Post forcefully declared. "If he has a domicile here, he is entitled
to the protection of our Constitution, of our laws . . ."

Describing Post's testimony, Mrs. William Hard wrote in the
New Republic:

As he stood there, unbowed, ungrayed by his seventy-three years, (*)
there seemed to pass forms, shadowy, real. They were the figures of the
ignorant, the hampered, the misunderstood, the Aliens. Back of them
were the terrified upholders of our Government. And back of them
there seemed, shadowily, to be the Committee of Americanizers that sit
in high places. But in the foreground, unterrified by the unreined emo-
tionalism of either, stood a little man, cool but fiery, who set his belief
in the Constitution of the country above all fears, and who could amass
facts . . .

The little man and his facts won out. The Rules Committee de-
cided to call off the impeachment proceedings.

"The simple truth," commented the New York Post, "is that
Louis F. Post deserves the gratitude of every American for his
courageous and determined stand in behalf of our fundamental
rights. It is too bad that in making this stand he found himself at
cross-purposes with the Attorney General, but Mr. Palmer's com-
plaint lies against the Constitution and not against Mr. Post."

There were other patriotic and courageous citizens who recog-
nized, like Louis F. Post, that behind the facade of the anti-Red
crusade an assault was being made on the very tenets of American
democracy.

In May 1920, twelve of the most distinguished attorneys in the
United States published a profoundly significant, sixty-three page
pamphlet entitled To The American People— Report Upon the Il-
legal Practises of the United States Department of Justice. Among
the authors of this report were such noted jurists as Roscoe Pound,
Dean of the Harvard Law School; Felix Frankfurter, Professor of

* Mrs. Hard was mistaken about Post's age. He was seventy-one years old
when he testified.

Law at Harvard Law School; Zechariah Chafee, Jr., one of the
nation's outstanding authorities on constitutional law; and Francis
Fisher Kane, who had resigned from his post as U. S. District At-
torney in Philadelphia in protest against the Palmer raids.

The report of these attorneys contained a painstakingly docu-
mented account of the unconstitutional activities of the Justice
Department at the time of the Palmer raids, and a penetrating analy-
sis of the ominous implications of these activities.

The report opened with these words:

For more than six months we, the undersigned lawyers, whose sworn
duty it is to uphold the Constitution and Laws of the United States,
have seen with growing apprehension the continued violation of that
Constitution and breaking of those Laws by the Department of Justice.

Under the guise of a campaign for the suppression of radical activities,
the office of the Attorney General . . . has committed illegal acts . . .

The report charged that in order to convince the American public
of the existence of a "Red plot" against the Government and "to
create sentiment in its favor, the Department of Justice has con-
stituted itself a propaganda bureau, and has sent to newspapers
and magazines of this country quantities of material designed to
excite public opinion against radicals."

Proceeding to a comprehensive study of the Palmer raids, the
report catalogued various violations of the Constitution by the Jus-
tice Department, under such headings as: Cruel and Ufiusual Pun^
ishmenty Arrests Without Warrants, U7ireaso7iable Searches and
Seizures, Compelling Persons to be Witnesses Against Themselves,

"The American People," stated the lawyers in a section entitled
Provocative Agents, "has never tolerated the use of undercover
provocative agents or 'agents provocateurs', such as have been
famihar in old Russia or Spain." But the Justice Department had
been using such agents for "instigating acts which might be called
criminal . . ."

Concluding, the twelve eminent attorneys declared:

Free men respect justice and follow truth, but arbitrary power they
will oppose until the end of time . . .

It is a fallacy to suppose that, any more than in the past, any servant
of the people can safely arrogate to himself unlimited authority. To pro-
ceed upon such a supposition is to deny the fundamental theory of the
consent of the governed. Here is no question of a vague and threatened
menace, but a present assault upon the most sacred principles of our
Constitutional liberty.

An equally scathing indictment appeared in a lengthy report
which was inserted into the Congressional Record by Senator
Thomas J. Walsh, the chairman of a Senate committee investigating
the practises of the Justice Department. The report was entitled
The Illegal Practises of the Depamnent of Justice,

"Those who conceived the procedure here criticized," stated this
Senate report, "were oblivious of the letter and wholly unapprecia-
tive of the spirit of the Bill of Rights."

But the sensational disclosures and grave admonitions of men like
Louis F. Post, Senator Thomas J. Walsh, and the twelve attorneys
who authored the report. To the American People, were largely
ignored or grossly distorted by the press. Their sober voices were
drowned out in a rising tide of anti-radical hysteria, prejudice and
repression.

2. "The Foulest Page"

The months of inflammatory agitation against the "Reds," the
ominous warnings by Government oflicials of imminent revolution,
the blood-curdling bomb plots, and the panic and terror surround-
ing the Palmer raids had had their effect on the country as a whole.
Fear of the Red Menace pervaded the nation like a contagious mad-
ness.

"Innumerable . . . gentlemen now discovered that they could
defeat whatever they wanted to defeat by tarring it conspicuously
with the Bolshevist brush," historian Frederick Lewis Allen later
wrote. "Big-navy men, believers in compulsory military service, . . ,
book censors, Jew-haters, Negro-haters, landlords, manufacturers,
utility executives ... all wrapped themselves in the Old Glory and
the mantle of the Founding Fathers and allied their opponents with
Lenin."

Newspapers and magazines overflowed with hair-raising accounts
of "Bolshevik atrocities" in Russia and sinister plots of "paid Soviet
agents" in America. On January 8, 1920, the nation's press head-
lined the news that Justice Department agents were "hunting down"
the Soviet representative to the United States, Ludwig C.A.K.
Martens, who was reported to be financing a "conspiracy to over-
throw the American Government." * Two days later, the House of

• Acting on the request of the Justice Department, the Department of Labor

Representatives refused to seat Socialist Congressman Victor Berger
of Milwaukee declaring that his "continued presence" in the Lower
House constituted "a menace" to that legislative body.

Soon afterwards, the New York State Assembly announced the
expulsion of five Socialist members on the grounds that they were
affiliated with "a disloyal organization composed exclusively of
traitors." Commented the New York Times regarding their expul-
sion: "It was an American vote altogether, a patriotic and conserva-
tive vote."

More than seventy Federal sedition bills were under consideration
in Congress. Some of these bills stipulated a maximum penalty of
twenty years imprisonment for "unlawful discussion," and the de-
naturalization and deportation of naturalized citizens for similar
offenses. Senator Kenneth D. McKellar of Tennessee called for the
establishment of a penal colony in Guam to which "subversive"
native-born Americans might be deported.

Almost every state had enacted criminal syndicalist laws making
it a felony to advocate "revolutionary" changes in American so-
ciety. The West Virginia statute defined as criminal any teachings
in sympathy with "ideals hostile to those now or henceforth exist-
ing under the constitution and laws of this state."

In thirty-two states it had become a criminal offense to display
publicly a red flag. Some of these states provided penalties for the
use of any emblem of any color "distinctive of bolshevism, anar-
chism, or radical socialism." In several states the wearing of a red
tie constituted a misdemeanor ...

In schools and universities throughout the land investigations of
the "loyalty" of teachers and students were instigated by local and
state authorities. On the recommendation of the Lusk Committee
Investigating Seditious Activities, the New York State Legislature
passed a law requiring "teachers in public schools to secure ... a
special certificate certifying that they are of good character and
that they are loyal to the institutions of State and Nation." The bill
read in part:

had issued a warrant for Marten's arrest for deportation. The brief against
Martens was prepared by J. Edgar Hoover.

In December 1920, Secretary of Labor Wilson ruled that Martens **was not
proved to have done anything unlawful as an individual." The illegal deporta-
tion warrant which Hoover had obtained was cancelled. In January 192 1,
Martens returned to Russia of his own accord.

No person who is not eager to combat the theories of social change
should be entrusted with the task of fitting the young and old of this
State for the responsibilities of citizenship.

Well-known liberals of the day like Jane Addams, Rabbi Stephen
S. Wise, Oswald Villard and Felix Frankfurter were widely de-
nounced as "tools of the Reds." Charles Chaplin, Will Rogers,
Norma Talmadge and other actors and entertainers were accused
of being "Communists." According to the Better American Federa-
tion of California, Sinclair Lewis' novel, Main Street, was "subver-
sive" because it "created a distaste for the conventional good life
of the American."

An Indiana jury, after deliberating two minutes, acquitted a man
who had murdered an alien for shouting, "To hell with the United
States" . . .

In this miasmic climate, vigilante groups of self-styled patriots
were mushrooming in every corner of the land. The white plague
of the Ku Klux Klan began swiftly spreading through Georgia,
Indiana, Colorado, Ohio and a score of other states; and every
month tens of thousands of new members joined the hooded ter-
rorists who were pledged to purge America of "Catholics, Com-
munists, Jews and aliens." * In Michigan, the Dearborn Independent,

* Organized during the Reconstruction era of the 1870's to deprive Negroes
of rights won in the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan had been dormant from
the turn of the century until 19 15, when the secret terrorist society was re-
vived under the leadership of a former preacher and traveling salesman named
William J. Simmons. In 1920 the membership of the Klan soared to 700,000.
By 1925 its members numbered almost 9,000,000; and the Klan had become a
national power.

With its vast secret apparatus— the Invisible Empire— the Klan came to domi-
nate the political life of Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Oregon,
and other states. In 1924 Klan-sponsored candidates won the gubernatorial
elections in Kansas, Indiana and Maine and the senatorial races in Oklahoma
and Colorado.

"The rise of the Ku Klux Klan from 1922 to 1925 was no accident," Roger
N. Baldwin, director of the American Civil Libenies Union, later wrote. "Its
organized intolerance was only a transfer to the field of racial and religious
conflict of the domination of the ruling economic class. ..."

In large sections of the country, the hooded Klansmen terrorized the popu-
lation with crossburnings, nightriding, intimidatory parades, floggings, mutila-
tions and lynchings. In Louisiana, Klansmen killed some victims with a steam
roller. In Oklahoma, an investigation revealed over 2,000 cases of violence by
the Klan in two years. There were no arrests or prosecutions in connection
with these crimes.

In the late 1920's, after a series of newspaper exposes and public investiga-
tions, the membership of the Klan and its influence underwent a rapid decline.
The secret society, however, began to grow again in the middle 1930's when

a weekly newspaper published by the famous auto magnate, Henry
Ford, launched a nationwide campaign of vitriolic anti-Semitic
propaganda with a front page editorial headlined, "The International
Jew: the World's Problem"; and shortly thereafter Ford's news-
paper began serializing the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, The
Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion.

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washing-
ton that summer. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer declared:
"I apologize for nothing that the Department of Justice has done
... I glory in it. I point with pride and enthusiasm to the results
of that work; and if . . . some of my agents out in the field were
a little rough and unkind, or short and curt, with these ahen agita-
tors ... I think it might be well overlooked in the general good
to the country which has come from it."

The Attorney General recommended that Congress pass a law
stipulating the death penalty for "dangerous acts" of peactime
sedition . . ,

The round-up of "Soviet spies" and "dangerous radical aliens"
continued. Among those arrested— taken into custody on May 5 in a
small town near Boston and charged with robbery and murder-
were two obscure Italian anarchists whose names were destined to
become world famous: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.*

In Boston that same May, an undistinguished Republican Senator
told a group of businessmen: "America's present need is not heroics
but healing, not nostrums but normalcy, not revolution but restora-
tion."

The Senator was Warren G. Harding of Ohio.

"America is no longer a free country, in the old sense; and liberty
is, increasingly, a mere rhetorical figure . . . ," wrote Katherine
Fullerton Gerould in an article in Harper's Magazi?ie. "On every
hand, free speech is choked off in one direction or another. The
only way in which an American citizen who is really interested in
the social and political problems of his country can preserve any
freedom of expression, is to choose the mob that is most sympathetic
to him and abide under the shadow of the mob."

its members played a leading role in combatting the growth of industrial trade
unions.
* For details on the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, see pages 93 ff.

During the course of a sermon delivered at the Cathedral of St.
John the Divine in New York City, Bishop Charles D. WilHams of
the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Michigan declared:

Businessmen are seeing "red." They commenced seeing "red" with
their drive on radicalism. They branded everyone who had a progressive
thought as a "parlor bolshevist," and persons have been secretly arrested
by paid spies on manufactured information and deported without cause.

Bishop Williams added:

The very principles of Americanism have been undermined by hys-
teria and panic. It is the foulest page in American history!

Chapter iii
BALANCE SHEET

The postwar wave of reaction in the United States cost the Ameri-
can people many of their most cherished democratic rights. It
fomented nationwide intolerance, hysteria, hatred and fear. Thou-
sands of innocent persons had been arrested, jailed and tortured.
Scores had died in labor struggles, lynchings and race riots. Never
before had terror and repression been so widespread in the nation.
What were the causes behind this "foulest page in American
history?"

Federal authorities explained the Palmer raids and other postwar
repressions as necessary measures to protect the nation against a
"Communist plot" to overthrow the United States Government.

Actually, the crusade against Communism played a role of sec-
ondary importance. The left-wing forces in the United States at
the time were extremely few in number. According to an estimate
made late in 19 19 by Professor Gordon S. Watkins of the Univer-
sity of Illinois, the combined membership of the Socialist, Com-
munist and Communist Labor Parties was between eighty and one
hundred thousand. "In other words . . . ," writes Frederick Lewis
Allen in Only Yesterday, "the Communists could muster at the
most hardly more than one-tenth of one per cent of the adult
population; and the three parties together . . . brought the pro-
portion to hardly more than two-tenths of one per cent, a rather
slender nucleus, it would seem, for a revolutionary mass movement."

Allen indicates some of the more compelhng motives behind the
postwar "anti-Communist" drive:

. . . the American businessman . . . had come out of the war with his
fighting blood up, ready to lick the next thing that stood in his way. . . .
Labor stood in his way and threatened his profits. ... he developed a
fervent belief that 1 00-percent Americanism . . . implied the right of

the businessman to kick the union organizer out of his workshop. ... he
was quite ready to believe that a struggle of American laboring-man for
better wages was the beginning of an armed rebellion directed by Lenin
and Trotsky. . . .*

American workers who went on strike in defense of their unions
and living standards were widely branded as "Reds" and "pawns of
Bolshevik agents."

"To smash these strikes," writes Henry M. Morals and William
Cahn in their biography, Gene Debs, "the cry of a 'red plot' was
raised."

The Associated Employers of Indianapolis called for the im-
mediate passage and "enforcement of laws to check the radicalism
of the A. F. of L. and the Bolshevists . . ."

The stratagem of the "Red Menace" was well adapted to the
mood of the time. As Selig Perlman and Philip Taft state in The
History of Labor in the United States:

For the large strata of the general population, the wartime emotion
was now ready to be transferred into an anti-red hysteria, with strikes
and wage demands often held manifestations of "redness."

The chief objectives of the Palmer raids and the postwar crusade
against "Communism" were to crush the organized labor move-
ment, drive down wages, restore the open shop on a national scale,
and effect greater profits for the large corporations.

* During the war itself, there had been harsh, widespread repressions against
those sections of the labor movement whose demands were regarded as "unrea-
sonable," and against left-wing elements opposed to America's participation
in the war on the grounds that it was an imperialist war. Throughout the
country, members of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) were
subjected to intense persecution by law-enforcement agencies and vigilante
mobs, were brutally beaten, jailed and lynched. Militant trade union leaders
and radicals were convicted on trumped-up charges and imprisoned.

The two most famous working class leaders to be jailed during the war
were Thomas J. Mooney and Eugene V. Debs.

An outstanding trade unionist in California, Mooney was framed on a bomb-
ing charge in San Francisco in July 191 6 and sentenced to be hanged. Nation-
wide protests resulted in the commutation of the sentence to life imprison-
ment. In 1939, after serving twenty-two years at San Quentin Penitentiary,
Mooney was granted an unconditional pardon by Governor Culbert Olson of
California and released.

The renowned Socialist and former leader of railroad workers, Eugene V.
Debs, was sentenced in September 191 8 to ten years imprisonment on charges
of violating the Espionage Act, because of his opposition to America's partici-
pation in the war. After serving three years, Debs was pardoned by President
Harding in December 192 1. (In 1920, while still in prison, Debs received

The Department of Justice shared the objectives of big business.
From the first, the Palmer raids and the "anti-radical" operations
of J. Edgar Hoover's General Intelligence Division of the Bureau
of Investigation were aimed chiefly at the trade unions and the
labor movement.

According to the subsequent testimony of Attorney General A.
Mitchell Palmer before the House Rules Committee, a strike in
June 1919 at the Ansonia, Connecticut, branch of the American
Brass Company had been "instituted entirely by the foreigners"
and was dealt with in this effective fashion:

A number of the most active leaders were arrested on deportation
warrants; some were included in the passenger list of the Buford . . .
However, a number of prominent agitators who were citizens continued
their efforts. The strike failed after federal and state prosecutions.

The Attorney General went on to tell the members of the Rules
Committee that the great steel strike of 19 19 was "terminated . . .
through the action of the Department of Justice."

On January 3, 1920, the New York Times offered this account
of the Justice Department preparations for the Palmer raids of the
previous night:

The action, though it came with dramatic suddenness, had been care-
fully mapped out, studied and systematized . . . For months. Department
of Justice men, dropping all their work, had concentrated on the Reds.
Agents quietly infiltrated into the radical ranks . . . and went to work,
sometimes as cooks in remote mining colonies, again as steelworkers, and
when the opportunity presented itself, as agitators of the wildest type.
. . . several of the agents, 'under-cover' men, managed to rise in the
radical movement and become, in at least one instance, the recognized
leader of the district . . .

During the steel strike, coal strike, and threatened railway strikes,
secret agents moved constantly among the more radical of the agitators
and collected a mass of evidence. For months an elaborate card index
of the utterances, habits, and whereabouts of these men had been made.
From time to time the Department of Justice will, from now on, round
up these disturbers and either send them to the courts or out of the
country.

Throughout this period, the Bureau of Investigation worked in
intimate, secret collaboration with the labor espionage apparatuses
of the large corporations.

920,000 votes as the candidate of the Socialist Party for President of the
United States.)

"The whole 'red' crusade," wrote Louis F. Post in The Deporta- '
tion Delirium of Nineteen-Tiventy "seems to have been saturated
with 'labor spy' interests— the interests, that is, of private detective
agencies ... in the secret service of masterful corporations . . .

The Commission of Inquiry of the Interchurch World Move-
ment recorded in its Report of the Steel Strike of 19 19:

Federal immigration authorities testified to the commission that raids
and arrests, for "radicalism," etc., were made especially in the Pittsburgh
District on the denunciations and secret reports of steel company
"under-cover" men, and the prisoners turned over to the Department
of Justice.

According to one Federal agent operating in the Pittsburgh area,
who testified before the Commission of Inquiry of the Interchurch
World Movement, "ninety per cent of all the radicals arrested
and taken into custody were reported by one of the large corpora-
tions, either of the steel or coal industry . . ."

Complementing the drive against organized labor was the con-
certed campaign against the entire progressive movement. The
essential aims of this campaign were to stifle all Hberal protest;
crush the political opposition of the Socialist, Communist and other
left-wing parties; intimidate champions of civil liberties; and sup-
press the struggles of minority groups for decent living standards
and equal rights.

Among minority groups, the Negro people were singled out for
special attack. While lynchings and other anti-Negro outrages were
occurring on a nationwide scale, Attorney General Palmer com-
piled an extensive report entitled Samples of Negro Propaganday
which he later submitted to the House Rules Committee. "Toward
the close of the European war," the Attorney General told the
members of the Rules Committee, "the Department of Justice was
confronted with considerable agitation and unrest among the
Negroes." The Department, said Palmer, had as yet "not found
any concerted movement on the part of Negroes to cause a general
uprising throughout the country." . . .

A final objective of the "anti-Communist" drive was to silence
voices demanding an end to America's participation in the war of
intervention against Soviet Russia and urging diplomatic recog-
nition of the Soviet Government. As the New York Times ob-
served on January 5, 1920 regarding "radicals" arrested during the

Palmer raids: "These Communists are a pernicious gang. In many-
languages they are denouncing the blockade of Russia."

"Even were one to admit that there existed any serious 'Red
menace' before the Attorney General started his 'unflinching war'
against it," wrote the authors of the Report Upon the Illegal Prac-
tices of the United States Department of Justice, "his campaign has
been singularly fruitless." Pointing out that Attorney General
Palmer, after announcing the Justice Department possessed a list
of 60,000 "Bolshevik suspects," had deported a total of only 281
aliens and ordered the deportation of 529 others, the Report com-
mented: "The Attorney General has consequently got rid of 810
alien suspects, which, on his own showing, leaves him at least
59,160 persons (aliens and citizens) still to cope with."

But in terms of its real objectives, the postwar "anti-communist"
crusade was far from fruitless. Along the entire industrial front,
from New Jersey to California, major strikes were broken, wages
driven down, the open shop restored and the organized labor move-
ment reduced to a shadow of its wartime strength. The case of the
Seamen's Union was not exceptional: its membership in 1920 had
been 100,000; two years later, its membership was 18,000. By 1923,
the American Federation of Labor had lost more than a million
members.

The success of this campaign against the labor movement was
due not only to the enormous power of American industrial-
financial interests, which had emerged from the war with far greater
resources and influence than ever before, and to the extensive
assistance rendered these interests by the Justice Department and
other Government agencies. The success of the campaign was due
also to major weaknesses in the labor movement. With the ex-
ception of a few militants like Wilham Z. Foster,* the trade union
leadership was in the hands of opportunistic, corrupt or timid of-
ficials, who were scarcely less alarmed than the employers them-
selves by the militancy of the workers. Red-baiting and internecine
squabbles wracked the organized labor movement. Of the leader-
ship of the railroad brotherhoods, the Wall Street Journal ob-
served:

* Historian Frederick Lewis Allen describes William Z. Foster as "the most
energetic and intelligent of the strike organizers."

It is no paradox to say that their inability to stand shoulder to
shoulder throughout the strike was the most fortunate thing that could
have happened, first for the country at large and eventually for the
investor in the railroads.

The defeat which was suffered by the American labor move-
ment represented at the same time a defeat for the American
people as a whole. The nation was to pay heavily for the victory
which big business had won.

The anti-democratic excesses and the undermining of the pro-
gressive movement during the years immediately following the
Great War paved the way for one of the most shameful and dis-
astrous eras in American history. It was to be an era of unpre-
cedented corruption and crime in high places; an era of absolute
domination of the Government by predatory vested interests, of
profiteering, fraud and embezzlement on a prodigious scale, of
ruthless and unrestrained looting of the land.

It was to culminate in the Great Depression.

BOOK TWO: LOOTING THE LAND

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-
nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation
looked to the Government but the Government looked
away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three
long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker tape
and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of
mirage and three long years of despair!

President Franklin D, Roosevelt,
October 31, 1^36.

Chapter iv
INCREDIBLE ERA

I. The Making of a President

The Republican National Convention, which took place in June
1920 in Chicago, Illinois, was a most extraordinary affair.

"The Presidency was for sale," writes Karl Schriftgiesser in This
Was Normalcy, "The city of Chicago, never averse to monetary
indecencies, was jam-packed with frenzied bidders, their pockets
bulging with money with which to buy the prize. The Coliseum
became a market place, crowded with stock gamblers, oil pro-
moters, mining magnates, munition makers, sports promoters, and
soap makers . . . The lobbies and rooms of the Loop hotels were in
a turmoil as the potential buyers of office scurried about lining up
their supporters, making their deals, issuing furtive orders, passing
out secret funds."

Among the captains of industry and finance who had flocked
into the Windy City to make sure the Republican Presidential can-
didate was a man to their taste were Harry F. Sinclair, head of the
Sinclair Oil Company, who had already invested $75,000 in the
Republican campaign and was to put up another $185,000 before
the campaign was over; Judge Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the
Board of Directors of U.S. Steel, whose name had figured promi-
nently in the smashing of the 19 19 steel strike; Samuel M. Vauclain,
president of the Baldwin Locomotive Company; Thomas W.
Lamont, partner in the firm of J. P. Morgan and Company; Ed-
ward L. Doheny, president of the Pan-American Petroleum Com-
pany; and William Boyce Thompson, the copper magnate, who .had
recently returned from Soviet Russia, where as head of the Ameri-
can Red Cross mission he had staked $1,000,000 of his own money
in an effort to stem the tide of the Russian Revolution.

For conducting the devious, backstairs negotiations among the
different delegations, and for keeping things in general under con-
trol at the open sessions of the Convention at the Chicago Cohseum,
the renowned industrialists and financiers were relying on a small,
select group of Republican poHticians. These "political deputies of
wealth," together with their connections, as named by Ferdinand
Lundberg in his book, A7nericd's 60 Fainilies, were

Senators Henry Cabot Lodge (Morgan), Medill McCormick (Chi-
cago Tribune-International Harvester Company), James E. Watson of
Indiana (Klan), Reed Smoot (Utah sugar interests), James W. Wads-
worth of New York (Morgan) and Frank Brandages of Connecticut
(Morgan).

Shortly after dinner on the sweltering hot night of June 9, with
the Convention balloting for the Presidential candidate deadlocked
between General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank O. Lowden
of Illinois, the junto of Senators met in the three-room suite of the
Republican National Chairman, Will Hays, at the Blackstone Hotel.

Present at the secret meeting, in addition to the Senators, was
George B. M. Harvey, the eccentric, influential publisher of Har-
vey's Weekly, who had close connections with J. P. Morgan and
Company and was frequently referred to as the "President-maker."

Periodically, as the evening wore on, Nicholas Murray Butler,
president of Columbia University and a key figure in the inner
circles of the Republican Party, drifted in and out of the smoke-
filled room in which the private, animated conference was taking
place.

Around midnight, the decision was reached as to who should
be the Republican candidate for President . . .

Senator Warren Harding of Ohio, tired, disheveled and sUghtly
intoxicated, was summoned to Will Hays' suite.

"Senator, we want to put a question to you," said George
Harvey. "Is there in your Hfe or background any element which
might embarrass the Repubhcan Party if we nominate you for
President?"

The meaning of this question was to be later interpreted in
various ways. One interpretation was that Harvey and his colleagues
wanted to be certain that Harding was not part Negro, as had
been claimed in some scurrilous racist propaganda then circulating
in Chicago. Harvey's own subsequent explanation was that the
Senator was being asked to seek Divine guidance regarding his fit-

ness to become President. Another version was that Harding was
being given the opportunity to inform his backers whether his
relationship with Nan Britton, the mother of his illegitimate daugh-
ter, might be disclosed and become an embarrassing issue during
the Presidential campaign.

At any rate, Harding retired to an adjourning room, remained
there a short while, and then came back and solemnly assured the
others that there was nothing in his past to preclude his becoming
President . . .

On the following afternoon, Senator Warren G. Harding was
nominated as the Republican candidate for President of the United
States. Selected to be his running-mate, as candidate for Vice-
President, was Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts, best
known for his role in suppressing a pohce strike in Boston in 19 19.

Commenting editorially on Harding's nomination, the Nenjo York
Times stated:

. . . the Chicago convention presents a candidate whose nomination
will be received with astonishment and dismay by the party whose
suffrages he invites. . . . Senator Harding's record at Washington has
been faint and colorless ...

The nomination of Harding ... is the fine and perfect flower of the
Senatorial cabal that charged itself with the management of the Repub-
lican Convention . . .

As for principles, they have only hatred of Mr. Wilson and a ravening
hunger for the offices.

According to the Nation, Harding was a "colorless and platitu-
dinous, uninspired and uninspiring nobody" who had been trotted
out by the Republican Old Guard "like a cigar store Indian to
attract trade."

Warren Harding's own succinct comment on the fact he had been
selected to run for President of the United States was: "We drew
to a pair of aces and filled."

2. "God, What a Job!"

There was one thing about Senator Harding on which every-
one agreed: he was an unusually handsome man. Tall and distin-
guished-looking, with a large well-molded face, deep-set ingenuous
eyes and silvery-grey hair, he cut an imposing figure in any gather-

ing. It was this quality which, years before, had convinced his
close personal friend and Presidential campaign manager, Harry M.
Daugherty, that a great pohtical future lay ahead of Harding. "He
looks like a President!" Daugherty repeatedly insisted. And, from
the beginning, Daugherty had been determined to see that Harding
became one . . .

Harry Micajah Daugherty, a blustering, heavy-set man who
usually sported a massive pearl stickpin in his garish ties, was a
lawyer by profession. His real business, however, was lobbying for
large corporations in the Ohio State Legislature, in which he him-
self had served two terms as a member of the House of Represen-
tatives. For a good many years, Daugherty had played a prominent
role in the notoriously corrupt Republican pohtical machine in
Ohio which was known as the "Ohio Gang."

"I frankly confess to a leadership in the so-called 'Ohio
Gang' . . . ," Daugherty subsequently stated in his book. The In-
side Story of the Harding Tragedy, which he wrote in collabora-
tion with Thomas Dixon, author of The Birth of a Nation and
other pro-Ku Klux Klan writings. "On the Ups of rival politicians
the 'Ohio Gang' is an epithet. I wear its badge as a mark of honor."

In 1 9 14 Daugherty had persuaded his friend, Harding, who was
then editor of a small newspaper in Marion, Ohio, to run for the
United States Senate. Harding at first had been reluctant. "When it
came to running for the Senate," Daugherty later reminisced, "I
found him sunning himself in Florida Hke a turtle on a log, and
I had to push him into the water and make him swim." With the
support of the Ohio Gang, Harding was elected to the Senate . . .

As Senator, Harding spent most of his time in Washington at
poker games, the ball park and the race track. The few speeches
Harding made in the Senate, as unforgettably described by William
G. McAdoo, left "the impression of an army of pompous phrases
moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these
meandering words would actually capture a straggHng thought and
bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of
servitude and overwork."

When Daugherty proposed that Harding make a bid for the
RepubHcan Presidential nomination, the Senator asked: "Am I a big
enough man for the race?"

"Don't make me laugh!" said Daugherty. "The day of giants in
the Presidential Chair is passed . . ." What was now needed was

an "every-day garden variety of man." And Harding, declared
Daugherty emphatically, was just that sort of man . . .

In February 1920, three months before the Republican National
Convention in Chicago, Daugherty had made this remarkably ac-
curate prediction: "At the proper time after the Republican Na-
tional Convention meets, some fifteen men, bleary-eyed with loss of
sleep and perspiring profusely with the excessive heat, will sit down
in seclusion around a big table. I will present the name of Senator
Harding to them, and before we get through they will put him
over."

In November 1920, in a runaway victory at the polls, Warren
Gamaliel Harding was elected President of the United States.*
He took office on March 4, 192 1.

The members of what was to become known as Harding's "Black
Cabinet" included Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, the
diminutive soft-spoken multi-millionaire who dominated the alu-
minum trust and ruled a vast private empire of oil wells, coal mines,
steel mills, utility corporations, and banking houses; Secretary of
War John W. Weeks, ex-Senator from Massachusetts and partner
in the Boston brokerage firm of Homblower and Weeks; Secretary
of Commerce Herbert Hoover, former head of the American Relief
Administration, who had amassed an immense personal fortune be-
fore the war in the promotion of dubious mining stocks in back-
ward parts of the world; Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall,
ex-Senator from New Mexico, where as a lawyer and politician
he had maintained intimate, shady connections with large oil in-
terests; and Postmaster General Will Hays, former Chairman of the
Republican National Committee and chief counsel for the Sinclair
Oil Company.

To Harding's political mentor and bosom friend, Harry M.
Daugherty, went the post of U.S. Attorney General . . .t

* The candidates of the Democratic Party were, for President, the Governor
of Ohio, James M. Cox; for Vice-President, the thirty-eight year old As-
sistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

t There was one man in the Harding Cabinet who, in the words of Karl
Schriftgeisser, "had real qualifications for his post." He was the Secretary of
Agriculture, Henry C. Wallace. "Honest, outspoken and (in his way) a true
liberal . . . ," writes Schriftgeisser of Henry C. Wallace in This Was Nor-
malcy, "he was not without his enemies both within and without the cabinet.
Surrounded as he was by men of whose faults he was only too aware, his life

Few, if anv, of the members of the new Administration were less
equipped to fill their posts than the President himself.

Not long after his inauguration, Harding was visited at the White
House by his old friend, Nicholas Murray Butler. The head of
Columbia University found the President sitting in his study,
staring disconsolately at the letters, documents and papers of state
that cluttered up his desk. Gloomily, Harding muttered, "I knew
that this job would be too much for me."

On another occasion, after listening in frustrated bewilderment
to a long, heated discussion among his advisers on a question of
taxation, Harding flung himself wearily into the office of one of
his secretaries.

"John, I can't make a damn thing out of this tax problem!" Hard-
ing blurted out to the secretary. "I listen to one side and they seem
right, and then— God!— I talk to the other side and they seem just
as right, and here I am where I started. I know somewhere there
is a book that will give me the truth, but, hell! I couldn't read the
book. I know somewhere there is an economist who knows the
truth but I don't know where to find him and haven't the sense to-
know him and trust him when I do find him."

Shaking his head in exasperation, the President cried, "God, what
a job!"

But Harding's own sense of inadequacy notwithstanding, his
qualifications for the office of President were eminently satisfactory
to the millionaires who had sponsored his candidacy. As Charles
W. Thompson states in his book Presidejits Vve Known: "They^
could shuffle him and deal him like a pack of cards."

3. The Ways of Normalcy

The domestic policy of the Harding Administration, as described
by Charles and Mary Beard in The Rise of American Civilization,
consisted essentially of

a repeal of the taxes on incomes, inheritances, and excess profits, espe-
cially the higher schedules, and a shift of the burden of federal support
from wealth enjoyed by the rich to goods consumed by the masses

in Washington was to be an unhappy one. But with the passing of the years,.
he stands out, head and shoulders, above the rest of the 'best minds.'"

For details on the political career of Henry C. Wallace's son, Henry A..
Wallace, see Books Three and Four.

, . . "no government interference with business"— no official meddling
with mergers, combinations, and stock issues, no resort to harsh price-
fixing or regulatory schemes, and a release of the tense pressure exerted
upon railways.

"Anyone knows," philosophized Andrew Mellon, Harding's
fabulously rich Secretary of the Treasury, who was affectionately
called "Uncle Andy" by the other Cabinet members, "that any man
of energy and initiative can get what he wants out of life . . . when
that initiative is crippled by legislation or a tax system which denies
him the right to receive a reasonable share of his earnings, then he
will no longer exert himself . . ."

As soon as the Sixty-seventh Congress convened, Mellon, who
lacked neither energy nor initiative, pressed for and secured the
repeal of the Excess Profits Act of 191 7. The liquidation of this Act
effected a yearly tax saving for large corporations of more than
$1,500,000,000, and, incidentally, a saving of approximately $1,000,-
000 a year for the diverse, multiple interests of Andrew A4ellon . . .

The foreign policy of the Harding Administration was keynoted
by the slogan, "America First", which Harding, at Daugherty's
suggestion had repeatedly employed during his campaign speeches.*
This foreign policy, as viewed by Walter Lippman, then writing
for the New York World, was based on these concepts:

That the fate of America is in no important way connected with the
fate of Europe.

That Europe should stew in its own juice . . .

That we can sell to Europe, without buying from Europe.

. . . and that if Europe doesn't like she can lump it, but she had better
not.

"Let the internationalist dream and the Bolshevik destroy," de-
clared President Harding. "God pity him 'for whom no minstrel
raptures swell.' In the spirit of the republic we proclaim American-
ism and proclaim America!"

There was, however, one highly significant phase of American
political-economic life to which the tenets of isolationism did not
apply. While publicly applauding Harding's program of "an end
to entangling foreign alliances," American finance-capitalists were
privately drafting secret international agreements with German,
Japanese, British and other foreign cartelists, and had already em-

* The same slogan was again revived on an extensive scale by the America
First Party in 1940-41. See page 219.

barked upon an ambitious program to infiltrate and dominate the
markets of Europe and Asia.*

Shortly before his inauguration, Harding had publicly observed,
"It will help if we have a revival of religion ... I don't think any
government can be just if it does not somehow have contact with
Omnipotent God ... It might interest you to know that while I
have never been a great reader of the Bible, I have never read it as
closely as in the last weeks when my mind has been bent upon the
work that I must shortly take up . . ."

Whatever the extent of his familiarity with the Bible, there was
definitely something of a biblical parable to be seen in Harding's
conduct as President of the United States. In the words of the
famous journaHst, William Allen White:

Harding's story is the story of his times, the story of the Prodigal
Son, our democracy that turned away from the things of the spirit,
got its share of the patrimony ruthlessly and went out and lived riot-
ously and ended it by feeding among the swine.

Within a few weeks after the Harding Administration took over,
the city of Washington was teeming with a motley crew of Repub-
lican Party bosses, big businessmen, bootleggers, members of the
Ohio Gang, and big-time confidence men. Not a few of these in-
dividuals held key offices in the new Administration. Others were
lobbyists for big corporations. All had come to share in the loot.

A mood of abandoned merrymaking pervaded the nation's capi-
tol. Wild parties and games of chance for fabulous stakes were
nightly occurrences. Prostitutes were plentiful. Prohibition or not,
liquor flowed freely . . .

Rowdy, cigar-smoking politicos congregated almost every eve-
ning in the sedate rooms of the White House for boisterous drink-
ing parties and shirt-sleeved poker sessions lasting into the early
morning hours. "While the big official receptions were going on,"
recollects Alice Longworth, in her book. Crowded Hours, "I don't
think the people had any idea what was taking place in the rooms
above. One evening while one was in progress, a friend of the
Hardings asked me if I would like to go up to the study. I had
heard rumors and was curious to see for myself what truth was in

*For further details on cartel and other international operations of Amer-
ican finance-capital during the 1920's, see page 81.

them. No rumor could have exceeded the reality; the study was
filled with cronies ... the air was heavy with tobacco smoke, trays
with bottles containing every imaginable brand of liquor stood
about, cards and poker chips ready at hand— a general atmosphere
of w^aistcoat unbuttoned, feet on desk, and the spittoon alongside."

Not all the gay carousals of the President and his boon com-
panions took place at the White House. Mrs. Harding, a petite
shriveled woman several years her husband's senior, who favored
a black velvet neck-band and was familiarly known in the inner
Harding circle as "The Duchess," was a possessive, domineering and
extremely jealous wife. Although Harding's mistress. Nan Britton,
paid occasional clandestine visits to the Presidential mansion, more
discreet rendezvous were deemed advisable . . .*

For purposes of relaxtion and revelry, the Ohio Gang established
a private retreat at a small comfortable residence at 1625 K Street.
This house, which came to be called "The Little Green House,"
was rented by Howard Mannington, a lawyer and politician from
Columbus, Ohio. While holding no official Government post, Man-

* Nan Britton later wrote a book, entitled The Fresidenfs Daughter, de-
scribing in intimate and sordid detail her clandestine affair with Harding-
first as U. S. Senator and then as President— and the birth of their illegitimate
daughter, Elizabeth Ann. Although written in a maudlin and meretricious
style, the book nevertheless offers a revealing picture of the character of the
28th President of the United States.

The book recounts such tawdry episodes as the furtive meetings between
Harding and Nan Britton in disreputable hotels, shabby rooming houses, the
Senate Office Building and the White House; and how, when they were
traveling together, Nan Britton would register at hotels as Harding's "neice"
or "secretary," and sometimes as his wife. During one of their meetings, which
took place in an obscure New York hotel while Harding was still a Senator,
house detectives broke in on the couple. Depicting Harding's reaction, Nan
Britton writes: "They got us!' [said Harding] ... He seemed so pitifully
distressed ... sat disconsolately on the edge of the bed, pleading that we had
not disturbed any of their guests, and for this reason should be allowed to
depart in peace." The detectives, on learning Harding was a member of the
U. S. Senate, respectfully conducted the couple out of a side entrance of the
hotel. "Gee, Nan," Harding told his mistress, "I thought I wouldn't get out
of that for under $1000!"

In one of the more significant passages in the book, Nan Britton relates how
Harding, as a Senator, obtained a secretarial position for her at the United
States Steel Corporation: "I had never heard of Judge Gary, strange to say,
and he [Harding] explained that he was the Chairman of Directors of the
largest industrial corporation in the world. Mr. Harding handed his card to
the secretary in Judge Gary's outer office. The judge came out immediately.
After introducing me to Judge Gary, Mr. Harding inquired casually of him
whether his senatorial services in a certain matter had been satisfactory. The
judge replied that they had indeed and thanked Mr. Harding . . ."

nington was in almost daily contact with Attorney General
Daugherty and other prominent figures in the Administration.
Mannington was on equally familiar terms with a number of the
nation's leading bootleggers, who used the house on K Street as a
headquarters when they visited Washington, and who there made
arrangements to buy permits for large quantities of liquor from
Government-controlled distilleries. At the Little Green House,
arrangements were also frequently made for federal convicts to buy
pardons, and for aspiring jurists to purchase federal judgeships.

Another favorite rendezvous of the Ohio Gang was a house at
1509 H Street, where Attorney General Daugherty lived together
with his close friend and personal aide, Jesse Smith. The house,
complete with butler and cook, had been turned over to Daugherty
by its owner, Edward B. McLean, the affluent playboy pubHsher
of the C'mcijinati Enquirer and the Washington Post, whose sump-
tuous estate, "Friendship," was frequented by President Harding
and key members of the Administration.

A description of the sort of affairs held in the house on H Street
appears in the memoirs of Gaston B. Means, who was one of the
chief investigators in the Bureau of Investigation during the Hard-
ing Administration. Means relates:

One night . . . my home phone rang . . . "Means? . . . This is Jess
Smith. Say— come around to H Street quick as you can get here, will
you? There's— a little trouble—" ... I slipped into my clothes . . . and
hustled around to H Street. Everyone knew of the many gay midnight
suppers there . . .

So I was not altogether unprepared for the scene that I walked into
when the door was opened for me. The rooms were in the wildest dis-
order. The dinner table had been cleared— evidently for the dancing of
chorus girls— dishes were scattered over the floor— bottles lay on chairs
and tables. Everybody had drunk to excess. Half drunken women and
girls sprawled on couches and chairs— all of them now with terror on
their painted faces.

I was approached by Mr. Boyd who told me that somehow, acciden-
tally, when they were clearing the table for the girls to dance . . . and
everybody was throwing bottles or glasses— that a water bottle had hit
one of the girls on the head and she seemed badly done up.

I saw President Harding leaning against a mantel with his guards
standing near and I whispered to the man next to me that they better
get the President out and away first . . .

I found the unconscious girl stretched out on a sofa in a rear hall . . .
I dared not 'phone for a doctor or an ambulance so I picked the seem-
ingly lifeless figare in my arms and carried her out to my car and took

her to a hospital behind the Hamilton Hotel. She was unconscious for
days and was finally operated on.*

It was not without reason that William Allen White later wrote
of the Harding era: "The story of Babylon is a Sunday school story
compared with the story of Washington from June 1920, imtil July

*For further details on Gaston B. Means' activities during the Harding
Administration, see pages 63 ff.

Chapter v

ROGUE'S GALLERY

I. "The Real Old Times"

One month after the inauguration of President Harding, a certain
Colonel Charles R. Forbes showed up in the nation's capitol. He
was a ruddy-faced, hard-drinking, swaggering adventurer, with a
penchant for spinning extravagant yarns and an easy way with
members of the opposite sex. During the war he had been decorated
with the Croix de Guerre and the Distinguished Service Medal. His
checkered career had also included desertion from the U. S. Army,
crooked ward politics on the West Coast, shady operations as a
business contractor, and several years of lucrative underhand deal-
ings as a public official in the Philippine Islands.

The reason Colonel Forbes came to Washington in the early
spring of 192 1 was that he had been summoned by President Hard-
ing himself . . .

Colonel Forbes and Senator and Mrs. Harding had met in Hawaii
before the war. The Hardings were enchanted by Forbes* inex-
haustible tall tales and boisterous affability; Forbes found Harding
to be a good-natured loser at poker; and a warm friendship quickly
blossomed between the Colonel and the future President and his
wife. During the 1920 Presidential campaign, Forbes, who was then
vice-president of the Hurley-Mason Construction Company of
Tacoma, campaigned energetically for Harding on the West Coast;
and following his election, Harding called his old friend to Wash-
ington to take charge of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. Soon
afterwards, Forbes was appointed director of the newly formed
United States Veterans' Bureau . . .

As head of the Veterans' Bureau, Colonel Forbes was responsible
for the management of all veterans' hospitals in the country, the
disposal of war-time medical supplies and hospital equipment, and

the construction of new hospitals for veterans. The total expeft-
ditures of the Veterans' Bureau were estimated at approximately
$500,000,000 a year.

The swashbuckling colonel lost little time in exploiting the
bonanza that had fallen into his hands. He promptly appointed as
his aides and subordinates a number of friends and old cronies, men
who could be relied upon to do just what they were told and whose
scruples were no more exacting than his own when it came to
matters of graft and embezzlement. The offices of the Veterans'
Bureau were soon swarming with hard-boiled swindlers and petty
racketeers, who traveled around the country, staging wild parties,
carousing and living in luxury on government funds that had been
set aside to care for disabled war veterans . . .

A typical letter written by one of Forbes' field representatives,
R. A. Tripp, to his immediate superior in Washington, read in
part:

You are missing the real old times. Hunting season is on— rabbit din-
ners, pheasant suppers, wines, beers, and booze— and by God we haven't
missed a one yet. Collins and I get invitations to 'em all. Last Wed. I
was soused to the gills on rabbit, etc. Last Sat. wines— Oh, Boy! . . . We
eat and wine with the mayor, the sheriff, the prosecuting atty.

To hell with the Central Office and the work. And the fun is in the
field— 'tis all the work I want— just travel around.

Regarding the site of one veterans' hospital, Tripp jocularly
noted:

Fire hazards— say, if Forbes could only see the "lovely" high (3') grass
& if fire comes— boom! up she goes.

The letter concluded:

Well, old Boss, 'tis a wonderful time— as happy as can be— as soon as
we can lift the freight embargo we will be thru. You should see us—
when we can't get a switch engine, we "swipe" the cars and take the
crane to spot 'em or use a liberty truck- then the Jews— Oh, my, how
they weep: "I got stung." Ha! Ha!

Let me know when Forbes is going to sell by sealed proposals, then's
when I get a Rolls Royce. Got a good drink coming, so here's back
to you.

Colonel Forbes himself, like the members of his staff, strongly
believed in mixing business with pleasure. None of his exploits as
head of the Veterans' Bureau more clearly revealed this proclivity
than his dealings with Elias H. Mortimer, a representative of the
Thompson-Black Construction Company.

Soon after Forbes and Mortimer became acquainted early in 1922,
they began privately discussing the extensive building program
then being initiated by the Veterans* Administration. During one
of their first chats on the subject, Forbes told Mortimer about his
own career in the construction game. The Colonel said pointedly,
"We fixed things so that no one lost money."

That April a small clandestine conference took place in Forbes'
Washington apartment. Present were Forbes, Mortimer, and J. W.
Thompson and James Black, heads of the Thompson-Black Con-
struction Company. The Colonel informed the others that he was
about to let a number of major contracts on hospital buildings, the
sites of which had not yet been made public. He himself would
soon leave on a cross-country tour to make final arrangements in
connection with the jobs. He suggested that Mortimer and his
vivacious young wife accompany him on the trip.

"You can look things over at Chicago," said Forbes. "We are
going to put up a five milHon dollar hospital at Chicago. We are
going to put up a hospital at Livermore, California, and one at
America Lake, which is just outside of Tacoma. On the way back
you can stop off at St. Cloud, Minnesota— and in this way have
advance information over everybody."

Presently, Forbes drew Mortimer aside. He was, he explained,
in a rather embarrassing predicament which he hesitated to mention
in front of the others. To put it in a nutshell, he was "very hard
up" . . .

Mortimer asked, "What do you want me to do?"

"I need about five thousand dollars," said the Colonel.

Before the group separated, Mortimer had arranged with his
associates for Forbes to get the money . . .

The five thousand dollars, it was understood, represented only a
token payment. According to the terms of the final agreement
reached between Forbes and the contractors, the Colonel was to
receive one-third of all profits on hospitals built by the firm of
Thompson and Black . . .

That summer Colonel Forbes and Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer
traveled across the country together. Their first stop was in
Chicago, where most of their stay was devoted to lavishly entertain-
ing business acquaintances and friends in their $5o-a-day suite at
the Drake Hotel.

Despite the merrymaking, and in a way because of it, a some-
what trying situation soon developed between the Colonel and his
two traveling companions. Describing one of the parties in his
suite at the Drake, Mortimer subsequently related:

. . . Colonel Forbes' room was off to the right of our apartment . . .
Colonel Forbes, when I came in there at about 4:30 in the afternoon was
shooting craps with Mrs. Mortimer on the bed . . , There was a bottle
of Scotch there, and he had his coat off . . .

Although piqued at this and similar episodes, Mortimer did not
at first permit the personal compUcation to interfere with his
business dealings with the Colonel. Together, the Mortimers and
Forbes proceeded on to California, having, in Mortimer's own
words, "one royal good time all the time we were on the trip."

Meanwhile, Forbes' trusted aide, Charles F. Cramer, Chief Coun-
sel of the Veterans' Bureau, was receiving sealed bids in Wash-
ington on Government hospital contracts. Following Forbes' in-
structions, Cramer opened all bids and immediately telegraphed
their details to the Colonel in Cahfomia. Forbes then relayed this
supposedly confidential information to Mortimer, so that the firm
of Thompson and Black might be able to gauge its own bids ac-
cordingly . . .

Forbes was delighted with the way things were going. "We'll all
make a big clean-up," he enthusiastically assured Mortimer.

For Mortimer, however, notwithstanding the mounting profits,
the situation was becoming increasingly irksome. As the summer
drew to a close, his forbearance finally at an end, Mortimer firmly
told his wife and Forbes that he had had enough of their more than
friendly relationship.

Returning east a few weeks later, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer per-
manently separated. At the same time, the secret partnership be-
tween Colonel Forbes and the firm of Thompson and Black came
to an abrupt conclusion . . .

Graft from the construction of veterans' hospitals was only one
of Colonel Forbes' multiple sources of income as head of the
Veterans' Bureau.

By buying Government supplies at fabulously high prices and
selling them at a fraction of their worth, Forbes won the esteem of
numerous business executives, who naturally did not object to shar-
ing profits with the Colonel.

From one favored firm, for example, Forbes purchased $70,000
worth of floor wax and floor cleaner— a quantity, it was later es-
timated, sufficient to last the Veterans' Bureau for one hundred
years. The Colonel paid 87 cents a gallon for the material which
was worth approximately two cents a gallon . . .

Forbes' largest single transaction in this field involved the Gov-
ernment's immense supply depot at Perryville, Maryland, where
there were more than fifty buildings filled with vast quantities of
medical stores and other supplies. Without any public advertise-
ment of the sale, the Colonel signed a contract with the Boston
firm of Thompson & Kelly, Inc., for the disposal of the entire con-
tents of the Perryville warehouses. The day the contract was
signed, fifteen empty freight cars moved into the Perryville rail-
road yards; and before a week had elapsed, more than 150 freight
cars were being simultaneously loaded with huge amounts of goods
and materials from the Government supply depot.

In all, Thompson & Kelly purchased at Perryville for the sum of
$600,000, supplies whose actual value was conservatively figured
at $6,000,000.

By the end of 1922, from all parts of the country, furious crit-
icism of Forbes' management of the Veterans' Bureau was pouring
into Washington from veterans' organizations, high Army and
Navy officers, and businessmen who had had no opportunity to bid
on Veterans Bureau contracts.

The Perryville deal brought matters to a head.

Early in January 1923, President Harding summoned Colonel
Forbes to the White House. Forbes came bringing with him a
bundle of old dilapidated sheets to indicate the "worthlessness" of
the goods he had sold at Perryville. The President was not im-
pressed. He told his friend that the irregular practises at the Vet-
erans' Bureau would have to stop.

Before the month was out, Forbes sailed for Europe. From
France, he sent his resignation to President Harding.

That spring the Senate initiated an investigation of the Veterans'
Bureau. Public hearings began in V/ashington in October.

Among those to appear at the hearings was Colonel Forbes, who
had just returned from Europe. "I worked sixteen long hours a
day . . . ," declared the Colonel -about his directorship of the Vet-

erans' Bureau, "and no man loved the ex-servicemen better than I
did."

Another witness was the building contractor, Elias Mortimer,
who described in intimate detail his various deahngs with Colonel
Forbes, including those involving Mrs. Mortimer. After Mortimer's
testimony, Mrs. Mortimer's attorney appeared at the hearings to
request that his client be given the opportunity to testify, so that
she might publicly defend her reputation. The attorney told the
senators, in what was probably the most poetic utterance at the
hearings: "A woman's character is a fragile thing, as delicate as
the frost upon the morning window, which a breath dispels, and it is
forever gone. And yet, a woman's character is her most priceless
possession."

Following the Senate committee hearings, Colonel Forbes was
indicted on charges of conspiring to defraud the United States
Government. He was tried in Federal court, found guilty and sen-
tenced to a fine of 1 10,000 and two years' imprisonment.

It was estimated that Forbes' machinations as Veterans' Bureau
director had cost the American people about $200,000,000, a fair
portion of which had ended up in the Colonel's own pocket.

Impressive as the sum was, it represented only a fraction of the
vast loot that was being systematically extracted from the public
treasury by U. S. Government officials and American big business-
men during the Harding Administration.

The Dome and the Hills

One day in the early spring of 1922, Harry F. Sinclair of the
Sinclair Oil Company and James E. O'Neill, president of the Rocke-
feller-controlled Prairie Oil and Gas Company, met with two busi-
ness associates for a quiet meal at the exclusive Bankers' Club in
New York City. The four men had come together to discuss a
highly confidential, multi-miUion-dollar oil transaction.*

"I wish," said one of the men during the meal, "that I was Sec-
retary of the Navy for about two years."

* The names of the two businessmen who met with Sinclair and O'Neill
are, despite considerable speculation, still not definitely known. The dialogue
quoted is taken from the subsequent testimony of a witness before a Senate
investigatory committee, who had overheard part of the conversation between
the four men at the Bankers' Club.

"Well," replied Sinclair, "you'd have a better job than the Presi-
dent."

"I'd clean up some milHons!"

"You all have to be careful after this," warned Sinclair, "and
each one will have to look out for himself."

"Suppose there's some trouble afterwards? Who would take care
of it?"

"If the Sinclair Oil Company isn't big enough, the Standard Oil
Company is," remarked O'Neill, whose firm was closely tied to
Standard interests. He added, "Why, we make a hundred million
dollars a year."

The secret deal that the four men were discussing concerned the
leasing of certain oil lands at the Naval Oil Reserve at Teapot
Dome, Wyoming.

For a number of years the largest American oil companies had
been trying to get control of the rich naval oil reserves established
in 1909 in Wyoming and California by an Executive Order of
President William H. Taft and confirmed by Congress in the Pickett
Act. The oil reserves were Navy Petroleum Reserve No. i at Elk
Hills, California; Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 2 at Buena Vista
Hills, California; and Naval Reserve No. 3 at Teapot Dome, Wyo-
ming. The purpose of these reserves was to hold the oil in the
ground for possible future use by the U. S. Navy, in the event that
regular commercial oil resources should become depleted.

During and immediately after the First World War, as the value
of oil soared to unprecedented heights, American private oil in-
terests became all the more determined to get their hands on the
naval oil reserves. With Harding as President, the oil men knew
their chance had come . . .

A few weeks after taking office. President Harding issued an Ex-
ecutive Order, against the vigorous opposition of high-ranking
Navy ofiicers, transferring control of the naval oil reserves from
the Navy to the Department of the Interior.

The Government official now responsible for determining what
happened to the naval oil reserves was Secretary of the Interior
Albert B. Fall

A cantankerous short-tempered man with a drooping white
mustache and long wavy white hair, who looked like an elderly
frontiersman. Secretary Fall had one main interest in life: to make

as much money as he could, as quickly as possible, by whatever
means were necessary.

Within a week after the promulgation of Harding's Executive
Order, Secretary Fall dispatched a confidential letter to Edward L.
Doheny, the president of the Pan-American Petroleum and Trans-
port Company of Cahfornia. The letter read in part:

There will be no possibility of any future conflict with Navy officials
and this department, as I have notified Secretary Denby that I shall
conduct the matter of naval leases, under the direction of the President,
without calling any of his force in consultation unless I conferred with
himself personally about a matter of policy. He understands the situation
and that I shall handle matters exactly as I think best . . .

Edward L. Doheny, a millionaire oil operator whose insatiable
yearning to exploit new oil resources were equaled in intensity only
by his burning hatred of "Bolshevism," was an old friend of Sec-
retary Fall. Years before, Doheny and Fall had prospected together
for oil in the Southwest.

Now, once again, the two men were to become profit-sharing
partners in an oil venture . . .

Certain obstacles precluded the immediate leasing by Secretary
Fall of the naval oil reserves to Doheny's company. There was, for
example, the Naval Fuel Oil Board, which had been set up to safe-
guard the reserves. In October 192 1 Secretary Fall's associate. Sec-
retary of the Navy Edwin N. Denby, disbanded the Naval Fuel
Oil Board.

This accompHshed, Secretary Fall put through a telephone call
from the Department of the Interior to Doheny, who was then in
New York City.

"I'm prepared now to receive that loan," Fall told Doheny.

The oil magnate promptly dispatched his son, Edward L. Doheny,
Jr., to the bank, where he drew $100,000 in bills. Carrying the
money in a small black satchel, Doheny, Jr., traveled to Washington.
There he turned the $100,000 over to the Secretary of the In-
terior . . .

Soon afterwards, Fall granted to Doheny's Pan-American Pe-
troleum and Transport Company a 15-year lease to all the oil
acreage of the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. i at Elk Hills, Cah-
fornia.

Regarding these arrangements, Judge Paul J. McCormick of the
United States District Court of Cahfornia subsequently stated:
60

It was in effect a complete surrender and transfer of approximately
30,000 acres of valuable proven oil land and its oil contents, estimated
at from 75,000,000 to 250,000,000 barrels of oil for fifteen years at least.

Doheny, at the time, put the matter more simply. "We'll be in
bad luck if we don't get $100,000,000 profit," the oil tycoon— whose
private railroad car was named The Patriot— S2iid of the contem-
plated draining of the naval oil reserves.

While furtively negotiating with Doheny, Secretary Fall was en-
gaged in similar clandestine deahngs with Harry F. Sinclair of the
Sinclair Oil Company.

On the morning of December 31, 192 1, Sinclair and his attorney.
Colonel J. W. Zevely, after whom the oil magnate had named his
famous race horse, "Zev," arrived from New York in a private
railroad car at Three Rivers, New Mexico. The two men had come
to visit Secretary Fall, who was spending the Christmas vacation
at his nearby ranch.

The purpose of the visit was not purely social. As Sinclair him-
self said later: "I went to Three Rivers to discuss with Senator Fall
the leasing of Teapot Dome."

Following several additional private conferences in Washington
and New York between Sinclair, Zevely and Fall, a contract leasing
the property of the Teapot Dome oil reserve to Sinclair was se-
cretly drafted in Colonel Zevely's Washington law offices. On
April 7 Secretary Fall signed the contract with Sinclair.

One month afterwards, Sinclair traveled to Washington. In the
seclusion of his private railroad car, Sinclair handed $198,000 in
Liberty Bonds to Secretary Fall's son-in-law, M. T. Everhart.
Later that same month, Everhart visited New York City, where, in
Sinclair's office, he received another $35,000 in Liberty Bonds and
$36,000 in cash, to take to his father-in-law. When Sinclair again
visited Fall's ranch that autumn, he gave the Secretary of the In-
terior an additional $10,000 in cash; and, in January 1923, in his
suite at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, the oil magnate
presented Fall with another $25,000.

In all. Secretary Fall and his son-in-law, Everhart, received $233,-
000 in Liberty Bonds and $71,000 in cash from Harry Sinclair . . .

From Sinclair's viewpoint, it was a conservative investment. Ap-
pearing in January 1923 before the Senate Committee on Manu-
factures, Sinclair declared: "I consider the value of the Mammoth

property at this time— it is only a guess— at a greater amount than
$100,000,000."

Sinclair was referring to the Mammoth Oil Company, which he
had incorporated solely for the purpose of exploiting the oil re-
sources at Teapot Dome.

Although profitably concluded. Secretary Fall's leasing of the
oil reserves at Teapot Dome and Elk Hills had not failed to arouse
considerable suspicion among certain Naval officers and congress-
men.

In the Upper House, Senator Robert M. LaFollette secured a
passage of a resolution caUing for an investigation by the Senate
Committee on Public Lands and Surveys of the leases to the Tea-
pot Dome and Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserves . . .

At the same time, angry protests were mounting among oil men
whose companies had been given no opportunity to bid on the con-
tracts. There were increasing demands for the resignation of Sec-
retary Fall.

Fall, however, clung obdurately to his post until the last of his
secret financial transactions had been concluded with Sinclair and
Doheny. Finally, on March 4, 1923, he handed in his resignation to
President Harding.

After reluctantly accepting the resignation, Harding announced
that he had offered Fall an appointment as Supreme Court Justice;
but that Fall— because of the tribulations of public office and a de-
sire to return to private Hfe- had gratefully declined the offer . . .

"I feel entitled to classify myself with the martyrs," Fall publicly
stated, referring to the early Christians who had met their fate
singing hymns in Roman gladiatorial arenas, "for I confess to a
grateful sense of satisfaction as I contemplate my approaching po-
litical demise."

Before leaving Washington, Fall purchased the handsome Jacob-
ean furniture in his office at the Department of the Interior and had
it shipped to his ranch at Three Rivers, New Mexico. The value of
the furniture was estimated at $3,000.00. The price Fall paid for
the furniture was $231.35 . . .

Back at his ranch, Fall received this letter from Washington:

My dear Fall,

This note is just by way of expressing appreciation for the many
kindnesses I had at your hands during the last two years in the Cabinet.
62

I know that the vast majority of our people feel a deep regret at your
leaving the Department of the Interior. In my recollection, that depart-
ment has never had so constructive and legal a headship as you gave it.
I trust the time will come when your private affairs will enable you
to return to public life, as there are few men who are able to stand
its stings and ire, and they have got to stay with it.

The letter was signed, "Yours faithfully, Herbert Hoover."

3. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

"r wouldn't have given thirty cents for the office of Attorney
General," remarked Harry M. Daugherty one year after taking
office, "but I wouldn't surrender it for a million dollars.'*

Among the various lucrative enterprises connected with the Jus-
tice Department while Daugherty was Attorney General were:

dismissing various Federal court actions against large corporations, and
failing to prosecute them for committing war frauds and violating anti-
trust laws;

selling pardons and paroles in connection with Federal prison sentences;
removing and selling liquor from bonded warehouses;
selling Federal Judgeships and U.S. District Attorney posts;
disposing of various property seized by U.S. Government authorities as
a consequence of violation of Federal statutes.

"We did not play for marbles," the Justice Department agent,
Gaston B. Means, said later. "The harvest was ripe, and we knew
we were there as the reapers."

None of the many adventurers connected with the Harding Ad-
ministration was more unscrupulous and remarkable than Gaston
B. Means. A hulking, 200-pound, six-foot southerner, with a bulging
forehead, thin receding hair, and little eyes set in a pudgy moon-
shaped face, Me^is had formerly served as a German Secret Service
agent in the United States, under the direction of the German naval
attache and espionage chief, Captain Karl Boy-Ed. He had also
operated from time to time as a secret agent for the Mexican, Jap-
anese and British governments, and for a number of years had been
employed as an undercover man by the William Burns Detective
Agency. When WilUam J. Burns was appointed director of the
Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation by Attorney General
Daugherty, he brought Means with him to Washington. In Burns'
opinion. Means was "the best investigator in the business."

Among Means' various duties as an agent of the Bureau of In-

vestigation were collecting graft from bootleggers, selling con-
fiscated liquor, acting as a liaison in surreptitious deals between the
Justice Department and the criminal underworld, and spying upon
congressmen who were calling for investigation of Attorney Gen-
eral Daugherty.

According to Means' subsequent testimony before a Senate in-
vestigating committee, he personally collected hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars for providing bootleggers with liquor permits and
for "insuring" various gangster operations against Federal inter-
ference.

In his book, The Strange Death of President Harding, Means
gives this description of how he received his "payments":

, . . the big bootleggers in New York City wanted to pay for Federal
protection ... It became known in the underworld that they could
pay this protection money to me. I was then stationed at the Vanderbilt
Hotel first . . .

Our method there was simple. We had our rumiers, twenty-five men,
—tipsters of the underworld. They were to keep us posted as to how
much money different bootleggers were making. From their reports,
my superior officers would estimate how much each one would pay,
for protection. These bootleggers were then notified . . .

We did not want these bootleggers to be handing this money to any
individual. I then had another room engaged— on another floor of the
Vanderbilt Hotel— we will say number 518. The register would show
that this room had been engaged by another man. In similar manner,
the room next door, number 517 was engaged.

In room 518, I took a big round glass bowl that one could easily
see through, a big gold fish aquarium. We made a peep hole in the door
connecting 518 and 517. This big glass bowl was conspicuously placed on
a table in 518 . . .

The "purchaser of protection" was instructed to come to the
hotel room containing the glass bowl:

He would enter 518,— would see nobody, but he would see the glass
bowl, which always had bills of money in it. From 517, through the
peep hole in the door, I could see him all the time. They were instructed
never to bring a bill less than $500.00. He would throw into the bowl
so many $500.00 bills— or so many $1000.00 bills. I watched for two rea-
sons: to make sure that he put his money into the bow-l and to be sure
that he took none out. As soon as he would step out, quick as a flash,
I'd unlock the door between and lock the outside door. I'd check up.
Never once was I short-changed! Then, I would leave the money,—
say $10,000.00 in the bowl, unlock the outside door again and wait for
the next man . . .

Bootleggers are straight shooters in matters like that. Seeing money in
64

the bowl gave them assurance that others were paying for protection
also . . .

According to Means' account:

By this process . . . we covered in territory besides New York City
and New York State,— Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New
Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania.

A conservative estimate of the sum total of each visit I made, I would
put at a quarter of a million,— $250,000.00 . . .

Fully $7,000,000.00 passed through my glass bowl and through my
hands.*

After the money had been collected, Means records, it was
turned over to Jesse Smith, Attorney General Daugherty's private
aide and confidante.

Jesse W. Smith was really not cut out for his job with the At-
torney General. He was a plump, middle-aged, rather effeminate
man, who had formerly owned a dry goods store in the little town
of Washington Court House, Ohio, and was happiest when discuss-
ing clothing fabrics. A close friend and worshipful admirer of
Daugherty, he had readily accepted the latter's invitation to come
to Washington to "give a hand" with the nation's affairs. Dazzled
by the glamorous atmosphere of the capitol and by the fact he was
rubbing shoulders with the most famous personages in the land.
Smith became a frequent caller at the White House, arranged when-
ever possible to be photographed standing alongside President
Harding, and periodically went shopping with Mrs. Harding, fas-
cidiously helping the First Lady select hats, dresses and shawls for
her wardrobe.

While holding no official post, Smith had a private desk directly
outside the office of the Attorney General, and word soon got
around Washington that the way to approach Daugherty was to
"see Jess first." t

* There is no documentary substantiation of Means' picturesque description
of the manner in which he collected graft and "protection money" from boot-
leggers. However, the fact that such money was collected, in sums running
into hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then turned over to Daugherty's
man, Jesse Smith, has been corroborated with ample evidence.

In view of the fact that Gaston B. Means was an unusually fluent liar, the
author of this book has been careful to quote Means only in instances where
there exists corroborative evidence of his statements, and where such does not
exist, to so indicate.

t Smith's first name, Jesse, was soon abbreviated to "Jess" in Washington;
and before long he himself adopted the shortened form, and used it even when
signing his "official" correspondence in the Justice Department.

Soon after joining Daugherty in Washington, Smith began hav-
ing large sums of money at his disposal. "We are all much better
off than we have ever been before," he cheerfully told his former
wife, Roxy Stinson. She and Smith had been married in 1908; and
although their marriage had lasted less than two years before they
were divorced, they had remained warm, intimate friends.

From the nation's capital. Smith frequently sent considerable
sums of cash to Roxy Stinson in Washington Court House, Ohio.
Sometimes the money Smith sent was for her personal use, and
sometimes she was instructed to buy certain stocks at a brokerage
firm where Smith had opened an account for her under an assumed
name. Smith himself had several such blind accounts at brokerage
houses, and much of his time at the Justice Department was spent
on the Attorney General's private telephone line, calling brokers
and ordering the purchase and sale of various leading stocks . . .

In a short time the former dry goods store proprietor was dis-
cussing matters of high finance with the casual air of a veteran
banker. "In the past few days," he informed Roxy Stinson on one
of his visits to Washington Court House, Ohio, "five men have
made $33,000,000."

"Were you and Harry in on it?" she asked.

"No," he said ruefully. "That's what we're sore about. They
were our friends too."

Other big projects, however, were underway.

Not the least of these projects concerned an internationally-con-
trolled copper concern called the American Metals Company.

During the war a large portion of American Metals stock had
been seized by the U. S. Alien Property Custodian as German-
owned and sold at Government auction for $7,000,000. In the fall
of 192 1 a certain Richard Merton visited the office of the Alien
Property Custodian. Presenting himself as the representative of a
^'Swiss Corporation," Merton claimed his firm was the rightful
owner of the American Metals stock that had been auctioned and
that the American Government therefore owed his firm $7,000,000.
The claim of the "Swiss representative" w^as quietly recognized as
vahd by the AUen Property Custodian and, at Merton's request,
the $7,000,000 was turned over to the Societe Suisse pour Valeurs
des Metaux^Q. Swiss front for German metal interests . . .

A number of persons in Washington had been involved in facili-
tating this transaction for Merton, and they were generously re-
66

warded for their assistance. To John T. King, Repubhcan National
Committeeman from Connecticut, who had acted as a general con-
tact man throughout the negotiations, Merton presented $391,000
in Liberty Bonds and a $50,000 check. Of this sum, $50,000 went to
the Alien Property Custodian, Colonel Thomas W. Miller, for his
"services." And, in appreciation of certain vital "introductions" in
Government circles and various other help, $224,000 was passed on
to Attorney General Daugherty's aide, Jesse Smith . . .

The stakes, however, were getting too steep for Smith. The more
deeply he became involved in the grandiose political-financial con-
spiracies afoot in Washington, the more uneasy he felt. "I am not
made for mis," he wrote to Roxy Stinson. "This intrigue is setting
me crazy. If I could just come home— but I am in now and have to
stand by Harry . . ."

By the spring of 1923, Smith had further cause for anxiety. The
details of Colonel Forbes' embezzlements in the Veterans' Bureau
were coming to light. The Senate Committee on Public Lands and
Surveys was investigating the leases to Teapot Dome and Elk Hills,
and Secretary of Interior Fall had just resigned. How long would
it be, Smith wondered, before someone discovered what was going
on inside the Justice Department?

V^hen Smith visited Washington Court House, Ohio, that April,
he was a terrified man. He knew "too much," he told Roxy Stinson;
and he could no longer trust anyone. Even the men with whom he
had worked so closely— yes, even his old friend Daugherty— had
now become suspicious of him. They thought he was weak and
might talk. And they were men, he said, who would stop at noth-
ing .. .

Smith and his former wife went to Columbus, Ohio, to attend a
dance, but Smith urged that they return to Washington Court
House while it was still afternoon.

"Let's go home before dark," he said.

On the train back to Washington Court House, Smith handed
Roxy Stinson his brief case, which was bulging with documents
and papers. "Carry them," he said, "I don't want to carry them."

When they were in a taxi driving away from the Washington
Court House station, Smith kept glancing nervously out the rear
window. Finally, Roxy Stinson told him, "Don't you do that again."

"All right," replied Smith with a weak smile.

They drove on in silence for a while. Then Smith said, "They
are going to get me, they are going to get me."

"No, they won't."

"They passed it to me."

"Oh, don't," said Roxy Stinson. "You are all right. You are all
right."

"You better destroy any letters and papers."

Roxy Stinson placed her hand on his. "Tell me all about it,
Jess," she said. "I know so much."

"No, no, no," said Smith. "Just cheer me up, just cheer me up."

The final thing Smith told Roxy Stinson before leaving Wash-
ington Court House to return to the Capitol was not to go out
by herself after dark and never to drive alone.

"The man was afraid," she said later. "The man was afraid."

It was the last time that Roxy Stinson saw Jesse Smith.

Shortly before daw^n on May 30, 1923, Jesse Smith was found
dead in the suite that he shared with Attorney General Daugherty
at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D. C. He was lying
on the floor with a bullet in his head, and in his outstretched hand
was a revolver.

The coroner's verdict was suicide. William J. Burns, chief of the
Bureau of Investigation, took charge of the body.

No autopsy was performed before the burial.

Attorney General Daugherty was not present when Smith's body
was discovered. He had spent the night at the White House.

"The act," stated Daugherty regarding the death of his old
friend, "could be accounted for only on the ground of a complete
mental collapse." Smith, he added, had suffered severely from di-
abetes. "This insidious disease plays sad tricks with the brain . . .
It has made many suicides. It has broken down the moral fibre of
character. I shall always remember my friend before his illness
when he was himself, kindly, helpful, loyal, generous."

The Attorney General was conspicuously absent from Jesse
Smith's funeral.

4. Sudden Death

Jesse Smith was not the only man prominently associated with
the Harding Administration to break under the strain of criminal
68

intrigue and the dread of exposure, and to die under unusual or
mysterious circumstances. There were a number of others.

Among them was President Harding himself.

By early 1923 an extraordinary change had taken place in Har-
ding's personality and appearance. He was no longer the handsome,
affable personage who had been sworn in as President in March,
192 1. He had aged shockingly. His face, now haggard, lined and sal-
low, wore a haunted look. Occasionally, when he made a public
appearance, his features twisted into a grotesque grimace— he was
attempting to smile. His hands shook uncontrollably. He could not
sleep at night. Great dark pouches lay under his eyes, which
seemed to stare fearfully at the world about him.

As the various Senate investigations moved relentlessly ahead, and
the whole scandal of his Administration threatened to flare into the
open, Harding periodically asked the few newspapermen he still
trusted what a President should do "whose friends have betrayed
him" . . .

In June, 1923, traveling in his private railroad car, the "Superb,"
President Harding set out from Washington for a tour of the west
coast and Alaska. The tour was never to be completed.

Returning by boat from Alaska in the latter part of July, Harding
was stricken with what was at first reported to be an attack of
ptomaine poisoning. On his arrival in San Francisco, he was con-
fined to bed at the Palace Hotel, his illness now being diagnosed as
pneumonia. A few days later, the President's physicians announced
that Harding was "resting comfortably" and was safely on the way
to recovery.

Then, suddenly, on the evening of August 2, the startled nation
was informed that President Harding was dead. "Death," stated an
official bulletin signed by Harding's physicians, "was apparently
due to some brain evolvement, probably an apoplexy."

In the early morning hours of August 3, by the flickering light
of an oil lamp in the Uving room of his family's farmhouse at Ply-
mouth Notch, Vermont, Calvin Coolidge was sworn in by his
aged father, a justice of the peace, as the new President of the
United States.

Various strange circumstances surrounded President Harding's
final illness and death.

The food-poisoning from which Harding had supposedly first
fallen ill was said to have come from eating crab meat on the boat
from Alaska. Crab meat, however, was not among the supplies listed
in the steward's pantry. Furthermore, no other member of the
presidential party was aifected by "ptomaine poisoning."

During the first few hours following the President's death, news-
papermen were officially informed that no physician was present
when Harding died and that Mrs. Harding had been alone with
her husband at the time. This report was then altered to specify
that the President's chief physician. Brigadier General Charles E.
Sawyer, had been in Harding's bedroom when death came. On
August 5, three days after Harding's death, the Nenj: York Times
reported:

There have been several versions of the incidents surrounding the
death of President Harding ... It was told by some of those in the
vicinity that Mrs. Harding rushed to the door of the bedroom and
called for help from her husband's physicians . . . People with nerves on
edge or stunned by the tragedy were unable to give any coherent ac-
count of what took place . . . The official bulletin was in error . . .

Several of the physicians who had been attending President
Harding urged that an autopsy be held. On Mrs. Harding's in-
sistence, however, Harding was buried without an autopsy.*

* Various theories were subsequendy advanced in explanation of President
Harding's death. One was that, facing imminent catastrophe from exposure of
the corruption and crime within his Administration, Harding had committed
suicide. Another theory held that Mrs. Harding had poisoned her husband,
either because she had discovered the details of his affair with Nan Britton or
because she wished to avert national disgrace for him from the mounting
scandals in the Administration.

In 1930, in his book. The Strange Death of President Harding, Gaston B.
Means, who had been in close touch with the White House while a Justice
Department agent, clearly intimated that Mrs. Harding, in connivance with
Dr. Charles E. Sawyer, had murdered her husband and that she had later
practically admitted this to him. Means.

"Both the suicide theory and the Means story are very plausible," writes
Frederick Lewis Allen in Only Yesterday.

Oswald Garrison Villard, in Fighting Years, states: "I am of those who lean
to the belief that there was foul play in his death . . ."

Some commentators on the period are of the opinion that there was nothing
mysterious about Harding's death and that he died from natural causes. "There
was no mystery," observes Samuel Hopkins Adams in Incredible Era, "other
than that conjured up by excited minds, or concocted .and commercialized
by Gaston B. Means."

But whatever the real cause of President Harding's demise, there were in
addition to his death and that of Jesse W. Smith, a strangely coincidental

5- Millionaires on Trial

"If I could write one sentence upon his monument/* said Bishop
William Manning a few days after President Harding's death, in
a sermon delivered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New
York City, "it would be this, 'He taught us the power of brotherli-
ness.' It is the greatest lesson any man can teach us. May God ever
give our country leaders as faithful, as wise, as noble in spirit, as
the one whom we now mourn."

But Warren Harding was not long in his grave before the nation
was getting a glimpse of what had been transpiring behind the
scenes durinor his Administration.

On October 23, 1923, in a large caucus room in the Senate Office
Building, the Senate Committee on Public Lands opened public

number of other sudden deaths and "suicides" of persons who had been closely
connected with the Harding Administration.

On March 14, 1923, Charles F. Cramer, Colonel Forbes' former aide and
chief counsel of the War Veterans' Bureau, was found dead in his bathtub
at his Washington residence. A bullet had been fired through his brain. The
coroner's verdict was suicide.

On September 23, 1924, Brigadier General Charles Sawyer, Harding's former
personal physician, who was said to have been with the President at the time
of his deith, was found dead at his home, White Oaks Farm, at Marion, Ohio.
The New York Times reported: "General Sawyer's death was almost identical
with the manner of death of the late Warren G. Harding . . . Mrs. Harding
was at White Oaks Farm when General Sawyer was found dead. Members of
his family had no intimation of the seriousness of the General's condition up
to the moment he expired."

On March 12, 1926, Thomas B. Felder, a lawyer who had been closely asso-
ciated with Attorney General Daugherty in Justice Department intrigues and
had later been sentenced to jail along with Gaston B, Means, died at Savan-
nah, Georgia. His death was reported due to a "heart attack" and "alcohol
poisoning." The New York Times stated that shortly before Felder died he
had announced his intention to "publish the complete records of the case in
a Georgia paper he intended to buy in order to vindicate himself."

On May 13, 1926, John T. King, the former Republican National Commit-
teeman who had been involved in the American Metals Company scandal
died of "pneumonia." Shortly before his death, King had been indicted on
the charge of conspiracy to defraud the U. S. Government in the American
Metals case. The New York Times reported that the Government had "ex-
pected to use Mr. King as a witness to prove the alleged payments of $391,000
... to Col. Miller, the late Jesse W. Smith, friend of Mr. Daugherty, and
himself."

On May 3, 1926, J. W. Thompson, partner in the Thompson-Black Con^
struction Company, who had been sentenced to jail along with Colonel
Forbes, died of a "heart attack" in St. Louis, Missouri.

On February 16, 1928, while under indictment on conspiracy charges for his
part in the bribing of Secretary Fall, Edward L. Doheny, Jr., was murdered
by his secretary, who then committed suicide.

hearings on the Government leases to the naval oil reserves at Tea-
pot Dome and Elk Hills.

The first witness at the Senate hearings was ex-Secretary Fall
himself. Verbose, arrogant and blusteringly evasive, Fall angrily
denied there had been anything remotely improper about his con-
duct in ofiice. In making the oil leases, as at all other times, declared
Fall, he had been motivated by patriotism of the highest order.

Fall's testimony was supported by that of Harry Sinclair, who
emphatically stated that in his dealings with the Secretary of In-
terior the latter had received no "benefits or profits, directly or
indirectly, in any manner whatsoever." Edward L. Doheny told
the Senate Committee, in a voice vibrant with emotion, that he was
deeply shocked by the disgraceful accusations that had been leveled
against his old friend, Albert Fall. "I want this record to show,"
said Doheny, "that I felt very badly about it; in fact, felt outraged
by it."

But during the ensuing weeks, as dozens of geologists, naval offi-
cers, oil experts, government officials and other witnesses appeared
before the Committee, one incriminating fact after another came
into the open; and slowly but inexorably the pieces of the complex
jigsaw of criminal intrigue, venality and fraud fell into place.

By the beginning of 1924, leading oil circles in the United States
were infected with a mood of feverish anxiety. The rumor spread
that the Senate Committee was about to subpoena a number of
leading figures in the oil industry. Overnight, there was a sudden
exodus from America of oil tycoons.

On January 16, Harry Sinclair sailed for France aboard the 5.S.
PariSy with his name discreetly missing from the passenger list. In
February, James O'Neil, president of the Prairie Oil and Gas Com-
pany, and Henry Blackmer, president of the Midwest Refining
Company, after resigning from their respective posts, also sailed for
Europe. Colonel Robert W. Stewart, chairman of the board of
Standard Oil of Indiana, abruptly departed for Mexico and South
America. H. S. Osier, head of the dummy Continental Trading
Company, went to Africa "to hunt hons." *

* The Continental Trading Co. was a dummy company incorporated under
Canadian law late in 192 1 by Harry Sinclair, James O'Neil, Colonel HRobert
W. Stewart, and Henry M. Blackmer. Operating through this company, the
four associates secretly arranged to buy more than 30,000,000 barrels of oil
from a large new oil field in Mexia, Texas. The price they paid was $1.50 a
barrel. Continental Trading Co. then resold the oil at $1.75 a barrel to the

On his return to the United States in the summer of 1924, Harry
Sinclair was again summoned before the Senate Committee. This
time, on the constitutional grounds that his answers might tend t*
incriminate him, Sinclair refused to answer any questions. He was in-
dicted by a federal grand jury on charges of contempt of the
Senate.

On June 30, 1924, Albert Fall, Harry Sinclair, Edward Doheny
and Edward Doheny, Jr., were all indicted by a special federal
grand jury on charges of conspiracy and bribery.

The federal indictments of Fall, Sinclair, Doheny and his son,
were followed by months and months of protracted court action,
with a battery of high-priced lawyers employed by the oil magnates
resorting to every conceivable device to delay and frustrate the
process of the law.

Not until March 1927, was Sinclair finally tried on the Senate
contempt charge, found guilty and sentenced to three months,
imprisonment and a |iooo fine.

In the fall of 1927, Fall and Sinclair went on trial on charges of
criminal conspiracy to defraud the Government. On the first day
of the trial it was disclosed by the prosecution that jurors and wit-
nesses were being trailed and intimidated by operatives of the Wil-
ham Burns Detective Agency and that Sinclair was paying the
Agency for these services. It was also revealed that attempts had
been made to bribe a number of jurors. The judge declared a mis-
trial.

American companies headed by Continental's promoters. The profits to Sin-
clair and his colleagues from this deal would have exceeded $8,000,000— and
would have cost the stockholders in their American firms the same amount—
if these oil magnates had not turned in these profits to their respective com-
panies after the deal was exposed by Senate investigators.

There was no direct connection between the Teapot Dome and Continental
deals; but Sinclair received some of Continental's profits in Liberty bonds,
and later turned over a portion of these bonds to Secretary Fall at the time
of the leasing of Teapot Dome. It was through tracing these bonds thtt
Senate investigators discovered the Continental Co. arrangements.

After hurriedly departing from the United States in 1924, the oil magnates
connected with the Continental deal straggled back to the country during
the following months, with the exception of Henry Blackmer. He remained
in France until September 1949. After agreeing to pay the U. S. Got-
emment $3,671,065 in back taxes and $60,000 penalties, he returned to the
United States. It was then reported that the Government had removed blocks
on frozen assets of Blackmer amounting to some ten million dollars. Five
criminal charges against Blackmer were dismissed, after he paid $20,000 in
final settlement for income tax evasion.

Sinclair and William J. Burns, the former chief of the Bureau of
Investigation, and several of their accomplices were subsequently
tried for seeking "to bribe, intimidate and influence" jurors. Found
guilty, Sinclair was sentenced to six months in jail and Burns to fif-
teen days. Bums was exonerated on appeal, but Sinclair served con-
currently three months for contempt of the Senate, and six months
for intimidation and influencing of jurors.

When Fall and Sinclair were tried a second time on charges of
conspiring to defraud the Government, both men were acquitted. . .

In October 1929 Fall was tried on the charge of accepting a bribe
from Edward L. Doheny. The former Secretary of Interior was
found guilty, fined $100,000 and given a one-year prison term.

Five months after Fall was convicted of accepting a bribe frorh
Doheny, the California oil tycoon was tried on charges of giving
the bribe. Doheny was acquitted.

"We ought to pass a law," Senator George W. Norris of Neb-
raska commented bitterly, "that no man worth $100,000,000 should
be tried for a crime. That at least would make us consistent."

The intrigues of Sinclair, Doheny and Fall were not the only
ngly secrets of the Harding Administration to come to light after
Harding's death.

In the spring of 1924 a Senate Select Committee began public
hearings on an investigation of the activities of Attorney General
Harry M. Daugherty.

Republican Party leaders, apprehensive over the possible harm to
their cause in the Presidential election that fall, decided that
Daugherty must resign immediately. Daugherty angrily refused to
do so. The Senate investigation, he said, was the work of "Com-
munist agents and their tools," and Senator Burton K. Wheeler, who
was conductng the inquiry, was "no more a Democrat than StaUn,
kis comrade in Moscow."

Only after President Coolidge sent the Attorney General a writ-
ten request for his resignation did Daugherty resentfully resign . . .

One of the first witnesses before the Senate Select Committee was
Jesse Smith's former wife, Roxy Stinson. She not only told the
Committee what she had learned through Smith about the criminal
conspiracies in the Justice Department, but also revealed she had
been repeatedly threatened in an effort to prevent her from testify-

ing. "I am not Jess Smith," said Roxy Stinson, "and there is not
going to be a convenient bullet in my head." *

Another of the numerous witnesses to appear before the Senate
Select Committee was Gaston B. Means. In copious, uninhibited
detail, and not without a certain pride. Means described his criminal
operations as an agent of the Bureau of Investigation. Among other
disclosures. Means revealed how various Senators had been secretly
investigated by Justice Department operatives, in an effort to fore-
stall the Teapot Dome probe and other senatorial investigations.

"You also investigated Senator LaFollette, did you not.^" asked
Senator Wheeler.

"Yes," repUed Means.

"And you went through his ofHces here, did you not, in the
Capitol?"

"I saw that it w^as done ... I would just as soon investigate a
tramp as anybody else . . . The man is a number. I never ask who
he is . . . Thousands of people have been investigated. Bishops have
been investigated. And clergymen—"

The Chairman of the Senate Committee, Senator Smith Brook-
hart, interrupted. "When did this terrific spy system start in the
United States," he asked, "by what authority, if you know?"

"I never saw a candidate that loomed up . . . that they did not
go out and make an inquiry about him . . . The financial crowd
finance and get investigations."

"You mean the financial interests investigate everyone who is a
candidate for office to get something on him," asked Senator Brook-
hart, "so they can control him, is that the idea?"

"Well, yes, that would be my interpretation . . ."

"And that gang . . ." said Senator Brookhart, "is the same gang
that I have denominated as the non-partisan league in Wall Street?
Is that the crowd?"

Means nodded. "I think that President Wilson gave them the best
designation, 'invisible government.' " t

* One of the witnesses who testified at the Senate hearings was Mrs. W. O.
Duckstein, former secretary to William J. Burns. The day after she had
given her testimony she received a letter from J. Edgar Hoover, then Acting
Director of the Bureau of Investigation, peremptorily dismissing her from her
job in the Justice Department.

t Gaston B. Means died in 1938 in a federal penitentiary. He was then
serving a term for defrauding Mrs. Edward B. McClean of $100,000 in 1932
on the pretext that this sum would enable him to get back the kidnapped child
of Ann and Charles Lindbergh.

Daugherty flatly refused to testify at the hearings. When Com-
mittee investigators sought to examine his accounts at the two banks
in Washington Court House, Ohio, his brother, Mai Daugherty,
who headed both banks, would not permit an inspection of the
records. It was later learned that all the records had been destroyed.

Despite the extensive evidence of his malfeasance as Attorney
General, Daugherty appeared in court to answer for only one of the
many conspiracies with which his name had been associated, while
he was in office. In 1926, together with the former Alien Property
Custodian, Colonel Thomas W. Miller, Daugherty was tried on
charges of conspiracy to defraud the Government and receiving
bribes in connection with the settlement of the American Metal
Corporation case.

Daugherty again refused to testify on the ground that his testi-
mony might tend to incriminate him. Colonel Miller was found
guilty, fined $5000 and given a year-and-a-half sentence. The jury
reported they could not reach an agreement on the guilt of
Daugherty, and he was acquitted . . .

To the bitter end, Harry Daugherty insisted he was the victim of
a sinister international plot which had its fountainhead at the Krem-
lin in Moscow. "I was the first official," he charged in his memoirs,
"to be thrown to the wolves by the Red borers of America. Their
ultimate success in my case was intended to intimidate every man
who succeeded me, and make the American Republic thereafter
cower under a reign of terror."

But the actual menace to the American Republic during 1920-
1932 was of quite a different nature from that indicated by former
Attorney General Daugherty. As Karl Schriftgeisser states in This
Was Normalcy:

. . . Fall and Daugherty, Forbes and Jess Smith, and all the rest of the
gangsters of this truly "incredible era," were in reality merely symbols
of a greater corruption which overtook the country during the next
twelve disastrous years. They cannot be ignored by the historians, but
their thefts and violences and the sounds of their revelry . . . were only
coincidental to the abdication of the democratic spirit that was the
fundamental crime perpetrated upon the people in these years.

Chapter vi

THE GOLDEN AGE

It is one thing to commit crimes against property, and a
vastly different thing to commit crimes in behalf of property.

Gustavus Myers, History of the Great
American Fortunes

I. "Aren't We All Rich Now?"

It could not be claimed that, in terms of their poUtical-economic
beliefs, there were striking differences between the Presidential can-
didates of the two major parties in 1924.

The Democratic Party candidate was the handsome, soft-spoken.
Wall Street attorney, John W. Davis, former U. S. Solicitor Gen-
eral and one-time Ambassador to Great Britain, whom the King
of England had characterized as "one of the most perfect gentlemen
I have ever met." Once regarded as an outstanding Hberal, Davis—
now a director in the United States Rubber Company, the National
Bank of Commerce, the Santa Fe Railroad and other such concerns
—had this to say of himself:

I have a fine list of clients. What lawyer wouldn't want them? I have
J. P. Morgan & Company, the Erie Railroad, the Guaranty Trust Com-
pany, the Standard Oil Company, and other foremost American con-
cerns on my list. I am proud of them. They are big institutions and
as long as they ask for my service for honest work, I am pleased to
work for them. Big Business has made this country what it is. We want
Big Business . . .

Calvin Coolidge, the Republican candidate, characteristically ex-
pressed the same thought in more succinct language. "The business
of America," said Coolidge, "is business."

While the campaigns of both candidates were generously subsi-
dized by big-moneyed interests, the leading industrialists and
financiers were more sympathetically inclined toward Coolidge's
candidacy. Their feelings were summed up by Henry Ford: "The
country is perfectly safe with Calvin Coolidge. Why change?"

Not a few Americans, however, regarded both candidates with
a jaundiced eye.

Members of the Farmer Labor Party and the Conference for Pro-
gressive PoHtical Action vigorously denounced the tweedledum-
tweedledee character of the Republican and Democratic Parties
and the ever-growing Government control by giant trusts and
monopoHes. Their candidate for President was Robert M. La Fol-
lette, popularly known as "Fighting Bob," the shaggy-haired,
elderly, deeply courageous if somewhat quixotic senator from Wis-
consin, who tirelessly crusaded against the mounting "encroach-
ment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many."

Few poHtical wiseacres gave Senator La Follette a chance of being
elected. But his words were sufiiciently far-reaching and his follow-
ing large enough to cause considerable alarm in the inner circles of
both major parties, and an intensive, lavishly financed campaign of
slander and vilification was organized to discredit La Follette and
his running mate, Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana.* Leading
Republicans and Democrats alike accused the two senators of being
the "tools of Bolshevik agents," and charged that "Moscow gold"
was swelling their campaign funds. Newspaper advertisements
championing the candidacy of "Silent Cal" featured the slogan, "I
like Silence and Success better than Socialism and Sovietism." t

If Coolidge was silent, money talked. Subsequent estimates of the
Republican campaign expenditures ranged from $15,000,000 to
$30,000,000.

The dour, pinch-faced Republican candidate, whose thoughts
were as sparse as his mode of speech, was returned to ofiice by an
overwhelming majority of the votes.

Far more surprising than Coolidge's victory was the number of
votes cast for Senator La Follette. Despite the propaganda drive
against LaFollette, a badly mismanaged and meagerly financed cam-

* At the time, Senator Wheeler was an outspoken foe of monopoly and
reaction In later years, Wheeler himself became one of the most reactionary
members of the Senate. See page 221.

+ Actually, the Communist Party did not support La Follette, but ran its
own presidential candidate, William Z. Foster.

paign and the fact his name was not even on the ballot in a number
of states, approximately one out of every six persons who went
to the polls voted for "Fighting Bob." La Follette's total vote was
4,822,000.

Impressive as was this demonstration of widespread opposition
to the Government's postwar policies, it failed to divert the states-
men and financiers from the disastrous course upon which they had
embarked.

"I am sure that Coolidge would make a good President. I think he
would make a great one . . . ," Dwight W. Morrow, partner in
the firm of J. P. Morgan & Company had written in a letter to a
friend as early as 1920.

There was nothing in Coolidge's conduct as President to diminish
Dwight Morrow's high regard for him . . .

A dominant theme in President Coolidge's public utterances was
the "Power of the Moral Law." "We do not need a more material
development, we need a more spiritual development," Coolidge
emphasized. "We do not need more intellectual power, we need
more moral power . . ."

At the same time, the President showed a statesmanlike flexibility
in the application of his Moral Law by dismissing the Teapot Dome
and other unsavory Harding scandals as "errors of judgment" . . .*

* The only change Coolidge made in the Cabinet after Harding's death
was in the replacement of Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty by Harlan
Fiske Stone, former dean of the Columbia Law School.

As Attorney General, Stone effected an extensive shake-up in the Justice
Department. The shake-up, however, did not eliminate all of those officials
who had been prominently involved in the Palmer raids and other post-war
machinations of the Justice Department. While William J. Bums, chief of the
Bureau of Investigation, was removed from office, his place was taken by his
former assistant and ex-head of the Bureau's General Intelligence Division,
J. Edgar Hoover.

In a statement reprimanding the Bureau of Investigation for its "anti-radical"
operations, Attorney General Stone declared shortly after taking office: "The
Bureau of Investigation is not concerned with political or other opinions of
individuals. It is concerned only with such conduct as is forbidden by the
laws of the United States. When a police system goes beyond these limits
it is dangerous to the proper administration of justice, and to human
liberty . . ."

Dexterously setting his sails to the new wind, J. Edgar Hoover acknowl-
edged in a memorandum to Assistant Attorney General William J. Donovan
on October 18, 1924: "It is, of course, to be remembered that the activities
of Communists and other ultra-radicals have not up to the present time con-
stituted a violation of the federal statutes, and, consequendy, the Department

President Coolidge's views on labor problems remained what they
had been when, as a member of the Massachusetts State Senate, he
described strike leaders as "socialists and anarchists" who "do not
want anybody to work for wages," and stated: "If any man is out
of a job it's his own fault . . . The State is not warranted in
furnishing employment for anybody so that persons may work."

With Dwight iMorrow and another Morgan partner, Thomas
Cochran, among the President's most intimate advisers, the Coolidge
Administration sedulously cultivated the growth of trusts and mo-
nopolies. In the words of William E. Humphries, a newly appointed
member of the Federal Trade Commission:

The Interstate Commerce Commission has become the bulwark in-
stead of the oppressor of the railways . . .

The President, instead of scoffing at big business, does not hesitate
to say that he purposes to protect the American investor wherever he
may rightfully be.

The Secretary of Commerce [Herbert Hoover], far from appealing
to Congress for legislation regulatory of business, allies himself with
the great trade associations and the powerful corporations.

The foreign policy of the Coolidge Administration was defined
in unusually frank language by Secretary of the Na\y Curtis
Wilbur, during a speech before the Connecticut Chamber of Com-
merce:

Americans have over twenty millons of tons of merchant shipping
to carry the commerce of the world, worth three billion dollars. We
have loans and property abroad, exclusive of government loans, of over
ten billions of dollars. If we add to this the volume of exports and im-
ports for a single year— about ten billion dollars— we have an amount
almost equal to the entire property of the United States in 1868 and if
we add to this the eight billion dollars due us from foreign governments,
we have a total of $31,000,000,000, being about equal to the total wealth
of the nation in 1878 . . . These vast interests must be considered when
we talk of defending the flag . . . We fought not because Germany
invaded or threatened to invade America but because she struck at
our commerce on the North Sea . . . To defend America we must be
prepared to defend its interests and our flag in every corner of the
globe . . .

of Justice, theoretically, has no right to investigate such activities as there has
been no violation of federal laws."

It was a bitter pill for J. Edgar Hoover to swallow; but he was willing to
bide his time and await a more propitious day when he might resume his old
"anti-radical" activities. See Books Three and Four for data on Hoover's sub-
sequent operations.

To further such American "interests," hundreds of millions of
dollars in public and private loans were streaming across the
Atlantic into the vaults of German industrialists and bankers who
were secretly rearming the Reich and subsidizing Hitler's rapidly
growing National Socialist Party. American-owned auto, electrical
equipment, aircraft and other plants were springing up throughout
Europe. General Electric was assuming the dominant interest in the
German electrical combine, A.E.G., one of the major contributors
to the Nazi Party fund. Standard Oil was concluding cartel agree-
ments with I. G. Farbenindustrie. General Motors was negotiating
for control of the German auto firm of Adam Opel, A. G. Enor-
mous sums were being advanced to II Duce's Italy, and large invest-
ments made in White Guard dictatorships in Poland, Hungary,
Bulgaria, Finland and Roumania.

The golden threads of Wall Street webbed the world. By 1926,
Commerce and Finance was able to make the impressive claim that
the United States had "a mortgage on the lives of both the living
and the unborn in practically every nation of Europe, except
Russia." *

* The Dawes Plan in 1924 and the Young Plan in 1929 arranged for huge
loans to Germany. A large portion of the funds thus obtained were used by
Genuan industrialists to finance their secret rearmament program, and to
build the Hitler movement.

The Dawes Plan was drawn up by a committee of experts established by
the Allied Reparations Commission. The committee functioned under the
supervision of General Charles G. Dawes, Chicago financier, director of the
budget under Harding, and vice-president during Coolidge's second term. A
leading member of the committee of experts was Owen D. Young, chairman
of the board of the Morgan-controlled General Electric Company. More than
$200,000,000 of the international gold loan borrowed by Germany under the
Dawes Plan was floated in the United States by Morgan and his associates.

The second international committee of experts, which drafted the Young
Plan in 1929 to replace the Dawes Plan, operated under the chairmanship of
Owen D. Young and included J. P. Morgan himself as an associate.

Other Americans who played an important role in projecting the Dawes
and Young Plans were Herbert Hoover; the Wall Street lawyer, John Foster
Dulles; and the banker, W. Averell Harriman. The chief negotiator for
Germany was Hjalmar Schacht, then head of the Reichsbank and later Hitler's
Minister of Economics.

In channeling funds from the United States into Germany (during 1924-
1929 Wall Street sank approximately four billion dollars into Germany), a
leading role was played by the Wall Street banking firm of Dillon Read and
Company, among whose directors were William F. Draper and James V.
Forrestal.

For similar operations on the part of Herbert Hoover, John Foster Dulles,
W. Averell Harriman and James V. Forrestal after the Second World War,
see Book Four.

In the opinion of many American statesmen and business leaders,
mankind was entering an era of American world domination. Re-
flecting this viewpoint, Ludwell Denny, chief editorial writer of the
Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, wrote in his book, America
Conquers Britain:

The "feeling" of victory is on America's side. It is America's "day."
The devastating "will to win" so characteristic of youth, and the energy
and daring which flow from it, drive America forward. The sense of
"manifest destiny" is contagious . . .

The "Americanization" of Europe and the far places of the earth"
advances . . . We were Britain's colony once. She will be our colony
before she is done, not in name but in fact. Machines gave Britain power
over the world. Now better machines are giving America power over
the world.

What chance has Britain against America? Or what chance has the
world?

At home business boomed as never before. Radios, electrical
appliances, cars, clothing, furniture, cosmetics, refrigerators and
other goods poured in an unending torrent from the nation's
machines. New factories and office buildings mushroomed on every
side. "CooUdge Prosperity" was the slogan of the day . . .

Not everyone, of course, had the money to buy what he wanted;
but nearly everyone bought. They purchased on credit, and paid
the "easy way," on "easy terms." In 1926, more than one-sixth of
the 40 billion sales volume in America was installment buying.

Mammon was king and the mores were those of the stock market.
The American people, wrote Senator George Norris in his auto-
biography. Fighting Liberal, had been "brought ... to their knees in
worship at the shrine of private business and industry." A Mellon,
Hoover, Rockefeller, Dawes or Morgan was regarded as oracle,
sage, scientist, dreamer-of-great-dreams, doer-of-great-deeds and
statesman, all rolled into one. The businessman had become, in
Stuart Chase's phrase, "the dictator of our destinies."

A billboard in New York City read: "Come to Church. Christian
Worship Increases Your Efficiency." A pamphlet issued by the
Metropolitan Insurance Company, entitled Moses, Persuader of
Men, portrayed the Israelite leader as "one of the greatest salesmen
and real-estate promoters that ever lived." One of the leading best-
sellers, Bruce Barton's The Man Nobody Knows, described how
Jesus Christ had
82

picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged
them into an organization that conquered the world . . . Nowhere is
there such a startling example of executive success as the way in which
that organization was brought together . . . [Jesus] was the founder of
modern business.

With profits seemingly limitless, and stocks rocketing to astro-
nomical new heights, the millenium of capitalism appeared to have
arrived.

"The great wealth created by our enterprise and industry, and
saved by our economy," proudly declared President Coolidge, "has
had the widest distribution among our people, and gone out in a
steady stream to serve the charity and business of the world."

In an article published in Colliers magazine, the well-known
journalist and Ford publicist, Samuel Crowther, exulted:

That there is no poverty other than voluntary or due to accident or
disease, and this is negligible.

That we are, excepting in a few sections, solidly prosperous, with a
buying power beyond comprehension.

That the standard of living is very high, but without a leaning toward
extravagance . . .

That those who complain of hard times are those who fail to adjust
themselves to a new order of things in retailing, manufacturing or agri-
culture.

That there is nothing of what we used to call radicalism.

That nothing can wreck our ship excepting ingeniously bad manage-
ment in government or in industry.

Samuel Crowther's article was entitled: "Aren't We All Rich
Now?"*

* Actually, for the great majority of Americans "Coolidge Prosperity" was
a cruelly elusive mirage.

There was widespread poverty in the rural areas, with bankruptcies and
foreclosures mounting among the farmers. The number of unemployed in
the land hovered between two and four million. In 1929, at the peak of
"prosperity" some 28,000,000 Americans failed to earn enough money to pro-
vide them with a minimum decent standard of living; and in four southern
states Negro workers had an average income of less than $300.

"At 1929 prices," reported the Brookings Institute, "a family income of
$2,000 may perhaps be regarded as sufficient to supply only basic necessities."
And these, according to the Brookings Institute, were the incomes of Amer-
ican families that year:

Nearly 6 million families, or more than 21 per cent of the total, had
incomes less than $1,000.

About 12 million families, or more than 42 per cent, had incomes less
than $1,500.

Nearly 20 million families, or 71 per cent, had incomes less than $2,500.
The economist. Professor Paul Henry Nystrom of Columbia University,

In 1929 the Federal budget totaled four and a half billion dollars.
That same year, according to Wade H. Ellis, former Assistant U.S.
Attorney General and head of the American Bar Association, the
nation's crime budget was thirteen billion dollars.

Crime had become a leading business in the United States.

In an article in the North America?! Review entitled "Our Big-
gest Business— Crime," the retired New York Police Commissioner,
Richard E. Enright, wrote:

The inescapable truth is that the annual total of the country's crim-
inals, of whom 400,000 are in cells and a milUon at liberty is the most
disturbing feature of our social order, the gravest problem confronting
America.

In 1928 alone, stated Enright, some 12,000 Americans had been
killed by criminals, a number equalling ten per cent of the nation's
total losses in the Great War . . .

The trades of mayhem, arson, vandalism and murder were being
widely pursued on a practical cash basis. Colliefs magazine noted
editorially:

Commercial rates have been fixed, for bombers and gunmen. A simple
bombing in some cities can be had for as little as S50, a cold-blooded
murder by machine-gunners may bring $10,000.

From bootlegging, gambling, prostitution and dope peddHng, the
nation's racketeers had branched out into almost every field of
business. The New York World reported in the late twenties that
some 250 industries in New York City were partially or completely
controlled by gangsters; the yearly "take" of these gangsters was
estimated at between $200,000,000 and $600,000,000. "It would
appear . . . ," observed Thomas Grain, New York County District
Attorney, "that they have their hands in everything from the cradle
to the grave, from baby's milk to funeral coaches."

"We're big business without high hats," Dion O'Banion, Chicago
gang Czar known to milHons as the mobster who loved flowers, told
a newsman shortly before being shot down by rival gangsters. His
funeral was attended by thousands of citizens; there were twenty-
five truckloads of floral wreaths; and his coffin cost $10,000 . . .

estimated in his book, Economic Principles of Consumption, that with the
Boom at its zenith, 1,000,000 Americans were public charges; another 1,000,000,
broken in health and spirit, were "unemployable"; a minimum of 7,000,000
were living under such circumstances that the least emergency meant for
them a choice between starving or accepting charity; and the incomes of
another 12,000,000 provided them with a "bare subsistence."

/Of Al Capone, the squat, scar-faced former pimp who had be-
came absolute monarch of a criminal empire grossing $100,000,000
a year, it was afterwards reported by Life magazine: "he wholly or
largely controlled the municipal governments of Chicago, Cicero,
Burnham and Stickney, 111."

"Men hke Al Capone and Arnold Rothstein and Bugs Moran,"
wrote Louis Adamic, "are figures of national prominence, 'big men'
in the same sense that Henry Ford and Charles Schwab are big
men."

Like other "big men" in America, Al Capone was deeply dis-
turbed by radical social trends. At his headquarters in the Lexington
Hotel in Chicago, Capone solemnly warned Cornelius Vanderbilt,
Jr., who was interviewing him for Liberty magazine:

Bolshevism is knocking at our gates. We can't afford to let it in.
We have got to organize ourselves against it, and put our shoulders
together and hold fast.

We must keep America whole and safe and unspoiled. We must keep
the worker away from the red literature and red ruses; we must see
that his mind remains healthy.

"The people know," declared Walter Lippmann, "that they are
beset by organized criminals who operate on a scale that has horri-
fied the world. They know that unless they master this evil it will
master them."

Lippmann was referring to the "established institution of racke-
teering" of the "criminal underworld." But during the era of post-
war prosperity, the American nation was wracked by a far more
deeply entenched and pernicious form of crime.

2. The Profits of Crime

During the first week of April 1927, Juan Leguia, the twenty-
one year old son of President Augusto Leguia of Peru, sHpped
quietly into New York City on a highly confidential mission.

Although young Leguia was considered good newspaper copy
because of his periodic mad escapades and international reputation
as a polo player, no New York paper mentioned his presence in the
.city. The son of the Peruvian dictator was travelling incognito, and
?all other necessary precautions had been taken to avoid the publicity
\usually attending his movements.

Juan Leguia had come north to conclude a secret multi-niilli>
dollar deal with a small group of Wall Street financiers.

Shortly after he had established himself in a luxurious apartmer*
at the Ritz Towers hotel, Leguia conferred privately with repre-
sentatives of the banking firm of J. W. Seligman & Company. The
subject under discussion was the size of a bribe Leguia was to
receive for his "personal services" in facilitating a loan by an
American banking syndicate to the Government of Peru.

According to the terms of the agreement reached between Leguia
and the SeHgman executives, Leguia was to get the major portion
of all commissions on loans to Peru floated in the United States by
Seligman and their associates. A special account in the name of
Juan Leguia was opened on the books of SeHgman & Company. It
was mutually understood that the details of the "gentlemen's agree-
ment" were not to be publicized; and no record of them was made
in writing.

During the following months, Seligman & Company deposited to
Leguia's account "commissions" totaling $415,000 . . .

According to a subsequent statement by Frederick J. Lisman,
head of Lisman & Company, one of the firms in the banking syndi-
cate arranging the Peruvian loan, the money turned over to Leguia
was not a "bribe." It was paid to him, said Lisman, for his "nuisance
value." Seligman representatives in Peru had reported that young
Leguia made a practice of obstructing deals between his father and
American financiers who failed to take his personal interests into
consideration.

The confidential arrangement made with Juan Leguia was not the
only significant item omitted from the circular prospectuses and
other promotional material used by the members of the banking
syndicate to stimulate the sale of Peruvian bonds in the United
States. The Wall Street concerns also refrained from mentioning
that the Leguia Government was in desperate financial straits, that
Peru's natural resources were being systematically drained from
the country by absentee American owners, and that President
Leguia was maintaining his rule over the impoverished Peruvian
population by imprisoning, exiling or murdering poHtical oppo-
nents, and by savage coercive measures against the people as a
whole.

By the end of 1928, the Wall Street bankers had sold $90,000,000
worth of Peruvian bonds to the American public ...
86

ein the summer of 1930 the Leguian dictatorship was overthrown

^i a popular revolt; ex-President Leguia and his sons were im-

^i^soned by a revolutionary tribunal; and the value of Peruvian

b'onds on the American market dropped from their original price

of $91.00 to $4.00 apiece.

The directors of Seligman & Company were not greatly dis-
turbed by these developments. The gross profit to their firm from
the sale of Peruvian bonds had amounted to $5,475,000 . . .

When the banker, Frederick J. Lisman, was called before the
Senate Committee on Finance in 1932, he was asked by Senator
Hiram Johnson regarding the bribing of Juan Leguia: "Do you
run across that sort of thing often in Latin American countries?"

"I had heard of it quite often, yes," said Lisman. He added:
"Bankers do not knowingly float bad loans. But the purpose is to
do a good business at a profit."

There were numerous instances among leading American bank-
ing houses of such "good business at a profit" during the Prosperity
Years.

From 1 92 6- 1 9 30 the Chase Securities Corporation, an affiliate of
the Rockefeller-controlled Chase National Bank, sold $20,000,000
worth of Cuban "public works securities" and $40,000,000 worth of
Cuban bonds to the American public. Most of the funds went
directly into the private coffers of President Gerardo Machado, the
murderous despot and former cattle-thief who had come to power
in 1925 aided by a miUion-dollar campaign fund from American
financial and industrial interests, and who then had smashed the
Cuban trade union movement, used hired gunmen to assassinate his
political enemies, and established a brutal military dictatorship.

Like Seligman & Company, the Chase National Bank found
bribery useful in its Latin American ventures. President Machado's
son-in-law, Jose Emilio Obregon y Blanco was appointed "joint
manager" of the bank's Havana branch at a yearly salary of $19,000,
and, in addition, given a "commission" of $500,000 when the Cuban
bond issue was floated. "As we know, from any business standpoint
he is perfectly useless," James Bruce of the Chase National Bank
wrote regarding Obregon y Blanco in a letter to another Chase
official.

In promoting the sale of Cuban "securities" in the United States,
the Chase National Bank refrained from mentioning the despotic

nature of the Machado regime and the extremely precarious con-
dition of Cuba's economy. /

When the seething discontent of the Cuban masses threatened
to end Alachado's dictatorship in the late twenties, U.S. State
Department and War Department officials, who were in close
friendly touch with the Chase National Bank, privately informed
the Cuban tyrant that American armed intervention could be
counted upon in the suppression of any revolt . . .

In August 1933, when Machado could no longer afford to pay
the salaries of his gangsters and army officers, and the advent of the
Roosevelt Administration had made unfeasible American armed
intervention, the dictator was overthrown by a furious uprising of
the Cuban people. Machado fled the country with a price on his
head.

Following Machado's downfall, the Cuban bonds which the
Chase National Bank had sold in the United States— at a profit to
the bank of approximately one and a half million dollars— were de-
clared illegal by the new Cuban government and were de-
faulted . . .

During 192 5- 192 9, Kuhn, Loeb & Company disposed of $90,000,-
000 worth of Chilean bonds on the American market. A military
junto was ruling Chile at the time, but the Wall Street bankers
were reluctant to mention the words "military council" in their
Chilean bond prospectus. "Is it not correct," they cabled their agent
in Chile, "to refer to the council as government council which we
prefer instead of military council?" The firm's prospectus com-
promised by defining the Chilean government as a "governing
council." By 1933, the Chilean bonds had been defaulted.

In a report issued in 1934, the Senate Committee on Banking and
Currency had this to say about the practises pursued during the
previous decade by American banking concerns in floating foreign
securities in the United States:

The record of the activities of investment bankers in the flotation
of foreign securities is one of the most scandalous chapters in the his-
tory of American investment banking. The sale of these foreign issues
was characterized by practises and abuses which were violative of the
most elementary principles of business ethics.

The predatory operations of American bankers during the 1920's
were by no means limited to the flotation of foreign securities. Their
88

eieatest booty came from transactions in American stocks and
•onds.

By unloading enormous amounts of wildly inflated or utterly
/worthless stocks on the market, by inducing tens of thousands of
Americans to invest their savings in reckless speculation, by engi-
neering market fluctuations, manipulating stock pools, misrepresent-
ing the assets of enterprises they were promoting and employing
an endless variety of other shady devices, American financiers
plundered the public wealth with a thoroughness and on a scale
which made the depredations of the Robber Barons of the nine-
teenth century seem petty in comparison.

Typical, according to subsequent findings by the Senate Com-
mittee on Banking and Currency, were the machinations of the
National City Bank, the second largest commercial bank on the
American continent. To circumvent legislation restricting the mar-
ket activities of commercial banks and prohibiting them from
trading in their own stock, the National City Bank operated through
a securities affiliate called the National City Company. This affiliate
company, which was actually nothing more than a giant brokerage
firm with over 600 salesmen, engaged in the promotion of all
manner of securities.

Among other securities sold by the National City Company to
the American pubUc were 1,950,000 shares of National City Bank
stock at a total cost exceeding six hundred million dollars. In Sep-
tember the market price of National City Bank stock was $579 a
share; its book value at the time was I70 a share.

Out of the fabulous profits accruing to the National City Bank,
the officers of the bank and its securities affiliate, privately siphoned
off immense bonuses for themselves through two special "Manage-
ment Funds." Between 1921-1929 the total sum distributed among
the bank's top executives from these Management Funds was
$19,000,000. The personal share of Charles E. Mitchell, president of
the National City Bank until 1929 and then chairman of the board
of directors, amounted to $6,950,539.83.

"The industrial situation of the United States is absolutely sound
and our credit situation is in no sense critical," stated Mitchell in
the fall of 1929. His income that year exceeded $4,000,000. More-
over, as he later explained before a Senate committee, he avoided
paying income tax in 1929 through the expedient device of selling
the multiple stocks he owned to his wife . . .

Another well-known banker engaging in curious financial tra?^7
actions was Albert H. Wiggin, chairman of the board of directOj/ J
of the Chase National Bank. To simplify his own trading in Chase
National Bank stock, and with the incidental objective of avoiding v
payment on income and inheritance taxes, Wiggin formed three
family corporations called Clingston Company, Inc., Shermar Cor-
poration, and Murlyn. The latter two were named after the banker's
daughters. "There was," said Wiggin later, "a little sentiment about
it." During 192 8- 193 2 Wiggin's family corporations, whose value
was not entirely sentimental, made a total profit of more than ten
million dollars from trading in Chase National Bank stock.

In 1929 there were more than 400 stock-market pools foisting
highly speculative securities upon the American public and jug-
gHng market prices so as to garner huge profits for the behind-the-
scenes manipulators. A typical pool in Sinclair Consolidated Oil
stock, organized by Harry F. Sinclair of Teapot Dome fame in col-
lusion with the Chase Securities Corporation and other banking
concerns, netted a profit of $12,200,109.41 for its operators, while
causing- losses of tens of millions of dollars to small investors.

Impressive newspaper advertisements, articles by "financial ex-
perts," radio programs and every other form of promotional tech-
nique and high-pressure salesmanship were employed to persuade
the pubhc of the easy money to be made in "sound" stocks and to
stimulate widespread speculation on the market.

Exemplifying the methods of press agents and public relations
counsel hired by stockbrokers, bankers and pool operators to boost
the sale of certain securities were the activities of one David M.
Lion, whose clients included such well-known concerns as Hayden,
Stone & Company; Eastman, Dillon & Company; and Sinclair Oil
Company.

As part of his promotional efforts. Lion founded an organization
impressively entitled the McMahon Institute of Financial Research.
The "Institute" consisted wholly of one man, WilHam J. McMahon,
an employee of Lion's who was featured on a weekly radio pro-
gram as "the distinguished economist and President of the McMahon
Institute of Financial Research." The "sound investments" recom-
mended by McMahon to his radio audiences were, of course,
stocks and bonds which Lion's clients wished to sell ...

Another public relations counsel, A. Newton Plummer by name,

established an organization called the Institute of Economic Re-
search, whose sole function was to place newspaper articles boost-
ing securities for the brokerage firms which employed him. Accord-
ing to evidence later submitted to the Senate Committee on Banking
and Currency by Representative Fiorello LaGuardia of New York,
the recipients of checks from Plummer included financial writers
on the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the New
York Herald-Tribune . . .

The Chicago brokerage firm of Halsey, Stuart & Company,
which did a land-office business in the sale of stock in Samuel
InsulFs utilities holding-companies, sponsored a weekly coast-to-
coast radio program featuring the "Old Counselor," who offered
homely advice to his listeners as to what stocks represented the
"best investments" for their savings.

The "Old Counselor" was a professor at Chicago University.
"Of course, everything he delivered was written for him," Harold
L. Stuart of the firm of Halsey, Stuart & Company subsequently
related. "He was simply the deliverer of it . . . It was written in
our office."

"While the brokers and pool operators were hiring press agents
to purchase newspaper writers and radio artists for the boosting
of their wares," writes M. R. Werner in his book, Privileged Char-
acters, "the larger banking houses were employing more dignified
means of gaining influence for their issues of securities and pur-
chasing the goodwill of important personages. J. P. Morgan &
Company had what the newspapers dubbed 'preferred lists'." The
individuals on these "preferred lists" were offered stocks at special
rates far below their market value. The lists, states Werner, in-
cluded

the names of politicians, public officials, editors, lawyers, officers and
directors of banks, trust companies, insurance companies, railroads and
industrial corporations. There were rumors that King George of Eng-
land, King Albert of Belgium, and Mussolini of Italy, were on the pre-
ferred list of the London and Paris house of Morgan for shares of the
United Corporation, and also that leading politicians in France were
allotted shares in that issue at the special bargain price at which J. P.
Morgan had purchased them.

Among the influential personages whose names were on the pre-
ferred lists of large banking houses and who were thus enabled

to buy stocks at special discounts were such individuals as Secretary
of the Navy Charles F. Adams; former Secretary of War Newton
D. Baker; John J. Rascob, chairman of the Democratic National
Committee, and E. I. du Pont de Nemours and General Motors
executive; Senator William G. McAdoo, former Secretary of the
Treasury; William H. Woodin, later Secretary of the Treasury;
Myron C. Taylor, chairman of the board of U.S. Steel; Bernard
M. Baruch, market-speculator and financier; and Edgar Rickard,
financial adviser to Herbert Hoover.*

Some concept of the prodigious sums mulcted from the American
public and turned over as "bonuses" to persons on the preferred
lists of leading banking concerns may be derived from these facts:
when Standard Brands stock was put on the market, 722,600 shares
released at $10 below the market price effected a bonus of $7,226,-
000 to the favored recipients; 600,000 shares of United Corpora-
tions stocks, distributed among persons on the preferred lists at
$24.00 below the market price, provided the privileged few with a
bonus of $14,400,000 . . .

"Implicit in the bestowal of favors on this magnificent scale,"
stated the 1934 report of the Senate's banking investigation, "is a
persuasive assumption of power and privilege. Implicit in the accep-
tance is a recognition of that power and privilege. The 'preferred
lists', with all their grave implications, cast a shadow over the
entire financial scene."

In America's 60 Families^ Ferdinand Lundberg writes:

The ruinous speculative boom that collapsed in 1929 v^^as engineered,
from the first to the last, by the wealthy families, and for their personal
account. At every stage of the game it was the richest, the most re-
spectable, the most publicized, and the most influential persons who
were the prime movers in unloading inflated securities upon a deluded
public.

The unrestrained predatory operations of bankers and big busi-
nessmen during the Boom Years cost the American people, when
the market collapse finally came, a sum estimated between twenty-
five and thirty billion dollars. In addition to bringing financial ruin
to miUions of Americans, these operations helped to pave the way

* After his term in office was over, Calvin Coolidge's name was placed on
the preferred list of J. P. Morgan and Co.

for the years of mass unemployment, destitution and ineffable suf-
fering of the whole nation during the Great Depression.

Despite the voluminous evidence gathered by congressional com-
mittees which later investigated the machinations of American
financiers during the Boom Years, none of the major culprits went
to jail for these crimes committed at such a fearful cost to the
country.

American courts of law, however, were not completely inactive
at the time.

3. "Those anarchistic bastards"

The case of Sacco and Vanzetti spanned the period of the
Harding and Coohdge Administrations. It began with the arrest
of the two Italian workers on May 5, 1920, and ended seven years,
three months and eighteen days later, with the execution of the
two men on August 23, 1927.

It was, in the words of Professor Felix Frankfurter of Harvard
University, "no ordinary case of robbery and murder" and involved
"more issues . . . than the lives of two men."

Before the case reached its tragic climax, it had become a prism
through which were refracted all the dark and briUiant colors of
the fiercely contending social elements in the postwar world.

Nicola Sacco at the time of his arrest was a twenty-nine year old
Italian immigrant, skilled shoe-worker and devoted family man with
a passionate love of nature. He was described by Michael Kelley,
the owner of the factory where Sacco worked, as a "man who is in
his garden at 4 o'clock in the morning, and at the factory at 7
o'clock, and in his garden again after supper until nine and ten
at night, carrying water and raising vegetables beyond his own
needs which he would bring to me to give to the poor."

Bartolomeo Vanzetti was a thirty-two-year old Italian immigrant,
migrant worker and fish peddler, a brilliant, self-educated, widely
read student of Hterature, history and philosophy. He numbered
among his favorite authors Kropotkin, Gorky, Marx, Renan, Dar-
win, Zola, Hugo, Tolstoy.

Both men were philosophic anarchists, and both had been active
in strikes and other labor struggles. The two men were close
friends.

Arrested at the frenzied peak of the Palmer raids, Vanzetti was
accused of involvement in two crimes, and Sacco in one. Vanzetti
was charged with participation in an unsuccessful attempt to steal
the payroll of the L. Q. White Shoe Company in Bridgewater,
Massachusetts; and he and Sacco were both charged with par-
ticipating in a payroll robbery at the Slater and Norrill Shoe Factory
at South Braintree, Massachusetts, during which the robbers had
shot down and killed the paymaster Frederick Parmenter and the
guard Alessandro BerardeUi.*

From the outset, the Justice Department took a special interest
in the case. Not only were the names of Sacco and Vanzetti on the
list of "dangerous radicals" which had been compiled by J. Edgar
Hoover's General IntelUgence Division of the Bureau of Investiga-
tion. More important, both men had displayed a disturbing curiosity
about the strange death of Andrea Salsedo, an ItaUan anarchist
printer who, after being held illegally for eight weeks and tortured
by Justice Department agents at the Park Row building in New
York City, had plunged from a f ourteen-floor window on the night
of May 3, 1920.

The Justice Department's special concern with the fate of Sacco
and Vanzetti was subsequently revealed by Fred J. Weygand, one
of the Federal agents assigned to the case, who stated in a sworn
affidavit:

I am thoroughly convinced and always have been, and I believe that
... it has been the opinion of such Boston agents of the Department of
Justice as had any knowledge of the subject, that these men [Sacco
and Vanzetti] have nothing whatsoever to do with the Braintree mur-
ders, and that their conviction is the result of cooperation between the
Boston agents of the Department of Justice and the District Attorney.

"Facts have been disclosed, and not denied by the prosecution,"
wrote Felix Frankfurter in his treatise. The Case of Sacco and
Vajjzetti, "to show that the case against Sacco and Vanzetti for
murder was part of a collusive effort between the district attorney
and agents of the Department of Justice to rid the country of these
Italians because of their Red activities."

On June 22, 1920, Vanzetti went on trial in the Superior Court

* Despite the eagerness of the authorities to pin both crimes on the same
"gang," Sacco had a foolproof alibi to prevent his being charged with the
Bridgewater crime; he had been working at his job at the 3K shoe factory
in Stoughton at the time the attempted hold-up occurred . . .

at Plymouth, Massachusetts, on charges of assault with intent to
rob and assault with intent to murder, in connection with the
attempted hold-up at Bridgewater. Wizened, elderly Judge Web-
ster Thayer of Worcester occupied the bench. Prosecuting the case
was District Attorney Frederick G. Katzmann.

Despite the testimony of more than twenty witnesses that the
defendant was miles from Bridgewater at the time of the crime,
Vanzetti was found guilty on both charges and was sentenced by
Judge Thayer to a prison term of twelve to fifteen years.

The evidence on the basis of which Vanzetti was convicted was
evaluated by Felix Frankfurter in these words:

The evidence of identification of Vanzetti in the Bridgewater case
bordered on the frivolous, reaching its climax in the testimony of a
little newsboy who, from behind the telephone pole to which he had
run for refuge during the shooting, had caught a glimpse of the crim-
inal and "knew by the way he ran he was a foreigner." Vanzetti
was a foreigner, so of course it was Vanzetti!

Judge Thayer's charge to the jury had included such comments
as "This man, although he may not actually have committed the
crime attributed to him, is nevertheless morally culpable, because he
is the enemy of our existing institutions." The full text of the
judge's highly biased charge became unavailable shortly after
the trial, when fifteen pages of the court record mysteriously dis-
appeared and were never found.*

With the state prosecution now advantageously able to charge
that one of the accused men was already a convicted felon, Sacco
and Vanzetti were indicted on the charge of murdering Alessandro
Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter during the South Braintree
hold-up.

On May 31, 192 1, with Judge Thayer again presiding and Dis-
trict Attorney Katzmann prosecuting the case, Sacco and Vanzetti
went on trial.

The trial took place in the Norfolk County Superior Court at
Dedham, Massachusetts, a residential suburb where well-to-do Bos-
tonians made their homes. Like the rest of the country, Dedham
was still gripped by the postwar anti-Red hysteria. The Dedham

*In the summer of 1928, the ex-convict Frank Silva admitted in a sworn
confession that he and several other gunmen had staged the Bridgewater hold-
up. Silva's confession was published, along with corroborative evidence, in
the October 31, 1928 issue of the magazine, Outlook and Independent.

courthouse was under heavy police guard, and even newsmen were
frisked for concealed weapons on entering the courtroom.

As G. Louis Joughin and Edmund M. Morgan observe in their
exhaustive study of the case, The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti:

The defendants were tried before a jury drawn from a community
and a people whose social mind was unfit to deal with any issue in-
volving its hysterical passions. As far as the jury was concerned, it was
inevitable that the quality of its verdict should be tainted. A sick society
makes sick decisions.

During the early stages of the trial a friend of the jury foreman,
Harry H. Ripley, told him it seemed unlikely that two men would
rob a factory in broad daylight where one of them had worked and
was well known. "Damn them," replied the jury foreman, "they
ought to hang them anyway!"

One of the state's key "eye-witnesses," who testified to having
seen Sacco and Vanzetti driving from the scene of the crime in the
bandits' car, was a man who went by the name of Carlos E.
Goodridge. Actually, the name was an aUas. The witness "Good-
ridge" was an ex-convict, swindler and convicted perjurer, who had
served two prison terms for theft, been imphcated in an arson
case with the intent to defraud an insurance company, and was,
at the time he testified, a fugitive from a New York indictment for
larceny. When the defense counsel sought to challenge the
credibility of "Goodridge" by asking him whether he had a criminal
record, District Attorney Katzmann objected to the question. The
objection was promptly sustained by Judge Thayer.

The court interpreter at the trial was a man by the name of
Joseph Ross. He was on close friendly terms with District Attorney
Katzmann and also with Judge Thayer, after whom he had named
his son, Webster Thayer Ross. Periodically during the trial, Van-
zetti protested that Ross's translations were dehberately favorable
to the prosecution. Judge Thayer summarily brushed aside Van-
zetti's protests. Shortly after the trial, Ross was sent to prison for
the attempted bribery of a judge in another case.

Among the Justice Department agents investigating Sacco and
Vanzetti, and providing the prosecution with information about
them, was an operative named Shaughnessy. Subsequently, Shaugh-
nessy was arrested for highway robbery and sentenced to a twelve-
year prison term.

One of the leading state officials connected with the case was
Attorney General Arthur K. Reading, who represented the Com-
monwealth at several hearings following the trial and kept in close
touch with Governor Allan T. Fuller. In 1928, Reading was
charged with having blackmailed, to the tune of $25,000, a concern
he was supposed to be investigating. He was impeached by the
Massachusetts lower house, resigned from office and was later
disbarred.

From the first day, the trial was permeated with bitter prejudice,
Italian-Americans who appeared as defense witnesses were bullied
by the prosecution and ridiculed for their unfamiliarity with the
English language, as were Sacco and Vanzetti themselves. Objec-
tions by the defense counsel to such tactics were invariably over-
ruled by Judge Thayer. In the words of Felix Frankfurter:

By systematic exploitation of the defendants' alien blood, their im-
perfect knowledge of English, their unpopular social views and their
opposition to the war, the district attorney invoked against them a riot
of political passion and patriotic sentiment; and the trial judge connived
at— one had alm.ost written, cooperated in— the process.

Both inside and outside the courtroom. Judge Thayer made no
attempt to conceal his hostility toward the defendants. He treated
Sacco and Vanzetti with open contempt and badgered the defense
law}^ers at every possible opportunity.

George U. Crooker, an acquaintance of Judge Thayer at the Uni-
versity Club in Boston, with whom the judge discussed the case on
several occasions, later revealed:

He conveyed to me by his words and manner the distinct impression
that he was bound to convict these men because they were "Reds."
I remember Judge Thayer in substance said to me that we must stand
together and protect ourselves against anarchists and "Reds."

On July 14, 192 1, after a flagrantly prejudicial charge by Judge
Thayer to the jury, Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty of
murder.

In the year that had elapsed since the arrest of Sacco and Van-
zetti, a constantly growing section of the labor and progressive
movement in the United States had rallied to the defense of the
two Italian workers. With the Sacco- Vanzetti Defense Committee
coordinating the campaign, talented left-wing journalists such as

Art Shields publicizing the facts of the case, and impassioned cham-
pions of civil liberties hke Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Ella Reeve
Bloor, Carlo Tresca and Fred Biedenkapp addressing meetings in
every state, a fervent crusade to free the two men had been organ-
ized on a national scale.

Now, with the verdict of guilty, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti
became an international cause celebre.

Throughout the following months there were mass protest meet-
ings in every part of Europe. Tens of thousands of men and women
demonstrated before American legations. Famous writers and scien-
tists, statesmen and philosophers, jurists and labor leaders on every
continent joined in the worldwide campaign to save the lives of
Sacco and Vanzetti.

"All over Europe, apparently," scoffed the Nenjo York Times,
"the various congeners of the Bolsheviki are going to howl against a
fictitious injustice" . . .

Between July 192 1 and October 1924 the defense counsel for
Sacco and Vanzetti submitted to Judge Thayer a series of motions
for a new trial, based on the uncovering of fresh evidence, proof
of collusion between the prosecuting attorney and state witnesses,
and the admission of prosecution witnesses that their testimony had
been falsified. The motions were accompanied by voluminous docu-
mentation, and hundreds of pages of sworn testimony, indicating
the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti.

On October i, 1924, Judge Thayer denied all of the motions.

The following month Judge Thayer elatedly told Professor James
P. Richardson of Dartmouth College, "Did you see what I did with
those anarchistic bastards the other day! I guess that will hold
them for a while . . . Let them go to the Supreme Court and see
what they can get out of them!"

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held: "Exceptions
overruled. Verdict to stand."

On November 18, 1925, there came a sensational new develop-
ment in the case. On that day, a signed note was delivered to Sacco
from another prisoner in the Dedham jail, Celestino F. Madeiros,
a young Portuguese criminal who was under death sentence for
killing a cashier in a bank robbery. The note from Madeiros read:
"I hear by confess to being in the south Braintree shoe company
crime and Sacco and Vanzetti were not in said crime."
98

Shortly before his confession, Celestino Madeiros had appealed
his conviction of murder in the first degree; and there was a possi-
bility he might not be executed. Even so, Madeiros admitted his
participation in the crime at South Braintree. "I seen Sacco's wife
come here with the kids/' Madeiros explained, "and I felt sorry for
the kids". . .

Sacco turned Madeiros' confession over to William G. Thomp-
son, the distinguished Boston attorney who had replaced the well-
known labor lawyer, Fred Moore, as chief counsel for Sacco and
Vanzetti in the late fall of 1924. Thompson immediately began a
painstaking investigation of all the facts connected with Madeiros'
confession. In the following weeks, Thompson unearthed copious
evidence substantiating Madeiros' admission that he and five other
members of the notorious Morelli gang of Providence, Rhode
Island, had staged the hold-up and committed the murders at South
Braintree.

On May 26, 1926, Thompson submitted the results of his findings
to Judge Thayer in a motion for a new trial.

Five months later, in a fifty-five page decision, Judge Thayer
denied the motion. Regarding Judge Thayer's lengthy opinion, Pro-
fessor Frankfurter wrote:

... I assert with deep regret but without the slightest fear of dis-
proof, that certainly in modern times Judge Thayer's opinion stands
unmatched, happily, for discrepancies between what the record dis-
closes and the opinion conveys. His 25,000-word document cannot ac-
curately be described otherwise than as a farrago of misquotations,
misrepresentations, suppressions, and mutilations.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld Judge
Thayer's ruling.

On April 9, 1927, after seven years of imprisonment, Sacco and
Vanzetti were brought before Judge Thayer for sentencing.

"Have you anything to say," asked the clerk of court, "why
sentence of death should not be passed upon you?"

"Yes, sir," said Sacco. "I never knew, never heard, never read
in history anything so cruel as this court."

Vanzetti spoke. "What we have suffered during these seven
years," he told Judge Thayer, "no human tongue can say, and yet
you see me before you, not trembhng, not changing color, you

see me looking in your eyes straight; not blushing, not ashamed or
in fear."

Concluding, Vanzetti said;

This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the
most low or misfortunate creature of the earth— I would not wish to any
of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of.
But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of.
I am suffering because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; 1
have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself;
but I am so convinced to be right that if you could execute me two
times, if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do
what I have done already.

I have finished. Thank you.

Judge Thayer sentenced Sacco and Vanzetti to die in the electric
chair on July lo, 1927.

As Thayer hurried from the courtroom, he met a grrup of
newspaper reporters. "Well, boys, how did it go?" he asked. The
newsmen remained silent. "Boys," said the judge, "you know I've
often been good to you. Now see what you can do for me."

During the next four and a half months, as the date set for the
execution of the two men was postponed first to August 10 and then
to August 22, protests against the sentence and pleas for executive
clemency poured into the U.S. State Department and the Massa-
chusetts state capital in a growing avalanche from every part of
the world. In Paris, Madrid and Mexico City, London and Havana,
Basle and Buenos Aires, and scores of other cities in every land,
great mass demonstrations took place. There were protest strikes of
workers in Denmark, AustraHa, South Africa, throughout Central
and South America. Albert Einstein, Romain Rolland, Martin
Andersen Nexo, George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, and
many other world-renowned figures added their voices, in im-
passioned pleas for clemency, to those of the milHons . . .

But as Robert Lincoln O'Brien, milHonaire owner of the Boston
Herald and the Boston Traveller, later observed in a privately pub-
lished document called My Personal Relations to the Sacco Van-
zetti Case: "The momentum of the established order required the
execution of Sacco and Vanzetti . . ."

"If this were the South," a Boston newspaperman told the author
and Daily Worker reporter, Michael Gold, early that August, "the
100

respectable mob would be storming the Charleston jail to lynch
the two Italian workers."

On August 3, Governor Fuller denied a plea for clemency from
Vanzetti. Four days later a special Advisory Committee which had
been appointed by the Governor to study the case reported it had
found that the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was "fairly conducted,"
that there was no subsequent evidence warranting a new trial, and
that they were "convinced beyond reasonable doubt that Sacco and
Vanzetti were guilty of the murder". . .*

As the dreaded day of the execution drew near, an almost un-
bearable tension gripped the nation. There were protest rallies from
coast to coast and strikes in nearly every state. The Charlestown
Penitentiary, where Sacco and Vanzetti were now confined, bristled
with machine guns and was guarded day and night by more than
700 heavily armed city and state poHce officers. Government agents
were stationed at Federal buildings in principal cities with orders
"to shoot first and ask questions afterwards" if trouble started. In
Washington, D.C., army detachments were mobilized in readiness
"to defend the Capitol."

Shortly before the date set for his electrocution, Vanzetti told
Philip Duffield Strong of the American Newspaper Alhance, "If it
had not been for this thing I might have lived out my life among
scorning men. I might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure.
This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we
hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's under-
standing of man, as now we do by an accident.

"Our words— our lives— our pains— nothing! The taking of our
lives— lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler— all!

* The Advisory Committee was composed of A. Lawrence Lowell, Pres-
ident of Harvard University; Samuel W. Stratton, President of the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology; and Robert Grant, a retired probate judge.
The proceedings of the Committee, which was commonly known as the
Lowell Committee, were dominated throughout by the wealthy, autocratic
Harvard President. "He was," write Joughin and Morgan in The Legacy of
Sacco and Vanzetti "widely regarded as a perfect specimen of the New Eng-
land snob, dominated by the sense of noblesse oblige . . ." One of his "private
prejudices," add these authors, "a dislike of Jews— is in the process of being
supported as the passage of years releases collections of private documents."
Joughin and Morgan imply that this particular prejudice may have influenced
Lowell in his consideration of Professor Frankfurter's findings. In any case,
Lowell, like other members of his set, felt nothing but bitter hostility toward
Sacco and Vanzetti, and saw to it that the proceedings of the Committee were
prejudiced against them from beginning to end.

lOI

"The moment that you think of belongs to us— that last agony is
our triumph!"

On August 23, 1927, the case which had begun at Plymouth,
Massachusetts, where the Pilgrims had established the first per-
manent settlement of Europeans in New England, ended in the
Charlestown Penitentiary near Bunker Hill, where the first major
battle of the American Revolution had been fought. A few minutes
after midnight, the lights of the prison flickered and grew dim as
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were killed in the electric
chair.

When word was flashed to the country that Sacco and Vanzetti
were dead, men and women who had congregated in every city
in the desperate hope of a last-minute reprieve wept agonizingly in
the streets. This is how the New York World described the scene in
Union Square, where a great crowd had assembled:

The crowd responded with a giant sob. Women fainted in fifteen
or twenty places. Others, too overcome, dropped to the curbs and
buried their heads in their hands. Men leaned on one another's shoulders
and wept. There was a sudden movement in the street to the east of
Union Square. Men began to run around aimlessly, tearing at their
clothes and ripping their straw hats, and women ripped their dresses
in anguish.

In France, a few hours after the execution, the famous novelist,
Romain Rolland wrote: "I am not an American; but I love America.
And I accuse of high treason against America the men who have
soiled her with this judicial crime before the eyes of the world."

On August 27, 1927, four days later, the Boston Herald edi-
torialized:

Let us get back to business and the ordinary concerns of life, in the
confident belief that the agencies of law have performed their duties
with fairness as well as justice . . . Now let us go forward to the re-
sponsibilities of the common day with a renewed determination to main-
tain our present form of government, and our existing social order.

The Herald editorial was headed: "Back to Normalcy."

102

Chapter vii

END OF AN ERA

I. Debacle

On August 2, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge released to the nation
his famous terse pronouncement: "I do not choose to run for
President in 1928."

To Coohdge's consternation, the Republican Party took him at
his word.* The following June, in the oppressive heat of Kansas
City, the listless perspiring delegates to the Republican National
Convention nominated Herbert Clark Hoover on the first ballot
as their Presidential candidate. The former Secretary of Commerce
was elected on November 6, 1928.

In the opinion of the iconoclastic author, H. L. Mencken, Hoover
was simply a "fat CooHdge." WiUiam Allen White summed up
Hoover as an "adding machine." Ferdinand Lundberg portrayed
him as an "erstwhile vendor of shady mining stocks who before
the war had been reprimanded by an English court for his role in a
promotional swindle."

While there was undeniable truth in each of these characteriza-

* Describing President Coolidge's reaction when the Republican National
Convention in 1928 failed to make any attempt to draft him for another term,
Irwin H. ("Ike") Hoover, chief usher at the White House, wrote in his
memoirs:

"There was dismay at the White House. . . . The President was not long
in vacating the Executive Office. He came to the White House visibly dis-
tressed. He was a changed man . . .

"He threw himself across the bed continuing on indefinitely to lay there.
He took no lunch and only that the physician came out a couple of times
to inquire, at the suggestion of the President, for word of the Convention
doings, was it known, the drift of his thoughts. In this room he continued
on to remain through the rest of the day and night, not emerging therefrom
until nearly eleven o'clock the next (Monday) morning. Even then it was a
different President we knew. . . . That night he left for Wisconsin."

103

tions, none of them did full justice to the Thirtieth President of the
United States.

It was not merely in terms of physical girth that Hoover was a
bigger man than his taciturn predecessor. Whereas Coolidge had
hewed to the precepts of Wall Street with the respectful obedience
of a grateful employee, Hoover was a millionaire in his own right,
moved on an easy, gracious footing with renowned financiers and
was, in fact, himself accepted as a leading figure in big business
circles.

As the Wall Street Journal had observed after Hoover's nomina-
tion as the Republican Party candidate:

Never before, here or anywhere else, has a Government been so com-
pletely fused with business. There can be no doubt '■jhat Hoover as
President would be a dynamic business President. He would be the first
business, as distinguished from political, president, the country has ever
had...

Hoover would serve the public by serving business . . .

Such a statesman, for all his preoccupation with business statistics,
precise commercial graphs and stock market evaluations, was not
to be dismissed as a mere "adding machine," a mechanism wholly
lacking in the knack of self-enrichment.

Nor were Hoover's promotional talents by any means limited to
the field of dubious mining ventures. No President before him had
been so gifted in the art of self-promotion. Despite his never having
shone in the engineering profession and the fact he had made his
fortune through organizing stock companies to exploit gold, timber,
ore and other concessions in Czarist Russia, Australia, China and
other backward regions, Hoover had sold himself to the American
public as "The Great Engineer"; despite his systematic use of food
as a political weapon to sustain savage White Guard regimes and
suppress the democratic upsurgence in postwar Europe, Hoover
was widely known in the United States as "The Great Humani-
tarian"; and despite his complete preoccupation with business mat-
ters and the accumulation of material wealth, there were millions of
Americans who had been taught to think of Hoover as "The
Great Idealist."

As Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen wrote in their book,
Washington Merry -Go-Round, "Every possible trick, every new
device, known or capable of being invented by skilled publicity
104

agents had been invoked to make Hoover the Superman, the Great
Executive ..." *

With Hoover in the White House, the stock market soared to
fabulous new heights and scores of new investment houses were
incorporated. In January 1929, over a billion dollars worth of new
securities were floated. In every major city throughout the land,
brokerage offices were jammed with eager buyers, their eyes hyp-
notically glued to lighted screens across which moved a rapid
procession of symbols and numbers recording the ever-mounting
prices on the New York Stock Exchange.

"We in America," opined Herbert Hoover, "are nearer to the
final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any
land . . . the outlook for the world today is for the greatest era
of commercial expansion in history." The United States, the Presi-
dent proclaimed in his inaugural address, had "reached a higher
degree of comfort than ever existed before in the history of the
world ... In no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more
secure."

Eight months later, America was overwhelmed by the most cata-
strophic economic crisis in all history.

* For twenty years prior to his appointment as U. S. Food Administrator
in 19 1 7, Herbert Hoover had lived abroad, rarely visiting the United States.

In the spring of 1897, at the age of twenty -two, Herbert Hoover had left
San Francisco to seek his fortune in the goldfields of West Australia. As a
representative of British gold mine owners in Australia, the youthful Hoover
soon won a reputation, as Rose Wilder Lane writes in The Making of Herbert
Hoover, "as a hard and ruthless man . . . whose ruthlessness was known from
Perth to the farthest reaches of the back country."

During the early 1900's, acting as an agent for various British mining con-
cerns and financial syndicates, Hoover became widely known for his ability
to organize and promote stock companies to exploit the resources of backward
colonial areas. By 1910 Hoover himself had large holdings in a number of
these stock enterprises, including eleven oil companies in Czarist Russia.
Around this time. Hoover became associated with the British multimillionaire
Leslie Urquart in three companies which had been set up to exploit timber
and mineral concessions in the Urals and Siberia; and, soon afterwards, in the
Russo-Asiatic Corporation, which was floated by Urquart and obtained con-
cessions from the Czarist regime to properties in Russia whose total value
was estimated at $1,000,000,000.

Late in 19 14, with the backing of the Belgian financier, Emile Francqui,
with whom he had been associated in the Chinese Engineering and Mining
Company, Hoover became Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Bel-
gium. This post was used by Hoover as a stepping-stone to the far more
important position of Director of the U. S. Food Administration.

105

In the last week of October 1929, the bottom dropped out of the
stock market.

During the preceding weeks, prices on the Exchange had fol-
lowed a continuous downward trend without causing much appre-
hension: the Big Bull market had sagged before, only to surge back
to spectacular new peaks and bigger profits for the pool operators.
By the middle of the month, however, alarm spread as the decline
in prices rapidly picked up momentum.

On October 23, with ticker tapes in brokerage offices running
almost two hours behind market transactions, more than 6,000,000
shares exchanged hands; and the Neuo York Times averages for
fifty leading industrial and railroad stocks recorded a loss of 18.24
points.

Then on Thursday, October 24, the deluge really got underway.

That day the volume of sales was nearly 13,000,000 shares.
Within the first hour of trading, as prices plunged downward at a
fantastic rate, thousands of speculators were wiped out in an ava-
lanche of selling. There was pandemonium in the great hall of the
New York Stock Exchange; shouting, madly gesticulating brokers
rushed to and fro, their faces contorted with fear and dismay.
Brokerage firms in every major city were jammed with disheveled
clients, frantically trying to dispose of their holdings before they
were completely ruined . . .

Shortly after noon, Charles E. Mitchell of the National City Bank,
Albert H. Wiggin of the Chase National Bank, and two other lead-
ing bankers hurried into the J. P. Morgan & Company building and
closeted themselves in the ofiice of Thomas W. Lamont. Within a
few minutes they had agreed to put up $20,000,000 apiece, to-
gether with one other financier, to form a buying pool of two
hundred and forty million dollars to slow the cataract of sales and
bring a semblance of order to the chaos at the Exchange.

From the White House, President Hoover, who had been in
constant touch with Thomas Lamont by long distance telephone,
proclaimed to the nation: "The fundamental business of our coun-
try, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a
sound and prosperous basis."

But neither multi-milHon dollar bankers' pools nor sanguine Pres-
idential proclamations could halt the debacle. The catastrophic
collapse in market prices continued unabated. On October 29, with
more hundreds of millions of dollars of "values" abruptly vanishing
106

into thin air, the volume of sales on the Exchange reached the
phenomenal all-time high of 16,410,030 shares.

And as the whole crazy cardhouse structure of credit, specula-
tion, paper values and stock market pools crumbled in a thousand
pieces, wild rumors multiplied on every side: All the banks have
collapsed/ The exchanges are being shut doivn by Government
decree! Twenty bajikers have committed suicide! Angry mobs are
marching on Wall Street!

The Great Panic was on.

"The present week," declared the November 2, 1929, issue of the
Co772?nercial and Finajicial Chro7iicle, "has witnessed the greatest
stock market catastrophe of the ages."

But what was happening was far more than a gigantic stock
market catastrophe. It was a world catastrophe. The era of spurious
postwar stability and prosperity had ended. An economic crisis of
unprecedented severity had begun which would swiftly engulf the
globe . . .

On December 18, 1930, Benito Mussolini summed up the effects
of the World Crisis on Europe:

The situation in Italy was satisfactory until the fall of 1929, when the
American market crash exploded suddenly like a bomb. For us poor
European provincials it was a great surprise . . . Suddenly the beautiful
scene collapsed and we had a series of bad days. Stocks lost thirty,
forty and fifty per cent of their value. The crisis grew deeper . . . From
that day we were again pushed into the high seas, and from that day
navigation has become extremely difficult for us.

Unemployment, hunger, mass demoralization and destitution
went hand in hand with the economic crash which swept like a
hurricane across America, Europe and Asia. Great financial and
industrial corporations collapsed in ruins; millions of small investors
were wiped out; workers were turned out into the streets. While
the masses starved, fruit was dumped into the sea; wheat rotted in
the crammed silos; coffee was used for stoking furnaces; cattle were
slaughtered and buried in ditches. The nations could no longer
pay for the plethora of commodities they had produced. An entire
system of economic distribution had broken down.

Early in 1932, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew
Mellon, who had been appointed American Ambassador to England
by President Herbert Hoover, told a Pilgrim's dinner in London: "1

107

do not believe there is any quick or spectacular remedy for the ills
from which the world is suffering, nor do I share the belief that
there is anything fundamentally wrong with the social system."

The famous American steel magnate, Charles M. Schwab, ex-
pressed a sentiment more widely prevalent in business circles. "I am
afraid," he said. "Every man is afraid."

2. Days of Reckoning

During the second year of the Great Depression, the famous
American author, Theodore Dreiser wrote in his book. Tragic
America:

I had heard much and studied much of present-day living condi-
tions, but I also wanted to see for myself certain definite examples of
life under our present economic regime ... I visited the western Penn-
sylvania miners' zone . . . and there I found unbelievable misery. Miners
receiving wages of but $14 to $24 for two weeks' work . . . Their food
was of the poorest; I studied their menus. One of their main foods at
that time was dandelion weeds.

I chose to visit Passaic, New Jersey, because I believe it to be a fairly
representative small industrial city ... A local minister told me of
instances of eight and ten persons living in one or two rooms . . . The
minister also told me of many cases of unemployment for over a year;
in particular he mentioned one woman who, trying to earn a living for
her family (the husband out of work) by making artificial flowers at
the rate of 15 cents for 24 flowers, could not possibly earn more than
90 cents a day . . .

... on January 3, 193 1, James Golden, aged 50, an unemployed
tin-smith, went into a bakery at 247 Monroe Street, and asked for
something to eat. As Rosenberg, the proprietor, reached for a loaf of
bread. Golden fell to the floor and died . . . Then there was John Pitak,
43, of 183 High Avenue, who committed suicide, leaving a wife and
three children, because he could not find work . . .

Describing the plight of Pennsylvania miners in 193 1 who had
been evicted from their company-owned houses after losing a des-
perate, futile strike for living wages, the writer Jonathan Norton
Leonard related:

Reporters . . . found thousands of them huddled on the mountainsides,
crowded three or four families together in one-room shacks, living on
dandelions and wild weed-roots. Half of them were sick, but no local
doctor would care for the evicted strikers. All of them were hungry
and many were dying of those providential diseases which enable wel-
fare authorities to claim that no one has starved.

108

Louise V. Armstrong, in her book, We Too Are the Feople, re-
corded this scene in downtown Chicago:

We saw a crowd of some fifty men fighting over a barrel of garbage
which had been set outside the back door of a restaurant. American
citizens fighting for scraps of food Hke animals!

By 1932, hungry destitute masses of Americans were spread in a
great dark tide across the land. Tens of thousands of ragged home-
less children roamed the countryside. The number of unemployed
was estimated at between thirteen and seventeen million.

American cities swarmed with beggars and hordes of gaunt hol-
low-eyed men and women who huddled at night in doorways,
alleys and cellars, and ransacked garbage heaps for maggoty scraps
of food. Everywhere, there were lengthening bread Unes, silent
crowds gathered in front of employment agencies and before closed
factory gates, haggard men and women standing beside pitiful ap-
plestands, and countless workers walking from house to house,
from shop to shop, in an endless desperate search for jobs, of any
sort, at any wage, to enable them to feed their starving families.

And in every state, like ugly festering sores across the body of
the land, there appeared squahd settlements of makeshift shacks
and hovels, built of tar paper, packing boxes, tin and scrap iron,
in which thousands of dispossessed and poverty-stricken American
famiHes now made their homes. These man-dump heaps were
known to the nation as "Hoovervilles."

President Hoover petulantly regarded the Depression as a per-
sonal challenge to his reputation as the Great Executive. Failing in
an initial attempt to persuade the American people that the crisis
was simply a fleeting mirage and that "prosperity was just around
the corner," Hoover issued a series of pontifical declarations be-
littling the disaster that gripped the nation.

On December 14, 1929, Hoover announced it was apparent
from statistics he had studied on the volume of shopping that
American business was "back to normal." In March 1930 he de-
clared that "the worst effect of the crash on unemployment will
have been passed during the next sixty days." The sixty days having
elapsed, he told the nation on May 2:

We have been passing through one of those great economic storms
which periodically bring suffering and hardship to our people. I am

109

convinced that we have passed the worst and with continued unity of
effort we shall rapidly recover.

That July the well-known attorney, Amos Pinchot, and a group
of businessmen visited the White House to urge the President to
take immediate emergency measures to relieve the rapidly growing
unemployment. Hoover listened to their plea with marked im-
patience. "Gentlemen," he then truculently told the delegation, "you
are six weeks late. The crisis is over."

Throughout the balance of his term in office, while granting
huge Government loans to reHeve the difficulties of banks, rail-
roads and large industrial concerns. President Hoover obdurately
balked at the idea of Federal relief for the mounting millions of
homeless, jobless and famished Americans. Federal rehef, asserted
Hoover, would be nothing more than "dole" and would harm "the
"character of Americans" by undermining their "rugged individual-
ism.

Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., protested, "The rehef of
human suffering in this emergency should take precedence over the
consideration of the interests of wealthy income-tax payers."

"Demagogy!" scoffed Hoover in reply . . .

While the people's anguish grew, President Hoover compiled
elaborate statistics and charts on the economic state of affairs,
formed commissions to "study" unemployment and industrial pro-
duction, and periodically called conferences of mayors, governors
and business executives to discuss diverse aspects of the crisis.

A typical White House conference on unemployment, attended
by a group of governors, was described shorty afterwards in a
private conversation by Governor FrankHn D. Roosevelt of New
York in these words:

We were to gather for dinner, and Mrs. Roosevelt went with me.
We stood rigid around an immense table waiting for the President to
come in. He was late, and we remained standing, silently, like stone
images. Nothing at Buckingham Palace could compare with this formal-
ity. Mrs. Pinchot came around to my side of the table and said every-
body would understand if I sat down at my place. A gold-braided aide
whispered to her to please return to her place and stand until the Presi-
dent entered. When the President sat down the conversation was con-
ducted in whispers.

After dinner the men were asked to go to the Red Room and the
ladies to the Blue Room. The President and his wife softly padded in
and greeted our party individually with a fleeting touch of the hand

and whispers. We were then herded into the music room like prize
cattle and sat on rickety chairs which undertakers use when they run
out of seats. Beyond a wide expanse of polished floor nervous fiddlers
played, with eyes cocked apprehensively on the aides with the epaulettes.
As we were leaving, Mrs. Roosevelt recognized one of the musicians
and spoke to me above a whisper for the first time since we entered
the White House. From out of nowhere another aide with shivering
epaulettes was at her elbow. He whispered to her that if she wished
to greet the musician, he would have to arrange it near the door-way
as we walked out. The musician greeted iMrs. Roosevelt in fear and
trembling. We left in a daze. I cannot remember what was discussed
about unemployment.

Abandoned by their Government, living in deepening poverty,
misery and despair, more and more Americans began taking matters
into their own hands.

One state capital after another was beseiged by hunger marchers.
In city after city, angry men and women banded together to
prevent evictions of their impoverished friends and neighbors.
Auctioneers conducting forced sales of farms repeatedly found
themselves surrounded by grim-faced farmers who kept outsiders
from bidding, bought the property under sale for a few dollars and
then promptly returned it to its original owners. Throughout the
country, unemployed councils formed by the Trade Union Unity
League, organized demonstrations demanding food, clothing and
work or adequate relief.

Furious measures were employed by the Federal, state and local
authorities to suppress the mounting rebellion of the people. Dem-
onstrations of famished and jobless Americans were bloodily dis-
persed by armed troops and police. Describing typical police tactics
used to break up an unemployment demonstration in New York
City, a Nenjo York World reporter told of:

. , . women struck in the face with blackjacks, boys beaten by gangs
of seven and eight policemen, and an old man backed into a doorway
and knocked down time after time, only to be dragged to his feet
and struck with fist and club.

. . . detectives, some wearing reporters' cards in hat bands, many
wearing no badges, running wildly through the crowd, screaming as
they beat those who looked like Comimunists.

. . . men with blood streaming down their faces dragged into the tem-
porary police headquarters and flung down to await the patrol wagons
to cart them away.

But neither the savage violence of law-enforcement agencies, nor
the horrified outcry that "Communist agents" were agitating the

III

unemployed, nor congressmen calling for the immediate imprison-
ment or deportation of all "Reds" * could dispel the gathering
storm of anger and revolt.
Across the land, the slogan spread: Don^t Starve— Fight!

3. March on Washington

During the second week of May, 1932, two hundred unemployed
World War veterans in Portland, Oregon, hastily packed together
a few of their meager belongings and set out on a 3,000-mile trans-
continental journey to Washington, D.C. "to petition Congress for
the immediate payment of veterans bonuses." Their departure
heralded the beginning of one of the most extraordinary, spon-
taneous popular demonstrations in American history: the Veterans
March on Washington . . .

After two and a half grim years of joblessness and destitution,
the smoldering resentment of American ex-servicemen had flared
into a nationwide demand that Congress enact legislation providing
for immediate payment of funds still due on veterans' bonus cer-
tificates.!

With the scheduled adjournment of Congress only a few weeks
away, the veterans began converging on Washington to present
their "petition on boots."

The veterans came singly, in small bands and caravans of hun-
dreds, many bringing their wives and children with them. They
halted trains and compelled conductors to allow them to travel as
non-paying passengers. They hitchhiked, jammed old jalopies, rode
freight cars. One small group trekked down from Alaska and across
the continent, a distance of more than 4,000 miles. Three veterans
sailed as stowaways aboard a ship from Hawaii.

Throughout the hot summer days and nights, the ex-servicemen

*The most active congressional committee crusading against "Reds" in
America was, at the time, the House Special Committee to Investigate Com-
munist Propaganda. The committee was headed by Representative Hamilton
Fish of New York.

t Officially titled the Adjusted Ser\nce Certificate, the Bonus was an addi-
tional payment to veterans of one dollar for every day served in the Armed
Forces at home and a dollar twenty-five cents for every day spent overseas.
The Bonus award had been passed by Congress in 1923 for payment in 1945.
In 1930 veterans were permitted to borrow one-half their bonus money at
4'/4 percent interest. The Bonus iMarchers sought to obtain the right to borrow
the remainder of the money immediately.

1 12

streamed endlessly along the highways of the land, across deserts,
plains and mountains, through villages and towns, toward the
nation's capital. Scarcely a day passed without the press announcing
the departure of new detachments: 900 from Chicago; 600 from
New Orleans; 1,000 from Ohio; 700 from Philadelphia and Cam-
den; 200 elected as delegates by the patients in the National Soldiers
Home at Johnson City, Tennessee . . .

State and federal authorities, and railroad executives, sought des-
perately to halt the Bonus Marchers and to force them to return
home. Police officials forbade them to enter certain towns. Sec-
retary of War Patrick J. Hurley announced that veterans reaching
Washington would be given no sleeping bags by the War Depart-
ment. The Washington Chief of Police, General Pelham Glassford,
dispatched frantic wires urging governors to turn the veterans back.
A vice-president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad proclaimed his
determination "to protect the interests of the railroad in the im-
pending war". . .

And still the veterans came.

And, in the communities through which they passed, tens of
thousands of sympathetic Americans greeted them with great pub-
lic demonstrations, provided them with clothing, food, lodging and
gave other assistance to help them on their way . . .*

By June, more than 20,000 Bonus Marchers had poured into
Washington.

The ex-servicemen, who thirteen years before had been hailed as
national heroes on their return from Europe's battlefields, were not
now treated as such by their Government. Congressmen visited by
veterans' delegations smilingly agreed to support the bonus legisla-
tion—and did nothing. President Herbert Hoover coldly refused

* In Cheyenne, Wyoming, a group of veterans arriving at midnight was
welcomed by more than 5,000 townspeople, who staged a torchhght parade
and feted the travelers at a great banquet. In Cleveland, 50,000 citizens con-
gregated to support the demand of Bonus Marchers that they be given rail-
road cars by local authorities. In AicKeesport, Pennsylvania, after frustrating
the mayor's efforts to prevent veterans from passing through the town, the
townspeople halted a train for the ex-servicemen. Following a futile attempt
by police and troops to prevent Bonus Marchers from boarding trains in East
St. Louis, Illinois, the local sheriff reported: "When it looked like trouble,
it wasn't the veterans I was concerned about, but the sympathizers. There was
a crowd of several thousand along the B & O tracks, and they were all yell-
ing and cheering the former soldiers ..."

to grant an audience to any representatives of the Bonus Marchers.
A heavy miUtary guard patrolled the White House.

Some of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, as the veterans now
called themselves, established makeshift hving quarters in empty
lots and vacant government buildings in Washington. The great
majority, however were directed to an encampment on the Ana-
costia Flats, a dust-ridden, low-lying stretch of land bordering the
Potomac River across from the nation's capital. Here, unprotected
from the broiling sun and from tepid rains which converted the
Flats into a muddy morass, there mushroomed a jungle-Hke city of
tents, dugouts, crude shacks, and caves in the river's bluff.

Lacking the most elementary sanitation facilities, and with hope-
lessly inadequate food supphes provided by the Washington author-
ities, the ex-servicemen and their families were soon beset by wide-
spread sickness. Within a short time, several of the veterans'
children had died from intestinal disorders and malnutrition . . .

Every possible device was employed to discredit the Bonus
Marchers, disrupt their ranks and force them to leave Washington.
Newspapers reported that the Bonus Army was infested with "com-
munist agents" seeking to set up "soviets in the nation's capital."
Police Chief Glassford threatened to invoke an evacuation order;
and when the veterans refused to move until Congress granted their
demands, Glassford, who was in charge of all food provisions for
the veterans, announced a "food shortage" and drastically reduced
the veterans' already skimpy rations.

The Bonus Expeditionary Force, moreover, was riddled with
Federal agents, pohce spies, paid informers and agents-provocateurs.
W. W. Waters, the dapper, smartly uniformed autocratic "com-
mander" of the BEF, was himself in constant communication with
General Glassford and was actually getting orders from the Police
Chief. According to Glassford's own subsequent account, the
"Military Police Corps" which Waters had organized to "keep
order" among the veterans "worked intimately with the Metro-
politan PoHce under my command." *

* Waters' political inclinations and personal ambitions became clear some
time later when, after forming an organization called the Khaki Shirts, he
declared: "Inevitably such an organization brings up comparison with the
Fascisti of Italy and the Nazis of Germany. For five years Hitler was lam-
pooned and derided. But today he controls Germany. Mussolini before the
war was a tramp printer, driven from Italy because of his political views.
But today he is a world figure."

114

"If we find any Red agitators in the group," Waters informed
Washington poHce, "we'll take care of them."

New arrivals at Anacostia Flats were warned by "Commander"
Waters against the "red activities" of the Workers Ex-Servicemen's
League, a left-wing veterans group which had played a major role
in mobilizing the Bonus March, and were made to take an oath
against Communism. A number of the League's leaders were kid-
napped, brutally beaten and ordered out of Washington. The bat-
tered bodies of two veterans suspected of being Communists were
found floating in the Potomac.

But for all the efforts to terrorize them and split their ranks, the
vast majority of the veterans stubbornly remained where they had
settled and continued to agitate for payment of their bonuses . . .

On the morning of July 17, after a hasty final session. Congress
adjourned without having taken any action on the bill. By nightfall
most of the Representatives and Senators had scurried out of Wash-
ington.

The careful preparations made by Government authorities for
imminent developments were afterwards disclosed by General Pel-
ham Glassford:

. . . troops were in training for just such a climax as early as June. . . .
both officers and men at Army and Marine posts adjacent to Washing-
ton were being held in readiness without leave for a long period . . ,
these troops were receiving special training in the use of tear gas and
in maneuvers incident to dispersing crowds.

Matters came to a head on July 28, a date subsequently named
"Bloody Thursday." That morning a large poHce contingent at-
tempted to evict several hundred veterans from two abandoned
Government buildings at Third Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
When the veterans refused to leave, the police charged the build-
ings, hurhng tear gas bombs at their occupants. The veterans fought
back. Enraged, the poHce drew their guns and fired. A number of
veterans dropped, two of them mortally wounded . . .

President Hoover promptly ordered General Douglas A. Mac-
Arthur, Army Chief of Staff, to assume command of the evacuation
of the Bonus Expeditionary Force from Washington and to employ
the army "to put an end to this rioting and defiance of civil
authority."

Around four o'clock in the afternoon, the troops arrived. De-
scribing ensuing events, the New York Times reported:

Down Pennsylvania Avenue . . . the regulars came, the cavalry lead-
ing the way, and after them the tanks, the machinegunners and the
infantry . . .

There was a wait for maybe half an hour while the Army officers
talked it over with the police and the bonus marchers shouted defiance.
They wanted action and they got it.

Twenty steel-helmeted soldiers led the way with revolvers in their
hands until about 200 were in position in front of the "bonus fort."
Then the mounted men joined. They rode downstreet clearing the path
with their sabres, striking those within reach with the flat of their
blades.

The action was precise, well-executed from a military standpoint, but
not pretty to the thoughtful in the crowd. There were those who re-
sisted the troops, fought back, cursed and kicked at the horses . . .

Amidst scenes reminiscent of the mopping-up of a town in the World
War, Federal troops . . . drove the army of bonus seekers from the
shanty village near Pennsylvania Avenue.

The troops then set fire to the veterans' shacks.

Every detail of the operation had been planned with methodical
care by General MacArthur, and fire engines were on hand to
prevent the flames from spreading . . .

Wearing gas masks, and lobbing tear gas bombs, infantrymen
pursued the fleeing veterans, who sought desperately to shield their
wives and children. Scores of calvalrymen, swinging sabres, joined
in the chase. Civilian onlookers were gassed, bludgeoned to the
ground, and trampled on by horses . . .

"The mob was a bad-looking one," General MacArthur told
newsmen regarding the veterans. "It was one marked by signs of
revolution. The gentleness and consideration with which they had
been treated they had mistaken for weakness."

That night MacArthur's troops stormed the Anacostia encamp-
ment. With giant floodlights blazing across the mud flats, the steel-
helmeted soldiers advanced, flinging tear gas bombs, setting fire to
the ramshackle huts and tents, and driving before them the veterans
and their families. By midnight, the Washington sky glowed as
though a great forest were ablaze. Many veterans and their wives
and childern were overcome by gas fumes. One infant died.

Dawn found the Government undisputed master of the field. The
Anacostia Flats were littered with smoking debris. Miles off, along
the roads and highways of Virginia and Maryland, thousands of
veterans and their families were hurrying away from the nation's
capital, some weeping and cursing, others silent and dazed . . .
116

A challenge to the authority of the United States had been met
swiftly and firmly," President Hoover declared in a statement to the
press. "After months of patient indulgence, the government met
overt lawlessness as it always must be met . . . The first obligation
of my office is to uphold and defend the Constitution and the
authority of the law. This I propose always to do."

But whatever few illusions the American people might still have
retained about the Great Humanitarian had vanished in the flames
that consumed the pitiful hovels at Anacostia Flats. The nation
would soon send another man to the White House.

That fall, with the presidential campaign underway, the editor
and publisher of the New York Graphic, Emile Gauvreau, had an
off-the-record interview at the New York state capital of Albany
with the Democratic candidate. Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt.

As Roosevelt and Gauvreau lunched together in a small room,
telephones kept up an incessant jangHng in the Governor's adjoin-
ing office. Reports of campaign developments were coming in from
all parts of the country. Periodically, the conversation between the
two men was interruped as long distance calls of special importance
were brought in to the Governor on telephone cord extensions.

Roosevelt was in an optimistic mood. There was no doubt in
his mind that he would be the next President of the United States.
Confidently, the Governor told Gauvreau some of his plans for the
nation.

"We need a direct contact with the people," said Roosevelt.
"Now is the time for the human hand to reach out to help ... So
you liked my 'forgotten man' speech? That describes millions of
our people. And the forgotten man represents four in each family
that he supports as the good provider. If fourteen million people
are out of work, multiply that by four to know the number
actually in want. Something will have to be done about that . . .
To keep the people happy, give the people work— that's the job."

The Governor drew deeply on his cigarette and slowly exhaled
a cloud of smoke. "Now in Russia—," he began, and deliberated be-
fore continuing, "I'm going to recognize Russia. I am going to send
people there to see what the Russians are doing . . ." The subject
seemed to hold a special fascination for him. "Russia . . . Russia, a
strange land, and their ideas may seem strange— I shall send people
to study Russia."

117

Abruptly, Roosevelt sat bolt upright in his chair. "There is work
to be done," he declared. "Our people will have to be put back on
their feet."

Another telephone call was brought in. Roosevelt listened for a
few moments, then laughed jovially. "Good work!" he said. "Three
more states! Fine, Jim."

Returning to his conversation with Gauvreau, Roosevelt told the
editor. "We will help the people yet." Momentarily, his face
clouded. "It will have to be soon. They are getting restless. Coming
back from the West last week, I talked to an old friend who runs
a great western railroad. 'Fred,' I asked him, 'what are the people
talking about out here?' I can hear him answer even now. 'Frank,'
he replied, Tm sorry to say that men out here are talking revolu-

On November 8, 1932, carrying forty-two states, with a popular
plurality of more than seven million votes, Franklin Delano Roose-
velt was elected President of the United States.

118

BOOK THREE: THE WAR WITHIN

Chapter viii
NEW DEAL

"A great man is great not because his personal qualities give
individual features to great historical events, but because he
possesses qualities which make him most capable of serving
the great social needs of his time. A great man is precisely a
beginner because he sees further than others, and desires
things jnore strongly than others. ... he points to the new-
social needs created by the preceding development of social
relationships; he takes the initiative in satisfying these needs.
He is a hero. But he is not a hero in the sense that he can
stop, or change, the natural course of things, but in the sense
that his activities are the conscious and free expression of
this inevitable and unconscious course."

From George Flekhanov^s essay, The
Role of the Individual in History, pub-
lished in i8p8,

"My anchor is democracy— and more democracy."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
August 1 8, ipsj.

I. F.D.R.

"I PLEDGE you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American
people . . . This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to
arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in
this crusade to restore America to its own people."

With these words Franklin Delano Roosevelt had accepted the
Democratic nomination for President on July 2, 1932, and heralded
the beginning of an historic era in America which would be known
to the nation and to the world as the New Deal.

The New Deal was to be a period of profound and sweeping
democratic reforms affecting every phase of American life. But it
120

was to be more than that. Complex, protean and often paradoxical,
the New Deal derived its predominant character and assumed its
form in the matrix of two epochal conflicts involving great masses
of humanity: the revolt of miUions of Americans against the inef-
fable suffering, want and human waste of the Great Depression;
and the momentous struggle of the freedom-loving peoples of the
world against barbaric conquest and enslavement by the Fascist
Counterrevolution. *

On the morning of January 30, 1933, almost exactly one month
before President Roosevelt's inauguration, the ex-Reichswehr spy
Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich by the senile
President of the German Republic, Field Marshal Paul von Hinden-
burg. On February 27, five days before Roosevelt entered the
White House, the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag, blamed the act
of arson on the Communists, and Hitler, declaring a state of emer-
gency, seized supreme power in Germany.

On February 27 also, British Foreign Minister Sir John Simon
told the House of Commons that the British Government was im-
posing an arms embargo against both China and Japan— a year and
a half after Japan had invaded Manchuria, and at a time when the
embattled Chinese armies were in desperate need of British arms . . .

* "The New Deal," Louis M. Hacker and Benjamin B. Kendrick write in
their history, The United States Since 186^, "has been described as a revolution
and, although it showed none of the violence and turbulence associated with
revolutionary overthrow, it did represent a shift in political power— from big
industrialists, investment bankers, and the larger farmers to the lower middle
classes and the workers."

A very different definition of the New Deal is offered by playwright Robert
Sherwood in his intimate study, Roosevelt and Hopkins. "It was, in fact, as
Roosevelt conceived it and conducted it," states Sherwood, "a revolution of
the Right, rising up to fight in its own defense."

While certainly not lacking in bloody violence and extreme turbulence-
Hacker and Kendrick to the contrary notwithstanding—, the period of the
New Deal did not encompass a revolution of the workers and the lower
middle class; at no time during 1933-1945 was there any transfer of actual
control of the economic-political life of the nation from American finance-
capitalists to another class.

On the other hand, despite the authoritative tone of Sherwood's observation,
the New Deal, for all its contradictions, by no means constituted a "revolu-
tion of the Right"— or rightest counterrevolution; never before in American
history had there been a more fruitful upsurgence of popular and progressive
forces in the land.

Both definitions, like many contemporary evaluations of the New Deal,
overlook the decisive impact of the international anti-fascist struggle in the
shaping of the New Deal.

121

Already, over the continents of Europe and Asia loomed dark
presagements of the Second World War.

In America, too, crucial days were at hand. Millions were des-
titute and without work. Millions were homeless or living in dread-
ful hovels. Millions were frantically searching for food for their
children. Fear stalked the land.

On Saturday, March 4, the day of the Presidential inauguration,
the banks closed down throughout America, and the entire banking
system of the richest country in the world ceased to function . . .

And this, in part, was what President Franklin D. Roosevelt told
the stricken nation in his inaugural address:

This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and pros-
per. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we
have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which
paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance . . .

Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the
very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the ex-
change of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness
and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have ab-
dicated. Practises of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted
in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of
men . . . The money changers have fled from their high seats in the
temple of our civilization . . .

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people
of the United States have not failed. In their- need they have registered
a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for
discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the
present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

Like all great statesmen, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was shaped by
the events and currents of his time no less than he helped shape
them. When Roosevelt began his first term as President at the age
of fifty-one, he was an unusually erudite, dynamic and astute
politician, a man of remarkable eloquence and great personal mag-
netism, whose liberalism was, in Karl Schriftgeisser's words, "little,
if any, advanced over that which had animated his predecessor
[Governor Alfred E. Smith] in Albany." Walter Lippmann re-
garded this scion of American aristocracy and wealth as "not the
dangerous enemy of anything," and had offered this trenchment
comment on Governor Roosevelt's Presidential campaign:
122

The Roosevelt bandwagon would seem to be moving in two opposite
directions ...

The art of carrying water on both shoulders is highly developed in
American politics, and Mr. Roosevelt has learned it. His message to the
Legislature, or at least that part of it devoted to his Presidential can-
didacy, is an almost perfect specimen of the balanced antithesis . . .

The message is so constructed that a left-wing progressive can read
it and find just enough of his own phrases in it to satisfy himself that
Franklin D. Roosevelt's heart is in the right place. He will find an
echo of Governor La Follette's recent remark about the loss of "eco-
nomic liberty." He will find an echo of Governor La Follette's im-
pressive discussion about the increasing concentration of wealth . . .
On the other hand, there are all necessary assurances to the conserva-
tives. "We should not seek in any way to destroy or tear down"; our
system is "everlasting"; we must insist "on the permanence of our
fundamental institutions."

More significantly, Lippmann remarked that "it is impossible he
can continue to be such different things to such different men" . . .

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt died twelve years later, after
shattering all precedent by being elected four times as President of
the United States, there remained little that was equivocal about his
position in the affairs of the nation and the world. Roosevelt stood
among the titans of modern times. He had emerged as one of the
outstanding if not the most outstanding of all American Presidents
—as a great architect of American democracy, an historic champion
of the rights of the little people and the underprivileged, and a
world leader in the struggle against fascism and for lasting peace
among the nations.

The initials, "F.D.R." were spoken with familiarity and affection
by millions on every continent. Roosevelt's indomitable courage
and confidence, Roosevelt's speeches, Roosevelt's personality— his
debonair smile, his intimate, compelling voice, his way of cocking
his head, the angle at which he held his cigarette-holder— were
world famed. Roosevelt's unforgettable phrases— "Economic Royal-
ists," "Quarantine the Aggressor," "Good Neighbor Policy," "Ar-
senal of Democracy," "Four Freedoms"— had become an integral
part of all languages.

"There was a bond between Roosevelt and the ordinary men and
women of the country," Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor in the
Roosevelt Administration, writes in her book, The Roosevelt I
Knew, "and beyond that, between the ordinary men and women
of the world."

123

Never before was a President so widely beloved by the American
people. The profound personal affection America's miUions came to
feel for Franklin D. Roosevelt was later vividly portrayed in the
following recollection by the Columbia Broadcasting System cor-
respondent, Bob Trout, who accompanied Roosevelt on many trips
in the United States:

Often in the middle of the night, speeding through open farm coun-
try, or perhaps through the desert, some of the reporters aboard the
train who stayed up late would look out the window— and there, almost
always, over the miles and through the days, were the silent crowds:
farmers, shop-keepers, miners, fishermen, factory-workers . . . ; they rode
in their battered cars or drove their horses or walked, no one knows
for how many hours, to stand beside the tracks in the middle of the dark
night and watch the President's train speed by. It seemed to satisfy
them . . . just to stand there and look, or perhaps wave a handkerchief
or a hat.

Once, in the rugged country of Idaho, we had roared along in the
train for many miles without seeing a house or a man. Suddenly the
train raced out from between the tall trees, and ran beside a quiet
mountain lake. There, on a tiny home-made pier, beside his log cabin,
stood a man— a trapper or a fisherman or a hunter perhaps— standing on
his little pier, between two large American flags he had rigged up,
standing at attention, with his hand in a military salute at his forehead
as the train sped past. He had made his arrangements, put up his
decorations, and he greeted the train for the few minutes it was visible
to him.

From the outset, the members of President Roosevelt's so-called
"Brain Trust," and his other aides and assistants contrasted sharply
with the millionaires, politicos, rascals or embezzlers who had
formed the entourages of the previous three Presidents. Some lead-
ing New Dealers, it was true, like the loquacious blustering General
Hugh S. Johnson, head of the National Recovery Administration,
were bureaucratic and dictatorial; some, hke the smart young
Columbia teacher, Adolph Berle, were later to become cynical and
embittered; but almost without exception the individuals around
Roosevelt were men of intelligence, energy, resourcefulness and
social awareness. Among them were Secretary of the Interior
Harold L. Ickes, blunt-spoken and short-tempered, a liberal
RepubHcan and former "Bull Mooser"; Secretary of Agriculture,
and later Vice-President, Henry A. Wallace, lean-faced and ideal-
istic, an affluent and eminent agronomist; Secretary of Labor
Frances "Ma" Perkins, primly-dressed first woman cabinet member,
124

a protege of the famous social worker Jane Addams; brilliant,
plump, gentle-featured Judge Samuel Rosenman, holding no official
Government post but known to be one of Roosevelt's most trusted
advisers; Robert Sherwood, the towering solemn-faced playwright;
Assistant Secretary of Labor Rexford Guy Tugwell, strikingly
handsome former college professor; Archibald MacLeish, the well-
known poet.

Closest of all President Roosevelt's aides and intimates was the
ailing former social worker, Harry L. Hopkins, son of a harness-
maker and one-time Socialist, a man of swift intelligence and deep
humaneness, with a passionate love for the poetry of John Keats.
After serving as Federal Relief Administrator and Secretary of
Commerce, Hopkins came to be regarded during the war years—
to quote the words of a British official to playwright Robert Sher-
wood—as "Roosevelt's own, personal Foreign Office." Summing up
much of Harry Hopkins' character was his own statement as Fed-
eral Relief Administrator: "Hunger is not debatable."

2. First Term

In his first inaugural address, President Roosevelt had promised
action; and action there was, from the start— bold, hectic, intense,
electrifying and sometimes confused and confusing action, action
on a scale never before witnessed by the American people.

Within his first ten days in office, Roosevelt called Congress into
special session, and demanded and received special emergency
powers— seventy-five distinct grants of sweeping power— such as no
peacetime president had ever had. He decreed a national bank holi-
day; drafted the National Economy Act; prohibited the export of
gold and all dealing in foreign exchange; slashed Federal expenses;
asked Congress to legalize beer; reopened the banks; and, as the
opening week of his Administration ended, addressed the nation in
the first of his famous, informal and warmly intimate Fireside
Chats.

Within Roosevelt's first three months in the White House, these
were some of the pieces of legislation rushed through Congress:

National Industrial Recovery Act
Economy Act
Emergency Banking Act
Tennessee Valley Authority Act
Civilian Conservation Corps Act

125

Agricultural Adjustment Act

A $500,000,000 Emergency Relief Act

Home Owner's Loan Act

3.2 Beer Act

Glass-Steagal Bank Act

Wagner Employment Exchange Act

Gold Clause Resolution

Railroad Co-ordinator Act

Securities Act

And, as the feverish activity continued during the following
months, as a vast program of Public Works was projected and the
country blossomed forth with ubiquitous NRA Blue Eagle insignia
and the slogan, ^'We Do Our Part,''^ sudden hope surged through
the land. It was as if for three dark years the nation had held its
breath in fear and now, all at once, the nation breathed again . . .

Reviewing Roosevelt's accomplishments during the first year of
his Administration, Walter Lippmann wrote early in 1934:

When Mr. Roosevelt was inaugurated, the question in all men's minds
was whether the nation could "recover" . . . Panic, misery, rebellion, and
despair were convulsing the people and destroying confidence not
merely in business enterprise but in the American way of life. No man
can say into what we should have drifted had we drifted another twelve
months . . . Today there are still grave problems. But there is no over-
whelmingly dangerous crisis. The mass of the people have recovered
their courage and their hope.

But even as Lippmann wrote these words, the nation's mood was
undergoing a deep and disturbing transformation. The "New Deal
Honeymoon," when big business and organized labor had joined
in a tenuous unity in support of Roosevelt's emergency measures,
was ending in widespread discontent and rapidly mounting unrest.
Roosevelt's observation that the "money changers" had "fled their
high seats in the temple" was proving more poetic than profound,
and disillusioning compromises and contradictions marked the
policies of the new Administration.

As Frederick Lewis Allen later wrote in The Lords of Creation:

Close observers of the New Deal noticed an increasing tendency to
announce new programs with a blare of trumpets and then, as opposition
developed, to moderate them . . . The NRA gradually stood revealed as
a governmental arm which protected groups of businessmen in organiz-
ing to maintain themselves against new competitors and against the
reduction of prices to the consumer; as an agency which accelerated and
only partially controlled that process of concentration which the gov-
ernment in earlier reform periods had so earnestly opposed!
126

The Wall Street publication, The Annalist, stated at the time:
"The large aggregates of financial capital stand to benefit in the
long run from the new regime— the ehmination of competitive
methods, closer welding together of the private banking with the
governmental financial apparatus, the increase of control and coor-
dination—all are elements of the strength of the future of financial
capitalism." *

* Expressing a more outspoken viewpoint, E. F. Brown, Associate Editor
of the Current History Magazine of the New York Times had written as early
as July, 1933, "The new America will not be capitalist in the old sense, nor
will it be Socialist. If at the moment the trend is towards Fascism, it will be
an American Fascism, embodying the experience, the traditions and the hopes
of a great middle-class nation."

One of the most ominous anti-democratic developments during this early
stage of the New Deal— a development receiving scant attention in commen-
taries on the period— was the rapid growth of a government secret police
apparatus. It was at this time that the Federal Bureau of Investigation mush-
roomed into a government agency of extensive power and that FBI chief,
J. Edgar Hoover, began his climb to national fame.

The criminal underworld faced hard times in 1933. The repeal of Prohibi-
tion had dealt a death blow to the multi-million dollar business of bootlegging;
and, as an increasing number of criminals turned to less lucrative and more
desperate trades, there was a wave of kidnappings and bank robberies. The
FBI had done nothing to interfere with the vast depredations of gangsters
during Prohibition; but now, with the children and property of even the most
prominent and wealthy citizens menaced, there was a sudden demand for
federal action. Congress enacted laws extending the jurisdiction of the FBI
to cover bank robberies, kidnappings and various other crimes.

J. Edgar Hoover was quick to exploit the situation. Before long, the dare-
devil exploits of his Special Agents, popularly known as "G-men," were the
talk of the country; and press, radio and motion pictures were chronicling
blood-curdling battles between the G-men and bank robbers, kidnappers and
escaped convicts. Overnight, the FBI became a household word.

"Five years ago, J. Edgar Hoover was practically an unknown as far as
the general public was concerned," Courtney Ryley Cooper, an FBI publicist
who also specialized in writing articles on circus lite and jungle animals,
stated in his introduction to Hoover's book, Fersons in Hiding, in 1938.
"Today he heads our best known group of man-hunters— the G-men. The
small boy is rare indeed who does not look upon its director as his ideal . ."

Through the indefatigable efforts of his large publicity staff, Hoover's views
on "scientific crime detection," "child delinquency" and kindred topics reached
the nation in a torrent of articles, press releases, public speeches, newspaper
interviews and radio broadcasts.

"He's the greatest publicity hound on the American continent," snorted
Senator George Norris regarding Hoover. "Unless we do something to stop
this furor of adulation and omnipotent praise, we will have an organization
of the FBI that, instead of protecting the government from criminals, will
direct the government itself."

In Hoover's Washington office there hung a framed statement, entitled
"The Penalty of Leadership," which read: "In every field of human endeavor,

127

While observing those NIRA regulations they found advan-
tageous, many employers were brazenly violating sections of the
codes supposedly designed to benefit employees. "For God's sake,"
a worker told the journalist George R. Leighton, who was in-
vestigating NIRA achievements in the fall 1933, "don't tell any-
body that you've been here. There are men in cement plants near
here who have complained and now they're out in the cold." In
Harper^ s Magazine Leighton reported that "the spirit and intent of
the National Industrial Recovery Act and the codes are being
frustrated, openly and in secret."

Workers began calling the NRA the "National Run Around" . . .

Even so, during 1934- 193 5, growing numbers of restive workers
were aggressively taking at its face value Section 7a of the NIRA,
which stated that "employees shall have the right to organize and
bargain collectively."

"The law is on our side!" boomed John L. Lewis, the histrionic
beetle-browed President of the United Mine Workers, and staking

he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of pubhcity . . . When
a man's work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a
target for the shafts of the envious few."

Year by year, subsidized by constantly increasing congressional appropria-
tions, the FBI grew in size and complexity. With much fanfare, Hoover
established a Crime Laboratory and founded, in 1935, an FBI National Police
Academy in Washington to serve "as a university of police methods" for
training police officials from all parts of the country. According to Hoover,
the fingerprints in his "Identification Division" numbered in the millions by
the mid-thirties. "They come from the crossroads of America," said Hoover,
"from the villages, from the towns, cities and metropolitan centers, to be
concentrated in Washington, and there to form a vast cross-index . . ."

The one-man dictatorship which Hoover had established within the FBI
itself was described as early as August 1933 by Ray Tucker in an editorial
in Collier's magazine in these words: "Under him [Hoover] the Bureau was
run in a Prussian style; it became a personal and political machine. iMore
inaccessible than Presidents, he kept his agents in fear and awe by firing and
shifting them at whim; no other government office had such a turnover of
personnel . . . He always opposed Civil Service qualifications for his men . . .
He was a law and czar unto himself."

According to Ray Tucker, Hoover "carried on and enlarged the best— or
worst— traditions of what amounts to a system of secret police":

". . . the bureau's shadows frequently had under surveillance such dignitaries
as prospective Cabinet members, government officials, publishers, newspaper
reporters, clerics, college professors, liberals, certain classes of the intel-
ligentsia, alleged Communists, labor leaders— and some criminals . . ."

Under Hoover's direction, said Tucker, the FBI by 1933 had become "a
miniature American Chcka."

^ In the years immediately ensuing, the FBI outgrew the "miniature" classifica-
tion. (For additional details on the FBI, see Book Four.)

128

his union's whole treasury in an organizational drive tripled the
union's membership in four months. Twelve thousand Pacific Coast
longshoremen headed by the militant rank-and-file leader, Harry
R. Bridges, striking in May, 1934, together with maritime workers,
brought shipping to a standstill from San Diego to Seattle; and in
mid-July, after strikers had been killed by police, the entire city
of San Francisco was tied up for four days by a general strike. In
1935 more than 40,000 National Guardsmen in nineteen states were
called out to suppress strikes. From one end of the country to the
other, industry fermented with bitter labor struggles, grim strikes
and union organizational campaigns.

In November, 1935, in a revolt headed by John L. Lewis against
the die-hard policies of the Old Guard in the AFL, the leaders
of eight AFL internationals founded the Committee for Industrial
Organization to build industrial unions and organize the unor-
ganized. . . .*

Meanwhile, the rich had grown even more disgruntled than the
poor with the New Deal. "The year 1933," Lammot du Pont,
president of the giant chemical concern of E.I. du Pont de Nemours
& Company, declared in January 1934, "has witnessed an adven-
turous attack by the Administration upon the pohtical, social and
economic ills of the country." Other leading industrialists and
financiers, who had at first smilingly accepted Roosevelt's "radical"
utterances as not unprecedented demogogy, reached the furious
conclusion that the President actually meant much of what he said
about the excesses of the "privileged few," the "humane ideals of
democracy," the right of the workers to organize and of the "un-
fortunate—to call upon the government for aid." As the New Deal,
responding to popular pressure, expanded its relief and public works
program, and as the trade union movement swelled in size, big
businessmen acrimoniously branded Roosevelt as a "traitor to his
class" and launched a virulent propaganda campaign against "that
Red in the White House" and his whole Administration. By the
spring of 1935, Kiplinger's Washington Newsletter estimated that
eighty percent of the businessmen in the country were opposed to
the New Deal.

* In September 1936 the Committee for Industrial Organization was sus-
pended with its adherents from the AFL by the AFL executive council. The
CIO held its first convention at Pittsburgh in November 1938, changed its
name to Congress of Industrial Organizations, and elected John L. Lewis
president.

129

The bitter hostility of big business toward the New Deal was not
lessened when, following a sweeping Democratic victory in the
November 1934 congressional elections, President Roosevelt told
the opening session of Congress on January 4, 1935:

We have ... a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must
forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through
excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and,
to our misfortune, over public affairs as well.

In Washington the "political deputies of wealth" prepared to
sabotage future New Deal legislation. According to a report in the
New York Times on February 24, a "Committee of 100" had been
formed in the House of Representatives "to hold secret meetings"
to map out anti-Administration strategy.

The Ti?7ies observed editorially:

.... we have a President with a nominal majority of two-thirds in both
houses of Congress, faced and thwarted every day by divisions within
his own ranks and threats of a spreading revolt against his most impor-
tant policies.

In the mid-summer of 1935, the New Deal crossed the Rubicon.
On May 27, the United States Supreme Court invalidated the
NIRA. The opinion supporting the decision, in the words of
Charles and Mary Beard, "seemed to block every loophole for the
regulation of procedures, hours and wages in industry by Federal
law."

At a Wliite House press conference of more than two hundred
newspapermen. President Roosevelt declared that the Court decision
was "more important than any decision probably since the Dred
Scott case." The President read excerpts from a few of the thou-
sands of telegrams he had received asking him whether there was
nothing he could do to "save the people."

"The big issue," said Roosevelt, "is this: Does this decision mean
that the United States Government has no control over any eco-
nomic problem?"

Roosevelt was determined this was not to be the case.

One month later, on June 27, Congress passed the National Labor
Relations Act. Deriving its legal sanction from the power of Con-
gress to regulate interstate commerce, the Act established a per-
manent National Labor Relations Board to investigate complaints
and issue "cease and desist" orders prohibiting interference by em-
130

ployers in the collective bargaining of their employees, main-
tenance of company-financed unions, discrimination against union
members in employment and other unfair labor practises.

The battle Hnes were now sharply drawn, and President Roose-
velt made clear to the American people on which side he stood.
In his first Fireside Chat of 1936, the President declared:

We insist that labor is entitled to as much respect as property. But
our workers with hand and brain deserve more than respect for their
labor. They deserve practical protection in the opportunity to use their
labor at a return adequate to support them at a decent and constantly
rising standard of living, and to accumulate a margin of security against
the inevitable vicissitudes of life. . • •

Roosevelt continued:

There are those who fail to read both the signs of the times and those
of American history. They would try to refuse the worker any effec-
tive power to bargain collectively, to earn a decent living and to acquire
security. It is these short-sighted ones, not labor, who threaten this coun-
try with that class dissension which in other countries has led to dic-
tatorship and the establishment of fear and hatred as the dominant emo-
tions in life.

Throughout the 1930's the nation was to be rent by a bitter con-
flict instigated by the "short-sighted ones" of whom Roosevelt
spoke.

The nature of this conflict had been prophetically described by
Theodore Dreiser in 193 1 in these words: "the great quarrel today
in America is between wealth and poverty— whether an individual,
however small and poor, shall retain his self-respect and his life, or
whether a commercial oligarchy shall at last and finally take charge
and tell all the others— some 125,000,000 strong now— how they
shall do and what they shall think and how little (not how much)
they may live on, the while a few others (the strong and cunning)
exercise their will and their pleasure as they choose. That is the
war that is coming!"

Chapter ix

FORCE AND VIOLENCE

It is one of our proudest boasts that the American working class has,
generally speaking, the highest standard of living of any working class
in the world. How did our workingmen achieve this position? Only
through struggle, intense struggle against bitter opposition, and especially
through the struggle of organized labor.

From a speech by Rockwell Kent, September 1948

Those who call for violence against radicals, strikers and Negroes go
scot-free. Not a conviction, not a prosecution in fifteen years. . . . But
the reactionaries not only incite violence; they practice it ... It is
plain . . . that those who defend majority prejudice or property rights
may not only advocate but practice violence against their enemies with-
out fear of prosecution.

American Civil Liberties Union Report, ips6

I understand sixty or seventy-five shots were fired in Wednesday's
fight. If this is true, there are thirty or thirty-five of the bullets accounted
for. I think the officers are damned good marksmen. If I ever organize
an army they can have jobs with me. I read that the death of each
soldier in the World War consumed more than five tones of lead. Here
we have less than five pounds and these casualties. A good average, I
call it.

R. W. Baldwin, president of the Marion Mantcfacturing
Company, as quoted in the ^^Asheville Citizen''^ after the
killing of six unarmed strikers at his plant and the wounding
of eighteen by deputies on October i, 1929

I. King of the Strikebreakers

In JANUARY 1935, Fortune magazine featured an article describing
the remarkable career of an American millionaire whose fame and
fortune had been, according to the magazine's editors, "in a business
that is permitted to exist nowhere except in the U.S."

132

The millionaire's name was Pearl L. Bergoff. His business was pro-
fessional strikebreaking.

The opening sentences of the Fortune article posed this hypo-
thetical problem to the reader:

You are the president. It says so on your office door. A week ago
your workers— your "boys" as you used to fondly refer to them—
served notice on you that you had just seven days in which to make
up your mind to raise their pay from $4.00 to $4.50 a day. Either that
or else . . . You are within some twelve hours of the deadline . . . your
head has not stopped aching for four days and four nights.

How much did that guy say he wanted? For fifty thousand dollars
he'd give you an absolute guarantee that he would break the strike,
smash the union, and leave you undisputed master of your plant. For
fifty thousand dollars and how many broken heads?

The article went on:

The foregoing is meant to convey some slight idea of the mental
confusion into which the average executive falls when he is confronted
with the appalling crisis of a strike ... if, at last, he decides to face
the issue and fight it through, the probabilities are that he will rise up
and telephone one Mr. Pearl L. Bergoff, of Bergoff Service, in New York
City. For Mr. Bergoff is the oldest, toughest, hardest-boiled prac-
titioner in the field of professional strikebreaking. There is nothing
indecisive about Mr. Bergoff.

For more than two decades, Pearl Bergoff had enjoyed national
fame. Newspapers throughout America referred familiarly to the
redheaded strikebreaker as "The Red Demon." Thousands of
professional gunmen and petty racketeers respectfully called him
"The General." Bergoff's own preference in titles was one which
he himself had coined— "King of the Strikebreakers."

There had been other widely known strikebreakers before Pearl
Bergoff, and he had a number of eminently successful contem-
poraries. But for the ruthless smashing of major strikes, for un-
restrained bloody violence and for distinguished clients, there was
no strikebreaker in America in the early 1930's to equal Bergoff's
record. It was Pearl Bergoff who put strikebreaking in the United
States on a modern, mass production basis.

"Money is my sole aim," stated Bergoff when, as a tough, bull-
necked, quick-witted young man he arrived in New York City at
the turn of the century, opened up a detective agency and began
oflFering his services as personal bodyguard to wealthy New

Yorkers. In 1907 he decided that there was, in his own words,
"more money in industrial work." By "industrial work" BergoflF
meant strikebreaking.

With the country entering a period of depression and intense
labor strife, there was an immediate widespread demand among
employers for the "industrial services" of the Bergoff Detective
Bureau. In the words of Fortune magazine: "An exquisitely profit-
able decade stood ahead of him." . . .

As his reputation for effective strikebreaking grew during the
next years, and more offers of work than he could handle poured
into his office, Bergoff became extremely particular about the jobs
he accepted. Sometimes, as a personal favor for some important
concern, Bergoff agreed to break a small strike, provided of course
that the fee was adequate. But ordinarily, Bergoff specialized in
breaking major strikes in key industries. "Others may break a but-
ton-hole makers' strike," said Bergoff. "When it's a steel strike they
call on me."

These were some of the numerous American firms which em-
ployed Bergoff 's services during 1907- 193 5:

Pressed Steel Car Company

Erie Railroad

Munson Steamship Line

Holland-American Line

Postal Telegraph-Cable Company

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

Baldwin Locomotive Works

Southern Pacific Railroad

Pennsylvania Railroad

New York Central Railroad

Interborough Rapid Transit of

New York City
Standard Oil of New York
Standard Oil of New Jersey
Wells Fargo Express Company
Trenton Street Railway
Morgan Steamship Line
Wilson Steamship Line
Havana-American Steamship Line
American Smelting and Refining

Company

The fees that Bergoff received for breaking strikes were com-
mensurate with the prominence of his clients in the business world.
By 1925, the net profits of Bergoff 's firm had totaled $10,000,000.
His own income at the time was $100,000 a year in salary, plus
several hundred thousand dollars in dividends and bonuses. His
personal fortune was then estimated at $4,000,000.*

* In 1925, following a sharp unexpected decline in his business, Pearl Bergoff
went into temporary retirement. "I closed the office," he subsequently related,
"and went to Florida . . . and took a flier in real estate."

After dropping $2,000,000 in Florida land speculations, Bergoff returned to

134

"The preparation for breaking a strike," Pearl Bergoff told a
journalist in 1934, "resembles the mobilization of a small army for
actual warfare."

To aid in mobilizing his strikebreaking army and directing its
operations in the field, Bergoff hired as special aides a group of
hand-picked ruffians, most of whom had prison records and all of
whom were adept in the use of fists, guns, knives and blackjacks.
Bergoff called these aides his "nobles."

For his "army reserves," as he termed them, Bergoff relied chiefly
on derelicts, hoodlums, petty criminals and professional strike-
breakers. Their function was to fill the jobs of striking workers,
and, if not actually to work themselves, to give at least the appear-
ance of active production by such devices as keeping smoke pour-
ing from factory chimneys. These men were known as Bergoff 's
"finks."

It was understood that the few dollars a day which Bergoff's
finks were paid did not represent their full remuneration and was
to be supplemented by whatever tools, factory equipment, clothing
and other goods they could steal while on the job. "Bergoff's finks,"
wrote Edward Levinson in 1935 in his book / Break Strikes/ The
Tech?iique of Pearl L. Bergoff, "have stolen everything from
plumbing fixtures to $50,000 worth of furs."

Classifying them according to "training and experience," Bergoff
maintained a huge list of the "finks" and "nobles" he had employed
throughout his years of strikebreaking. "This list," he said, "is my
most priceless stock in trade, the core of my business, and could
not be duplicated or retraced because it is the product of time
primarily, combined with the exercise of discrimination and grilling
experience."

New York City and reorganized his strikebreaking firm under the name,
Bergoff Service Bureau.

Bergoff's new headquarters occupied four rooms on the fourteenth floor of
the Fred F. French Building at 551 Fifth Avenue. In the sparsely furnished
reception room there hung a sign which read: "No loud noise or profanity."
Before being admitted to the inner office, visitors were carefully scrutinized
through an iron-grilled peephole. Bergoff's own private office was adorned
with framed newspaper clippings of his exploits and testimonial letters from
leading business executives.

Following the stock market crash of 1929, the Bergoff Service Bureau,
together with other outstanding business concerns, temporarily encountered
difficult times. Said Bergoff later, "Business was so rotten we had to sell our
arsenal. Conditions were terrible. Fm not blaming Mr. Hoover, y'understand."

Here are the names and records of typical "nobles" on Bergoff's
list:

James Francis O^Donnelly alias Two-Gun Jim O^Donnell: Grand
larceny, 191 7, New York City, term at Blackwell's Island; man-
slaughter, 1926, Dumont, N.J., sentenced to eight years in New
Jersey State Prison.

Jajnes Weiler, alias Joe Spanish: manslaughter, 19 19, New York City,
term at Dannemora Prison; assault, 1925, New York City; felonious
assault, 1934, discharged.

John B. Baron, alias Jesse Mandel: Petty larceny, 1903, New York
City; petty larceny, 1905, New York City, sent to Reformatory;
grand larceny, 1909, New York City, sent to Elmira Reformatory;
grand larceny, 191 o. New York City, sentenced to five years in
Sing Sing.

James Tadlock: drug addiction, 192 r, Philadelphia, Pa., rw'o years and
six months confinement; impairing morals of a minor, 1934, New
York City, penitentiary term.

William Stern, alias Kid Stei?iie: petty larceny, 191 1, New York City,
three months sentence; homicide, 1920, New York City, ten to
twenty years in Sing Sing.

Joseph Cohen, alias Joe Pullman: robbery, 1924, Cleveland, Ohio,
pleaded guilty to assault and battery, fined; assault and battery,
1930, Cleveland, Ohio, discharged; carrying concealed weapons,
1930, Cleveland, Ohio, discharged; violation of Harrison Narcotic
Act, 193 1, sixty days in jail; assault, 1932, no disposition recorded;
assault, 1932, St. Louis, Mo., no disposition recorded; disorderly
person, 1934, Jersey City, N.J., ninety days in jail.

"When we put a man on strike duty as a guard," stated Bergoff,
"we want a man of good habits. At the same time we cannot have
any Sunday School teachers working for us."

Violence and bloodshed invariably accompanied Bergoff's strike-
breaking activities. "Injuries and fatalities," reported Fortune, "were
of only minor concern to him. His aim was psychological."

Since local law enforcement agencies usually worked in collusion
with the powerful corporations which employed Bergoff, his strike-
breakers committed innumerable crimes with impunity. His armies
of derelicts and gunmen descended on city after city, like hordes
of medieval mercenaries, robbing and terrorizing whole popula-
tions, and leaving in their bloody wake a mounting toll of injured
and dead.

The deliberate provocation of violence was a regular practise
with BergofiF. A Bergoff gunman, "Frenchy" Joe, told the Collier's
writer, John Craige, during one strikebreaking operation:

'36 ,

"You give me twenty-five good guards with clubs and guns, and put
'em in wagons, and give me a couple of stool-pigeons with guns to
run through the crowds and fire at the wagons to give us a chance
to start, and we'd run through the crowds in this town in a day . . .
We'd gentle 'em. We'd give 'em such a taming they'd run every time
they saw an express wagon, or else they'd get down on their knees
and say their prayers. And look at the things we could shake out of
this town if the thing worked right."

"For those who preferred the unexpected," relates Edward Levin-
son in his biography of Bergoff, "there were the two Bergoff
lunatics, Francis W. Magstadt and Joe Schultz,— one escaped from
an asylum and the other on his way to one. Turned loose among a
group of unsuspecting strikers, they could be counted upon to slug
and shoot, unfettered by the cramping bonds of sanity." *

On October 24 and 25, 1934, ^^ ^ series of two signed articles
in the New York Post, entitled "I Break Strikes," Bergoff reviewed

* A typical if early Bergoff campaign was that which took place when the
Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company hired him in 1910 to break a strike of
5000 motormen and conductors seeking an increase in their 21 cent an hour
wage. For weeks a reign of terror gripped Philadelphia. Bergoff's strikebreakers
robbed shops, broke into private homes and shot strikers and other Phila-
delphia citizens. On one occasion a gang of drunken Bergoff strikebreakers
piled into two trolley cars, and took them on a mad rampage of the city,
shooting wildly at people in the streets and wounding about a dozen people,
including a sleeping infant.

"The first day of the strike two of our men were killed," Bergoff sub-
sequently related. "I buried one of them at our own expense. He was a man
with a family."

The journalist, John Craige, who was in Philadelphia during the strike,
reported in an article in Collier's: "Never before were there such systematic,
wilful, brutal, unprovoked assaults upon an unoffending populace in an Amer-
ican city. There has never been such wholesale pilfering and looting. If you
gave the strikebreaking conductor a coin you got no change. If you protested
you were thrown off the car and clubbed, and if you resisted you ran a fine
chance of being shot. I will never forget the sight of a mother with a child
in her arms . . . staggering along, blood pouring from three jagged cuts in
her head, administered by one of these guards."

The Philadelphia police made no attempt to prevent the outrages committed
by Bergoff's strikebreakers.

During the two months taken by Bergoff to break the Philadelphia Rapid
Transit strike, sixteen men, women and children were killed.

Fatalities frequently accompanied Bergoff's strikebreaking activities. For
example, in his attempt to smash a strike at The Pressed Car Steel Works at
AlcKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, in 1909— a venture which first gained Bergoff
national repute— there were twenty-two deaths. Among the dead were two
Bergoff gunmen. "We paid four or five thousand dollars for each of our men
killed," said Bergoff afterwards. "The income was so large that this expense
made no difference."

his record as a strikebreaker with the pride of an eminently success-
ful self-made businessman.

"Strikebreaking is my profession," wrote Bergoff. "I have been
a leader in the field for more then thirty years, almost without in-
terruption. I have mobilized small armies on a few hours' notice an-
swering the call of railroads, traction and steamship companies in
scores of cities . . ."

According to Bergoff, the basic techniques of strikebreaking had
changed very little since he first entered the profession. The chief
objective was still to undermine the morale of the strikers and
"persuade" them of the hopelessness of their cause. There had, it
was true, been some developments in the instruments of persuasion:

In the old days we maintained an arsenal. We had 2,500 rifles with
plenty of ammunition. A couple of thousand nightsticks and clubs were
always on hand. Today we keep pace with the modern requirements.
We sent tear gas to Georgia in the recent textile strike . . .*

Noting that the net income derived from any business enterprise
was the ultimate test of its success, Bergoif observed: "The profits
of strikebreaking have been large." But success could not, of course,
be measured in financial terms alone. He had other causes for gratifi-
cation:

... I have come to look upon the services rendered by my organiza-
tion to commerce and industry as basically similar to those of the
physician to the ailing individual. I believe there is an academic or col-
legiate degree of "Doctor of Economics" but I feel that I can justly
lay claim to that of "Doctor of Practical Economics," without expos-
ing myself to undue criticism."

There were others in America who had come to share BergofF's
own estimate of his importance as an American citizen. Newspapers
in the early 1930's quoted the millionaire strikebreaker's views on
national and international affairs. Financial journals commented on

* The article on Pearl Bergoff in Fortune magazine had this to say about
his arsenal: "He values his current arsenal at $14,500 and replenishes it from
time to time as fresh bargains come along. Tear gas he buys from Federal
Laboratories, Inc. in Pittsburgh, [For data on Federal Laboratories, Inc. see
pages 145 ff.] Night sticks he buys by the gross from police supply houses, of
which there are many in Chicago and New York, with Cahn-Walter Co. of
Lafayette Street, Manhattan, getting the bulk of Bergoff orders. Brass knuckles
are available from numerous sources. As to machine guns: a recent federal
statute requires that owners of them be registered— but a considerable bootleg
traffic goes on in them nonetheless, and they can usually be had by anyone
who puts his mind to it."

138

the phenomenal success of the Bergoff Service Bureau. A grand
jury investigating riots connected with one of Bergoff's strike-
breaking operations extended a vote of thanks to him "for saving
the city from disaster."

Among Bergoff's friends and social acquaintances were well-
known politicians and prominent businessmen. Bergoif played golf
at fashionable country clubs, donated impressive sums to charity,
and joined the Cathohc Church. In Bayonne, New Jersey, where he
had settled with his family, Bergoff financed the construction of an
office building with his initials, "P.L.B.," carved in gothic letters on
the facade ...

In December 1934, after twenty-seven years of transporting
armies of desperadoes about the countryside, terrorizing whole cities
and causing the deaths of scores of citizens, Pearl Bergoff finally
appeared in a court of law. The charges against him were brought
not by any state or federal agency, but by a group of ex-convicts
and professional strikebreakers. Their complaint was that Bergoff
had hired them to help break a strike and then failed to reimburse
them for their services. They were suing Bergoff for wages and
traveling expenses.

The trial took place in the Municipal Court of the City of New
York, with Justice Keyes Winter presiding.

Bergoff's attorney sought to discredit the testimony of his client's
former employees by challenging their credibility as witnesses.
"Were you ever convicted of a crime.^" he asked Harry Borak, a
swarthy young man wearing spats.

Borak turned indignantly to Judge Winter. "Judge, I'm not a
stickup man," he protested. "I was going with a girl. She wouldn't
marry me and I shot her. I was a young man and I was in love."

When another of the plaintiffs, Bennie Mann, took the witness
stand, Judge Winter leaned forward, staring at a prominent bulge
in one of the man's pockets. The judge asked Mann, "Have you a
gun on you?"

"Sure," said Mann.

"And why do you come into this court with a gun?" demanded
Judge Winter.

"I was expecting to go to work this morning," Mann explained.

When Bergoff testified, he proudly informed the court, "I've
served American industry, north, south, east and west. I've been

139

thirty years in harness to American industry. I've shipped armies of
men to Cuba and Canada. Railroad strikes, dock strikes, transit
strikes and textile strikes, I've broken them all in my time, and
there's still plenty of demand for my services . . ."

The charges against him, snapped Bergoff, darting venomous
glances at his accusers, were absolutely false. His professional
ethics, he declared, were highly esteemed among business leaders.
"Railroad presidents, I know them all and they've all used me,"
Bergoff told the judge. "In the history of my campaigns I've never
cheated a man out of a penny. I'm the best known of any strike-
breaker in the country."

Notwithstanding Bergoff 's eloquent plea, the decision of the
court went against him. Judge Winter ruled that Bergoff must pay
the strikebreakers the wages and expenses that were due them.

The blow to Bergoff's prestige was mitigated by the wording of
the court's decision. In it. Judge Winter spoke of Bergoff as "the
active genius of his profession" and made flattering reference to his
"fame as a leader in Industrial Service ... his masterly activities on
behalf of large corporations . . ."

Bergoff's "masterly activities," however, were drawing to a close.

With the rapid growth of the trade union movement, the passage
of the National Labor Relations Act, and the enactment of federal
legislation forbidding the transport of strikebreakers across state
lines, the bonanza days of Bergoff's profession were over.

In 1936 Pearl Bergoff, self-styled King of the Strikebreakers,
closed his office and went into permanent retirement.*

2. Blackguards and Blacklists

"We see no reflection in any way in the employment of detec-
tives," an attorney representing the Michigan Manufacturers Asso-

* On August II, 1947, Pearl L. Bergoff died in the St. Vincent's Hospital
in New York City. The hospital records reveal a final gesture of vanity: on
entering the hospital a week before his death, Bergoff had claimed to be eight
years younger than he actually was.

"I knew him a long time," wrote Westbrook Pegler in his syndicated column
in the Hearst press. "Pearl Bergoff was never on the Communist side. He was
a law and order man. Pearl was a wonderful strikebreaker ... I think he
was cleaner and more honest than any union boss in the U. S. A. Breaking
strikes was a straight business with him. He never rumbled about democracy
or human rights."

140

elation told the members of the Senate Civil Liberties Committee
in 1937. " 'Detective' and 'spy' are two names that are used in a
derogatory sense, but even a spy has a necessary place in time of
war."

In the war against trade unionism in America, labor espionage had
long been regarded by big business as a weapon of vital importance.
For more than half a century, secret battalions of professional labor
spies, detectives, agents-provocateurs and paid informers had been
waging clandestine warfare against the labor movement. But it was
not until the advent of the New Deal, and the outmoding of the
crude strikebreaking tactics of the Bergoff era, that labor espionage
operations reached their peak offensive.

By 1936 there were more than 200 labor espionage agencies doing
a land office business in the United States.

Three of the largest and most successful of these agencies, with
branch offices functioning in dozens of cities, were the Pinkerton's
National Detective Agency, the Railway Audit and Inspection
Company and the Corporations Auxiliary Company.

Among the approximately 500 clients serviced by Corporations
AuxiHary Company during 1934-1936 were these concerns:

Aluminum Co. of America Kellogg Co.

Chrysler Corp. (23 plants) Kelvinator Corp.

Diamond Match Company Midland Steel Products Co.

Dixie Greyhound Lines New York Edison Co.

Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. Radio Corp. of America

General A4otors Corp. (13 plants) Standard Oil Co.

International Shoe Co. Statler Hotels, Inc.

Here is a partial list of the firms with which the Pinkerton
Agency had accounts:

Bethlehem Steel Co. National Cash Register Co.

Campbell Soup Co. Montgomery Ward & Co.

Curtis Publishing Co. Pennsylvania R.R. Co.

General Motors Corp. Shell Petroleum Corp.

Libbey-Owens Ford Glass Co. Sinclair Refining Co.

The Railway Audit and Inspection Company Included these com-
panies among its clients:

Borden Aiilk Co. Frigidaire Corp.

Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. Pennsylvania Greyhound Bus Co.

H. C. Frick Coal and Coke Co. Western Union

Consolidated Gas Co. of New Western Electric & Mfg. Co.
York

141

"The known total of business firms receiving spy services from
these [labor espionage] agencies is approximately 2,500," the Senate
La Follette Committee investigating violations of free speech and
rights of labor reported in December 1937. "The list as a whole
reads like a bluebook of American industry."

The labor espionage expenditures of General Motors alone
amounted to approximately $1,000,000 from January 1934 to July
1936.

According to statistics compiled in 1936 by Heber Blankenhorn,
industrial economist on the National Labor Relations Board, the
total operating costs for that year of labor espionage agencies in
the United States exceeded $80,000,000.

"The main purpose of industrial espionage," writes Leo Huber-
man in The Labor Spy Racket, "is union-prevention and union-
smashing."

To accomplish these aims, labor espionage agencies depended
chiefly on the systematic promotion of disunity and dissension
among employees, particularly through the use of Red-baiting; the
widespread distribution of anti-union propaganda; and the compila-
tion of extensive blackhsts of union members and sympathizers.

As privately advertised by Robert J. Foster of the Foster In-
dustrial and Detective Bureau, these were the services offered by
his firm:

FIRST:— I will say that if we are employed before any union or or-
ganization is formed by the employees, there will be no strike and no
disturbance. This does not say that there will be no unions formed, but it
does say that we will control the activities of the union and direct its
policies provided we are allowed a free hand by our clients.

SECOND:— If a union is already formed . . . although we are not
in the same position as we would be in the above case, we could— and
I believe with success— carry on an intrigue which would result in
factions, disagreement, resignations of officers and a general decrease in
membership.

A more genteel approach in the solicitation of business was used
by the Corporations Auxiliary Company:

We start on every operation with the idea of making our operative
a power in his little circle for good, and, as his acquaintance grows,
the circle of his influence enlarges . . .

Wherever our system has been in operation for a reasonable length
of time . . , the result has been that union membership has not in-
142

creased, if our clients wished otherwise. A number of local unions
have been disbanded. We eliminate the agitator and the organizer
quietly, and with little or no friction.

Some of the duties of labor spies were outlined in these instruc-
tions from the Railway Audit and Inspection Company to one of
its hundreds of undercover agents:

It will be necessary that you mingle with the employees so that you
can win their confidence to such an extent that the men will confide
in you, as to just what they are doing, etc.

It will be necessary that you render a good, detailed, lengthy report
each and every day covering conditions as you find them, reporting
in detail the conversations you hold, those you overhear, etc.

Report . . . whether there is any union agitation, etc.

On Sundays and when not working in the plant it will be necessary
that you render a report, and in order to do so, so that the client can
be billed for the day, it will be essential that you associate with some
of the employees, i.e., visit them, so that you will be able to obtain
from some of the employees information that you may be able to secure
in no other way, for much information of value to the client is gained
in this way.

Of all information gathered by labor spies, the identification of
active trade unionists was generally considered most important.
Each week lengthy lists of such employees were compiled by labor
espionage agencies and turned over to their clients. Employees thus
designated were promptly fired and their names added to con-
fidential blacklists. Describing a typical instance of the use of such
blacklists, Edwin S. Smith, a member of the National Labor Rela-
tions Board, stated:

I have never listened to anything more tragically un-American than
stories of the discharged employees of the Fruehauf Trailer Co., vic-
tims of a labor spy. Man after man in the prime of life, of obvious
character and courage, came before us to tell of the blows that had
fallen on him for his crime of having joined a union. Here they were—
family men with wives and children— on public relief, blacklisted from
employment, so they claimed, in the city of Detroit, citizens whose
only offense was that they had ventured in the land of the free to or-
ganize as employees to improve their working conditions. Their reward,
as workers who had given their best to their employer, was to be
hunted down by a hired spy like the lowest of criminals and there-
after tossed like useless metal on the scrap heap.

Another service featured by labor espionage agencies was the
forming of company unions. Created with the aim of preventing
employees from joining bona-fide unions, and secretly controlled

143

and financed by the employers themselves, these company unions
were frequently officered by professional labor spies.

"Where it is desired that company unions be formed," stated a
brochure published by the labor-espionage Butler System of In-
dustrial Survey, "we first sell the idea to the workers and there-
after promote its development into completion. Hundreds of such
organizations have been formed to date."

By 1935, according to a survey conducted by the Twentieth
Century Fund, approximately 2,500,000 workers in the United
States were covered by company union plans . . .

In addition, labor espionage agencies made a special effort to
get their operatives placed as leading officials in bona-fide unions.

Posing as diligent trade unionists and sedulously cultivating
popularity among their "fellow workers," scores of labor spies
maneuvered their way into executive positions in the CIO, AFL
and Railroad Brotherhoods. Once in these posts, they vigorously
applied themselves to the task of undermining the unions through
a variety of disruptive devices.

So successful were the efforts of one Corporation Auxiliary
agent, who managed in 1935 to get elected as secretary of an AFL
Typewriter Workers Local in Hartford, Connecticut, that the local
was reduced from 2500 to 75 members within less than a year. In
Flint, Michigan, another local with labor spies among its officers
dropped from 26,000 members in 1935 to 122 members in 1936.

"It is very effective," reported the Pinkerton agent, Lawrence
Baker, regarding the labor espionage campaign for General Motors
at the Fisher Body factory in Lansing, Michigan. "One time at
Lansing-Fisher they were almost 100 per cent organized. And fi-
nally it went down to where there were only five officers left."

In its preliminary report to the U. S. Senate on February 8, 1937,
the La Follette Committee investigating violations of free speech and
rights of labor stated:

It is clear that espionage has become the habit of American manage-
ment. Until it is stamped out the rights of labor to organize, freedom
of speech, freedom of assembly wiH be meaningless phrases. Men can-
not meet freely to discuss their grievances or organize for economic
betterment; they may not even express opinions on politics or re-
ligion so long as the machinery of espionage pervades their daily
life . . .
144

The report added:

That private persons or interests should be allowed to maintain
arsenals is surprising enough. That industry should be permitted to
arm unscrupulous men under their own pay, gravely wearing the
badge of the law is startling. That there is allowed to flourish a
gigantic commercial enterprise in which employers collaborate with
professional spies in assaulting citizens because they exert their lawful
right to organize for collective bargaining, is shocking to any true
defender of constitutional government.

3. Gas and Guns

"Labor difficulties are in the making all over the country," wrote
Barker H. Bailey, vice-president of the Federal Laboratories, Inc.,
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a letter to one of the company's
traveling salesmen in the spring of 1934. "The man who has a terri-
tory with any appreciable amount of manufacturing . . . certainly
should be on the look-out for advantageous outlets for the protec-
tive devices which we have. It looks to me like the year 1934 may
be a very beautiful one for all of our men."

The Federal Laboratories "protective devices" to which Vice-
President Barker referred in his letter consisted of machine guns,
submachine guns, revolvers, automatic pistols, shot-guns, rifles, ar-
mored cars, gas guns, gas ejectors, gas mortars, ammunition, bullet-
proof vests, tear and sickening gas, gas projectiles, gas masks and
similar supplies.

Federal Laboratories, Inc. was one of the leading firms in the
United States engaged in the unique American business of selling
arms, ammunition, and other military supplies to private industry,
strikebreaking and labor espionage agencies, vigilante groups, state
and municipal law-enforcement bodies.*

Among the hundreds of clients serviced by Federal Laboratories
were such concerns as:

* The three principal concerns engaged in this business were Federal
Laboratories, Inc., the Lake Erie Chemical Company, and the Manville Manu-
facturing Company. During 1933-1936, the income of these three companies
from the sale of gas and gas equipment amounted to $1,040,621.14. This figure
was exclusive of income from the sale of machine guns, revolvers, rifles, am-
munition and other such equipment which grossed an additional several million
dollars.

It should be noted that the name Federal Laboratories, Inc. was only a trade
name, and that the concern had no official connection with any Government
agency.

American Hawaiian Steamship Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.

Co. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp.

Bendix Corp. L. A. Railway Corp.

Bethlehem Steel Co. Pacific R & H Chemical Corp.

Carnegie Steel Co. Pontiac Motor Car Co.

Chevrolet Motor Co. Sears Roebuck Co.
Chicago & Eastern Illinois Rail- Six Companies, Inc.

road Co. Standard Oil, Inc.

Chicago Tribune Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad

General Motors Corp. Co.

One of the largest stockholders in Federal Laboratories, Inc., was
the Atlas Powder Company of Wilmington, Delaware, whose in-
terests were closely affiliated with those of the great chemical firm,
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.

Since the operations of Federal Laboratories, Inc. often skirted on
the edge of the law, discretion and ingenuity were constantly re-
quired of the firm's representatives. Illustrative of this fact were
certain negotiations conducted by Federal Laboratories in San Fran-
cisco during the general strike in that city, in 1934.

A Federal Laboratories salesman had secured from the San Fran-
cisco chief of police an order for more than thirteen thousand
dollars' worth of gas and gas equipment. But difficulties in filHng the
order, according to a subsequent account by Federal Laboratories
Vice-President Bailey H. Barker, arose because of "the refusal of
certain officers of the city to honor the chief's request that he have
the shipment made." Barker himself hurried to San Francisco to
straighten matters out.

After a private conference with several representatives of west
coast steamship concerns. Barker wrote a letter to the Bank of
America which read in part as follows:

Bank of America NT. & SA.
Market New Montgomery Office
San Francisco, Calif.
Gentlemen:

We are handing you herewith a sealed envelope which we are asking
you to deliver on payment to you of $13,809.12.

When these funds are received by you then remit them to my parent
organization, the Federal Laboratories, Inc., i85-5ist Street, Pittsburgh,
Penn.

Yours very truly,
Federal Laboratories, Inc.
by B. H. Barker, Vice-Pres.

146

The "sealed envelope" delivered by Barker to the Bank of Amer-
ica contained Federal Laboratories' invoice for the gas and gas
equipment ordered by the San Francisco chief of poUce. In ex-
change, Barker received a cashier's check for $13,809.12. The gas
equipment, paid for by persons whose names were never made pub-
lic, was shipped to the San Francisco Police Department.

"We will not forget, I assure you, the peculiar tangle that we
found ourselves in," wrote Barker, on his return to Pittsburgh, in
a warmly appreciative letter to Ashfield Stow of the American-
Hawaiian Steamship Company, "and to find you not only willing
to advise, but ready to protect the activities of the people who, in
good faith, had been dealing with us, will remain in our memory
long after other things are forgotten."

Later that year, John W. Young, President of Federal Labora-
tories, Inc., circulated among the company's agents a memorandum
summarizing the firm's accomplishments during the previous
months. Young's memorandum began:

Gentlemen: We have been experiencing some very eventful days—
history-making days— not only in this business but in the destiny of our
country. Class struggle has become more defined and more pronounced.

Sales exceeded the million dollar mark by a healthy margin the first
six months of this year.

Indicating the international scope of his firm's operations. Young
reported:

Two car loads of gas have been shipped to Cuba and twenty-two
armored cars for police use all made by Federal Laboratories. Police
are being instructed in the use of this equipment and hardly a week
goes by but what gas is used in one or more cases . . .

But it was in the United States itself that business had been most
satisfactory. "Approximately $7,500.00 worth of Federal Gas was
shipped into Toledo for their trouble," wrote Young. "$20,000.00
worth into Youngstown, $25,000.00 to Pittsburgh, $10,000.00 to
Wisconsin and $5,000.00 to Seattle."

The President of Federal Laboratories concluded:

You have probably noticed that in the newspaper accounts there
are many items where tear gas has been effective. The reason for this
is that police departments are becoming better educated in how to use
the gas. They use plenty of it and in checking back we find they have
been using Federal Gas in the majority of cases.

I want to especially compliment Baxter, Roush, Baum, Grieg, Fisher,

147

Richardson and those boys who have given their personal services to
direct the activities of the police in the use of this equipment during
times of emergency.

Joseph M. Roush, one of the Federal Laboratories agents singled
out for special commendation in President Young's letter, had been
dispatched to California by the Pittsburgh office early in 1934. With
labor strife intensifying all along the west coast, Federal Labora-
tories executives wanted one of their most capable representatives
on the spot. Their confidence in Roush was not misplaced . . .

After a preliminary survey of the California situation, Roush re-
ported in a letter to Bailey H. Barker, the vice-president of Federal
Laboratories, that business prospects were exceedingly promising.

"One reaction that was practically universal throughout the
whole state," wrote Roush, "is that this year will witness the worst
strikes and riots in the history of our country . . . Next month
should be a good one. Another strike is expected in the Imperial
Valley . . ."

A number of other "nice, juicy strikes" were in the offing, added
Roush, and there was every reason to anticipate a "healthy demand"
in the near future for machine guns and other firearms, and par-
ticularly for tear gas products, in California.

In subsequent reports, Roush informed his superiors that he was
making a special effort to push the sale of a new piece of Federal
Laboratories merchandise. Technically known as Diphenylamine-
chlor ursine (DM) and more colloquially referred to as Sickening
Gas, this product w^as described in Federal Laboratories promotional
literature as follows:

The liquid chemical is used for lachrymating purposes. It also causes
nausea, severe headache, vomiting, etc. A severe dose will incapacitate
a person for six to eight hours. While it is also considered as a toxic
gas in closed quarters, no reports of fatalities have ever been reported
from its use in the field.

"I hope all the Reds get sickening gas in L. A.," wrote Roush
in one letter. "I will do what I can about it up here" . . .

Like most traveling salesmen, Roush carried in his sales kit
various promotional material designed to stimulate the sale of his
merchandise. When soliciting business he was rarely without a copy
of The Red Network by Elizabeth Dilling, the anti-Communist
propagandist who was later to be tried on charges of conspiring
148

with Nazi Germany against the U. S. Government.* DilHng's book
was used by Roush to indicate to prospective customers the extent
to which "Red agents" had infiltrated American society and the
desirability of using Federal Laboratories equipment as a "protec-
tion" against them. Roush also usually had on hand, for distribution
among potential buyers and regular clients, a pamphlet entitled
The Red Line of Crime and Civil Disorder A

During the early summer months, Roush encountered unexpected
difficulties in the sale of his tear gas products. Potential customers
were plentiful, but, as Roush notified Bailey H. Barker, certain state
legislation was creating a really serious problem.

The State Tear Gas Law certainly played heck with my business . . .
You will remember the trouble we had during the Meat Strike about
permits, well the City absolutely refuses to issue permits for any more
private companies. How do you like that . . .

Showing a sympathetic understanding of Roush's plight. Barker
wrote in reply, "If this cannot be corrected locally, I don't suppose
there is a thing we can do from here, and the disappointment will
just have to be swallowed, in the hopes that other types of business
. . . can be secured."

Roush, however, whose sales commissions depended largely on

* Elizabeth Dilling, and the twenty-nine other alleged pro-Nazi seditionists
tried with her in 1944, were never convicted. A mistrial was declared after the
death of the judge during the trial, and the defendants were never again
placed on trial.

t Anti-Communist propaganda material was regularly supplied by Federal
Laboratories to all salesmen and field representatives for promotional purposes.

On July 24, 1934, in a bulletin addressed 'To all Federal Agents," Federal
Laboratories President John W. Young notified his representatives that he
was sending them copies of Elizabeth DQling's The Red Network as an indica-
tion of "the danger of revolution" in this country. "We are heading for plenty
of trouble and it is time for all of the American patriotism you can manifest,"
declared Young. "Whatever you do, read this book when you get the time.
Carry it with you and get every police chief and sheriff you talk to to buy
one; get each industrial leader to buy one. We would be glad to fill these
orders at cost ... in an effort to stir up the American public to prepare
for the things that are facing us."

Another communication from Young addressed To All Age?2ts read in
part: "The Third International ... at their convention in Moscow this month
manifested a change in policy. They are no longer secretly planning revolu-
tion. They came out and openly boasted of the progress they are making
in various countries, especially the United States." In concluding this com-
munication, Young observed: "The most attractive order of the week was one
for 12 Thompson submachine guns from the city of Detroit, through George
Grieg."

149

tear gas orders, was stubbornly determined not to lose this business.
He made a point of cultivating the acquaintance of Clarence Mor-
rill, the Chief of the State Division of Criminal Identification and
Investigation. Morrill had the authority to approve or deny permits
for the sale of gas and machine guns throughout California.

One day, Roush called Barker in Pittsburgh by long distance
telephone. Would Barker agree, asked Roush, to giving Morrill
the exclusive right to handle Federal Laboratories sales in Alaska?

Barker promptly answered in the affirmative.

Thereafter, no difficulties were encountered in getting permits
for the sale of gas and machine guns throughout CaUfornia.

In a lengthy letter to Barker on July 22, 1934, two days after the
end of the general strike in San Francisco, Roush gave a jubilant
account of how his business had "picked up":

The evening of July 2, Sergeant Mclnerney and Officer Myron
Gernea . . . asked me if I would go with them in the Headquarters' car
the next morning and take some of my gas equipment. They said they
expected considerable rioting and would appreciate my experience in
the use of gas . . . We started out to do battle with (gas) equipment
and two shotguns. We did not have long to wait. The first riot started
early in the morning and we went in with short range shells and
grenades.

When some of the "rioters"— striking longshoremen who were
peacefully picketing the San Francisco waterfront— began picking
up the gas grenades and hurling them back at the police, Roush
recommended that "long range shells" be used by the police. "Be-
lieve me," he wrote, "they solved the problem. From then on each
riot was a victory for us ... It was most interesting as well as
educational. . . ."

The gas shells achieved such "remarkable results" on the water-
front, related Roush, that not only the San Francisco PoHce De-
partment but numerous other customers started placing large orders
for Federal Laboratories equipment:

It was a landslide of business for us. Immediately following the busi-
ness from San Francisco came orders for gas and machine guns from
the surrounding territory . . . Naturally I was in seventh heaven.

As it was unsafe to leave our stock in the warehouse, I moved it
into the San Francisco Police Department vault . . . No one could have
received more courtesies than were extended to mt by the Berkeley
Police Department, the Oakland Police Department and the District
Attorney's office and the San Francisco Police Department. The com-

150

pany and myself certainly owe them a debt of gratitude . . . The Berke-
ley Department furnished us office space, telephone service, and even
gasoline when it was impossible to obtain any throughout the city.

Roush said he was obtaining photographs of the waterfront
"riots" which he would forward to the home office. "I might
mention," he added, "that during one of the riots, I shot a long
range projectile into a group, a shell hitting one man and causing
a fracture of the skull, from which he has since died. As he was a
Communist, I have had no feeling in the matter and I am sorry that
I did not get more."

Roush's letter concluded:

Now let me at this time thank you from the bottom of my heart for
the very wonderful cooperation that you gave me. No words can ex-
press the feelings I have on the matter . . . Please convey my thanks
to all the members of the company that made this business possible
for us. I can think of no greater inspiration to get out and get more
business than the knowledge of how firmly the factory and its per-
sonnel are behind me . . .

I shall make San Francisco my permanent headquarters ... I find it so
practical and pleasant I shall continue to live here . . .

With best personal regards to you and the rest of the company, I
remain,

Sincerely yours,
JOSEPH M. ROUSH.*

* Despite the exultant tone of Roush's letter, West Coast corporations were
faced with certain problems which could not be solved with gas and machine
guns. Not the least of these problems was the Australian-born labor leader,
Harry Bridges.

As Bridges emerged during and following the San Francisco strike of 1934
as one of the outstanding and most militant labor leaders in the country (in
1937 Bridges became President of the International Longshoremen's and Ware-
housemen's Union), an extraordinary campaign was launched to deport him
as a "Communist" seeking to overthrow the U. S. Government "by force
and violence." At the same time, Bridges' own efforts to become a citizen were
systematically obstructed.

Prompted by big business interests, the Labor Department conducted an
exhaustive investigation of Bridges; but in 1936 a Department memorandum
stated the investigation had failed to uncover "any legal grounds" for deport-
ing him. Even so, in March 1938, the Department issued a deportation warrant
against Bridges, charging him with being a Communist.

In 1939 a deportation hearing lasting eleven weeks was held before James
M. Landis, dean of the Harvard Law School. Dean Landis ruled that the
Government had failed to prove Bridges a Communist and that there were
no grounds for his deportation. The deportation warrant was cancelled and
the proceedings were dropped.

In June 1940 a bill passed the House of Representatives, with the stated
purpose of deporting Bridges; the bill died in the Senate. Immediately there-

4- Techniques of Terror

In later years, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, with its
6,000,000 members, was to be almost universally recognized as a
vital and integral part of American society. But in the mid-thirties,
those laboring men and women who set out to build the CIO
were often treated as common criminals, were widely branded as
"Communist conspirators" and traitors to their country, repeatedly
jailed, driven from town after town, and blacklisted in every major
industry.

During 193 5- 193 7, more than 47,000 workers were arrested while
participating in trade union struggles in America . . .

Frequently union organizers carried on their work at the risk
of their lives. Time and again they were kidnapped by company-
hired gunmen and vigilante gangs, mercilessly beaten and brutally
tortured. Not a few were murdered in cold blood.

after, the Lower House amended the Immigration Act, with the aim of
making "constitutional" Bridges' deportation.

In 1 94 1 a second deportation warrant was issued; and after a hearing,
Presiding Inspector Charles Sears held that the warrant should stand . . .

Here is how Dean Landis had characterized some of the Government wit-
nesses and FBI informers who had testified against Bridges at the first hearing:
Major Laurence A. Milner— "a self-confessed liar"; Harper L. Knowles of the
American Legion— "he lied when he dared to"; John R. Davis— "arrested in
Indiana on a warrant charging him with grand larceny . . . Charged with
leaving a shortage of $1,800 in his accounts with his union, he was found
guilty as charged"; Richard A. St. Qair— "(his) repeated convictions for
drunkenness are at least a circumstance." Another witness against Bridges at
the Landis hearing was William C. McCuiston, who had been arrested eight
times and tw^ice convicted of assault, and who was later tried (and acquitted)
on charges of murdering an official of the National Maritime Union.

Among the Government witnesses against Bridges at the Scares hearing were
Peter J. Innes, a labor spy who had been expelled from his union for theft
and who was later sentenced to jail for attempted rape of a small child; and
John Oliver Thompson, who had previously stabbed his wife to death, pleaded
guilty of manslaughter and been sentenced to 2 to 5 years imprisonment.

In June 1945, after protracted proceedings in the lower courts, the U. S.
Supreme Court ruled that the warrant of deportation against Bridges was
unlawful. That September, Bridges took the oath of American citizenship.

"The record in this case," stated Justice Frank Murphy of the Supreme
Court, "will stand forever as a monumicnt of man's intolerance of man. Seldom
if ever in the history of this nation has there been such a concentrated effort
to deport an individual because he dared to exercize the freedom that belongs
to him as a human being and that is guaranteed him by the constitution."

Four years after the end of World War II, in May 1949, Bridges was in-
dicted by the Justice Department on the charge of conspiracy and perjury in
connection with his naturalization, and the Department filed suit to cancel his
citizenship and to deport him to Australia. See footnote page 282 for further
details.

One graphic, personal account of the sort of ordeal often ex-
perienced by these organizers appeared on August 28, 1935, in the
New Republic. It was written by Blaine Owen, an organizer in
the steel industry in Birmingham, Alabama.

Here is the story Blaine Owen told:

"There are names which should be put in parentheses after the
name Birmingham: TCI, RepubHc Steel, Schloss-Sheffield. And the
greatest of these is TCI. TCI is Tennessee Coal and Iron— United
States Steel, the House of Morgan.

"In the company houses they have established a rule that workers
with gardens must not grow corn or anything as high as a man's
head. Lights burn in the spaces between the houses all night. Don't
be found in the streets after nine-thirty. But somehow the meetings
go on, somehow no terror can stop these meetings. Although it
means jail and beating, leaflets appear miraculously on doorsteps
overnight, calling for organization and struggle.

"It was on my way home that a police car went by slowly, two
uniformed men in the front seat. One drove, the other swung the
spotlight full on me. Across the street stood a dark sedan, men
standing about it, smoking. I walked on around the corner. They
closed in, and the Ford sedan quietly rolled in front of us, the
doors already open . . .

"Held firmly between them in the back of the car, we shot past
the traffic light and between the rows of quiet buildings. No one
said a word. The windows were closed tight and we all sweated
slowly, out of breath from the tussle, panting . . .

"Smash! It came— though I had known it would come— as a sur-
prise. My Hp was numb as I took a deep breath and tried to double
as it came again. This time it caught me on the cheek . . .

"There was a salt taste to the thick blood, and I sucked it in with
my breath. A sharp knee dug into my stomach and I gasped, strain-
ing to free my arms. I thought I would never again get air into
my lungs, they felt crushed and splattered all over inside me. Some-
how I forgot my face. It was in my lap, maybe, maybe in his lap,
a trip hammer pounding on it, but it was no longer part of me
. . . Suddenly the blows had stopped. The realization startled me
and I opened my eyes, but only the right one would open . . .
"The tall, gaunt one stood in the shadow with the dull gleam
of a revolver at his side, and asked me quick, short questions.
Each time he would pause long enough for the younger one with

153

the straight, dark brows and the rolling lips to slam me in the face.
'He won't talk,' he said. Smash! 'Hasn't said a God-damn word.'
Smash! . . . "Keep your mouth shut," I said to myself over and over,
"keep your mouth shut, because they're going to finish you any-
way, and the more you say, the more they'll pound you before
they finish you off.

" 'Throw him in the river,' the fair young one said, and from
somewhere a rope was brought . . . the rope cut down across my
shoulders, with a high, crying swish from a sharp slap. I felt hands
rip off the shirt, strip by strip, yanking it off the places where
blood had begun to dry and stick. Someone was ripping my trousers
with a knife . . .

"The whipping stopped, and a boot crashed into my ribs. I rolled
over and slumped back on my face. There was a sUght pause before
it began again . . .

"I don't know when it stopped. I only know I could think of
nothing except the great necessity of keeping my mouth shut and
lying as still as possible. I recall more questions coming out of the
shadows . . .

"Vaguely I realized that it had stopped, heard the car door slam,
and tried to lift my head as the tires dug into the soft dirt and the
car spun away . . .

"I let my face drop forward again, and hugged the earth, not
wanting to slip off into sleep, wanting now to go, somehow, back to
Birmingham, back to the workers there.

"Workers kept an armed vigil at my bedside. One metal worker,
who had been a member of the Klan only a few years ago, brought
his little eight year old boy to me. He asked me to sit up in bed,
and he bared the cuts and slashes that crisscrossed my body, back
and face before the child's eyes.

" 'Look at that, sonny,' he said. "That's the company. That's
what you got to learn to hate— and fight agin.' "

As milUons of workers in the mid-thirties sought to put into
practice the rights guaranteed them by their Government in the
Wagner Labor Act, and as the trade union movement gathered
momentum throughout the land, acts of savage violence against
labor organizers and trade union members became daily occurrences
in America.

These are a few typical instances of the anti-labor violence during
1935-1938:

Alaba7na: In August 1935, the cottonpickers of Lowndes County went
on strike. The local sheriff organized a gang of vigilantes who roved
the countryside, breaking into strikers' homes, kidnapping strikers and
subjecting them to merciless beatings. On August 22, the vigilantes
kidnapped and killed a striker named James Merriweather. Mrs. Merri-
weather later related:

"We had heard about the lynch mob whipping the hands on the Bell
place . . . About half the mob came on to the house where I was . . .
They started tearing up the place looking for leaflets. They found
the leaflets under a mattress ... I said I didn't know about the meeting
because I had been working . . . Vaughn Ryles started doubling the rope
and told me to pull off all my clothes. He said, 'Lay down across the
chair, I want naked meat this morning.' I lay down across the chair
and Ralph McQuire held my head for Ryles to beat me . . . He was
beating me from my hips on down, and he hit me across the head.
They said, 'Now see if you can tell us what you know.' They were all
cussing . . . Ryles put a loop in the rope . . . He threw the rope over
the rafters . . . drew me up about two feet from the floor ... I heard
guns firing . . . They told me about my husband being shot . . . They
were lynching him then . . ."

Arkansas: Describing violence in this state, Howard Kester, an organ-
izer for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, wrote in the New York
Post of February 10, 1936:

"At night deputy sheriffs and masked men ride the roads, on the look-
out for secret meetings of the union . . . Beatings are frequent and
killings are not uncommon . . . Planters even organized a Fascist band
wearing green shirts and carrying the swastika as its symbol . . . Hun-
dreds of our members have been beaten and scores of families have
been driven from their homes by terror ... At least ten of our mem-
bers have been killed.

"Just a few weeks ago, at Earle, Ark., armed vigilantes broke up
a meeting in a Negro church— and shot two men . . . The next day,
while I was addressing 450 white and Negro members of the union in
a Methodist church, about fifteen armed planters and deputies came
into the meeting house.

"I was dragged from the platform and thrown into my automobile
by three men while the others began beating members of the union, men,
women and children. The interior of the church was wrecked."

Michigan: Vigilantes including American Legion members and Na-
tional Guardsmen in mufti called out by Mayor Daniel Knagge of
Monroe on the night of June 10, 1937, hurled tear and vomit gas bombs
at strikers' picket lines at the Newton Steel Co. After beating strikers
with baseball bats, the advocates of "law and order" dragged sympa-
thizers from their homes, beat them, burned a tent used as picket
headquarters and wrecked a dozen strikers' automobiles.

^55

Texas: During a pecan shellers strike toward the end of 1937 over
700 workers were arrested in San Antonio for claiming the right to
picket. Both men and women strikers were beaten, clubbed and kicked.
Pickets, including women, children and mothers with babies in their
arms, were lined up by the police who suddenly shot tear gas into their
midst. Scores were held in jail without any charges placed against them.

California: Local 283 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and
Smelter Workers led a strike of gold miners in Nevada County for
recognition of the union early in 1938. A vigilante mob led by the
local sheriff and by members of the California State Highway Patrol
on January 20 attacked strikers at the Murchie mine. Later, a band
of 300 vigilantes, armed with riot guns and clubs, attacked a picket
line of 60 strikers. The next evening 12 pickets were sent to the hospital
and the union headquarters were smashed. Union officers were threat-
ened with lynching. More than 100 miners with their families were
driven out of the county.

Mississippi: On April 15, 1938, in Tupelo, Charles F. Cox, a 27-year-
old CIO organizer, was forced into an automobile by a group of men,
driven about 20 miles, stripped naked and beaten with leather belts
by 1 1 men. Left barely conscious, he crawled back to town. Cox was an
important witness for the labor board in cases against mill owners result-
ing from a local strike in 1937. Organizations investigating the case
charged Cox had been kidnapped to prevent his testifying against the
company.

But nation-wide company-organized violence and intimidation,
vigilante terror, and strikebreaking by National Guardsmen and
municipal police failed to accomplish their purpose.

Spurred on by the hardship and misery of the depression years,
by the pro-labor policies of the New Deal and by union victories
in mining. West Coast maritime and other industries, American
workers continued their mass influx into trade unions and intensified
their fight for higher wages and better working conditions.

Early in 1936 the leaders of the CIO unions raised a "war chest"
and pooled their forces to assist organization in rubber, auto, steel,
aluminum, radio and other major industries. Newspaper men, chem-
ists and technicians, retail and office workers, government em-
ployees, lumbermen, seamen, shoe, fur and oil workers joined the
swelling army of organized labor.

In February 1936 10,000 Goodyear Tire and Rubber Workers
at Akron, demanding recognition of the CIO Rubber Workers
Union, occupied the Goodyear factory buildings in the nation's
first sit-down strike. After four weeks, the company yielded to the
workers' demands.
156

In November 1936, the United Auto Workers called a strike at
General Motors, the nation's largest industrial corporation. After
three months of bitter struggle involving 125,000 workers and ty-
ing up GiM plants in a score of cities, the company signed a contract
with the union. Two months later, Chrysler recognized the UAW
as the bargaining agent for its employees.

The crucial struggle was in the steel industry. "If Lewis wins in
steel," commented Business Week on June 13, 1936, "no industry
will be safe . . ." By the year's end, 100,000 workers had been
organized by Phil Murray's Steel Workers Organization. On March
2, 1937, in the CIO's greatest single victory, the new steel union
signed up U.S. Steel and its subsidiaries.

5. "Lest We Forget"

The date was May 30, 1937, Memorial Day, the national holiday
in honor of American soldiers fallen in battle. The place was a
large open field adjoining the Republic Steel plant in South Chicago.

By mid-afternoon, almost a thousand men, women and children
had gathered at one end of the field. They were striking Republic
Steel workers and their families, workers from other industries,
friends and sympathizers. They had come to parade past the Re-
public Steel factory as a demonstration to protest the company's
anti-labor policies.

"I won't have a contract, verbal or written," Tom Girdler, the
truculent round-faced president of Republic Steel, had declared,
"with an irresponsible, racketeering, communistic body like the
CIO."

Republic Steel was the only major steel corporation which was
still unorganized by the CIO.

It was a pleasant warm Sunday, and a gay spirit prevailed among
the demonstrators. Waiting for the march to begin, they congre-
gated in small groups, chatting animatedly, laughing, singing, the
women wearing light summer dresses and most of the men in shirt
sleeves. In the middle of the crowd two American flags flapped in-
dolently in the slight breeze.

There was one seemingly incongruous note to the scene. Midway
across the field, between the demonstrators and the Republic Steel
plant, stood several hundred uniformed poUcemen with riot clubs
hanging from their hands. Most of the police officers were loosely

^57

grouped in rows stretching across a dirt road that traversed the
field. Behind these rows were clusters of reinforcements and a
number of patrol wagons . . .

Shortly after four o'clock, about three hundred of the demon-
strators started to parade down the dirt road and across the field,
in a long straggling line led by two men carrying American flags.
The marchers chanted slogans as they came and held up banners and
placards reading Join the CIO, Republic vs. the People, and Repub-
lic Steel Violates the Labor Act,

Halfway across the field, their way barred by the police, the
marchers slowed to a halt. A young man standing between the two
flagbearers began urging some of the police ofiicials to allow the
parade to continue. The paraders closed up, forming a crowd
around the young man, listening intently to his words.

Several of the demonstrators called out that they had been given
a municipal permit to march. The police, they said, had no right to
interfere with the parade.

The police stirred nervously, hitching up their belts, fingering
their riot clubs.

An ominous tension had settled over the field.

Suddenly, without warning, acting as if by some prearranged
signal, a number of police drew back their arms and hurled tear
gas bombs into the crowd. At the same instant, with terrifying un-
expectedness, a volley of pistol shots rang out.

Dozens of men and women among the demonstrators plunged
to the ground. The remainder of the crowd, aghast and panic-
stricken, scattered in headlong flight. After them charged the police,
savagely flailing the fugitives with clubs.

Amid the intermittent crackle of pistol shots and the screams of
the injured, one person after another was cornered and clubbed
to the ground. Groups of policemen stood over fallen victims ham-
mering them with riot sticks. Men and women with blood-stained
.faces staggered drunkenly across the field, desperately striving to
elude the clubs of their pursuers.

Such was the beginning of the Memorial Day massacre.

A Reverend Charles B. Fiske who had come to the demonstration
as an observer for a group of Chicago ministers investigating vio-
lations of civil liberties, and who had with him a motion picture
camera, subsequently related:

158

I got my camera up to my eyes and I could see where the tear gas
was breaking out near the crowd, and I could see the people at the very
head of the column go down, dozens and scores of them falling to the
ground . . .

I noticed, out of the corner of my left eye, a young fellow standing
thirty or forty feet behind me ... He was standing still for a time
and then he dropped. I took pictures of him lying with his face on the
ground. I could tell he had been shot by the bloodstains on the back
of his shirt . . .

Very close to me, not more than forty yards away, I saw two police-
men chasing one young fellow, who was running as fast as he could
go, and shouting over his shoulder, "I'm going, I'm going, I'm doing
what you told me to. I'm going as fast as I can." He . . . stumbled
and these t^^^o policemen coming up on him simultaneously struck him
down behind a little clump of bushes and then stood there for a
couple of minutes slugging him. I have pictures of them standing
over him, hitting him with their clubs five or six times after he was
down and apparently unconscious . . .

Another witness of the Memorial Day massacre was Mrs. Lupe
Marshall, a social worker associated with Hull House in Chicago.
Mrs. Marshall, who was trapped in the melee when the police
charged the demonstrators, was clubbed to the ground and then
flung into a patrol wagon.

She later stated:

When the policemen started to pick up those men that had been
lying approximately where I had been standing when the thing started,
they started bringing them in by their feet and hands, half dragging them
and half picking them up. None of the men that were in the wagon
were able to sit up. They [the police] piled them up one on top of the
other. There were some men that had their heads underneath others.
Some had their arms all twisted up, and their legs all twisted . . .

Describing the nightmarish ride to the hospital, Mrs. Marshall
related: "It was ages before we got there, and every time the patrol
wagon jolted, these men would go up about a foot or so, and fall
on top of each other, and there was the most terrible screaming,
groaning and going on in that wagon . . ."

When the patrol wagon reached the hospital, the policemen
dragged the wounded and unconscious out of the vehicle, hauled
them into the building by their hands and feet, and dropped them
roughly on the floor. A detective, suddenly appearing on the scene,
pointed toward the bodies, and shouted angrily at the pohcemen,
"Who the hell ordered this goddam shooting?" One of the police-

159

men replied, "Shut your mug!" Jerking his thumb toward Mrs.
Marshall, he added, "They're not all dead yet."

By far the most horrifying record of the Alemorial Day Massacre
was contained in a Paramount news reel of the entire episode. The
film was never exhibited publicly; Paramount executives said that
public showing might lead to "riots."

A few days after the film was developed, it was privately shown
to a small audience composed of Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr.,
Senator Elbert D. Thomas and a few staff members of the La
Follette Civil Liberties Committee.

An extraordinary account of this private showing of the film
subsequently appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The follow-
ing are excerpts from the Post-Dispatch article:

. . . suddenly, without apparent warning, there is a terrific roar of
pistol shots, and men in the front ranks of the marchers go down like
grass before a scythe . . . Instantly the police charge on the marchers
with riot sticks flying . . .

In a manner which is appallingly businesslike, groups of policemen
close in on isolated individuals, and go to work on them with their clubs.
In several instances, from two to four policemen are seen beating one
man. One strikes him across the face, using his club as he would wield
a baseball bat. Another crashes it down on the top of his head, and still
another is whipping him across the back.

CIO officers report that when one of the victims was delivered at an
undertaking establishment, it was found that his brains literally had been
beaten out, his skull crushed by blows , , .

The account continued:

A man shot through the back is paralyzed from the waist. Two
policemen try to make him stand up, to get him into a patrol wagon, but
when they let him go his legs crumple, and he falls with his face in the
dirt, almost under the rear step of the wagon. He moves his head and
arms but his legs are limp. He raises his head like a turtle and claws the
ground . . .

The article in the Post-Dispatch concluded:

The camera shifts back to the central scene. Here and there is a
body sprawled in what appears to be the grotesque indifference of
death ... A policeman, somewhat disheveled, his coat open, a scowl on
his face, approaches another who is standing in front of the camera. He
is sweaty and tired. He says something indistinguishable. Then his face
breaks into a sudden grin, he makes a motion of dusting off his hands,
and strides away. The film ends.

1 60

Ten men were killed and scores seriously injured in the Memorial
Day massacre.

The massacre was justified by Chicago police officials on the
grounds that the steel strikers' demonstration was a "Communist
plot" to invade the Republic Steel plant and "murder" its occupants.
According to these police officials, "two or three hundred hves'*
were saved by the "disciplined police action."

The following are excerpts from testimony given before the
Senate La Follette Committee on June 30, 1937, by Captain James
L. Mooney of the Chicago Police Force:

SENATOR THOMAS: Then you think the disturbance on the 30th
was a fight between the police and the Communists?

CAPTAIN MOONEY: It was brought on over there by Red agi-
tators . . . their real object was to get into the plant . . . They
would have accomplished killing a lot of people in there.

SENATOR THOMAS: Do you think that all people you call Com-
munists want to kill people, that that is one of their objectives?

CAPTAIN MOONEY: Not all of them, but all that I have met . . .

Later in his testimony, Captain Mooney asked, "Could I make
a recommendation that would clarify the mind of the Senate Com-
mittee?"

Senator Thomas said yes.

"Deport every one of those Communists and all of those Reds
out of the country," said Captain Mooney, "and then we will get
along."

"Where would you send them?" asked Senator Thomas.

"Back to Russia; go over there with Lenin."

"You actually think they were paid agents of Russia?"

"The reason I think so, down in the fifty district some of those
way up in the Communist Party left for Russia to get further in-
structions."

"Do you know what part of Russia they went to?"

"They went to the capital."

"Where is that?"

Captain Mooney hesitated a moment and then replied. "Well,
where Lenin is."

6. The General Staff

Once each year during the turbulent New Deal era, a small group
of immensely powerful American milHonaires gathered with great

161

secrecy in Room 31 15 at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.
The group called itself the "Special Conference Committee."

The cryptic inscription on the door of Room 31 15 at 30 Rocke-
feller Plaza— 'Edward S. Cowdrick, Consultant in Industrial Rela-
tions"— offered no clue to the business that the Special Conference
Committee conducted at this office. The Committee was not listed
in the telephone directory; its name appeared on no letterheads; and
all Committee minutes, records and communications were marked
Strictly ConfidentiaL

Edward S. Cowdrick, who was the secretary of the Special Con-
ference Committee, never mentioned the Committee by name when
corresponding with persons who were not among its members;
he referred to the organization simply as "my associates" or "the
group by which I am employed."

The Special Conference Committee was composed of men whose
names were legendary in industrial and financial circles throughout
the world.

These were some of the men attending Committee meetings or
participating in its general activities:

Walter S. Gifford: President of American Telephone and Telegraph

Company
Lamviot du Font: President of E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.: President of the General Motors Corporation
Harry W. Anderson: Labor Relations Director of General Motors

Corporation
Owe?! D. You7ig: Chairman of the Board of General Electric Com-
pany
Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.: Vice President of United States Steel Cor-
poration
F. W. Abranis: President of Standard Oil Company of New jersey
Cyrus S. doing: Director of Industrial and Public Relations of United

States Rubber Company
Edgar S. Bloofu: President of Western Electric Company
Eugene G. Grace: President of Bethlehem Steel Company
/. M. Larkin: Vice President of Bethlehem Steel Company
Frank A. Merrick: President of Westinghouse Electric & Manufactur-
ing Company
Harry E. Ward: President of Irving Trust Company
Northrop Holbrook: Vice President of Irving Trust Company
E. J. Thomas: General Superintendent of Goodyear Tire and Rubber
Company

The special interest groups represented in the Special Conference
Committee were as follows:
162

Morgan Group: United States Steel Corporation (America's largest
industrial corporation); General Electric Company; American Tele-
phone & Telegraph Company

Dii ¥ont Group: General Motors Corporation (America's 3rd largest
industrial corporation); E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company
(America's 4th largest industrial corporation); United States Rub-
ber Company

Rockefeller Group: Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (America's
2nd largest industrial corporation)

Mellon Group: Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company

Chicago Group: International Harvester Company

Cleveland Group: Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

The Special Conference Committee was the secret General Staff
which planned the strategy and tactics, and directed the major
campaigns of the incessant war being waged during the 1930's by
American big business against organized labor and the New Deal.*

While the principals of the Special Conference Committee met
only once a year, there were frequent interim meetings among their
representatives and subordinates; and, in numerous memoranda, re-
ports and other communications, Secretary Cowdrick kept leading
Committee members constantly informed of all pertinent develop-
ments on the industrial front.

The first year of the New Deal was an especially busy one for
the Committee. "In numbers of meetings," J. M. Larkin, vice-presi-
dent of Bethlehem Steel and chairman of the Special Conference
Committee, reported early in 1934, "in variety and importance of
subjects considered, and in the multiphcity of demands made upon
its members by their companies and their industries, 1933 established

an all-time higrh record."

Expressing gratification with the Committee's record during this
troubled time, Larkin stated, "The companies which by their in-
terest and support have maintained the Special Conference Commit-
tee .. . were in a position to call upon the experience and counsel
of the Committee in grappling with the labor problems and per-
plexities growing out of the recovery program."

However, added Larkin in his report, there were still vexing

* The Special Conference Committee had been formed in 1919 during the
period of industrial strife following World War I; but it was not until the
advent of the New Deal era that the Committee began to function on a
fulltime, systematically organized basis.

163

problems which remained to be solved. Outstanding among these
was the fact that, "We are facing right now a drive against the open
shop" . . .

During the initial stages of the Roosevelt Administration, the
Special Conference Committee, by utilizing its vastly influential
connections, was able to do much to shape government poHcy in
various domestic affairs. When the U.S. Department of Com-
merce estabhshed a Business and Advisory Planning Council in
August, 1933, Gerard Swope, president of General Electric, and
Walter C. Teagle, president of Standard Oil of New Jersey— both
of whose firms were represented in the Special Conference Commit-
tee—were named respectively chairman of the Council and chairman
of the Council's Industrial Relations Committee. Swope and Teagle
thereupon appointed leading members of the Special Conference
Committee to the Industrial Relations Committee and made Ed-
ward Cowdrick its secretary.

In a confidential letter to W. A. Griffin, president of the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Cowdrick gave this
explanation of the status of Special Conference Committee members
on the government agency:

Each member is invited as an individual not as a representative of his
company, and the name of the Special Conference Committee will not
be used . . . The work of the new committee [the Industrial Relations
Committee] will supplement and broaden— not supplant— that of the
Special Conference Committee. Probably special meetings will not be
needed since the necessary guidance for the Industrial Relation Com-
mittee's work can be given at our regular sessions.

But as the pro-labor poUcies of the New Deal crystallized and the
gap widened between the Roosevelt Administration and big busi-
ness interests, it became increasingly clear to the Special Conference
Committee that its members could not continue to operate with
adequate effectiveness within the Government itself. What had now
become essential, in the opinion of the Committee, was an all-out
drive directed both against Roosevelt and the trade union move-
ment . . .

Public relations experts and specialists in the field of industrial
relations were summoned for consultation. Detailed analyses of
pending pro-labor legislation were prepared under Cowdrick's su-
pervision, and distributed for careful study among Committee mem-
164

bers. At the suggestion of Cyrus Ching of United States Rubber,
the Committee's "informational service" was greatly expanded.*
Maintaining its policy of operating behind the scenes, and using
the facilities of sympathetically inclined business organizations, the
Committee initiated an elaborate propaganda campaign against trade
unionism and for the maintenance of the open shop. In a memoran-
dum commenting on the organizational cooperation the Committee
was receiving in this campaign, Cowdrick noted:

I have had very useful contacts with individuals and organizations,
including the National Association of Manufacturers, United States
Chamber of Commerce, the National Automobile Chamber of Com-
merce and the Washington offices of some of the Special Conference
Committee companies. For the most part I have dealt through these
acquaintances rather than directly -with government officials, as it seemed
to me best to avoid making myself too conspicuous or doing anything to
give the impression I am lobbying.

The NAA4 and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, stated Cowdrick
in his memiorandum, were being "extremely friendly and accommo-
dating—which is not strange in view of the fact that most of the
Special Conference Committee companies are heavy contributors
to both organizations" . . .

The passage of the National Labor Relations Act, despite the
intense efforts of the Committee to defeat the bill, created a host
of new problems for the Committee. As the Committee's annual re-
port of 1936 stated, after reviewing the work of the Committee
since its formation in 19 19:

Of all these eighteen years, none has been more difficult than 1936 . . .
the difficulties of labor administration were increased by continued gov-
ernmental legislation and by the aggressive pressure of union leaders . . ,

The Special Conference Committee was unusually active in 1936 . . .

The drastically changed situation necessitated the use of new
anti-labor tactics. One such tactic recommended in Committee
memoranda w^as that of enlisting the support of "community" and
vigilante groups to back up the efforts of large corporations to
maintain the open shop. In a memorandum commenting on the
Goodyear Rubber Company's use of this technique during a strike
at Akron, Cowdrick wrote:

* On August 7, 1947, Cyrus Ching was appointed by President Harry
Truman to the post of Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation
Service, with the responsibility of acting as chief arbitrator in major disputes
between labor and management.

165

Sunday afternoon C. Nelson Sparks, a former Mayor of Akron, ac-
cepted leadership of a law and order league . . . He made a radio speech
in which he warned outside agitators to leave town. In the meantime,
fresh pressure is being brought to bear upon the Governor to send state
troops to preserve order.

At the same time, the Special Conference Committee undertook
an extensive study of various American fascist organizations, whose
services might be employed in breaking strikes and carrying on
other anti-labor activities. Among such groups discussed in Com-
mittee memoranda were the Constitutional Educational League, the
Crusaders, the Sentinels of the Republic, and the Men of America.

On June i, 1936, Cowdrick wrote H. W. Anderson, General
Motors Labor Relations Director and assistant to WiUiam S. Knud-
sen, asking the GM executive for his opinion of the anti-Semitic
and pro-Nazi Sentinels of the Republic. A few days later Ajiderson
replied:

With reference to your letter of June i regarding the Sentinels of the
Republic, I have never heard of the organization. Maybe you could use
a little Black Legion down in your country. It might help.*

A further indication of the Committee's interest in fascist anti-
labor techniques was contained in a Committee memorandum
drawn up by Cowdrick at the suggestion of A. H. Young, Vice-
President of U. S. Steel Corporation. The memorandum included
a detailed analysis, for the consideration of Committee members, of
an unusual piece of labor legislation. The labor legislation in ques-
tion contained this clause:

The leader of the enterprise makes the decision for the employees and
laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise ... He is responsible
for the well-being of the employees and the laborers. The employees
and the laborers owe him faithfulness according to the principles of the
factory community.

In a letter to Cowdrick, A. H. Young explained that he had ob-
tained this piece of legislation "from an officer of the German
government."

The law was Adolf Hitler's Act for the Organization of National
Labor.

* The Black Legion was a secret terrorist society which operated in Michi-
igan, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana during the mid-1930's. Arson, bombing, torture
and murder were among the Legion's anti-labor techniques. For a detailed
account of the Legion's operations, see pages 204 ff.

166

But despite the elaborate schemings of the members of the Special
Conference Committee, and notwithstanding their far-reaching in-
fluence and immense resources, they were unable to stem the tidal
wave of trade unionism surging through America's factories, mines
and mills.

In the six months between March and September 1937, the CIO-
grew from 1,804,000 to 3,718,000 members. By the end of 1938,
the total number of organized workers in the United States was
at the all-time peak of 7,700,000.

"In a little more than a year's existence," wrote CIO editor Len
de Caux in Union News Service early in 1938, "the CIO has put
about $1,000,000,000 in increased annual wages in workers' pay
envelopes, through its organizing activities in the steel, auto, rubber
and other previously unorganized mass-production industries— not
to mention the resulting indirect benefits in other industries."

Only one great industrial concern in America remained unor-
ganized by labor. That concern was the Ford Motor Company.

1(57

Chapter x

INSIDE FORD'S EMPIRE

Ford has directly created and distributed more wealth
than any other man since the beginning of time. None of his
wealth and consequent employment was at the expense of
any one or anything.

From "Way to Wealth, ^^ an article by
Samuel Crowther published in the Sat-
urday Evening Post on May zy, 1930.

Maybe we were endowed by our creator

With certain inalienable rights including

The right to assemble in peace and petition. . . .

Maybe God Almighty wrote it out

We could shoot off our mouths where we pleased

and with what and no Thank-yous
But try it at River Rouge with the Ford militia.
Try it if Mister Ford's opinions are otherwise.
Try it and see where you land with your back broken . . .

Fro772 Land of the Free, by Archibald
MacLeish,

I. Man and Myth

"We'll never recognize the United Automobile Workers or
any other union," declared Henry Ford after all other leading auto
manufacturers had signed contracts with the UAW. "Labor unions
are the worst thing that ever struck the earth."

No other American industrialist had waged so ruthlessly effective
a fight as Henry Ford against trade unions; and the passage of
the Wagner Labor Act had by no means diminished his determina-
tion to see that his employees remained unorganized. Ford had long
regarded himself as above the laws of the land.
168

In the three and a half decades that had elapsed since Ford
first experimented in an empty stable in Detroit with a strange-
looking contraption resembling a large perambulator with a motor
in the back, the once obscure mechanic had become one of the
richest and most powerful men in the world.

Ford's vast private empire sprawled across six continents. Ford
had factories and offices in China, Egypt, Argentina, Mexico, Hun-
gary, Japan, Germany and a dozen other countries. His domain
included oil wells in California; hundreds of thousands of acres
of coal and timberlands in Kentucky, West Virginia and northern
Michigan; 2,225,000 acres of rubber plantations in Para, Brazil. He
controlled almost a quarter of the glass produced in the United
States. He owned banks, railroads, airlines and steamship lines.
Among the commodities produced by Ford factories were cars,
trucks, tractors, electric locomotives, airplanes, steam turbines, gen-
erators, steel, cement, textiles, paper. Despite his frequent fulmina-
tions against "international financiers," Ford's own enterprises were
closely linked with chemical, munition, steel and rubber cartels in
Europe and Asia.

The capital of the Ford empire was the River Rouge plant at
Dearborn, Michigan. The largest industrial unit in the world, cover-
ing an area of more than a thousand acres, the River Rouge plant
was a city in itself. It contained over 100 miles of railroad tracks;
a mile and a half of docks, capable of accommodating ocean-going
vessels; an elaborate network of paved thoroughfares and broad
canals. Its giant, manifold structures included office buildings, foun-
dries, steel mills, assembly plants, press shops, a paper mill, tire,
glass and cement plants. When operating at full speed and capacity,
the plant employed 85,000 workers.

By 1940, the Ford Motor Company had produced more than
30,000,000 cars. The firm's yearly income amounted to approxi-
mately one billion dollars.

According to the legend that had been assiduously woven around
the name of Henry Ford by his own highly-paid pubUcists and by
those devotees for whom he epitomized the virtues of free enter-
prise, the world-famed auto manufacturer was a great humanitarian,
philanthropist and sage, motivated by a desire for the advancement
of mankind in general and the welfare of his own employees in
particular. Actually, the mechanical genius of the tall, spare, sHghtly

169

stooping multi-millionaire was coupled with intellectual sterility,
fierce bigotry and an intense phobia for social progress.*

In Ford factories throughout the world, the use of the most
modern industrial techniques and the lavish care of mechanical
equipment contrasted sharply with the backward and brutal treat-
ment of the human beings in Ford's employ.

Nowhere was this contrast more pronounced than at the Ford
River Rouge plant at Dearborn, Michigan.

When a worker passed through the carefully guarded gates to
the River Rouge plant, it was as if he had entered an autonomous
fascist state within America— a state which maintained, in the words
of the National Labor Relations Board, *'a regime of terror and
violence directed against its employees."

If the dictator of this state was Henry Ford, its dreaded and all-
powerful chief of secret police was Harry Herbert Bennett.

2. -The Little Fellow

Throughout Ford's fabulous career, strange and often sinister
adventurers had played a major role in shaping his policies and exe-
cuting his commands. His entourage invariably included such per-
sonahties as Major-General Count Z. Cherep-Spirodovitch, a fanat-
ical anti-Semite and ex-Czarist officer, who helped persuade Ford
to finance the international distribution of the infamous Jew-baiting
forgery. The Protocols of Zio7i; Dr. Harris Houghton, a former
member of the United States Mihtary Intelligence, who in the early
1920's headed the Ford Detective Service, which secretly compiled
dossiers on prominent American liberals; Ernest Gustav Liebold, an
enigmatic Germanophile who, while holding no executive title in
the Ford Company, had constant access to Ford's ofKce and was
for a time reputed to be the second most powerful in the company;
and William J. Cameron, who, first as editor of Ford's Dearborn
lndepende?it and later as head of the anti-democratic Anglo-Saxon
Federation, conducted nationwide anti-Semitic propaganda cam-
paigns.

* It was more symbolic than paradoxical that Ford— who had done perhaps
more than any other man of his time to revolutionize methods of industrial
production— should surround himself with antiques, stage periodic square
dances, sternly forbid subordinates* to smoke in his presence and, in the early
1930's, declare that if Prohibition were repealed he would never manufacture
another car.

170

But of all Ford's aides, advisors, and associates, the most sinister
and extraordinary was Harry Herbert Bennett.

Harry Bennett's official title was Personnel Director of the Ford
Motor Company. When asked about his exact job, Bennett liked
to answer, "iVle? I'm just Mr. Ford's personal man." The answer
was deceptively modest. By the mid-thirties, many shared the view
expressed by Look magazine that Bennett was "absolute boss of the
company."

"A nod from Bennett may make or break a man in the Ford
empire," wrote Spencer R. McColloch in an article in the St. Louis
Post Dispatch. "Major executives who antagonize him may find it
advisible to 'resign.' Others have been known to roam the buildings
without an office for months at a stretch in expiation for some
breach in Bennett's discipline.'*

In the opinion of Ford himself, Harry Bennett was capable of
directing even larger enterprises than the Ford Motor Company.
"Harry Bennett," asserted Ford, "should be President of the United
States."

Bennett's own lieutenants usually referred to him as "The Little
Fellow." A small, tight-lipped, dapper man, who invariably wore
a bow tie because an assailant had once almost strangled him by
jerking his four-in-hand tie against his neck, Bennett had served
several years in the U. S. Navy and fought for a time as a light-
weight boxer under the name of "Sailor Reese" prior to his em-
ployment by Ford in 191 6.*

Tough, quick-witted and resourceful, Bennett had risen rapidly
in the Ford organization. Given the task of forming a bodyguard to
protect Ford's grandchildren from possible kidnapping, Bennett
won the auto magnate's personal esteem by his efficient handling of
the assignment. In 1926, at the age of thirty-four, Bennett was ap-
pointed head of the Ford Service Department.

The purported function of the Service Department was to pro-
tect company property against theft. But its real purpose, as was
commonly known, was to guard Henry Ford not against robbery
but against the unionization of his employees. The Service Depart-
ment was the anti-union and labor-espionage division of the Ford
Motor Company.

* According to Bennett's own various, somewhat ungrammatical accounts
of his youth, he had been at different times a musician, painter, draftsman,
cartoonist, football player, champion prizefighter and deep-sea diver.

171

Under Bennett's leadership, the Service Department expanded
into a huge apparatus whose devious ramifications reached far be-
yond the confines of Ford's factories. By the early 1930's, its net-
work not only covered the cities of Dearborn and Detroit, but
extended throughout the country, reaching into every phase of pub-
lic and private life. Among its ubiquitous paid agents and secret
allies were labor spies, gangsters, gunmen and ex-convicts; detec-
tives, poHce chiefs and judges; lawyers, educators, editors and
merchants; municipal, state and Federal officials.

Describing the Service Department's far-reaching influence, Mal-
colm M. Bingay of the Detroit Free Press later wrote:

Candidates for Governor, Senate, Congress, Mayor, Common Council,
the judiciary, trembled in fear as to whether "Bennett's gang" would be
for or against them. Even regents of the University of Michigan waited
word from him on the conduct of that ancient institution.

According to conservative estimates, there were more than 3000
Service Department agents operating in the River Rouge plant by
1937. Most of them were spies, disguised as regular workers, jani-
tors, sweepers and window cleaners. The operations of the Service
Department outside the plant were subsequently described by one of
the Department's key agents, Ralph Rimar, in these words:

Our spy network covered Dearborn and the city of Detroit, reaching
into the home of every worker and into the private offices of the
highest state and city officials. Years of espionage had provided the
Company with accumulated files of all the activities of every Ford
employee. We also had catalogues of the private lives of public officials.
Governors and Government men who might be of value to the Com-
pany . . .

My own agents reported back to me conversations in grocery stores,
meat markets, restaurants, gambling joints, beer gardens, social groups,
boys' clubs and even churches. Women waiting in markets to buy some-
thing might discuss their husbands' jobs and activities; if they did, I
soon heard what they had said. Children talked of their fathers' lives
. . . Nick Torres, one of our Servicemen, was boxing instructor at a
boys' club in Dearborn. His information helped me to secure the dis-
missal of many men . . .

Periodically, Rimar submitted to Service Department head-
quarters lengthy lists of union members and workers suspected of
union sympathies. In a sworn statement to National Labor Rela-
tions Board investigators, Rimar later declared:

Prior to 1937 and the rise of the CIO, I once estimated that I was
responsible for the firing of close to 1500 men. During the year 1940
172

alone I turned in lists of over looo sympathizers, and they were all
fired as a result of my reports.

An intimate working relationship existed between the Ford Ser-
vice Department and the criminal underworld. The Detroit gang
leader, Chet LaMare, up until the time of his murder by rival
gangsters, shared in the concession which prepared and distributed
the lunch boxes at the River Rouge Plant. Joe Adonis, the notorious
Brooklyn racket chief, had exclusive rights to the trucking of all
cars at the Ford plant at Edgewater, New Jersey. Members of the
Purple Gang, the Bloody Gang, and other Detroit and Dearborn
gangs, frequented the River Rouge Plant, where they received
various favors.*

The gangsters, for their part, mobilized support for Ford-endorsed
politicians, provided the Service Department with reinforcements
from their own ranks, and beat and tortured active trade unionists.
More than one labor organizer was found dead in Dearborn with
a bullet in his back.

Bennett made no secret of his own close acquaintanceship with
underworld celebrities.

"Several times," wrote Spencer McColloch of the St. Louis Post
Dispatch after interviewing Bennett, "he alluded to friendly chats
with Al Capone."

Following a visit to the River Rouge Plant, J. Killgallen of the
International News Service reported:

Bennett admitted he has a wide acquaintanceship in the underworld.
He said he makes it his business to know thugs and racketeers person-
ally.

* Houses of prostitution and gambling places in Dearborn, most of which
were controlled by the Bloody Gang, made payments for the privilege of
operating to the Dearborn Chief of Police, Carl A. Brooks. Chief Brooks was
himself a secret agent of the Ford Service Department and had been placed
on the Dearborn police force at Bennett's personal request.

Under Brooks' protection, the vice ring in Dearborn reaped an estimated
$500,000 a year.

Indicted in May 1941 on charges of selling police protection to gamblers
and brothel operators, Brooks never came to trial. He was found dead in his
car, shortly after his indictment; he was reported to have died from a "heart
attack."

Inspector Charles A. Slamer, who had turned state's witness in the Brooks*
case, was also found dead soon after the indictment. An autopsy revealed that
Slamer had died from the effects of a drug.

On one occasion, a gangster bearing a grudge against Bennett
rashly took a shot at the Ford Service Chief, wounding him in the
stomach. Soon afterwards, Bennett received in the mail a photo-
graph of the gangster's bullet-ridden body. On the picture was
scrawled the anonymous inscription: "He won't bother you no
more, Harry."

"I ain't afraid of anything," Bennett told the newspaperman,
Spencer AlcColloch. "If I get mine— well, I'll get it, that's all."

Even so, Bennett took few needless chances. Powerful bodyguards
accompanied him at all times. Trusted Service Department men
were stationed near his office in the basement of the Administration
Building at the River Rouge Plant, and the door to the office was
controlled by a button on Bennett's desk. Day and night, armed
guards vigilantly patrolled Bennett's luxurious estate, "The Castle,'*
overlooking the Huron River, and after dusk the grounds were lit
up by an elaborate flood-lighting system.

3. "Bennett's Pets"

Among the feverishly active workers at the River Rouge Plant,
there were always a number of conspicuously idle men. Muscular
hulking fellows, with broken noses, cauUflower ears and scarred
faces, they sauntered up and down the busy assembly lines, stood
beside the doorways to the various shops, and hovered near the
gates leading into the plant. They were members of the Service
Department's strong-arm unit. Ford workers called them "Bennett's
pets."

The strong-arm unit of the Service Department was composed
largely of former prize-fighters, discharged police officials, ex-con-
victs, gangsters and gunmen. A typical member of the strong-arm
unit, and one of Bennett's favorites, was Kid McCoy, a former box-
ing champion who had served a term of imprisonment at San
Quentin for murdering his wife . . .

Bennett was in a highly advantageous position to augment the
number of criminals on the payroll of the Ford Service Depart-
ment. He not only had his numerous personal contacts in the crim-
inal underworld; he also was a member of the Michigan Parole
Board.

These are a few of the criminals who were paroled from Michi-
gan jails to enter the employment of the Ford iMotor Company:

174

MURDER, 2ND DEGREE

James B. Soldan
Charles Stover

RAPE

Anthony Cevette
Joseph Laborn

MANSLAUGHTER

Tom Kaschuk
Samuel S. Smith

INDECENT LIBERTIES

Herlon Carver

GROSS INDECENCY

Frank Gage

FELONIOUS ASSAULT

Melvin Campbell
George King
Geo. Maid, alias Mallo,
Leo Pimpinalli

ASSAULT TO ROB

Arthur Fodov
Chas. Foster

GRAND LARCENY

Ramon Cotter

LARCENY

Frank Ditzek
Archie Forgach
Henry Jones
Robert Paul Lavi^son
Harry Douglas
Alex Guba
Steve Paley

FORGERY

Louis F. Randall

"We don't tolerate rough stuff or thugs in the Ford organiza-
tion," Bennett once told a newspaperman visiting the River Rouge
Plant. Pointing to a group of bulky Service Department men stand-
ing nearby, Bennett added, "These fellows thugs? Why, it's to
laugh! They have nice families and homes in Detroit."

175

ROBBERY, ARMED

Willard Cleary

Robert Cook

Dennis Coughlin

Gilbert Cunningham

John Doe (Frank Korvcinski)

Stanley M. Edwards

Gerald Fahndrick

Trevor Falkner

Albert Gazie

Stanley Heay

Taft Hicks

Kenneth Hilliard

George Kalburn

Peter Poppy (alias Popy)

William Thomas

Unice Thompson

Marion Williams

Leo Waller

BURGLARY

Ray Carney

BREAKING AND ENTERING

Walter Hatbowy
Harold R. Harrison
Jefferson D. Haskins
William G. Crane
Francis Dolson
Ernest Martin
Leo Mazzarello
Morris Nadorozny

EMBEZZLEMENT
Roy D. Jones

VIOLATION DRUG LAW

Lorenzo Sachez

BANK ROBBERY
Floyd E. Drennan

Such genteel qualities, however, were not reflected in the prac-
tises of the strong arm unit . . .

A typical instance of the strongarm unit's mode of operation oc-
curred on March 26, 1937. On that day, having previously obtained
a permit from the Dearborn City authorities, members of the
United Automobile Workers went to distribute union leaflets at the
gates of the River Rouge Plant. At the top of the stairway of an
overpass leading to the plant, the union men found a group of Ford
Servicemen barring their passage.

"This is Ford property," said one of the Servicemen. "Get the
helloff of here!"

As the union men turned, they were suddenly attacked from be-
hind by the Ford Servicemen.

The Reverend Raymond P. Sanford, a Chicago minister who was
acting as an observer for the Conference for the Protection of Civil
Rights, later gave this description of the assault on Richard Frank-
ensteen, the director of the UAW Ford Organizing Committee:

A separate individual grabbed him by each foot, by each hand and
his legs were spread apart and his body was twisted over to my left, and
then other men proceeded to kick him in the crotch and groin and left
kidney and around the head and also to gore him with their heels in the
abdomen or the general region of his solar plexus.

While members of the Dearborn police force stood by and
watched, union men distributing leaflets near the overpass, and not
on Ford property, were assaulted with equal ferocity. One of the
UAW members, William Merriweather, was clubbed to the ground
and stomped upon by Ford Servicemen shouting: "Kill him . . .
Bash his face in . . . Kick his brains out . . ." Doctors who later
examined Merriweather found that the Servicemen had broken his
back.

Women distributing union leaflets were also attacked. Ford Ser-
vicemen grabbed them, twisted their arms to make them drop the
leaflets, and beat them mercilessly. Reverend Sanford subsequently
related:

The girls were at a loss to know, apparently, what to do, and then
one girl near me was kicked in the stomach and vomited at my feet,
right at the end of the steps there, and I finally shot an imploring glance
at one of the mounted policemen, to whom I had previously spoken, and
he dashed over on horseback to the west side of the fence, and in a
rather pleading tone . . . said: "You mustn't hurt those women; you
mustn't hurt those women." ... he seemed to speak as one not having

176

authority in the situation and seemed to be pleading, rather, not to
injure the women.

Next day, Harry Bennett released a statement to the press. The
Ford Motor Company, he said, was in no way responsible for what
had happened. "The union men were beaten by regular Ford em-
ployees," stated Bennett. "The employees of the Ford plant want to
be left alone by CIO organizers so they can do their work here
in peace . . .'*

4. The Dallas Affair

In the spring of 1937, Harry Bennett was informed through a
report from one of his undercover agents that the International
Union of the United Automobile Workers of America was about
to launch an organizational drive among the workers at the Ford
assembly plant at Dallas, Texas.

The Dallas plant was one of sixteen Ford assembly plants in the
United States.* Since the unionization of any one of them would
establish a precedent for the others, Bennett dispatched one of his
most dependable aides, a man named Warren Worley, to Dallas to
help forestall the anticipated union drive.

As soon as Worley arrived at the Dallas plant, Rudolf F. Rutland,
general body foreman and head of the Dallas branch of the Service
Department, summoned the key servicemen in the plant to his
office to confer with Bennett's emissary. Worley and Rutland out-
lined a plan of action against UAWA organizers. "We don't want
any of them rats in the plant," declared Rutland. . . .

"Fats" Perry, a massive thug and onetime wrestler weighing 230
pounds, was placed in charge of a special strong-arm squad. He
chose as his chief aides a former pugilist, "Sailor" Barto Hill, and a
violent, sadistic ex-convict, "Buster" Bevill. The squad as a whole
was composed of about forty criminals, gunmen and professional
thugs.

A large and varied arsenal of weapons, including blackjacks,
whips, brass knuckles, steel rods and clubs, was maintained for the
use of the strong-arm squad. "The boys got their own guns," stated
"Fats" Perry later, "and the blackjacks, they were made in the
maintenance department."

* Ford motors, rear ends, body pieces and other car parts were shipped
from Dearborn, Michigan, to these assembly plants.

Perry also kept on hand a supply of lengths of leaded rubber
hose which he called "persuaders." They were for use on reticent
union men. In Perry's words: "We persuaded them to talk by
applying the rubber to them."

Under Perry's supervision, special cruising detachments were or-
ganized to keep a constant watch in all parts of Dallas for any
union activity, and to check at bus stations, train depots and hotels
for the possible arrival of union organizers. The vigil soon extended
to Fort Worth, Houston, Beaumont and other neighboring cities.
"We knew if they got into those cities," explained "Buster" Bevill
afterwards, "they'd be in Dallas next, and so we went after them."

As soon as the cruising detachments located a union man, they
got in touch with "Fats" Perry. Then the strong-arm squad went
into action . . .

On June 23, 1937, a UAWA official named Baron De Louis
arrived in Dallas with Leonard Guempelheim, a member of the
executive committee of the union's Kansas City Local. Even before
they registered at the New Dallas Hotel, "Fats" Perry knew of their
presence in town.

Later that same day the two union representatives were eating
lunch in a drug store when Perry and a group of his thugs strolled
up to them.

"You're a union organizer, aren't you?" Perry asked De Louis.

"If you call it that," De Louis replied. "Fm trying to line some
of the boys up."

Without \^^arning. Perry smashed his fist into De Louis' face,
knocking him backwards over the soda fountain. At the same time,
the other Ford thugs attacked the two union men with fists and
blackjacks. Breaking away, De Louis ran from the drugstore.
Guempelheim was less fortunate. He was dragged to a nearby
schoolyard, knocked down, kicked and repeatedly lifted to his feet
and battered to the ground again. Finally, the beating stopped.

"Now you get the hell out of town," Perry told Guempelheim,
"and take that other CIO son-of-a-bitch with you and never come
back to Dallas."

His face covered with blood and several of his ribs broken,
Guempelheim staggered down the street and made his way back to
the New Dallas Hotel.

The brutal assault, which had been witnessed by a number of

178

bystanders, was promptly reported to the Dallas Police Department.
No arrests were made . . .

To guard against possible infiltration of the Dallas plant by
union organizers, every applicant for a job was carefully questioned.
Those suspected of "union leanings" were given the "third-degree"
by the strong-arm squad. "We would whip them," Perry later
related, "some with fists, some with blackjacks, some with lashes
made out of windshield cord."

If workers were so badly injured that the local authorities had to
make inquiries, members of the strong-arm squad temporarily left
Dallas. As Perry put it: "When things got too hot for the boys,
they beat it out of town for a while." Traveling expenses for these
hasty trips were ordinarily advanced by the Ford office.

As these expenses mounted, and there was also the occasional
necessity of paying fines and fees to bondsmen and attorneys, the
Dallas Service Department chief, Rudolf Rutland, declared to have
the workers in the plant help defray the costs. A glass jar was placed
every pay-day on a stand which workers had to pass after receiving
their pay checks. Members of the strong-arm squad stood nearby
and told the workers to "hit the jar." After each pay-day's collec-
tion, Perry took the jar to the office of W. A. Abbott, the plant
superintendent. The money was turned over to Abbott's secretary,
Leon Armstrong, who had opened in his own name a special
account for the "fighting fund" at the Grand Avenue State Bank
of Dallas . . .

On August 7, 1937, Rutland received a telephone call from the
Dallas Police Department advising him that an official of the
United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union
named George Baer had arrived in Dallas for the purpose of or-
ganizing the millinery workers in the city. The poHce inspector
recommended that "Perry's boys go after him."

Two days later, Baer was kidnapped by some of "Fats" Perry's
men and taken to the Sportatorium, a stadium on the outskirts of
the city.

Shortly afterwards, the Ford thugs telephoned "Fats" Perry from
the stadium. "You better come down and look at Baer," Perry was
told. "He's in pretty bad shape."

Together with "Buster" Bevill, Perry drove to the Sportatorium.
The car containing Baer and his captors was parked in back of the
stadium. Baer was lying on the floor. Blood covered his disfigured

179

face. His nose was smashed and most of his teeth had been knocked
out. One eye was hanging from its socket.

"Well, you better get rid of him," said Perry. "You better put him
somewhere."

"Buster" Bevill pulled Baer out of the car and let him fall on the
ground. "Let's take the son-of-a-bitch," said Bevill, "and throw him
in the river."

The Ford thugs put Baer back in the car, drove along the high-
way for a few miles and threw him out into a field.

As the strong-arm squad was driving back to Dallas, Bevill said,
"We better call the McKamy Cambell Funeral Home and have them
pick him up."

But despite the fearful punishment he had received, George Baer
did not die. In a semi-conscious state, he crawled out to the high-
way, was picked up by a passing motorist and taken to a hospital.
Ten days later, Baer was well enough to leave the hospital. He was,
however, totally blind in one eye.

Within six months after the arrival at the Dallas plant of Bennett's
aide, Warren Worley, approximately fifty union members, "sus-
pects" and organizers had been assaulted by "Fats" Perry's strong-arm
squad on the streets of Dallas, or kidnapped and taken to the out-
skirts of the city, where they were flogged, blackjacked, tarred and
feathered, and tortured. A mood of suspicion and fear permeated
the plant. Not knowing who might be a company spy, the workers
were now afraid even to mention the subject of unions. The
UAWA efforts to organize the Dallas plant were at a standstill.

An expression of the management's satisfaction with the anti-
union drive was contained in a letter sent by the Plant Superin-
tendent, W. A. Abbott, to "Fats" Perry, the day before Christmas,
on December 24, 1937. The letter read:

Dear "Fats":
"RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW"

That statement covers a lot of territory, and it means that you per-
sonally have taken many steps, so to speak, since last December 25th.

For your various steps toward better cooperation, a better under-
standing among your coworkers, and the best organization in the com-
pany, I wish to express sincere appreciation from the writer and from
the Company.

I know that you have on many occasions tackled problems that

180

seemed difficult to solve— but you made the grade. Though you may not
have realized it, your efforts and ability to carry on enabled the Dallas
Branch to pass another milestone and hang up the sign "PRODUCTION
NOT INTERRUPTED." That too covers a lot of territory.

I thank you for your genuine loyalty to the Company and for your
individual accomplishments to maintain harmony and efficiency . . . You
kept the Dallas Branch ahead another year, in more v^ays than one.
LET'S CARRY ON.

With best regards, and the Season's Greetings, I am.
Sincerely yours,

s/ W. A. Abbott,
Superintendent.

Early in 1940, after many months of preliminary investigation
and painstaking collation of evidence, the National Labor Relations
Board charged the Ford Motor Company with violation of the
Wagner Labor Act at its Dallas plant.

At an extraordinary Board hearing held in Dallas from February
26 to March 28, 1940 there unfolded the whole appalHng story of
the anti-union campaign waged by the Ford Management at the
Dallas plant. Among the numerous witnesses who testified concern-
ing the machinations of the Ford espionage apparatus and the grue-
some operations of Perry's strong-arm squad were former company
spies, ex-members of the strong-arm squad, and union organizers and
*'suspects" who had been beaten and tortured by the Ford thugs.
The total testimony filled 4,258 closely-typed pages.

The most comprehensive and damning testimony against the Ford
Company came from "Fats" Perry himself, who had turned state's
evidence and who described in full detail his activities as head of the
strong-arm squad. Here is an excerpt from Perry's testimony re-
lating how "union suspects" were "taken for a ride":

Q. What would you do then?

A. Well, the first thing we would do, we would search them and find
out if they had any identification belonging to a union of any
kind, or where they were from, or what they belonged to, and
give them a good talk, and worked over some of them, ones that
we had under suspicion of being a union man or if they had cards
on them.

Q. What do you mean "gave them a working over".?

A. We would whip them, beat them up.

Q. With what?

A. Put the fear of God in them as they call it.

Q. What would you whip them with?

181

A. Some with fists, some with blackjacks.

Q. Anything else?

A. One or two of them we whipped with a regular whip we had
made out of rubber wind cord and some of them— one of them
was whipped according to whether we thought he could take it
or not with brushes off of trees, limbs.

Through such beatings, it was revealed at the hearing, Ford thugs
had crippled thirty-five men, blinded one, and mutilated and seri-
ously injured dozens of others.

One of the most shocking revelations at the hearing came during
the testimony of Archie C. Lewis, a salesman of fire-fighting equip-
ment in Dallas, whose outspoken pro-union views had incurred the
enmity of members of the Ford Service Department. Lewis related
how Ford thugs, mistaking his twin brother for himself, had brutally-
attacked his brother, beating 'him unconscious with blackjack blows
on the head and kicks in the stomach. After the beating, his
brother hovered between Hfe and death for several months. Shortly
before he finally died, he told Archie Lewis: "You know they killed
me, mistaking me for you."

Ford attorneys offered a singular defense. They introduced wit-
nesses who solemnly declared that the Ford workers "feared" union
organizers were going to "invade" the Dallas plant, and had there-
fore organized gangs to "protect" themselves.

The Ford counsel, Neth L. Leachman, summed up this line of
defense with the statement: "The things these people were protect-
ing was their lunch baskets and they did not want to be molested in
their happy conditions."

The evidence against Ford was overwhelming.

"No case within the history of this board," stated Trial Ex-
aminer Robert Denham in his report, "is known to the undersigned
in which an employer had deliberately called and carried into
execution a program of brutal beatings, whippings and other mani-
festations of physical violence comparable to that shown by the
uncontradicted and wholly credible evidence on which the findings
are based."

The Board found the Ford Motor Company guilty of flagrant
violations of the Wagner Labor Act, and ordered the company to
cease these practices and to rehire those employees who 'had been
discharged because of their union activities.
182

It was the eleventh decision of the National Labor Relations
Board against the Ford Motor Company.*

5. Boring From Within

Notwithstanding the virtual impunity with which Ford con-
tinued to violate the Wagner Labor Act, a serious challenge had
arisen to the auto magnate's despotic rule over the workers in his
factories. The challenge came from the United Automobile
Workers Union.

Following the victorious sit-down strikes of 1937, the UAW had
grown with phenomenal rapidity. As some 400,000 auto workers
poured into its ranks within a matter of months, the UAW became
the third largest union in the CIO.

Aware of the wage increases and improved working conditions
won in auto plants organized by the UAW, Ford workers began
growing increasingly restive . . .

Harry Bennett was quick to recognize the gravity of the situa-
tion. When it came to handling an adversary as powerful as the
UAW had suddenly become, Bennett's past methods were clearly
outdated. Effective as violence, terror and intimidation had previ-
ously been, their future value had obvious limitations . . .

As Bennett saw it, since the UAW had apparently come to stay
and since the union would undoubtedly make inroads among Ford
employees, certain basic revisions were necessary in Ford's labor
policy. Bennett decided not only to permit but to encourage the
formation of a union at River Rouge— with this single qualification:

* Other NLRB hearings had been held in connection with the company's
anti-labor operations at River Rouge and Ford branch plants, located in
Chicago, Buffalo, St. Louis, Kansas City, Somerville (Mass.), and Richmond
and Long Beach, California.

In all of these cases, the American public was kept largely unaware of the
sensational findings by the NLRB. The Dallas hearing, for example, was
covered by only one major newspaper, the New York Times. Otherwise, with
the exception of the lefuving and labor press, the extraordinary revelations
at the hearing were almost entirely suppressed by the nation's press.

When the author of this book was collecting material for a series of articles
on Ford in 1939, which were subsequently published in Friday magazine, he
learned that a considerable amount of Ford data uncovered by Dallas reporters
had never been printed by their newspapers but had, instead, been filed away
in the newspaper "morgues." Among such material, which the author man-
aged to obtain, were photographs of trade unionists after they had been beaten
and tortured by "Fats" Perry's strong-arm squad.

183

the leaders of the union would be secret agents of Bennett's Service
Department and the union itself would be completely under his
domination . . .

Well aware that his own overt sponsorship of any union would
be a sure way to keep Ford workers from joining, Bennett enlisted
the assistance of an old friend, with unusual promotional facilities at
his disposal. The friend was Father Charles E. Coughlin.*

* The relationship between Harry Bennett and Father Coughlin was only-
one instance of a close alliance that had existed for many years between the
Ford Motor Company and fascist elements not only in the United States but
throughout the world.

Shortly after World War I, Henry Ford's name had been connected with
the rapidly growing Nazi movement in Europe. According to the February
8, 1923, edition of the New York Times, Vice-President Auer of the Bavarian
Diet had publicly declared, "The Bavarian Diet has long had information that
the Hitler movement was partly financed by an American anti-Semitic chief,
who is Henry Ford. . . . Herr Hitler openly boasts of Mr. Ford's support and
praises Mr. Ford not as a great individualist but as a great anti-Semite."

In March 1923 Adolf Hitler declared: "We look on Heinrich Ford as the
leader of the growing Fascisti movement in America. We admire particularly
his anti-Jewish policy which is the Bavarian Fascisti platform. We have just
had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published. The book is being cur-
rently circulated to millions throughout Germany."

A number of German agents who came to America during the 1920's and
1930's to build a Nazi fifth column in the United States were in close touch
with the Ford Motor Company. Heinz Spanknoebel, the Nazi agent who
founded the Friends of New Germany, and Fritz Kuhn, the Nazi agent who
organized the German-American Bund, were both on the payroll of the Ford
Motor Company while they were openly carrying on their Nazi organizational
activity.

Up to, and even after, the outbreak of the World War II, Ford plants
throughout the world were centers of fascist intrigue. The managers and
officials of Ford's factories in Germany, Austria and Hungary cooperated
closely with the Nazi Party. Gaston Bergery, Ford's personal and business
representative in Paris, was one of the key Nazi agents in France and was
described by the New York Sunday Times of August 11, 1940, as the "coming
man" in Hitler's schemes for the Nazification of France. Julio Brunet, General
Manager of the Ford Motor Company in Mexico City, was associated with
the Nazi-supported General Nicholas Rodriguez, organizer of the Fascist
Gold Shirts, who sought to overthrow the Cardenas Government m 1936.
Lord Perry, head of the Ford Motor Company, Ltd., of England, which until
1934 controlled Fordwerke, A.G., in Germany, was on intimate terms with
members of the notorious pro-Nazi Link organization.

In August 1938 Henry Ford became the first American to be awarded the
Grand Cross of the German Eagle by the Government of Nazi Germany . . .

Pro-fascist groups and individuals in the United States were in constant
touch with the Ford Motor Company.

John Koos, a close associate of Harry Bennett's at the Ford River Rouge
Plant, was a leading spokesman for the American branch of the fascist
Ukrainian Hetman Society, which had its headquarters in Berlin. On Septem-

.84

Late in 1937, the formation of the Workers Council for Social
Justice, Inc., an "independent body" to "organize and benefit" Ford
employees, was publicly announced. A series of articles, urging
Ford workers to join the Council, started appearing in CoughUn's
Social Justice, and the publication was distributed in mass quantities
throughout the River Rouge Plant by Ford foremen and Service
Department agents. "Bennett bought about 30,000 copies a week,"
the Service Department agent, Ralph Rimar, subsequently related.
"This sort of helped Coughlin in a financial way too."

Even so, only a handful of Ford workers joined the Council. The
vast majority wanted nothing to do with any movement with which
Coughlin's name was connected.

After Uvo more abortive attempts to estabHsh an effective com-
pany union among the workers at River Rouge, Bennett embarked
upon his boldest and most ambitious undertaking in the field of
trade unionism. The grandiose aim of Bennett's new scheme was to
capture control of the United Automobile Workers Union.

Since 1936, the UAW president had been an egoistic, youthful
former college track star and ex-Baptist minister named Homer
Martin. An impassioned orator of the revivalist school, who had

her 30, 1938, Koos sent a congratulatory cable to Adolf Hider praising him
for his "history-making efforts in the adjustment of minority rights."

Parker Sage, the head of the fascist National Workers League in Detroit,
which was partly financed with funds received from the Nazi spy Dr. Fred
Thomas, held meetings on Dearborn property, was permitted to recruit
members for his organization in the River Rouge Plant, and referred to Henry
Ford as "the greatest living American" who "knows that the Jews got us into
this war."

The top man in the Michigan Ku Klux Klan, Charles E. Spare, worked for
a "detective agency" which subsisted by providing labor spies for the Ford
Service Department.

Harry Bennett periodically made sizeable financial contributions to Gerald
L. K. Smith, ex-Silver Shirter No. 3223 and head of the fascist America First
Party. Smith's confidential adviser William E. Nowell, was a Ford man. . . .

Late in 1943, the author of this book wrote an article disclosing these and
other facts about the relationship existing between the Ford Motor Company
and fifth column elements in the United States. The author sent documenta-
tion of this material to the Attorney General and suggested he verify these
facts by sending an agent of the Department of Justice to interview Harry
Bennett.

Shordy afterwards, John S. Bugas, director of FBI operations in the Mich-
igan area, went to the River Rouge Plant— although not exactly in the manner
this author had recommended. Bugas resigned from his job with the FBI
and went onto the Ford payroll as an assistant to Harry Bennett. In 1946,
Bugas became Ford vice-president in charge of labor relations.

185

won a large mass following during the chaotic days of the sit-down
strikes, Martin deeply resented any questioning of his autocratic
decisions and accused critical UAW officials of being "Reds"
secretly plotting against his leadership.

Bennett arranged for a private conference with Homer Martin.
Henry Ford, Bennett told the union chief, was now willing to have
his workers organized but he still had one serious objection against
Martin's union— Ford wanted all "Commies" out of the union
leadership . . .

The head of the Ford Service Department and the UAW presi-
dent began meeting with increasing frequency. Describing these
negotiations, the Service Department agent Ralph Rimar subse-
quently related:

. . . Bennett handled Martin with kid gloves. Martin was having a
tough time with the union. The bunch opposing him was getting
stronger. He needed dough. Bennett said he'd like to help— for the "good
of the union." Homer swallowed the bait. The money was to be con-
sidered as a loan. It was to be paid back as soon as Martin got things
straightened out in the union ... I don't know how much he got in all,
but I was told that an account was opened in Martin's name on a New
York bank and that the first two checks drawn were for $10,000 and
$15,000 . . .

Meanwhile, Bennett's agents in the UAW were instructed to use
the rift in the leadership as means of promoting dissension through-
out the union. "We were told to split the union into two camps,"
Ralph Rimar later revealed. "We were also told to spread the word
that the bunch opposing Martin were Reds . . ."

By the fall of 1938 the UAW was torn by bitter factional strife.
Acrimonious charges and counter-charges filled the pages of UAW
publications. Violent arguments, and not infrequently fistfights, dis-
rupted one union meeting after another.

"Here these guys have been talking about organizing Ford, and
now they're knocking one another off!" Bennett exultantly told one
of his Service Department aides. "The whole damn union's falling
apart! Is that a hot one.^"

But Bennett's elation was premature. Resentment against Martin's
dictatorial conduct was rapidly mounting among the UAW rank-
and-file. When Martin summarily suspended five members of the
UAW Executive Board, widespread indignation within the union
186

forced him to reinstate them. Soon afterwards, Martin suspended
fifteen Board members. The fifteen union officials, who comprised
the majority of the Board, promptly issued a statement to the effect
that Martin no longer represented the union membership and that
they were suspending him from the presidency of the union . . .

Alarmed at this unexpected turn of events, Bennett hurriedly
called a press conference and announced that the Ford Company
was entering into union negotiations with Martin. Following a
widely publicized meeting between Bennett and Martin, newspapers
proclaimed that complete agreement had been reached between the
Ford Motor Company and "Homer Martin, President of the United
Automobile Workers Union,"

But far from being favorably impressed by the hasty agreement,
the vast majority of the UAW membership regarded it as conclusive
proof of collusion between Martin and the hated chief of the Ford
Service Department. An angry demand for the expulsion of Martin
swept through the UAW.

In January 1939, the UAW Executive Board expelled Martin
from membership in the union.

It was the end of Homer Martin's brief, stormy career as a trade
union leader. Not long afterwards, the former UAW president
moved his headquarters to the River Rouge Plant*

6. Final Drive

With Homer Martin's disruptive influence eliminated, and with
R. J. Thomas as the new UAW president, the union began inten-
sive preparations for an all-out drive to organize the River Rouge
Plant. A special Ford Organizing Committee was set up. The Execu-
tive Board of the CIO and the UAW each allocated $50,000 to the
campaign fund.

By the fall of 1940, the drive was well under way.

So enthusiastic was the response of the Ford workers to the
campaign that Bennett himself soon admitted in a newspaper inter-
view that an NLRB election at River Rouge would proba'bly result
in a victory for the UAW. If this occurred, added Bennett, he
would meet with representatives of the union and "bargain until
hell freezes over and give the union nothing."

Using every possible device to forestall the NLRB election,

187

Bennett ordered the wholesale firing of UAW members at the River
Rouge Plant; but this measure only served to intensify the rebelUous
spirit mounting among Ford workers . . .

On April i, 1941, the revolt in the Ford empire reached its
climax. Late in the afternoon, in protest against the dismissal of the
members of their UAW bargaining committee, 10,000 workers in
the rolling mill at the River Rouge Plant left their machines. As
word of the work-stoppage spread through the great plant, workers
poured out of the pressed steel, tool and die, open hearth, and motor
buildings. In a great tide, tens of thousands of workers streamed
through the plant gates. By midnight, every building at River Rouge
had ceased to operate.

Daybreak found an extraordiary spectacle at River Rouge. All
roads leading to the plant were being picketed, and blockades of
cars backed up the picket Hnes. Thousands of Ford workers on
the morning shift, who had not yet been ink)rmed of the strike,
were arriving by streetcar, bus and automobile. For miles, the
highways were clogged with densely packed vehicles.

Within a few hours, there was an enormous picket line reaching
all the way around the huge plant. Marching four abreast, waving
hastily constructed placards, singing and shouting slogans, the
pickets soon numbered more than 10,000 men.

For the first time in its thirty-five years of existence, the Ford
Motor Company was shut down by a strike.

In a statement to the press, Harry Bennett declared that under no
circumstances would he or any other Ford executive meet to discuss
terms with representatives of the UAW. "It's all a Communist plot,"
he said, "and is a move to create a revolutionary situation so that
the Communists can have the conditions necessary for the setting
up of a dictatorship of the proletariat."

During the next twenty-four hours, Bennett embarked on a
desperate scheme to break the strike. With the aim of fomenting
race riots at the River Rouge Plant and discrediting the strike in
the eyes of the public, Bennett began smuggHng Negro strike-
breakers into the plant. They were encouraged to manufacture
knives and other murderous weapons in the shops of the plant.
Then, Service Department agents began agitating the strikebreakers
to attack white workers on the picket lines.
188

A tragic catastrophe was averted only by quick, far-sighted action
on the part of the UAW leadership and the Negro community in
Detroit. Instructions were issued to all pickets not to be provoked
into fighting with the strikebreakers. Prominent Negro citizens hur-
ried to River Rouge and, addressing the strikebreakers through
loudspeakers in UAW sound cars, exhorted them to leave the plant.
Thousands of Negro workers marching on the picket lines urged
the strikebreakers to come out and join them.

Gradually, the strikebreakers straggled out . . .

The River Rouge Plant was Hke a deserted city. Its huge buildings
stood silent and empty. Not a railroad car moved on the miles of
track. Ford ships lay idle at their docks.

Hourly, the gigantic human chain encircling the six square miles
of the River Rouge Plant grew in numbers. Workers from General
Motors, Chrysler and other auto plants in the Detroit area came,
after working hours, to take their places on the picket lines. By the
third day of the strike, a total of 35,000 men and women, operating
in three shifts, were picketing the plant.

On April 4, the Ford Company announced it was closing down
its sixteen assembly plants throughout the country, because of parts
shortages caused by the strike at the River Rouge Plant. Eighteen
other Ford plants simultaneously ceased operations.

On April 8, with all hope of breaking the strike ended, Harry
Bennett entered into negotiations with CIO President Philip Murray
and the UAW leaders.

Three days later, after lengthy parleys between Ford executives
and union officials, the Ford Motor Company agreed to bring its
wages into line with those of other major automobile manufacturers,
to recognize the UAW as the spokesman for its members in Ford
employ, and to permit the holding of an NLRB election.

On June 21, after the union had won a resounding victory in an
NLRB election at the River Rouge Plant, the Ford Motor Company
signed a contract with the United Auto Workers.

The settlement of the prolonged and bitter conflict at America's
largest defense plant came none too soon.
Five and a half months later, the United States was at war.

189

Chapter xi

DANGEROUS AMERICANS

There are also American citizens, many of them in high
places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are aiding these
[Axis] agents.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
December 2g, 1940.

In the United States we have many of our compatriots
and even more friends among the citizens of the United
States who are favorably disposed toward us. Many of the
latter hold important positions in political and economic life.

From a speech delivered in Berlin in
ip^o by Reichsminister R, Walter Darre.

I. Secret Offensive

The Axis war against America did not begin on December 7, 1941,
with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The momentous events
of that morning climaxed a secret war that the German, Japanese
and Italian General Staffs had been waging against the United States
for almost a decade. The major battles of this undeclared war were
fought on American soil.

During the 1930's a huge fifth column apparatus of Axis-inspired
organizations, pro-Nazi propaganda centers, military-espionage and
racist terrorist cells, ramified through every phase of American
hfe. When Hitler's mechanized legions swept into Poland on Sep-
tember I, 1939, and launched the Second World War, there were
already more than 700 fascist organizations operating in the United
States.

These were a few of the openly pro-Axis or native fascist organ-
izations which functioned in America during 1933-41:
190

American Desdny Party Italian Fascist Clubs

American Guards Japanese Imperial Comradeship

American White Guards League

Ausland-Organization der Japanese Military Servicemen's

N.S.D.A.P. (Overseas Branch of League

the Nazi Party) Ku Klux Klan
A.V. Jugendschaft (Hitler Youth) Kyffhaeuser Bund (German Vet-
Black Dragon League erans League)
Black Legion National Copperheads
Blackshirts National Workers League
Christian Front ODWU (Organization for the
Christian Mobilizers Rebirth of the Ukraine)
Deutscher Krieger Bund von Ordnungsdienst (Order Service—

Nord-A?nerika (German Sol- Storm Troops)

diers League of North America) Patriots of the Republic

Ethiopian-Pacific League Russian Fascist National Revolu-

Falangists tionary Party

German-American Bund Silver Shirts

Gray Shirts Social Justice Clubs

Hetman Stahlhehn (Steel Helmets)

Hindenburg Youth Association White Russian Fascists

Cooperating with or directly supervised by the Axis Propaganda
Ministries and Military Intelligence Agencies, such organizations
flooded America with anti-democratic and anti-labor publications,
openly fomented racial antagonisms, denounced the Roosevelt Ad-
ministration, or called for the establishment of a fascist regime in
America. At mass rallies and clandestine conferences, on the radio
and by mail, in industrial centers and small towns, in factories,
farms, schools, chnirches and army training posts, the fifth column
network conducted ceaseless hostilities against the American nation.

The major objectives of the fascist fifth column were these: to
disrupt and disunite the American -people; to undermine public con-
fidence in Roosevelt; to convince Americans they were menaced not
by Fascism but by Communism; to hamstring U.S. defense prep-
arations; and to isolate America from its anti-fascist allies abroad.

Extraordinarily enough, the fascist fifth columnists were allowed
to pursue these pernicious aims in America, with practically no
interference whatsoever from the Department of Justice and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And, from the beginning, the machinations of the fifth column-
ists were directly aided by some of the wealthiest and most power-
ful men in the United States.*

The organization most vividly exemplifying the amazing impunity with

191

"It becomes more apparent every day that there is a sinister
movement in this country that seeks to super-impose on our free
American institutions a system of hateful fascism," declared Secre-
tary of Interior Harold L. Ickes in a speech at Altoona, Pennsyl-

which the Axis fifth column was permitted to operate in the United States
was the German-American Bund, which functioned under the command of
Nazi agents trained at Dr. Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry and German Mili-
tary Intelligence espionage -sabotage schools.

By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, seventy-
one branches of the German-American Bund were active in key cities through-
out the United States; four official Bund newspapers were being issued in
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles; and the Bund membership
and that of its affiliates was estimated at 200,000. Thousands of goosestepping,
brown-shirted Bund Storm Troops, complete with swastika armbands and
rubber truncheons, were staging public Nazi demonstrations in American
cities and openly heiling Hider.

Bund members, all of whom had to take an oath of allegiance to Hitler and
Nazi Germany, held jobs in vital defense plants, on railroads and steamship
lines, and in every major industry, and moved in large numbers into the
U. S. Army . . .

From the outset, the German-American Bund served as a recruiting agency
for the German Military Intelligence, and enlisted and trained spies and
saboteurs. Almost every major spy trial in the United States during the Second
World War involved Bund members. Figures issued by the Federal Bureau
of Investigation revealed that during 1940-41 the Bund was responsible for
smuggling into the United States and protecting "at least 200 key Nazi agents."

Most astounding of all was the fact that the Bund's army of trained Nazi
spies and propagandists continued to operate unmolested on American soil
for seven months after Nazi Germany had formally declared war on the
United States. Not until July 1942 did U. S. authorities finally get around
to arresting twenty-nine of the top Bund leaders and begin rounding up other
Bundists on charges of conspiring to obstruct the Selective Service Act. Only
a few hundred of the many thousands of active Bundists were arrested and
imprisoned or interned for the duration of the war. Officially disbanded in the
summer of 1942, the Bund continued to operate during the war years through
affiliate societies and various other channels.

The only possible explanation for the amazingly temperate attitude of the
Justice Department and the FBI toward the German-American Bund was the
fact that these Government agencies were traditionally far less concerned
about fascist machinations than about labor, progressive and left-wing acdvities
in the United States. Moreover, much of the Bund's program-such as its
"anti-Communist" and anti-labor agitation-was not exactly sharply divergent
from the general orientation of the Justice Department and the FBI.

In this respect, the Bund was not an exceptional case. Leniency toward
fascist conspiratorial operations in America has been a consistent policy with
the Justice Department and FBI. When editor of The Hour, the author of
this book repeatedly called to the FBI's attention cases of Axis and native
fascist intrigue in America, and was almost invariably unable to effect action
by the FBI.

192

vania, in 1935. "This group is composed of, or at least lias the active
support of, those who have grown tremendously rich and powerful
through the exploitation not only of natural resources, but of men,
women and children of America. Having stopped at nothing to ac-
quire the wealth that they possess, they will stop at nothing to hold
onto that wealth and add to it."
Secretary Ickes added:

Stimulating us to a patriotic fervor by pretending that a Communist
uprising threatens in this country, these gentry are attempting to line
us up in support of a facist coup d'etat.

In the movement to which Ickes referred, a leading role was
being played by an organization headed by a group of Americans
outstanding industrialists and financiers. The organization was
called, rather euphemistically, the American Liberty League . . .

In August 1934, the American Liberty League had been officially
incorporated with the proclaimed intention "to combat radicalism,"
and "defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States."

The dominant influence in the Liberty League came from
du Pont-Morgan interests. On the League's national executive com-
mittee and advisory council sat Pierre S. du Pont, Irenee du Pont,
and John J. Raskob, respectively Chairman of the board. Vice-
chairman of the board and Vice-President of E. I. du Pont de
Nemours & Co.

Among the other members of the national executive or advisory
council were:

John W. Davis, former presidential candidate, counsel for the House
of Morgan, director in Morgan's Guaranty Trust Company and of
the Morgan-dominated American Telephone and Telegraph Com-
pany

Sewell L. Avery, president and chairman of the board of the Morgan-
controlled Montgomery Ward & Co.

Alfred P. Sloan, chairman of the board of General Motors Corp.

Williain S. Knudsen, president of General Motors Corp.

Cornelius F. Kelley, president of the Anaconda Copper Co.

Colby M. Chester, chairman of the National Association of Manufac-
turers and of the board of General Foods Corp.

Ernest. T. Weir, chairman of the board of National Steel Corp. and
president of Midwest Steel Corp.

Alvan Macauley, president of Packard Motor Car Co.

Herbert L. Pratt, chairman of the board of Socony- Vacuum Co.

193

In a lavishly financed promotional campaign, the Liberty League
was presented to the American public as a patriotic society dedi-
cated to championing "the rights of the American citizen." The
extent to which the League actually reflected the interests of
average Americans was indicated in a United Press dispatch on
January 9, 1935, which read in part:

The American Liberty League, a non-partisan society created to op-
pose "radical" movements in the national government, was shown today
to be under control of a group representing industrial and financial or-
ganizations possessing assets of more than $37,000,000,000.

League directors were shown to have affiliations with such organiza-
tions as the United States Steel Corp., General Motors, Standard Oil Co.,
Chase National Bank, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad, the Mutual Life Insurance Co. and scores of others.

The writer Herbert Harris had this to say about the underlying
aims of the American Liberty League:

. . . the only liberty the League fosters is the liberty to water stock, rig
the market, manipulate paper, and pyramid holding companies to the
stratosphere ... It is the liberty to pay starvation wages and break
strikes with hired thugs ... It is the liberty to warp the minds and
bodies of children in textile mills and on "share-cropping" farms. It is
the liberty to buy opinions of the pulpit and the press. It is the liberty
which leads to death.

While pubUcly proclaiming the Liberty League's concern for the
nation's welfare, the leaders of the League were privately spending
huge sums in an intensive effort to discredit the Roosevelt Admin-
istration, impugn New Deal social reforms, and incite hostility
against the organized labor movement. To help promote these aims,
League members created or subsidized a number of anti-democratic
auxiharies. These were the names of some of them:

American Federation of Utility National Economy League

Investors New York State Economic Coun-

American Taxpayers League cil

Crusaders Sentinels of the Republic

Farmers Independence Council Southern Committee to Uphold

League for Industrial Rights the Constitution

Minute Men and Women of To- Women Investors in America, Inc.
day

On April 18, 1936, the New York Post reported:

The brood of anti-New Deal organizations spawned by the Liberty
League are in turn spawning fascism.

194

One of the first fascistic organizations to be formed under
Liberty League sponsorship was the Southern Committee to Uphold
the Constitution.*

The Southern Committee concentrated on two main objectives:
spUtting the Democratic vote of the South away from Roosevelt;
and stirring up anti-Negro sentiment, to prevent white and colored
workers from uniting in trade unions. "This is a hybrid organiza-
tion," commented the Baltimore Sun regarding the Southern Com-
mittee, "financed by northern money, but playing on the Ku Klux
Klan prejudices of the South. When Raskob, a Roman Catholic,
contributed $5,000, he was told his money would be used to stir
up the KKK and also to finance a venomous attack on Mrs. Roose-
velt."

The chairman of the Southern Committee was John Henry
Kirby, former NAM President, Texas oil magnate and one of the
wealthiest lumbermen in America. Acting as Kirby's right-hand
lieutenant in the Committee was a self-styled "public relations
counsel" named Vance Muse, editor of The Christian American
and specialist in the promotion of "Christian" and "anti-Communist"
organizations. "From now on," said Vance Muse regarding the
New Deal labor policies, "white women and white men will be
forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will
have to call 'brother' or lose their jobs.". . .

Another fascist organization financed by Liberty League members
was the Sentinels of the Republic. The National Chairman of the
Sentinels was Raymond Pitcairn, President of the Pitcairn Com-
pany; and the total contribution of the Pitcairn family to the
Sentinels amounted to more than $ioo,ooo.t Other large contribu-
tors were Atwater Kent, President of the Atwater Kent Manu-
facturing Company; Horatio Lloyd, banker and Morgan partner;

* League members contributing most heavily to the financial support of the
Southern Committee included Lammot du Pont, President of du Pont de
Nemours and Chairman of the board of General Motors Corporation; Pierre
S. du Pont; Alfred P. Sloan; and John J. Raskob, Vice-President of the du
Pont firm.

t According to the findings of the Temporary National Economic Com-
mittee in 1 94 1, the Pitcairn family of Pennsylvania had holdings in industrial
corporations amounting to $65,576,000 and ranked tenth among the nation's
richest families with industrial holdings. The largest holdings of the Pitcairn
family were in the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.

J. Howard Pew, President of the Sun Oil Company; and Bernard
Kroger, banker and grocery tycoon.

Like official Nazi propaganda, the literature disseminated by the
Sentinels of the Republic stressed "the Jewish-Communist" menace
of the New Deal. In 1936 the Senate Black Committee investigating
lobbying activities made public certain revealing correspondence
found in the files of the Sentinels. The correspondence consisted
of an exchange of letters between Alexander Lincoln, the Boston
investment banker who was President of the Sentinels, and W.
Cleveland Runyon of Plainfield, New Jersey. Runyon's first letter
to Lincoln excoriated "the Jewish brigade Roosevelt took to Wash-
ington" and went on to say:

The fight for Western Christian civilization can be won; but only if
we recognize that the enemy is world-wide and that it is Jewish in
origin. All we need here is money . . . The time is getting short. Can
you not do something?

To which the President of the Sentinels, Lincoln, replied:

I am doing what I can as an officer of the Sentinels. I think, as you
say, that the Jewish threat is a real one. My hope is in the election next
autumn, and I believe that our real opportunity lies in accomplishing
the defeat of Roosevelt.

Runyon then wrote back:

The people are crying for leadership and we are not getting it. Our
leaders are asleep. The Sentinels should really lead on the outstanding
issue. The old-line Americans of $1,000 a year want a Hitler.

The concept of an American dictator was not new. As early as
September 1932 the magazine Current History had reported:

For a good while, certain powerful elements have been toying with
the idea that the way out of our troubles lies through the establishment
of some form of economic and political dictatorship, and meetings of
important personages are known to have been held in New York and
Chicago, at which sentiment was tested out and possibilities discussed.

Returning from a visit to Europe in 1933, WilHam S. Knudsen,
President of General Motors, told a New York Times reporter that
Hitler's Germany was "the miracle of the twentieth century."

If such a miracle could occur in Germany, why not in the
United States?

One of the men being seriously considered in the early 1930's for
the role of American Fuehrer was Major General Smedley Butler of
the United States Marines.
196

2. Abortive Putsch

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, wearer of two con-
gressional medals of honor, was a colorful hard-bitten soldier who
had served thirty-three years in the Marine Corps before his habit
of blunt speaking involved him in an international incident that
brought about his enforced retirement. In 193 1, in a pubHc speech
dehvered in Philadelphia, General Butler had described Benito
Mussolini as "a mad dog about to break loose in Europe." The
General had also related how II Duce while speeding in his car
through an Italian town had run over a child, driven on without
slowing down and told an American journalist with him at the
time, "Never look backward. What is one life in the affairs of
state?" When the ItaHan Ambassador furiously protested against
Butler's remarks, and President Hoover issued an order to the Secre-
tary of the Navy that the General withdraw his remarks or face
court-martial, Butler stubbornly refused to recant. Shortly after-
wards, the Italian government, embarrassed by the mounting pub-
licity and reluctant to have more of the facts aired, requested the
case be dropped. The court-martial proceedings against General
Butler were discontinued, and the General was retired from active
service.

Far from diminishing General Butler's widespread popularity, the
episode had considerably increased the number of his enthusiastic
admirers— a fact not unnoted by certain influential circles then pri-
vately discussing potential candidates for the role of America's
"man on the white horse". . .

In July 1933, General Butler was visited at his home in Newton
Square, Pennsylvania, by two prominent American Legion officials,
Gerald C. MacGuire and William Doyle. They proceeded to urge
Butler to make a bid for the post of American Legion National
Commander at the Legion convention which was scheduled to take
place that October in Chicago. The General, said MacGuire, was
just the man to lead a rank-and-file movement to oust the Legion's
autocratic leadership.

The General said he liked the idea of "unseating the royal family
. . . because they've been selling out the common soldier in this
Legion for years." But he didn't see how rank-and-file support could
be rallied for his candidacy. What average veteran, he asked, could
afford to go to the Chicago convention.^

197

MacGuire reached into his pocket and took out a bank deposit
book. He pointed to two entries— one for $42,000, and the other for
$64,000. Rank-and-file delegates, said MacGuire, would be brought
to the convention from all parts of the country ...

Up to this point in the discussion. General Butler had felt there
was something strange about the proposition being made to him.
Now he was certain. "Soldiers don't have that kind of money," said
Butler later.

The General decided not to let his visitors know his suspicions
had been aroused. In his own words, "I wanted to get to the bottom
of this thing and not scare them off."

He would need time. General Butler told the two men, to think
the whole thing over. He proposed they meet again in the near
future . . .*

At a second meeting, MacGuire and Doyle presented General
Butler with a typewritten "draft" of a speech which they suggested
he deliver at the Legion convention. Among other things, the speech
recommended the convention adopt a resolution urging that the
United States return to the gold standard. "We want to see the
soldiers' bonus paid in gold," said MacGuire. "We don't want
the soldiers to have rubber money or paper money."

When General Butler bluntly asked who was going to foot the
cost of the campaign to make him Legion Commander, MacGuire
replied that nine very wealthy men were putting up the necessary
funds. One of them was the well-known Wall Street broker. Colonel
Grayson M.-P. Murphy. "I work for him," said MacGuire. "I'm in
liis office."

"What has Murphy got to do with this?" Butler inquired.

"Well, he's the man who underwrote the formation of the
American Legion for $125,000," MacGuire answered. "He paid for
the field work of organizing it and has not gotten all of it back yet.'*

"That is the reason he makes kings, is it?" said Butler. "He has
still got a club over their heads."

"He's on our side," MacGuire insisted. "He wants to see the
soldiers cared for." t

* The description of this meeting, and the dialogue quoted, is taken from
testimony given by General Smedley Butler in November 1934 before the
Special House Committee investigating Nazi Propaganda Activities, as is the
balance of the material in this section, except where specifically indicated.

t Grayson M.-P. Murphy— who besides heading his own brokerage firm,
held directorships in the Anaconda Copper Company, Goodyear Tire Com-

198

General Butler said that before discussing the matter any further,
he wanted to meet some of "the principals" who were putting up
the money. MacGuire said this would be arranged . . .

Not long afterwards, a Wall Street broker named Robert Sterling
Clark came to see General Butler at his home. He was, he told
Butler, one of the men who were interested in seeing the General
take over the leadership of the Legion.

During the conversation that followed, General Butler mentioned
the speech that MacGuire and Doyle had given him. "They wrote
a hell of a good' speech," said Butler.

"Did those fellows say that they wrote that speech?" asked
Clark.

"Yes, they did."

The broker chuckled. "That speech cost a lot of money," he
said.

General Butler spoke of the resolution calling for a return to
the gold standard. "It looks to me as if it were a big business speech.
There is something funny about that speech, Mr. Clark."

"I've got thirty million dollars," Clark quietly told the General.
"I don't want to lose it. I am willing to spend half of the thirty
miUion to save the other half. If you get out and make that speech
in Chicago, I am sure that they will adopt the resolution and that
will be one step toward the return to gold, to have the soldiers stand
up for it . . ."

When General Butler said he wanted no part in such a project,
Clark politely asked if he might use the General's telephone. Calling
Gerald MacGuire by long distance, the broker told him that Butler
would not be coming to the convention. "You've got forty-five
thousand dollars," said Clark to MacGuire. "You'll have to do it
that way."

Clark then took his leave of General Butler.

pany, Bethlehem Steel Company and several Morgan banks-was a man of
considerable experience in political-financial intrigues.

In the early iqoo's, after visiting Panama on a confidential mission as a
lieutenant in the U. S. Army, Murphy had sought to interest J. P. Morgan
and Company in financing a military putsch in that country.

Following World War I, Murphy headed the Red Cross Mission to France
and, later to Italy. Like Herbert Hoover, Murphy saw to it that food and
other supplies were used as a weapon against the postwar revolutionary
upsurgence in Europe. Subsequently, Murphy was decorated by Mussolini
and made a Commander of the Crown of Italy.

199

That October, the gold standard resolution was passed at the
Legion convention in Chicago.

In the spring of 1934, Gerald MacGuire traveled to Europe. The
purported reason for his trip was "business." Actually, MacGuire
was being sent to conduct a private survey of the role played by
war veterans in the Nazi Party in Germany, the Fascisti in Italy
and the Croix de Feu movement in France.

In a letter from Paris, MacGuire reported to the broker, Robert
Sterling Clark:

The Croix de Feu is getting a great number of recruits, and I recently
attended a meeting of this organization and was quite impressed with the
type of men belonging. These fellows are interested only in the salvation
of France, and I feel sure that the country could not be in better hands
. . . and that if a crucial test ever comes to the Republic these men
will be the bulwark upon which France will be saved . . .

Returning to America that' summer, MacGuire rendered a per-
sonal account to his "principals" in New York City of his findings
on the European continent.

Soon afterwards, MacGuire again went to see General Butler.
The proposition MacGuire now made to the General was more
startling than his original one. What was needed in America,
MacGuire told Butler, was a complete change of government to
save the nation from the "communist menace." Such a change, said
MacGuire, could be brought about by a militant veterans' organiza-
tion, Hke the Croix de Feu in France, which would stage a coup
d'etat in the United States. The financial details were already ar-
ranged. "We have three million dollars to start with on the line,"
said MacGuire, "and we can get three million more if we need it."
And the ideal person to head the projected "militantly patriotic"
veterans' organization and to lead "a march on Washington," Mac-
Guire emphatically stated, was General Smedley Butler . . ,

General Butler subsequently related:

To be perfectly fair to Mr. MacGuire, he didn't seem bloodthirsty.
He felt such a show of force in Washington would probably result in a
peaceful overthrow of the government. He suggested that "we might
even go along with Roosevelt and do with him what Mussolini did with
the King of Italy." . . .

Mr. MacGuire proposed that the Secretary of State and Vice-Presi-
dent would be made to resign, by force, if necessary, and that President
Roosevelt would probably allow MacGuire's group to appoint a Secre-

200

tary of State. Then, if President Roosevelt was "willing to go along,"
he could remain as President. But if he were not in sympathy with the
Fascist movement, he would be forced to resign, whereupon, under the
Constitution the President succession would place the Secretary of State
in the White House . . .

He told me he believed that at least half of the American Legion and
Veterans of Foreign Wars would follow me.

"Is there anything stirring about yet?" General Butler asked
MacGuire.

"Yes, you watch," MacGuire replied. "In two or three weeks,
you will see it come out in the papers. There will be big fellows in
it. This is to be the background of it."

MacGuire did not reveal the specific nature of the development
to which he was referring, and the discussion ended with MacGuire
urging the General to give the entire matter very careful considera-
tion.

A fortnight later, the formation of the American Liberty League
was publicly announced. Named as Treasurer of the Liberty League
was MacGuire's employer, the Wall Street financier, Grayson M.-P.
Murphy . . .

Amazed at the audacity of the scheme of which he had learned,
General Butler immediately contacted Paul Comly French, an en-
terprising journalist on the Philadelphia Record, with whom he was
acquainted. The General enlisted the services of the newspaperman
to help him uncover the full details of the plot. "The whole affair
smacked of treason to me," said Butler later.

On September 13, 1934, Paul French visited MacGuire at his
office at the brokerage firm of Grayson M.-P. Murphy Company in
New York City. Pretending a sympathetic interest in the proposition
made to General Butler, French won MacGuire's confidence.

MacGuire then told the journalist, as French later revealed, "sub-
stantially the same story as related by the General."

"The whole movement is patriotic," said MacGuire, "because the
Communists will wreck the nation unless the soldiers save it through
Fascism. All General Butler would have to do to get a miUion men
would be to announce the formation of the organization and tell
them it would cost a dollar a year to join."

The chief financial support of the movement, however, was to
come from other sources. French subsequently related:

201

He [MacGuire] said he could go to John W. Davis or Perkins of the
National City Bank, and any number of persons and get it [financial
backing] . . .

Later we discussed the question of arms and equipment, and he sug-
gested that they could be obtained from the Remington Arms Company
on credit through the du Fonts. I do not think at that time he men-
tioned the connection of du Pont with the American Liberty League,
but he skirted all around the idea that that was the back door, and that
this was the front door.

To indicate to French the progress already made toward securing
support from American veterans groups for the projected move-
ment, MacGuire held up a letter. "It's from Louis Johnson, the
former National Commander of the American Legion," he said.

Then, according to French's account:

He [MacGuire] said that he had discussed the matter with him
[Johnson] along the lines of what we were now discussing, and I took it
to mean that he had discussed this Fascist proposition with Johnson, and
Johnson was in sympathy with it.*

Both General Butler and Paul French were now convinced they
had unearthed sufficient evidence to warrant a full-scale Govern-
ment investigation of the plot for a fascist coup d'etat. Contacting
the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional Committee then investi-
gating Nazi and other propaganda in America, Butler asked to
testify at one of its hearings.

On November 20, at a private session of the McCormack-Dick-
stein Committee, General Butler gave a detailed account of the
manner in which he had been asked to lead a fascist putsch against
the U.S. Government. If the committee wanted to get at the bottom
of the conspiracy, said Butler at the conclusion of his testimony, it
should call for questioning Grayson M.-P. Murphy, General
Douglas MacArthur, ex-American Legion Commander Hanford
MacNider and various members of the American Liberty League.f

Among other witnesses to testify before the Committee were

* When Louis Johnson was National Commander of the American Legion,
Gerald MacGuire had served on his staff as chairman of the League's distin-
guished-guest committee.

On March 28, 1949, Louis Johnson was appointed U. S. Secretary of
Defense by President Harry S. Truman.

For further details on Johnson, see footnote page 250.

tin his testimony, Butler had related that he had been told by MacGuire
that General MacArthur and Hanford MacNider were also being considered
as potential leaders of the fascist putsch.

202

James Van Zandt, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars,
who admitted knowledge of the whole plot and corroborated Gen-
eral Butler's story; and Gerald MacGuire, who admitted to having
met periodically with General Butler but asserted that he had been
"misunderstood," by the General . . .

An exclusive news-story by Paul French revealing the content
of General Butler's testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein
Committee appeared in the Philadelphia Record, the New York
Post and two papers in New Jersey.

Immediately, General Butler's story became a national sensation.

But the startling disclosures by General Butler and Paul French
did not accomplish what they had anticipated. With the exception
of a handful of liberal and left-wing newspapers, the nation's
press rallied to the defense of the powerful interests involved in
the conspiracy, suppressed the most incriminating portions of Gen-
eral Butler's testimony, and ridiculed his story as a whole. The New
York Times casually reported that the "so-called plot of Wall
Street interests" had "failed to emerge in any alarming proportion."
Ti77te magazine mockingly dismissed the affair as a "plot without
plotters."

The broker Grayson M.-P. Murphy's statement to the press flatly
denying all knowledge of the plot and characterizing General
Butler's story as "a joke— a publicity stunt," was more prominently
featured by most newspapers than the General's charges.

Soon, all references to the sensational case vanished from the
newspapers.

No Government investigation of the conspiracy took place.

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee never summoned as wit-
nesses any of the prominent persons named by General Butler; and
when the Committee finally made public the General's testimony,
many of his most startling charges, including the names of various
Wall Street figures and all mention of the American Liberty
League, had been deleted from the report on the hearing.

Even so, the Committee report stated:

There is no question that these attempts [of a fascist putsch'] were
discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when
and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. . . .

. . . your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements

203

made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement
suggesting the creation of the [fascist] organization. This, however, was
corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal,
Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad
studying the various forms of veterans' organizations of Fascist character.

Following the publication of the Committee's report, the head
of the Civil Liberties Union, Roger Baldwin, made this observation:

The Congressional Committee investigating un-American activities
has just reported that the Fascist plot to seize the government . . . was
proved; yet not a single participant will be prosecuted under the per-
fectly plain language of the federal conspiracy act making this a high
crime. Imagine the action if such a plot were discovered among Com-
munists!

Which is, of course, only to emphasize the nature of our government
as representative of the interests of the controllers of property. Violence,
even to the seizure of the government, is excusable on the part of those
whose lofty motive is to preserve the profit system . . .

3. Murder in the Middle West

Of the myriad fascist organizations that mushroomed in the
United States during the 1930's, none practised greater violence or
perpetrated more appalling crimes than the Black Legion. A secret
society, whose night-riding members wore black robes with slitted
hoods adorned with skull and crossbones, the Black Legion main-
tained a reign of terror from 1932 to 1936 in Michigan, Indiana,
Ohio and other mid western states. In its wake, the Legion left a
grisly trail of bumed-down homes, bombed union halls, fear-
stricken communities, and dead and crippled human beings.

"What gave it [the Black Legion] significance," record A. B.
Magil and Henry Stevens in their book The Peril of Fascism, "w^as
the peculiarly violent character of its activities, its penetration into
police departments and high places in city, county and state gov-
ernment, its connections with the Republican Party, and the fact
that it was interwoven with the espionage systems and company
unions of the automobile corporations."

The conspiratorial apparatus of the Black Legion was organized'
along mihtary lines. Its members, most of whom were required to
possess firearms, were grouped into "divisions" which operated under
the direction of "colonels" and "captains." For performing such
tasks as breaking up labor meetings, dynamiting or burning down
buildings, flogging or killing trade unionists, there were special
204

"anti-Communist squads" or "arson squads", "bombing squads",
and "punishment" or "execution squads." Members were sworn to
blind obedience and utter secrecy. The penalty for insubordination
or failure to perform an assignment was torture or death.

Initiation ceremonies were conducted at night in the macabre
atmosphere of unlighted cellars or dark, secluded woods. Each new
recruit was commanded to kneel within a circle of black-robed
Legionnaires. With a loaded pistol pressed against his chest, he
repeated the Black Legion oath of allegiance. Among the Black
Legion "secrets" then revealed to the new recruits was this one:

We regard as enemies of ourselves and our country all aliens, Negroes,
Jews and cults and creeds believing in racial equality and owing
allegiance to any foreign potentate.

Once initiated, new members were given a .38 calibre bullet. They
were told that should they ever betray the Legion's secret, they
would receive "another bullet". . .

The Black Legion's stronghold was in Michigan, where the per-
centage of unemployment was at a national peak during the depres-
sion years and every industrial center was simmering with social
unrest. By 1935 Legion members in Michigan numbered in the
tens of thousands, and its secret apparatus reached like a hidden
cancerous growth throughout the industrial and political life of
the state.

Factories were honeycombed with Black Legion terrorist cells.
The upper echelons of the Black Legion included city councilmen
and state legislators, judges and police chiefs, prominent business-
men, sheriffs, mayors and officers of the National Guard. As Will
Lissner of the New York Times later reported:

An important section of the membership consisted of substantial
citizens. Campaign funds were raised at meetings in at least two churches
in Detroit. Scores of politicians joined the organization, hoping to win
its votes.

To accomplish some of its aims, particularly in the field of
politics, the Legion operated through various front organizations.
One of these was called the Wolverine Republican League. The
League, whose leadership was composed largely of Black Legion-
naires, was used to muster votes for Legion members and sym-
pathizers running for poUtical office.

The headquarters of the Wolverine Republican League were

205

located at Room 2120 in the Union Guardian Building in Detroit.
This room also served as the office of the Republican attorney,
Harry Z. Marx, former head of the Americanization Committee of
the American Legion and counsel for Detroit's Chief of Police,
Heinrich Pickert. Marx himself was one of the directors of the
Wolverine Republican League and Chairman of its Delegate Com-
mittee.

An indication of the poHtical influence of the Wolverine Re-
publican League was the fact that when former Governor Wilbur
M. Brucker was running as a candidate for the United States Senate
in May 1936, he delivered his opening campaign address at a
meeting sponsored by the League.

On the night after ex-Governor Brucker had delivered this
speech, five of the leading members of the Wolverine RepubUcan
League, who were also Black Legionnaires, participated in the
murder of a WPA worker named Charles Poole*. . .

The anti-labor terrorist activities of the Black Legion, like those
of other fascist organizations in America, were generally carried on
in the name of combatting the "Communist menace." After investi-
gating Black Legion operations in Oakland County, Michigan, a
Grand Jury reported:

Communist activities had engaged the Oakland County members
from the first . . .

A member spy was directed to join the Communist Party in Pontiac
and report to Col. Pierce (Police Sergeant) relative to the activities of
this group . . .

Anti-Communist prejudice was constantly inflamed by the su-
periors ...

For the purpose of more direct "anti-Communist" action, Black
Legion leaders compiled an "execution list" of "Reds" and "Party
sympathizers."

Among the names on the Legion execution list was that of the
well-known labor attorney, Maurice Sugar, who in the spring of
1935 was a candidate for the office of Recorders Judge. A Black
Legion member named Dayton Dean was given the assignment of
bombing Sugar's apartment. Dean rented an apartment in the build-

* When Charles Poole's murderers were arrested and brought to trial, their
defense attorney was Harry Z. Marx. For further details on Poole's murder,
see page 209.

206

ing where Sugar lived, but failed to go through with the assign-
ment. "I got cold feet," Dean explained later, "because too many-
people would have been killed."

Ordinarily, such qualms did not hinder the work of the Legion's
"bombing squads." In one town after another, homes of trade
unionists were dynamited or burned down by the black Legion-
naires. During a strike at the Motor Products Company, Legion
members dynamited the union headquarters and the homes of a
number of the strike leaders. On other occasions. Legionnaires in
Detroit bombed the Hall of the Ukrainian Educational Society, the
Workers' Bookshop and the offices of the Communist Party , . .

A typical Black Legion note, delivered to a small businessman
who had allowed his shop to be used as a meeting place for union
organizers, read as follows:

One more meeting of the Communist Party in this joint and out of
business you go and you won't be on earth to know what business means.

Such threats were not infrequently followed by death.

One of the first murder victims of the Black Legion was George
Marchuk, a Communist who was Secretary of the Auto Workers
Union in Lincoln Park, Wayne County, Michigan. Marchuk had
received several warnings from the Black Legion to cease his "Red"
activities in organizing workers at the Ford plant or "suffer the
consequences." When Marchuk continued his trade union work, he
was visited by a one-legged Black Legionnaire and former police-
man named Isaac, or "Peg-Leg," White. White gave the Auto
Workers' Secretary a final warning. On December 22, 1933,
Marchuk was found dead in an empty lot with a bullet through his
head.

A few weeks later, on March 15, 1934, the body of John Bielak,
who had been an A.F.L. organizer in the Hudson plant, was found
riddled with bullets beside a lonely country road on the outskirts
of Monroe, Michigan. Like Marchuk, Bielak had been "visited"
shortly before his death by the Black Legionnaire, "Peg-Leg"
White.*

* In 1932, the ex-policeman "Peg-Leg" White had been a member of a
vigilante "Citizens Committee", which was established with the aid of Harry-
Bennett's Service Department at the Ford plant. White also worked closely
with the labor espionage departments of other auto factories. Describing how

207

Sometimes, Black Legion members committed murder for the
sheer "thrill" of killing. Describing one such murder which took
place in May 1935, Black Legionnaire Dayton Dean later related:

. . . Harvey Davis [a Black Legion leader] came in one day and we
were talking and he wanted to know if I could get a colored guy for
him.

He said they were going to have a party out to the lake and they
wanted to have a little excitment. They wanted to have a colored fel-
low, didn't make any difference where he came from so long as he was
black. They wanted to take him out and kill him. Colonel Davis said
he wanted to know what it felt like to shoot a Negro.

So I got hold of Charlie Rouse and Charlie said he had just the right
man, he had one working for him, so we made arrangements with
Davis . . .

The Negro selected as "just the right man" to be killed was a
42 -year old veteran and laborer named Silas Coleman. On the
pretext he was to be paid some back wages he was owed by his
employer, Coleman was lured at night to a summer cottage on the
outskirts of Detroit, where Harvey Davis and several other Black
Legionnaires were having a drinking party, together with their
wives. When the unsuspecting Coleman arrived, the Legion mem-
bers drove with him to a nearby swamp, parked their car and got
out. Here, in Dayton's words, is what then happened:

. . . the colored fellow came around to the rear of the car, wondering
to see what we was doing around there, and just as he came around
and faced up, Davis took his .38 and he shot first and then the others
shot. The colored fellow went to say something and the bullet seemed

he had drawn up lists of "Communist" labor organizers for the auto com-
panies, White told a Detroit News reporter in June, 1936:
"... I called on all the plants of Detroit. Once or twice I turned in a
bunch of names to the Hudson Motor Car Company. How many I don't
remember but there were several typewritten sheets ... I took some to
Ford's, some to Budd Wheel, in fact to all the plants that had strikes or
threats of strikes . . . the personnel departments of the plants v/ere always
glad to get information about the Communists and they thanked us. It was
merely a courtesy proposition."

The interview with the News reporter was published at a time when some
of the shocking facts about the Black Legion were finally being brought to
light; and there was widespread demand that White be questioned by the
police authorities in connection with the Marchuk and Bielak murders and
other outrages perpetrated by the Black Legion.

Not long after his indiscreet remarks to the News reporter, White was
arrested. Five days after his arrest, he was reported to have died of "pneu-
monia."

208

to pierce his lung or something and he couldn't talk and he made a kind
of "a-h-h-h" gurgle in his throat or something kind of so.

He run like a deer down there and when he started running they
say "Don't let him get away" and ran after him emptying their guns after
him.

We went back to our cars and drove back to the cottage. They
gave Charlie Rouse and I a shot of liquor and a bottle of beer and we
drove back to Detroit but they stayed there and continued the party.

Silas Coleman's body was later found, riddled with bullets, lying
in the woods . . .
These were some other murders traced to the Black Legion:

Paul Avery: died April 14, 1935, as a result of a flogging he had re-
ceived from Black Legion members
Oliver Hiirkett: found dead in his car on April 25, 1935; he himself

had close connections with the Black Legion and was said to have

been killed as a "disciplinary measure"
Rudolph Anderson: found dead on a street in Detroit on December

16, 1935, with a bullet wound in his chest from a high-powered rifle
Charles A. Poole: found shot to death, his body lying in a ditch beside

a road on the outskirts of Detroit, on May 13, 1936
Roy V. Pidcock: found hanging on Fighting Island, Detroit River, on

May 29, 1936; an active trade unionist, he had been previously

flogged by Black Legion members.

Most of the killings carried out by the Black Legion, however,
were never oflicially blamed on the secret terrorist society. The
murders were listed in police records simply as "unsolved" crimes.
According to subsequent testimony by Captain Ira H. Marmon of
the Michigan State Police, at least fifty unexplained "suicides" in
Michigan during the years 193 3- 1936 were the work of the Black
Legion . . .

In the summer of 1936, after a series of particularly bloodcurdling
and brazen Black Legion crimes, public clamor forced Michigan
state and municipal authorities to initiate investigations of the
Legion's activities. Eleven Legionnaires were arrested in connection
with the murder of Charles Poole, tried and sentenced to life im-
prisonment. Some fifty other Black Legion members were rounded
up and indicted on charges of murder, kidnapping, arson and other
crimes.

Trade unions, civic organizations and other public-spirited groups
urged that the Department of Justice conduct a thorough probe of
Black Legion operations throughout the Middle West. "It is only a
Federal investigating Bureau that can coordinate the clues from all

209

these areas . . . ," a group of Michigan citizens stated in a report
submitted to the Justice Department. "Local authorities are hamp-
ered by fears of witnesses . . . Detroit newspapers have indicated
how the Black Legion dominates even upper circles of officialdom."

In Washington, Senator Elmer A. Benson of Minnesota intro-
duced a resolution in the Senate caUing for a Federal investigation
of the Black Legion.

On May 28, 1936, Attorney General Homer S. Cummings stated
that the Justice Department had "known of the Black Legion for
about a year," but that action by the Department was impossible
because "no federal law had been violated."

The local investigations of the Black Legion concealed many
more facts than they revealed.

Few disclosures ever got beyond the court-room of the one-man
grand jury. Judge E. Chenot. "I have control of the proceedings
in this court," said Judge Chenot, at the opening session of the
hearing. "Anyone who violates the secrecy of the grand jury will
go to jail."

A Detroit lawyer, Duncan McCrea, was the Wayne County
Prosecutor in charge of investigating Black Legion activities. Mc-
Crea's Chief Investigator was a man named Charles Spare. Unknown
to the public. Spare was himself a leading member of the Ku Klux
Klan, the Michigan branch of which he had helped to incor-
porate.

At the height of the Wayne County investigation, the Detroit
Tbnes pubHshed a photograph of a Black Legion application card
bearing the name of Prosecutor Duncan McCrea. McCrea did not
deny that the signature was his. It was possible, he said, that he
"might have signed the card"— after all, like other poUticians, he
was "a joiner" . . .

Commenting at the time on the criminal conspiratorial activities
of the Black Legion, Governor George H. Earle of Pennsylvania
declared:

I charge that this organization is the direct result of the campaign of
subversive propaganda subsidized by the Grand Dukes of the Duchy of
Delaware, the du Ponts, and the munition princes of the American
Liberty League.

I was United States Minister to Austria in 1933-34. ^ saw for myself
how fascism and Nazism are born furtively, in the dark; how they de-
velop through just such organizations as the Black Legion • • •

210

I say to you that the money changers and the great industrialists
behind the RepubHcan Party leadership cannot escape responsibility
for this creature . . . The Black Legion is the first fruit of their
campaign for fascism.

4. Fifth Column in Congress

In August 1936 an extraordinary national convocation attended
by American fascist and anti-Semitic propagandists took place at
Asheville, North Carolina. The gathering, which was called the
National Conference of Clergymen and Laymen, had been arranged
with the assistance of the prominent Liberty Leaguer and lumber
king, John Henry Kirby, and his aide, Vance Muse, who together
had organized the fascist Southern Committee to Uphold the Con-
stitution.

Among those present at the Asheville assembly, whose promoters
had the avowed purpose of making anti-Semitism a key issue in the
1936 Presidential campaign, were William Dudley Pelley, Silver
Shirt chief and Nazi collaborator; James True, pro-Axis propa-
gandist and inventor of a patented blackjack called the "kike-
killer"; and George Deatherage, head of the "official Fascist
Party," the American Nationalist Confederation, who was later to
attend a World Congress of anti-Semites held in Erfurt, Germany,
and there dehver a speech entitled, "Will America be the Jews'
Waterloo?"

One of the main addresses at the Asheville conference was de-
livered by a stocky round-faced man with short-cropped hair whose
name was Edward F. Sullivan. His remarks, according to the Ashe-
ville press, were "what Hitler would have said had he been speak-
ing" . . .

Edward F. Sullivan had first become associated with the fascist
movement in 1933, shortly after Hitler's rise to power in Germany.
Nazi agents were already swarming over the globe to organize fifth
columns within the democracies, particularly among national groups
and minorities. There were one miUion Ukrainian-Americans in the
United States, and, under expert Nazi supervision, a pro-Axis fifth
column soon mushroomed among them. When a publicity man
was needed to help rally mass support for the movement, several of

211

the Ukrainian-American fascist leaders recommended Edward F.
Sullivan for the job. Sullivan was then an impecunious young news-
paperman in Boston who, according to the records of the Senate
Civil Liberties Committee, had been employed for a time by the
labor-espionage Railway Audit and Inspection Company. Ap-
proached by the Ukrainian-Americans, Sullivan readily went to
work for them.

By 1936, when he attended the Asheville conference, Sullivan
was already regarded in fifth column circles as one of the more
promising anti-democratic propagandists in the country.

Even so, under ordinary circumstances there would have been
little to distinguish Sullivan from numerous such agitators then
operating in the United States. But an event was soon to occur
which would place Sullivan in a very special category . . .

In the summer of 1938 a Special Congressional Committee was
formed, under the chairmanship of Representative Martin Dies of
Texas, to investigate un-American activities in the United States.

The first Chief Investigator appointed by the Dies Committee
was— Edward F. SuUivan.

American taxpayers who paid Sullivan's salary while he was Chief
Investigator for the Un-American Activities Committee were un-
aware of his anti-democratic previous activities. They might also
have been interested in Sullivan's police record. Here it is:

Offense
Drunkenness

Driving so as to endanger
Driving without license
Driving so as to endanger
Larceny

Larceny

Place of Offense
Charleston
Roxbury
Suffolk
Suffolk
Maiden

Date

Mass. 9/7/20
12/18/23
2/1 1/24
6/27/24

Middlesex 4/12/32

Superior Court
Operating after license sus- Lowell 2/1 1/32

pended
Violation of Section 690 of New York City 12/20/33

the penal law (Sodomy)
Arrested on charges of im- Pittsburgh 12/11/39

personating FBI officer

Disposition

Released

Fined $25

Placed on file 6 mo.
House of Correc-
tion; appealed

Nolle prossed

Filed

Acquitted
Charges dropped

After supervising the initial "investigations" conducted by the
Un-American Activities Committee, Edward Sullivan was reluc-
tantly dropped as Chief Investigator by Congressman Dies. "For
reasons of economy," said Dies. Actually, liberal American organi-

212

zations had uncovered certain details about Sullivan's unsavory
record; and Dies, with an eye to a new appropriation for his Com-
mittee, wanted to avoid a public scandal.

Sullivan's place as chief investigator for the Un-American Activ-
ities Committee was taken by J. B. Matthews, an embittered rene-
gade radical who, Hke his predecessor, was held in high esteem by
Axis agencies and their fifth column alHes. Matthew's diffuse auto-
biography, Odyssey of a Fellow Tr^x;e/^r— dedicated to Martin
Dies, J. Parnell Thomas, and other members of the Un-American
Activities Committee and published by John Cecil, head of an anti-
Semitic organization called the American Immigration Conference
Board— was widely distributed in American fascist circles. The
Nazi Propaganda Ministry warmly recommended Matthew's writ-
ings, and articles by him were printed in Contra-Komintern, an of-
ficial organ of the German Foreign Ofiice. . . .*

The alleged purpose for which the Un-American Activities Com-
mittee was established on May 26, 1938, was to gather information
on "the diffusion within the United States of subversive and un-
American propaganda that is instigated from foreign countries or
of a domestic origin that attacks the principle of the form of gov-
ernment as guaranteed by the Constitution."

Instead, from its inception, the Un-American Activities Com-
mittee itself served as a fountainhead of virulently anti-democratic
propaganda and as an agency seeking to undermine basic tenets of
the Constitution.

As The New World, official organ of the Chicago diocese of the
Catholic Church, stated editorially six months after the formation
of the Committee:

If it is really a committee to investigate "un-American activities,"
it really should begin with an investigation of itself.

Week after week, in the marble-columned caucus room in the
old House Office Building, an endless macabre procession of ex-
convicts, labor spies, foreign agents, racketeers, fascist propagandists
or political renegades were solemnly paraded before the Committee

* In directing the "investigatory" operations of the Un-American Activities
Committee, both Edward F. Sullivan and J. B. Matthews were assisted by a
lean, sleek, pale-faced southerner named Robert E. Stripling who in 1943 be-
came Chief Investigator of the Committee.

213

to testify as "expert witnesses" on "communist activities" in the
United States.

One of the first witnesses to appear before the Committee was a
man by the name of Alvin I. Halpern. On the second day of
Halpern's testimony, a District of Columbia court sentenced him to
serve a prison term of one to two years for the crime of larceny.

Nevertheless, Halpern's testimony was included, without any
reference to his criminal record, in the official published reports of
the Un-American Activities Committee. . . .

These were some of the other "expert witnesses" to appear be-
fore the Committee:

Peter J. Innes: a labor spy who had been expelled from the National
Maritime Union for stealing $500 from the union treasury; he was
subsequently sentenced to eight years imprisonment for attempted
rape of a small child.

Willia?n C. McCuiston: an organizer of strong-arm squads for attack-
ing trade unionists; he testified before the Committee while under
indictment for the murder of Philip Carey, a labor leader who was
shot and clubbed to death in New Orleans; subsequently acquitted
on murder charge.

Willia?7i T. Gernaey: a labor spy, exposed by the LaFollette Commit-
tee as agent No. 0273 employed by the notorious labor espionage
agency. Corporations Auxiliary.

Edivm Perry Baiita: a pro-Axis propagandist, member of the Christian
Front and collaborator with Nazi agents; he died in jail on Novem-
ber 8, 1945, while serving a three year sentence for conspiracy to
commit a felony.

John Koos: 2. former leading spokesman for the American branch of
a fascist Ukrainian organization called the Hetman, which had its
headquarters in Berlin during the Nazi regime and operated under
the direction of the German Military Intelligence; on September 30,
1938, he sent a congratulatory cable to Adolf Hitler praising him for
his "history-making efforts in the adjustment of minority rights."

Richard Krebs, alias Jan Valtin: a renegade German Communist who
served thirty-nine months in San Quentin penitentiary; and who, in
his book, Out of the Night, explained his former membership in the
Nazi Gestapo on the grounds that he was combatting its activities.

Walter S. Steele: editor of the National Republic, a pro-Coughlin
magazine; and one of the American sponsors of a book entitled
Coimmmism in Germany, which was the first official Nazi propa-
ganda document to be distributed in the United States and which
was prefaced with a quotation from Adolf Hitler.

These individuals did not appear before the Un-American Activ-
ities Committee as the accused. They were the accusers. Under the

214

pretext of exposing "Communist activities" in the United States,
they vilified outstanding American liberals, slandered progressive
organizations, and calumniated the organized labor movement. The
torrent of character assassination and abuse which flowed from
their lips filled dozens of volumes published by the Government
Printing Office and was widely quoted in the nation's press.

None of the groups or persons thus publicly denounced had the
opportunity to confront their defamers. The Committee permitted
no cross examination of its "expert witnesses."

"We can say anything we please about people and they have no
recourse," declared Representative John J. Dempsey, a member of
the Committee . . .

While these hearings were being held, an elaborate espionage ap-
paratus of secret agents was organized by the Committee to spy
upon American citizens, plant dictaphones, seize private records,
and compile extensive blacklists of liberals, anti-fascists and active
trade unionists.

According to the Committee's own claims, its files soon con-
tained the names of "more than one million subversive Americans."

"And how did they get those names?" asked Representative John
J. Cochran of Missouri. "They confiscated mailing lists of so-called
subversive organizations. . . . Undoubtedly my name is on the list;
and so is yours."

After learning that his name was included on the Committee's
blacklists. Professor Clyde R. Miller of Teachers College, Columbia
University, paid a visit to the Committee's ofHce in Washington,
D. C. He said he wanted to know why the Committee had listed him
as a "dangerous American."

A Committee investigator named Chester Nickolas told Profes-
sor Miller that, according to the Committee's records, he had been
a member of several organizations combatting anti-Semitism.
"You're just a college professor," said Nickolas. "You should know.
Professor, that all these groups fighting anti-Semitism are Com-
munist transmission belts."

Then Investigator Nickolas added:

"You better go back and tell your Jewish friends that the Jews
in Germany stuck their necks out too far and Hitler took care of
them, and the same thing is going to happen here unless they watch
their step. . . ."

215

On February ii, 1941, Congressman Samuel Dickstein of New
York made a startling accusation against the Un-American Activ-
ities Committee. Speaking on the floor of the House of Represen-
tatives, Dickstein charged:

One hundred and ten fascist organizations in the United States have
had, and have now the key to the back door of the Un-American Activi-
ties Committee!

In the crucial years immediately preceding Pearl Harbor, with
the Axis fifth column in America feverishly endeavoring to under-
mine national morale and hamstring U. S. defense preparations, the
Un-American Activities Committee not only failed to combat these
machinations; it actually worked in collusion with German and
Japanese agents and their American accomphces.

One of the largest and most menacing of the pre-war fifth column
organizations in America was the Christian Front. Its members,
operating under the supervision of Nazi agents, ran into the tens
of thousands; its secret stormtroop cells were armed and drilling
in every major city; and its leader. Father Charles E. Coughlin, by
means of his radio program and his pubhcation, Social Justice, was
disseminating copious quantities of propaganda received directly
from the Nazi Propaganda Ministry.

The Un-American Activities Committee never investigated
Father Coughhn and his vast fascist apparatus. On the contrary, a
secret understanding existed between the Committee and the pro-
Nazi priest, who periodically provided Chairman Martin Dies with
lists of "Communists" and various propaganda material.

In 1939, Father Coughlin issued these instructions to his storm-
troopers:

In your appreciation of the work accomplished by Dies, employ some
of your leisure moments to write him a letter of encouragement. In fact,
a million letters brought to his desk would be an answer to those who are
bent on destroying him and the legislative body he represents.

On December 8, 1939, the German-American Bund leader and
Nazi spy, Fritz Kuhn, was asked by newspapermen what he thought
of the Un-American Activities Committee. "I am in favor of it
being appointed again," Kuhn replied, "and I wish them to get
more money."

Here are other typical comments by leading fifth columnists or
fascist propagandists on the work of the Un-American Activities
Committee:
216

"I have the highest respect for the Comniittec and sympathize with its
program."— George Sylvester Viereck, Nazi agent sentenced on Feb-
ruary 21, 1942, to serve eight months to two years in prison.

"I founded the Silver Legion in 1933 ... to propagandize exactly the
same principles."— William Dudley Pelley, former head of the pro-
Nazi Silver Shirts, sentenced on August 13, 1942, to 15 years imprison-
ment for criminal sedition.

"[The Committee's] program ... so closely parallels the program
of the Klan that there is no distinguishable difference between them."
—James Colescott, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

". . . the Committee of One Million carried a petition bearing more
than 400,000 names to Washington calling for the continuation of the
investigation."— Gerald L. K. Smith, ex-Silver Shirter No. 3223, Na-
tional Chairman of the fascist Committee of One Million.*

5. America First

The members of the Un-American Activities Committee were
not the only U. S. congressmen involved in the secret war the Axis
was waging against America in the days before Pearl Harbor. There
were other Representatives and Senators who, wittingly or un-
wittingly, proved extremely useful to Axis agents operating in the
United States.

There was, for example, Senator Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota.
On June 19, 1940, Lundeen delivered on the floor of the Senate
a lengthy speech attacking Lord Lothian, then British Ambassador
to the United States. Lundeen's speech was widely distributed by
American fifth column organizations after being reprinted by a
publishing house called Flanders Hall, Inc.

It happened that the firm of Flanders Hall had been founded and
was financed by the ace Nazi agent, George Sylvester Viereck. It
also happened that Viereck had written Senator Lundeen's speech
for him. For the m.ost part, the speech was a compilation of material

* After America's entry into the war, the Un-American Activities Commit-
tee carried on a continuous propaganda campaign which closely paralleled
that of the Axis, violently attacking the Roosevelt Administration, charging
that U. S. Government agencies were riddled with "Reds," and denouncing
America's fighting allies. These charges were repeatedly picked up and re-
peated by the Axis Propaganda Ministries. A report made by the Federal
Communications Commission on Axis short-wave broadcasts to this hemisphere
stated: "Representative Dies received as many favorable references in Axis
propaganda in this country as any living American public figure. His opinions
were quoted by the Axis without criticism at any time."

217

Viereck had acquired at the German Embassy in Washington . . .

Two other American pohticians who were in close touch with
Flanders Hall were Representative Stephen A. Day of Illinois and
ex-Senator Rush D. Holt of West Virginia.

In the summer of 1941, Representative Day turned over to Sieg-
fried Hauck, President of Flanders Hall, a manuscript savagely at-
tacking the domestic and foreign poHcies of the Roosevelt Admin-
istration. After various editorial revisions by Nazi agent Viereck,
the manuscript was published as a book called We Must Save the
Republic.

Ex-Senator Holt, following conferences at his Washington house
with Hauck and Viereck, wrote for Flanders Hall a manuscript en-
titled Who^s Who Among the War Mojigers. Holt's book was
never pubHshed, but the manuscript went on an interesting journey.
It was mailed by Viereck to the German Ambassador in Portugal,
who was to forward it for inspection to Berlin. The manuscript,
however, never reached its destination. It was intercepted at Ber-
muda by the British censors.

Viereck, who was later characterized by an Assistant U. S. At-
torney General as "the head and brains" of the Nazi propaganda
network in America, had frequent urgent business in the nation's
capitol during 1 940-1 941. As Hitler's legions overran Europe and
then plunged eastw^ard into Russia, and as Axis plans were readied
for the open military assault on America, the Fascist Powers placed
increasing importance on sabotaging Lend-Lease aid and U. S.
defense legislation. To further these aims, Viereck established a
special propaganda apparatus in Washington.

The headquarters of Viereck's Washington propaganda machine
was in Room 1424 in the House Office Building. Room 1424 was
the office of Congressman Hamilton Fish of New York, an arch
exponent of isolationism and appeasement.*

Representative Fish's secretary, George Hill, was one of Viereck's
key assistants. After being introduced to Viereck by the Congress-

* In the fall of 1939 Representative Fish traveled to Nazi Germany. There,
immediately prior to the outbreak of war, the Congressman conferred with
Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi Foreign Minister; Count Galeazzo Ciano,
Italian Foreign Minister; and other Axis leaders. In a private plane placed at
his disposal by the Nazi authorities. Fish toured Europe urging the smaller
nations to accede to Germany's demands. In Berlin, Fish told American news-
papermen, "Germany's claims are just."

218

man, Hill became— as Special Assistant Attorney General William
P. Maloney later declared— "an important cog in ... a [propaganda]
machine so diabolically clever that it was able to reach in and use
the halls of our own Congress to spread its lies and half truths to
try to conquer and divide us as they did France and other con-
quered nations."

Another of Viereck's Washington aides was an isolationist pub-
licist named Prescott Dennett. With Dennett acting as his front
man, Viereck set up a special propaganda "committee" in Wash-
ington which arranged to have isolationist propaganda inserted in
the Congressional Record and then mailed throughout the country,
under the congressional frank, mass quantities of reprints of this
material in the Record. The Chairman of this propaganda com-
mittee was Senator Ernest Lundeen. Honorary Chairman was
Senator Robert R. Reynolds of North Carolina, the Chairman of
the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Representative Martin L.
Sweeney of Ohio acted as Vice-Chairman. Prescott Dennett was
Secretary-Treasurer.

Here is a list of congressmen whose franking privilege was used,
whether or not all of them were aware of it, by the Viereck-Den-
nett Committee:

Senators: D. Worth Clark, Rush D. Holt, E. C. Johnson, Gerald
P. Nye, Robert R. Reynolds, and Burton K. Wheeler.

Representatives: Philip Bennett, Stephen Day, Henry Dworshak, Ham-
ilton Fish, Clare E. Hoffman, Bartel Jonkman, Harold Knutson,
James C. Oliver, Dewey Short, William Stratton, Martin L.
Sweeney, Jacob Thorkelson, George Holden Tinkham, and John
M. Vorys.

But the most important agency used by George Sylvester Viereck
for the distribution of his isolationist and pro-Axis material was not
his own propaganda apparatus. It was the America First Committee.

The America First Committee appeared on the American political
scene in September 1940. Operating on a national scale up until the
day of Pearl Harbor, through the medium of the press, radio, mass
raUies, street-corner meetings and every other kind of promotional
device, the America First Committee spread a prodigious amount
of anti-British, anti-Soviet and isolationist propaganda, and vigor-
ously opposed the sending of Lend-Lease supplies to England and
Russia.

219

The Committee was headed by the isolationist Chicago business-
man General Robert E. Wood, who publicly stated that he was
willing to hand Europe over to Hitler and, if necessary, all of South
America "below the bulge." Other original America First leaders
included Henry Ford, who as early as 1923 was reported to be an
active supporter of the Nazi Party in Germany and was decorated
by the Hitler Government in August 1938; Colonel Robert R. iMc-
Cormick, publisher of the violently isolationist Chicago Tribwie;
Charles E. Lindbergh, who blamed the war danger to America on
"the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt Administration," ad-
vocated cooperation with Nazi Germany against Russia, and had
accepted a medal from Hitler in October 1938; Senators Burton K.
Wheeler, Gerald P. Nye and Robert Rice Reynolds, and Represen-
tatives Hamilton Fish, Clare E. Hoffman and Stephen Day— all of
whose franking privileges had been used for propaganda purposes
by the Nazi agent Viereck.

From the start, the America First membership was riddled from
top to bottom with German and Japanese agents, and with noto-
rious American anti-Semitic agitators, fascist propagandists and
fiftli column leaders. The chief woman spokesman for the Commit-
tee was the ex-aviatrix and socialite Laura Ingalls; she was later con-
victed on charges of having failed to register as a paid agent of the
Third Reich. Werner C. von Clemm, subsequently jailed for smug-
gling diamonds into the United States in collusion with the German
High Command, served as an anonymous strategist and financial
supporter of the New York branch of the America First Commit-
tee. Frank B. Burch, later convicted of having received $10,000 from
the Nazi Government for illegal propaganda services in the United
States, was one of the founders of the Akron, Ohio, branch of the
Committee. The American journalist, Ralph Townsend, who was
later given a prison sentence for having failed to register as a paid
Japanese agent, was head of a West Coast branch of the Commit-
tee and a member of the editorial board of the two leading America
First propaganda organs, Scribner^s Commentator and The Herald,
Both of these journals regularly published Axis propaganda received
via shortwave radio from Europe and Japan.

Behind the scenes, the Nazi agent George Sylvester Viereck pre-
pared much of the propaganda material which was distributed from
coast to coast by the America First Committee . . .

Via shortwave to America on January 22, 1941, Dr. Paul Joseph
220

Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry announced: "The America First
Committee is truly American and truly patriotic!"

Not all of the prominent Americans who were associated with
the America First Committee were publicly known as members of
its executive bodies or appeared as speakers at America First mass
rallies. There was, for instance, William R. Castle, the wealthy
former Under-Secretary of State in the Hoover Administration.
Several of the conferences at which the original plans for the Com-
mitte were drafted took place at Castle's palatial residence in Wash-
ington, D. C. Among the leading American advocates of isolatism
and appeasement with whom Castle maintained close contact were
Senator Burton K. Wheeler, General Robert E. Wood, Charles
Lindbergh and former President Herbert Hoover.

Public statements by Herbert Hoover bitterly attacking the
foreign poUcy of the Roosevelt Administration and condemning
Lend-Lease, were enthusiastically reprinted and widely circulated
by the America First Committee.

In a confidential cable sent from London by Harry Hopkins to
President Roosevelt early in 1941, Hopkins reported:

"Last night I saw Wendell Willkie. He told me that he believes
the opposition to Lend Lease is going to be vehemently expressed
and it should not be underrated under any circumstances. It is his
belief that the main campaign against the Bill will be directed from
Chicago and heavily financed. As perhaps he told you it is his
opinion that Herbert Hoover is the real brains behind this opposi-
tion."

Wilham R. Castle was not the only old friend of Hoover's who
was quietly cooperating with the America First Committee. An-
other was the Wall Street attorney, John Foster Dulles. A staunch
exponent of appeasement, Dulles had dehvered a speech before the
Economic Club in March 1939 in which he spoke of the German,
Japanese and Italians as "dynamic peoples determined ... to take
their destiny into their own hands." Dulles added:

There is no reason to believe that any of the totalitarian states either
collectively or separately would attempt to attack the United States. Only
hysteria entertains the idea that Germany, Italy or Japan contemplates
war against us . . .

The incorporation papers of the New York Chapter of the

221

America First Committee were drawn up in the office of Dulles'
law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell; and the records of the America
First Committee listed both Mr. and Mrs. John Foster Dulles among
the Committee's financial supporters.*

* In 1943, when Dulles was queried by newsmen about his former connec-
tions with the America First Committee, he was quoted as indignantly de-
claring: "No one who knows me and what I have done and stood for con-
sistently over thirty-seven years of active life could reasonably think that I
could be an isolationist or 'America Firster' in deed or spirit."

In one respect, Dulles was perfectly justified in claiming not to be an isola-
tionist. In the years between the two world wars, few Americans had been
so constantly and deeply involved in international financial-political operations.
"Imperialism and cartels," declared Senator Claude Pepper, "are the only
economic theories Dulles knows."

In 1919, as the chief American counsel on the Paris Peace Conference Com-
mittees on reparations and financial matters, and as a member of the Supreme
Economic Council, Dulles helped project the disastrous policies of the post-
war period. During the 1920's, as a member of the law firm of Sullivan &
Cromwell, Dulles assisted in drafting the Dawes and Young Plans and chan-
neling American funds to reactionary European regimes, and in making cartel
arrangements between great German and American trusts.

After Dulles had become senior partner of Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the
world's wealthiest law firms (its partners sit on the boards of more than forty
industrial corporations, utilities and banks), the concern represented such
clients as these: J. H. Schroeder Banking Corp., whose parent banking house
in London was described by Time magazine in 1939 as "an economic booster
for the Rome-Berlin Axis"; the Bank of Spain, following fascist Generalissimo
Franco's seizure of power; and Count Rene de Chambrun, son-in-law of the
French traitor, Pierre Laval.

"It may be only coincidence, of course," stated the October 1947 issue of
Social Questions, the bulletin of the Methodist Federation for Social Action,
"that the firm (Sullivan & Cromwell) had such close relations with the
Schroeder Bank, I. G. Farben, the famous German law firm of Albert &
Westrick, etc., and that Mr. Dulles is listed as a director of the International
Nickel Co. of Canada, which in 1946 was sued by the U. S. Government for
having a cartel price-fixing alliance with I. G. Farben and giving illegitimate
aid to German rearmament . . ."

On October 10, 1944, Senator Pepper declared: "One of Mr. Dulles' con-
nections which I believe the American people are especially entided to know
is his relationship to the banking circles that rescued Adolf Hitler from the
financial depths and set up his Nazi Party as a going concern . . . It . . .
should in my opinion be one of the central points of a Senate investigation
before entrusting the making of peace into the hands of any man with these
past loyalties."

At the end of World War II, as a U.S. delegate to the San Francisco Con-
ference, advisor to Secretary of State Byrnes and a U. S. delegate to the U. N.
Assembly, Dulles became one of the chief architects of American foreign
policy. (See Book Four.) On April 6, 1950, Dulles was appointed by President
Harry Truman as top-ranking advisor and consultant to Secretary of State
Dean Acheson.

222

Chapter xii

THE WAR YEARS

We of the United Nations are not making all this sacrifice
of human effort and human lives to return to the kind of
world we had after tlie last World War.

We are fighting today for security, for progress, and for
peace, not only for ourselves, but for all men, not only for
one generation but for all generations. We are fighting to
cleanse the world of ancient evils, ancient ills.

From a radio address by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 12, 1942

They [corporations] cannot commit treason, nor be out-
lawed nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.

Sir Edward Coke, 16 is

I. Gold Internationale

In the early spring of 1940, a German emissary named Dr. Ger-
hardt Westrick arrived in the United States on a mission of the ut-
most importance. Officially, Dr. Westrick traveled as a Commercial
Attache to the German Embassy in Washington. Unofficially, he
was in America as a personal representative of the Nazi Foreign
Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Westrick's secret mission was
to discuss certain confidential trade agreements with a number of
leadincr American industrialists and financiers.

Westrick was well quahfied for his assignment. For some years,
he had been a familiar figure in international big business circles.
As a partner in the prosperous German law firm of Albert & West-
rick, which numbered among its clients such concerns as the colos-
sal chemical trust, I. G. Farbenindustrie, Westrick had served as
a counsel for the German subsidiaries of the Underwood Elliot-

Fisher Company, Eastman Kodak Company, and other outstanding
American firms. In addition Westrick was head of the Standard
Elektrizitaets Gesellschaft, German subsidiary of the International
Telephone and Telegraph Company.*

Though accredited with the U.S. State Department as a diplo-
matic official attached to the German Embassy, Dr. Westrick spent
little time in Washington following his arrival in the United States.
He established himself in a sumptuous suite at the Hotel Waldorf-
Astoria in New York City; made arrangements to receive his con-
fidential mail at another New York hotel, where he was registered
under an assumed name; and rented a secluded suburban estate at
Scarsdale in Westchester County as a private headquarters for trans-
acting the more vital business of his mission.

Handsome limousines driven by liveried chauffeurs were soon
arriving at the Scarsdale estate. Among the first of Dr. Westrick's
various distinguished visitors were Captain Torkild Rieber, Chair-
man of the Board of the Texas Company, one of America's largest
oil concerns, and Philip D. Wagoner, President of the Underwood-
Ellliott Fisher Company.

For his own convenience in traveling: to and from New York
City, Westrick had at his disposal a car which belonged to Captain

* An interesting sidelight to Dr. Westrick's mission in the United States
dnring World War II was the role that had been played by his law partner,
Dr. Heinrich Albert, in America during W\irld War I.

Prior to America's entry into the Great War, Dr. Albert was the German
Ccmm.ercial Attache in Washington. He was also the secret paymaster of a
German espionage and sabotage ring then operating in America.

In 1919, following a Senate investigation of German wartime espionage-
sabotage activities in the United States, Senator Knute Nelson characterized
Dr. Albert as the "Machiavelli of the whole thing . . . the mildest mannered
man that ever scuttled ship or cut throat."

The sabotage ring financed by Dr. Albert carried out such operations as
blowing up American ships, infecting American cattle with disease germs,
setting fire to American war plants and docks, and stirring up anti-Allied
sentiment throughout the country. Through Albert's hands passed at least
$40,000,000 to subsidize sabotage, sedition and conspiracy in the United States.
In 191 7, Dr. Albert was finally forced to leave America and return to
Germany.

During the 1920's and 1930's, as a member of the German General Staff
and a representative of I. G. Farben, Dr. Albert helped train German "business
agents" for espionage operations in the United States. He himself remained in
Germany, running the law firm of Albert and Westrick with Dr. Gerhardt
WestricK.

As of February 1945 Dr. Heinrich Albert still held, among other posts, that
of Director of the Ford Motor Company, Cologne, Germany.

"4.

Torkild Rieber. In applying for his auto license, Westrick gave
the Texas Company as his business address . . .

On August I, 1940, the New York Herald-Tribune featured a
sensational front-page story headhned: "Hitler's Agent Enscoased in
Westchester— Dr. Westrick Traced to Secluded Headquarters on
Scarsdale Estate." In this and two subsequent articles, the Herald-
Tribune revealed a number of Westrick's mysterious, ex-officio
activities in the United States.*

Editorially, the Herald-Tribune commented:

It is desirable to know what those who have been dealing with him
[Westrick] have been doing; it is even more desirable to get those who
may have been dealing with him to stand up, to be counted and to ex-
plain themselves . . . The great danger to a democracy from its potential
Petains and Lavals and Baudouins is that they exist in secret, pretending
to support the majority until that critical moment when their sudden
defection may paralyze the whole national will just when it is needed
most.

Hurriedly returning to Nazi Germany after the Herald-Tribwie
expose. Dr. Westrick had at least the consolation of knowing that
one of his distinguished American friends had come to his defense.

"I don't believe he has done anything wrong," John Foster Dulles
told a Herald-Tribune reporter. "I knew him in the old days and
have a high regard for his integrity."

Some years later, when questioned by American occupation
authorities in Germany at the end of World War II, Dr. Westrick
disclosed these facts about his visit to the United States in 1940:

My most important connection with American business was with
International Telephone and Telegraph Co., whose president was Col.
Sosthenes Behn. Behn was also a director of Standard Elektrizitaets
Gessellschaft, which was affiliated with International Telephone and
Telegraph Co. . . .

Among those I saw in the United States were Torkild Rieber of the
Texas Co., Eberhard Faber of the Faber Co., James Mooney of General
Motors, and Edsel and Henry Ford . . .

I paid Mooney a visit and one day he came to visit me in the
Waldorf-Astoria, and on his own initiative he told me that he and a
group of other people had the intention of seeing the President and
trying to convince the President that he should insist on normal political
relations between the United States and Germany. This was after Ger-
many had invaded France, Belgium and Norway.

* The first stories exposing Dr. Gerhardt Westrick's mission in the United
States appeared on April 6 and April 20, 1940, in the newsletter. The Hour,
of which this author was then managing editor.

In the critical period of 19 39-1 941, as Hitler made his open bid
for world conquest, there were not a few big businessmen in the
United States who, like Dr. Westrick's American friends and asso-
ciates, were eager to maintain "normal political relations" with Nazi
Germany. Their viewpoint was reflected in a remarkable letter
which Alfred P. Sloan, chairman of General Motors, wrote to a
stockholder in the spring of 1939. Sloan's letter read in part:

General Motors is an international organization. It operates in
practically every country in the world . . . many years ago, General
Motors— before the present regime in Germany— invested a large amount
of money in Adam Opel A.G. It has been a very profitable investment,
and I think outside of the political phase, its future potentiality from
the standpoint of development and profit, is equal to, if not greater
than many other investments which the Corporation has made. It en-
joys about 50% of the business in Germany— a little less than that to be
exact. It employs German workers and consumes German materials . . .

Having attained the position which we have, through evolution,
hard work, and, I believe, intelligent management, of approaching 50%
of one of the most important industries in Germany, I feel that we
must conduct ourselves as a German organization, involving German
capital . . .*

"By the time the present war broke out," Sims Carter, Assistant
Chief of the Economic Warfare Section of the U.S. Department of
Justice, told the Kilgore Committee in September 1944, "most of
Germany's leading industrial, commercial and banking firms had
American connections. Even after hostilities had begun, key figures
continued to arrive in the United States and other parts of the
hemisphere from Germany."

Most of the intimate, war-time dealings between American and
German businessmen, however, were not transacted in the western
hemisphere. A more convenient meeting place for their secret nego-
tiations was the headquarters of the Bank of International Settle-
ments at Basle, Switzerland.

On May 19, 1943, an article in the Neiv York Times had this to
say about the Bank at Basle:

Allied preparations for an invasion of the European continent make
the Bank of International Settlements at Basle, Sv/itzerland, look still

* The operations of the great auto manufacturing firm of Adam Opel A.G.
were no less valuable to the German Government than they were to General
Motors Company. Opel was producing the major portion of the mobile equip-
ment for the Nazi Wehnnacht . . .

226

more incongruous than it ever looked since the outbreak of the war
in September, 1939. In the seclusion of a Swiss city, American, German,
French, and Italian bankers, not to mention Swedish, Swiss and Nether-
land representatives, are still at work side by side and attend to com-
mon business . . .

Does it mean that, in this world of today, so hopelessly torn asunder,
all belligerents are tacitly agreed to preserve a unique shelter for what
was formerly called international finance— a shelter to be eventually
used at will for the purpose of a policy of appeasement?

The directors of the Bank of International Settlements included
three directors of the Bank of England; the powerful Nazi finan-
ciers—Baron K. F. von Schroeder of Cologne, Reichsbank President
Walther Funk and Dr. Hermann Schmitz, President of I. G. Farben;
and the American Wall Street banker, Thomas H. McKittrick,
Director of the First National Bank of New York and President and
General Manager of the Bank of International Settlements.

"It is German-controlled," Harry White, special adviser to the
U.S. Treasury Department said regarding the International Bank of
Settlements on November 23, 1943. 'There's an American president
doing business with the Germans while our boys are fighting
Germans."

The American banker McKittrick informed a United Press cor-
respondent in Switzerland in the summer of 1944: "We keep the
machine ticking . . . because when the Armistice comes the formerly
hostile powers will need an efficient instrument such as the BIS."

Two other important personages reported to be doing their part
toward keeping the machdne ticking in Basle, Switzerland, were von
Ribbentrop's former personal emissary to the United States, Dr.
Gerhardt Westrick, who made frequent trips during the war to the
BIS headquarters; and Westrick's old friend, Allen Dulles, John
Foster Dulles' brother, a member of the law firm of Sullivan &
Cromwell, and a director of the Schroeder Banking Company. In
1942 Allen Dulles had been appointed as head of the Switzerland
branch of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. He remained in
Switzerland until the fall of 1944 . . .

On June 3, 1942, in a speech delivered before the Illinois Bar
Association, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thurmond Arnold
had this to say about the international cartel agreements which lead-
ing American industrialists were still maintaining with their German
counterparts:

227

The small group of American businessmen who are parties to these
international rings . . . still think of the war as a temporary recess from
business-as-usual with a strong Germany. They expect to begin the game
all over again after the war.

It is significant that these cartel leaders still talk and think as if the
war would end in a stalemate, and that, therefore, they must be in a
strong position to continue their arrangements with a strong Ger-
many after the war. This is not shown by their speeches, but by the
actual documents and memoranda of business policy which we find in
their files.

Throughout the war years, most of the largest American corpora-
tions continued to collaborate with Nazi trusts through cartel ar-
rangements, or were under agreement to resume business relations
with their German partners as soon as hostilities ended. Within the
single week of May 1942, the U.S. Department of Justice uncovered
no less than 162 cartel agreements betw^een the German I. G. Farben
trust and American business firms. Cartels which remained operative
during the war years, or were temporarily "suspended," covered
chemicals, rubber, magnesium, zinc, aluminum and many other vital
products. Some of these cartel contracts were legally valid until
after i960.

At least one great American company, Standard Oil of New
Jersey, publicly refused to cancel postwar cartel deals with Ger-
many. As Homer T. Bone, Chairman of the Senate Patents Com-
mittee, informed the Senate Military AflFairs Committee on June 4,
1943:

The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey directors were asked by
certain stockholders to cut ofiF all relations with Farben after the war,
but it was refused. One official said such a request was "an affront."
There is clear indication that after this unpleasant interlude of war they
will hold hands again and resume their very harmonious and beautiful
arrangement with the cartels.

The sinister implications of cartel, patent and other such agree-
ments were by no means limited to the period that would follow
the war. As Drew Pearson later reported:

I. G. Farben's monopoly agreement with Standard Oil of New Jersey
prevented the United States from developing synthetic rubber and kept
the Americans without rubber tires for four years. The monopoly be-
tween Aluminum Corporation of America and I. G. Farben kept mag-
nesium away from the American aircraft industry and retarded our
production of airplanes. Bausch and Lomb's secret agreement with Carl

228

Zeiss was extremely detrimental to the U.S. Navy on submarine
sights . . .*

There were other ways in which certain leading figures in Ameri-
can industrial and financial circles pursued a business-as-usual policy
during the years of the Second World War.

2. "What price patriotism?"

In the middle of the crucial month of September 1942, as the
German Sixth Army of some 330,000 men launched a ferocious,

* These were some of the scores of American firms listed by the Senate
Kilgore Committee as having entered into various cartel arrangements with
Nazi trusts: Agfa Ansco Corp.; Aluminum Co. of America; American Cyani-
mid Co.; Bell and Howell Co.; Carbide and Carbon Chemical Corp.; National
Aniline & Chemical Co.; Dow Chemical Co.; Eastman Kodak Co.; General
Motors Research Corp.; Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.; Procter and Gamble;
Standard Oil Groups.

"Under our agreement," stated officials of Siemens-Halske, the great German
electrical equipment producer, in a memorandum to the American firm, Ben-
dLx Aviation Co., on October 25, 1939, "your geographical contract territory
includes the United States, its territories and Canada. A state of war exists at
the present time between Canada and ourselves. Notwithstanding the war we
are of course willing to live up to the agreement as far as possible." The
Siemens executives went on to request that Bendix "supply no instruments,
built under a license, if you know that they are destined for our enemies."

A Bendix official replied: "As regards the drawings sent over, you may rest
assured. As regards fabrication ... we wUl arrange to the best of our ability
to keep within the orbit of domestic use."

Siemens maintained cartel and patent agreements with numerous other Aner-
ican concerns, including Westinghouse Mfg. Co.

After the war, it was established that Siemens had devised and manufactured
the gas-chamber installations at Oswiecim and other Nazi death camps, and
had a monopoly on gas-chamber electrical equipment. One of the devices
patented by Siemens was a ventilating system for regulating the flow of gas
with such efficiency that at Oswiecim 10,000 persons could be killed within
twenty-four hours . . .

I. G. Farbenindustrie, the gigantic chemical combine, maintained cartel ar-
rangements with more American firms than any other German trust. Among
these American firms were Standard Oil of New Jersey, duPont de Nemours,
and Ethyl Gasoline Corp., which was half-owned by General Motors.

I. G. Farben was Hitler's largest financial backer and reaped the greatest
profits in Germany from the Nazi war efi^ort. At the Nurnberg trial of Nazi
war criminals, moreover, it was established that I. G. Farben conducted many
wartime "experiments," with chemicals and drugs, using concentration camp
inmates as guinea pigs. In one typical case, Farben bought 150 women from
the Oswiecim camp, for approximately $70.00 apiece, "in contemplation of
experiments of a new soporific drug."

Later a Farben memorandum reported: "Received the order of 150 women.
Despite their emaciated condition, they were found satisfactory . . . The tests
were made. All subjects died. We shall contact you shordy on the subject of
a new load."

22Q

all-out assault against Stalingrad, and as American marines and war-
ships battled furiously to hold the Pacific island of Guadalcanal, the
resolutions committee of the National Association of Manufacturers
held a private meeting at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City.
The purpose of the meeting was to prepare a 1943 program for
presentation at the December NAiVl convention.

Some of the more patriotic members of the resolutions commit-
tee urged that the NAM program concentrate on one issue, winning
the war. James D. Cunningham, president of Republic Flow Meters
Company, pointed out that "if we don't win the war, there won't
be a postwar."

Lammot du Pont, chairman of the Board of du Pont de Nemours
& Co., spoke in reply. A respectful hush fell over the resolutions
committee as he began his remarks.

"Deal with the government and the rest of the squawkers the way
you deal with a buyer in a seller's market!" du Pont said. "If the
buyer wants to buy, he has to meet your price. Nineteen hundred
and twenty-nine to 1942 was the buyer's market— we had to sell on.
their terms. When the war is over, it will be a buyer's market again.
But this is a seller's market. They want what we've got. Good.
Make them pay the right price for it. The price isn't unfair or un-
reasonable. And if they don't like the price, why don't they think
it over?"

As his audience listened intently du Pont asked, "Are there com-
mon denominators for winning the war and the peace? If there
are, then, we should deal with both in 1943. What are they?" The
famous industrialist proceeded to answer his own question:

We will win the war (a) by reducing taxes on corporations, high
income brackets, and increasing taxes on lower incomes; (b) by re-
moving the unions from any power to tell industry how to produce,
how to deal with their employees, or anything else; (c) by destroying
any and all government agencies that stand in the way of free
enterprise.

The majority of the members of the NAM resolutions commit-
tee were in hearty agreement with the views expressed by Lam-
mot du Pont. So were certain other big businessmen.

From the inception of the U.S. defense program in the summer
of 1940 many leading American industrialists had stubbornly re-
fused to manufacture weapons of war except on terms which they
230

themselves dictated. Failing at first to get agreement from the Ad-
ministration on exorbitant profits, special tax privileges and other
concessions they demanded, these industrialists staged what came
to be known as the "sitdown strike" of American capital.

"In the great capital sitdown strike of 1940, which delayed the
signature of defense contracts and the start of them from May
1940, until the beginning of October," I. F. Stone writes in his
book, Business as Usual, "the aviation industry was used as a front
for the rest of business in its fight for special tax privileges on
defense contracts."

The Temporary National Economic Committee investigating
Concentration of Economic Power in the United States gave this
description of the dilemma with which the Roosevelt Administra-
tion was confronted in getting war supplies manufactured:

Speaking bluntly, the Government and the public are "over a barrel"
when it comes to dealing with business in time of war or other crisis.
Business refuses to work, except on terms which it dictates. It controls
the natural resources, the liquid assets, the strategic position in the coun-
try's economic structure, and its technical equipment and knowledge
of processes. The experience of the [First] World War, now appar-
ently being repeated, indicates that business will use this control only
if it is "paid properly." In effect, this is blackmail . . .

The TNEC report added:

Business apparently is not unwilling to threaten the very foundations
of government in fixing the terms on which it will work. It is in such a
situation that the question arises: What price patriotism?

The attack on Pearl Harbor and the fact that the American
nation was now engaged in a desperate struggle for survival did
little to alter the attitude of many American big businessmen to-
ward the war. Profit, not patriotism, remained their paramount
concern.

"The present grave lack of steel is the responsibility of the large
steel companies which have sought to perpetuate their monopolies,"
Senator Harry S. Truman, then Chairman of the Senate Committee
Investigating National Defense declared early in 1942. "Even after
we were in the war, Standard Oil of New Jersey was putting forth
every effort to protect the control of the German government over
a vital war material . . . Yes, it is treason. You cannot translate it
any other way."

Among the prices paid to secure the cooperation of big business-

231

men in the American war effort was that of turning over to them
almost absolute control of Government war production agencies.

The extent to which these agencies were dominated by big busi-
ness interests made a profoundly disturbing impression on William
Allen White when he visited the nation's capital in the sum-
mer of 1943. "One cannot move about Washington without bump-
ing into the fact that we are running two wars— a foreign war and a
domestic war," wrote the dean of American journalists in his £7;/-
poria Gazette. White continued:

The domestic war is in the various war boards. Every great com-
modity industry in this country is organized nationally and many of
them, perhaps most of them, are parts of great international organiza-
tions, cartels, agreements, which function on both sides of the battle
front.

One is surprised to find men representing great commodity trusts
or agreements or syndicates planted in the various war boards. It is
silly to say New Dealers run this show. It's run largely by absentee
owners of amalgamated industrial wealth, men, who either directly or
through their employers control small minorit)^ blocks, closely organ-
ized, that manipulate the physical plants of these trusts.

These "managerial magnates," declared WiUiam Allen White,
were determined at all costs "to come out of this war victorious for
their stockholders" . . .

Here are a few of the "managerial magnates" and the posts they
occupied in the U.S. war agencies:

William S, Knudsen, President of General Motors: Chairman of the
War Production Board *

Edward J. Stettinius, Jr., Chairman of the Board of U.S. Steel: Chair-
man of the War Resources Board

Ja?nes V. Forrestal, President of the Dillon, Read & Co., Investrnejit
Bankers: Under Secretary, and then Secretary of the Nav)^

William H. Harrison, Vice-President of American Telegraph and
Telephone Company: Director of Production, Office of Produc-
tion Management

Philip Reed, Chairman of the Board of General Electric Company:
Director of the Consumer Goods Division, War Production Board

* The political orientation of some General Motors executives was indicated
by William S. Knudsen's comment in 1933 that in his opinion Hitler's Ger-
many was "The miracle of the 20th century"; and by GM Vice-President
James Mooney's acceptance in 1938 of a medal from Adolf Hitler. During t!ie
war, James Alooney acted as the liaison between General Motors and the
U. S. Government, in connection with war contracts. General Motors received
contracts aggregating almost 14 billion dollars, or approximately one-twelfth
of the total contracts awarded.

232

Williain M. Jeffers, Fresideiit of the Union Pacific Railroad: Direc-
tor of the Office of Rubber Production

Ralph K. Davies, Director of Standard Oil Cojnpany of California:
Deputy Petroleum Administnuor

Sain H. Husbands, Director of the Anglo -California National Bank:
President of the Defense Plant Corporation of the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation.

Charles B. Henderson, Director of the Western Pacific RR: Presi-
dent of the Aletals Resources Corporation of the RFC

Donald AI. Nelso?j, Executive Vice-President of Sears Roebuck & Co.:
Chairman of the War Production Board

Leo T. Crowley, Chairman of the Board, Standard Gas <b- Electric
Co.: Administrator of the Foreign Economics Administration

Charles E. Wilson, President of General Electric Co.: Executive Vice-
Chairman, WPB

William L. Batt, Chair77ian of the Board of American Management
Association, President, SKF Industries: Asst. Vice-Chairman WPB

Donald D. Davis, President General Mills, Inc.: WPB Vice Chairman

T. P. Wright, Vice-President Curtiss-W right Corp.: Aircraft Re-
sources Control Office

Walter S. Gifford, President of the American Telephone & Telegraph
Co.: Member War Resources Board and Chairman Industry Ad-
visory Committee of Board of War Communications *

Inevitably, with control of the armaments program in such hands,
war production became overwhelmingly the monopoly of the few
most powerful industrial concerns in the United States. So con-
centrated was this monopoly that, according to statistics later re-
leased by the Senate Smaller War Plants Committee the leading loo
corporations in America received approximately 70 per cent of all
the v\'ar contracts.

By the summer of 1945, twenty-six bilUon dollars' worth of new
industrial plants and equipment— mostly subsidized with govern-
ment funds— had been added to the nation's manufacturing facihties.
The interests which acquired ownership of these colossal new in-

* As early as August 1941, Representative John M. Coffee read into the
Congressional Record a list of the names of forty-two presidents of large
corporations who were acting as important officials in the armament program.
Throughout the war these business leaders and hundreds of lesser executives
of their enterprises held key posts in all government bodies connected with
planning war production and purchasing war supplies. A postwar study of the
War Shipping Administration revealed that 186 of its 312 officials had been on
the payroll of shipping and shipbuilding companies, and that many of the
remainder had been employed in associated fields like marine insurance and
naval architecture. The case of the WSA was typical rather than exceptional.

233

dustrial resources were indicated in a report of the War Assets
Administration:

The 250 largest war manufacturing corporations operated during the
war 79 percent of all new, privately operated plant facilities built with
Federal funds . . . these companies have acquired 70 percent of total
(surplus) disposals . . .

"It is quite conceivable," the Temporary National Economic
Committee had prophetically stated before America's entry into the
war, "that the democracies might attain a mihtary victory over the
aggressors only to find themselves under the domination of eco-
nomic authority far more concentrated and influential than any
which existed prior to the war."

And on April 29, 1938, in a message to the Congress, President
Roosevelt had given this eloquent warning of the dangers inherent
to American democracy in the concentration of such economic
power in the hands of a few men:

Unhappy truths abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the
liberty of a democratic people.

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the
people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes
stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism-
ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other
controlling private power . . .

Among us today a concentration of private power without equal
in history is growing . . .

The Second World War resulted in an unprecedented accelera-
tion of the concentration of private powxr in the United States.

The basic and most ominous paradox of the American war eflFort
was the fact that while the nation w^as helping to destroy fascism
abroad, the economic base for fascism was being laid at home.

3. People's War

In spite of the business-as-usual operations and voracious war
profiteering of giant American corporations, their uninterrupted
dealings with enemy cartel interests and their growing hold on the
nation's economy, the American people had never before achieved
such unity or engaged in such a prodigious democratic struggle as
during the epochal days of the Second World War.

Following Pearl Harbor, the manpower and industrial might of
the land were galvanized with lightning speed into a stupendous

234

war effort under the leadership of President Roosevelt. Within a
matter of months, millions upon millions of American men and wo-
men had been mobilized into the Armed Services and transported
overseas, or were undergoing intensive training at huge army en-
campments throughout America; supply lines totaling more than
56,000 miles, to ten fighting fronts, webbed the oceans and con-
tinents of the earth; and the names of scores of far-off, hitherto
unfamihar places— Bataan, Midway, Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Anzio,
Buna, Guam, Wake, Tarawa, Bizerte— had become every-day words
designating battlefields where U. S. soldiers and sailors were carry-
ing the offensive to the Axis enemy by land, sea and air.

By the winter of 1942 American troops, convoyed 5,000 miles
across the Atlantic Ocean, had landed in North Africa. Ten months
later Anglo-American armies forced Italy out of the war and drove
the Germans back to the north of the Italian peninsula. On June 6,
1944, in Operation Overlord, a gigantic armada of 800 warships and
4,000 boats loaded with men and guns swarmed across the English
Channel, debarked Allied troops in Normandy and opened up the
long-awaited Second Front. "The history of wars," declared Marshal
Joseph Stalin of this military achievement, "does not know any such
undertaking so broad in conception and so grandiose in its scale
and so masterly in its execution."

On the homefront, American men and women gave full meaning
to Roosevelt's phrase— Arsenal of Democracy. One year after Pearl
Harbor, America was producing as much war material as the com-
bined industrial plants of the Axis powers. By V-J Day, almost fifty
bilHon dollars' worth of Lend-Lease— military supplies, petroleum
products, food, industrial materials and equipment— had been fur-
nished by the United States to its allies ...

Two weeks after America entered the war, the leaders of almost
eleven million organized workers voluntarily relinquished their
right to strike. Joint labor-management committees, which were set
up in every industry to increase production and arbitrate labor-
management differences, numbered almost 5,000 by 1944, included
50,000 committeemen and represented some 8,000,000 workers.

"The contribution of the production front to America's success-
ful offensives," Admiral Ernest T. King, Commander-in-Chief of
the U.S. Fleet, declared on May 15, 1944, three weeks before the
invasion of France, "constitutes in itself a lasting tribute to the

235

American workman. He is doing more than I can tell you to help
win the war."

Said General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander in the
European Theatre of Operations, at the war's end:

When great emergency demanded special effort, time and again our
unions loyally responded. American labor rightly shares in the laurels
won by American troops on the battlefield.

The total membership of American trade unions grew from 8,-
944,000 in 1940 to 14,796,000 in 1945 . . .

In marked contrast to the Great War of 1914-1918, the Second
World War gave rise to a new democratic spirit in America.
"During the war," the American Civil Liberties Union later re-
ported, "national unity and necessary government controls resulted
in protecting and even extending democratic liberties, and in a
remarkable lack of hysteria and intolerance." *

The Fair Employment Practices Committee was established by
President Roosevelt to enforce Executive Order 8802 which stated
that "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers
in defense industries or Government because of race, creed, color,
or national origin." Commxunists were officially recognized as part
of the broad coalition supporting the American war effort. On
February 5, 1944, Major General James A. UUo, the Army Ad-

* The American Civil Liberties Union was referring in its report to the
period in which the United States was actively engaged in the war.

During the early stages of the war— the so-called phoney war phase, when
Britain and France were still under the influence of the Chamberlain-Daladier
appeasement policies— there were extensive curbs on civil liberties in America
and widespread repressions against the progressive and labor movement, which
strongly opposed any American involvement in the war which had not yet
become a people's war. On the other hand, America First and other pro-fascist
isolationist forces were permitted to operate with complete freedom. This was,
in fact, the most reactionary period of the Roosevelt Administration.

Regarding the Smith Act, which epitomized this period, Zechariah Chafee,
Jr., writes in Free Speech in the United States:

"On June 28, 1940, the Alien Registration Act became law. Its official tide
would make us expect a statute concerned only with finger-printing aliens and
such administrative matters . . . Nor until months later did I for one realize
that this statute contains the most drastic restrictions on freedom of speech
ever enacted in the United States during peace. . . . the 1940 Act gives us a
peace-time sedition law— for everybody, especially United States citizens. . . .

"A. Mitchell Palmer is dead, but the Federal Sedition Act he so eagerly de-
sired is at last on the statute-books. The host of over forty alien and sedition
bills in Congress in 1939 and 1940 recalls the similar situation cxacdy twenty
years before . . ."

236

jutaiit General, circularized a directive authorizing the granting of
army commissions to known members of the Communist Party.
When the House Military Affairs Committee instituted an investi-
gation of this directive, and twenty-three Communist officers were
singled out by the die-hard Chicago Tribune for special attack.
Major General Clayton Bissel, head of the U.S. Army Intelhgence
Corps, declared: "The Army files show the loyalty of these of-
ficers . . . these officers have shown by their deeds that they are
upholding the United States by force and violence." *

Out of the global conflict between the armies of progressive
mankind and the international forces of fascism, and in the suffer-
ing, sacrifice and bloodshed of battle, a new and unprecedented
unity— symbolized in the United Nations Organization— was born
among the democratic nations of the world. The most meaningful
expression of this unity was in the friendly relations and fighting
alliance established between the United States and the Soviet Union,
the two greatest powers in the world. As one anti-Soviet propaganda
lie after another was stripped bare by the grim realities of the war,
Americans came to regard Russia as their most valuable fighting
ally and learned much about the true stature of the Soviet nation,

* Of the 15,000 Communists in the U. S. Armed Forces, a number received
commendations and decorations for bravery in action and other exemplary
services.

Among such soldiers was Robert Thompson, former vice-president of the
Young Communist League and later member of the national board of the
Communist Party, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for
heroism in the campaign at Buna, New Guinea. (In 1949 Thompson, together
with ten other Communist leaders, was sentenced to prison for having alleg-
edly conspired "to teach and advocate the overthrow and destruction of the
Government of the United States by force and violence." For details of this
case, see pages 332 ff.)

Another Communist with a particularly distinguished record in the U. S.
Army was Herman J. Bottcher, an anti-Nazi German who had fought with
the International Brigade against Franco in Spain. After being promoted from
sergeant to captain and decorated for bravery on the field of battle during
the Buna campaign, Bottcher later became a major before he was killed in
combat in the Philippines. In an article published in the Saturday Evening Post
on August 13, 1949, Lieutenant-General Robert L. Eichelberger, former com-
mander in the Buna campaign, wrote regarding Bottcher: "On my recommen-
dation, the Allied commander commissioned Bottcher as a captain of infantry
for bravery on the field of battle. He was one of the best Americans I have
ever known. . . . His combat experience was extremely useful at Buna, and
his patriotism as a new American was vigorous and detemiined." According
to General Eichelberger's article, Bottcher was "Buna's greatest hero."

its leaders, its industry, its army and, in Secretary of State Cordell
Hull's words, "the epic quality of their patriotic fervor." *

More than that, the realization came to the American people that
the achievement of their major war aims— security, progress and
durable peace in the postwar world— depended primarily on the
maintenance of friendship between the Soviet Union and the
United States. As the New York Herald-Tribune stated on Feb-
ruary II, 1943:

There are but two choices before the democracies now. One is to
cooperate with Russia in rebuilding the world— as there is an excellent
chance of doing, if we believe in the strength of our own principles
and prove it by applying them. The other is to get involved in intrigues
with all the reactionary and anti-democratic forces in Europe, the only
result of which will be to alienate the Kremlin.

"Today," wrote President Roosevelt in the draft of a speech
during the early days of April 1945, on the eve of the San Fran-

* In 1943 the former Republican presidential candidate Wendell L. Willkie,
after a seven-weeks world-encircling tour by airplane, wrote a book entitled
One World, in which he summed up his views on the Soviet Union as follows:

"First, Russia is an effective society. It works. It has survival value. The
record of Soviet resistance to Hitler has been proof enough for most of us,
but I must admit in all frankness that I was not prepared to believe before I
went to Russia what I now know about its strength as a going organization of
men and women.

"Second, Russia is our ally in this war. The Russians, more sorely tested by
Hitler's might even than the British, have met the test magnificently. Their
hatred of Fascism and the Nazi system is real and deep and bitter . . .

"Third, we must work with Russia after the war. At least it seems to me
that there can be no continued peace unless we learn to do so . . . Russia is
a dynamic country, a vital new society, a force that cannot be bypassed in
any future world."

Regarding the Soviet war effort, Winston Churchill declared in 1943: "No
government ever formed among men has been capable of surviving injuries
so grave and cruel as those inflicted by Hitler on Russia . . . Russia has not
only survived and recovered from those frightful injuries but has inflicted,
as no other force in the world could have inflicted, mortal damage on the
German army machine."

Such statements by Churchill and numerous other Allied leaders are worth
recalling in view of the postwar tendency in some quarters in America to
belittle the Soviet war effort. The historical fact is that the Red Army en-
gaged approximately 240 German divisions throughout four years of the war
(during most of the war, German troops in the West did not exceed 50
divisions). Soviet military losses, in killed, prisoners and missing, were esti-
mated at some 6,500,000— a number almost seven times as great as the combined
casualties of the Anglo-American armies. This figure does not include the
enormous casualties among the civilian population of Soviet regions occupied
by the Germans.

238

Cisco Conference of the United Nations, "we are faced with the
pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate
the science of human relationships— the ability of all peoples, of all
kinds, to Uve together and work together in the same world, at
peace. . . . The work, my friends, is peace, more than an end to
this war— an end to the beginnings of all wars, yes, an end, for-
ever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of differences be-
tween governments by the mass killing of peoples."

Roosevelt concluded his speech with these words: "And to you,
and to all Americans who dedicate themselves with us to the making
of an abiding peace, I say: The only limit to our realization of
tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with
strong and active faith."

The speech, which was scheduled to be broadcast as the Presi-
dent's Jefferson Day Address, was never delivered . . .

At 5:49 P.M., Eastern War Time, on April 12, a radio program
being broadcast over the Columbia Broadcasting System was
abruptly halted. "We interrupt this program to bring you a special
news bulletin from CBS World News," stated the tense voice of a
radio commentator. "A press association has just announced that
President Roosevelt is dead . . ."

As the terrible and tragic news sped through the nation, men
and women wept like children in the streets, and work stopped in
the factories and on the farms. Grief, like a dark and sudden night,
engulfed the land.

To millions of Americans the very world seemed suddenly to
change, as if an elemental part of life itself were strangely, un-
believably and irrevocably lost '. . .

And when the funeral train brought Roosevelt's body from
Warm Springs to Washington and from Washington to Hyde Park,
hundreds of thousands of mourning people stood along the many
miles of track and clustered silently at railroad stations and cross-
ings; and as the train went by, men bared their heads and women
raised children in their arms, bidding their President a last fare-
well.

At Harmon Station on the Hudson River, as the funeral train
passed through during the grey early morning, a man said to a
stranger standing beside him, "I never voted for him. I should have
but I never did. We're going to miss him, miss him terribly."

239

A small boy asked his father, "Daddy, when Pvoosevelt died did
he leave treasures in his house?"

The father answered, "Yes, he left a lot of treasures, but his
house wasn't just the building where he lived, his house was ail
America, and the treasures he left belong to all of us". . . .

In every part of the world countless miUions shared America's
sorrow. Throughout the British Empire, the Union Jack was or-
dered to half-mast. Black-edged red flags were hoisted above the
Kremlin in Moscow and in the city squares. In Nanking and Paris,
in Warsaw and Manilla, in Prague, Mexico City, Bombay, Budapest,
and hundreds of other cities and towns on every continent men and
women grieved and wept.

Never before had the death of any American been so widely
mourned among the peoples of the world.

On the evening of April 12, Vice-President Harry S. Truman
was svv^orn in by Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone at the White
House as President of the United States.

Three weeks after Roosevelt's death, armored troops of the Red
Army stormed and captured Berlin. On May 8, 1945, Field Marshal
Wilheim Keitel of the German High Command, in the presence of
Am^erican, British and Russian generals signed the final act of un-
conditional surrender of the forces of the Nazi Wehrmacht.

In mid-August the Government of Japan accepted the terms laid
down in the Potsdam Declaration. On September 2, aboard the U. S.
battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, the official instrument of sur-
render was signed by Foreign Minister Magoru Shigemitsu on be-
half of the Japanese Emperor.

The Second World War was over.

240

BOOK FOUR: THE NEW INQUISITION

Indeed, if such reaction should develop— if history were to
repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called "normalcy"
of the 1920s— then it is certain that even though we shall have
conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall
have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
January //, 1^44

Chapter xiii

DEATH OF THE NEW DEAL

This war that I saw going on all around the world is, in
Mr. Stalin's phrase, a war of liberation. It is to liberate some
nations from the Nazi or the Japanese Army, and to liberate
others from the threat of those armies. On this much we are
agreed. Are we agreed that liberation means more than this?
Specifically, are the thirty-one United Nations now fighting
together agreed that our common job of hberation includes
giving to all peoples freedom to govern themselves as soon
as they are able, and the economic freedom on which all
lasting self-government inevitably rests? . . .

Our very proclamations of what we are fighting for have
rendered our own iniquities self-evident. When we talk of
freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking para-
doxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer
be ignored. If we want to talk about freedom, we must mean
freedom for others as well as ourselves, and we must mean
freedom for everyone inside our frontiers as well as outside.

Wendell Willkie, One World, ip4S

According to the London Tmies, the expression "iron cur-
curtain" was coined by von Krosigk, Hitler's Minister of
Finance, and was used by Goebbels, in his propaganda for
some years before iMr. Churchill adopted it.

Bartletfs Familiar Quotations,
1^48 Editio?i

I. War's Legacy

Twenty million men had died in battle. Tens of millions of men,
women and children had perished by starvation and disease, and
in concentration camps and death chambers. Great warehouses at
Nazi extermination centers remained still crammed with the myriad
possessions of the murdered dead, with clothing, children's toys and
242

women's hair. Where cities world-famed for their beauty had once
stood, there now stretched endless miles of gutted skeletons of
buildings and mountainous piles of rubble. Countless human beings
wandered destitute and homeless across the blood-soaked continents
of Europe and Asia. In the wake of the war stalked famine, plague,
misery and mass impoverishment.

And all of this ineffable suffering and loss had stemmed from the
fierce Counterrevolution following the First World War, and from
the savage measures of world reaction during the ensuing years to
frustrate the democratic aspirations of the masses of mankind. It
was this global conspiracy to protect the privileges of the few by
the repression and enslavement of the many that had conjured
Fascism into being. It was this treason against the people that had
culminated inevitably in the Second World War.

Yet out of this dark and dreadful epoch of bloody terror, anti-
democratic intrigue, treachery, fascism and total war, the peoples
of the world had triumphantly emerged with greater power in
their hands than ever before in history.

The monstrous prison-empire of the Axis lay in crumbled ruins,
and the liberated milUons were marching inexorably toward the
achievement of their ancient goals. In Eastern Europe, great sec-
tions of the land were being divided up among the impoverished
peasantry, and prodigious reconstruction programs had been swiftly
begun. Indonesia, IndoChina, Palestine, Korea and other colonial
and semi-colonial parts of the world were in a ferment of popular
revolt. Across the great land mass of China, a people's revolution
was gathering momentum like a vast and irresistible storm.

In every land the hearts of men and women were filled with hope
for a new era of freedom, friendship among the nations and lasting
peace on earth.

The cornerstone of world peace and security was the United
Nations Organization; and the fruitful functioning of this body, all
knew, depended essentially on the maintenance of the close alliance
that had been forged during the war between the Western democ-
racies and the Soviet Union.

But on both sides of the Atlantic there were powerful reaction-
ary forces which had Httle interest in the maintenance of this al-
liance. Their primary concern, as after the First World War, was
to protect their vested interests, dam the swelling tide of demo-

243

cratic revolt and prop up the archaic system of the past. And once
again, linked with the struggle against world democracy, the coun-
terrevolutionary cry for an international crusade against "Com-
munism" was heard.

Barely six months after V-J Day, on the heels of the smashing
defeat of his Tory Party in England and faced with a mounting
crisis in the British Empire, Winston Churchill rediscovered the
"menace of Bolshevism." In a widely pubHcized speech delivered
in the United States on March 5, 1946, Churchill called for an anti-
Soviet alliance between Great Britain and the United States against
"the growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization" from
Russian Communism.

Churchill's internationally sensational speech was deUvered on
the occasion of his being awarded an honorary degree by West-
minster College in Fulton, Missouri. The little-known college was
located approximately 150 miles from President Truman's home-
town of Independence; and the President who had previously read
Churchill's speech, was conspicuously present at the time of its
delivery.

Following his inauguration. President Truman had fervently
echoed Roosevelt's repeated warnings against disunity among the
United Nations. But almost as soon as Truman took office, members
of his Administration embarked upon a course which would inevi-
tably create dissension within the United Nations . . .

The first serious split in the United Nations developed at the
San Francisco Conference in the summer of 1945. The issue of
dispute was whether or not Argentina should be invited to join
the Conference and become a UN member. British and American
delegates supported and secured Argentina's admission, against the
opposition of the Soviet delegate, Vyacheslav Molotov.

Some months later, the U.S. Government released an ofiicial
report entitled Blue Book on Argentina which conclusively proved
the "Nazi-Fascist character of the Argentine regime" and estab-
lished that the Argentine "mihtary government collaborated
v/ith enemy agents for important espionage and other piu*poses
damaging to the war effort of the United Nations" . . .

The most basic aim of the United Nations was the complete
extirpation of fascism in the world; but in forcing Argentina's
admission to the San Francisco Conference, the American and Brit-
244

ish delegates had championed, not opposed, the cause of a fascist
power. In this fashion, the Anglo-American Governments initiated
the so-called "get-tough-with-Russia" policy.

During the months that followed, this policy was to become the
dominant political orientation of the Governments of Great Britain
and the United States.

Nowhere was the postwar betrayal of the fundamental principles
of the United Nations more flagrantly demonstrated than in the
policies pursued by the British and American Governments toward
their recent arch-enemy, Germany.

Months after Germany's surrender, uniformed units of German
troops totaling a force of almost half a million men were still intacl
in British-occupied German territory; and in the American zone
of occupation, the U. S. Army was equipping and arming thousands
of fascist Polish, Yugoslavian and Ukrainian troops to serve in "labor
service companies" and as "guards." "Most members of these service
companies," reported Raymond Daniell in a dispatch to the New
York Times on February 3, 1946, "are as anti-Semitic and anti-
Russian as any Nazi." Many of them, according to Daniell, had
fought with the Nazi Wehmacht on the Eastern Front * . . .

Following V-E Day, Senator Harley M. Kilgore, Chairman of
the Sub-Committee of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, re-
peatedly warned that the German cartel apparatus, instead of being
destroyed, was being deliberately rebuilt in the western zones of
occupation. By the spring of 1946, I. G. Farben stock had risen on
the Munich and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges from 68 to 142 Vz-

"It is still not clear to me whether Mr. Byrnes intends to scrap the
Allied program of Quebec, Yalta and Potsdam . . . ," declared
former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., in a
radio address on May i, 1946, denouncing the poUcy being pursued

* On March 31, 1948, John O'Donnell reported in the Washington Times
Herald: ". . . we are now about to make military sense in Germany. Despite
denials from some sources, we have drawn up plans to reactivate some of
those tough fighting German Panzer and SS divisions, give them plenty of
food and first-rate American equipment . . . The Germans, always good
soldiers, would rather fight against their historic enemies— the Mongol-Slavs of
eastern Europe— than against their blood cousins to the west— Scandinavians,
British, Americans and French . . . Years and years ago, we pointed out that
FDR was backing the wrong horse in this war— that the continent of Europe,
so far as sternly isolationist America was concerned was better off under
Germanic rule than under Joe Stalin,"

245

in Germany by Secretary of State James F. Byrnes. "If it is Mr.
Byrnes' intention to scrap the Potsdam pact . . . then I prophesy
we are simply repeating the fatal mistakes of Versailles, and laying
the foundations of World War III."

On September 1 1, 1946, Edwin Hartrich of the Neiv York Herald
Tribune reported in a dispatch from Germany that "German busi-
nessmen and industrialists" were satisfied that "America and Britain
have definitely decided to build up western Germany as a balance
against the Russian zone."

The replacement of James F. Byrnes by General George C. Mar-
shall as Secretary of State in January 1947 brought about no change
in American foreign policy. Shortly afterwards, Undersecretary of
State Dean Acheson declared:

We must push ahead with the reconstruction of those two great work-
shops of Europe and Asia— Germany and Japan . . . We must take what-
ever action is possible immediately, even without full Four Power agree-
ment, for a larger measure of European, including German, recovery.*

In the Far East, as in Europe, the American get-tough-with-
Russia pohcy went hand in hand with the support of the militarists
and reactionaries.

Following Japan's surrender, the American Army in China pro-
ceeded to train and equip forty Kuomintang divisions, numbering
more than 700,000 men— a force twice as large as the American
Army had trained and equipped during the entire Second World
War. With GeneraHssimo Chiang Kai-shek desperately striving to
keep his feudal corrupt regime in power, the Truman Administra-
tion granted the Kuomintang more than $600,000,000 in loans for
the purchase of American surplus arms from the Pacific Islands.
By 1947 the total value of American war material and other aid
given to Chiang Kai-shek exceeded four billion dollars.

As early as November 26, 1945, Congressman Hugh DeLacey of
Washington had warned that Truman's Far Eastern pohcy repre-
sented—

the logic of American big businessmen, wanting unrestricted economic
exploitation of Asia. It is the logic of dollar imperialism. It is the logic
of a new world war, this time against the Soviet Union, launched from
great bases in the Pacific, from a Japan whose militarists we have not yet
rooted out, from anti-Communist bases in North China . . .

* On January 7, 1949, Dean Acheson was appointed Secretary of State.
246

The continuation of this poUcy, declared DeLacey, would make
"civil war inevitable" in China . . .*

On March 12, 1947, the get-tough- with-Russia policy reached
an historic climax. On that day, President Truman appeared before
a joint session of the United States Congress to deliver a momentous
address requesting a loan of $400,000,000 and military assistance
for the Greek and Turkish Governments. The acknowledged pur-
pose of the loan, although it was not specifically mentioned as such
by Truman, was to halt "Soviet expansionism" and the spread of
"Bolshevism" in Europe.

The Chicago Daily News characterized Truman's address as an
"open invitation to war" with Soviet Russia.

"It is not a Greek crisis that we face, it is an American crisis . . .,"
former Vice-President Henry Wallace, who had been ousted as
Secretary of Commerce because of his opposition to Truman's
foreign poHcy, declared over a nationwide radio hook-up on the
day after Truman's speech. "When President Truman proclaims the
world-wide conflict between East and West, he is telling the Soviet
leaders we are preparing for eventual war . . ."

While oflicially presented to the American public in terms of an
anti-Communist crusade, the Truman Doctrine reflected other con-
siderations of a more compeUing, if unoflicial, nature. As Tijne mag-
azine reported on March 24, 1947:

* By the summer of 1946, civil war was raging in China. At first the Com-
munists, vastly outnumbered and confined to a few provinces in North China,
suffered setbacks at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek's well-equipped troops.
Within two years, however, as increasing millions rallied to the support of the
Communists, their armies assumed the off^ensive on one front after another.
In October 1948, Mukden, chief city of industrial Manchuria, fell to the
Chinese Red Army. In the following twelve months, in an extraordinary mili-
tary campaign, the Communist armies swept across the vast expanse of China,
with the Nationalist forces reeling before them. In rapid succession Peiping,
Nanking, Shanghai, Canton and Chungking fell to Mao Tze-tung's victorious
forces.

On December 9, 1949, Communist troops occupied Chengtu, the last Na-
tionalist stronghold, and reached the Indo-Chinese border. Except for the
island of Formosa, to which the nationalist remnants had fled, the entire nation
of 470,000,000— almost one-fourth the population of the world— had been won
by the Chinese Communists.

In August 1949, in a letter sent to the President along with a State Depart-
ment White Paper on Sino-American relations. Secretary Acheson declared
that "the ominous result of the Civil War in China was beyond the control
of the government of the United States." Acheson added that "nothing . . .
was left undone" by America to prevent the outcome of the war.

247

The loud talk was all of Greece and Turkey, but the whispers behind
the talk were of the ocean of oil to the south.

As the U.S. prepared to make its historic move, a potent group of
U.S. oil companies also came to an historic decision. With the tacit ap-
proval of the U.S. and British Governments, the companies concluded
a series of deals— biggest ever made in the blue-chip game— to develop
and put to full use this ocean of oil. . . . Jersey Standard and its partners
were going to spend upwards of $300,000,000 in the stormy Middle
East to bring out this oil.

The headlines of the feature article in Business Week on March
22 read: "New Democracy, New Business; U.S. Drive to Stop
Communism Abroad Means Heavy Financial Outlays for Bases,
Relief and Reconstruction. But in Return, American Business is
Bound to Get New Markets Abroad."

"All of this," wrote Ralph Henderson, financial editor of the
New York World-Telegrmii, "is a much safer and profitable state
of affairs for investors. It is good new^s of a fundamental character."

At the same time, American big businessmen were finding equal
cause for enthusiasm in the postwar domestic policies of the Tru-
man Administration.

2. Return of Herbert Hoover

Less than two months had elapsed since the death of Franklin
D. Roosevelt when, on the morning of May 28, 1945, Herbert
Hoover entered the White House for the first time in twelve years.

Hoover was a few^ minutes early for his appointment wdth Presi-
dent Truman, and, while waiting, he strolled slowly through some
of the rooms he had not seen since March 1933. The former Presi-
dent was now seventy years old; his white hair was sparse, his face
wrinkled and pudgy; but, as the journalist Sidney Shallet was to
report a few months later. Hoover felt like "a new man" . . .

The conference between Truman and Hoover lasted for three
quarters of an hour. The news photographers w^ere then called in
to take pictures of the two men shaking hands and smiHng affably
at each other.

As Hoover left the White House, newsmen crowded around him.
"What did you discuss?" asked one of them.

Hoover's face crinkled into a smile. "The President of the United
States," he said, "has the right to make his ow^n announcement
concerning anything he may have said to his visitors or what visitors
248

may have said to him. I think that is all you will get from me at
the present time."

But Truman's action in summoning the ex-President to the White
House spoke for itself.

"The capital;" reported Time magazine on June 4, "buzzed with
rumors that Herbert Hoover . . . was to be put back into harness,
if only as an adviser. Whatever the outcome, Harry Truman's invi-
tation had been as shrewd as it was generous. In one master stroke,
he had won the applause of Republicans . . . [and] had made it
plain that he is not mad at anybody, an attitude which he further
dehneated by inviting both Thomas E. Dewey and Alfred Landon
to confer with him 'any time they might be in Washington.' "

Two days after the conference between Truman and Hoover, an
editorial in the Wall Street Journal enthusiastically observed:

"The crusading days of the New Deal as directed from the White
House are over."

At the time of Hoover's visit to the White House, a number of
New Dealers, including three former members of the Roosevelt
cabinet, had already been dropped from office, and many more
such changes were in the immediate offing.

"The Truman Cabinet appointments are regarded in Congres-
sional circles as constituting a major alignment in Government
pohcy," reported the official pubhcation of the National Associa-
tion of ^Manufacturers on July 7, 1945. "Quietly, the new President
is removing the New Deal element from high authority and replac-
ing it with men recognized as Democrats in the sense this word
was used before 1932. The effect upon business will be a definite
lessening of much of the sticky humidity which has prevailed for
the last 12 years."

Among the "Democrats in the sense this word was used before
1932" and the non-Democrats, in any sense of the word, to assume
key posts in the Truman Administration were the following indi-
viduals:

James V. Forrestal, Secretary of Defense: former president of the
investment banking firm of Dillon, Read & Co., and ex-Secretary of the
Navy. In the words of Time, Forrestal was "a lone wolf who came up
the hard way." *

* During the 1920's Forrestal's firm, Dillon, Read & Co., floated several
hundred million dollars in loans to German and Italian trusts, and to South

249

W. Averell Harriman, Secretary of Commerce: partner in the bank-
ing firm of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.; chairman of the board
of Union Pacific Railroad Co., and director in five other major rail-
roads; director in Guaranty Trust Co., Western Union Telegraph Co.,
and other large concerns.

Arthur M. Hill, Chairman of the Natiojial Resources Board: president
of the Atlantic Greyhound Corp.

Sidney W. Soiiers, Secretary of the National Security Council:
former vice-president of the General American Life Insurance Corp.

Robert A. Lovett, Undersecretary of State: partner in the banking
firm of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.

Brigadier General Charles E. Saltzman, Assistant Secretary of State:
former vice-president of the New York Stock Exchange

Lewis W. Douglas, Ambassador to Great Britain: former president of
the Mutual Life Insurance Co., ex-vice president American Cyanamid
Co., and director of General Motors

Archibald Wiggins, Undersecretary of the Treasury: former presi'
dent of the Trust Company of South Carolina, and former president of
the American Bankers Association

American dictatorships. (See page 8i). At the same time, Dillon, Read was
making major investments in the Stinnes' coal and iron interests and in the
Vereinigte Stahlwerk steel trust in Germany, two concerns which were help-
ing finance the growing Nazi movement.

Regarding the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank, two German banking
houses with which Dillon, Read & Co. was associated, the American Military
Government's Weekly hiformation Bulletin reported on June 30, 1947: 'They
participated actively in building the Nazi war machine, and the exploitation of
Europe . . . Certain top officials of the Dresdner Bank are facing indictment
and trial at Nuernberg for crimes."

On Forrestal's resignation from the post of Secretary of Defense in March
.1949, Louis A. Johnson was appointed as his successor. An affluent corpora-
tion lawyer and former Assistant Secretary of War, Johnson— like his pre-
decessor—had for some time been a prominent figure in international financial
circles. In March 1943, Johnson was appointed a director of Consolidated
Vultee Corp., which had been heavily backed by the Anglo-German- Ameri-
can Schroeder banking interests. In April 1943, Johnson became a direc-
tor of I. G. Farben's U.S. subsidiary. General Aniline and Film Co., and
subsequently president of a General Aniline affiliate.

In the summer of 1949, Johnson's name was prominendy connected with a
major scandal involving large Government orders for B-36 bombers, after the
Army had practically decided to abandon building this model bomber. On
June 6, 1949, Life magazine stated: "Congressman Van Zandt . . . pointed out
that Louis Johnson was formerly a director of Consolidated Vultee, which
builds the B-36, and that Secretary of Air Stuart Symington is reported to be
a frequent house guest at the California ranch of Floyd Odium, the financier
who now controls Consolidated Vultee. Odium, according to gossip Van
Zandt had heard, had helped Louis Johnson raise anywhere from $1.5 to %6.$
million for the Democratic campaign chest."

(See page 202, for data on Louis Johnson's alleged interest in the abortive
fascist putsch exposed by General Smedley Butler in 1934.)

Thomas B. McCabe, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board: presi-
dent of the Scott Paper Co.

William M. Martin, Chairjnan of the Export-Import Bank: former
president of the New York Stock Exchange

William S. Symingto77, Secretary of the Air Force: president of the
Emerson Electrical Manufacturing Co.

Arthur Barrows, Undersecretary of the Air Force: former president
of Sears, Roebuck & Co.

Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force:
chairman of the board of Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company

Thomas H. Har grave, Chairman of the Munitions Board: president of
Eastman Kodak Corp.

Kenneth C. Roy all, Secretary of the Army: Chairman of the Board of
Mebane-Royall Co.

Major Gejieral William H. Draper, Undersecretary of the Army:
former vice-president of the banking firm of Dillon, Read & Co.

Under the aegis of Secretary of State Marshall, a constantly
growing number of professional soldiers joined the diplomatic corps
and assumed key posts in the State Department. Before long, ten
out of twenty of the Department's executive officers were military
men, and the Army and Navy BullettJi could claim, "Today the
Army has virtual control of foreign affairs" . . .

"Into the vacuum created by the exodus of the New Dealers,"
noted the New Republic, "two groups have moved— the Brass Hats
and the Wall Streeters."

There was a third group. Washington correspondents dubbed it
the Missouri Gang.

3. Missouri Gang

The Missouri Gang was composed of old cronies of President
Truman and buddies who had served with him in the First World
War. They formed what soon came to be known as the President's
"kitchen cabinet." *

* A one-time haberdasher in Independence, Missouri, whose business had
failed in the early 1920's, Harry S. Truman had become involved in pohtics as
a protege of the notorious, corrupt Pendergast machine in Missouri. Boss
Tom Pendergast obtained a county judgeship for Truman in 1922 and then
backed Truman's election to the Senate in 1934, declaring he wanted "his own
emissary" in the Senate.

During the following years, Truman maintained close connections with
Pendergast and his political machine. When Pendergast was found guilty of
tax evasion in 1939 and sent to jail, Truman remained a staunch supporter of

One of the most influential members of the Missouri Gang was
Harry H. Vaughan, a burly coarse-humored former reserve corps
colonel who had been Truman's secretary in the Senate. Truman
and Vaughan had been close friends since the First World War,
when both had served as officers in artillery batteries from Mis-
souri. Immediately upon Truman's inauguration, Vaughan became
the President's military aide and shortly afterwards was pro-
moted to Major General. General Vaughan soon had his hands in
the affairs of practically every important government agency and
was using his newly acquired influence to benefit various acquain-
tances. "I'm considered in many circles to be very unethical, and
I'm sure I will continue to be," the General pubUcly replied to
critics of his conduct. "There are only two people I have to please
—Mr. Truman and Mrs. Vaughan. As long as I please them, I'm
satisfied." *

Another of the Missouri Gang was James K. Vardaman, Jr., son
of the late Senator James K. Vardaman who during World War I

his former political mentor. Later, as President, Truman removed from office
the U.S. district attorney who had prosecuted Pendergast.

Truman's record in the Senate was undistinguished until in 1941 he was
appointed chairman of the Senate Committee Investigating National Defense.
Largely through the work of capable staff members, this committee achieved
considerable prominence.

In 1944, Truman was selected at the Democratic National Convention as a
compromise candidate for the vice-presidency, in order to prevent the bolting
of the Southern Democrats and rightwingers who opposed the re-nomination
of Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate.

* In the summer of 1949, acting on disclosures by the Neiv York Herald
Tribune a Senate from the Justice Department, beginning
in late October, in order to make a lecture tour. The subject of his
lectures was to be the fascist menace in the United States and the
methods by which the Nazis had sought to subvert American de-
mocracy.

On October 22, at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Rogge
delivered the first lecture of his tour. Among those Americans men-
tioned by Rogge as having proved useful to the Nazis was ex-
Senator Burton K. Wheeler . . .

On the morning of October 25, Rogge left New York by plane
for the west coast to keep a speaking engagement at Seattle, Wash-
ington. Encountering bad weather after nightfall, the plane made
an unscheduled stop for refuehng at Spokane. At the airport Rogge
was informed that there was no room for him on the plane for the
remainder of the trip, and that he would have to make other ar-
rangements for flying on to Seattle. He was also told that a "Mr.
Savage" was on his way to the airport to see him.

Soon afterwards, a stranger approached Rogge at the airport.
*'My name's Savage," he said. "I'm from the Federal Bureau of In-
vestigation." He handed Rogge an unsealed envelope.

The envelope contained a letter to Rogge bearing the typewritten
signature of Attorney General Clark. The letter curtly notified
Rogge that he was dimissed from the Justice Department "as of
the close of business this day" . . .

On October 24, the day before Rogge was discharged, ex-Senator
Wheeler had visited the White House and conferred privately with
President Truman. That evening the President had telephoned At-
torney General Clark. A few hours later, the Attorney General
called a midnight press conference and announced that Assistant
Attorney General O. John Rogge was being dismissed from the
Justice Department for having "wilfully violated . . . long-standing
rules and regulations ..."

Almost twenty-four hours elapsed after this press conference be-
fore Rogge himself was notified that he had been discharged.

Commenting on Rogge's dismissal, I. F. Stone noted in PM that
"the Truman Administration and Tom Clark have no stomach for
a fight which involves Lindbergh, Coughlin, Wheeler, Ford."

259

Stone added:

The intellectual climate produced by the anti-Red, anti-Soviet tom-
toms of the government and press is hardly conducive to the criminal
prosecution of people whose stock in trade has always been— as was
Hitler's— that they are a bulwark against Bolshevism.

It was not former pro-Nazis but liberals and anti-fascists
who were now being investigated by Government agencies in the
United States.

A leading role in these investigations was being played by the
House Committee on Un-American Activities.

5. Sound and Fury

Toward the end of the war, with public resentment against the
disruptive practises of the Un-American Activities Committee at a
peak, Chairman Martin Dies had withdrawn as a congressional can-
didate and three other Committee members had been crushingly
defeated at the polls. At the time, it was generally believed that the
Committee was about to be disbanded by Congress. Then, on Jan-
uary 3, 1945, during the opening session of the 79th Congress, a
surprise bill was passed by a vote of 207-186 converting the Com-
mittee into a permanent congressional body.

The congressman responsible for this legislative coup was Rep-
resentative John E. Rankin of Mississippi.

A rabid anti-Semite and white supremacist, the wizened, sallow-
faced congressman from Mississippi had been described by the of-
ficial Nazi propaganda bulletin, Welt-Dienst (World Service) as
"an outstanding American."

Under Rankin's leadership,* in the months following V-J day,
the Un-American Activities Committee launched an all-out anti-
Communist crusade.

In an incessant stream of lurid press releases, pubHc statements

•Nominally, the chairman of the Committee was Representative Edward
J. Hart of New Jersey. The actual head of the Committee was Representative
Rankin. When Hart resigned as chairman in July 1945, and was succeeded bv
Representative John S. Wood of Georgia, the change did not affect Rankin's
domination of the Committee.

In January 1947, Representative J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey assumed
the chairmanship.

260

and "official reports," the Committee proclaimed that "Soviet im-
perialism" was plotting world domination and that a Kremlin-
directed network of saboteurs and atom bomb spies honeycombed
the United States. Professional anti-Soviet propagandists, Com-
munist renegades, and other "expert witnesses" appeared at Com-
mittee hearings and told hair-raising tales of "Red spy rings" and
Soviet war preparations against America.

Typical of the "authoritative" testimony at the Committee's hear-
ings was that given by the anti-Soviet ex-diplomat, William C.
BuUitt. Here are excerpts from BulHtt's testimony:

RANKIN: Is it true that they eat human bodies there in Russia?

BULLITT: I did see a picture of a skeleton of a child eaten by its
parents.

RANKIN: Then they're just like human slaves in Russia?

BULLITT: There are more human slaves in Russia than ever existed
anywhere in the world.

RANKIN: You said before that sixty percent of the Communist
Party here are aliens. Now what percentage of these aliens are Jews?
... Is it true, Mr. Bullitt, that the Communists went into the southern
states and picked up niggers and sent them to Moscow to study revolu-
tion? Are you aware they teach niggers to blow up bridges?

There was nothing new in the fantastic tales told by Bullitt and
other Committee witnesses. Since 1938 these tales had been the
regular stock in trade of the Un-American Activities Committee.
But now they were presented to the American people by the na-
tion's press and radio as news of momentous importance, and were
even cited by high-ranking Government officials as data vitally af-
fecting America's domestic and foreign policies.

Behind the facade of investigating "Soviet plots" and "Communist
intrigue," the Un-American Activities Committee conducted a
steadily broadening offensive during 1946- 1947 against the demo-
cratic institutions and constitutional rights of the American people.
The Committee launched "investigations" of numerous progressive
and anti-fascist organizations which it characterized as "subversive."
These were some of them:

Civil Rights Congress

Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions

National Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism

National Council of American-Soviet Friendship

Unitarian Service Committee

261

Veterans Against Discrimination
Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee *

The most overt and brazen of the Committee's attacks on free-
dom of expression in America was directed against the motion pic-
ture industry.

On October 20, 1947, after elaborate promotional preparations,
the Committee opened public hearings on "subversive activities" in
Hollywood. Two groups of witnesses had been subpoenaed. One
group was composed of "friendly witnesses," mostly famous movie
stars, through whose "expert" testimony the Committee intended to
reveal the extent to which Communists had subverted the film in-
dustry. The "unfriendly witnesses" were nineteen screen writers,
actors and directors, who, according to the Committee, were lead-
ing figures in Hollywood's "Red underground." t

*The tactics employed against the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee
were t}^pical. They represented, in the words of Albert Deutsch of PM, "not
an investigation but an inquisition."

Since 1942, the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee had been engaged in
raising funds and medical supplies, and maintaining hospitals and orphanages,
to aid anti-fascist refugees abroad, particularly Spanish Republicans who had
emigrated to France and Mexico after Franco's fascist regime came into power
in Spain.

Early in 1946 the Un-American Activities Committee denounced the Joint
Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee as a "Communist-front organization," and
demanded that the relief agency surrender all its books and records. When
the officers of the Refugee Committee refused to comply, its Chairman (the
eminent surgeon. Dr. Edward K. Barsky), its Executive Secretary, and the
sixteen members of its executive board were cited for contempt of Congress,
tried and found guilty in Federal Court, and, on January 16, 1947, sentenced
to prison terms ranging from three to six months and fines of $500 each.

Other persons indicted during the postwar period at the instigation of the
Un-American Activities Committee, on charges of contempt of Congress in-
cluded George Marshall, chairman of the Civil Rights Congress; Reverend
Richard Morford, executive director of the National Council of American-
Soviet Friendship; the ten Hollywood writers, actors and directors referred to
above; and Leon Josephson, a Communist lawyer and former anti-Nazi
underground fighter in Germany, who served a one-year prison sentence for
his refusal to testify before members of the Committee on the grounds that
this agency was unconstitutional.

In June 1947, the general secretary of the American Communist Party,
Eugene Dennis, was tried on contempt charges brought by the Un-American
Activities Committee, found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and
a fine of $1,000. On March 27, 1950, the conviction was upheld by the U. S.
Supreme Court.

t Among the "unfriendly witnesses'* were Albert Maltz, author of such
novels as The Cross and the Arrow and winner of the 1938 O. Henry Me-
morial Award; John Howard Lawson, author of the play Processional^ and

262

From the start, the hearing assumed the character of a fantastic
extravaganza. A battery of newsreel cameras with sound equipment
recorded every gesture and word of the witnesses and Committee
members. Reporters wore dark glasses to protect their eyes from
the blazing Klieg lights. Special provisions had been made for tele-
vision and radio coverage. Periodically, Chairman Thomas inter-
rupted the proceedings to help cameramen secure dramatic picture
effects.

Here is how Ruth Montgomery of the New York Daily News
described the testimony of one of the Committee's key witnesses,
Robert Taylor:

More than i,ooo shoving, sighing women today mobbed the House
caucus room to see the film star Robert Taylor. The hearing room was
jammed to capacity, with hundreds of curious lining the halls outside.
A 65-year-old woman, scrambling on a radiator for a better look at the
screen star, fell and struck her head. The clothes of others were torn
in the mad scramble to the door . . . Wild applause frequently punctu-
ated Taylor's testimony.

With his head carefully cocked at the proper angle for the pho-
tographers, Taylor solemnly declared: "I personally believe the
Communist Party should be outlawed. If I had my way, they'd all
be sent back to Russia." Asked to name some of the Communists in
the motion picture industry, Taylor mentioned the names of two
actors. "They're the only two I can think of at the moment,'* he
said. He paused^ then added, hesitantly, "I don't know whether
they're Communists."

For five days, other "friendly witnesses" gave similar testimony
regarding "Communist activities" in Hollywood . . .

When the "unfriendly witnesses" took the stand, they were per-
emptorily forbidden to read prepared statements and aggressively
questioned regarding their political and trade union affihations.
When they challenged the constitutionaHty of such questions.

well-known scholar and historian; Dalton Trumbo, author of the novel Johnny
Got His Gun; Samuel Ornitz, author of Haunch, Faunch and Joivl; and Ring
Lardner, Jr. The motion pictures on which these writers had worked had
included such outstanding films as Pride of the Marines; Destination Tokyo;
Action on the North Atlantic; Brotherhood of Man; and The House I Live In.
Two other "unfriendly witnesses" were Adrian Scott and Edward Dmytryk,
respectively producer and director of the widely acclaimed film, Crossfire.

263

they were curtly ordered from the stand and cited by Chairman
Thomas for contempt.

Despite every effort to browbeat them, the "unfriendly wit-
nesses" refused to be cowed.

"In this country we have the secret ballot and how a man votes
is his own affair," stated author Alvah Bessie. "General Eisenhower
has refused to reveal his pohtical affiliation and what's good enough
for him is good enough for me."

Meanwhile, popular indignation against the whole proceedings
was growing on a national scale. Trade unions, civic and fraternal
organizations, church groups, and prominent citizens issued state-
ments denouncing the character and conduct of the Committee.
Mass protest rallies took place in many cities . . .

The Detroit Free Press editoriahzed:

The most un-American activity in the United States today is the
conduct of the congressional committee on un-American activities . . .

No congressional committee that robs men and women of their good
names for the sheer sadistic glee of getting headlines should be allowed
to exist . . . The hypocritically named "Committee on Un-American
Activities" should be abolished at the earliest possible moment by the
United States Congress.

Confronted with mounting public condemnation and frustrated
by the courageous conduct of the witnesses, the Un-American Ac-
tivities Committee brought the hearing to a hasty, unexpected con-
clusion. On October 30, having questioned only ten of the nineteen
"unfriendly witnesses," Chairman Thomas abruptly announced that
the hearings were being indefinitely adjourned.

An important victory had been won by the forces of decency and
democracy in the United States.

But the victory was not unqualified.

On November 25, fifty executives of the motion picture indus-
try, representing all the major studios and most of the independents,
released a statement announcing their decision to refuse employ-
ment to Communists and to "discharge or suspend without com-
pensation" those of the ten Hollywood figures cited for contempt of
Congress who were then in their employ.*

The action of the film executives was enthusiastically hailed by
Representative Thomas as "a constructive step and a body blow

* The statement of the film executives was drawn up under the legal advice
of James F. Byrnes, former Secretary of State

264

at the Communists." The chairman of the Un-American Activities
Committee added: "Our hearings and exposures will continue." *

The most significant fact, however, about the House Un-Ameri-
can Activities Committee in 1947 was not that it was continuing,
on a greatly intensified scale and as a permanent congressional body,
the ugly anti-democratic conspiracy that Congressman Dies had
initiated a decade before. The most significant fact about the Com-
mittee was that its policies and those of the U.S. Government had in
many respects now become identical.

During the Roosevelt Administration, leading Justice Department
officials had denounced the Un-American Activities Committee as
"anti-democratic" and "itself bordering on the subversive." Now,
Attorney General Tom Clark informed members of the Committee
at one of its hearings:

We may say, I think, that you in Congress and we in the Department
of Justice are laboring in neighboring vineyards and that we have the
same purpose in view. The program of this Committee . . . can render
real service to the American people.

During the Roosevelt Administration, even J. Edgar Hoover had
carefully avoided all public association with the Committee. Now
the Committee enjoyed in the words of Life magazine, "the hearty
cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," and FBI chief
Hoover himself stated:

As this Committee fulfills its obligation of public disclosure of facts
it is worthy of the support of loyal, patriotic Americans.

During the Roosevelt Administration, none of the Committee's
propaganda activities was more sharply condemned by responsible

* On November 8, 1948, Representative Thomas, who had been a member
of the Un-American Activities Committee since its formation in 1938, was
indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on charges of conspiracy to defraud the
Government. He was accused of padding his own payroll and that of the
Un-American Activities Committee by placing on them the names of persons
who performed no services and who turned over their paychecks to him.
Thomas, according to the indictment, had been pursuing this criminal practise
since January 1940.

Indignantly denying the charge, the Chairman of the Un-American Activi-
ties Committee declared he would "continue to expose the participants in this
Communist conspiracy whether they be Government employes, scientists,
diplomats, labor leaders or movie stars."

Found guilty as charged, Thomas was sentenced on December 9, 1949, to
six to eighteen months in prison and a fine of $10,000.

265

Government officials than its oft-repeated charge of "Communist
infiltration" of Federal agencies and its constant demand for a
"purge" of "disloyal Government employes." Now, on March 22,
1947, President Truman himself promulgated an Executive Order
calling for a loyalty investigation of all Government employes and
the dismissal of those found to be "disloyal."

President Roosevelt had characterized the Un-American Activi-
ties Committee as "sordid, flagrantly unfair and un-American."

President Truman in his Executive Loyalty Order stipulated that
one of the four investigative agencies chiefly to be relied upon in
determining the loyalty of Government employes was "the House
Committee on Un-American Activities."

266

Chapter xiv

WASHINGTON WITCH HUNT

And lest some one should persuade ye, lords and com-
mons, that these arguments of learned men's discouragement
at this your order are mere flourishes, and not real, I could
recount what I have seen and heard in other countries, where
this kind of inquisition tyrannizes . . . There it was I found
and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the
inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the
Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.

John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644

The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators,
and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of
despotic power. The hours of the most unsuspected confi-
dence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses of do-
mestic retirement, afford no security . . . Do not let us be
told that we are to excite fervor against a foreign aggression
to establish a tyranny at home; and that we are absurd
enough to call ourselves free and enlightened while we
advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of
Gothic barbarity.

Congressman Edward Livingston, speak-
ing in the U. S. House of Representa-
tives in opposition to the Sedition Act of

Are your friends and associates intelligent, clever?

A question put by a U. S. Loyalty Board
in 1948 to a government e?nployee ac-
cused of disloyalty

I. The Loyalty Order

Executive order 9835 was issued by President Truman ten days
after his speech before Congress proclaiming the Truman Doctrine.

267

Proximity in time was not the sole relationship between the two
events. While the Truman Doctrine projected a foreign policy of
aiding reaction and counterrevolution in the name of halting
*'Communist expansion" abroad, the Truman Loyalty Order enun-
ciated a domestic program of thought control and repression in the
name of combatting the "Communist menace" at home.

One act complemented the other. Both crystallized the profound
metamorphosis that had taken place in the United States since the
death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt . . .

The sweeping scope and nationwide implications of the Executive
Loyalty Order were indicated by an Associated Press dispatch from
Washington on the day of the promulgation of the President's
decree:

President Truman's Order . . . covers about 2,200,000 executive branch
positions . . . On an individual basis the order could conceivably affect
everybody in the executive branch from the President to the janitor
in a small-town postoffice.

The Loyalty Order— without defining the meaning of "loyalty"—
prescribed an elaborate program of investigative procedure, includ-
ing the establishment of "loyalty boards" in all executive branch
agencies of the Government and the compilation of a list of "dis-
loyal organizations" by the Attorney General. The stated purpose
of this program was to effect "maximum protection" to "the United
States against infiltration of disloyal persons into the ranks of its
employes."

Actually, the Order provided no method for counteracting the
operations of possible foreign agents and spies within the United
States Government— such contingencies were already amply cov-
ered by existing Federal statutes. As L. A. Nikoloric, a member of
the well-known Washington law firm of Arnold, Fortas and Porter,
wrote in an article entitled "Our Lawless Loyalty Program" in
The Progressive magazine:

The loyalty program couldn't catch a spy, for it is what its name
implies— a method to test the total adherence of Federal employes to
certain undefined standards of thought. Its purpose, ostensibly, is to
catch Communists, but if you're a Government worker, you can be
branded for life even if you aren't and never were a Communist. You
are disloyal— in the Federal service— if, in the opinion of your agency's
loyalty board, you are or ever have been

(i) sympathetic to Communism,

268

(z) friendly to organizations allegedly sympathetic to Communism,

(3) associated with persons in groups (i) or (2)

(4) considered talkative in the presence of persons in groups (i),

(2) or (3).

Nikoloric added: "Furthermore, it is not required that the boards
prove that you belong in any of these categories. If there is any
doubt you lose the verdict."

Commenting on the procedural techniques outlined in the Order,
four outstanding legal authorities— Ernest N. Griswold, Dean of the
Harvard Law School; Austin W. Scott, an eminent specialist on the
law of trusts; Milton Katz, Professor of Law at Harvard Law
School; and Zechariah Chafee, Jr., noted authority on constitutional
law and Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School— wrote in a
letter to the New York Times on April 13, 1947:

There is no provision that the accused shall be confronted by such
evidence as there may be to support the charges against him, so that he
may undertake to rebut it. Indeed there is no requirement that the
evidence against him shall be introduced at the hearing at all.

No provision is made for a detailed record of the hearing or, for
that matter, for a record of any kind. There is no requirement that
the findings of the loyalty board must be supported by the evidence . . .

Considerably less concern over the anti-democratic and uncon-
stitutional character of the loyalty program was displayed by the
elected representatives of the American people. With few excep-
tions, Democratic and Republican congressmen enthusiastically
hailed Truman's Loyalty Order as a "vital contribution" to the
nation's welfare.

"It's good to see that he [Truman] has finally awakened to the
truth of what we've been telling him for the last few years," de-
clared Congressman Joseph E. Martin, Republican speaker of the
House of Representatives.

"The President's program is almost precisely that which the
House Committee on Un-American Activities has been advocating
for at least four years," asserted Representative Karl E. Mundt,
one of the Committee's most active members.

In the opinion of Representative John E. Rankin, the Loyalty
Order was "just what the country needs" . . .

Returning from the Nuremberg trials in Germany, where he had
been Deputy Chief Counsel to the American prosecution staff,
attorney Abraham Pomerantz wrote in a letter to the New York
Times on May 4, 1947:

269

., • , we have absorbed into our own legal system the German
tyranny that we fought and inveighed against. I refer to our executive
order which provides that any one of two and one-half million em-
ployees in the executive branch of our Government can be summarily
fired if he is, or ever was, a member of, or in "sympathetic associa-
tion" with, any organization or combination of persons placed by the
Attorney General of the United States on his private blacklist.

The condemned organization receives no indictment or even intima-
tion that its loyalty is impugned. It gets no hearing or opportunity to
contest the charge . . . The American citizen ... is afforded no oppor-
tunity to challenge the Attorney General's ex-parte condemnation of his
organization.

This conviction without trial, borrowed from the darkest days of
the Nazi inquisition, is a startling innovation in American judicial
procedure.

Pomerantz added:

Another aspect of the Executive Order presents a striking and sicken-
ing parallel to a Nazi decree which provided that no person could hold
public office unless he could prove "by his conduct that he is willing
and able to serve loyally the German people and the Reich." (Law
regarding Citizens of the Reich, of September 15, 1935.) ... In my
judgement, the Executive Order is, both substantially and procedurally,
the most Nazi-like and terrifying law since die Alien and Sedition
Acts.

Such condemnation of the Loyalty Order failed to perturb At-
torney General Tom C. Clark. In language remarkably reminiscent
of that used by Attorney General Palmer during the anti-Com-
munist drive after the First World War, the soft-spoken Texan
depicted the loyalty program as a means of promoting "Christian
principles" and defending "the democracy and constitutional rights
fought for and secured by our forefathers."

From material provided for the most part by the FBI and the
Un-American Activities Committee, the Attorney General pro-
ceeded to compile what the New York Times described as "an
initial master list of Communist organizations for use in ferreting
out disloyal Government employees." On December 4, 1947, the
"initial master list" was released to the nation. It included the names
of seventy-eight organizations which, according to Attorney Gen-
eral Clark, were "totalitarian, fascist. Communist or subversive."

About half of the organizations named by the Attorney General
were German, Japanese and Italian organizations which had oper-
ated in the United States before or during the war. None of these
organizations was any longer in existence.
270

The remainder of the list consisted almost entirely of progressive
and left-wing groups, committees engaged in the defense of civil
liberties, and anti-fascist organizations. In making his selection, re-
ported PMj Clark "appeared to follow the lead of the House Com-
mittee on Un-American Activities." *

On May 28, 1948, Clark published a second "subversive" list,
naming thirty-two more organizations as "disloyal." The only fascist
organization on this second list was the Aiisland-Organization der
N.S.D.A.F., the overseas branch of the Nazi Party, which, of course,
had ceased to exist long before Clark's list was drawn up . . .

Regarding the use to be made of his lists, the Attorney General
declared: "We shall do this in the American way ... in a legal
orderly manner. We shall not use Gestapo tactics of a Hitler or
destroy the very institutions of Hberty and justice that we have
fought so hard to preserve."

But the actions of the newly established Loyalty Boards spoke
louder than the words of the Attorney General. These actions were
soon conjuring up in America what Abraham Pomerantz described
as "shades of the malodorous German People's Courts."

2. Behind Closed Doors

"The procedure before the boards," wrote the attorney, L. A.
Nikoloric, in his article, "Our Lawless Loyalty Program," "violates
the provisions of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Bill of
Rights. The employe 'answers' the charges to his accusers— not to
an impartial judge. He is not told where the derogatory information
originated; it is impossible to impeach the reliability of its source
. . . His only defense is to prove a somewhat nebulous 'loyal' state
of mind."

But the "most reprehensible feature of the Loyalty Program,"
according to Nikoloric, was "the character of the evidence on
which charges are issued."

The attorney, who had acted as counsel for Government em-
ployes in various loyalty proceedings, cited specific cases to illus-
trate his point. These were some of them:

* Among the progressive organizations on Clark's list, grouped together with
the Communist Party of America, were the Civil Rights Congress, the Joint
Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, the National Council of American-Soviet
Friendship, the Veterans Against Discrimination, the National Negro Con-
gress, the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America, and the International
\Vorkers Order.

271

Miss A. spent one afternoon a week collecting money for Russian
War Relief in front of a movie house. She also was instrumental in
having Senators Ball and Pepper talk to the people of her city concern-
ing the necessity of accepting Russia as an ally. These events took place
in 1943, when the Russians were bearing much of the brunt of the war
in Europe. Miss A. also did Red Cross work, collected money and
knitted sweaters for British and French War Relief, and spent one night
a week at the U. S. O. . . . She was charged on these facts with being
disloyal to the United States.

Mr. B. married a girl, who, 10 years before, as a sophomore in col-
lege, had been a member of the Young Communist League. The YCL
in her school was almost exclusively interested in low-cost dormitory
facilities and in higher pay for scholarship jobs. Mrs. B. resigned from
the YCL after six or eight months, and it was not alleged that she
has since been in any way connected with Communism. Mr. B. was
accused of disloyalty to his country.

Mr. C. had an acquaintance in college. The acquaintance, whom C.
had not seen for 15 years, was named a defendant in a proceeding
involving alleged Communists. In answer to an appeal made to most
of his classmates, Mr. C. contributed some money to his friend's defense.
Although the friend was acquitted, Mr. C. was charged with disloyalty.

Mr. D. served as a civilian employe with the occupation forces in
Japan. At a conference he suggested that in distributing fertilizer to
Japanese farmers the occupation forces require that a certain percentage
of the farmers' produce be marketed immediately, through occupa-
tion channels, to stop hoarding. The senior Army officer at the con-
ference asked Mr. D. if he were a Communist, and whether he believed
in free enterprise. Mr. D. stated that he was not a Communist, that he
believed in free enterprise, but thought that his suggestion would curb
the black market. Shortly thereafter, Mr. D. was relieved and returned
to the United States on a loyalty charge because of this incident.

It was reported to the FBI by an associate of Mr. E. that the associate
had "heard" that E's mother-in-law was pro-Russian. Mr. E. was charged
with disloyalty.

These cases were not unique. They were, in Nikoloric's words,
''Hypical of the charges made in the generous sampling of cases with
which I am fajmliar. Freque?itly , the einploye, even after a hearing
has been conducted^ is unable to determine njohy charges were ever
preferred."

No less extraordinary than the "evidence" on which Govern-
ment employes were charged with disloyalty was the manner of
their interrogation by the loyalty boards. Here, taken from tran-
scripts of loyalty board hearings, are some typical questions ad-
dressed to Federal employes by the boards:
272

Are your friends and associates intelligent, clever?

Have you a book by John Reed?

There is a suspicion that you are in sympathy njoith the underpriv-
ileged. Is that true?

Was your father native born? . . . How about his father?

Do you think that the Russian form of Government is good for the
Russians?

Are you in favor of the Marshall Plan?

How do you feel about the segregation of Negroes?

Did you or your wife ever invite a Negro into your home?

Would you say that your wife has liberal political viewpoints?

Were any of your relatives ever members of the Coimnunist Party?

Did you ever attend any affairs with your wife where liberal views
were discussed?

What do you think of the Italian situation?

Do you understand why the Catholic Church is opposed to Com-
munism?

Suppose you should find out that your wife was a Communist, what
would you do about it?

"Loyalty board 'loyalty' does not mean loyalty to America,"
declared the former Assistant Attorney General, O. John Rogge.
"It means loyalty to the bi-partisan foreign policy abroad, to segre-
gation and the open shop at home . . . The loyalty cases are not
directed exclusively or even primarily against the Communists.
They are directed at the labor movement, and at those who share
the intellectual and social bequests of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
and the New Deal."

In a book entitled Our Vanishing Civil Liberties, which was pub-
lished early in 1949, Rogge recounts the details of some of the
loyalty cases in which he acted as counsel for accused Govern-
ment employes. One such case involved a Swedish-born mechanic
named Charles Oscar Matson, who had been employed in the New
York Naval Shipyard for thirty years.

In February 1948 iMatson's case came up before the Loyalty Board
at the New York Naval Shipyard.

The Board, as Rogge relates, "soon got down to business":

BOARD: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Com-
munist Party?

MATSON: No, I have never been a member.

BOAP.D: Has your wife or any relative been a member?

MATSON: No, my wife is a church member. All she does is vote.
Outside of that she doesn't belong to anything . . .

BOARD: Do you ever recall attending a meeting of the American
League for Democracy?

273

MATSON: I may have. I don't know for sure. The name don't even
sound familiar.

BOARD: Did you ever attend meetings sponsored by the Saints and
Sinners?

MATSON: What are they? Religious?

BOARD: No . . .

On questioning Matson about his reading habits, the Board learned
he had once been a subscriber to the Literary Guild:

BOARD: What kind of books did they put out?

MATSON: They were supposed to be the best for the month.

BOARD: Did they put out books by Theodore Dreiser?

MATSON: Yes, I think-

BOARD: Feuchtwanger?

MATSON: I think there was one by Dreiser . . .

BOARD: Have you ever read any of Feuchtwanger?

MATSON: No.

BOARD: Howard Fast?

MATSON: I don't know him. Never heard of him.

The Board proceeded to question Matson about his "political
views":

BOARD: Have you ever discussed the Truman Doctrine?

MATSON: Yes, a little bit.

BOARD: What do you think of it?

MATSON: Well, I went fifty-fifty on that.

BOARD: You aren't settled on that?

MATSON: No.

BOARD: Neither for or against?

MATSON: No, I feel sorry for a lot of people over there and I
feel sorry for people here. For instance, I will give you a case. They
want packages. My daughter and myself gathered up some old clothes
and instead of sending them over to the other side we sent them to the
Indians. The Navajos or something . . ,

Following Matson's testimony, a number of workers from the
naval shipyards were put on the witness stand by Rogge. "Witness
after witness," records Rogge, "declared that Matson had never said
or done anything disloyal. Not one witness had an unkind word
for him."

One of the witnesses was asked by the Board if he considered
Matson "to be a rather deep thinker." The witness said he was not
sure.

"Did you have any reason," demanded the chairman of the
Board, "to believe that he was fairly well read?"
274

Summarizing his account of the Matson case in his book, Our
Vanishing Civil Liberties, Rogge writes:

I have the transcript of the Matson hearing before me now. It en-
compasses 95 single-spaced typewritten pages of testimony, every line
of which is an indictment of Executive Order 9835. After the indignities
of this hearing which was not even a competent imitation of justice,
Charles Oscar Matson was fired.

Another loyalty case handled by O. John Rogge was that of
George Gorchoff, an Engineering Material and Equipment In-
spector in the New York Naval Yard. Unlike many of the indi-
viduals accused of disloyalty, who were not unnaturally bewildered
and at a loss for words at their loyalty board hearings, Gorchoff
turned out to be not only aggressive but extremely articulate.

The hearing had barely opened when this interchange took place:

GORCHOFF: In the charges here— this here— they specify that addi-
tional information will be given at the hearing, detailing these charges.
Can I have that additional information at this time?

BOARD: This is an informal hearing. We have no additional in-
formation for you.

GORCHOFF: It so states in the letter that Admiral Haeberle sent
me.

BOARD: That is incorrect procedure. . . . Any information that has
been given to me in regard to this case has been given to us as confi-
dential and cannot be divulged to you.

GORCHOFF: It is quite obvious that I can't refute these specific
questions without the people being brought here . . . For example, that I
recruited people into the Communist Party.

BOARD: Did you or didn't you?

GORCHOFF: Who said that I did.

BOARD: This is not a court of law.

GORCHOFF: I know, and I am not a lav^yer.

BOARD: This is not a court of law. You have been accused—

GORCHOFF: Have you— these people— the authority to exonerate
me?

BOARD: No.

GORCHOFF: Who has?

BOARD: All we can do is submit a recommendation to the Com-
mander of the Shipyard.

As the hearing progressed, Gorchoff continued to demand con-
crete information regarding the charges against him and to pro-
test against the Board's using as "secret evidence" the vague accusa-
tions of unidentified informers. "This is a hearing where I am
attempting to prove my innocence," protested Gorchoff. "In order

275

to do that I have to have something ... It is not only a question
of a job, it is my life— 15 years of my life. While I was here I got
married and had two kids. I am not a young kid flitting around
looking for a job."

At one point, when Gorchoff was requesting concrete informa-
tion about one of his anonymous accusers, Rogge's colleague,
Robert Goldman, asked the Board: "Are you declining to give such
information?"

"We don't have such information," answered the Board chairman.
"We don't know the name of the person."

Rogge spoke up. "You merely have a statement without any
proof?"

"It has been corroborated, checked and verified," said the Board
chairman.

"By whom?'*

"I can't tell you."

"By unknown parties?"

The Board chairman hesitated a moment. "Put it any way you
like," he then replied.

"Do you have an enemy who happens to be a government em-
ployee or a worker in a plant with a government contract? I will
tell you how to dispose of him," writes Rogge with bitter irony
in Our Vmiishing Civil Liberties. He continues:

Write a postcard to the F.B.I. Do not sign it. A signature would be a
gratuitous gesture of courage ... In this postcard state that your enemy's
wife read something by Theodore Dreiser, subscribed to the New
Republic^ and once invited a Negro into her home . . .

Mail your postcard, and rest assured— your enemy is finished. The
F.B.I, will conduct a secret investigation. Your enemy will end up
before a Loyalty Board where your postcard will be vital but secret
part of the evidence against him. He will not have the chance to face
you, his accuser. He will have to defend himself against charges he has
never heard. He may be fired. He may be allowed to resign. He may
even be cleared. But in any case, he is a marked man.

He was once investigated for "disloyalty."

The grim truth of Rogge's observation was confirmed by an
experience of Bert Andrews, Chief of the Washington Bureau of
the New York Herald-Tribune and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in
Journalism for 1947.

While collecting material for a series of expose articles on the
276

loyalty program, Andrews visited the State Department to check on
the cases of seven employes v^ho had been dismissed on charges
of disloyalty. An informal conference took place between Andrews
and three State Department officials. Andrews questioned the "de-
cency and fairness" of branding an employe disloyal and dismissing
him "without letting him in on the secret of who had accused him
of what." Was this, Andrews wanted to know, the American way
of doing things?

Finally wearying of the discussion, one of the State Department
officials blurted out: "Why beat around the bush on a matter like
this? It is entirely conceivable that any one of us in this room could
be made the victim of a complete frame-up, if he had enough ene-
mies in the Department who were out to get him."

While Andrews listened with growing astonishment, the Depart-
ment official went on: "Yes, such a thing would be perfectly con-
ceivable. And we would not have any more recourse than Mr.

," he named one of the Department employes who had been

dismissed— "even though we were entirely innocent."

"What did you say," demanded the astounded Andrews.

The State Department man calmly repeated his statement.

"If a man of your intelligence," said Andrews, "can say a thing
like that without being shocked at what you are saying and without
a feeling of personal peril, then something is wrong."

Not only in the nation's capital, but throughout the length and
breadth of the land, something very definitely was wrong in the
United States.

277

Chapter xv

PATTERN OF SUPPRESSION

We have seen the war powers, which are essential to the
preservation of the nation in time of war, exercised broadly
after the military exigency had passed and in conditions for
which they were never intended, and we may well wonder
in view of the precedents now established whether constitu-
tional government as heretofore maintained in this republic
could survive another great war even if victoriously waged.

From cm address delivered by Charles
Evans Hughes at the Harvard Law
School, June 21, 1^20.

The real traitors to America at present , . . are precisely
those false patriots who cry down truth, obstruct the path of
social discovery, deny a free forum to Intellectual Honesty,
pretend— while storm clouds gather ominously overhead,—
that America is a cooing dove of peace and prosperity, a
bird of paradise, a harbinger of glad tidings to a world in
despair.

From Samuel D. Schmalhausen^s preface
to Behold America!, published 1^31,

I. Grim Schedule

On June 15, 1947, returning from a state visit to Canada, President
Harry Truman stopped en route to view the famous spectacle of
Niagara Falls.

For several moments, in pensive silence, Truman contemplated
the giant thundering waterfall. Then, thoughtfully, the President
said: "I'd sure hate to go over 'em in a barrel."

There were, at the time, other problems confronting the Amer-
ican people.

Since the end of the war, the cost of living had continued to soar,

278

with wages lagging far behind. By June 1947, according to Depart-
ment of Labor statistics, prices had registered an 1 8 percent increase
over June 1946. "If the present trends of living costs continue,"
warned the New York City Hospital Commissioner, Dr. Edward
Bernecker, "there is a grave danger that the health of large segments
of our population will deteriorate." Should food prices climb still
higher, said Dr. Bernecker, there would be "a definite increase in
the rate of illness in a population weakened by malnutrition."

Regarding the greatly increased cost of food, Senator Robert A.
Taft dryly commented that he agreed with Herbert Hoover that
"the best answer is for the people to cut down on their extrava-
gance. They should eat less."

The housing shortage had reached emergency proportions. Ap-
proximately three million American families were sharing their
living quarters; hundreds of thousands were desperately searching
for places in which to live; more than 20,000,000 people were living
in slum areas, shacks and iiretrap tenements; and one-third of all the
families in the nation were living in homes lacking minimum stand-
ards of decency.

And, as the living standards of the American people declined, the
grim schedule of the offensive against their political and economic
rights moved inexorably ahead . . .

More than two hundred anti-labor bills were pending in Congress,
and one state after another was enacting legislation aimed at under-
mining the strength of the trade union movement.

In Nebraska, South Dakota, and Arizona, the closed shop was
made illegal. Anti-union shop or "right to work" bills were passed
in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida
and Alabama. Regarding eight anti-labor bills passed by the Texas
legislature, the Manufacturers' Association in that state noted with
satisfaction: "The legislature's action has . . . answered the aims
of this organization."

On June 23, 1947, the United States Congress enacted a law
which, in the words of the American Civil Liberties Union, "in one
sweeping act aimed at labor's economic and political power put
many of its hard-won rights of more than a decade in a legal
straight-jacket."

Officially designated as the Labor Management Relations Act of
1947, and more familiarly known as the Taft-Hartley Law, the new
statute virtually nullified the historic National Labor Relations Act.

279

It outlawed the closed shop, industry-wide bargaining, jurisdictional
strikes and strikes by Government employees; revived the injunc-
tion as a strike-breaking weapon for employers; banned contribu-
tions or expenditures by unions for political purposes; and withdrew
union rights from any labor union whose officers failed to sign non-
Communist affidavits.

"This bill is not a milk toast bill," Senator Robert A. Taft, the
chief architect of the measure, had remarked during the debate in
the Senate on his proposed labor law. "It covers about three quarters
of the matters pressed on us very strenuously by employers."

According to Earl Bunting, president of the National Association
of Manufacturers, the new law was "full of benefits" and would
bring "a better tomorrow for everybody."

The Neijo Republic declared:

Fully exploited by anti-labor corporations and fully backed by an
anti-labor government, the Taft-Hartley law can destroy trade unionism
in America.*

"The Eightieth Congress has reversed the ruinous New Deal
trend," proclaimed a twenty-three page document entitled Republi-
can Congress Delivers, issued in August 1947 by the RepubUcan
National Committee as a summary of the accomplishment of the
first session of this Congress. "This is a Congress . . . well ad-
vanced in its comprehensive program for clearing away the debris
left by fourteen long years of New Deal-Democrat misrule . . ."

"The Republican Party has delivered— to big business," wryly
countered Gael Sullivan, executive director of the Democratic Na-
tional Committee. "It has responded to the will of Wall Street."

Sullivan, naturally enough, made no mention of the close work-
ing alliance that Democratic and Republican congressmen had
maintained in supporting the cold war policy of the Truman Doc-

* When the bill was sent to the White House after its initial passage by
Congress, Truman had returned it with a 5,500-word veto message charac-
terizing the measure as a "clear threat to the successful working of our demo-
cratic society." But, in the opinion of many, the Chief Executive was only
making a politically expedient gesture, with an eye to the 1948 Presidential
election. On June 20, the day that Truman's veto message was made public,
the New York Times correspondent, William S. White, reported in a dispatch
from Washington that the President "up until this morning had given no
visible evidence of the application of White House pressure" to rally his
Party forces against the bill. With the overriding of his veto by Congress
practically a foregone conclusion, Truman staged a last-minute, highly pub-
licized but completely ineffectual campaign against the measure.

280

trine, the President's inquisitorial loyalty program, increased appro-
priations for the Un-American Activities Committee, the Taft-
Hartley law, and numerous other measures taken by the Eightieth
Congress to wipe out every last vestige of the New Deal.

2. Fear Itself

In August 1947 the American Civil Liberties Union published a
report on "U. S. Liberties" which summarized developments of the
preceding twelve months in these words:

A general retreat to nationalism, militarism and defense of the status
quo increasingly marked the country. Excitement bordering on hysteria,
characterized the public approach to any issue related to Communism,
accentuated by the declaration of a foreign policy aimed at blocking the
advance of Soviet influence.

In such an atmosphere of militant conservatism it was inevitable that
practically all forces seeking reform should be blocked, and that even
established liberties associated with them should be attacked ... In
almost all fields of expression, liberal and minority forces were thrown
back on the defensive.

Not even during the days of the Palmer raids and the frenzied
anti-Communist crusade following the First World War had there
been such a sweeping assault on traditional American freedoms as
was rampant in the land by the summer of 1947. ^^ every part of
the country, investigations of "Communism," denunciations of
"Reds," witchhunts and purges were under way. Everywhere Fed-
eral agents, labor spies, state investigators and private detectives
were prying into the affairs of American citizens, drawing up ex-
tensive blacklists of "radical agitators" and "Communist sympa-
thizers," compiling detailed records of "fellow travelers," anti-
fascists and liberals.

J. Edgar Hoover, after a quarter of a century in office, had really
come into his own. "Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover," wrote Jan Hasbrouck in the New Republic on
December 15, 1947, "is one of the half-dozen most influential men
in Washington." There was no phase of American life into which
Hoover's secret agents had not infiltrated. Trade unions and political
parties, newspapers and universities, private corporations and fra-
ternal orders, local law enforcement bodies, Government agencies

281

and the Armed Forces— all were honeycombed with Hoover's spies,
investigators and paid informers. As aptly characterized by Bill
Davidson in an article in Coronet magazine, J. Edgar Hoover was
"Master of the Hunt."

Like Hoover's former chief, A. Mitchell Palmer, Attorney Gen-
eral Tom Clark was conducting an intensive campaign to deport
foreign-born "radicals." However, according to the FM columnist,
Max Lerner:

Tom Clark . . . has learned a thing or two that Palmer didn't know.
He doesn't arrest thousands for deportation in a single month. . . . He
arrests only the key figures who are alien radicals and who are strategi-
cally important in the left-wing trade unions. He carries the arrests out
one at a time . . . His game is often big game, and always lands on the
front pages. He uses warrants, but denies administrative bail . . . One
cannot but feel that the Department of Justice has left behind the . . •
primitive methods of the Mitchell Palmer days.*

In a number of states the legislatures had established their own
little un-American Activities Committees and were busily drafting
repressive laws based on the "findings" of these committees. On

* Among the more outstanding men and women arrested for deportation
during 1947- 1948 were Ferdinand C. Smith, secretary of the National Mari-
time Union; Ir\-ing Potash, vice president of the International Fur and Leather
Workers Union; Charles A. Doyle, vice president of the United Chemical
Workers of America; John Williamson and Claudia Jones, Communist leaders;
George Pirinsky, executive secretary of the American Slav Congress;
Peter Harisiades and Henry Podolsky, leaders in the International W^orkers
Order.

In 1949 the Justice Department extended its attack on the foreign-bom,
announcing it was preparing to revoke the citizenship of some 250 naturalized
Americans.

On April 4, 1950, after a trial lasting nearly five months, the West Coast
labor leader Harry Bridges was found guilty of perjury and conspiracy on
the charge that he lied to conceal that he was a Communist when he took
the oath of American citizenship. Bridges was sentenced to five years im-
prisonment, and the Government authorities immediately initiated proceed-
ings to cancel his citizenship and deport him. Among the Government
witnesses upon whose testimony Bridges' conviction was based were con-
fessed perjurers like the labor spy and FBI agent, Lawrence Ross.

One extraordinary episode summed up Justice Department tactics in the
case. During the trial, two Department agents approached Herman Mann, a
member of Bridges' union, whose wife was suffering with malignant cancer.
The Government agents told Mann that special facilities at the Government-
subsidized Cancer Institute would be placed at his wife's disposal free of
charge if he would testify that Bridges was a Communist. Mann refused the
offer. His wife died shortly afterwards.

282

August II, 1947, in a "Report on the State of Civil Liberties
Today," the New Republic published on-the-spot accounts from
different sections of the country vividly indicating the scope and
intensity of the anti-democratic campaign. From Michigan, Nev}
Republic correspondent Andrew A. Bishop reported that "civil
liberties . . . have been dealt their severest blow since the 'Palmer
raids' period." In California, wrote Robert Kincaid, "the current
attack on civil liberties . . . has been marked by efforts at 'thought
control' among public servants, school teachers and trade unionists
... by increasing economic pressure on minorities and by raids on
allegedly seditious school books." Gould Beech related: "Reaction-
aries in the South are in a frenzy to find new and fancier ways to
attack labor unions, Negroes and 'Communists'. . . Everywhere the
reactionaries are having a field day . . ."

In universities and scientific institutions, factories and fraternal
societies, trade unions and veterans organizations, in federal, state
and municipal agencies, "loyalty" investigations were taking place
and Americans were being ordered to give an accounting of their
social and political beliefs ...

On November 26, 1947, in a letter addressed to the President of
the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Speaker of the
House of Representatives, twenty-two members of the faculty of
the Yale University Law School gave sober warning of the extent
to which democracy had been undermined in America since the end
of the war. The letter read in part:

A pattern of suppression is today evolving at the highest levels of the
Federal Government. The more alarming aspects of the situation include
the President's loyalty order of last spring, the recent "Statement of
Security Principles" by the Department of Justice and the current per-
formance of the Committee on Un-American Activities of the House
of Representatives . . .

Under the cloak of congressional immunity or the cloak of anonym-
ity, high officials of the national Government are today acting in dis-
regard and in defiance of the American tradition of civil liberties, and,
in our considered judgment, in violation of the Constitution of the
United States.

The faculty members of the Yale Law School added:

There are alarming signs that persecution for opinion, if not curbed,
may reach a point never hitherto attained even in the darkest period of
our history. With it, we may expect racial, religious and every other
kind of bigotry which, if allowed to run its full course, can loose such

283

a flood of intolerance as utterly to destroy the civil liberties without
which no democratic society can survive.

And in an article published in the Lawyers Guild Review,
Richard F. Watt, Assistant Professor of Law at Chicago University,
wrote: "The spirit of fascism is abroad in America. Gone is the
spirit that produced the dream of the Four Freedoms, and here at
home the freedoms themselves are in danger . . . The spirit of
Fascism is here— only two short years after we conquered our Fascist
enemies on the battlefields overseas."

At no time during the dark and perilous days of the Second
World War had the American people been gripped by such feverish
anxiety and apprehension as now permeated the land, after two
years of peace.

Over the whole nation, shadowing every aspect of its life, there
hung a pall of fear— fear of the "Communist fifth column," fear of a
third world war, fear of atomic and biological weapons, fear of
another depression, fear of being "purged" on charges of disloyalty,
fear of being branded as a "Red."

"People afraid to speak their minds," wrote Eleanor Roosevelt in
her syndicated column, "people afraid to meet for discussions on
unpopular subjects, people afraid to be seen talking to certain other
people, people afraid to be known to be reading certain books— all
these are afraid not because of any wrong-doing, but because of
what might be expected."

"There is hysteria, in Washington and in the country," said the
well-known news commentator and former head of the Office of
War Information, Elmer Davis, speaking over the American Broad-
casting Company network.

George Seldes, veteran journalist, author and editor of the news-
letter, In Fact, reported in his publication:

There is fear in Washington, not only among government employes,
but among the few remaining liberals and democrats who have hoped
to salvage something of the New Deal . . . There is fear in Hollywood
. . . There is fear in the book publishing houses. There is fear among
writers, scientists, school teachers, liberals; among all who are not part
of the reactionary movement, all who do not belong to the native
fascist cliques.

"We in America," stated the newspaper FM, "live in an age of
fear."

284

Such was the mood prevailing in the land a decade and a half
after President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first inaugural address
had told the nation: ". . . let me assert my firm belief that the only-
thing we have to fear is fear itself." *

3. Storm troop Strategy

On the cloudy afternoon of November i, 1947, some two
thousand men and women gathered at Independence Hall Square
in Philadelphia to attend a rally held under the auspices of the Pro-
gressive Citizens of America. The purpose of the rally was to pro-
test the anti-democratic practises of the House Committee on Un-
American Activities.

As the speakers mounted the rostrum, scores of young toughs
scattered throughout the crowd and groups of middle-aged men
wearing American Legion and Catholic War Veterans insignia,
began hooting, booing, and shouting insults and threats. When the
chairman of the meeting approached the microphone, there were
howls of "Go to Russia, you bums!"— "Beat it, you dirty com-
munists!"— "Back to the ghetto!" The shrieking siren and clanging
bell of an American Legion truck parked on the outskirts of the
crowd added to the pandemonium.

The voices of the speakers were lost in the mounting din.

When a woman in the crowd urged that the speakers be given a
chance to be heard, several rowdies promptly set upon her,

* Symptomatic of the tense and fear-ridden atmosphere in postwar America
were a number of sudden deaths and suicides. On November 3, 1947, John
Gilbert Winant, prominent New Dealer and ex-Ambassador to England,
committed suicide at his home in Concord, New Hampshire. On June 4,
1948, Morton E. Kent, a former State Department employe, who had been
accused of seeking to contact an alleged Soviet agent, slashed his throat. Two
months later, on August 16, Harry Dexter White, former Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury, died of a heart attack following grueling questioning at a
hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee. On December 20,
1948, Laurence Duggan, a former State Department official who had been
accused of being a Communist, leaped to his death from a New York office
building. On December 24, 1948, Mrs. Minnie Outride, a New York school-
teacher who was being investigated for "communist" activities, committed
suicide. On February 14, 1950, after stating she did not want to live in a
hydrogen bomb age, Mrs. Emily Anderson of Burlington, California, threw
herself before a train. On April i, 1950, Professor F. O. Matthiessen of Har-
vard University, a leader of the Progressive Party, jumped to his death from
a hotel window. Three days later, N. W. Robertson, a liberal Washington
newspaper correspondent, committed suicide.

285

knocked her to the ground and trampled on her. Fist fights began
throughout the square . . .

At a given signal, a number of hoodlums surged toward the
speakers' platform. Kept from clambering onto it by police officers,
they milled about the stand, raising their arms in fascist salutes,
yelling taunts and oaths at the speakers.

Among those on the speakers' platform was Francis Fisher Kane,
a distinguished jurist and former recipient of the Bok Award as
Philadelphia's outstanding citizen, who in 1920 had resigned from
his post as U. S. District Attorney in protest against the Palmer
raids. Kane came to the microphone and pleaded for silence. "Un-
less there is tolerance of free speech," said the eighty-one year old
attorney, "liberty is gone ... all that we have fought for during
the past will be gone . . ." His words were drowned out in a
furious outcry. He was showered with pennies and stones. One of
them broke his glasses. Stench bombs hurtled through the air onto
the platform . . .

For an hour the speakers attempted in vain to be heard. Then the
chairman declared the meeting at an end.

More than a hundred police officers and plainclothesmen had been
present at the rally. They made one arrest. The young man taken
into custody was a member of the Progressive Citizens of Amer-
ica. . . .

"It was bound to happen sooner or later . . . ," wrote H. E.
Sharkey, editor of the Gazette and Daily of York, Pennsylvania.
"The mob was applying the new loyalty in a way that was pre-
pared for it in the halls of Congress ... If it takes more riotmg,
and some real skull-cracking to make Americans conform to the
new loyalty, there'll be plenty of volunteers."

Three weeks later, at the other end of the continent, an evening
meeting of the LaCrescenta Democratic Club was in session at a
private home in the suburbs of Los Angeles when suddenly a band
of men wearing American Legion caps poured into the house. The
leader of the band pushed his way through the startled members of
the Club, thrust the Club secretary from the speakers' table, and
began reading a statement which opened with the words: "Progres-
sive Citizens of America ..."

The owner of the house, a retired fruit grower named Hugh
Hardyman, told the Legionnaire he was raiding the wrong organi-

286

zation. Ignoring Hardyman, the Legionnaire sharply ordered his
men, "Proceed according to plan!"

"It was just like the Gestapo," later reported Don Carpenter,
editor of the Montrose Ledger, who was covering the meeting. "The
leader read some sort of edict that they knew what this outfit was,
had scouted the meetings, checked backgrounds and would give us
ten minutes to disperse or they'd take matters into their own
hands."

In Congress, Representative Chet Holifield of California de-
nounced the raid as part of a nationwide "wave of fear, suspicion
and hysteria." Holding up newspaper photographs taken of the
raiders. Congressman HoHfield warned:

It was a Democratic Club in Montrose ... it may be a Catholic
group, or a Jewish group, or a Republican group, or a Negro group,
or a labor group next time . . .

"Are we on the verge of storm trooper incidents throughout
America?" asked Holifield.

Almost as the Congressman spoke, the answer was being given to
his question. In Trenton and Newark, in Philadelphia and New
York City, in Detroit, Chicago and New Orleans, gangs of Amer-
ican Legionnaires, CathoUc War Veterans, Ku Kluxers, and former
members of the Christian Front and the German-American Bund
were raiding public and private meetings, attacking peacefully
assembled American citizens, and perpetrating lawless and violent
acts against what they called "Communist organizations."

"Men wearing Legion caps," reported the railroad brotherhood
weekly, Labor, "are breaking up meetings from Washington to
Los Angeles. Their excuse is that the participants are *reds' or 'fel-
low-travelers.' That's the way Mussolini started in Italy and Hitler
in Germany . . ."

As in Europe during the rise of fascism, Communists in America
were singled out for especially violent treatment.

In Columbus, Ohio, on the night of March 30, 1948, a mob of
several hundred men smashed into the home of Frank Hashmall,
the executive secretary of the local branch of the Communist
Party. Not finding Hashmall, who had been forewarned of the
raid and taken his family to the house of a friend, the mob ran-
sacked the house, tearing up books, demolishing furniture, breaking

287

windows. Police officers summoned to the scene stood around
joking with members of the mob and then withdrew.

None of the participants in the raid was arrested.

Asked to comment on the raid, Governor Thomas J. Herbert of
Ohio dismissed it as an incident "where a few men lost their
heads. . . . This wasn't an organized mob. I don't intend to inter-
fere unless there is a pattern estabhshed." The Governor went on
to say:

"Hashmall should go back to Russia . . . We don't Hke Com-
munists and we don't need any in Ohio. It's not that kind of state.'*

Six weeks later, the anti-Communist crusade claimed its first
murder victim. He was a twenty-eight year old seaman named
Robert New, who was port agent for the National iMaritime
Union and Chairman of the Wallace for President Committee in
Charleston, South Carolina.

New's murderer, Rudolpho Serreo, was a member of the NMU's
anti-Communist bloc, which was headed by the union's president,
Joseph Curran. A vicious brawler once acquitted on a plea of self-
defense after stabbing a shipmate to death, Serreo had repeatedly
threatened to "fix New, that nigger lover and Wallace stooge."

On the afternoon of May 7, 1948, Serreo telephoned Charleston
police headquarters and told the police he intended to put an end
to New's "Commie propaganda" and "niggerism." "You better
bring an ambulance along," said Serreo. "I'm looking for trouble,
and someone may get hurt."

Shortly afterwards, at the union hall, Serreo attacked New with
a butcher knife, stabbing him several times in the body and then
slashing his jugular vein.

Arrested and jailed, Serreo was treated with marked solicitude
while awaiting trial. "I'm doing everything I can for Serreo," an-
nounced the jail warden.

Charleston's ex-mayor Thomas P. Stoney, head of the largest
law firm in town, undertook Serreo's defense. According to Stoney,
the real criminal was not the murderer but the man who had been
murdered. "At the trial," said the ex-mayor, "I will prosecute Bob
New for raising unrest among colored people in the south. I will
prosecute him also as the chairman of the Wallace committee, as a
communist."

Serreo himself felt that in killing New he had performed an im-
portant, patriotic service. In a letter to the NxMU chief, Joseph
288

Curran, Serreo wrote: "Well, Joe, I did all I can to keep the NMU
from going Commie, and I'm very, very sorry I can't do more."

Serreo's trial took place in September. He was found guilty of
manslaughter. In passing sentence. Judge J. Frank Eaton cliided
Serreo for "acting unwisely" and taking the law into his own
hands. The killer was sentenced to three years imprisonment . . .

On September 22, 1948, the chairman of the New York State
Communist Party, Robert Thompson, was attacked late at night on
his way home by two thugs wielding blackjacks. When Thompson,
a sturdy thirty-three year old war veteran who was awarded the
Distinguished Service Cross for heroism during the war, fought
back vigorously, one of his assailants drew a knife and stabbed
Thompson in the abdomen. The thugs then jumped in a waiting car
and sped away.

Half-conscious and bleeding profusely, the Communist leader
dragged himself to a nearby house of a friend. Medical examination
showed that Thompson had suffered contusions of the cervical spine
and brain concussion, and that if the knife wound had been half an
inch higher, it would have been fatal . . .

A delegation headed by the Communist New York Council-
man, Benjamin J. Davis, went to see Mayor William O'Dwyer to
demand a special investigation of the crime. The mayor refused to
grant the delegation an audience. Newspapers intimated that the
assault had been dehberately staged by the Communists to win
"public sympathy." The New York Pohce Department conducted
a brief, casual investigation. No arrests were made . . .

Two months after the attack, on the evening of November 20,
while Thompson and his wife were at a motion picture theatre,
a private detective and former labor spy named Robert J. Burke
burst into Thompson's house. Flashing his detective's badge at Mrs.
Mildred Cheney and Harry Rainey, who were minding the Thomp-
son children, Burke told them he was carrying a gun and warned
them not to make a sound. Burke went to the bedroom of Thompn
son's eight-year old daughter, made an indecent exposure in front
of her, and carried the terrified child into the bathroom, locking
the door behind him.

Mrs. Cheney and Rainey broke open the door. They wrested
the child from Burke, who then shambled from the house . . .

Arrested and brought to trial on charges of illegal entry, inde-

289

cent exposure and seeking to impair the morals of a minor, Burke
pleaded that he did not like Communists and that he wanted to give
Thompson a "hard time." The judge held Burke innocent of illegal
entry but found him guilty on the two morals charges.

The judge's ruling, however, was set aside and a new trial
scheduled when Assistant District Attorney Irving Shapiro, who
had himself prosecuted the case, found a technical "error" in
Burke's typewritten confession.

A second trial was held. This time, Burke was found not guilty
on all charges and set free.

4. "Is this America?"

"There is an hysterical campaign raging here ostensibly directed
against the ever-popular target, the Communists," wrote attorney
Abraham Pomerantz in the December 1947 issue of the Protestant
magazine. "When you examine it more closely, however, it becomes
apparent that the attack is really aimed at the liquidation of all
resistance to the mounting tide of war and reaction."

Pomerantz went on to say:

The approach, copied from the Nazis works this way:

The press and radio first lay down a terrific barrage against the Red

Menace. Headlines without a shred of substance shriek of atom bomb

spies, or plots to overthrow our government, of espionage, of high

treason, and of other blood-curdling crimes.

We are now ready for the second stage: the pinning of the label

"Red" indiscriminately on all opposition.

The chief opposition to the domestic and foreign policies of the
Government in 1948 was formed by the Progressive Party under
the leadership of former Vice-President Henry A. Wallace.

On January 29, 1948, a National Wallace for President Committee
had been set up under the chairmanship of Elmer Benson, the
militantly progressive former Governor of Minnesota. Acting as
Co-Chairman of the Committee were the noted sculptor, Joe David-
son; Paul Robeson, renowned singer and actor; and Rexford Guy
Tugwell, former prominent New Dealer and ex-Governor of Puerto
Rico. The Executive Director was C. B. Baldwin, former Farm
Security Administrator.*

* Among other New Dealers, liberals and labor leaders who became mem-
bers of the National Wallace for President Committee were Robert Morss

290

In his opening address to the first convention of the National
Wallace for President Committee which was held in Chicago in
April 1948, former Governor Benson summarized the reasons why
there was "an imperative need for a new party." Said Benson:

On the day after tomorrow, three years will have elapsed since
FrankHn Delano Roosevelt died. Within that brief period, profound and
sinister changes have occurred in our land.

During the thirteen years that Roosevelt was President, our nation
moved steadily forward toward the achievement of a secure and mean-
ingful way of life . . .

Following Roosevelt's death, declared Benson, the Government of
the United States had "fallen into the hands of that small but vastly
powerful clique which was characterized by Roosevelt as the eco-
nomic royalists." Controlling both major parties, this cHque had
"embarked upon a scheme to dominate and control the world
market . . . Nor do they care if they thrust our country into an-
other war." As part of their campaign, which was being carried
on "in the name of a crusade against Communism," they had
launched "an intensive assault on the civil and pohtical rights of
American citizens."

"When a Government ceases to represent the people," stated
Benson, "when men holding pohtical power become the hirehngs
of the privileged few, then it is time to change the composition of
that Government. That time is now!"

By the first week in February, Wallace for President Committees
had been established in twelve states and fourteen more committees
were in the process of formation. On February 18, Leo Isaacson,
an American Labor Party candidate running on the Wallace ticket
in a congressional bi-election in the Bronx, New York, was elected
to the House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority. In
March, the Independent Progressive Party supporting Wallace in
CaHfornia filed 295,951 vahd petitions to win a place on the ballot
in that state. Throughout the spring and early summer, giant mass
rallies for Wallace were held in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit,
Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities.

Lovett, former Governor of the Virgin Islands; Albert J. Fitzgerald, President
of the United Electrical and Machine Workers Union; O. John Rogge, former
Assistant to the U. S. Attorney General; Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, outstanding
scholar and historian; Dr. Maud Slye, distinguished cancer specialist; Charles
P. Howard, Des Moines publisher and ex-member of the Republican National
Committee; and Rockwell Kent, well-known artist.

291

The founding convention of the Progressive Party, attended by
3240 delegates and alternates from forty-eight states, took place in
Philadelphia on July 22-25. Henry Wallace was nominated as the
new party's candidate for President, and Senator Glen H. Taylor
for Vice-President.

From its inception, the Wallace movement was the target of an
intensive barrage of violent denunciation and vitriolic abuse. The
nation's press and radio branded the Progressive Party as a "Com-
munist-front organization" controlled by a cabal receiving "orders
from Moscow." Wallace was pictured as a "muddle-headed
dreamer" who had become "Stalin's chief spokesman" in America.
"Tools of the KremHn," "fifth columnists for Russia" and "traitors
to the American Government" were some of the typical terms used
to describe Progressive Party members.

In Congress, members of both houses called for a Federal investi-
gation of the Progressive Party. "A vote for Henry Wallace,"
declared Senator Scott W. Lucas of Illinois, "is a vote for the
Kremlin."

At a White House press conference, President Truman asked:
"Why doesn't Wallace go back to Russia?"

As the anti- Wallace propaganda mounted in virulence and pro-
vocativeness, there simultaneously evolved a nationwide pattern of
repressive measures against the Progressive Party.

With increasing frequency, the Progressive Party was denied
access to public halls, refused permits for street corner meetings
and forbidden to distribute campaign literature. Arrests of Pro-
gressive Party public speakers, sound truck drivers, canvassers and
even candidates for office became commonplace throughout the
country.

While many newspapers refused to accept paid advertisements
of the Progressive Party, the press in Pittsburgh, Birmingham,
Danbury and other cities pubHshed the names and addresses of per-
sons who had signed petitions to place Wallace on the ballot. Small
merchants who publicly supported the Progressive Party found
themselves faced with organized boycotts, and men and women
were repeatedly dismissed from jobs simply for wearing Wallace
buttons.

Not a few professors were discharged from college posts for
pro- Wallace sympathies and activities. These were typical cases:
292

Dr. Clare?ice R. Athearn, professor of philosophy and social ethics -at
Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, requested by the college authorities
to resign from the chairmanship of the Lycoming County Progressive
Party and subsequently dismissed from the college.

Dr. George Farker, teacher of religion and philosophy at Evansville
College in Indiana, ousted from his post tv^o days after presiding at a
Wallace rally.

Professor Luther K. MacNair^ Dean of Lydon State Teachers College
in Vermont, forced to resign after being sharply attacked in the local
press for his support of Wallace, and following the appearance of an
editorial in the Burlington Times of an article entitled "MacNair Must
Go."

Processor Clyde Miller, well-known authority on propaganda analysis,
dropped by Columbia University after being listed as a member of the
700-man national committee of the Wallace movement.

Leonard Chosen, Charles G. Davis and Daniel D. Ashkenes, faculty
members at the University of Miami, discharged for Progressive Party
activity.

Professor Curtis D. MacDougall, at Northwestern University, was ad-
vised by university authorities he would be forced to resign unless he
withdrew as Progressive Party candidate for United States Senate.
Twenty-five other professors and instructors at this university were
told that unless they discontinued their pro-Wallace activities they
would be discharged.

The chief of police in Detroit, Harry S. Toy, publicly announced
that in his opinion members of the Progressive Party were "un-
American," and that such "un- Americans ought to be either shot,
thrown out of the country, or put in jail." *

In one state after another, open attempts were made to keep the
Progressive Party off the ballot.

* The forms of public and private pressure against Wallace supporters in
all walks of life were infinitely varied. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a socially
prominent woman who had invited a group of doctors and professors to her
home to discuss a program for the improvement of state hospitals later learned
that, because of her well-known pro-Wallace sentiments, police officials had
recorded the license plate numbers of all cars parked outside her house during
the meeting. In Boston, Massachusetts, several women circulating Wallace
petitions were warned by school headmasters that if they continued their
political activities, their children might later find it "difficult" to enter certain
leading universities. In St. Louis, Missouri, a woman whose favorite pet was
a small blind dog received anonymous telephone calls informing her that if
she did not discontinue her pro-Wallace activities, her dog would be poisoned.

In the little town of Au Sable Forks in up-state New York, a boycott was
secredy organized against the Asgaard Dairy which was owned by the famous
artist, Rockwell Kent, an outspoken Wallace supporter and a congressional
candidate on the American Labor Party ticket. The boycott forced Kent's
dairy out of business.

293

On June 4, Secretary of State Edward Hummel of Ohio an-
nounced that the new party would not be permitted to appear on
the ballot in that state, as he had received "conclusive proof" from
the FBI that leading Wallace supporters advocated overthrow of
the United States Government "by force and violence." In Ne-
braska and Oklahoma the Progressive Party was ruled off the ballot
on technical grounds. Ballot certification was at first refused the
Progressive Party in Wyoming, Arkansas, Missouri, and Florida.

Despite the fact that 100,000 petition signatures were collected in
Illinois, the Progressive Party was barred from the ballot through-
out the state, with the exception of Cook County, on the grounds
of failure to meet technical requirements.*

"This letter," read a communication received at the New York
headquarters of the Progressive Party from the Birmingham, Ala-
bama, office in the summer of 1948, "is being written in longhand
due to the fact that our office was broken into a few nights ago
and all of our office equipment was damaged. The intruders took
all our literature as well as our files."

The incident was not exceptional. Acts of vandalism and violence
against the Wallace movement were becoming commonplace. In
Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit and a score of other cities,
the windows of Progressive Party headquarters were smashed,
meetings of Wallace supporters were broken up by hoodlums, and
persons attending open-air rallies were egged and stoned . . .

On April 6, when a Wallace rally took place in the Coliseum at
Evansville, Indiana, a shouting mob stormed into the building and
tried to force their way into the auditorium where Wallace was
speaking. After a wild skirmish, during which Wallace's campaign
manager, C. B. Baldwin, and several Wallace aides were assaulted,
the intruders were finally driven from the Coliseum.

The harrowing experience of a group of Progressive Party cam-
paign workers in Augusta, Georgia, was later vividly recounted by
one of them, Rhoda Gaye Ascher, in an article published in the
New York Star. Miss Ascher related how a band of men "all armed
with pistols or revolvers" had raided at night the house where the
Wallace campaigners were staying:

* In the end, after prolonged litigation and organized popular pressure, the
Progressive Party succeeded in obtaining certification in forty-five states. The
Party remained off the ballot in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Illinois (with the
exception of Cook County).

294

. . . one of the men reversed his gun and repeatedly banged Forbes
[one of the Wallace group] on the head . . . Forbes fell back, with
blood streaming from two wounds on his forehead.

Annie Mae Leathers, an Atlanta worker for Wallace, came screaming
from the kitchen. "Who are you?" she kept saying over and over again
to the men.

One of the crowd grabbed her by her hair and slapped her across the
mouth. "Shut up, you dirty New York Communist," he said.

After smashing the windows and breaking up the furniture in the
house, the raiders forced Miss Ascher and her co-workers into cars.
They were driven out into the country to a field where dozens of
cars were already parked and a crowd was waiting. From all sides
came shouts of "String 'em up." One of the mob produced a rope.
Another said, "The chief ain't here. Let's let it ride."

The Progressive Party campaign workers were warned: "The
Klan tells you to get out and stay out. We don't want any Jew
Communists stirring up the niggers."

The members of the mob then got in their cars and drove off. . . .

Miss Ascher and her companions had managed to note the license
plate numbers of several of the cars assembled in the field. One of
these licenses, they later found out, belonged to an Augusta police
car.

Organized violence against the Progressive Party reached a peak
of intensityN during Wallace's campaign tour of the South at the end
of the summer.

Wallace's key-note address of the southern tour was delivered at
the North Carolina Progressive Party Convention on August 29 at
Durham. At a strategic moment, hoodlums attacked some of the
convention delegates. "Eggs were thrown," reported Twie maga-
zine, "firecrackers and stinkbombs exploded, a national Guardsman
fired into the air." Uniformed policemen and National Guardsmen
finally quelled the rioting. During the melee, a University of North
Carolina student and Wallace supporter named James Harris, was
stabbed in the arm and back . . .

On the following day Wallace drove to Burlington, N. C, to
speak at a large street-corner meeting. As the Presidential candidate
stepped from his car, he was pelted with eggs and tomatoes. There
was a tumult of boos, epithets and cries of "Why don't you go
back to Russia?" Without hesitation, Wallace strode into the midst

295

of the crowd. Confronting several of his assailants, he demanded:
*'Is this America?"

At the town of Charlotte, only one policeman was assigned by
the local authorities to protect Wallace at a meeting attended by
more than 3,000 people. As the Presidential candidate shouldered
his way through the crowd toward his car after his speech, an
angry shouting mob surged menacingly about him. "For a few
moments," reported John Cabot Smith of the Ne^co York Herald
Tribune, "it looked as if he might not be able to make it . . ."

In town after town where Wallace spoke on his southern tour,
ugly-tempered mobs subjected him to every imaginable form of
personal insult, bombarded him with eggs, tomatoes and other
missiles, and sought to break up his meetings by provoking riots.

Never before in the history of the United States had a Presi-
dential candidate been the object of such abuse, open threats of
violence and organized mob assaults.

The Cass Lake Times of Minnesota stated:

The newspapers of the country are holding up their hands in holy
horror at the t^^ throwing . . . These primitive acts of primitive men
have been condemned as cowardly, unfair, intolerant and un-American.

We cannot see much difference between the throwing of eggs and
tomatoes at Wallace, and the hurling of epithets that have branded him
as a Communist. We do not know which is worse— throwing tomatoes
and eggs or cartooning Wallace as a slave of Stalin.

The mob has taken seriously the newspapers' attacks on Wallace . . .

The months of virulent propaganda, systematic intimidation,
widespread repression and violence against the Progressive Party
were not without their effect. Estimates of Wallace's potential vote
had ranged from five to ten milHon. The actual vote received by
Wallace on November 7, 1948, was 1,137,957.*

Harry S. Truman, orating about a "Fair Deal" for the nation and
pledging a new era of far-reaching Rooseveltian reforms, con-
founded political wiseacres and public opinion experts by over-
whelming his Republican opponent Thomas E. Dewey.

"So now we have in the White House a man with the most

* The unexpectedly limited vote obtained by Wenry A. Wallace was not
to be explained entirely in terms of the intensive campaign against the Pro-
gressive Party. A major cause of the smallness of Wallace's vote was the
failure of the organized labor movement— with the exception of a handful of
unions— to support his candidacy. (In New York Citv, where considerable
labor support was forthcoming, the militantly progressive Representative Vito
Marcantonio was re-elected to Congress on the Progressive Part^' ticket.)

296

radical platform in presidential history . . . ," proclaimed the Neni>
Republic. "Reaction is repudiated. The New Deal is again em-
powered to carry forward the promise of American life. . . . The
government ... is one whose watchword is: Da?mi the torpedoes-
Full speed aheadr

But the editors of the Neuo Republic^ like many other American
liberals, mistook campaign promises for the realities of life.

5. Method in Madness

The first to witness the strange and awesome phenomenon had
been a businessman in Boise, Idaho. Late one afternoon, he had
suddenly seen nine huge objects resembling "flying saucers" which
hurtled through the sky at terrific speed and then, as abruptly as
they appeared, vanished over the Cascade Mountains. Soon after
the details of this remarkable experience had been reported in the
press and on the radio, Lieutenant Governor Don. S. Whitehead of
Idaho announced he had seen a huge disk-like object which "didn't
move but just seemed to go below the horizon with the rotation of
the earth." A tradesman in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, sighted a flying
form "about the size and color of a washtub." Weird engines fol-
lowed by "vapor trails" raced through the heavens before the
startled eyes of a carpenter in Kansas City, Missouri. Two airmen
flying a passenger plane over a mountain range in Utah beheld "sev-
eral enormous luminous cylindrical objects" not far off in the sky»
turning their plane from its course, pursued the objects for some
distance before the mysterious quarry suddenly disappeared . . .

With similar reports coming from every section of the country,
Meade Layne, a publisher of an occult magazine in San Diego,
California, informed the press that he had managed— with the aid of
a spiritual medium— to establish direct contact with one of the "fly-
ing saucers." Aboard it, said Layne, were living creatures who
wanted to take up residence in the United States. "They come with
good intent," Layne confidently assured newsmen.

The spiritualist's optimistic opinion, however, was not shared by
considerable numbers of Americans who were firmly convinced
that the extraordinary objects plunging through the skies were
"secret Soviet weapons" . . .

Subsequently indicating the extent of the flying saucer "epi-
demic," the United States News reported on January 6, 1950:

After two years spent running down 375 rumors and reports of
mysterious flying saucers, the Air Force closed down its investigation

297

last week with this conclusion: There is no such thing. The flying
saucers that hundreds of people think they have seen are really: "(i)
misinterpretation of various conventional objects, (2) a mild form of
mass hysteria or (3) hoaxes."

In one respect at least the "mysterious flying saucers" were not
unique. There were at the time other, not unrelated, forms of "mass
hysteria" in America.

Shortly before the first flying saucers had been seen in the United
States, Tmie magazine had told its readers:

In 1948, strategists guess, Russia will have power to send one-way
missions of 1,000 planes against the U.S. By 1949, they think, Russia will
probably have guided missiles, armed with one-ton war head, with a
range of 3,000 miles. By 1952 diseaSe-tipped bacterial weapons may be
practical. Any time after 1952, by their estimates, Russia is very likely
to have the Bomb.

Day by day, during the years 1947-49, ^^^ nation's press was
filled with similar portentous accounts of stratosphere and inter-
continental bombers, giant rockets and increasingly powerful atom
bombs, bacterial weapons, military maneuvers, mobilization plans,
and urgent secret conferences between American and Western
European Chiefs of Staff. Scarcely a week went by without some
frightening new "threat of war" looming on the international
horizon. Cabinet members, diplomats, congressmen and four-star
generals dwelt incessantly on the "world crisis," "the Russian men-
ace to world peace," and the urgent need for "adequate defense
measures."

"The atmosphere in Washington today," wrote Joseph and
Stewart Alsop in their column in the Neuo York Herald-Tribune
on March 17, 1948, "is no longer a postwar atmosphere. It is, to put
it bluntly, a prewar atmosphere ... it is now universally admitted
that war within the next few months is certainly possible."

The Gallup poll reported that seventy-three percent of the voting
population of America already believed that a third world war was
inevitable . . .*

* Accompanying the growing war hysteria, and in no small measure con-
tributing to it, were a series of sensational cases involving "secret Soviet
agents," purportedly engaged in plots against American security.

On March 26, 1946, with much fanfare, the FBI announced the arrest of Lieu-
tenant Nicolai Redin, a Russian officer attached to the Soviet consulate in
San Francisco. The FBI charged that Redin had been secretly involved in
obtaining plans and information connected with the U.S. destroyer tender
Yellowstone, which was slated to take part in the Bikini atomic bomb test.

298

"A war strategy is guiding U.S. policy," U.S. Nezus had reported
on August 8, 1947, less than two years after V-J Day. "There's a
regular war strategy in moves made. The war in this state is politi-

During the ensuing trial, none of the charges were proved against Redin. He
Avas acquitted July 17, 1946.

In February, 1947, newspapers throughout the country headhned the news
that the Un-American Activities Committee had tracked down and was sum-
moning for questioning "the key Kremhn agent in America" and "the brains of
a red atom bomb spy ring." His name was Gerhart Eisler. An anti-fascist
refugee and German Communist journalist, Eisler had resided in America
since 1941 and had been about to return to Germany late in 1946 when his
exit visa was suddenly cancelled. At the Committee hearing, Eisler requested
permission to read a brief statement. Denied this request, Eisler refused to
testify. For this action, he was subsequently found guilty of contempt of
Congress. In May 1949, after being repeatedly refused an exit permit, Eisler
stowed away aboard the Polish boat, Batory and returned to Germany. No
evidence was ever produced to establish that Eisler was a Soviet spy or that
he had conspired against the U.S. Government.

On August 13, 1947, the New York World Telegram and Sun front-paged
stories reporting that a secret federal grand jury hearing of vital importance
was underway in New York City. According to these papers, the grand jury
was investigating a major "spy ring" involving top American Communist func-
tionaries, trade union leaders and Soviet agents. Despite the sensational story,
no such plot was to be uncovered by this or any other jury.

In July and August, 1948, the American press and radio blazoned a lurid
tale of "Soviet war-time espionage operations in America" as told by a Com-
munist renegade named Elizabeth Bentley in testimony before a Senate in-
vestigating committee and the Un-American Activities Committee. Aliss
Bentley, a heavy-set rather ungainly woman who had been glamorously de-
scribed before her public appearance as a "Soviet Alata Hari" and "blonde
spy queen", related how "Red agents" in key U.S. war offices had stolen vital
secret data which they gave her and she in turn delivered to Soviet repre-
sentatives. The "Supreme Presidium of the Soviet Union," said Aliss Bentley,
had awarded her— in absentia— the Order of the Red Star for "extremely
valuable services" to Russia. Government investigators were unable to sub-
stantiate the details of her fantastic story.

The most sensational "spy ring" case— and most widely publicized by press,
radio, newsreel and television— began on August 3, 1948, with the testimony
before the un-American Activities Committee of Whittaker Chambers, ex-
Communist and senior editor of Thjie magazine. A self-admitted perjurer,
who was subsequently to be characterized in court by two eminent psychia-
trists as a "psychopathic personality," Chambers testified that he had served
before the war as a courier in a Soviet espionage ring. Among those charged
by Chambers with giving him confidential data was Alger Hiss, a former high
State Department official who had acted as adviser to Roosevelt at Yalta and
as Secretary of the Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco Conferences. Sum-
moned before a Federal Grand Jury, Hiss was indicted for perjury for deny-
ing Chambers' accusations against him. When Hiss' first trial in. the summer
of 1949 ended in a hung jury, several congressmen demanded that the judge
be investigated; newspapers published the voting record of the jury; and
jurors who had voted for Hiss' acquittal received threatening telephone calls

299

cal, economic, not military . . . War itself, fighting war, is prob-
ably ten years away, maybe 15, maybe 5."

These were some of the more important events of 1947- 1949
which reflected the war strategy guiding U.S. pohcy:

May 26, 194"]: Exactly two and a half months after the promulgation
of the Truman Doctrine, the President submitted the Inter-Con-
tinental Defense Plan to Congress, calling for the modernization
and standardization of the equipment and training methods of Latin
America and Canada under the supervision of the United States.

]ime 2j ip4j: The President's Advisory Commission on Universal
Training warned that "the coming war will be cataclysmic in its
suddenness and destructiveness," and called for a special army of
trained men throughout the nation to deal with "wartime emerg-
encies," and for universal military training for all young men.

June y, 194-]: Speaking at Harvard University, Secretary of State
Marshall projected a program of American aid to European coun-
tries, which was to become known as the Marshall Plan.*

and letters. In a second trial, a new jury found Hiss guilty and, on January 25,
1950, he was sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Rivaling the Hiss-Chambers case for headlines in the nation's press was the
Coplon-Gubitchev case. On March 24, 1949, Judith Coplon, a Justice Depart-
ment employe, and Valentin Gubitchev, a Soviet citizen employed by the
United Nations, were arrested in New York. In Miss Coplon's purse, the FBI
agents found documents relating to "national defense"— documents which Miss
Coplon later claimed had been planted on her. Among these documents were
confidential FBI reports charging outstanding Hollyu'ood personalities and
national literary figures with being Communists or Communist sympathizers.
Miss Coplon was brought to trial in Washington on the charge of stealing
government secret documents to aid a foreign power. Although the Govern-
ment was unable to prove Miss Coplon intended to transmit the documents to
Gubitchev, she was sentenced on July i, 1949, to from 40 months to 10 years
imprisonment. A second trial involving both Judith Coplon and Valentin
Gubitchev began in November. During the early stages of the trial, FBI agents
admitted, under questioning by defense counsel, that some 81 agents had illeg-
ally tapped telephone wires, and that numerous statements in their own reports
were inaccurate. Regarding defense attorney Abraham Pomerantz, Newsweek
reported on January 30, 1950: "He was able to demonstrate that if FBI agents
had not committed perjury in describing the bureau's wiretap activities, they
had skirted very close to it." On March 9, the two defendants were found
guilty and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Gubitchev, acting on a State
Department proposal, left the country.

* At the end of 1948, before the European Recovery Program had been in
effect a year, Joseph W. Frazer of the Kaiser-Frazer Automobile Corporation
told reporters in Rome that the "Marshall Plan is proper as a military ex-
pedient but stinks as a business project."

Despite the appropriation of more than ten billion dollars for European aid
during 1948- 1949, American exports declined drastically. Moreover, in the
nations covered by ERP, unemployment increased at an accelerating tempo.
During 1948, the number of unemployed nearly doubled in France and rose

300

July 26, 194"]: President Truman signed the National Security Act,
establishing a National War Council and unifying the armed serv-
ices under a Secretary of Defense. The President appointed James
V. Forrestal, former Secretary of the Navy, to the new post.

January 12, 1948: In his budget message to Congress, President Tru-
man called for the expenditure of $18,034,000,000 for national
defense and international subsidies. "Five budget items directly re-
lated to war," reported the United States News, "make up 79 per
cent of the budget."

May 6, 1948: The Senate approved the establishment of a seventy
force air group, following discussion in which Senator Henry
Styles Bridges, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, had
characterized the Soviet Union as America's "only possible foe."

June 24, 1948: President Truman signed a bill authorizing the first
peacetime draft in the nation's history.

Nove77iber 75, 1948: The National Military Establishment published a
plan detailing civilian defense needs and calling for the mobilization
of 15,000,000 men and women "prepared and equipped to meet the
problems of enemy attack, and to be ready against any weapon that
the enemy may use."

June 20, 1949: President Truman signed the Central Intelligence
Agency Act, commonly known as the Spy Bill. For "security
reasons," not even Congress was informed of many of the details of
various provisions of the Act. Included among these provisions
were stipulations for the safeguarding of "military secrets"; a plan
for infiltrating American intelligence agents into foreign countries;
and measures to facilitate the recruitment of foreign spies by waiv-
ing immigration regulations in the case of aliens useful "to the
furtherance of the national intelligence mission." So sweeping were
the powers granted the Central Intelligence Agency that the New
York Times warned it was "a legislative catch-all with very broad
. . . implications, which under improper administration or the spur
of hysteria could lead to grave abuses of freedom."

July 2$, 1949: President Truman signed the North Atlantic Pact,
binding twelve "North Atlantic nations," including Denmark on the
North Sea and Italy on the Mediterranean, in a treaty providing for
"mutual assistance against aggression." Directly after signing the
Pact, Truman sent a message to Congress calling for the passage of
the Military Assistance Program, to provide $1,450,000,000 for arms
for the European signatories of the Pact, Iran, the Philippines and

to almost two million in Italy and to an equal number in Western Germany.
In its January 27, 1950 issue, the United States News reported:

"Truman doctrine is dead, discarded . . . Marshall Plan is on the way
down . . .

"The turn is away from postwar phase in which U.S. tried, with dollars,
to mold the kind of world it wanted. Communist victory in China was one
jolt. Badly unbalanced budget at home was another. Idea is dawning that
maybe U.S. cannot do in the world all the things it would like to do."

Korea, and to effect the "transfer of certain essential items of mili-
tary equipment, and . . . the assistance of experts in the production
and use of military equipment and the training of personnel."

According to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, "the basic
objectives" of the North Atlantic Pact were "to deter war and to
attain maximum military effectiveness if war cannot be prevented."

Putting the case somewhat more bluntly, Representative Clarence
Cannon of Missouri stated: "We will blast at the centers of opera-
tion and then let our allies send the army in, other boys, not our
boys, to hold the ground we win . . . With the signing of the At-
lantic Treaty we have the bases, and all we need now are the planes
to deliver the bombs."

The New York Daily News editorialized: "Let's stow the ba-
loney and doubletalk, and admit there is a treaty creating a military
alliance which contemplates war on Soviet Russia."

As the war fever mounted in the United States, an increasing
number of voices called for immediate launching of a "defensive
war" against the Soviet Union. Newspapers, magazines and military
journak began featuring scores of articles graphically forecasting
the tactics and strategy of an atom bomb offensive against Russia.

Typical of these military analyses were two lengthy articles by
the former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, General Carl Spaatz,
which were published in consecutive issues of Life magazine in
June 1948. "It may smack of cynicism," observed General Spaatz in
the opening passage of the first article, "for a soldier, so soon after
one war, to start laying out the strategy for the next." The General
then proceeded to outline a plan for attacking the Soviet Union
whereby "the precision bombing of a few hundred square miles of
industrial area in a score of Russian cities would fatally cripple in-
dustrial power."

"The first question," said General Spaatz, "is: is it possible to
reach the vulnerable industrial system of Russia? The controlling
factor now is the radius of the B-29, which with postwar improve-
ments is more than 2,000 miles . . ."

The General answered his own question by making this sugges-
tion to the reader:

Take a globe and a string scaled to 2,000 miles, pin one end down at
Moscow, and swing the free end westward. It will take in the British
Isles and part of Iceland. Swing it south and it will take in part of North
Africa. Now do the same thing from the Urals, fixing one end of the
string on Magnitogorsk and swinging the other south. The free end in
its sweep will take in Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan as far south as Karachi.
From the Ukraine-Volga center, the string will pass through Britain,

302

France, and North Africa. From Baku in the Caucasus the sweep will
encompass part of India, Saudi Arabia and part of Europe. There is
additionally in Siberia a fast-growing center of industry, not to mention
the double-track Trans-Siberian railroad. This region could be reached
by B-29 from China and Japan.

In each case, General Spaatz pointed out, there were within the
arc formed by the "free end of the string" air bases from which
B-29 bombers could conduct raids against the specified "priority
targets" . . .

In the autumn 1948 edition of the Air University Quarterly Re-
view, Colonel Dale O. Smith, an ardent exponent of the Spaatz
school of air warfare, envisioned a "super atomic bhtz" which
would accomplish an American victory within a matter of weeks.
"If the war lasts as long as one month," wrote Colonel Smith, "what
possible targets will there be left to bomb?" The Colonel added,
"Not to be overlooked are the strategic results of population bomb-
ing in urban centers." *

On December 29, 1948, Secretary of Defense Forrestal announced
that the U.S. high command was studying possibilities of establish-
ing a "rocket outpost" hung in the skies. An Associated Press dis-
patch reported:

From an altitude of more than 200,000 miles, the . . . satellite would
have the whole earth in its "bomb sight." Beyond the possibility of an
unmanned, automatic transmitting satellite is the possibility that ways
might be found to send men and equipment to the satellite, there to
launch direct rocket attack on earth targets.

Some scientists believe that the nation which first creates an outer
space platform for the guidance of launching of atomic warhead rockets
will dominate the earth.

"Yet what nation is there that desires war?" demanded former
Governor Elmer Benson of Minnesota. "The American people do
not want war; we want peace. We are told by certain voices that
Russia wants war. But is it conceivable that a country which lost
close to 10,000,000 of its citizens and had one third of its land and
resources laid waste in the Second World War— is it conceivable
that such a country should now deliberately seek a third world

* Differing quite sharply with the atomic warfare enthusiasts, P. B. Har-
wood, vice-president of Cutler-Hammer, Inc., told a meeting of the American
Interprofessional Institute of Milwaukee, "The atom bomb is a poor weapon
of war because it destroys too much property. Although it sounds cold-
blooded, the type of weapon we should have, if we must wage war at all, is
one that will kill only people . . ."

war? No, it is utterly inconceivable. Like the American people, the
Russian people want peace. And if the peoples of the world want
peace, why then is there in our country all this mad talk of war?"

There was, however, definite method in this seeming madness.
Behind the frantic talk of war lay certain "practical" calcula-
tions . . .

By early 1947 the ephemeral postwar boom had run its course.
As prices continued to soar, and consumer purchasing power ebbed,
unsold goods piled up in the nation's warehouses. Talk of an im-
pending crash was widespread in business circles.

A crash was averted. The "menace of war," "Soviet aggression,"
spy scares and the "spread of Communism" provided the rationale
for placing the American economy on a war footing. As Hershel
Meyer writes in his book, Must We PerishF:

Big business got its "shot in the arm"— more billions in new armament
contracts. It was miraculous how the "Communist danger" kept on
growing and, parallel with it, the monopoly demands for still bigger
armament orders. With each billion appropriated for planes, bombs and
guns the war cries of the militarists became more frenzied. Over $20
billion were to be spent on armaments in the 1949 fiscal year alone,
more than the United States spent in the entire decade between 1930-40,
when Japan and Germany threatened American security and world
peace. This huge peace-time armament appropriation was at once re-
flected in the rise of stocks and commodities on the exchanges.

"All fear of a business setback should now be removed," exulted
Barron^ s Fina?icial Weekly on October 8, 1948, "by a revelation
that a plan for military aid patterned on the E.C.A. program will be
one of the first programs submitted to Congress next January. As
long as the armament prop remains under business it is difiicult to
beheve that a collapse in demand is imminent."

Two weeks later, the same Wall Street periodical stated:

... if military demand should grow much larger it would eliminate any
dangers from expanded inventories ... If an enormously speeded up
defense program, or warfare itself, should come, the problem of excess
inventories would vanish completely.

On January 14, 1949, in an editorial in the United States News
entitled "Our Unpreparedness for Sudden Peace," David Lawrence
wrote:

We are being asked to spend $15,000,000,000 a year for armaments
and an additional $1,000,000,000 at least to supply arms to the North
Atlantic military alliance.

304

It is obvious that armament expenditures have given America a false
prosperity . . .

Hence the paradox that the biggest economic danger faced by
America is the danger of a sudden turn to peace by Russia.

In France, the conservative journal, Vie Francaise, summed up
this line of reasoning with the headline: "Better a War Than a

Crisis." *

* The satisfaction of American businessmen and industrialists with the war
preparations was by no means shared by the American millions.

In the forefront of the peace movement in America were the Protestant
Church organizations. In 1948 the Northern Baptist Convention called for the
establishment of a World Peace Movement "to save the world from destruc-
tion." The Michigan Conference of the Methodist Church protested to the
President "the continuing pressure for military domination of our life" and
urged "an honest attempt to make peace with Russia." The 400,000 members
of the United Council of Church Women announced a campaign to ring
doorbells to build support for peace.

In its Christmas, 1948 issue The Churchjnan noted ironically: "So, because
the Christmas song of 'Peace on Earth' haunts Protestantism, it is subversive
and identical with communism! We suggest that all the 50,000,000 American
Protestants be jailed."

On March 25, 26 and 27, 1949, more than 600 outstanding American per-
sonalities sponsored the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace
held in New York City under the auspices of the National Council of the
Arts, Sciences and Professions. Among the sponsors were Dr. Harlow Shapley,
Henry A. Wallace, Bishop Arthur W. Moulton, Thomas Mann, Albert Ein-
stein, Aaron Copland, Olin Downes and Lillian Hellman. The plenary and
panel sessions of the conference were filled to overflowing, and hundreds of
people were turned away. At the concluding Madison Square Garden meeting
on March 27, there was an audience of 20,000 people.

The State Department restricted foreign representation to guests from
Eastern Europe, refusing visas to more than twenty Western Europeans and
Latin Americans, including such renowned individuals as Paul Eluard, J. D.
Bernal, Carlo Levi and Abbe Jean Boulier. Among the foreign guests who did
attend the conference were Dimitri Shostakovich, Juan Mariniello, Olaf
Stapledon and Alexander Fadayeev.

The following month some 300 prominent American figures formed an
American Sponsoring Committee of the World Congress of Fighters for
Peace, held in Paris during April 20-25, 1949. Co-chairmen of the American
Sponsoring Committee were Bishop Arthur W. Moulton, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois
and O. John Rogge. Fifty American delegates attended the Congress, at which
there were 2,000 delegates from 72 countries who represented more than 600,-
000,000 human beings.

During the first week of September 1949 over 200 American delegates
attended the American Continental Congress for Peace held in Mexico City.

On October i and 2, 1949, a National Labor Conference for Peace was held
in Chicago. It was attended by more than 1,000 delegates from 28 states, each
representing a minimum of 25 supporters in AFL, CIO, independent unions
and Railroad Brotherhoods.

In addition, throughout the nation, there were numerous local individual
manifestations for peace by widely diversified groups and organizations.

Chapter xvi

THE MONSTROUS FACT

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are hfe, hberty,
and the pursuit of happiness . . .

The Declaration of Independence,
July 4, n-jS.

For any colored man who has become inocculated with
the desire for political equality, there is no employment for
him in the South. This is a white man's country, and will
always remain a white man's country.

Congressvmn James F. Brynes,
August 2$ J 1919.

When people are divided by a master-race theory, liberty
and justice are impossible.

Segregation in Washington— A Report
of the National Cormnittee on Segrega-
tion in the Nation^s Capital, 1948.

I. In Freedom's Name

From September 1947 to December 1948 a Freedom Train, sym-
bolically painted red, white and blue, journeyed on an elaborately
pubUcized tour of America, with three exhibition cars containing
131 historical documents and flags "marking the development of
liberty in the United States." The tour, which covered every state
in the Union, was sponsored by Attorney General Clark and en-
dorsed by President Truman. It was conducted under the auspices
of the American Heritage Foundation, the chairman of whose board
of trustees was Winthrop W. Aldrich, head of the Chase National
Bank.

306

In making public the purposes of the Freedom Train project, the
American Heritage Foundation stated:

We shall announce as a basic credo that the essence of democracy is
the sanctity of the individual. . . . Men were born to be free, for only
free men can walk the earth with dignity. We shall emphasize the fact
that our nation holds secure for its people the integrity of the individual
and the freedom to aspire to the fullest development of the personality.

The Foundation stressed that the principles it was propagating
were of international, as well as national, import;

. . . when we speak of "our way of life" we speak of the hopes and
aspirations of countless millions all over the world. There are no geo-
graphic boundaries to the universal yearning of men to be free. . . ,
always we must hold forth "our way of life" as an inspiration to the rest
of the world.

Even if such grandiloquent protestations about American democ-
racy had not come at a time when the traditional rights and free-
doms of Americans were under unprecedented attack, there would
still have been one sahent aspect of the American "way of Hfe'*
which could scarcely serve as an inspiration to the rest of the world.

That was the infamous and monstrous fact that 1 5,000,000 Ameri-
cans—one out of every ten in the nation— were sentenced from birth
to second-class citizenship and were systematically subjected to
lifelong oppression, humiliation and most dreadful persecution.

More than a century and a half after the American Republic
was founded on the basic principle that all men are created equal,
and almost a hundred years after the signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation, Negro citizens in postwar America were living under
conditions comparable in many respects to those endured by Jews
in pre-war Nazi Germany.

"With the possible exception of South Africa," Harry Haywood
wrote in 1948 regarding the status of American Negroes in his
book, Negro Liberation, "in no other country has 'race' been made
to play such a decisive role in the socio-economic oppression of a
people . . . Slavery as ownership of chattel is gone; as a caste system
it remains. Its purpose is to keep non-whites in a position which,
in one way or another, is inferior or subordinate to that of whites.
Its devices range from lynchings and mob violence, at the one
extreme, through legal enactments and extra-legal manipulations of

307

courts and police, to custom and etiquette as instruments of caste
control."

During the New Deal era, particularly in the war years, certain
breaches had been made in this American caste system. With the
growth of progressive trade unionism, symbolized chiefly in the
CIO, and with the establishmant of the Fair Employment Practices
Committee, tens of thousands of Negro men and women obtained
jobs as skilled workers from which they had previously been barred.
And, as the manpower needs of the armed forces multiplied, the
traditional discrimination against Negro enlistments in various
branches of the service was largely broken down.*

Following V-J Day, however, the old policies were swiftly re-
vived. In the summer of 1946, the Army stopped accepting Negro
enlistments; t and a few months later every Negro in the Marine
Corps was given his choice of a discharge or a transfer to the
steward's branch.

Last to be hired in industry, Negro workers were first to be fired.
Between July 1945 and April 1946, unemployment among Negroes
increased twice as rapidly as among whites. Congress refused to
appropriate money to enable the FEPC to continue its work beyond
May 1946. In its final report, the Committee stated:

The wartime employment gains of Negro, Mexican- American and
Jewish workers are being lost through an unchecked revival of dis-
criminatory practises . . . Nothing short of congressional action to end
employment discrimination can prevent the freezing of American work-
ers into fixed groups, with ability and hard work of no account to those
of the "wrong" race or religion.

Jim Crow was again the law of the land.

Some concept of the legally institutionalized Jim Crowism exist-
ing in many states in postwar America may be derived from these
clauses in the Constitution of Mississippi:

Article 8, Education, Section 20J

Separate schools shall be maintained for children of the white and
colored races.

* Despite the gains made by Negroes in the armed services during the war,
it remained a shocking fact— and one of the major contradictions of the
American war effort— that almost all Negroes were compelled to serve in
separate units. Negro soldiers were given the right to die, but not the right to
fight in the company of white soldiers.

tin 1947, when the Army had reduced the number of Negro soldiers to
the desired proportion, a limited number of enlistments were accepted.

308

Article lo, The Penitentiary and Prisons, Section 22$

It [the legislature] may provide for . . . the separation of the white
and black convicts as far as practicable, and for religious worship for
the convicts.

Article 14^ General Provisions, Section 263

The marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto, or person
who shall have one-eighth or more Negro blood, shall be unlawful and
void.

Perhaps the most remarkable of the Mississippi statutes is the
following:

Any persons, firm or corporation who shall be guilty of printing,
publishing, or circulating printed, t}^pewritten or written matter urging
or presenting for public acceptance, or general information, arguments
or suggestions in favor of social equality, or intermarriage, between
whites and Negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a
fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or imprisonment not exceeding
six months or both fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court.

"Legislation similar to that of Mississippi," the National Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Colored People stated in An Appeal to
the World!, a document submitted in February 1947 to the United
Nations, "is in force in Virginia, North Carolina, South CaroHna,
Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and
Texas. Similar but less stringent legislation is in force in Delaware,
West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri . . . Eight north-
ern states (Cahfornia, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, Nevada,
Oregon and Utah) forbid intermarriage . . .'*

The Appeal continued:

In twenty states segregation of pupils in schools is mandatory or ex-
pressly permitted. In three states the statutes call for even separate
schools for the deaf, dumb and blind. In six states the statutes call for
separate schools for the bUnd . . . Florida stipulates that textbooks used
by Negro pupils shall be stored separately.

In fourteen states the law requires separate railroad facilities. . . .
Separate waiting rooms are required in eight states. Separation in buses
is required in eleven states; ten states have the same requirements affect-
ing streetcar transportation . . .

There are laws which require separation of the races in hospitals. In
eleven states even mental defectives must be separated by race. . . .

Separation is required by eleven states in penal and correctional in-
stitutions. ...

There are laws which require separation of the races in a multitude
of relations— too many to be mentioned here. Several examples will
make clear the scope of Jim Crowism imposed by law: Oklahoma re-
quires separate telephone booths for Negroes; a Texas statute prohibits

309

whites and Negroes from engaging together in boxing matches; ... in
South Carolina Negroes and whites may not work together in the same
room in cotton textile factories, nor may they use the same doors of
entrance and exit at the same time.*

At the end of the war, there were 5,000,000 Negroes in the Black
Belt of the South, most of them living in virtual serfdom or invol-
untary servitude on great cotton plantations as sharecroppers and
as tenant farmers. Although Negroes comprised approximately sixty
per cent of the population of the Black Belt area, which stretched
through twelve southern states, the overwhelming majority of them
were deprived of the right to vote. The methods used to keep
Negro citizens from the polls ranged from the poll-tax and other
"legal" devices to terrorization and lynch mobs ...

Throughout the North, too, "Black Belts" existed.

In every major northern city, the overwhelming majority of
Negro residents were confined in squahd, frightfully overcrowded
ghettos— miasmic slums of crumbling hovels and rat-infested, fire-
trap tenements. In Chicago's Black Belt the population density was
90,000 per square mile in an area where health authorities set the
optimum density at 35,000. In Harlem, the average number of
residents per block was 3,781. "At a comparable rate," stated Archi-
tectural Forum of the population density in Harlem, "the entire
United States could be housed in half of New York City."

Through restrictive covenants and various other "legal" and
extra-legal means, and not infrequently through mob violence,
Negroes were quarantined in these Black Belts almost as rigorously
as Jews had been by the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. Between
1944-46 in Chicago alone, fifty-nine attacks were made on the
homes of Negroes trying to settle in white areas— five shootmgs,
twenty-two stonings and more than a score of arson-bombings.
Not a single culprit was punished for these crimes . . .

In a report pubHshed by the U.S. Office of Education, I. C.
Brown stated regarding the living conditions in Negro ghettos in
many parts of America:

* The author of this particular section of the NAACP Appeal was Milton
R. Konvitz, Associate Professor at Cornell University.

The full tide of the NAACP document was An Appeal to the World!
A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of
Citize72s of Negro Descent in the United States and cm Appeal to the Ufiited
Nations for Redress.

310

... in cities, paving, lighting, sewerage service and police protection
often cease where the Negro section begins ... In many areas there is
no hospital service of any kind available to Negroes, and the medical
and nursing service is often wholly inadequate if not lacking altogether.

In Chicago and New York City, the tuberculosis rate among
Negroes in 1947 was approximately five times as high as among
whites. In Newark, New Jersey, it was almost seven times as high.

More than twice as many American Negro mothers as white
mothers died in child-birth. Infant mortality among Negroes was
seventy per cent higher than among whites.

The average life expectancy of Negro Americans was ten years
less than that of white Americans.

"Why apologize or evade?" asked Senator Walter F. George of
Georgia, former member of the Georgia Supreme Court, in an ar-
ticle in Liberty magazine. "We have been very careful to obey the
letter of the Federal Constitution— but we have been very diligent
and astute at violating the spirit of such amendments and statutes
as would lead the Negro to believe himself the equal of the white
man. And we shall continue to conduct ourselves in that way!"

2. In the Nation's Capital

"The capital of a nation," Justice Wendell Philipps Stafford of
the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia once declared,
"though it may lie, as ours does, at the level of the sea, must be in
a very true sense, a city that is set on a hill and which cannot be
hid ... it will become a symbol— a symbol of the great Republic
whose visible throne is here."

With its stately white granite buildings, majestic monuments and
spacious tree-lined boulevards, postwar Washington was seemingly
a worthy symbol of the great traditions of the American Republic.
But the superficial beauty and dignity of the capital of the United
States were a deceptive facade. They concealed a noisome morass
of racial prejudice, discrimination, Nazi-Hke segregation and the
deliberate humiliation of human beings whose skin was not white . . .

Within view of the White House, and in the shadow of Lincoln's
gravely beautiful memorial, there sprawled a hideous ghetto in
which more than a quarter of the city's inhabitants, 250,000 Negro
Americans, were penned. In the Capital of their own land, Negro

citizens were barred from "white" hotels, restaurants and theatres,
denied the right to patronize the main department stores, forced
to attend separate schools and hospitals, and compelled to stand
while eating at downtown lunch counters . . .

In 1947, the proprietor of a dog cemetery in Washington publicly
announced that henceforth he would not accept for burial dogs
belonging to Negroes. Although, he explained, he knew that dogs
would not object to non-segregated burial, he had found that his
white clientele were offended by such treatment of their deceased
pets . . .

After a visit to the capital of the United States, a native of India
declared: "I would rather be an Untouchable in the Hindu caste
system than a Negro in Washington."

The booklet, Segregation in Washington— A Report of the
National Committee on Segregation in the Nation'' s Capital* which
was published in November 1948, included this comment:

On occasion, the State Department has sent vigorous protests to cer-
tain nations which attempt to restrict the movements of our representa-
tives abroad. But Washington is the only major capital in the world
where it is necessary to chaperone foreign guests to protect them from
insult on account of color.

As typical examples of the experiences of foreign colored visitors
in Washington, the Report cited these cases:

During the war, the Foreign Minister of an African country was in-
vited to Washington by the State Department, which made hotel reser-
vations in advance. He arrived late at night, however, and the hotel
manager flatly refused to admit him. A high official of the Department
was routed out of bed, and persuaded the hotel by telephone to admit
the Foreign Minister— on a plea of urgent "war necessity."

An influential Puerto Rican Senator comes to Washington frequently
to see the Resident Commissioner who must devise ways and means to
provide him with rooms and meals. On one visit a private family in
Alexandria gave him shelter. On another, a Puerto Rican newspaper
correspondent took him to his home. On a third, the Commissioner
was not able to find private quarters and asked the Senator to sleep on
the couch in his office.

A devout Catholic from Panama entered a Catholic Church in Wash-

* Among the members of the National Committee on Segregation in the
Nation's Capital were Roger N. Baldwin, Bruce Bliven, Reverend Harry
Emerson Fosdick, Philip Murray, Professor Louis Wirth, Bishop G. Bromley
Oxnam, Walter White and Eleanor Roosevelt.

312

ington. As he knelt in prayer, a priest approached him and handed him
a slip of paper. On the paper was the address of a Negro Catholic
church. The priest explained that there were special churches for Negro
Catholics and that he would be welcome there.

Ordinarily, however, a distinction was made in Washington be-
tween foreign visitors and native Americans with dark skins. "Most
of the capital's stores and eating places," reported the National
Committee on Segregation in the Nation's Capital, "are alert to the
importance of distinguishing between American Negroes and
foreigners of dark complexion, so as to treat the latter like white
persons . . . Often an alien Negro will be allowed to eat sitting
down at a lunch counter if he has a diplomatic pass, or some other
means of proving that he is not an American Negro."

Discrimination in the American capital was intended to be re-
served as the special prerogative of black Americans.

"No property in a white section," stipulated a clause in the Code
of Ethics of the Washington Real Estate Board, published in 1948,
"should ever be sold, rented, advertised or offered to colored
people."

In an article in the Washington Post headed, "Negro Housing-
Capital Sets Record for U.S. in Unalleviated Wretchedness of
Slums," Agnes E. Meyer described the Negro ghetto in Wash-
ington in these words:

In my journey through the war centers I . . . visited the worst
possible housing. But not in the Negro slums of Detroit, not even in
the southern cities, have I seen human beings subjected to such un-
alleviated wretchedness as in the alleys of our own city of Washing-
ton . . .

Not only houses have been subdivided, but small rooms already too
filthy for animal habitation, have been partitioned with cardboard to
absorb more tenants.

In Burke's Court, 14 occupants have been stowed away in a single
room; in Ninth Street, N.W., a small house holds 19 persons, while a
woman and three children live in the basement.

Five or six persons to a room, occupying at times a single bed, is
commonplace . . .

Only thirty per cent of the residents of the District of Columbia
were Negroes, but Negroes had seventy per cent of the slum resi-
dents and sixty-nine per cent of the tuberculosis deaths . . .

Front-paged on the New York Times of May 14, 1948, under the

313

headline, "RACE BIAS IN WASHINGTON DEPRIVES 51
YOUNGSTERS OF TRIP TO CAPITAL," was a news item
which read in part as follows:

Long-cherished dreams of passing a few hours among the tokens of
freedom and historical attractions of the nation's capital were shattered
yesterday for fifty-one New York children by Negro segregation and
discrimination rules as practised in Washington. All of the youngsters
were medal winners in the safety patrol contests in the New York met-
ropolitan area . . .

Among the youths designated to share in the safety honors were four
Negro children . . . When the Automobile Club sought accommodations
for them with their white companions, the Washington hotel doors
were closed to them. This action caused the cancellation of the junket
yesterday. A special citation was to have been given by President
Truman . . .

Commenting on this incident, the New York Herald Tribune
editorialized: "The humihation of these New York schoolboys was
a national disgrace." *

The most shocking fact about discrimination against Negro
citizens in postwar Washington was that it was not only condoned
but actually fostered by the Government itself.

In the words of the National Committee on Segregation in the
Nation's Capital:

AUied against the Negro in this doubtful enterprise ... is the full
majesty of the United States Government. . . .

In spite of all its principles and all its professions, its executive orders
and directives, the United States Government is systematically deny-
ing colored citizens of the capital equal opportunity in employment,
and is setting an example of racial discrimination to the city and nation.

Following the war. Government departments and agencies re-
verted once more to the pohcy of excluding Negroes from all but

* Negro children in Washington are carefully segregated and systematically
made to feel inferior to children whose skins are white. Separate schools are
set aside for Negro children. Operated under the cynical, self-contradictory
formula of "separate and equal," the Negro schools are in old, dilapidated
buildings, one third of which were constructed before the turn of the century.

White athletic and debating teams cannot compete with Negro teams. In
1947 the finals of a Bill of Rights oratorical contest sponsored by the Junior
Chamber of Commerce could not be held as contemplated in a public school
auditorium because both white and Negro children were taking part in the
competition.

On public playgrounds as elsewhere, Jim Crow is rigidly enforced. Colored
boys and girls are forbidden by the regulations of the District of Columbia
Recreation Board to enter the playgrounds of white children.

the lowest custodial and clerical jobs. In the State Department,
Justice Department, the Bureau of the Budget, the Federal Trade
Commission and the Federal Reserve Board, colored workers were
relegated almost entirely to the most menial work. In the Census
Bureau, the Government Printing Office, and the Bureau of En-
graving and Printing, most Negro employees were kept in the low-
est paid jobs and segregated in separate units . . .

Such were the post-war anti-Negro policies practised in Wash-
ington by the Government that the National Committee on Segre-
gation in the Nation's Capital stated toward the conclusion of its
Report:

At this very moment the Federal Government is holding more citi-
zens in bondage than any single person or agency in the country. It is
responsible because it, and it alone, has the power to break the chains
that bar a quarter of a million Negroes in Washington from their
equal rights as Americans.

Worse, the government has helped to make the chains. Its District
courts have been used, unconstitutionally as it now appears, to force
colored people in ghettoes. Its lending, housing and planning agencies
have been drawn into the general undertaking. Its District Commissions,
appointed by the President, and its various other officers, have helped
maintain the color bar in municipal agencies, schools, hospitals, and
recreational facilities. . . .

When people are divided by a master-race theory, liberty and justice
are impossible. Nowhere is this plainer than in the capital . . .

"It must be viewed as one of the ironies of history," commented
the Washington Evening Star one year after the defeat of the Fascist
Powers, "that the Confederacy, which was never able to capture
Washington during the course of that war, now holds it as a help-
less pawn."

3. Terror in Tennessee

On the morning of February 25, 1946, in the little town of
Columbia, Tennessee, James C. Stephenson, a nineteen-year-old
Negro Navy veteran, and his mother went to the Castner & Knott
store to fetch a radio they had left for repairs.

Mrs. Stephenson paid the thirteen-dollar repair bill. On testing
the radio, she found it still would not work. "Thirteen dollars,
and the radio not playing!" she exclaimed.

Enraged that a Negro had the temerity to speak in this fashion,
the repairman, William Fleming, stepped menacingly from behind

315

the counter and ordered the Stephensons out of the shop. As they
left, one of the shop clerks punched James Stephenson from be-
hind. At the same time, Fleming kicked Mrs. Stephenson and
knocked her down.

The young Negro veteran sprang at Fleming and struck him a
blow that sent him crashing through the display window. A grocer
came running from a neighboring shop, crying, "Kill the black
bastards!" As a crowd gathered, someone shouted "Let's lynch
them!"

Several policemen arrived on the scene. One of them raised his
nightstick over young Stephenson's head. Mrs. Stephenson cried
out, "Don't hit my boy!" The policeman turned and struck her
with the club.

The Stephensons were then arrested.

At the City Hall, the police judge asked the prisoners, "Were you
fighting?"

They answered in the afiirmative.

"Guilty," said the judge. "Fifty dollars."

A man hurried into the City Hall. A crowd was gathering out-
side, he told the judge, and there was talk of a lynching.

The judge telephoned the sheriff. "You better get these people
out of here," he said. "We can't give them any protection."

The Stephensons were taken to the county jail by the sheriff and
locked up . . .

Meanwhile a local magistrate, C. Hayes Denton, had arranged
for a warrant to be sworn out charging the Stephensons with "at-
tempting to commit murder by use of dangerous instrument, to-
wit, pieces of glass." Denton set bail for the Stephensons at $3,500
each.

That afternoon, the sheriff telephoned a Negro businessman in
Columbia named Julius Blair. "You better make bond and get them
out of here," the sheriff told Blair, "because they're going to be
lynched. There's a mob miUing around."

Quickly, Blair posted the $7,000 bond at the magistrate's office,
drove to the county jail and picked up the Stephensons. The veteran
and his mother were then spirited out of town.

By sundown, a mob of about a hundred men carrying rifles, shot
guns and pistols had congregated in Columbia's courthouse square.
Bottles of liquor were being passed from hand to hand. Speakers
316

harangued the crowd, urging them to go to Mink Slide, the segre-
gated Negro district, and "get those niggers."

But the mob was not eager to invade the Negro community. The
rumor had spread that Negro war veterans, armed with German
and Japanese war trophy guns and other firearms, had been mobil-
ized to meet the attack . . .

In Mink Slide a group of Negro citizens, including a number of
veterans, were going from house to house, urging their occupants
to lock their doors and keep off the streets. The veterans had
gathered together a handful of weapons— a few shotguns, two
target rifles and a few pistols— which they planned to use as a last
resort, if necessary, to defend their families and homes.

When night came, there was scarcely a sign of life in Mink
Slide. Except for occasional Negro patrol units, the streets in the
Negro district were completely deserted. Doors were locked and
shades tightly drawn. Children had been hidden in back rooms and
garrets. The whole area was silent, blacked-out, tensely waiting . . .

Shortly after dark, cars filled with armed white men began cruis-
ing the outskirts of Mink SHde. Sporadic shots cracked as the oc-
cupants of the cars fired at random into the unlighted buildings.

A car carrying four poHcemen headed into Mink Slide. The car
had no distinctive markings and in the darkness was mistaken for
one of the mob's vehicles. A voice cried out, "Here they come!"
There was a shotgun blast. Peppered with bird shot, the poHcemen
swung their car about and drove back to the center of town . . .

The mayor of Columbia now put through a telephone call to
Governor McCord at Nashville and asked that armed forces of the
State be sent immediately to Columbia.

Before dawn, 500 state guardsmen, including a machine gun com-
pany, had been rushed into Columbia with full military equipment.
State Guard Brigadier General Jacob Dickinson was in command
of the troops. In Columbia, the state troops were joined by seventy-
five highway patrolmen under the leadership of Lynn Bomar, State
Director of Public Safety.

Paying no attention to the armed white mob still gathered in the
square, General Dickinson deployed his force in a cordon around
Mink Slide. This done, the General informed newspapermen: "The
Negroes are surrounded."

Promptly at five o'clock in the morning, the invasion of the
Negro section began.

The attack was carried out with military precision. State High-
way police led the way, with tommie guns, automatic rifles and
carbines blazing. Close on their heels came rows of steel-helmeted
state guardsmen carrying rifles with fixed bayonets. Volley after
volley crashed into houses and shops as the troops slowly advanced
through the smoke-filled streets.

Describing the assault, the Nashville Banner stated later that day:

As the highway patrolmen moved into the "Mink Slide" or "Black
Bottom" section, this morning, they blasted a number of business estab-
lishments with machine guns and carbines . . . Plate glass windows
were shattered, doors knocked down and all the places of business
were virtually wrecked . . .

"To the war veterans," commented the newspapermen, Tom
Ketterson and Paul Page, in the Columbia Daily Herald, "the scene
was reminiscent of American troops going through a captured town
in Europe."

There were, however, significant differences. between the military
tactics of U.S. troops overseas and those of the invaders of Mink
Silde. As Robert Minor records in his pamphlet. Lynching and
Frame-up in Tennessee:

, . . only the places owned by Negroes were destroyed; every white
shop was left untouched, and in that respect it was more like a Nazi
storm-troop raid on a Jewish quarter.

Under the personal command of State Director of Public Safety,
Lynn Bomar, state poUce stormed into the Negro-owned shops,
restaurants and offices, wrecking furniture and hurling supplies and
equipment into the street. They fired tommie gun blasts at mirrors
and pictures, smashed cash registers and emptied them of their con-
tents.

Breaking down doors, the police forced their way into private
homes and apartments. Men, women and children ahke were driven
into the littered streets, clubbed with rifle butts, and ordered to
stand with their hands above their heads.

The Negro prisoners were then marched in a long procession
through the streets of the town to the jail . . .

At noon. Governor McCord arrived in Columbia. At a hurried,
private conference with municipal authorities, it was agreed there
should be no more public -talk about lynchings. The episode was to

318

be officially described as "an armed Negro uprising" that had
been forestalled in the nick of time. The Governor's executive sec-
retary, Bayard Tarpley, told newspapermen that Negroes were
known to have been. buying weapons "all over the state."

That afternoon the Columbia Daily Herald stated editorially:

The Negro has not a chance of gaining supremacy over a sovereign
people, and the sooner the better element of the Negro race realize
this the better off the race will be . . .

Headlines throughout America blazed the news of a "Negro
Riot" in Columbia, Tennessee.

Seventy Negroes were placed under arrest, most of them charged
with attempt to commit murder. Their bail was set by Magistrate
Denton at $5,000 each, totaling $350,000.

The preliminary interrogation of the arrested Negroes was con-
ducted at the packed county jail. One after another, the prisoners
were taken from their cells, led down corridors bristling with armed
guards and pushed into a room which ordinarily served as the
sheriff's dining room. They were told that if they "talked" and dis-
closed what they knew about "the plot," they would be dealt with
leniently. Despite cajolery, threats and third degree, no prisoners
"talked''' . . .

On February 28 three prisoners were brought together into the
sheriff's dining room. Their names were William Gordon, James
Johnson and Napoleon Stewart. After a prolonged interrogation,
during which they failed to give what police officials termed "satis-
factory answers," the three men were taken by deputy sheriffs
and state troopers into an adjoining office.

Suddenly there was a burst of machine gun fire.

With blood pouring from bullet wounds, Gordon and Johnson
were taken to King's Daughters Hospital. They were given blood
plasma but refused bed accommodations because the institute was,
in the words of the Washington Post, "a white hospital." While
being driven to Nashville, the two men died.

Following nationwide demands for Government action, a Federal
Grand Jury was set up to conduct an investigation of the events
at Columbia.

All persons selected to serve on the Federal Grand Jury were
white.

319

After a two months' inquiry, the Grand Jury reported that it had
found "no violation of civil rights," and that there was no evidence
of any attempt at a lynching in Columbia.

Sharp criticism by the Grand Jury was reserved for "inflam-
matory articles" that had appeared in the "Communist press" . . .

In reporting the findings of the Federal Grand Jury, the nation's
press neglected to mention an extremely interesting fact about
Judge Elmer D. Davies, who had presided at the hearings as the
appointee of Attorney General Clark. The unmentioned fact was
this: Judge Davies— according to a news story which had appeared
in the New York Times on July 19, 1939— was, by his own admis-
sion, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.

4. By Trigger, Lash and Noose

On June 6, 1947, in a feature article entitled "Lynch Trial Makes
Southern History," Life magazine saw fit to express satisfaction
over a "forward step" in the extension of "justice" to Negroes in
the South.

In Greenville, South Carolina, a white taxi driver had been
stabbed to death the previous February. County authorities had
promptly arrested a Negro youth, Willie Earle. "Early next morn-
ing," recorded Life, "a lynch mob driving cabs took Earle from
the jail at nearby Pickens, beat him, kicked him, pounded him with
the butt of a shotgun, then stabbed him five times, gouged a huge
piece of flesh from his thigh and finally blew off most of his head
with three blasts from the shotgun."

Twenty-six confessed participants in the lynching were placed
on trial. The court proceedings, according to Lije^ "frequently took
on the informal aspect of a family picnic." The jury's verdict was
"not guilty."

Following the acquittal of the defendants, R. C. Hunt, the man
who had blown out Earle's brains with a shotgun, gave a party, an-
nouncing: "Justice has been done on both sides." Duran Keenan,
another of the lynchers, told the press: "It's the best thing that ever
happened to this country."

Summing up its views on the case, Life praised the trial as "the
first time the entire ugly story of a brutal lynching was put in the
legal records." The magazine opined:

320

For nine days they were tried, in all seriousness . . . The trial did
not end in a way to satisfy those who believe that democracy means
what it says, regardless of the color of a man's skin . . . But history
had been made nonetheless ... It was clear that the South could no
longer be considered ioo% safe for a lynch mob, or at least that lynch-
ing could not be kept ioo% secret.

On August 13, 1947, two months after the appearance of the
Life article, the New York Times carried an editorial headed,
"Georgia Moves Forward." The editorial concerned a case involv-
ing the massacre of eight Negro convicts at the Anguilla Prison near
Brunswick, Georgia.

On July II, 1947, a group of Negro prisoners from the Anguilla
camp had been ordered by prison guards to work in a swamp in-
fested with rattlesnakes. When some of the convicts hesitated and
asked for boots to protect themselves. Warden H. G. Worthy
furiously ordered them back to camp. At the prison stockade.
Warden Worthy told five prisoners he accused of being "ring-
leaders" to step forward. When the prisoners failed to obey his
command. Worthy shouted to the prison guards, "Let 'em have it."
The guards and the warden opened fire.

Five convicts were killed instantly. Three more were mortally
wounded.

At county grand jury hearings, Warden Worthy claimed the
Negroes had been attempting a "jail break." The county grand jury
ruled that the warden and the guards were "justified in their action"
and were "acting in order to maintain order." The jury statement
added: "This would not have happened if the men were in chains
and stripes."

Protests from the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and other liberal organizations resulted in the Fed-
eral indictment of the warden and four guards for violating Federal
civil rights statutes. At the Federal trial, the defense counsel con-
tended the shooting had been necessary to crush a "Communist-
inspired plot" to take over the prison camp. After dehberating eight
minutes, the all-white federal jury acquitted the defendants.

The New York Times commented in its "Georgia Moves For-
ward" editorial:

The one encouraging aspect of still recurrent outbreaks of race op-
pression in the deep South is that they are at last, in one way or another,
producing a healthy reaction toward amelioration ... In Georgia, as

in the rest of the South, the area of enlightenment perceptibly spreads
and "freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent."

On March 14, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall told
the Four Power Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Moscow:

I realize that the word ^^democracy" is given many interpretations.
To the America?! Government and citizens it has a basic ?neaning. We
Jpelieve that human beings have certain iiialienable rights . . .

They include the right of every individual to develop his ??iind and
his soul in the ways of his own choice, free of fear and coercion . . .
To us a society is not free if law-abiding citizens live in fear of being
denied the right to work or deprived of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.

During the year in which Secretary Marshall made this statement
scarcely a day passed in the United States without frightful viola-
tions of the "inalienable rights" of American Negroes. The follow-
ing are a few of the countless episodes:*

Atlanta, Georgia, February: Two weeks after a band of white men
had warned a Negro minister, Reverend A. C. Epps, to move out of a
white neighborhood, the minister's house was dynamited. The band
was seen joking with the police after leaving the Epps home.

SMirm^iELD, North Carolina, April: Fletcher Martin, a Negro orderly
at the Provident hospital in Baltimore, was traveling by train to his
home in North Carolina. When he objected to the order to move into
a Jim Crow railway coach, he was shot and killed by the train con-
ductor. The conductor claimed he shot Martin in "self-defense."

* It is impossible to estimate accurately the number of crimes and atrocities
committed against the Negro people. Only a few of the cases get into print,
and then, almost only when progressive groups fighting for the rights of
Negroes have taken an active interest. Innumerable brutalities are never
recorded.

In postwar America, moreover, a method of lynching Negroes was being
practised which prevented many killings from being known. In the words of
a Petition prepared by the historian, Dr. Herbert Aptheker, and submitted by
the National Negro Congress in June 1946 to the Economic and Social Council
of the United Nations: "Of greater importance today is the device of 'dry
lynching', the secret, unpublicized mutilation or destruction of an undesirable
Negro by a small group of individuals (frequendy, it is believed, officers of
the law). From the nature of this device precise details and figures are not
available, but it is significant that a study, in 1940, sponsored by four United
States Congressmen, including Senators Wagner and Capper, by a 'native
white southerner who must remain anonymous', states, 'that countless Negroes
are lynched yearly, but their disappearance is shrouded in mystery, for they
are dispatched quiedy and without general knowledge.' Other recent works
have offered substantiating remarks, and this is certainly a type of barbarism
that should be thoroughly investigated and absolutely extirpated."

Rocky Mount, North Carolina, May: The body of Willie Pittman,
a Negro taxi driver, was found horribly mutilated on the side of a
country road near Rocky Mount. His head had been smashed in and
his legs and arms cut off.

Sardis, Georgia, May: Joe Nathan Roberts, a twenty-three year old
Negro veteran studying at Temple University under the GI Bill of
Rights was shot to death when he failed to say "sir" to a white man.
The killer was never brought to trial.

Hamilton, Georgia, May: Henry Gilbert, a Negro farmer, was killed
in Harris County jail by police officers. Gilbert's head was smashed in
and his ribs crushed.

Lettworth, Louisiana, July: A game warden got in an argument with
William Brown, 83 year old Negro, who was hunting squirrels in
the woods. The warden took Brown to the edge of the forest and shot
him in the back of the head. The warden then walked to a nearby white
sharecropper and told him, "I just shot a nigger; let his folks know."
The coroner's report stated: "The killing was justified because the
warden shot in self-defense."

Calhoun, Louisiana, July: When Wesley Thomas, a Negro wood-
cutter, quit his job with a white farmer, the latter offered $50 for the
killing of Thomas, claiming Thomas had threatened his life. Another
white farmer found Thomas and shot him, explaining, "When he tried
to run into a house, I just let him have it." The coroner's jury termed
the shooting "justifiable homicide," asserting that the killer had acted
in "self-defense."

Prentiss, Mississippi, August: After a mob had given the sheriff eight
hours to "get a confession" from Versie Johnson, a Negro sawmill
worker held on a charge of rape, the sheriff and two deputies shot the
prisoner. The sheriff declared a coroner's inquest "wasn't necessary"
since the officers had shot Johnson when he reached for one of the
officer's guns.

New York, New York, August: Lloyd Curtis Jones, a disabled Negro
veteran and music student working for a Guggenheim Fellowship was
singing with a small group at the Columbus Circle entrance to Central
Park. Patrolman Francis LeMaire ordered Jones to move on, jabbing
Jones with his nightstick. When Jones objected, LeMaire struck the
Negro on the head with such force that his stick broke. Jones lifted his
arms to protect himself. LeMaire then fired three bullets into Jones'
stomach, seriously but not mortally wounding him. After a cursory
investigation, LeMaire was exonerated.

Rochester, New York, November: When Roland T. Price, a Negro
war veteran insisted he had been short-changed in a restaurant, the
management summoned the police. After an altercation, the officers
shot and killed Price. They claimed Price had attempted to draw a

323

revolver. Later it was revealed that Price had been unarmed. The police
were exonerated by a coroner's jury.

Louisville, Kentucky, November: Two policemen entered a confec-
tionery store and accused George E. Kelly, a Negro, of creating a dis-
turbance. Kelly tried to knock a gun from one officer's hand. The
policeman beat Kelly unconscious and riddled his body with bullets.
The officer was exonerated.

On January 7, 1948, President Harry S. Truman declared in his
State of the Union address to Congress:

The basic source of our strength is spiritual. For we are a people with
a faith. We believe in the dignity of man . . .

We have a profound devotion to the welfare and rights of the indi-
vidual as a human being.

Our first goal is to secure fully the essential hu7nan rights of our
citizens . . .

Any denial of human rights is a denial of the basic beliefs of democ-
racy and of our regard for the worth of each individual.

That same year— while anti-lynch, anti-poll tax and Fair Employ-
ment Practices legislation remained deadlocked in Congress— these
were some of the innumerable violations of the human rights of
Negro Americans:

Macon, Georgia, February: After a one-day trial, an all-white jury
found Mrs. Rosa Lee Ingram, a Negro woman, and her two sons, 17
and 14 years old, guilty of murder in the first degree. The "crime"
for which they were then sentenced to death had occurred three
months earlier when the two Ingram boys had defended their mother
against the assault of a white farmer. In the struggle, one of the boys
had struck the farmer a fatal blow on the head. The execution of Mrs.
Ingram and her sons was stayed, and their sentence was commuted to
life imprisonment, following widespread protests.

Trenton, New Jersey, February: After the murder of a white store-
keeper, Trenton police rounded up dozens of Negroes, and eventually
placed six Negro youths under arrest. Later, the police produced con-
fessions signed by five of the prisoners. At the trial, however, all the
accused offered satisfactory alibis; the chief defense witness was unable
to identify the suspects; and three of the accused testified they had been
doped by the police. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and all six
men were sentenced to be electrocuted. Defense counsel headed by
former U. S. Assistant Attorney General O. John Rogge appealed the
verdict.

MEMPms, Tennessee, May: A Negro, Eli Blaine, complained at police
headquarters that money had been taken from him during a police

324

investigation of a disturbance. Officers at the police station savagely
beat Blaine and blinded him in one eye.

Detroit, Michigan, Jzme: After brutally manhandling Leon Moseley, a
15 year old Negro boy, two policemen shot him to death. The police
report of the case stated that Moseley's car did not have lights.

August, Georgia, July: A Negro prisoner, Ike Crawford died of
wounds from a beating inflicted by Rochmond County stockade guards.
One of his eyes had been gouged out and his skull fractured.

Calhoun Falls, South Carolina, August: After Rev. Archie Ware, a
Negro minister, had defied warnings not to vote in the primary elections,
he was set upon, clubbed, stabbed and left for dead, while two police-
men stood by and watched.

MontgOxMery County, Georgia, SepteiJiber: D. C. Carter, president of
the county branch of the NAACP disregarded threats and voted in
the state primary elections. He was beaten with iron bars by a gang of
white men, and was ordered at the point of a gun to cease transporting
neighbors to the polls.

Lyons, Georgia, Novejitber: Robert Mallard, a Negro farmer was shot
on a lonely road by a group of white men, as he returned with his wife
and child and two other Negroes from church services. The testimony
of Mrs. Mallard and the other Negroes who witnessed the shooting was
disregarded by local authorities.

On September 15, 1949, on being nominated as the Republican
candidate for U.S. Senator from New York state, John Foster
Dulles declared:

America is what it is because our people have always believed that
the most important, the most worthwhile thing in the world is the
human being— to develop hint in soul and mind and to establish for him
a friendly prospering enviromnent, which stimulates him to think fine
thoughts and to accomplish fine things.

Here is a list of some headlines appearing during 1949 in the
nation's three leading Negro newspapers— the Afro- American, the

Pittsburgh Courier, and the Chicago Defender:

50 OFFICERS WHO BEAT MAN ALMOST TO DEATH FREED
JURY TAKES FIVE MINUTES TO RENDER VERDICT

(Miami, Florida, January 22)

2 RACE KILLINGS GIVE DIXIE NEW BLACK EYE

(Bessemer, Alabama and Fort Myers, Florida, February 12)

FLORIDIAN FLOGGED BY WHITE MOB

TERROR LEAVES VICTIM'S MIND COMPLETE BLANK

(Orlando, Florida, March 19)

325

ALA. JUDGE LINKS SHERIFF TO BEATING
TELLS OFFICERS HELPED FLOG 7 MEN

(Chattanooga, Tennessee, April 30)

JUDGE SCORES GEORGIA SHERIFF

WHO GAVE UP PRISONERS TO KLANSMEN

(Trenton, Georgia, May 21)

GRAND JURY FREES 2 ALA. POLICEMEN
WHO ATTACKED WOMAN

(Montgomery, Alabama, May 28)

SLAVERY IN JERSEY

ASBURY PARK PEONAGE COMPLAINT PROBED

(Asbury Park. New Jersey, June 18)

LYNCHED FOR HOGGING ROAD

(Houston, Mississippi, July 16)

S. C. WHITE MAN HELD IN MURDER OF BOY, 10
WHO CURSED HIM

(Spartansburg, South Carolina, July 19)

WHITE MURDERER OF VET SET FREE

(Irwinton, Georgia, July 23)

HOME DYNAMITED IN CHATANOOGA

(Chatanooga, Tennessee, July 30)

JAILER FACES SECOND TRIAL FOR PEONAGE

(Dallas, Texas, July 30)

MOB BESIEGES NEW OWNERS . » .
2,000 IN GROUP

(Chicago, Illinois, August 6)

WHITE SLAYS ANOTHER IN 1948 LYNCH TOWN

(Lyons, Georgia, August 2i)

140 MADE SLAVES ON MISS. FARM

(Jackson, Mississippi, September 3)

FIVE LYNCH WELL-TO-DO GEORGIA FARMER

(Bainbridge, Georgia, September 10)

FIERY CROSS BURNED IN CAPITAL OF NATION

(Washington, D. C. September 12)

But the wholesale terror of the postwar period failed to cow the
Negro people of America.

On every side there was mounting evidence of the resolute strug-
gle of Negro citizens not only to maintain but to extend their hard-
326

won gains of the New Deal era. Uniting with other progressive
Americans, they conducted one campaign after another in com-
munities throughout the land to eliminate housing restrictions,
break down discrimination in employment, halt anti-Negro violence
and eradicate other manifestations of racial oppression and Jim
Crow.

Epitomizing the epic militant spirit of the Negro people was the
phenomenal increase in the votes they cast in the South. In the
jface of KKK threats, police brutality, and myriad legal and extra-
legal obstacles, the number of Negro voters in the South rose
from 211,000 in 1940 to more than one million in 1948.

The Negro people in the United States were unshakably deter-
mined to achieve once and for all, no matter what the opposition,
equal rights as human beings and first class citizenship as Americans.

327

Chapter xvir

THE RED SPECTRE

In their systematic destruction of all opposing groups,
Hitler and Mussolini had the communists first on their list.
Among the early opponents of fascism, the communists were
in the forefront.

From the U.S. Army orientation bulle-
tin, Army Talk, March 194$

Anyone who stands by the interests of all the people is
labeled "red," so that the term has become a badge of honor,
certainly, to those who believe in the dignity and equality
of human beings.

Brigadier General Evans F, Carlson,
May 7, ip4j

There ought to be an open season on Communists and all
other activities of this kind. In fact, there ought to be a
bounty for the pelts of such vicious animals.

From the January 20, 1949, issue of the
textile trade jourjial, American Woolen
and Cotton Reporter

I. Theme and Variations

In the quiet little town of Hobe Sound, Florida, toward the end
of March 1949, there occurred an extraordinary event of interna-
tional significance. Late one night, immediately after a fire siren
had sounded, a disheveled man clad in pajamas rushed from a house
and ran down the street wildly screaming, "The Red Army has
landed!" The man was the United States Secretary of Defense,
James V. Forrestal.

The incident w^as carefully hushed up.*

*The details of the incident first became known to the public when the
journalist Drew Pearson revealed them on his radio broadcast of April 10, 1949.

328

Forrestal was flown by special plane from Hobe Sound to the
Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland. There he was placed under
the care of psychiatrists and watched day and night by a hospital
corpsman. Navy physicians announced to the press that Forrestal
was suffering from "occupational fatigue . . . the result of exces-
sive work during the war and the postwar period."

At two o'clock on the morning of May 22, Forrestal slipped
unnoticed from his de luxe suite on the sixteenth floor of the Naval
Hospital, crossed the corridor, unhooked a window screen, stepped
out of the window and plunged to his death.

The founders of the First International, Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, had written in 1848 in the opening sentence of their Com-
viumst Manifesto: "A spectre is haunting Europe— the spectre of
Communism."

A century later, the spectre of Communism was haunting the
United States of America.

The suicide of James V. Forrestal epitomized the anti-Red hys-
teria which gripped the land like some contagious psychosis at the
time of his death. In no other country in the postwar world was
the public mind so tormented by dread apparitions of the Com-
munist Menace. Meek as well as mighty were plagued by the mass
phobia.

Unlike most epidemics, this one had been deliberately man-
made.

At the war's end, it was apparent that manufactured threats of
a new war and recurrent spy scares were in themselves not enough
to convince the American people their country was menaced by
Soviet armed aggression from without and by a Moscow-inspired
Communist uprising from within. The vivid recollection of the
American-Soviet fighting alliance and Russia's vast contribution to
victory had first to be erased. In their place had to be conjured
up fearful images of Soviet Russia as a ruthless tyranny scheming
world conquest by treachery and war, and of the American Com-
munist Party as an organization of Kremlin-directed spies and
saboteurs plotting the overthrow of the United States Government.

This metamorphosis was effected by a prodigious tour de force
of propaganda.

Every conceivable promotional device and propaganda technique,
every available medium of communication, state and federal agen-

329

cies, educational institutions, business associations, church groups,
super-patriotic societies, fraternal bodies and veterans organizations
—all were galvanized into an intense and incessant anti-Communist
campaign which permeated every phase of the nation's life.*

* It would literally take volumes to catalogue the myriad items of anti-
Communist propaganda that deluged the United States in the postwar years.

Scarcely a day elapsed without some anti-Communist or anti-Soviet docu-
ment emanating from the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities published one report after
another dealing with the Red Menace. The titles of one series issued by the
Committee were as follows:

100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.
loo Things You Should Know About Communism in Religion
ICG Things You Should Know About Communism in Education
loo Things You Should Know About Communism in Labor
100 Things You Should Know About Communism in Government

Congress issued a stream of official reports such as: Soviet Espionage Within
the U.S. Government; One Hundred Years of Communisvi; Communism in
the Near East; Comrminism in China; $00 Leading Coimmmists; and Co?n-
munism in Action— A Documented Study and Analysis of Communism in
Action in the Soviet Union.

From the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other branches of the Justice
Department came an unceasing barrage of anti-Communist pronouncements,
reports, press releases and magazine and newspaper articles, prepared under the
expert supervision of Attorney General Tom Clark and FBI chief J. Edgar
Hoover.

Numerous business organizations published booklets and sponsored news-
paper advertisements and radio programs dealing with the "Communist men-
ace." Among the brochures on this subject issued by the Chamber of Com-
merce were: Communism in Government, Communism in the Labor Move-
ment, Co7nmunist Infiltration in the United States, and Cormnunity Action for
Anti-Communisvi.

Philosophers and psychologists prepared studies dealing with the "emotional
motivations" of Communists and the "inferiority" and "power drives" of citi-
zens of Soviet Russia. Among the more discussed of these studies was a thesis
entitled "Some Aspects of the Psychology of the People of Great Russia,"
which was written by anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer under the auspices of
the Columbia University project, Research in Contemporary Cultures. In this
thesis, Gorer advanced the theory that the Russian "avalanche complex"— a
tendency to act "with intense destructive rage"— orginated from the manner
in which Russian mothers "cruelly swaddled" their infants in "tight wrappings
—like a log of wood for the fireplace."

Among religious groups the anti-Communist crusade was spearheaded by
the Roman Catholic Church, with Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of
New York, acting as its chief spokesman. The Catholic Information Society
issued dozens of pamphlets on Communism, with titles like these: Co7n7minisin
Means Slavery, Comiminism and Fascism: Tivo of a Kind, Justice by Assas-
sination and The Enemy i?i Our Schools. On the radio, from the pulpit and at
public meetings, priests excoriated Communists and the Soviet Union in in-
numerable sermons and speeches.

Out of Hollywood came such anti-Communist films as : "I Married a Com-

330

"Communism in America today," stated Newsweek magazine on
June 2, 1947, "is under the heaviest fire it has ever experienced.
. . . Compared with the hysterical anti-Bolshevik drive which fol-
lowed the first world war, the present movement is a far more
realistic and intelligent effort to combat Communism. The main

munist," "The Red Menace," "The Conspirator," "Guilty of Treason" and
"The Red Danube." Radio networks featured programs dealing with "Soviet
spies" and "Communist intrigue." Children's comic books introduced Russian
and Communist villains.

Anti-Communist and anti-Soviet literature glutted the bookstores. There
were books by diplomats, politicians and military men, "refugees" from behind
the "Iron Curtain" and deserters from the Red Army, Communist renegades,
anti-Soviet "liberals," members of the Trotskyite, Socialist and Social Demo-
cratic Parties and other professional anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propa-
gandists. These were some of them:
One Who Survived by Alexander Barmine; 7 Chose Freedom by Victor
Kravchenko; The Great Globe Itself by William C. Bullitt; The Red Plot-
ters by ex-Congressman Hamilton Fish; The Soviet Spies by Richard Hirsch;
American Communism by James Oneal and G. A. Werner; This Is My
Story by Louis Budenz; The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain by Ferenc
Nagy; Land of Milk and Honey by W. L. Wliite; The God That Failed,
edited by Richard Grossman; Great Retreat by N. S. Timashev; Comrnunism
and the Conscience of the West by Fulton J. Sheean; Last Chance in China
by Freda Utley; False Christ of Covmiunism and the Social Gospel by R. B.
White; Why They Behave Like Russians by John Fischer; Stalin and Ger-
Tfian CoTrmmnism by Ruth Fischer; A?nerican Capitalism vs. Russian Com-
iniinism by C. A. Peters; Russia's Europe by H. A. Lehrman; Two Worlds,
USA-USSR by S. Nenoff; Pll Never Go Back by M. Koriakov; Why I
Escaped by Peter Pirogov; Iron Curtain by Igor Gouzenko; Communist
Trade Union Trickery Exposed by K. Baarslag; Cotmnunism by J. F.
Cronin; Forced Labor in Soviet Russia by D. J. Dallin and B. I. Nicolaevskii.
"Russians are Colossal Liars, Swindlers!" read the headline to a full-page
"Nevo York Herald-Tribune advertisement of a serial by General Frank How-
ley entitled My 4-Year War With The Reds, appearing in Collier's maga-
zine as "his own story of Soviet arrogance, deceit and gangsterism, murder
and rape." Another serial in the same magazine was promoted with full-page
advertisements headed: "How Moscow Wrecked an American Home."

These were a few of the other countless anti-Communist and anti-Soviet arti-
cles appearing in American periodicals during 1947- 1948:

"How Communists Get That Way" (Catholic World, February 1947);
"How the Russians Spied on their Allies" (Saturday Evening Post, January
25, 1947); "Turn the Light on Communism" (Collier's, February 8, 1947):
"Labor and the Communists" (Current History, March 1947); "Trained to
Raise Hell in America: International Lenin School in Moscow" (Nation's
Business, April 1947); "Let's Make It a Professional Red Hunt'* (Business
Week, March 22, 1947); "Commie Citizens?" (Newsweek, April 14, 1947);
"Communists Penetrate Wall Street" (Conmiercial and Financial Chronicle,
November 6, 1947); "Communist Manhunt (Conmionweal, April 4, 1947);
"Why I Broke With the Communists" (Harper's, May 1947); "Iron Cur-
tains for Czechoslovakia" (Readers Digest, May 1948) ; "Is America Immune

gimmick: the possibility that the pubHc— as it did after the last
war— may weary of the anti-Communist fight . . ."

The public was not permitted to weary of the crusade.

While the cacophony of anti-Communist propaganda mounted
from crescendo to crescendo, Government agencies took drastic
steps to dramatize the "menace of Communism" to the nation. The
Loyalty Program was initiated. Congressmen called for barring the
Communist Party from the ballot. In June 1947, Carl Marzani, a
former member of the Office of Strategic Services, was sentenced
to one to three years imprisonment for supposedly concealing his
membership in the Communist Party in 1 940-1 941. In January 1948
Representative William J. Crow of Pennsylvania sponsored a bill
to deprive Communist veterans of benefits under the G.I. Bill of
Rights. The following May the Mundt-Nixon Bill, "An Act to
Protect the United States Against Un-American and Subversive
Activities," was drafted with the avowed aim of outlawing the
Communist Party.*

The campaign reached a climax in 1949 with the trial of twelve
members of the National Committee of the Communist Party.

2. The Trial of the Twelve

On July 20, 1948, a Federal Grand Jury indicted twelve members
of the National Committee of the Communist Party of the United
States on charges of conspiracy "to teach and advocate the over-
throw and destruction of the Government of the United States by
force and violence."

The Grand Jury, which had been investigating Communist activi-
ties in America for sixteen months, did not charge the Communist
Party with the commission of any overt subversive acts. The indict-
ment accused the Communist leaders of plotting to subvert the
Government by: i) organizing a poUtical party dedicated to the
principles of Marxism-Leninism; 2) arranging to "pubhsh and cir-
culate . . . books, articles, magazines, and newspapers advocating

to the Communist Plague?" {Saturday Evening Tost, April 24, 1948); "Reds
Are After Your Child" {American Magazine, July 1948); "How Commu-
nists Take Over" {United States News, March 12, 1948), "The Nature of
Communism" {Catholic World, August 1948); "Capture of the Innocents"
{Collier's, November 27, 1948); "Destruction of Science in the USSR
{Saturday Evening Post, December 4, 1948).

* The Mundt-Nixon Bill failed to pass after liberal and anti-tasclst forces
organized a nation-wide drive to effect its defeat. The bill, with minor modi-
fications, was re-introduced in both Houses of Congress in 1950.

the principles of Marxism-Leninism"; and 3) establishing "schools
and classes for the study of the principles of Marxism-Leninism, in
which would be taught and advocated the duty and necessity of
overthrowing and destroying the Government of the United States
by force and violence."

The indictment of the Communist leaders was drawn up under
the provisions of the Alien Registration Act of 1940, commonly
known as the Smith Act. According to the noted authority on con-
stitutional law, Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr. of the Harvard Law
School, the Smith Act contained "the most drastic restrictions on
freedom of speech ever enacted in the United States during peace
. . . the first Federal peacetime restrictions on speaking and writing
by American citizens since the ill-fated Sedition Act of 1798."

The twelve Communist leaders named in the Federal indictment
were:

Williajn Z. Foster, National Chairman: former trade union leader,
who had headed the AFL steel drive and the great steel strike of
1918-1919 *

Eugene Dennis, General Secretary: former organizer among agricul-
tural workers on the West Coast

Benjamin Davis: sole Negro member of the New York City Council,
and former attorney in Scottsboro case

Henry Winston, National Organization Secretary: World War II
veteran and former Young Communist League national secretary

Robert Thompson, New York Co?mnunist Party Chairinan: former
AFL organizer, ex-commander of Canadian Battalion of Interna-
tional Brigade in Spain and winner of Distinguished Service Cross
during World War II

John Gates, Editor of the Daily Worker: former organizer in the
steel industry, ex-lieutenant colonel in International Brigade in
Spain and paratrooper in U. S. Army during World War II

Irvi?ig Potash: vice-president of the International Fur and Leather
Workers

Jack Stachel, Educational Director: former capmaker and organizer
of unemployed

Gilbert Green, Illinois Communist Party Chairman: former machinist
and ex-national president of the Young Communist League

Gus Hall, Ohio Communist Party Chairman: World War II veteran
and former lumberjack and steel organizer

John Williamson, Labor Secretary: former shipyard worker.

Carl Winter, Michigan Co?n?nunist Party Chairman: former organizer
of unemployed

* On January 18, 1949, the case of William Z. Foster was severed from the
other cases, due to the serious illness of the Communist Party national chair-
man.

333

The indictment of these men was an act of momentous import to
the American people. It represented far more than an indictment of
twelve Communist leaders. In the words of a public statement issued
by Chief Justice James H. Wolfe of Utah, Arthur Garfield Hays of
the American Civil Liberties Union, ex-Dean Charles H. Houston of
the Howard University Law School and other distinguished Amer-
icans:

The Communist Party is on trial only so far as free speech itself is
on trial, and the entire proceedings represents a total distortion of
government function, as conceived and limited in the United States for
159 years . . .

The indictments in these cases allege no overt act whatever, except
"teaching and advocating" the principles of "Marxism-Leninism" . . .

If such advocacy is declared a crime, political change in a democracy
may become impossible.

Such a decision would, in fact, outlaw the Communist Party and
other left wing groups in the United States, in a manner hardly to be
distinguished from the outlawing of the Commimist Party by Hitler,
Mussolini and Franco . . .

The trial of the Communist leaders opened on January 17, 1949,
in Room no of the Federal Court House in Foley Square in New
York City.

Presiding was Judge Harold R. Medina, an affluent former cor-
poration lawyer whose sizable holdings in New York real estate
had included a number of tenement houses in slum areas. Suave and
dapper, sporting a neatly groomed mustache and looking much
younger than his sixty years. Judge Medina had been recently
appointed to the Federal bench by President Truman.*

*An article entitied "Rigors of Communist Trial Sentence Medina to Soli-
tary Life," which appeared in the New York World-Telegra??i on September
6, 1949, gave this description of Judge Medina's luxurious country home, at
Apaucuck Point, Long Island:

"The judge's special pride is his own handsomely-appointed air-conditioned
library, built several hundred feet from the house with a sunken garden be-
tween. It has two studies . . .

"There's also a billiard room, for which Mrs. Medina found green curtains
to match. 'The billiard room,' she commented, 'is what the judge really built
the place for.' "

A pastime which Medina preferred even to billiards was yachting, and the
judge owned a 54-foot motor yacht.

In the data supplied by Harold Medina for inclusion in Who's Who In
America^ he recorded as one of his more important achievements that he had
been "Counsel for Herbert Singer, only defendant acquitted in criminal prose-
cution of officers of Bank of U.S."

An interesting sidelight to Medina's career as a jurist was the fact that in

334

The atmosphere in which the trial began was unparalleled in the
annals of American jurisprudence. The metropolitan press on the
day of the opening session blazed with banner headlines proclaim-
ing the arraignment of the "Red Chiefs" on charges of plotting to
"overthrow the U.S. Government." An army of mounted police,
patrolmen, detectives and Federal agents ringed the Court House,
as though anticipating an armed insurrection. The Nenju York Times
reporter counted "no less than 45 detectives, 40 traffic policemen,
38 superior officers, 11 mounted patrolmen . . . and 260 foot pa-
trolmen—the largest detail for a court case in police history."

The defense attorneys forcefully objected to the extraordinary
police guard. "An armed mob operating in uniform under authority
of the law is here to intimidate us," defense counsel George
Crockett told Judge Medina.

"I have found there is no intimidation or armed guard," the
judge replied. "In fact, I was grateful for their assistance in getting
through the crowd to lunch . . ."

In the opening stages of the trial, the prosecution presented thir-
teen witnesses. With the exception of two regular FBI agents, the
Government's witnesses were renegade Communists or FBI spies
within the Communist Party. These were some of them:

Louis F. Budenz: a former managing editor of the Daily Worker
who quit his post in October, 1945, joined the Catholic Church, wrote
a lurid Red-baiting book entitled This Is My Story and appeared as an
"expert witness" on Communism before the Un-American Activities
Committee and in various Federal deportation cases. During one de-
portation hearing in September 1947, Budenz refused to reply to twenty-
three questions put to him by defense counsel, on the grounds that his
answers might make him "liable to criminal prosecution and conviction."

WilliaTn O. Noivell: a renegade Communist who had been accused
by auto workers of being a Ford labor spy employed by Harry Bennett
in the Ford Service Department. On leaving his job at the Ford Motor
Company, Nowell acted as confidential adviser on "race relations" for
the notorious fascist, Gerald L. K. Smith, ex-Silver Shirter No. 3223.
At the war's end, Nowell became an FBI informer, appearing as a
Government witness in a number of cases involving Communists and
left-wing trade unions. Shortly before the trial of the twelve Com-

the fall of 1942 he had served as an appointed defense counsel for Anthony
Cramer, an accomplice of one of the eight Nazi saboteurs who had been
landed by a German submarine earlier in the year. Cramer was originally
sentenced to forty-five years imprisonment. On appeal, Medina managed to
have this sentence reduced to twelve years.

335

munists, Nowell was given a paid job with the Immigration Bureau of
the Justice Department.

Charles W. Nicodeimis: a former factory worker who was expelled
from the Communist Party in 1946 for anti-Negro agitation. Arrested
and indicted in Pittsburgh in the spring of 1948 on charges of carrying
concealed weapons "with intent unlawfully to do injury" to unnamed
persons, Nicodemus pleaded guilty. Subsequently, Nicodemus was per-
mitted to withdraw this plea, and the indictment against him was
quashed, at approximately the same time he became an informer for the
FBI.

William Cunrmings: a former labor spy and FBI informer within
the Communist Party. Among other activities as a "Communist,"
Cummings recruited three of his own relatives into the Party and then
turned their names over to the FBI.

John Victor Blanc: a stoolpigeon within the Communist Party who
recruited workers into the Party, paid their dues himself, and then
denounced them to the FBI. Included among the names turned over by
Blanc to the FBI was that of his own brother-in-law, who had actually
never joined the Communist Party but whose name had been signed
to a Communist application form by Blanc.

"These witnesses," declared U.S. Prosecuting Attorney John
McGohey, "that testified for the Government, possessing as they
do, each and every one of them, a deep sense of loyalty to our
country, performed a task at tremendous personal sacrifice, which
should rank high in the annals of patriotism. The job they did under
the direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was, in my
opinion, magnificent."

A conflicting opinion was expressed by Circuit Judge Nerval
Harris of Indiana. Said Judge Harris:

The Communist trial is a farce . . . and the whole indictment should
be thrown out. The prosecution's case is based on vile evidence of
stoolpigeons and informers. That kind of evidence I would not permit
in my court. I detest stoolpigeons and informers. So do the American
people.

Concurring with Judge Harris, Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr.
observed:

. . . the government evidence . . . reveals that at least three of the
undercover agents of the United States were actually engaged in per-
suading men to become Communists and take part in what their official
employers considered to be a criminal conspiracy against the United
States. ... It is only a step to agents provocateurs, spies who incite
organizations to commit unlawful acts for the sake of getting damaging
evidence against those organizations— the sort of thing the LaFollette
Committee showed to be going on inside labor unions.

336

There was nothing newfangled about the tales of "Communist
intrigue" told by the Government witnesses at Foley Square. For
three decades these tales had been the familiar themes of anti-Com-
munist newspaper exposes, books on the Red Menace, Chamber of
Commerce and American Legion reports on "radicalism," and the
"findings" of such congressional investigatory bodies as the Un-
American Activities Committee.

One prosecution witness after another testified that the Com-
munist Party of the United States operated directly upon "orders
from Moscow," that American Communists were ruthless conspira-
tors functioning through a nationwide complex of "secret cells,"
and that the basic objective of the Communist Party was the "over-
throw of the Government by force and violence."

At the opening of the trial, Judge Medina had instructed the
jurors to approach the issues of the case with complete lack of bias
and with minds as "blank" as a sheet of white paper he raised in
the air. From the outset, however, it was clear where his own sym-
pathies lay. Regarding Medina's conduct, the distinguished attorney
and former Director of Justice of the Cuban Government, Domingo
Villamil, reported to the International Association of Democratic
Lawyers, which had delegated him to be an observer at the trial:

My sentiments of justice and decorum were painfully disconcerted
by what I heard and saw . . .

Judge Harold Medina impressed me as an evidently partial person;
a man who is very far from being an ornament of the North American
judiciary. ... I saw him, always, as compliant, gentle and affable
towards the prosecutor ... as he was prejudiced, ironical and curt
towards the defendants . . .

The judge, evidently, has inverted the rule of universal juridical
morality . . . instead of presuming the innocence of the accused until
their guilt has been proved, he presumes their wickedness and their
guilt ...

There are two prosecutors and no judge at all at that trial— Judge
Medina . . . being the more formidable of the two.

After examining over 13,000 pages of the court record, with a
view to assessing the accuracy of press reports of the proceedings,
a group of New York lawyers published a treatise entitled Due
Process in a Political Trial. The lawyers made the prefatory com-
ment: "In the analysis that follows, the reader may discern a pat-
tern of juridical conduct characterized by bias against the defen-

337

dants and their counsel, the effect of which tends to deprive the
defendants of a fair trial and to obstruct the defense lawyers in the
performance of their duty."

The treatise prepared by the New York lawyers listed, with de-
tailed documentation, these categories of judicial misconduct on
the part of Judge Medina:

(a) Rulings which tend to silence and immobilize defense counsel;

(b) Improper characterizations of defense counsel in the presence
of the jury;

(d) Threats to penalize defense counsel for performance of their
duty;

(e) Discriminatory application of rules of evidence to the defense
as compared with the prosecution;

(f) Badgering of defendants and defense witnesses contrasted with

courtesy and helpfulness to prosecution witnesses;

(g) Deprecation of the defendant's evidence in the presence of the
jury;

(h) Attributing to the defense ulterior and improper motives in the
presence of the jury.*

A vivid and significant instance of Judge Medina's partiality
toward the prosecution occurred in connection with one of the
most vital issues of the trial— the meaning of the term, Marxism-
Leninism. When Louis Budenz was on the witness stand. Prosecutor
McGohey asked him to interpret that section of the Communist
Party constitution which stated the Party based itself "on the prin-
ciples of Marxism-Leninism." The defense attorneys objected to the
question on the grounds that the term was fully defined in official
Communist documents already introduced as evidence, and that it
was for the jury to decide the meaning of the term from such
materials.

* Typical of the caustic remarks repeatedly made by Judge Medina to the
defense attorneys were the following:

"Talk all you like, but I have the last word."

"That sounds crazy. You always seem to do that,"

"You may object your head off."

"You look so innocent."

"You will now take the book and you will now sit down and get busy read-
ing it."

"The least observation you make, the better."

In one instance. Judge Medina accused defense attorney Harry Sacher of
having "deliberately lied." When Sacher objected to the judge's language,
Medina angrily declared, "I will not believe a word you say."

338

Judge iMedina overruled all objections. "How will they [the
jury] know what Marxism-Leninism is referred to," he said, "unless
somebody tells them?"

On Medina's instructions, Budenz answered the question, stating
that according to Marxist-Leninist principles socialism could be
attained in America only by the "overthrow of the Government of
the United States . . . and the setting up of a dictatorship of the
proletariat by force and violence." This, declared Budenz, repre-
sented the fundamental program of the Communists on trial . . .

Subsequently, when defendant Robert Thompson was on the wit-
ness stand, defense counsel Richard Gladstein asked, "Will you state
to this jury what is Marxism-Leninism?"

Prosecutor McGohey objected to the question.

"Sustained," said Judge Medina.

"May I call your Honor's attention," said Gladstein, "to the state
of the record—"

"No," interrupted the judge, "I don't want to hear any more
argument about it."

"But your Honor—"

Judge Medina again cut Gladstein short, saying the question was
not "relevant."

"Would your Honor notice," asked Gladstein, "that in the record
your Honor permitted the witness Budenz to be asked precisely
that question and to give an answer to it?"

"You know," Judge Medina angrily declared, "I just told you I
didn't desire to hear argument but you wanted to get that point in
and so again you have become contemptuous."

As the trial continued through the spring and summer months.
Judge Medina frequently castigated the defense attorneys as "im-
pudent" and "contemptuous," and repeatedly threatened them with
disciplinary reprisals for their tenacious efforts to bring forward evi-
dence they considered vital to their cHents' case.

Manifesting a weary injured air. Judge Medina charged the de-
fense lawyers with plotting to undermine his health. Typical of his
remarks were these: "You have my nerves so frayed that I do not
know how I am going to carry on this trial". . ."It is more than
any human being can stand". . ."I have been meditating about hav-
ing some kind of a little recess of two or three days because I have
been getting myself in such a state of fatigue that I am really
worried."

339

Periodically, the judge recessed court sessions to "rest" in his
chambers from the "rigors" of the trial.

In the press and on the radio, Medina was effusively praised for
his "infinite patience" and "temperance". . ,

On June 3, John Gates declined to give the prosecution the names
of fellow veterans who had helped him prepare a pamphlet dealing
with veterans' problems. To name these individuals, said Gates,
would expose them to persecution. For refusing to divulge this in-
formation. Gates was sentenced by the judge to thirty days in jail.
When the defendants Henry Winston and Gus Hall protested,
Medina promptly remanded them for the duration of the trial.

On June 20, Gilbert Green objected to Medina's unwillingness
to accept as evidence an article which he, Green, had written. "I
thought we would be given a chance to present our case," said
Green. "This article is germane to the very heart of the issue." For
making this remark, Green was sentenced to jail for the balance of
the trial.

When Carl Winter declined to state whether or not his father-
in-law had attended a Communist Party convention, Medina gave
the defendant a thirty-day prison sentence.*

On August 23, the New York Daily Compass published a sensa-
tional exclusive news-story on the trial at Foley Square. The story
revealed that one of the jurors, Russell Janney, elderly theatrical
producer and author of the book. The Miracle of the BellSy had
publicly expressed a violent antipathy toward the Communist Party
less than a month before being sworn in as a supposedly unbiased
juror.

The Compass story, which was written by the newspaper's cru-
sading editor and publisher, Ted O. Thackrey, quoted excerpts from
a speech made by Janney at Macon, Georgia, on February 21, 1949.
Janney had stated:

* The defendants cited for contempt were confined, when court was not in
session, in the old dilapidated West Street jail. In their prison quarters, they
were unable to consult properly with their attorneys. Friends and relatives
were not permitted to bring the defendants food to supplement their meagre
prison rations. During the excessive summer heat, the defendants were kept
in cramped ill-ventilated cells. When Henry Winston suffered two heart at-
tacks in jail, Judge Medina denied him the services of his family physician
and refused to grant a court recess or suspend Winston's contempt sentence.

340

There can be no compromise between Communism and democracy.
. . . People who want Communism should go to Russia and live. . , .
We're already fighting a war with Communism and it should be a war
to the death.

Thackrey also disclosed that during the course of the trial, Janney
had made frequent comments outside the courtroom which clearly
indicated his strong prejudice against the defendants.

Thackrey commented:

. . there are sworn statements available testifying to the accuracy
of what I have reported.

What I have reported is sufficient for me to question whether Mr.
Janney is, or ever was, sufficiently free of conclusions concerning the
defendants to give them a fair hearing or a fair trial.

On the basis of these disclosures, the defense attorneys moved on
August 24 to have Janney disqualified as a juror.
Judge Medina denied the motion.

On October 14, after nine months of court proceedings, the trial
of the eleven Communists reached its foregone conclusion. The
jurors brought in a verdict of guilty.

As soon as the jury had handed down its verdict. Judge Medina
instructed all defense counsel to rise. After reading a judgment of
contempt against the five attorneys and Eugene Dennis, who had
conducted his own defense, the judge sentenced the six men to
prison terms ranging from thirty days to six months.

A week later. Judge Medina sentenced ten of the Communist
leaders to five years' imprisonment and fines of $10,000 each.

The sentence given Robert Thompson was three years' imprison-
ment and a fine of $10,000. The judge explained he was being
lenient because of Thompson's record as a war hero.

The verdict and sentence were widely hailed by the nation's press
as a symbol of American justice. The "Voice of America" broad-
cast the verdict to the world as proof of the fact that "every man
in America, whether rich or poor, and without discrimination as to
his color or creed, has his day in court."

But a large number of thoughtful Americans, cognizant of the
profound significance of the conviction of the Communist leaders,
agreed with the opinion expressed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

. . . convicting them goes against one of the greatest traditions m all
American history— that which insists upon the worth of the individual

citizen as a person rather than as a minute part of the state. . . . Punish
the Communists for their ideas and we open the way to punish others
with less cause or no cause at all.

3. Peekskill

More than a decade before the trial of the American Communist
leaders, Eugen Hadamowski, Nazi radio chief and Goebbels' aide,
wrote: "Propaganda and force are never absolute antitheses— the use
of force can be a part of propaganda. Between them are means of
every degree to exert influence: from lightning-flashes to arouse
the individual, from gentle persuasion to wild mass propaganda;
from the loose organization of recruits to the creation of state or
semi-state institutions; from individual to mass terror . . ."

In America in the summer of 1 949, as anti-Communist propaganda
reached a frenzied peak, there occurred a world-shocking event
which seemed to exemphfy the thesis of Eugen Hadamowski.

While the twelve Communist leaders were on trial at the Federal
Court House in New York City for alleged advocacy of force and
violence against the Government, the real exponents of force and
violence in America went into action less than fifty miles away.

A concert by Paul Robeson had been announced for Saturday
evening, August 27, at the Lakeland Acres picnic grounds outside
the town of Peekskill, New York. [Proceeds of the concert were to
go to the Harlem Chapter of the Civil Rights Congress, an organi-
zation dedicated to defending constitutional liberties that had been
named on Attorney General Clark's "subversive" list.]

Four days before the scheduled concert, the Peekskill Evening
Star carried the headline, "Robeson Concert Here Aids 'Subversive'
Unit." The paper editorialized: "The time for tolerant silence that
signifies approval is running out . . ." The president of the local
Chamber of Commerce and other local patrioteers attacked the
concert as "un-American." Veterans organizations voted to hold a
protest parade and demonstration the night of the concert.

The concert was never held.

When Paul Robeson arrived for the aflFair, he could not get into
Lakeland Acres. An ugly-tempered mob blocked the way, prevent-
ing anyone from entering the grounds. For two miles along the
road leading to the park, the cars of concert-goers were jammed
fender to fender. No police were in sight.

342

At nightfall the hoodlums smashed the folding chairs set up on the
field, made a blazing bonfire out of them, and launched a violent
assault on persons who had entered the grounds earlier in the eve-
ning. The attackers shouted: "No one of you leave here alive . . .
We're Hitler's boys— out to finish his job."

A defense line was hastily organized by a few dozen men in the
picnic grounds. At 8:30 one of the men, making his way in the dark
through the shouting mob, went to telephone the state police. He
later recounted this episode:

I saw a Negro and two white people approaching the entrance to
the grounds. They were stopped by the mob. A dozen men pushed the
Negro up against an embankment. The Negro kept saying, 'Tm an
American! I have a right to attend this concert!" Suddenly, one of the
men struck him. He went down and the gang piled on top of him
yelling, "Kill him! Let's finish him!" They beat him unmercifully,
kicked him and stamped all over him. Then I saw a man in soldier's
uniform standing on the side. I said to him, "Come on, buddy, this
ain't right." He said, "That's right, this ain't the American way," and
dashed into the gang. I managed to half drag the Negro through some
parked cars and into the woods. If I hadn't I think they would have
murdered him.

Describing the treatment accorded numerous persons seeking to
attend the concert, the New York Herald Tribune reported on
August 29:

. . . they were stopped by a road block of boulders and logs, and
ordered out of or pulled from the vehicles. The men were manhandled,
the women permitted to depart with jeers. The machines were smashed
on tops, sides and windows with rocks and eight of them turned over.
They were removed by wreckers about 2 o'clock this morning.

Not until after the rioting had been going on for several hours
did poUce finally arrive on the scene and restore a semblance of
order.

On Sunday afternoon, the day following the outrage, 1500 indig-
nant local residents assembled at the estate of Dr. Samuel Rosen in
Katonah, formed the Westchester Committee for Law and Order
and voted unanimously to send a second invitation to Paul Robeson
to sing in Peekskill. "We refuse to abandon any section of the
United States to organized hoodlumism," the Committee resolved.
"Our freedom and civil rights are at stake."

Tuesday night, 8,000 people jammed the Golden Gate Ballroom

343

in Harlem to protest the Peekskill violence. Addressing the meeting,
Paul Robeson announced he was returning to sing in Westchester
County.

The new concert was scheduled for Sunday afternoon, September
4, at the Hollow Brook Country Qub.

As the day of the second concert approached, tension mounted in
Peekskill. Local veterans organizations called for a giant protest
parade outside the concert grounds. Signs and posters appeared
throughout the town bearing the slogan, "Wake Up America—
Peekskill Did!" Stickers were pasted on cars and buses with the
inscription: "Communism Is Treason, Behind Communism— the
Jew! Therefore: For My Country— Against the Jews." The Daily
Compass reported that vacationers in a nearby summer colony felt
"so menaced that the menfolk have organized 24-hour-a-day guards
against attack."

The night before the concert, young men loitering in bars and
poolrooms and on street corners in Peekskill were openly boasting
of the "job" they were going to do on the "commies," "niggers,"
and "kikes". . .

At the urgent insistence of the Westchester Committee for Law
and Order, Governor Thomas E. Dewey ordered state poHce to
Peekskill on the day of the concert.

To insure protection for the audience, the organizers of the con-
cert themselves mobiHzed a corps of 2500 anti-fascist veterans.
Under the command of Leon Straus, vice-president of the Interna-
tional Fur and Leather Workers Union and a reserve officer in the
U.S. Army, these veterans arrived at Hollow Brook Country Club
shortly after sunrise on the morning of the concert. Standing
shoulder to shoulder, they formed a defense guard completely en-
circling the grounds.

At noon the concert-goers, including numerous families with
picnic boxes, began to throng into the area. Approaching the en-
trance, they passed between lines of hundreds of police restraining
crowds of demonstrators calling threats, curses and epithets. Some
shouted: "Commies, kikes, nigger lovers . . . You're goin' in but
you ain't comin' out."

Groups from local veterans posts marched up and down to the
accompaniment of bands.

When the concert started at 2 o'clock, some 20,000 people were

344

in the grounds. The audience was hushed as Paul Robeson sang.
Waves of applause echoed against the surrounding hills . . .

At the conclusion of the concert, the police routed departing
buses and cars along a steep winding road which passed through
thick woods. Hundreds of men were waiting in ambush along the
way armed with piles of rocks, stones, bottles and bricks. A storm
of missiles met the vehicles coming along the road.

Here are some excerpts from a£5davits later secured from victims
of the attack:

"We asked a State trooper to arrest a rock thrower. He said, *Go on
home, you dirty Jew kike, before you get your head split.' "

"I saw several injured people ask the troopers and policemen for
help. They were laughed at, called such names as 'Dirty Jew,' 'Dirty
nigger,' and some of these injured were hit with the billies of the police-
men. I also saw some troopers and policemen throw rocks at the cars
and buses."

"The women and children in the bus were told to lie on the floor.
The women crouched over the children to protect them from the
rocks and flying glass. . . . Several ruffians ran up close to the bus and
taking careful aim hurled rocks directly at the heads of some of the
women."

"One of the troopers said, 'Let's get these bastards.' One of them
stopped at the front window [of the car] where I sat. He took careful
aim and shoved his nightstick, point first, at my left eye. . . . The club
missed the eyeball and caught the corner of the lid. It began to bleed.
The police ordered us out of the car. ... I was forced to run through
a gauntlet of 15 to 20 policemen. Each of them clubbed me across the
head or back. They threw me to the ground and continued the beating.
One of the policemen noticed a bandage on my left hand, which had
been burned a week before. He jumped on the hand and ground his
heel into the bandage, fracturing one of the burned fingers."

"A group of hoodlums came directly in front of the bus and threw
a huge boulder in. This boulder struck my left hand and when I looked
down I saw that the third joint of my middle finger was barely hanging
by one tendon. Witnessing this whole incident were State troopers who
were laughing."

Casualties totalled in the hundreds. A number of men and women
were critically injured.

345

More than fifty buses and hundreds of private cars carried grim
scars of the mob violence— shattered windows, dented sides, battered
fenders.

"This is being written a few short hours after my departure from
the Hell on Earth that was Peekskill," Leslie Matthews, a staff cor-
respondent for the Negro paper, New York Age, wrote that eve-
ning. "I still hear the frenzied roar of crowds, the patter of stone
against glass and flesh. I hear the wails of women, the impassioned
screams of children, the jeers and taunts of wildeyed youths. I still
smell the sickening odor of blood flowing from freshly opened
wounds, gasoline fumes from autos and buses valiantly trying to
carry their loads of human targets out of the range of bricks, bot-
tles, stones, sticks. I still feel the violence, the chaos, which per-
meated the air. I still hear, smell, and feel Peekskill."

An outcry of revulsion and condemnation went up from coast
to coast. Numerous civic, religious, labor and fraternal organiza-
tions, as well as scores of outstanding public figures, joined the
protest.

The Christian Science Monitor editorialized:

... if a community like that could produce the tyranny of riots
which denied constitutional rights of free assembly and free speech,
few cities in America can feel safe . . .

The preface to a booklet entitled Eyewitness: Peekskill, U.S.A.
subsequently published by the Westchester Committee for a Fair
Inquiry Into the Peekskill Violence, read in part:

We who submit this report to you are residents of the area. We
have built our homes here, we send our children to its schools . . .

We know now, that what happened to us spells Fascism. It is no
longer something remote which happened to the people of Germany.
It is now something close and personal which threatens us in our daily
lives.

A local merchant says: "The young lad who carries the mail in our
village, the lad who has smiled and greeted me every morning for
three years was a member of the howling mob which attacked the
first Robeson concert." An old resident tells us: "The barber . . . who
had cut our children's hair for i6 years, boasts proudly that he helped
organize the stoning of cars as they left the second concert." And a
mother says: "The girl who was our daughter's best friend in school,
told her she deserved the rock hurled at her face because she went to
hear Robeson sing in Peeksill."

346

The statement concluded:

We send you this report in the fervent hope that you, too, will act
before it is too late; that you will never close your eyes and ears to the
truth; that you will never permit this vicious thing called Fascism to
degrade and brutalize the people of our land.

4; 1950

"As we move forward into the second half of the Twentieth
Century," President Harry Truman told a joint session of Congress
in his State of the Union message on January 4, 1950, "we must
always bear in mind the central purpose of our national hfe. . . .
We work for a better life for all. . . . We can achieve peace only
if we maintain our productive energy, our democratic institutions
and our firm behef in individual freedom. . . . Today, by the
Grace of God, we stand a free and prosperous nation with greater
possibilities for the future than any people ever had before in the
history of the world."

According to an editorial in Life magazine, the President's mes-
sage was "in many respects the finest expression of national charac-
ter and purpose which has come from the White House since the
time of Teddy Roosevelt." The editorial exulted:

. . . what a change has come over the U.S.!

Think back to the 30's, to the decade of Franklin Roosevelt, when
the President of the U.S. reflected the sterile belief of many Americans
in those years that the frontiers were closed or closing.

There was no denying Life's claim that a profound change had
occurred in the United States in the five years that had elapsed
since the end of the Roosevelt era. But millions of Americans,
unlike the editors of Life magazine, were finding less and less
reason for rejoicing in the drastically altered conditions in their land.

To many Americans, in fact, it seemed as if their nation instead
of moving forward had suddenly plunged backwards— as if, in
many respects, history were repeating itself in a grim regeneration
of the disastrous events which had overtaken the country in the
years following the First World War.

At the mid-century mark, as during the Roaring Twenties, a cabal
of immensely powerful industrialists and financiers were relent-
lessly imposing their will on the economic and political life of
America. In another period of spurious prosperity, with corporate

347

profits reaching hitherto unknown heights, unemployment and
national insecurity were steadily mounting. In place of Harding's
Ohio Gang, Truman's Missouri Gang held sway in the nation's
capital. Once again, corruption and cynicism were gnawing at the
moral fabric of the nation; racketeers and political bosses were
wrangling over the spoils; and crime was rampant in the land.

Reaction was riding high, and red hysteria, bigotry and violence
intensifying on every side. The country, in the words of an Ameri-
can Civil Liberties Union report entitled In the Shadow of Fear^
was beset by "an unprecedented array of barriers to free associa-
tion, of forced declarations of loyalty, of blacklists and purges,"
and the power of the FBI had reached a point "risking for the first
time in our history the creation of a secret police system with its
array of informers and under-cover agents."

Exactly thirty years after thousands of "radicals" had been
rounded up in the infamous Palmer Raids on the pretext they were
plotting to overthrow the U.S. Government, Acting Assistant
Attorney General Raymond P. Whearty announced at a Congres-
sional committee hearing in Washington, D.C., that the FBI was
ready to arrest 21,105 Americans for "subversive activity." And,
like an evil spirit returned from a nightmarish past, the "Master of
the Hunt" was again J. Edgar Hoover . . .

The similarities between the two postwar Americas, however,
were less ominous than the differences.

Whereas the American people experienced sweeping assaults on
their democratic rights following the First World War, they were
menaced in 1950 with the total destruction of democracy itself and
the establishment of fascism in America. And whereas the wild
profiteering and depredations of the Twenties foreboded the want
and suffering of the Great Depression, the power politics of the
Cold War era threatened to touch off an atomic global war which
would snuff out the lives of countless millions of men, women and
children.

Overriding all other issues, two stark and momentous questions
faced the American people in 1950: democracy or fascism in their
land? peace or war in the world?

Throughout the length and breadth of the earth hundreds of
millions of freedom-loving human beings, determined to maintain
peace, were anxiously watching to see which path the American
nation would choose.

348

TO THE READER

The story told in this boo\ remains unfinished.

Even as these words are written, acts of treason are being com-
mitted against the American people. At this very moment, our
liberties and lives are more gravely endangered than ever before
by traitorous intrigues.

In facing the crisis of the present, we must be ever mindful of
the lessons of the past. On all sides, strident voices are proclaim-
ing that the current danger to our nation comes not from the
right but from the left, that those conspiring against us are not
reactionaries but radicals. But every American who prizes democ-
racy and peace, every American who cherishes the welfare of his
family, must as\ himself: who profited from the First World
War? who looted our land in the Twenties and brought upon us
the terrible depression of the Thirties? who plotted and fought
against the democratic advances of the people in the days of the
'New Deal? who nurtured fascism, put Hitler mto power and
made inevitable the Second World War? who, indeed, has grown
rich upon the bloodshed, agony and mass impoverishment of
these last decades?

And in the answers to these questions the propaganda lies of
today are stripped bare, and the real enemies of the people stand
exposed.

It is these same enemies of the people — the privileged few and
their agents in political office — who are now contriving the
mounting reaction and lessening freedom in our land. It is they
who menace us with the ghastly havoc and slaughter of a third
world war.

It should be clear to any reader of this boo\ that these enemies
of the people possess much power. If they did not, they would
represent small danger to us. But their power of the moment
must not make us fearful. Their influence in our land, as

349

throughout the rest of the world, is as ephemeral as the deceits
and illusions upon which it depends. Their fierceness is horn of
desperation, for with every, day their actual strength wanes. They
are giants with feet of clay.

It would of course be foolhardy to hlin\ at the fact that the
cause of progress and peace in America has suffered severe, if
temporary, setbac\s. The democratic coalition which rallied about
Roosevelt and reached its pea\ of vigor and unity during the war
years has been badly disrupted. Such a coalition must be restored
and strengthened to wrest control of the fate of the many from
the hands of the few.

In building this coalition, we must not he disconcerted by the
accusation of disloyalty leveled against those who challenge and
oppose the policies of our present government. It is utterly alien
to the American tradition to demand unquestioning loyalty and
unequivocal obedience from the people to the government; the
American tradition is to demand loyalty and obedience from the
government to the people. And when a government ceases to be
loyal to the people, when in fact it betrays the interests of the
people, then the time has come to change the policies of the
government by changing its composition and electing to office
true representatives of the people.

"The issue of this war',' said President Fran\lin D. Roosevelt
in an address to Congress on July y, 1943, "is the basic issue be-
tween those who believe in mankjnd and those who do not — the
ancient issue between those who put their faith in the people and
those who put their faith in dictators and tyrants. There have
always been those who did not believe in the people, who at-
tempted to bloc\ their forward march across history, to force
them bac\ to servility and silence!'

Roosevelt declared: "We are going to win the war and we are
going to win the peace that follows."

The people won the war. The people will win the peace.

A.E.K.
April ig^o

350

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the preparation of this book, I made extensive reference to the hearings,
reports and official records of U.S. Government agencies and Congressional
Committees, and to various other public documents. Those official records,
documents and reports upon which I drew most heavily are listed below
under the heading, "Public Documents."

I also made considerable use of the published memoirs of a number of the
persons mentioned in this book. All of the dialogue in this book is taken from
these memoirs, which are included among the books listed below, and from
court records, official reports and other such documentary sources.

Acknowledgment must be made of my special indebtedness to the writings
of George Seldes, whose Witch Hunt, Facts and Fascis7n, You Can't Print
That, 1000 Americans and other books provide an invaluable source of in-
formation on political intrigue, big business machinations and anti-democratic
activities in the United States during the last three decades. Among other
books which proved particularly useful to me were Privileged Characters,
Al. A. Werner's comprehensive study of corruption in high places during the
1920's; This Was Nor??ialcy, Karl Schriftgeisser's enlightening account of the
Harding, Coolidge and Hoover eras; Free Speech in the United States, Zech-
ariah Chafee, Jr.'s definitive work on constitutional law and civil liberties;
-and Ojily Yesterday and Siiice Yesterday, Frederick Lewis Allen's colorful
and interesting books dealing with the American scene between the two
world wars.

The Index of the New York Times, The Readers' Guide to Periodical
Literature and the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences were indispensable refer-
ence sources.

Much material, as indicated in the text, has been taken from newspapers,
magazines and other journals. Among contemporary publications which con-
tain important material often not available in the general press are Johannes
Steel's Report on World Affairs; George Seldes' hi Fact; Cedric Belfrage's
National Guardian; T. O. Thackrey's Daily Compass; and the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch. The files of the Daily Worker contain valuable data, frequently not
obtainable elsewhere, on the class struggle in America during recent years.
(An excellent example of vivid eye-witness reportage on labor strife is William
Allen's series of articles in the Daily Worker on the strike at the Ford River
Rouge Plant in April 1941.)

I want to record a special debt of gratitude to Sally and Rockwell Kent,
whose friendly encouragement and advice proved greatly helpful. I wish also to
express my appreciation of the valuable assistance given to me by Richard
Boyer, Joseph Brainin, Nathan Supak, Leon Straus, and G. S. R.; and to
thank Cecil Lubell, Henry Black, Janet Laib, Ruth Gershon, Sidney Jackson,
Rebecca Margolis, Robert Dunn and Gladys Meyer for their help in compil-
ing material for this book.

And, most especially, must I express my gratitude to Rictte, my wife, for
her patient, unceasing and vital aid in every phase of my work on this book.

Listed below are the chief source references for High Treason.

A. E. K.
351

PUBLIC DOCUMENTS

Hearings, Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer on charges made against the Dept. of Jus-

tice by Louis F. Post and others, House of Representatives Committee on Rules, 1920.
Report of the Attorney General for 1920, U.S. Department of Justice, 1920.
Revolutionary Radicalism, Report of Joint Legislative Committee Investigating Seditious

Activities, New York Senate, 1920. (Lusk Committee.)
Hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee, (pp. 397-420), 1921.
Hearings before the Committee on Judiciary, House of Representatives, 67th Congress, 3rd,

4th sess. on H. Res. 425, 1922.
Hearings before the Select Committee on Investigation of Veterans' Bureau, U.S. Senate,

67th Congress, 4th sess., 1923.
Hearings before Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, U.S. Senate, 68th Congress, ist

sess., 1924. (Teapot Dome Investigation.)
Hearings before the Select Committee on Investigation of the Attorney General, U.S.

Senate, 68th Congress, ist sess., 1924.
Investigation of Communist Propaganda, Hearings before a Special Committee to Investigate

Communist Activities in the United States of the House of Representatives, 71st Congress,

2nd sess., 1930.
Hearings before the Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate, 72nd Congress, ist sess., 1932,

(Sale of Foreign Bonds or Securities in the U.S.)
Hearings before the Committee on Banking and Currency, U.S. Senate, 72nd Congress, ist

sess., 1932-1933. Hearings, 73rd Congress, 1933-34. (Stock Exchange Practices.)
Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda

Activities, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, 73rd Congress, 2nd sess., 1934.
Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor, Hearings before a Sub-committee of the

Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate (LaFoUette Committee), 74th-

76th Congress, i937-i939.
Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States, Hearings before

a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, 1938-1948.
Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power, Hearings before the Temporary National

Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 75th Congress, i939. .
National Labor Relations Board. Ford Motor Co. and United Automobile Workers of

America. Dallas case. Decision and Order, 1940.
Un-American Activities in California, Report of the Joint Fact-Finding Committee, 55th

California Legislature, I943-
Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Military Affairs, U.S. Senate, 78th

Congress, 2nd sess., 1944. (Cartel Practices and National Security.)
Economic (Concentration and World War II, Report of the Smaller War Plants Corporation

to the Special Committee to Study Problems of American Small Business, U.S. Senate,

79th Congress, 1946.
Control of Subversive Activities, Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S.

Senate, 8oth Congress, 2nd sess., 1948.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS

Adamic, Louis, Dynamite, The Viking Press, 1935.

Adams, Samuel Hopkins, Incredible Era, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939.

Allen, Frederick Lewis, Only Yesterday, Bantam Books, 1946.

The Lords of Creation, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1935.

Since Yesterday, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1940.

Allen, James S., World Monopoly and Peace, International Publishers, 1946.

Who Owns America f New Century Publishers, 1946.

Allen, Robert S., and Pearson, Drew, Washington Merry-Go-Round, Horace Liveright,

Inc., 1931.
Aubruster, Howard Watson, Treason's Peace, The Beechhurst Press, 1947.
American Civil Liberties Union, The Nation-Wide Spy System, 1924.

In Times of Challenge, U.S. Liberties, 1946-47, 1947-

In the Shadow of Fear, American Liberties 1948-49, August i949.

Violen-ce in Peekskill, A report of the violations of civil liberties at tzvo Paul Robeson

concerts near Peekskill, N.Y., August 27th and September 4th, 1949 — released December

i. 1949.
American Friends Service Committee, The United States and the Soviet Union, Some

Quaker Proposals for Peace, Yale University Press, 1949.
Andrews, Bert, Washington Witch Hunt, Random House, 1948.
Anonymous, The Brown Network, The Activities of the Nazis in Foreign Couiitries, Knight

Publications, Inc., 1936.
Anonymous, The Mirrors of Washington, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921.
Anonymous, The New Dealers, Simon & Schuster, 1934.
Bane, Suda Lorena, and Lutz, Ralph Haswell, editors, Organisation of American Relief

in Europe, 1918-1919, Stanford University Press, 1943.
Beard, Charles A., and Beard, Mary R., The Rise of American Civilization, The Macmil>

Ian Co., 1930.

A Basic History of the United States, The Blakiston Co., 1944.

Bb&gb, Wendell, Cartels, Challenge to a Free World, Public Affairs Press, 1944.

Berle, Adolf A., Jr., and Means, Gardiner C, The Modern Corporation and Private

Property, The Macmillan Co., i934- , ^. , r. . ,• i.

BiMBA, Anthony, History of the American Working Class, International Publishers, 1927.
Blake, George, Who Pays for the Cold War?, New Century Publishers, 1949-
Blanshard, Paul, American Freedom and Catholic Power, The Beacon Press 1949.
BoRKiN, Joseph, and Welsh, Charles A., Germany's Master Plan, Duell, Sloan and

Brady^'^Robert a., Business As A System Of Power, Columbia University Press, 1943.

Britton, Nan, The President's Daughter, Elizabeth Ann Guild, Inc., 1927.

Brown, Earl, and Leighton, George R., The Negro and the War, Public Affairs

Pamphlets, 1942. ,, ^^.„ „ , ^ t

Budenz, Louis Francis, This Is My Story, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1947-
Buell, Raymond, Europe, A History of Ten Years, Macmillan Co., 1928.
Bullitt, William C, The Great Globe Itself, Charles Scnbners Sons, 1946.
Carlson, John Roy, Under Cover, The Blakiston Co., 1943-
Carr, Katherine. South American Primer, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939.
Catton, Bruce, The War Lords of Washington, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1948. _
Chafee, Zechariah, Jr., Free Speech In The United States, Harvard University Press,

1948.
Churchill, Winston S., The Aftermath, Charles Scribners Sons, 1929.
Civil Rights Congress, America's "Thought Police," 1947- ^, tvt ■ t a

Cobb, W. Montague, M.D., Medical Care and the Plight of the Negro, The National Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Colored People, 1947.
Coffin, Tris, Missouri Compromise, Little, Brown & Co., 1947. , n -l

The Commission of Inquiry, The Interchurch World Movement, Report on the Steel Strike

of 1919, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.
Crane, Milton, editor. The Roosevelt Era, Boni and Gaer, 1947.

CuMMiNGS, Homer, and McFarland, Carl, Federal Justice, The Macmillan Co., i937'
Daugherty, Harry M., with Dixon, Thomas, The Inside Story of the Hardtng Tragedy,

The Churchill Co., 1932.
Davies Joseph E., Mission To Moscow, Simon and Schuster, 1941.
Department of Realms, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc., Articles on the Klan and

Elementary Klankraft, undated.
Dilling, Elizabeth, The Red Network, published by the author, 1934.
Dos Passos, John. The Big Money, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936.
Douglas, Jack, Veterans on the March, Workers Library Publishers, i934-
Dreiser, Theodore, Tragic America, Horace Liveright, Inc., 1931-
DuBois, W. E. Burgh ardt. Dusk of Dawn, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1940.

editor, An Appeal to the World!, The National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People. i947'
Dulles, Foster Rhea, The Road to Teheran, Princeton University Press, i944-
Dunn, Robert W., editor, The Palmer Raids, International Publishers, 1948.
DuTT, R. Palme, Fascism and Social Revolution, International Publishers, i935-

World Politics, 1918-1936, International Publishers, 1936.

Engelbrecht, H. C, and Hanighen. F, C, Merchants of Death, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1934.
Faulkner, Harold U., and Starr, Mark, Labor in America, Harper & Bros., 1944.
Fish. Hamilton, The Red Plotters, Domestic and Foreign Affairs Publishers, 1947.
Flanagan, Hallie, Arena, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940.

FoNER, Philip S., editor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Selections from His Writings, Inter-
national Publishers, 1947-

Forster, Arnold, A Measure of Freedom, Doubleday & Co., rg^o.

Foster, William Z., Misleaders of Labor, Union Educational League, 1927.
Pages from a Worker's Life, International Publishers, 1939-

The Twilight of World Capitalism, International Publishers, 1949-

Frankfurter, Felix, The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti, Little, Brown & Co., 1927.

Frankfurter, Marion Denman, and Jackson, Gardner, editors, The Letters of Sacco and
Vanzetti, The Viking Press, 1928.

Gaer, Joseph, The First Round, The Story of the CIO Political Action Committee, Duell,
Sloan & Pearce, 1944.

Gauvreau, Emile, What So Proudly We Hailed, Macaulay, i935-

Geddes, Donald Porter, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, A Memorial, Pocket Books, Inc., rg4S«

Gellermann, William, Martin Dies, John Day Co., i944-

GiBBS, Sir Philip, More That Must Be Told, Harper & Bros. Publishers, 1921.

Gray, Justin, with Bernstein, Victor H., The Inside Story of the Legion, Boni & Gaer,
1948.

Gunther, John, Inside U.S.A., Harper & Bros., 1947.

Hacker, Louis M., and Kendrick, Benjamin V., The United States Since 1865, Appletoar
Century-Crofts, Inc.

Hamill, John, The Strange Career of Mr. Hoover Under Two Flags, William Faro, Inc.,
1931.

Harris, Herbert, American Labor, Yale University Press, 1939.

Haywood, Harry, Negro Liberation, International Publishers, 1948.

Haywood, William D., Bill Haywood's Book, International Publishers, igzg.

Henderson, Harry B., and Shaw, Sam, War In Our Time, Doubleday, Doran & Co., Ina
1942.

Hirsch, Richard, The Soviet Spies, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc., 1947.

Hirschmann, Ira A., The Embers Still Burn, Simon and Schuster, 1949.

353

HousER, George and Rustin, Bayard, We Challenged Jim Crow!. The Fellowship of
Reconciliation, 1946. ^, r , <- -r. ui- ■« ,.i- , • ^

Howard, Sidney and Dunn, Robert, The Labor Spy, Republic Publishing Co., 1924.

HuBERMAN, Leo, The Labor Spy Racket, Modern Age Books, Inc., 1937.

Ingersoll, Ralph, Top Secret. Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1946.

Ireland, Tom, Child Labor, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1937.

Irwin, Will, Herbert Hoover. The Century Co., 1928.

JouGHiN, G. Louis, and Morgan, Edmund M., The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti, Har-
court, Brace & Co., 1948. _, „ . , , rr .

Kahn, Albert E., Treason In Congress — The Record of the Un-Amertcan Activities Com^
mitiee. Progressive Citizens of America, 1948.

Kahn, Gordon, Hollywood on Trial, Boni & Gaer, 1948,

Kennedy, Stetson, 'Southern Exposure, Doubleday & Co., 1946

KiNNAiRD, Clark, editor. The Real F.D.R., The Citadel Press, 1945.

Knox, John, The Great Mistake, National Foundation Press, Inc., 1930.

Konvitz, Milton R., The Constitution and Civil Rights, Columbia University Press, i947-

Kravche'nko, Victor, / Chose Freedom, Charles Scribners Sons, 1946.

Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Books l-o. International Publishers, 1931-1949.

■ Trends in American Capitalism, International Publishers, 1948.

Landis, Kenesaw M., editor, Segregation In Washington, National Committee on Segrega-
tion in the Nation's Capital, 1948.

Lee, Alfred McClung, and Humphrey, Norman Daymond, Race Riot, The Dryden
Press, Inc., 1943.

Leighton, Isabel, editor, The Aspirin Age, 1919-1941, Simon & Schuster, 1949.

Levinson, Edward, / Break Strikes! The Technique of Pearl L. Bergoff, Robert M.
McBride & Co., 1935.

Lilienthal, David E., TVA, Democracy on the March, Pocket Books, Inc., 1944.

LiNDLEY, Ernest K., The Roosevelt Revolution, Viking Press, 1933.

Lippmann, Walter, Interpretations, 1931-1932, The Macmillan Co., 1932.

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt, Crowded Hours, Charles Scribners Sons, I933-

Lowry, Edward G., Washington Close-Ups, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1921.

LuNDBERG, Ferdinand, America's 60 Families, The Citadel Press, 1946.

MacLeish, Archibald, Land of the Free, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1938.

McConkey, Darel, Out of Your Pocket, The Story of Cartels, Pamphlet Press, 1946.

McWiLLiAMS, Carey, Factories in the Field, Little, Brown & Co., 1939.

Prejudice, Japanese-Americans, Symbol of Racial Intolerance, Little, Brown & Co..

1944.

Race Discrimination and the Law, National Federation for Constitutional Liberties,

1945-

A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America, Little, Brown & Co., 1948.

Magil, a. B., and Stevens, Henry, The Peril of Fascism, International Publishers, 1938.

Manes, Isabel Cable, A Southerner Looks at Negro Discrimitiation, International Pub-
lishers, 1946.

Marion, George, Bases & Empire, A Chart of American Expansion, Fairplay Publishers,
1948.

The Communist Trial, Fairplay Publishers, 1949.

Matthews, J. B., Odyssey Of A Fellow Traveler, Mount Vernon Publishers, Inc., 1938.

Means, Gaston B., and Thacker, May Dixon, The Strange Death of President Harding,
Gold Label Books, Inc., 1930.

Meyer, Hershel D., Must We Perish?, New Century Publishers, i949-

MiLLiGAN, Maurice M., Missouri Waltz, Scribners, 1948.

Minor, Robert, Lynching and Frame-Up in Tennessee, New Century Publishers, 1946.

Minton, Bruce, and Stuart, John, Men Who Lead Labor, Modern Age Books, Inc., 1937.

The Fat Years and the Lean. International Publishers, 1940.

Morais, Herbert M., and Cahn, William, Gene Debs, The Story of a Fighting American,
International Publishers, 1948.

Morison, Samuel Eliot, and Commager, Henry Steele, The Growth of the American
Republic, Oxford University Press, 1942.

Morris, George, The Black Legion Rides, Workers Library Publishers, 1936.

Murray, Alan Robert, What the Constitution Says, 1938.

Murray, Florence, editor, The Negro Handbook, 1949, The Macmillan Co., 1949.

Myers, Gustavus, History of the Great American Fortunes, The Modern Library, 1936.

History of Bigotry in the United States, Random House, 1943.

Myers, William Starr, and Newton, Walter H., The Hoover Administration, Charles
Scribners Sons, 1936.

Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy,
Harper & Bros., 1940.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, "Equal Justice Under Law,"
1945. . _

Terror in Tennessee, 1946.

Groveland, U.S.A., i949-

How About A Decent School for Me?, undated.

O'Brien, James J., Hoover's Millions and How He Made Them, James J. O'Brien Pub-
lishing Co., 1932.

Ogden, August Raymond, The Dies Committee, The Catholic University of America Press,
1943-

Onkal, James, and Warner, G. A., American Communism, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1947=

Pbrkins, Frances, The Roosevelt I Knew, Viking Press, 1946.

354

Perlman, Selig, and Taft, Philip, History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932, The

Macmillan Co., 1935- , ,,, „„, ^

Phelps, Edith M., editor, Civil Liberty, H. W. Wilson Co., 1927.
Post, Louis F., The Deportations Delirium of Nineteen-Twenty, Charles H. Kerr & Co.,

1923.
The President's Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights, Simon & Schuster,

1947.
Pringle, Henry F., Theodore Roosevelt, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 193 1.
Purvis, Melvin, American Agent, Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1936.
Reimann, Guenter, Patents for Hitler, The Vanguard Press, 1942.
Rochester, Anna, Rulers of America, International Publishers, 1936.

The Nature of Capitalism, International Publishers, 1946,

Roe, Wellington, Juggernaut, American Labor in Action, J. P. Lippincott & Co., 1948.

RoGGE, O, John, Our Vanishing Civil Liberties, Gaer Associates, Inc., 1949.

Roosevelt, Franklin D., Roosevelt's Foreign Policy 1933-1941, Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1942.

Rowan, Richard Wilmer, The Pinkertons, A Detective Dynasty, Little Brown & Co., 1931.

Sasuly, Richard, / G Farben, Boni & Gaer, 1947.

Sayers, Michael, and Kahn, Albert E., Sabotage! The Secret War Against America,

Harper & Bros. Publishers, 1942.

The Plot Against the Peace, Dial Press, 1945.

— The Great Conspiracy : The Secret War Against Soviet Russia, Little, Brown & Co.,

1946.
Schmalhausen, Samuel D., editor, Behold America!, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1931.
Schriftgiesser, Karl, This Was Normalcy, Little, Brown & Co., 1948.
ScHUMAN, Frederick Lewis, American Policy Toward Russia Since 1917, International

Pjiblishers, 1928.

Europe on the Eve, The Crisis of Diplomacy, 1933-1939, Alfred A. Knopf, 1939.

Night Over Europe, The Diplomacy of Nemesis, 1939-1940, Alfred A. Knopf, 1941-

Schuyler, William M., editor, American Yearbook, 1935-1936, J. J. Little & Ives Co.,

1937.
Seldes, George, World Panorama, 1918-1935, Blue Ribbon Books, 1935.

You Can't Do That, Modern Age Books, 1938.

Witch Hunt, The Technique and Profits of Redbaiting, Modern Age Books, 1940.

The Facts Are, In J"act, Inc., 1942.

Facts and Fascism, In Fact, Inc., 1943.

The Catholic Crisis, Julian Messner Inc., 1945.

• One Thousand Americans, Boni & Gaer, 1947.

Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins, Harper & Bros., 1948.

Shugg, Roger W., and De Weerd, Major H. A., World War II, A Concise History, The

Infantry Journal, 1946.
Simpson, Kemper, Big Business, Efficiency and Fascism, Harper & Bros., 1941.
Spivak, John L., Plottiny America's Pogroms, New Masses, 1934.

America Faces the Barricades, Covici, Friede, Publishers, 1935.

Shrine of the Silver Dollar, Modern Age Books, 1940.

Secret Armies, The New Technique of Nazi Warfare, Modem Age Books, Inc., 1942.

Pattern for American Fascism, New Century Pi:blishers, 1947.

The "Save the Country" Racket, New Century Publishers, 1948.

Steel, Johannes, Will the Marshall Plan Re-Nazify Germany?, People's Forura Publishing

Co., Inc., 1948.
Steuben, John, Labor in Wartime, International Publishers, 1940.
Stout, Rex, editor, The Illustrious Dunderheads, Alfred A. Knopf, 1942.
Strong, Donald S., Organised Anti-Semitism In America, American Council on Public

Affairs, 1941.
Sullivan, Edward D., Rattling the Cup, On Chicago Crime, The Vanguard Press, 1929.
Sullivan, Mark, Our Times, Vol. VI, Charles Scribners Sons, 1935.
Surface, Frank M., and Bland, Raymond L., American Food in the World War and

Reconstruction Period, Stanford University Press, 1931.
Sward, Keith, The Legend of Henry Ford, Rinehart & Co., Inc., 1948.
Trachtenberg, Alexander, editor, The American Labor Yearbook 1919-1920, The Rand

School of Social Science, 1920.
United Public Workers of America, CIO, The Story of Discrimination in Government,

undated.
Vorse, Mary Heaton, Labor's New Millions, Modern Age Books, Inc., 1938.
Walker, Stanley, The Night Club Era, Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1933.
Ward, Estolv E., Harry Bridges on Trial, Modern Age Books, 1940.
Weatherwax, John M., Peace Key, Bryant Foundation, 1946.
Weaver, Robert C, Hemmed In, American Council on Race Relations, 1945.
Werner, Max, Attack Can Win in '4^, Soviet Russia Today, 1943.
Werner, M. R., Privileged Characters, Robert M. McBride & Co., 1935.
Westchester Committee for a Fair Inquiry Into the Peekskill Violence, Eyewitness: Peek-
skill U.S.A., 1949.
Whipple, Leon, The Story of Civil Liberties in the United States, Vanguard Press, 1927.
White, William Allen, A Puritan In Babylon, Macmillan Co., 1938.
Willkie, Wendell L., One World, Simon and Schuster, 1943.

VVooD, Clement, Herbert Clark Hoover: An American Tragedy, Michael Swain, 193:2.
Woodward, W. E., A New American History, Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1938.
Yellen, Samuel, American Labor Struggles, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936.

355

INDEX

AF of L See Federation of Labor

ARA See American Relief Administration

Abbott, W. A., 179-81

Abercrombie, John W., 16, 25

Abrams, F. W., 162

Acheson, Dean, 246, 247 fn.

Adam Opel A. G., 226

Adamic, Louis, 85

Adams, Charles F., gz

Adams, Samuel Hopkins, 70

Addams, Jane, 3 1

Adjusted Service Certificate, 112 fn.

Adonis, Joe, 173

Advisory Commission on Universal Train-
ing, 300

Agents Provocateurs: Bonus marchers,
114; Justice Department, 11, 20, 28;
strikebreaking, 141

Akron, Ohio, 165-66

Alabama: anti-labor violence, 155; Ne-
groes, 309

Alaska, 112, 150

Albert, Dr. Heinrich, 224 fn.

Albert & Westrick (law firm), 223-24

Aldrich, Winthrop W., 306

Alien Act (1917), 15-16

Alien Property Custodian, 66-67, 7^

Alien Registration Act (1940), 236, 333

Aliens, 31, z^. See also Deportation

Allen, Frederick Lewis, quoted on: anti-
Communist drive, 34-35 ; Bolshevik
bomb plots, 14 fn.; Bolshevism, 10, 29;
Foster, William Z., 38 /n.; Harding's
death, 70; New Deal, 126

Allen, George E., 253-54

Allen, Robert S., 104-05

Allied Reparations Commission (W. W.
II), Sifn., 254

Allied troops (W.W.I.) , attempt to over-
throw Soviet government, 5, 6 fn.

Alsop, Joseph and Stewart, 298

Aluminvmi Corporation of America. 141.
228

"America First" (slogan), 48

America First Committee, 219, 222

America First Party, 48 fn.

American Brass Company, strike (19 19),
36

American Civil Liberties Union, 31 fn.,
236, 281

American Civil Liberties Union Report
(1936) quoted, 132

American Continental Congress for Peace,
Mexico City, 305

American dictator, concept and plan for,
196-204

356

American Federation of Labor : CIO,
129; labor spies, 144; membership, 8,
. 38 .

American foreign policy. See Foreign
policy

American Hawaiian Steamship Co., 146,
147

American Heritage Foundation, 306-07

American Legion, 197-202, 285-87

American Liberty League, 193-95, 201-03

American Metals Company, 66-67, 7i fn.,
76

American Nationalist Confederation, 211

American people: League of Nations, 10;
treason against, xi-350

American Red Cross Mission, 42

American Relief Administration, 5

American Reparations Commission, 256

American Smelting and Refining Com-
pany, 134

American Sponsoring Committee of the
World Congress of Fighters for Peace,
30s

American Telephone and Telegraph Co.,

^ 163, 193

Anacostia Flats, Washington, D. C, 114-
17

Anderson, Mrs. Emily, 285 fn.

Anderson, George, 17

Anderson, Harry W., 162, 166

Anderson, Rudolph, 209

Andrews, Bert, 18 fn., 276-77

Anguilla Prison, Brunswick, Georgia, 32Y

Ansonia, Conn., strike (1919), 36

Anti-labor violence, 155-56. See also Ford
Motor Company ; Palmer raids ; Strike-
breaking

Anti-radical raids. See Palmer Raids ; Un-
American Activities Committee

Anti-Semitism : America First Committee,
220 ; American Immigration Conference
Board, 213; Black Legion, 205; Com-
munism, 215 ; Ford, Henry, 32, 170,
184 ; National Conference of Clergymen
and Laymen, 211 ; Sentinels of the Re-
public, 196; Un-American Activities
Committee, 260

Anti-Soviet propaganda, 237-38, 330-32

Appeal to the World, An (document), 309;

Aptheker, Dr. Herbert, 322 fn.

Argentina, United Nations admission, 244

Arizona, 279

Arkansas: anti-labor violence, 155; Ku
KJux Klan, 31 fn.; Negroes, 309 ; Pro-
gressive Party, 294 ; race riots (1919), 9

Armament program, 233, 304-05

Armed services : Communists, 237 ; Ger«-
many, 245 ; Negroes, 208

Armistice (1918), 3, 6fH., 7
Armstrong, Leon, 179
Armstrong, Louis V., 109
Arnold, Thurmond, 227-28
Ascher, Rhoda Gaye, 294-95
Ashkenes, Daniel D., 293
Atheam, Dr. Clarence R., 293
Atlanta, Georgia, ^22
Atlantic Pact. See North Atlantic Pact
Atlas Powder Company, 146
Atomic bomb, 302-03
Au Sable Forks, New York, 293
Augusta, Georgia : Negroes, 325 ; Pro-
gressive Party, 294-95
Ausland-OrganisationderN.S.D.A.P., 271
Avery, Paul, 209
Avery, Sewell L., 193
Aviation industry, 231

BIS See Bank for International Settle-
ment

Baer, George. 179-80

Bailey, Barker H., 145

Baker, Lawrence, 144

Baker, Newton D., 92

Baldwin, C. B., 290, 294

Baldwin, R. W., 132

Baldwin, Roger N., 31 fn., 204, 312 fn.

Baldwin Locomotive Works, 134

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 134

Bank of International Settlements, Basle,
Switzerland, 226-27

Bankruptcies, 83

Banks and banking : "boom" years, 92-
93; depression, 106-07, no; foreign
securities, 85, 88 ; predatory operations
(1920's), 88-89 ; preferred lists, 91-92 ;
robberies, 127; Roosevelt, F. D., 122,
124, 127 ; stocks and bonds, 89-93. ^^^
also Wall Street and the names of indi-
vidual banks

Banta, Edwin Perry, 214

Baron, John B.. 136

Barr, William H., quoted, 8

Barrows, Arthur, 251

Barsky, Dr. Edward K., 262

Barton, Bruce, quoted, 82-83

Baruch, Bernard M., 92

Batt, William L., 233

Bausch and Lomb, 228-29

Bayonne, New Jersey, 139

Beard, Charles and Mary, quoted, 47-48,
130

Beech, Gould, 283

Bendix Aviation Corp., 146, 229

Bennett, Harry Herbert, 170-89, 208

Bennett, Philip, 219

Benson, Elmer A., 210, 290-91, 303

Bentley, Elizabeth, 299

Berardelli, Alessandro, 94, 95

Berger, Victor, 30

Bergery, Gaston, 184

Bergoff, Pearl L., 132-40

Berkeley Police Department, 150-51

Berle, Adolph, 124

Bernal, J. D., 305

Bernecker, Dr. Edward, 279

Bessie, Alvah, 264

Bethlehem Steel Co., 141, 146

Bevill, "Buster," 177, 179-80

Biedenkapp, Fred, 98

Bielak, John, 207, 208 fn.

Big Business. See Business

Bingay, Malcolm M., quoted, 172

Birmingham, Alabama, 153-54, 294

Bishop, Andrew A., 283

Bissel, Clayton, 237

Black, James, 55

Black Belts, 310-11. See also Chicago;
Harlem ; Names of individual Southern
cities and states

Black Legion (society), 166, 204-211

Blackmer, Henry, 72 fn., 72

Blaine, Eli, 324-25

Blair, Julius, 316

Blanc, John Victor, 336

Blankenhorn, Heber, 142

Bliven, Bruce, 312 fn.

Bloody Gang, Detroit, 173

"Bloody Thursday," 1 15-16

Bloom, Edgar S.. 162

Bolshevism : "atrocities," 29 ; bomb plots,
13-14 ; Capone, Al, quoted, 85 ; Clemen-
ceau, quoted, 5 ; fear of, 24 ; Hoover,
Herbert, quoted 5-6 ; London, Meyer,
quoted, 24 ; Paris Peace Conference, 5 ;
"plots" to overthrow U. S. government,
13; WWI (post), fear of, 10-23, See
also Communism ; Palmer raids

Boraar, Lynn, 317, 318

Bombay, India, Roosevelt's death, 240

Bombs and bombings : Bolshevik plots, 13-
14 ; commercial, 84

Bone, Homer T., 228

Bonus Marchers, 1 12-17

Bootlegging : Coolidge regime, 84 ; Hard-
ing regime, 49, 51, 64-65 ; Prohibition
repeal, 127

Borah, William Edgar, quoted, 6 fn.

Borak, Harry, 139

Borden Milk Co., 141

Boston, Mass. : Harding, W. G., speech,
32 ; Progressive Party, 294 ; Red raids
(1920's), 17, 25, 32; Wallace support-
ers, 293

Bottcher, Herman J., 237 fn.

Boulier, Abbe Jean, 305

Boy-Ed, Captain Karl, 63

"Brain Trust," 124

Brandages, Frank, 43

Brewster, Owen, 255

Bridgeport, Conn., 20-21

Bridges, Harry R., 129 /m., 151-52, 282

Bridges, Henry Styles, 301

Britton, Nan, 44, 50, 70

Brookhart, Smith, 75

Brookings Institute, 83 fn.

Brooks, Carl A., 173 fn.

Brown, E. F., 127

Brown, I. C, 310

Brown, William, 323

Bruce, James, 87

Brucker, Wilbur M., 206

Brunet, Julio, 184

B-36 bombers, 250

Budenz, Louis F., 335, 338-39

357

Bttford (ship), 2-3, 15

Bugas, John S., 185

Bukowetsky, Alexander, 22-23

Bullitt, William C, quoted, 261

Bunting, Earl, 2S0

Burch, Frank B., 220

Burke, Frank, lo-i i

Burke, Robert J., 289-90

Burleson, Albert Sidney, 13

Burlington, N. C, 295

Burns, William J., 63, 68, 73-74, 75 fn.

Business : armament contracts, 304 ;
"boom" years, 92-93 ; business-as-usual
policy, 229, 234 ; Coolidge era, 77-93 ;
Far East, 246 ; Harding era, 47-48, 58 ;
Hoover era, 103-05 ; labor espionage,
141-57; New Deal, 121, 126, 129-30,
163, 164; Red menace, 34-36; strike-
breaking, 132-40 ; Truman era, 248-49 ;
World War H, 222-ZA- See also Cartels

Butler, Nicholas Murray, 43, 47

Butler, Smedley Darlington, 196-204
Butler System of Industrial Survey, 144

Byrnes, James F. : Communists in film in-
dustry, 265 ; Dulles, John Foster, 222 ;
Negroes, quoted, 10, 306 ; postwar pol-
icy, 245-46

CIO See Congress of Industrial Organiza-
tions

Cahn, William, 35

Cahn- Walter Co., 138 /n.

Calhoun, Louisiana, 323

Calhoun Falls, South Carolina, 325

California: anti-labor violence, 148, 156;
civil liberties, 283 ; naval oil reserves,
59-63 ; Negroes, 309 ; strikebreaking,
149-50 ; tidelands oil reserves, fn., 255-
56 ; Wallace support, 291. See also San
Francisco

Camden, New Jersey, 113

Cameron, William J., 170

Campbell Soup Co., 141

Cannon, Clarence, 302

Capitalism, 8-9, 83

Capone, Al, 85

Carey, Philip, 214

Carlson, Evans F., quoted, 328

Carnegie Steel Co., 141, 146

Carpenter, Don, 287

Cartels : Dulles, John Foster, 222 ; Ford,
Henry, 169 ; German, 227-2g, 234, 245 ;
Harding administration, 48-49 ; World
War II, 22,2, 234

Carter, D. C., 325

Carter, Sims, quoted, 226

Castle, William R., 221

Catholic Church : anti-Communist cru-
sade, 330; KKK, 31; Washington, D.
C, 312-13

Caux, Len de, quoted, 167

Cecil, John, 213

Central Intelligence Agency Act, 301

Chafee, Zechariah, Jr., 28, 269, 333, 336

Chambers, Whittaker, 299-300

Chambrun, Count Rene de, 222

Chaplin, Charlie, z^

358

Charleston, South Carolina, 288-89

Charlotte, N. C, 296

Chase, Stuart, quoted, 82

Chase National Bank, 87-88, 90, 194

Chase Securities Corporation, 87, go

Cheney, Mildred, 289

Chenot, Judge E., 210

Cherep - Spirodovitch, Major-Gentral
Count Z., 170

Chester, Colby M., 193

Chevrolet Motor Co., 146

Cheyenne, Wyoming, 113 /n.

Chiang Kai-shek, Generalissimo, 246^
247 fn.

Chicago, Illinois: Bonus Marchers, 113;
depression, 109; German-American
Bund, 192; Negroes, 310, 311; public
and private meetings, raids on, 287 ;
race riots (1919), 9; Republican Na-
tional Convention (1920), 42-44, 46;
Special Conference Committee, 163. See
also Republic Steel plant

Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad Co.,
146

Chicago Tribune, 146

Chilean bond issue, 88

China : civil war, 247 ; revolution, 243,.
301 ; U. S. interference, 246-47

Ching, Cyrus S., 162, 165

Chosen, Leonard, 293

Christian Front, 216

Christian Science Monitor, 346

Chrysler Corp., 141, 157

Churchill, Winston : Bolshevism, menace
of, 244 ; Fulton, Mo., speech, 244 ;
Paris Peace Conference, 4 ; Russia, in-
tervention in, quoted, 6 fn. ; Soviet war
effort, 238

Ciano, Count Galeazzo, 218

Civil liberties, 37, 267-77, 281-85

Civil Liberties Union, 204

Civil Rights Congress, 342

Clark, D. Worth, 219

Clark, Robert Sterling, 199, 200, 204

Qark, Tom C. (Attorney General) : anti-
Communist menace, 330 ; arrests, 282 ;
Freedom Train, 306 ; loyalty order, 270-
71 ; Nuremburg trials information, 257,
258, 259 ; subversive lists, 270-71, 342 ;
Un-American Activities Committee, 265

Clemenceau, Georges, 4-5

Clemm, Werner C. von, 220

Cleveland, Ohio: Bonus Marchers,
11$ fn.; Progressive Party, 294; Spe-
cial Conference Committee, 163

Closed shop, 8, 279, 280

Coal industry, strike (1919), 9

Cochran, John J., 215

Cochran, Thomas, 80

Coffee, John M., 223

Cohen, Joseph, 136

Coke, Sir Edward, quoted, 223

Coleman, Silas, 208-09

Colescott, James, 217

Collective bargaining, 128, 129, 131, 144-
45

Colorado: Ku Klux Klan, 31; Negroes,

309

Columbia, Tennessee, 315-20

Columbus, Ohio, 287-88

Commerce Department, 165

Committee for Industrial Organization,
129

Communist Manifesto, 13, 329

Communist party : China, 247 fn.; Colum-
bus, Ohio, 287-8S ; Depression, 1 1 1-12 ;
Fascism, 191 ; fear of, 328-48; forma-
tion, II fn.; Foster, William Z., gfn.;
KKK, 31 ; LaFollette, Senator, 78 /w.;
loyalty tests, 271 fn.; National Com-
mittee, trial (1949), 332-42 ; New York
state, 289-90 ; Palmer raids, see that
heading ; political opposition, 37 ; raids,
10-23, 34, 281 ; strength (c. 1919), 34;
Un-American Activities Committee,
260, 261 ; World War II, 236-37

Company unions, 143-44, 185

Concentration camps, 229, 242-43

Conference for Progressive Political Ac-
tion, 78

Congress (U. S.), rgth, 260; 80th, 280;
alien and sedition bills, 236 ; anti-labor
bills, 279; fifth column activities, 211-
17, 219; Un-American Activities Com-
mittee, 260

Congress of Industrial Organizations :
AF of L, 129; formation, 129; labor
spies, 144; membership, 152, 167; op-
position methods, 152-54; Republic
Steel, 157-61 ; Rubber Workers Union,
is6.See also United Automobile Work-
ers Union

Congressional Record, 219, 233

Connally, Tom, 257 fn.

Consolidated Gas Co. of New York, 141

Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp., 250
fn.,2S4

Constitutional Educational League, 166

Continental Trading Company, 72-73 fn.

Coolidge, Calvin, and his administration,
77-102; Daugherty, H. M., 74, 79 fn.;
foreign policy, 80-81 ; Harding's death,
69 ; Republican National Convention
(1928), 103 ; vice-presidency, 44; Wall
Street, 104

Cooper, Courtney Ryley, quoted, 127

Copland, Aaron, 305

Coplon, Judith, 300 fn.

Corporations Auxiliary Company, 141-44,
214

Coughlin, Father Charles E., 184, 185, 216

Couzens, James, 22

Cowdrick, Edward S., 161-67

Cox, Charles F., 156

Cox, James M., 46 fn.

Craige, John, 136-37

Crain, Thomas, 84

Cramer, Anthony, 335 fn.

Cramer, Charles F., 56, 71

Crawford, Ike, 325

Credit buying. See Installment buying

Crime, 84, 127. See also Bootlegging;
Gangsters ; Prostitution

Crime Laboratory, 128 fn.

Criminal syndicalist laws, 30

Crockett, George, 335

Croix de Feu movement, 200

Crooker, George U., 97

Crow, William J,, 332

Crowley, Leo T., 233

Crowther, Samuel : business conditions,

quoted, 83 ; Ford, Henry, quoted, 168
Crusaders, 166
Cuba : bond issue, 87-88 ; strikebreaking,

147
Cultural and Scientific Conference for

World Peace, New York City, 305
Cummings, Homer S., 210
Cummings, William, 336
Cunningham, James D., 230
Curran, Joseph, 288-89
Curtis Publishing Co., 141

Daily Worker, 335

Dallas, Texas, Ford assembly plant, 177-

Daniell, Raymond, 245

Darre, R. Walter, quoted, 190

Daugherty, Harry Micajah : Attorney
General, 46, 51, 63-68, 71, 74, 76; Re-
publican National Convention (1920),
44-48; Schriftgeisser, Karl, quoted, 76

Davidson, Bill, 282

Davidson, Joe, 290

Davies, Elmer D., 320

Davies, Ralph K., 233

Davis, Benjamin J., 289, 333

Davis, Charles G., 293

Davis, Donald D., 233

Davis, Elmer, 284

Davis, Harvey, 208

Davis, John R., 152 /n.

Davis, John W., 77, 193, 202

Dawes, Charles G., 81 fn.

Dawes Plan (1924), 81 fn., 222

Day, Stephen A., 218-20

De Lacey, Hugh, 246-47

De Louis, Baron, 178-79

Dean, Dayton, 206-08

Dearborn, Michigan : fascist groups, 185 ;
Ford River Rouge plant, 168-70, 172-
76, 183-89 ; union leaflet distribution,
176 ; vice ring, 173 fn.

Dearborn Independent, 31-32

Deatherage, George, 211

Debs, Eugene V., 35

Declaration of Independence, quoted, 306

Deer Island, 17, 22,, 25

Defense program (U. S.), 230, 231, 2^2

Delaware, 309

Democracy, maintenance of, xii, 234, 349-

50
Democratic Convention (1920), 46 /«.
Democratic Convention (1924), 77-78
Democratic National Convention (1944),

252
Dempsey, John J., 215
Denby, Edwin N., 60
Denham, Robert, 182
Dennett, Prescott, 219
Dennis, Eugene, 262 fn., 333, 341
Denny, Ludwell, quoted, 82

359

Denton, C. Hayes, 316
Deportation: Alien Act (1917), 15-16;
Bridges, Harry, fn. 151-52; Soviet
agents (1919), 2-3. 25, 38
Depression (Great) : causes, 39, 92-93,

349; Hoover, H. C, 105-17
Detroit, Mich.: Black Legion, 205-10 ;
fascist groups, 185; murders, 208-09;
Negroes, 313, 325; Progressive Party,
294 ; public and private meetings, raids
on, 287 ; Red raids, 14, 22 ; strikebreak-
ing equipment, 149; Wallace support,
293
Deutsch, Albert, 262 fn.
Dewey, Thomas E.. 249, 296, 344
Diamond Match Company, 141
Dickinson, Jacob, 317
Dickstein, Samuel, 216
Dictatorship, economic and political, 196
Dies, Martin, 212-13, 216 217 fn., 260,

265
Dilling, Elizabeth, 148-49
Dillon. Read & Company, 81, 249, 250 /«.
Diphenylaminechlorarsine (DM), 148
Discrimination : employment, 308 ; Negro,

314-15. See also Segregation
Displaced persons, 243
District of Columbia, See Washington,

D. C.
Dixie Greyhound Lines, 141
Dixon, Thomas, 45
Dmytryk, Edward, 263 fn.
Doheny, Edward L. : indictment, 73 ; naval
oil reserves, 60-62, 72-74 ; Republican
National Convention, 42
Doheny, Edward L., Jr., 60, 71 fn., 73
Donovan, William J., fn. 79-80
"Don't Starve — Fight!" (slogan), 112
Dope peddling, 84
Douglas, Lewis W., 250
Downes, Olin. 305
Doyle, Charles A., 282
Doyle, William, 197-99
Draper, William P., 81
Draper. William H., 251
Dreiser, Theodore : Depression, quoted,

108; New Deal, quoted, 131
Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt, 9,

291 fn., 305
du Pont, Irenee, 193, 202
du Pont, Lammot, 129, 162, 202, 230
du Pont, Pierre S., 193, 195 fn., 202
Duckstein, Mrs. W. O., 75 fn.
Duggan, Laurence, 285 fn.
Dulles, Allen, 227

Dulles, John Foster : appeasement, ex-
ponent of, 222 ; Dawes and Young
plans, 81 fn. ; human rights, 325 ; West-
rick, Dr. Gerhardt, quoted, 22$
Dworshak, Henry, 219

Earle, George H., quoted, 210-11

Earle, Willie. 320

Earle, Ark., 155

East St. Louis, Illinois, 11^ fn.

Eaton, J. Frank, 289

Education, 308, 309, 314 fn.

Eggleston, George T., 221 fn.

Eichelberger, Robert L., 237 fn.

Einstein, Albert, 100, 305

Eisenhower, Dwight, 236, 264

Eisler, Gerhart, 299

Elk Hills, oil reserve, 60-62, 67, 72

Ellis, Wade H., 84

Ellis Island, 2, 23

Eluard, Paul, 305

Emanuel, Victor, 254

Empey, Arthur Guy, quoted, 19

Employment discrimination, 308

Enright, Richard E., quoted, 84

Epps, Reverend A. C, 322

Erie Railroad, 134

Espionage. See Labor espionage

European Recovery Program, fn 300-01

Evansville, Indiana, 294

Everhart, M. T., 61

Excess Profits Tax (1917), 48

Executive Order 9835, 267-77

FBI See Federal Bureau of Investigation

Faber, Eberhard, 225

Fadayeev, Alexander, 305

"Fair Deal," 296-97

Fair Employment Practice Committee, 236

Fall, Albert Bacon : Harding Cabinet, 46 ;
indictment, 73 ; naval oil reserves, 60-
63, 72-74; resignation, 62-63, 67;
Schriftgeisser, Karl, quoted, 76 ; Wil-
son, Woodrow, 7

Families, incomes (1929), fn. 83-84

Farmer Labor Party, 78

Fascism, 190-222; Argentina, 244; con-
temporary, 284 ; economic, 234 ; Ford
Motor Company, 184; organizations,
166, 190-91, 270-71 ; Peekskill, N. Y,,
346; postwar reconversion, 250-60;
Roosevelt, F. D., definition, 234 ; trea-
son against the people, xi, 349 ; World
War II, 243

Fear : Roosevelt era, 285 ; Truman era,
284, 287

Federal Budget, 84

Federal Bureau of Investigation : anti-
Communist pronouncements, 330 ; Bug-
as, John S., 185 ; fascist fifth columnists,
191, 192/M. ; formation, 10 fn. ; loyalty
order, 276 ; Roosevelt (F. D.) adminis-
tration, 127 ; subversive activities, 348 ;
Un-American Activities Committee,
265. See also J. Edgar Hoover

Federal Laboratories, Inc., 138 fn., 145-

Federal Sedition Act, 236

Felder, Thomas B., 71

"Fighting Quaker." See Palmer, A. Mif^

chell
"Fireside Chats," 125, 131
Firestone Tire and Rubber Co., 141
Fish, Hamilton, 112 fn., 218-20
Fisher Body factory, Lansing, Michigan,

144
Fiske, CHiarles B., quoted, 158-59
Fitzgerald, Albert J., 291 fn.
Flanders Hall. Inc., 217, 218
Fleming, William, 315-16

360

Flint, Michigan, 144

Florida : Negroes, 309 ; Progressive Party,

294

"Flying saucers," 297-98

Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 98

Flynn, William James, 12

Food costs, 279

Forbes. Charles R., 53-58, 67, 7^

Ford, Edsel, 225

Ford, Henry : America First Committee
220 ; anti-semitism, 32, 184-85 ; Cool-
idge, Calvin, quoted, 78 ; Nazis, support
of, 184; Westrick, Dr. Gerhardt, 225

Ford Detective Service, 170

Ford Motor Company, 167, 168-89; Al-
bert, Dr. Heinrich, 224 -fn. criminals
in employ of, 174-76 ; Dallas plant, 177-
83 ; employees, 169 ; income, 169 ; mur-
ders associated with, 207 ; National
Labor Relations Board, 170, 181-83,
187-88; strike, 188-89

Foreign policy. See Coolidge ; Harding;
Roosevelt ; Truman

Foreign securities, 85, 88

Forrestal, James V. : atomic warfare, 303 ;
defense program, 22,2 ; Dillon, Read &
Co., 22,2, fn. 249-50; Secretary of the
Navy, 301; suicide, 328-29; Truman
administration, 249, 301

Fort Wayne army barracks, 22

Fosdick, Harry Emerson, 312 /n.

Foster, Robert J.. 142

Foster, William Z., 9, 38, 78 fn., 333

Foster Industrial and Detective Bureau,
142

France, unemployment, 300

Francqui, Emile, 105 fn.

Frankensteen, Richard, 176

Frankfurter, Felix : denounced as a 'Red',
31; Justice Department, 27-28; Sacco
and Vanzetti case, quoted, 93-95, 97, 99

Franking privilege, misuse of, 219

Frazer, Joseph W., 300

Freedom Train project, 306-07

French, Paul Comly, 201-03

"Frenchy" Joe, 136-37

Frick (H. C.) Coal & Coke Co., 141

Friends of New Germany, 184

Frigidaire Corp., 141

Fruehauf Trailer Co., 143

Fuller, Allan T., 97, loi

Funk, Walther, 227

Gallup poll, 298-300

Galsworthy, John, 100

Gambling, 84

Gangsters and racketeers, 84-85. See also

Bootlegging
Gary, Elbert Henry : labor unions, quoted,

8 ; Republican National Convention

(1920), 42
Gas-chamber electrical equipment, 229
Gates, John, 333, 340
Gauvreau, Emile, 1 17-18
General Electric Co., 8i, 163
General Motors : American Liberty

League, 193-94; cartels, 229; Federal

Laboratories, Inc., 146 ; Hitler regime,

support of, 226; labor espionage, 141,
142, 144 ; strike (1936), 157 ; war agen-
cies, 232 ; Westrick, Gerhardt, 225

George, Walter F., 311

Georgia: Ku Klux Klan, 31; Negroes,
309, 321-25

Germ an- American Bund, 184, 191, 192 fn,,
216

Germany: American zone, 245; British
zone, 245 ; postwar, 245-46 ; rearma-
ment, 81 ; unemployment, 301. See also
Hitler ; Nazi regime

Gernaey, William T., 214

Gerould, Katherine Fullerton, quoted, 32

Gibbs, Sir Philip, quoted, 4

Gifford, Walter S., 162, 233

Gilbert, Henry, 323

Girdler, Tom, 157

Gladstein, Richard, 339

Glassford, Pelham, 113, 114, 115

Goebbels, Paul Joseph, 221

Gold, Michael quoted, 100-01

Gold standard, 198, 199, 200

Golden, James, 108

Goldman, Robert, 276

Goodridge, Carlos E., 96

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., 146, 156,
163, 165-66, 194, 229

Gorchoff, George, 275-?^

Gordon, William, 319

Gorer, Geoffrey, 330

Government employees : fear, 284 ; Ne-
groes 314-15. See also Loyalty order

Grace, Eugene G., 162

Graham, Wallace H., 253

Grant, Robert, loi fn.

Great Britain : American influence, 82 ;
oil interests, 248 ; Roosevelt's death,
240 ; United Nations, 244-45

Greece, loan to, 247-48

Green, Gilbert, 333, 340

Greenville, South Carolina, 320

Grieg, George, 149

Griffin, W. A., 165

Griswold, Ernest N., 269

Gubitchev, Valentin, 300 fn.

Guempelheim, Leonard, 178-79

Gumlach, E. T., 25

Gutride, Mrs. Minnie, 285 fn.

Hacker, Louis M., quoted, 121

Hadamowski, Eugen, 342

Hall, Gus, 333, 340

Halpern, Alvin L, 214

Halsey, Stewart & Company, 91

Hamilton, Georgia, 323

Hannegan, Robert, 255

Harasiades, Peter, 282

Hard, Mrs. William, quoted, 27

Harding, Florence (Mrs. Warren Gamal-
iel), 50, 65, 70, 71 /«•

Harding, Warren Gamaliel, and his admin-
istration, 49-76 ; Bible, 49 ; Boston
speech, 32 ; Cabinet, 46-47 ; carousals,
50-52; daughter, 44, 50 ; death, 69-71 ;
Debs, Eugene V., 35 fn.; domestic pol-
icy, 47-48 ; Forbes, Charles R., 53*58 ;
foreign policy, 48-49 ; H-street rendez-

361

Harding, Warren Gamaliel (cont.)

vous party, 51 ; loot, 58 ; mistress, 50;
Negro blood, 43 ; nomination for presi-
dency, 43-46 ; personal qualities and ap-
pearance, 44-45, 69 ; poker, 53 ; Sacco-
Vanzetti case, 93 ; Senate speeches, 45 ;
sense of inadequacy, 47 ; Teapot Dome,
59-60

Hardj'man, Hugh, 286-87

Hargrave, Thomas H., 251

Harlem, population density, 310

Harriman, W, Averell, 81 fn., 250

Harris, Herbert, quoted, 194

Harris, James, 295

Harris, Norval, 336

Harris, Sam, 256-57

Harrison, William H., 232

Hart, Edward J., 260 fn.

Hartford, Conn., jail, 21

Hartrich, Edwin, 246

Harvard Law School, 27-28

Harvey, George Brinton McClellan, 43

Harwood, P. B., 303 fn.

Hasbrouck, Jan, 281

Hashmall, Frank, 287-88

Hauck, Siegfried, 218

Havana- American Steamship Line, 134

Hays, Arthur Garfield, 334

Hays, Will, 43, 46

Haywood, Harry, quoted, 307-08

Health, 279

Hellman, Lillian, 305

Henderson Charles B., 223

Henderson, Ralph, 248

Herald (publication), 220, 221 fn.

Herbert, Thomas J., 288

Hickey, Edward ]., 21

Hill, Arthur M., 250

Hill, George, 218-19

Hill, "Sailor" Barto, 177

Himmler, Heinrich, J. Edgar Hoover com-
pared with, 19

Hindenburg, Paul von, 121

Hiss. Alger, 299-300 fn.

Hitchcock, Gilbert Monell, 7

Hitler, Adolf : Act for the Organization
of National Labor, 166 ; American sup-
port, 81, 114 fn., 349 ; Ford, Henry 184 ;
German American Bund, 192 ; L G.,
Farben, 220, 228, 229 ; start, 287 ; su-
preme power seizure, 121

Hoffman, Clare E., 219, 220

Holbrook, Northrop, 162

Holifield, Chet, 287

Holland-American Line, 134

Hollywood: anti-Communist films, 330-
31; fear, 284; Communism, 264-65;
subversive activities, 262-64

Holt, Rush D., 218, 219

Hoover, Herbert Clark, and his adminis-
tration, 103-17 ; America First Commit-
tee, 221; A. R. A., 104, 105 /n.; Bol-
shevism, quoted, 5, 6 fn.; Bonus March-
ers, 1 1 3-1 7 ; business, 80 ; Butler, Smed-
ley, court martial, 197 ; Dawes and
Young plans, Si fn. ; depression, 109-
II ; Director of the U. S. Food Admin-
istration, 105/M.; Fall, Albert B.,

362

quoted, 62-63 ; food cost increase, 279 ;
Harding Cabinet, 46 ; inaugural ad-
dress, quoted, 105 ; income, 104; Lend-
lease, 221

Hoover, Irwin H. ("Ike"), 103

Hoover, John Edgar : anti-radical opera-
tions, 36, 79-80 /n.; Communism, 79-
80 fn. ; Coolidge regime, 79 - 80 fn.;
Harding regime, 75 ; Martens, L. C.
A.K., deportation, 30 fn. ; national fame,
127 ; Palmer "anti radical" raids, 1 1-12,
13, 16, 18, 19; "proscribed lists," 19;
publicity hound, 127-28 ; Sacco and
Vanzetti case, 94; spies, 281-82; sub-
versive activities, 330, 348 ; Un-Ameri-
can Activities Committee, 265

"Hoovervilles," 109

Hopkins, Harry L., 125, 221

Hospitals, 309

Houghton, Dr. Harris, 170

House, Edward Mandell, quoted, 4

Housing shortage, 279

Houston, Charles H., 334

Howard, Charles P., 291 fn.

Howley, Frank, 331

H-Street House (No. 1509), Washington,
D.C., 51-52

Huberman, Leo, 142

Hughes, Charles Evans, quoted, 278

Hull, Cordell, 238

Human relationships, science of, 239

Hummel, Edward, 294

Hunger, Harry Hopkins, quoted, 125

Hunger Marches, 111-17

Hunt, James V., 252

Hunt, R. C, 320

Hurkett, Oliver, 209

Hurley, Patrick J., 113

Husbands, Sam, H., 233

I G Farbenindustrie,. 220, 228, 229, 245,
250

IWW See Industrial Workers of the
World

Ickes, Harold L. : "Brain Trust," 124;
Clark, Tom, quoted, 257 ; fascism,
quoted, 192-93 ; Pauley, Ed, 255-56

Idaho, 309

Illinois: Black Legion, 166; Progressive
party, 294

Immigration Bureau, 16

Incomes, Coolidge era, 83 fn.

Indiana: Black Legion, 166, 204; Ku Klux
Klan, 31 ; murder of an alien, 31 ; Ne-
groes, 309

Industrial Workers of the World, 35 fn.

Ingalls, Laura, 220

Ingram. Rosa Lee, 324

Innes, Peter J., 152 fn, 214

Installment buying, 82

Institute of Economic Research, 91

Insull, Samuel. 91

Interborough Rapid Transit of New York
City, 134

Interchurch World Movement Commis-
sion of Inquiry, 8, 37

Inter-Continental Defense Plan to Con-
gress, 300

Interior Department (U. S.), naval oil
reserves, 59-63

International Harvester Company, 163

International Longshoremen's and Ware-
housemen's Union, 151

International Shoe Co.. 141

Interstate Commerce Commission, 80

Investment banking, 88

"Iron curtain," 242

Isaacson, Leo, 291

Isolationism, 48, 220-22

Italy, 81, 301. See also Mussolini

Janney, Russell, 340-41

Japan, 121, 246

Jeffers, William M., 233

Jesus, the founder of modern business,

82-83
Jews : Black Legion, 205 ; Communists,

261 ; Harding era, attitude toward, 54;
KKK, 31 ; Lindbergh, Charles, 220.
See also Anti-Semitism

"Jim Crowism," 308-10, 314

Johnson, Albert, 25

Johnson, E. C, 219

Johnson, Hiram, 87

Johnson, Hugh S., 124

Johnson, James, 319

Johnson, Louis, 202, 250 fn., 302

Johnson, Versie, 323

Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee,

262 fn.

Jones, Claudia, 282

Jones, Lloyd Curtis, ^^Z

Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp., 146

Jonkman, Bartel, 219

Josephson, Leon, 262 fn.

Joughin, G. Louis, 96, loi

Justice Department (U.S.) : agents-pro-
vocateurs, II, 20, 28; anti-Communist
pronouncements, 330 ; Black Legion,
209-10; Bolshevik suspects, 38;
Bridges, Harry, 152, 282; Bureau of
Investigation, 10 ; cartel agreements,
228 ; Clark, Tom C., 257 ; "communist"
and "radical aliens" raids, 10-23 ; fas-
cist fifth columnists, 185, 191, 192 /n.;
foreign-born, attacks on, 282 ; labor
movement, campaign against, 38 ; Ne-
groes, 37, 315 ; Palmer, 24-29, 36, 282 ;
Rogge, O. John, 256-60 ; Sacco and
Vanzetti case, 94 ; Soviet agents, depor-
tation (1919), z-'z ; Stone, H. F., 79 fn.;
strikes, 36 ; Un-American Activities
Committee, 265

KKK. See Ku Klux Klan
Kane, Francis Fisher, 28, 286
Kansas, 31 fn.
Katz, Milton, 269
Katzmann, Frederick G., 95, 96
Keenan, Duran, 320
Keitel, Wilhelm, 240
Kelley, Cornelius F., 193
Kelley, Michael, 93
Kellogg Company, 141
Kelly, George E., 324
Kelvinator Corp., 141

Kendrick, Benjamin B., quoted, 121

Kent, Atwater, 195

Kent, Morton E., 285 fn.

Kent, Rockwell, 132, 291 fn., 293

Kentucky, 309, 324

Kester, Howard, 155

Ketterson, Tom, 318

Khaki Shirts, 114 /n.

Kid Steinie, 136

Kidnappings, 127

Kilgore, Harley M., 245

Kilgore Committee, 226, 229

Killgallen, J., 173

Kincaid, Robert, 283

King, Ernest T., 22,3-3^

King, John T., 67, 71 fn.

Kiplinger's Washington Newsletter, 129

Kirby, John Henry, 195, 211

Knagge, Daniel, 155

Knowles, Harper L., 152 fn.

Knudsen, William S. : American Liberty
League, 193; Anderson, H. W., 166;
Hitler's Germany, quoted, 196; War
Production Board, 22,2

Knutson, Harold, 219

Konvitz, Milton R., 310 fn.

Koos, John, 184-85, 214

Krebs, Richard, 214

Kroger, Bernard, 196

K-Street house (No. 1625), 50-51

Ku Klux Klan, 31 ; American Liberty
League, 195 ; fascism, 191 ; Michigan,
210; Negroes, 326; Un-American Ac-
tivities Committee, 217; World War I
(post), growth, 31

Kuhn, Fritz, 184, 216

Kuhn, Loeb & Company, 88

Labor : blacklists, 141 ; Roosevelt, F. D.,
131 ; World War I (post), 8-9, 34-38.
See also Labor espionage ; Labor
unions ; Strikebreaking ; Strikes

Labor Department (U.S.): Bridges,
Harry, 151; deportation statute, 16;
Post, Louis Freeland, 24-27, 29 ; Red
raids, 20, 24-29

Labor espionage, 141-57 ; Black Legion,
204-1 1 ; Ford Motor Company, 171. See
also Strikebreaking

Labor Management Relations Act, 279-81

Labor unions : American Liberty League,
194-95 ; Black Legion, 204, 206, 207,
208; company unions, 143-44; Cuba,
87 ; du Pont, Lammot, 230 ; Ford,
Henry, 168, 171-73, 176-77, 181 ; lead-
ership, 38; membership (1940-1945),
2.36; Negroes, 308; New Deal, 129.
167; Roosevelt, F. D., 129; Special
Conference Committee, 165-67 ; Taft-
Hartley Law, 279-81 ; Wartime wages,
8; World War I (post), 8-9, 35-36

LaCrescenta Democratic Club, 286-87

LaFollette, Robert M. : Communist Party,
78 fn. ; "economic liberty," 123; Fed-
eral relief, no ; Means, Gaston B., 75 ;
naval oil reserves, 62 ; presidential can-
didate (1924), 78-79; Republic Steel
Strike (1937), 160-61

3^3

LaFollette Committee, 144-45

LaGuardia, Fiorella, 91

Lake Erie Chemical Company, 145 fn.

LaMare, Chet, 173

Lamont, Thomas W., 42, 106

Landis, James M., 151-52 /n.

Landon, Alfred, 249

Lane, Rose Wilder, quoted, 105 fn.

Langtry, Albert P., qtioted, 18-19

Lardner, Ring, Jr., 263 fn.

Larkin, J. M., 162-64

Laval, Pierre, 222

Lawrence, David, quoted, 304

Lawson, John Howard, 262-63 fn.

Layne, Meade, 297

Lazarus, Emma, quoted, 2

Leachman, Neth L,, 182

League of Nations, 7, 10

Leathers, Annie Mae, 295

Lee, Algernon, 14/71.

Left-Wing. See Communist Party ; Social-
ist Party

Leguia, Augusto, 85-87

Leguia, Juan, 85-87

Leighton, George R., 128

LeMaire, Francis, 323

Lend-Lease, 218, 219, 221, 231

Leonard, Jonathan Norton, quoted, 108

Lerner, Max, 282

Lettworth, Louisiana, 323

Levi, Carlo, 305

Levinson, Edward, 135, 137

Lewis, Archie C, 182

Lewis, John L., 9, 128-29

Lewis, Sinclair, Main Street, 31

Libbey-Owens Ford Glass Co., 141

Liberal protest, 37

Liebold, Ernest Gustav, 170

Lincoln, Alexander, 196

Lindbergh, Charles E., 75, 220, 221

Lion, David M., 90

Lippmann, Walter : "criminal under-
world," quoted, 85 ; Harding foreign
policy, quoted, 48 ; Roosevelt, F. D.,
quoted, 122-22,, 126

Lisman, Frederick J., 86, 87

Lissner, Will, 205

Little Green House, Washington, B.C.,
.50-51

Living costs, 278

Living standards, 35, 37, 83-84, 108, 132,
279

Livingston, Edward, quoted, 267

Lloyd, Horatio, 195

Lloyd George, David, 4-5

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 6-7, 43

London, Meyer, quoted, 24

Longworth, Alice, quoted, 49-50

Louisiana, zi fn., 309, 323; Ku KIux
Klan, 31 fn.

Louisville, Kentucky, 324

Lovett, Robert A., 250

Lovett, Robert Morss, 291 fn.

Lowden, Frank O., 43

Lowell, A. Lawrence, 10 1

Lowell, James Russell, quoted, xii

Lowell Committee. 10 1

Lowry, Edward G., quoted, 7

364

Loyalty investigations, 283

Loyalty Order, 267-77, 286

Loyalty tests, 30-31

Lucas, Scott W., 292

Lundberg, Ferdinand : depressioHj cause

of, quoted, 92 ; Hoover, H. C, qxioted,

103 ; Republican National Convention,

quoted, 43
Lundeen, Ernest, 217-18
Lusk Committee Investigating Seditious

Activities, 30-31
Lynchings, 34
Lyons, Georgia, 325

McAdoo, William G. : Harding's Senate

speeches, quoted, 45 ; preferred lists, 92
MacArthur, Douglas A., 115-16, 202
Macauley, Alvan, 193
McCabe, Thomas B., 251
McColloch, Spencer R., 171, 173-74
McCormack - Dickstein Congressional

Committee, 202-04
McCormick, Medill, 43
McCormick, Paul J., 60-61
McCormick, Robert R., 220
McCoy, Kid, 174
McCrea, Duncan, 210
McCuiston, William C, 152 /n.^ 214
MacDougall, Curtis D., 293
McGohey, John, 336, 339
McGraw, William, 257
MacGuire, Gerald C, 197-204
Machado, Gerardo, 87-88
Machine guns, 138 fn., 145, 149
McKeesport, Pennsylvania, 113 fn,
McKellar, Kenneth D., 30
McKittrick, Thomas H., 227
McLean, Edward B., 51
McLean, Mrs. Edward B., 75
MacLeish, Archibald : Ford, Henry,

quoted, 168 ; Roosevelt, F. D., 125
McMahon, William J., 90
McMahon Institute of Financial Research,

90
MacNair, Luther K., 293
MacNider, Hanford, 202
Macon, Georgia, 324
McQuire, Ralph, 155
Madeiros, Celestino, F., 98-99
Magil, A. B., 204
Magnesium, 228
Magstadt, Francis W., 137
Main Street, novel (S. Lewis), 31
Maine, 31 fn.
Mallard, Robert, 325
Maloney, William P., 219
Maltz, Albert, 262 fn.
Mammoth Oil Company, 61-62
Manchuria, 121
Mandel, Jesse, 136
Manilla. P. I., Roosevelt's death, 240
Mann, Bennie, 139
Mann, Herman, 282
Mann, Thomas, 305
Manning, William, quoted, 71
Mannington, Howard. 50-51
Manville Manufacturing Company, 145 fn.
Maragon, John, 252

Marcantonio, Vito, 296

Marchuk, George, 207, 208 fn.

Marine Corps, 308

Mariniello, Juan, 305

Marmon, Ira H., 209

Marriage and intermarriage, 309

Marshall, George, 262 fn.

Marshall, George Catlett : democracy,
quoted, Z22 ; diplomatic corps, 251 ; Sec-
retary of State, 246

Marshall. Mrs. Lupe, quoted, 159-60

Marshall, Thomas Riley, 7

Marshall Plan, 300, 301

Martens, Ludwig, C.A.K., 29-30 /n.

Martin, Fletcher, ^22

Martin, Homer, 185-87

Martin, Joseph E., 269

Martin, William M., 251

Marx, Harry Z., 206

Marzani, Carl, 332

Massachusetts, 17-19. See also Boston;
Sacco-Vanzetti case

Matson, Charles Oscar, 273-75

Matthews, J. B., 213

Matthews, Leslie, 346

Matthiessen, Francis Otto, 285 fn.

Means, Gaston B., 63 ; criminal operations,
75 ; death, 71, 75 fn.; Harding admin-
istration parties, 51-52; Harding's
death, 70 ; Justice Department agent,

63-65

Medina, Harold R., 334-42

Mellon, Andrew : Harding Cabinet, 46,
48; social system, quoted, 107-08

Mellon Group, 163

Memorial Day massacre (1937), 157-61

Memphis, Tennessee, 324-25

Men of America, 166

Mencken, H. L., quoted, 103

Mental defectives, 309

Merrick, Frank A., 162

Merriweather, James, 155

Merriweather, William, 176

Merton, Richard, 66-67

Methodist Church, 305

Metropolitan Insurance Company, 82

Mexico City, Roosevelt's death, 240

Meyer, Agnes E., 313

Meyer, Hershel, 304

Michigan : anti-labor violence, 155 ; Black
Legion, 166, 204-10 ; civil liberties, 283 ;
Dearborn Independent, 31-32 ; Negroes,
325 ; Parole Board, 174 ; unemployment,
205. See also Dearborn ; Detroit

Midland Steel Products Co., 141

Midwest Refining Company, 72

Military Assistance Program, 301

Miller, Clyde R., 215, 293

Miller, Tliomas W., 67, 71 fn., 76

Milner, Laurence A., 152 fn.

Milton, John, quoted, 267

Minneapolis, Minnesota, 293

Minor, Robert, 318

Mississippi : anti-labor violence, 156 ; Ne-
groes, 308-09, 323

Missouri : ' Negroes, 309 ; Progressive
Party, 294. See also Harry S. Truman

Mitchell, Charles E., 89, 106

Molotov, Vyacheslav, 244

Monopolies, 78, 80. See also Cartels

Montgomery, Ruth, 263

Montgomery County, Georgia, 325

Montgomery Ward & Co., 141, 193

Mooney, James, 225, 232

Mooney, James L., 161

Mooney, Thomas J., 35 fn.

Moore, Fred, 99

Morais, Henry M., 35

Moran, Bugs, 85

Morelli gang, 99

Morford, Richard, 262 fn.

Morgan, Edmund M., 96, lOi

Morgan Steamship Line, 134

Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 245-46

Morrill, Clarence, 150

Morrow, Dwight W., 80, quoted, 79

Mortimer, Mr. and Mrs. Elias H., 54-56,

58
Moseley, Leon, 325
Moulton, Arthur W., 305
Mundt, Karl E., 269
Mundt-Nixon Bill, 332
Munson Steamship Line, 134
Murder, commercial, 84
Morgan, John Pierpont, and the Morgan

interests, 42-43, 163 ; American Liberty

League, 193 ; Bolshevik bomb plot, 13 ;

Coolidge, 79 ; Davis, John W., 77 ;

Dawes Plan, 81 fn.; "preferred lists,"

91-92 ; Young Plan, 81 fn.
Murphy, Frank, 152 fn.
Murphy, Grayson M. P., 198, 199 fn.,

201-03
Murray, Philip, 157, 189, 3^2 fn.
Muse, Vance, 195, 211
Musek, Peter, 21-22
Mussolini, Benito, 107, 114. fn., 199, 200,

287
Myers, Gustavus, quoted, 77

NIRA See National Industrial Recovery
Act

NLRB See National Labor Relations
Board

Nakwhat, Simeon, 20-21

Nanking, China, Roosevelt's death, 240

National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People, 309

National Association of Manufacturers,
165, 230, 249, 279

National bank holiday, 125

National Cash Register Co., 141

National City Bank, 89

National City Company, 89

National Conference of Clergymen and
Laymen (1936), 211-12

National Economy Act, 125

National Industrial Recovery Act, 124-
25, 128, 130

National Industrial Recovery Adminis-
tration, 124

National Labor Conference for Peace, 305

National Labor Relations Act, 130-31.
165, 279

National Labor Relations Board, 170, 181-
83, 187-8-8

365

National Police Academy, Washington,
128 /n.

National Security Act, 301

National Socialist Party, 81. See also Hit-
ler ; Nazi regime

National Soldiers Home at Johnson City,
Tennessee, 113

National War Council, 301

Naval Fuel Oil Board, 60

Naval oil reserves, 58-63, 67, 72. See also
Teapot Dome scandal

Nazi regime: American agents, 211- 12,
216-22, 257-60 ; Dillon, Read & Co.,
250; Ford, Henry, 184; loyalty law,
270 ; overseas branch, 271 ; treason, xi ;
veterans, 200. See also Cartels ; Ger-
many ; Hitler

Nebraska : closed shop, 279 ; Negroes,
309 ; Progressive Party, 294

Negroes : agitation and unrest, 37 ; Amer-
ican Liberty League, 195 ; armed serv-
ices, 308; Black Legion, 205, 208-09;
Byrnes, James F., quoted, 10, 306;
Catholic Church, 312-13 ; Chicago, 310 ;
Coolidge era, 83/«.; discrimination,
314-15; education, 314/n.; Ford Mo-
tor Company, 188-89 ; infant mortality,
311; Ku Klux Klan, 31; life expec-
tancy, 311; living conditions, 310-11;
Mississippi, 308-09 ; New Deal, 308,
326; New York, 310; Palmer report,
37 ; postwar conditions, 306-27 ; race
riots (1919), 9-10; Rankin, John E.,
260-61; segregation, 311-15; South
Carolina, 320-21 ; strikebreakers, 188-
89; tuberculosis, 311, 313; unemploy-
ment, 308 ; United Nations, 322 ; voting,

310, 326; Washington, D. C., 311-15
Nelson, Donald M., 233

Nelson, Knute, 224 fn.

Nevada, 309

New, Robert, 288-89

New Colossus. The, poem (Lazarus),
quoted, 2

New Deal, 120-31; business, 163, 164;
Congress (80th), 280; discredit, at-
tempts to, 194; "Jewish-Communist"
menace, 196; labor, 156, 164, 195; Ne-
groes, 308, 326 ; strikebreaking, 141 ;
Truman, H. S., 249. See also Roose-
velt, Franklin Delano

New Jersey : Negroes, 324 ; Red raids
(1920), 17

New Orleans, Louisiana : Bonus March-
ers, 113; public and private meetings,
raids on, 287

New York : Communist Party, 289 ; gang-
sters, 84 ; German-American Bund,
192; loyalty tests 30-31 ; Negroes, 310

311, 323; public and private meetings,
raids on, 287; Red raids (1920's), 14-
15, 17 ; safety patrol contest winners,
314; State Assembly, 30; unemploy-
ment demonstration, 1 1 1 ; Wallace sup-
port, 296

New York Central Railroad, 134

New York Edison Co., 141

New World, The (publication), 213

366

Newark, New Jersey : Negroes, 311 ; pub-
lic and private meetings, raids on, 287 ,
Red raids (191 9), 14

Newspapers (American), attitude towards
Red raids, 19

Newton Steel Co., 155

Nexo, Martin Andersen, 100

Nickolas, Chester, 215

Nicodemus, Charles W., 336

Nikoloric, L. A., 268-69, 271-72

Norris, George, 82, quoted, 127

Norris, George William, 74

North Atlantic Pact, 301, 302

North Carolina: Negroes, 309, 322-23;
Progressive Party Convention, 295

Northern Baptist Convention, 305

Northwestern University, 293

Nowell, William O., 185, 335

Nuremburg trials, 229, 257-58, 269-70

Nye, Gerald P., 219, 220

Nystrom, Paul Henry, 83-84 fn.

Oakland Police Department, 150-51

O'Banion, Dion, 84

Obregon y Blanco, Jose Emilio, 87

O'Brien, Robert Lincoln, quoted, 100

Odium, Floyd, 250

O'Donnell, James Francis (Two - Gun
Jim), 136

O'Donnell, John, 24S fn.

O'Dwyer, William, 289

Ohio: Black Legion, 166, 204; Bonus
Marchers, 113; Communism, 288; Ku
Klux Klan, 31

"Ohio Gang," 45, 49, 50, 348

Oil: California, 255-56 /w.; Far East,
248. See also Naval oil reserves ; Tea-
pot Dome scandal

Oklahoma: Ku Klux Klan, 31 fn.; Ne-
groes, 309 ; Progressive Party, 294

"Old Counselor" (radio program), 91

Oliver, James C, 219

Olson, Culbert, 35 fn.

O'Neill, James E., 58-62, 72

Open shop, 8, 38, 165, 273

Oregon : Ku Klux Klan, 3 1 fn. ; Negroes,
309

Organized workers, in the United States
(1938), 167

Orlando, Vittorio, 4

Ornitz, Samuel, 263 fn.

Osier, H. S., 72

Oswiecim, concentration camp, 229

Owen, Blaine, 153-54

Oxnam, G. Bromley, 312 fn.

Pacific R & H Chemical Corp., 146

Page, Paul, 318

Palmer, Albert Mitchell, and the Palmer
raids, 12-23 ; Federal Sedition Act, 236 ;
methods, 282 ; Negroes, 37 ; objectives,
34-36, 38 ; Post, L. F., 24-27 ; Sacco-
Vanzetti, 94 ; Senate Judiciary Commit-
tee, 32 ; Soviet agents' deportation,
2-3, 38 ; Stone, H. F,, 79. See also J.
Edgar Hoover

Pan-American Petroleum and Transport
Company of California, 60

Paris, France, Roosevelt's death, 240

Paris Peace Conference (19 19), 3-6

Parker, George, 293

Parmenter, Frederick, 94, 95

Passaic, New Jersey, 108

Pauley, Edwin W., 254-56

Pearson, Drew : cartel agreements, 228-
29; Forrestal, James V., 328; Hoover,
H. C, quoted, 104-05

Pecan shellers strike (1937), 156

Peekskill, New York, 342-47

Pegler, Westbrook, 140 fn.

Pelley, William Dudley, 211, 217

Pendergast machine in Missouri, 251-
52 fn.

Pennsylvania, depression, 108-09

Pennsylvania Greyhound Bus Co., 141

Pennsylvania Railroad, 134, 141

Perkins, Frances, 123-25

Perlman, Selig : Red menace, quoted 35;
World War I, labor concessions, 8 fn.

Perry, "Fats," 177-182, 183 /«.

Perry, Lord, 184

Perryville, Maryland, supply depot, 57

"Persuaders," 178

Peruvian bonds, 86-87

Pew, J. Howard, 196

Philadelphia : Bonus Marchers, 113 ; Ger-
man-American Bund, 192; Progressive
Citizens of America, rally, 285-86 ; Pro-
gressive Party, 294 ; public and private
meetings, raids on, 287 ; Rapid Transit
Company strike (1909), 137 fn.; Red
raids (1919), 14

Phillips, county, Arkansas, race riots
(1919), 9-10

Pickert, Heinrich, 206

Pickett Act, 59

Pidcock, Roy V., 209

Pinchot, Am.os, no

Pinkerton's National Detective Agency,
141, 144

Pirinsky, George, 282

Pitak, John, 108

Pitcairn, Raymond, 195

Pittman, Willie, 323

Pittsburgh, Pa. : Red raids, 37 ; tear gas,
147

Plekhanov, George, quoted, 120

Plummer, A. Newton, 90-91

Podolsky, Henry, 282

Pomerantz, Abraham, 269-70, 290, 300 fn.

Pontiac Motor Car Co., 146

Poole, Charles, 206, 209

Portland, Oregon, 112

Post, Louis Freeland, 24-27, 29, 37

Postal Telegraph-Cable Company, 134

Potash, Irving, 282, 333

Potsdam pact, 246

Pound, Roscoe, 27

Poverty: "Coolidge Prosperity," 83-84;
Hoover era, 105. See also Depression;
Hunger

Prairie Oil and Gas Company, 58, 72

Pratt, Herbert L., 193

Prentiss, Mississippi, 323

President's Daughter, The (Britton), 50

Press (American), attitude toward Red
raids, 19

Pressed Car Steel Works, McKees Rocks,
Pennsylvania, strike (1909), 134, 137

Price, Roland T., 323

Progressive Citizens of America rally
(1947). 285-86

Progressive Farmers' Household Union,
Arkansas, 10

Progressive movement, 37

Progressive Party, 290-96

Prohibition : Ford, Henry, 170 fn.; Hard-
ing administration, 49; repeal, 170 fn.

Prostitution, 49, 84

Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, The,
32, 170

Public charges, 84 fn.

Pullman, Joe, 136

Purple Gang, Detroit, 173

Race riots, 9, 34

Racketeers. See Gangsters

Radical aliens. See Bolshevism ; Commu-
nism

Radio Corporation of America, 141

Railroad Brotherhoods: labor spies, 144;
leadership, 38-39

Railroads: Bonus Marchers, 113; Inter-
state Commerce Commission, 80 ; Ne-
groes, 309

Railway Audit and Inspection Company,
141, 143

Rainey, Harry, 289

Ralston, Jackson H., 25

Rankin, John E., 260-61, 269

Rascob, John J., 92, 193, 195

Reactionaries, 349

Reader s Digest, 221

Reading, Arthur K., 97

Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 254

Red Cross Mission to France and Italy,
199 fn.

Red Network (Dilling), 148-49

Red raids. See Communist Party ; Palmer
raids ; Un-American Activities Com-
mittee

Redin, Nicolai, 298 fn.

Reed, Philip, 232

Relief (Federal), no

Religion and spiritual development : busi-
nessman, 82 ; Coolidge, 49 ; Harding, 49

Report on the Illegal Practices of the
United States Department of Justice,
38

Republic Steel plant. South Chicago, strike
(1937), 157-61

Republican National Convention (1920),
42-44

Republican National Convention (1924),
77-78

Republican National Convention (1928),
103

Republican Party, 204, 211. See also Fas-
cism

Reynolds, Robert Rice, 219-20

Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 218, 223

Richardson, James P., 98

367

Rickard, Edgar, 92

Rieber, Torkild, 224-25

Right to organize and bargain collectively,

128, 129, 131, 144-45
Rimar, Ralph, 185-86, quoted, 172-73
Ripley, Harry H., 96
River Rouge plant at Dearborn, Michigan,

168-70, 172-76. 183-89
Roberts. Joe Nathan, 323
Robertson. N. W., 285
Robeson, Paul. 2qo, 342 #.
Rochester, New York, 323
Rockefeller. John D., 13
Rockefeller Group, 163
Rocky Mount, North Carolina, 323
Rodriguez. Nicholas, 184
Rogers, Will, 31
Rogge, O. John : loyalty cases, 273-76 ;

Nuremburg trials. 256-60 ; Progressive

Party, 291 fn.; Trenton Negroes, 324;

World Congress of Fighters for Peace,

305

Rolland, Romain, 100, 102

Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor (Mrs. Franklin
Delano), 110-11, 312 fn.

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano : affection for,
123-24; attacks on, 194, 196, 217, 218;
Axis agents, quoted, 190 ; Congress mes-
sage (1935), quoted, 130 ; Cuban people,
88 ; death, 239-40, 268, 291 ; democracy,
350, quoted, 120; Democratic nomina-
tion for President on July 2, 1932,
quoted, 120 ; economic power concentra-
tion, quoted, 234; election (1932), 32;
evaluation, 123; fascist organizations,
191 ; fear, quoted, 122, 284-85 ; "fireside
chats," 125, 131 ; "forgotten man"
speech, 117; funeral train, 239, 255;
Hoover, Herbert, opposition to, 221 ;
human relationships, quoted, 238-39 ;
inaugural address (1933), quoted, 122,
125 ; Jefferson Day address, 239 ; Just-
ice Department, 265 ; Lindbergh, C,
220 ; loyalty tests, 27s ', New Deal, 120-
31, 242-66; "normalcy" of the 1920's,
quoted 241 ; personal qualities, 123 ;
plot to overthrow, 200-01 ; presidential
campaign (1936), 211; radio address
(1942), quoted, 223 ; reactionary period,
236 fn.; Republican administration
quoted, 41 ; Southern vote, 195 ; Soviet
Union, interest in, 1 17-18 ; term (first),
125-31 ; Un-American Activities Com-
mittee, 217 fn., 265-66; unforgettable
phrases, 123 ; United Nations, quoted,
223; vice-president, candidate (1920),
46 fn.; winning of the peace, quoted,
350; World War II, 231, 235, 245 /».,
350

Rosen, Samuel, 343

Rosenman, Samuel, 125

Ross, Joseph, 96

Ross, Lawrence, 282 fn.

Rothstein, Arnold, 85

Rouse, Charlie, 208, 209

Roush, Joseph M., 148-51

Royall, Kenneth C, 251

368

Rubber, 228

Runyon, W. Cleveland, 196

Russia : American Red Cross Mission, 42 ;

intervention, 5-6 fn., 37 ; revolution

(191 7), 5-6. See also Union of Soviet

Socialist Republics
Russian People's House, New York City,

raid (1919), 14-15
Rutland, Rudolf F., 177
Ryles, Vaughn, 155

Sacco, Nicola, 32, 93

Sacco-Vanzetti case, 93-102

Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, 97-98

Sacher, Harry, 338 fn.

Sage, Parker, 185 /n.

St. Clair, Richard A., 1^2 fn.

St. Louis, Missouri, 293

Salsedo, Andrea, 23, 94

Saltzman, Charles E., 250

San Antonio, Texas, 156

San Diego, California, shipping strike
(1934), 129 . , , .

San Francisco, California: bombing
(19 1 6), 35 /»•; shipping strike (1934).
129, 146-47, 150-51

San Francisco Conference, 222, 244

Sandburg, Carl, quoted, xii

Sanford, Raymond P., 176-77

Sardis, Georgia, 323

Sawyer, Charles E., 70, 71 fn.

Schacht, Hjalmar, 81 fn.

Schmalhausen, Samuel D., quoted, 278

Schmitz, Hermann, 227

Schriftgeisser. Karl : Harding administra-
tion, quoted, 76 ; Republican National
Convention (1920), quoted, 42, 46;
Roosevelt, F. D., quoted, 122

Schroeder, Baron K. F, von, 227

Schroeder Banking Company, 222, 227,
250, 254

Schultz, Joe, 137

Schwab, Charles M., 108

Scott, Adrian. 263 fn.

Scott, Austin W., 269

Scribner's Commentator, 220, 221 fn.

Seamen's Union, 38

Sears, Charles, 152

Sears Roebuck Co., 146

Seattle, Washington, 8-9, 129, 147

Sedition bills. 30

Segregation in Washington — A Report of
the National Committee on Segregation
in the Nation's Capital (booklet), 312

Segregation of Negroes, 311-15

Seldes. George, 284

Selective Service Act, 192

Seligman (J. W.) & Company, 86-87

Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 7

Sentinels of the Republic, 166, 195-96

Serreo, Rudolpho, 288-89

Shallet, Sidney, quoted, 248

Shapiro, Irving, 290

Shapley, Harlow, 305

Sharkey, H. E., 286^

Shaughnessy (operative), 96

Shaw, George Bernard, 100

Shell Petroleum Corp., 141

Sherwood, Robert, 125, quoted, 121

Shields, Art, 98

Shigeniitsu, Magoru, 240

Shipyard workers strikes. See San Fran-
cisco ; Seattle

Short, Dewey, 219

Shostakovich, Dimitri, 305

Sickening Gas, 148

Siemens-Halske, 229

Silva, Frank, 95 fn.

Silver Legion, 217

Simmons. William J., 31 fn.

Simon, Sir John, 121

Sinclair, Harry F. : indictment, yz ', naval
oil reserves, 58-62, 72-74 ; Republican
National Convention (1920), 42-44 •46 ;
speculative securities, 90

Sinclair Oil Company, 58, 61-62, 141

Singer, Herbert, 334 fn.

Six Companies, Inc., 146

Skeffington, Henry J., 16

Siamer, Charles A., 173 fn.

Sloan, Alfred P., Jr. : American Liberty
League, 193, 195; Nazi Germany,
quoted on, 226 ; New Deal, 162

Slye, Dr. Maud, 291 fn.

Smaller War Plants Committee (Senate),

233

Smith, Alfred E., 122

Smith, Dale O., 303

Smith Edwin S., 143

Smith, Ferdinand C., 282

Smith, Gerald L. K., 185, 217, 335

Smith, Jesse W., 51, 65-68, 70 fn., 71 J
Schriftgeisser, Karl, quoted, 76

Smith, John Cabot, 296

Smith Act, 236 fn., 333

Smithfield, North Carolina, 322

Smoot, Reed, 43

Snyder, John W., 253

Social Justice (publication), 185, 216

Socialist Party, 30, 34, 37 ; Debs, E. V.,
35 fn., 36 fn.

Societe Suisse pour Valeurs des Metaux,
66

Souers, Sidney W., 250

South Carolina, 309-10, 320-21, 325

South Dakota, 279

Southern Committee to Uphold the Con-
stitution, 195

Southern Pacific, 134

Southern Tenant Farmers Union, 155

Soviet agents, deportation (1919), 2-3

"Soviet Ark." See Buford

Spaatz, Carl, 302-03

Spanish, Joe, 136

Spanknoebel, Heinz, 184

Spare, Charles, E., 185 fn., 210

Sparks, C. Nelson, 166

Special Conference Committee, 161-67

Speech, freedom of, 236

Spellman, Francis Cardinal, 330

Spy Bill, 301

Stachel, Jack, 333

Stafford, Wendell Philipps, 311

Stalin, Josef, American war effort, quoted,
235

Standard Brands stock, 92

Standard Oil of New Jersey : American
Liberty League, 194 ; cartel agreements,
81, 228-29, 231 ; Federal Laboratories,
Inc., 146; labor espionage, 141; New
Deal, 163 ; Middle East, 248 ; strike-
breaking, 134

Standard Oil of New York, 134

Stapledon, Olaf, 305

Statler Hotels, Inc., 141

Steel industry: strike (1919), 9, 36, 37,
42; working condition (1919), 8fn.;
work-week 8 fn. See also Foster, Wil-
liam Z,

Steel Workers Organization, 157

Steele, Walter S., 214

Stephenson, James C, 313-16

Stem, William, 136

Stettinius, Edward R., Jr., 162, 232

Stevens, Henry, 204

Stewart, Douglas M., 221 fn.

Stewart, Napoleon, 319

Stewart, Robert W., 72

Stinson, Roxy, 65-68, 74-75

Stock market speculation, 90-93

Stone, Harlan Fiske, 79 fn., 240

Stone, I. F., 231, 259-60

Stoney, Thomas P., 288

Stow, Ashfield, 147

Strange Death of President Harding, The
(Means), 64, 70

Stratton, Samuel W., loi fn.

Stratton, William, 219

Straus, Leon, 344

Strempel, Heribert von, 220

Strikebreaking, 132-40

Strikes : coal, 9 ; Coolidge, 80 ; Ford
Motor Company, 188-89; Pennsylvania
miners (1931), 108; Roosevelt (F._D.)
era, 129 ; shipping, see San Francisco,
Seattle ; Special Conference Committee,
166 ; steel (1919), 36, 37 ; World War I
(post), 8-9, 35, 36, 38 ; World War II,
231, 235

Stripling, Robert E., 213

Strong, Philip Duffield, loi

Stuart, Harold L., 91

"Subversive literature," 13

Sugar, Maurice, 206-07

Sullivan, Edward F., 211-13

Sullivan, Gael, 280

Sullivan & Cromwell, 222, 227

Swarthmore College, 259

Sweeney, Martin L., 219

Swope, Gerard, 165

Symington, William S., 251

Tadlock, James, 136

Taft, Philip : Red menace, quoted^ 35 ;

World War I, labor concessions, 8 fn.
Taft, Robert A. : food cost increase, 279 ;

Taft-Hartley law, 279-81
Taft, William H., 59
Taft-Hartley Law, 279-81
Tarpley, Bayard, 319
Taylor, Glen H., 292
Taylor, Myron C., 92
Taylor, Robert, 263
Teagle, Walter C, 165

369

Teapot Dome scandal, 59, 61-62, 67, tz,
73 fn-, 75, 79, 255, 256 /n.

Tear gas, 13^ fn., 145-51, 1 5 5-59

Temporary National Economic Committee
investigating Concentration of Econom-
ic Power in the United States, 231, 234

Tennessee, 309, 315-20, 324-25

Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co.,
146, 153

Texas : anti-labor bills, 279 ; anti-labor
violence, 156; Ku KIux Klan, 31 /n.;
Negroes, 309. See also Dallas

Thackrey, Ted O., 340-41

Thayer, Webster, 95-100

Thomas, E. J., 162

Thomas, Elbert D., 160-61

Thomas, Fred, 185 /«.

Thomas, J. Parnell, 213, 260 fn., 263-64,
265 fn.

Thomas, R. J., 187

Thomas, Wesley, 323

Thompson, Charles W., quoted, 47

Thompson, J. W., 55, 71 fn.

Thompson, John Oliver, 152 /«.

Thompson, Robert, 237 fn., 289, 333, 339,

341

Thompson, William Boyce, 42

Thompson, William G., 99

Thompson & Kelly, Inc., Boston, 57

Thompson-Black Construction Company,
54-56, 71 fn.

Thorkelson, Jacob, 219

Tinkham, George Holden, 219

To the American People — Report Upon
the Illegal Practices of the United
States Department of Justice, 21, 27-28

Toledo, Ohio, 147

Torres, Nick, 172

Townsend, Ralph, 220

Toy, Harry S., 293

Trade Union Unity League, 1 1 1

Trade Unions. See Labor Unions

Treason, 349-50 ; definition, xi

Trenton, New Jersey : Negroes, 324 ; pub-
lic and private meetings, raids on, 287

Trenton Street Railway, 134

Tresca, Carlo, 98

Tripp, R. A., quoted, 54

Trout, Bob, 124

True, James, 211

Truman, Bess, her deep-freezer unit, 252

Truman, Harry S, and the Truman ad-
ministration : cabinet, 249 ; Chang Kai-
shek, 246 ; Churchill's Fulton, Mo.,
speech, 244; domestic policy, 248-51,
268, 290 ; "Fair Deal," 296-97 ; Far
Eastern policy, 246-47 ; foreign policy,
247, 268, 281, 290 ; freedom train, 306 ;
Greek loan, 247-48 ; Hoover, Herbert,
248-49 ; Ickes' resignation, 256 ; intel-
lectual cheapness, 252 ; Johnson, Louis,
202 fn.; "kitchen cabinet," 251-56; la-
bor-management disputes, 165 fn. ; loy-
alty investigations, 266 ; Loyalty Order,
267-77; Medina, H. R., 334; Missouri
gang, 251-56, 348; Niagara Falls,
quoted, 278 ; North Atlantic Pact, 301 ;
Pendergast machine, 251-52 fn.; presi-

dent, sworn in as, 240 ; Rogge, O. John,
259 ; Rooseveltian reforms, 296-97 ;
Senate, 251-52 /n.; State of the Union
address (1948), 324 ; State of the Union
address (1950), 347 ; steel, lack of, 231 ;
Taft-Hartley law, 279-80 ; Turkish loan,
247-48 ; Un-American Activities Com-
mittee, 266 ; Wallace, H. A., 292 ; war
strategy, 300

Truman Doctrine, 247-48, 267, 268, 274,
300-01

Trumbo, Dalton, 263 fn.

Trusts, 78, 80. See also Banks ; Cartels

Tuberculosis, 313

Tucker, Ray, 128

Tugwell, Rexford Guy, 125, 290

Turkish Government loan, 247-48

Twentieth Century Fund, 144

Typewriter Workers Local, Hartford,
Conn., 144

Ukrainian-American fascist leaders, 211-
12

Ulio, James A., 236-37

Un-American Activities Committee, 212-
17, 260-66; Communism, publications
on* 330 ; Eisler, Gerhart, 299 ; Progres-
sive Citizens of America, 285 ; subver-
sive organizations list, 270-71

Unemployment: Coolidge era, 83-84 /n.;
depression, 93, 107-12; Michigan, 205;
Negroes, 308

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics :
agents deportation, 2-3 ; Allied attempts
to overthrow, 5 ; Roosevelt's death, 240 ;
United Nations, 244-45 ; United States,
237-38, 244-47, 303-04 ; war effort, 238,
303-04. See also Bolshevism ; Com-
munism

Unions. See Labor Unions

United Auto Workers: Chrysler, 157;
Ford Motor Co., 176-78, 180, 183, 185-
88; General Motors, 157

United Council of Church Women, 305

United Mine Workers, 9 fn., 129

United Nations : fascism, 244-45 ; Gubi-
chev, v., 300 ; Negroes, 322 ; peace and
security, 237 ; principles betrayal, 245 ;
Roosevelt, F. D., quoted, 223 ; Truman,
H. S., 244 ; U. S.-Soviet rapport, 243

United States: Bolshevik revolution, 10;
oil interests, 248 ; Soviet Union, 237-
38, 244-47 ; United Nations, 244-45.
See also Coolidge ; Harding ; Hoover ;
Roosevelt ; Truman ; Wilson

United States Rubber Company, 163

United States Steel Corp., 8, 157, 163, 194

Universal military training, 301

Urquart, Leslie, 105 /n.

Utah, 309

Valtin, Jan, 214

Van Zandt, James, 203, 250

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, Jr., 85

Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 32, 93. See also

Sacco-Vanzetti case
Vardaman, James K., 252-53
Vauclain, Samuel M., 42

Vanghan, Harry H., 252, 253, 255

Versailles Treaty, 6

Veterans: bonuses, ii2fn.; disabled, 54

Veterans' Bureau (U. S.), S3-58, 67, 71

Veterans March on Washington (1932),
1 12-17

Veterans of Foreign Wars, 201, 203

Viereck, George Sylvester, 217-21

Villamil, Domingo, ^^7

Villard, Oswald Garrison : Bolshevism,
Hoover, quoted, 6 fn. ; denounced as a
'Red', 31 ; Harding's death, 70

Vinson, Fred M., 252

Virginia, 309

Vorys, John M., 219

Wadsworth, James W., 43

Wages and income, 38, 83 fn., 278

Wagner Labor Act, 154, 168, 181-83

Wagoner, Philip D., 224

Wall Street : American dictator plan, 196-
204; bomb explosion (1920), 14; Chil-
ean bond issue, 88 ; Coolidge, Calvin,
104 ; Cuban securities, 87-88 ; German
rearmament, 81 /n.; Hoover, Herbert,
104; influence of, 75 ; 1926, 81 ; Peru-
vian bonds, 86-87 ; Wilson, Woodrow,
quoted, 75. See also Banks and banking ;
Stockmarket speculation ; the names of
individual banks

Wallace, Henry A. : Cultural and Scien-
tific Conference for World Peace, 305 ;
Democratic National Convention
(1944), 252; presidential campaign,
288, 290-96 ; Secretary of Agriculture,
124; Truman foreign policy, 247

Wallace, Henry C, 46-47 /«.

Wallace for President Committee, 288

Walsh, Thomas James, 18, 29

War agencies, 232-33

War Assets Administration, 234

War Production Board, 232-33

War Risk Insurance Bureau, 53

War Shipping Administration, 232 /«•

War veterans. See Veterans

Ward, Harry E., 162

Ware, Rev. Archie, 325

Warsaw, USSR, Roosevelt's death, 240

Washington, D. C. : Bonus Marchers, 1 12-
17; Catholic Church, 312-13; Negroes,
311-15 ; race riots (1919), 6

Waters, W. W., 114, 115

Watkins, Gordon S., 34

Watson, James E., 43

Watt, Richard F., 284

Weeks, John W., 46

Weiler, James, 136

Weir, Ernest T., 193

Wells Fargo Express Company, 134

Werner, M. R., 91

West Street jail, New York City, 340 fn.

West Virginia: coal strike (191 9), 9;
criminal syndicalist law, 30 ; Negroes,
309

Westchester Committee for Law and Or-
der, 344

Western Electric & Mfg. Co., 141

Western Union, 141

Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri,
244

Westrick, Dr. Gerhardt, 223-26, 227

Weygand, Fred J., 94

Whearty, Raymond P., 348

Wheeler, Burton K. : America First Com-
mittee, 220-21 ; Bolshevist agent accusa-
tion, 78 ; Daugherty investigation, 74 ;
Nazi sympathies, 219, 259

White, Harry Dexter, 227, 285 fn.

White, Isaac, (or "Peg-Leg") 207, 208 fn.

White, Walter, 312 fn.

White, William Allen : big business inter-
ests, 232; Harding, Warren G., quoted,
49; Harding era, quoted, 52; Hoover,
H. C, quoted, 103 ; "managerial mag-
nates," 232

White, William S., 280 fn.

White supremacy, 10

Whitehead, Don. S., 297

Whitney, Cornelius Vanderbilt, 251

Wiggin, Albert H., 90, 106

Wiggins, Archibald, 250

Wilbur, Curtis, 80

Williams, Charles D., 33

Williamson, John, 282, 333

Willkie, Wendell : freedom, quoted, 242 ;
Soviet Union, 238

Wilson, Charles E., 233

Wilson, L. B., 25, 30 fn.

Wilson, Woodrow: American people's re-
jection, 10; armistice message, quoted,
3 ; coast-to-coast speaking tour, 7, 8 ;
illness and defeat, 7, 12; industrial
democracy, 8 ; Paris Peace Conference,
3-6 ; Republican National Convention
(1920), 44; Russian territory evacua-
tion, 6 ; Wall Street, quoted, 75

Wilson Steamship Line, 134

Winant, Gilbert, 285 fn.

Winston, Henry, 333, 340

Winter, Carl, 333, 340

Winter, Keyes, 139-40

Wirth, Louis, 312 fn.

Wisconsin, 147

Wise, Stephen S., 31

Wolfe, James H., 334

Wolverine Republican League, 205-06

Wood, John S., 260 fn.

Wood, Leonard, 43

Wood, Robert E., 220-21

Woodin, William H., 92

Workers Council for Social Justice, Inc.,
185

Workers Ex-Servicemen's League, 115

Workers (Communist) Party of America,
II fn.

World War I : aftermath, 243 ; causes,
80 ; Paris Peace Conference, 3-6

World War II, 223-240; aftermath, 242-
48 ; causes, 243 ; profiteering, 231-34

Worley, Warren, 177, 180

Worthy, H. C, 321

Wright, T. P.; 233

Wyoming : naval oil reserves, 59-63 ; Pro-
gressive Party, 294. See also Teapot
Dome scandal

Yale University Law School, 283-84 Yudenidi, Nikolas, 6 fn.
Yellowstone (U. S. destroyer tender), 298

Young, A. H., 166 Zeiss, Carl, 228-29

Young, John W., 147-49 Zevely, J. W., 61
Young, Owen D., 81 fn., 162

^IZU^n^A!; '"■' '" Jota AsUin. B. A., indexer

372

ALBERT E. KAHN.

at thirty-seven, has earned an interna
tional reputation for his sensational ex-
poses of secret diplomacy, fifth column
intrigue, and the machinations of men
in high places. His books, as Walter
Winchell once said of them, "pull nc
punches, name names."

A graduate of Dartmouth College,
where he was a famous athlete and
winner of the Crawford-Campbell Li-
terary Fellowship, Mr. Kahn became,
in 1938, the Executive Secretary of the
American Council Against Nazi Pro-
paganda whose Honorary Chairman
was the late William E. Dodd, former
U.S. Ambassador to Germany. During
the war years Mr. Kahn was editor
of The Hour, a newsletter which
achieved nationwide prominence for its
numerous revelations and news scoops
concerning fascist agents and Axis es-
pionage rings.

In 1942, in collaboration wdth Michael Sayers, Mr. Kahn WTote Sabotage!
The Secret War Against America. Reprinted in Reader's Digest, Sabotage!
became one of the most w^idely discussed books in the country. Together
with Michael Sayers, Mr. Kahn wrote two more bestsellers: The Plot
Against The Peace (1945). and The Great Conspiracy (1946).

The Great Conspiracy, which sold a quarter of a million copies in the
United States, has been printed in probably more foreign lands than any
other non-fiction book published in the last decade. Among the 25 lan-
guages in which The Great Conspiracy has appeared are French, Rus-
sian, German, Swedish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Italian, Dutch, Portugese,
Polish, Slovakian, Danish, Norwegian, Roumanian and Bengali. The
world circulation of the book runs into millions. High Treason appears
to be headed for the same international acclaim.

Arthur Kahn, research and editorial assistant to Albert E. Kahn in th^
writing of High Treason, served in the Office of Strategic Services during the^
war, aod after V-E Day was appointed Chief Editor of Intelligence, Informa-
tion Control Division of the Military Government in Germany. He is:
the author of Betrayal, The American Occupation of Germany. The two
Kahns are not related.

LEAR PUBLISHERS

105 East 15th St., New Yori: 3