Letters to the Editor:
Letters to the Editor: rtaM inclad* fall uai sad address. W» will withhold both if roaaosUd. Germer Sees C. I. O. Ruin in A. F. of L Proposals Editor of The New Leader: The New Leader of...
...We in the United States should do everything to boycott the bnatal Calaban and all its works Every dollar spent on Japanese goods in this country is a bullet fired at a Chinese man, woman or child...
...Solon Bernstein...
...Under these circumstances the importance of establishing who these people are, with whom they were in contact in America, who aided them in the passport faking, etc., is self-evident...
...Nevertheless, Moscow has two mysterious people in its control and an absolutely free hand to use them as it will...
...The plain, blunt truth is that if the A. F. of L. accepts the C.I.O...
...Robinson's picture...
...The case appears to be clinched for the reliability of the report, which shows that thousands of corporations employ mercenaries to poison human relations in industry...
...THE PRESIDENTS MESSAGE •THE President addressed not only Congress last Monday but also the bandit powere of Japan, Germany...
...Persons fa New York claim to have seen her in Moscow about a year ago...
...6. In obtaining their fake passports the Robinsons, or those using the name, employed various addresses...
...Perhaps it had no authority to do so...
...General Hugh Johnson this week radioed his resentment that the government may say to the Sacred Cow: "Cooperate, you big bum, or we'll beat you to death...
...He referred to "unfortunate divisions relating to jurisdiction among the workers" which have "retarded production within given industries...
...Did the G.P.U...
...OwBcJeentally, a G.P.U...
...THE JAPANESE CALABAN '^"HE Japanese war in China continues to be an amazing combination of provocation, mass murder of innocents, reduction of cities, towns and villages to ash heaps and a disgusting pretense of ethical and religious motives...
...Why did it permit these particular Robinsons to enter...
...At last the decision came...
...Is he willing to see the labor movement murdered and have the corpse again laid to rest in the hands of Hutcheson, Wharton, Coe-field, Frey and Company...
...The message was largely a restatement of objectives to be later followed by specific recommendations...
...Senators LaFollette and Thomas answered in a long letter, considering each statement of the Times and analyzing it...
...Again, whether the so-called Robinsons moved in Stalinist circles may be the crucial question if they should in due time blossom out with "confessions...
...If it has authority and refuses to do so, then we have good reason to question its sincerity and to beware of wolves in sheeps' clothing...
...X^E AN* WHILE, Hague is contin-*"* uing his defiance of the C.I.O., the Civil Liberties Solan, and the committee that was organized to fight his totalitarian rule of "his" city, a mtmmm that includes Walter Lippman, Dr...
...It is common knowledge that this dispute has also provided a hair shirt for other members of the Administration...
...Is that the desire of Algernon Lee...
...It is rumored that well-known members of the Communist Party in New York have said privately that the Robinsons had bees to California...
...My own pattern—and I offer rt as a tentative hypothesis that admittedly assy not be worth the paper it's written on—is this: A couple of G.P.U...
...agents are brought to the attention of the American public...
...But it is not even offering restitution for the wrong the Executive Council did in illegally suspending the C.I.O...
...This genera] hypothesis may be worthless...
...To take the unions back that were illegally suspended is not a concession...
...These documents, in ester, are...
...Who is she and what does she know...
...It has really helped to keep China divided by bribing high Chinese officials in the post-war period, by subsidizing Chinese bandit leaders, by breaking down the Chinese customs service, by smuggling Japanese goods, and by financing puppet Chinese politicians in local and provincial offices...
...Militarist Japan has always insisted that it wants a unified China with which it can cooperate...
...7. The only occupation that has showed up far "Rubens" was a contact with a magazine called "Literary America...
...general standards down to these low levels...
...No Alaskan Indian tribe ever bowed with mere reverence before his totem pole than do many of our "best people" before our Sacred Cow...
...Hence, since there is no longer a strike, there is no sense in picketing any more...
...The kept organs of Hitler and Mussolini snarled their resentment of this criticism...
...The fact was in the papers...
...Even he could not get himself to outlaw picketing, especially since many other Vice-Chan-cellors were deciding that picketing was legal...
...F. of L. controversy...
...But he worked out a decision that stands as a triumph and that will probably live as the greatest piece of legal reasoning ever to come out of Tom's River, N. J. Vice-Chancellor Berry found that a strike ceases to be a strike when there are no longer vacancies in the force employed by the boss who is being struck against...
...Roosevelt replies by approving the philosophy of democracy and condemning dictatorships...
...3. But Moscow has not yet stated in so many words that the alleged Robinsons are under arrest...
...Has the American** government insisted on seeing her, as it has every right to do under its treaty with Russia ? 4. The pivotal witness on the American side is the person who.» admittedly received and signed for the Robinson passports: a Mist . Helen Ravitch, at a Drama Travel League...
...Why have the reporters dropped that trail ? It is obviously important to elucidate whether she is a communist of the Stalinist denomination...
...Did she ever work for any Soviet organization ? What proportion of the business done by her travel agency is represented by tours to Russia, especially the tours to the Soviet Theatre Festival ? Where did the financial backing of the agency originate...
...Meanwhile, Maja Leon Berry of Tom's River was pondering his problem...
...Such an able scholar of the American labor movement as Lee...
...5. This lady's husband is a New York physician...
...The latest jewel mined from the Berry legal intellect was eagerly awaited for a long timer' Several years ago the labor movement in New Jersey—then united—filed an elaborate brief seeking a definition of the rights of workers to picket...
...To accept the A. F. of L. proposal is nothing short of destroying what the C.I.O...
...Two of these six firms, in addition, had employed the guard services of detective agencies...
...CORPORATION MERCENARIES *T*HE report of the LaFollette Senate Committee on Education , and Labor last month, disclosing the widespread use of spies and provocateurs in industry, was challenged by some influential dailies...
...If it has not, it should say so...
...Present indications are that at least one of the implicated people, Mrs...
...other injunctions enjoined workers from doing other things...
...Harry Friedlander, Miss Lillian Paley, one iPodemy or Podolsky, Julius Rosenthal, etc...
...so far as he is concerned (and as far as the law in New Jersey is concerned ) the whole problem of strikes and picketing is solved...
...Will they confess contritely that they were spies, working for the Mikade under Trotsky's orders, trying to steal the Panama Canal and bring it to Tokyo and that suddenly Trotsky told them to detbur to Moscow and purloin the White Sea Canal instead...
...Another stenographer in that office is supposed to be in California...
...U) Ham Fish's finding on radicalism in the United States...
...It would be going too far, even for the Tom's River legal luminary, to outlaw strikes...
...We suggest that the American flag be changed so that it will beer the imprint of a well-fed cow decorated with dollar signs If our bloated corporate kings must have first consideration in all things, let's adapt the national banner to the r*l*\r\x\ religion and require all of us to order knee-pads for use in praying to our Sacred Cow...
...Hints an dropped in Moscow, and planted in New York as well, that thev maV be "Trotskyist spies...
...must know how Hutcheson, Whar«l ton, Frey and Company handle ""belligerents...
...Why hasn't any reporter gone to the library and checked up on the contests and contributors...
...Now, that is what Berry says, and that suits Hague first rate...
...Rubens," is an American...
...WHERE THE NEWS ENDS By EUGENE LYONS A MATEUR detectives, cross-word puzzlers and addicts to news...
...MEANWHILE, there were many *** strikes, and the labor movement wanted to know where it stood...
...What connections, if "any, did such people have with the Communist Party, or with Soviet organizations here...
...Hague's Anti-Union Blasts Speed Unity in Ranks of Jersey Labor By WILLIAM M. FEIGENBAUM AND now comes one Maja Leon Berry of Tom's River, N. J., Vice-Chancellor, to strike the latest (unwittingly) blow for independent political action for the labor movement...
...That is where fke matter rests at this moment, except that the rank and file of the A. F. of L is restive and uneasy ove* the continued split with the C.I.O...
...wants reunion, and actually is cooperating with the C.I.O...
...Among other things, Lee says: "The American Federation of Labor has already conceded, as an integral part of the settlement to be reached, as much as could reasonably be demanded of it and more than seemed likely a few weeks ago...
...I- s~ OUR SACRED COW C1NCE the decline of industrial production began last August, it has become clear that the big business class is the American Sacred Cow...
...The New York Times declared that the report lacked documentation, was carelessly prepared, and reckless in its accusations...
...IT is a safe guess that either the Robinson-Rubens esse will fade out entirely, an unsolved and forgotten mystery—or it will make page one headlines in some sensational affair now in the works...
...Is this the same man who was physician to William Z. Foster, Communist candidate for President in 1&32, and connected with the International Workers Order...
...The committee for many months had issued releases reporting no less than 1,500 firms using the "services" of detective agencies, and only eight had directly challenged the accuracy of the reports...
...Have they any other inside or advance information on the movements and intentions of the Robinsons...
...After an interval they are discredited in American public opinion as impostors and not even Americans...
...Detroit, Mich...
...The others had used guard services...
...Only a few days ago the same Maja Leon Berry of Tom's River decided that while it is legal to strike, it is illegal to strike for a closed shop...
...True, the A. F. of L. committee did agree to recommend that the unions illegally suspended by the Executive Council be re-admitted, but how about the members of the new Internationals formed by the C.I.O...
...Hence, it is illegal to picket...
...The only ones who can solve the mystery at will are those who have the Robinsons-Rubenses in custody...
...Turning to our own problems, he made it clear that he would continue to fight for minimum wages and maximum hours of labor, pointing out low standards that survive in various sections which contribute profits to absentee owners and tend to drat...
...Take the United Electrical and Radio Workers, for instance...
...In brief, the A. F. of L. proposes to use a part ef the C.I.O...
...Hitler and Mussolini have for years broadcasted their contempt for democracy and glorified their dictatorships...
...It is the simplest thing in the world to suspend charters and fire those who want a change in administration or policy...
...For the C.I.O...
...What does the A. F. of L. propose to do with them now...
...His latest blast is devoted to Roger Baldwin, and its "facts" are taken almost wholly from the Lusk report, to which be refers with reverence...
...The result was an impressive and convincing answer...
...Unfortunately, for the sake of< clarity, our good friend Lee does not inform your readers just what "concessions" the A. F. of L. has made, nor does he state in just what manner the A. F. of L. has conceded "more than seemed likely a few weeks ago...
...It is a joke, to say the least...
...The daily press and the radio have for months warned that this or that must not be done, as it would be offensive to our national fetish, and government has been cautioned that the Sacred Cow must first be consulted before it acta...
...2. The Soviet government has not yet explained why it waited a week or more before answering the State Department's inquiry about the missing Robinsons...
...That, the Tom's River Blackstone believes, is that...
...There was no place for them in the A. F. of L. except as step-children of the Electrical Workers' Union...
...Instead of "unite" it is "divide," "divide" and then divide some more...
...unions...
...If not, where did she get the one she travelled on ? 10...
...And why would such resourceful spies use precisely the name under suspicion ? If they used another name, Rubens let us say, how could they have lived at the National Hotel in Moscow for weeks as Robinson, when visitors surrender their passports to the hotel on arrival...
...The fate of the new unions formed by the C.I.O...
...shows that the President is much disturbed by it...
...Dozens of "leads" have been ignored or dropped before their possibilities were exhausted...
...On the other hand, should the C.I.O...
...The Hutchesons, Whartons, Coe-fields, Freys, and Wolls may be dethroned...
...8. A stenographer working for the Drama Travel Bureau...
...One reason why the Jap Dillingers have ventured upon the present bloody crusade is that despite all Japanese provocation, China had accomplished much in reconstruction and unity...
...But <from that quarter-nothing but silence...
...Prospects for flat Laker "Party an blight...
...Germer Sees C. I. O. Ruin in A. F. of L Proposals Editor of The New Leader: The New Leader of December 18 contains an article by my old friend and colleague, Algernon Lee, dealing with the C.I.O.-A...
...Since the raid on Manchuria several years "ago, the policy has been to manufacture "incidents" on Chinese soil, followed by military invasion, creation of "demilitarized zones," installing Chinese traitors in power and maintaining them in power with bayonets...
...Injunctions were issued, and workers enjoined from marching on tlje picket line closer than 120 inches apart...
...If that*1s the ease, it stay shed additional light on whether the milieu in which the "Robinsons" moved was Stalinist...
...PHE movie version of the American reporter represents him as a * keen-witted and indefatigable detective, following every cine with bloodhound tenacity...
...He declared that "stable civilization is actually threatened...
...The President gently informs the practitioners of this black magic that it can hardly be reconciled with the ethical claims of the expert players and that it should be ended...
...Italy and their allies...
...and expressed confidence that "democracy will be restored or established in those nations which today know it not" These statements are unusual in a presidential message...
...Buy no blood-stained Japanese goods...
...accept the terms of the A. F. of L. and allow the newly formed national unions to be split and absorbed by the old line craft unions, it will" serve the purpose of increasing their voting power in A. F. of L. conventions and further ibetray the cause of industrial unionism...
...Letters to the Editor: rtaM inclad* fall uai sad address...
...chief in s Moscow article suggests that California is in-feeted with Japanese spies...
...At any rate, Hague has discovered three documents that he quotes with all the finality of Maja Leo Berry quoting precedents, or Adolf Hitler quoting "Mein Kampf...
...Adolph Germer...
...A Warsaw dispatch hints that they were in Mexico, where Trotsky now resides...
...national and international unions is an indication of the methods employed to keep the old reactionary crowd in control...
...that world peace is safe only in the hands of the democratic nations, that it "is moat greatly jeopardized in and by those nations where democracy has been discarded or has never developed...
...Another decade of this reconstruction would have meant a unified China capable of defeating all internal and foreign robbers, including Japan herself...
...As against all the unconvincing and unsupported stories ef international Trotskyist-Japsnese-Nazi plotting exposed by Dr...
...For instance: 1. Last summer the Soviet government was keeping out tourists named Robinson...
...The Hague blasts, published in the Jersey City newspapers, are supposed to be taken seriously, bat if they were written as^burlesques they couldn't be funier...
...Up to now, the A. F. of L. committee has persistently refused to reduce its so-called "concessions" to writing...
...Its phrasing was so indirect that it is still in a position to announce that it has failed o apprehend the mysterious visitors, should it decide to squelch the whole business...
...Charles A. Beard, Dorothy Thompson and other "reds...
...Moscow correspondents ask to interview the Robinion-Rubenses but they dont get to first base...
...His latest is to issue a series of blasts against various "reds," which are dutifully printed in the newspapers of "his" city, ss are resolutions adopted by civic, fraternal, veterans' and religious organizations...
...Miss Walsh, thought she recognized Mrs...
...From all appearances Miss Ravitch may hold the key to the mystery...
...Isn't it true that their proposition is to split them into four or five parts and repeat the blunders that have been characteristic of the A. F. of L. for the last 25 years or mote...
...to accept those terms would be an act of betrayal that could never be forgiven...
...Now, if workers may strike, it follows that they may picket...
...The record in this •fantastic case has belied that version, both in respect to the foreign correspondents and the domestic reporters...
...I yield to no one in my desire for the unity of the working class, not even to Algernon Lee, and could the A. F. of L. proposal be interpreted, by the furthest stretch of imagination, as a move towards a greater and more solidified labor movement, I should be the first to welcome it...
...A significant statement was his assertion that those who oppose government work relief for the jobless, at heart really favor a dole in place of useful work I A section is devoted to the various forms of tax-dodging the* big shots practice, their wizard manipulations of stock, excessive capitalization, price rigging and other forms of the black art by which pockets are picked, little chaps are frozen out, and corporate tenacles gather in the smaller stakes of leaser investors and businesses...
...If that is so—and it should not be difficult to trace down these private statements—how did they know...
...built up during the past two years...
...The object of a strike, in the Berry mind, is merely to fill vacant places in the shop...
...to further entrench itself and make its rule more secure...
...Vice-Chancellor Berry, who is 60 years old and who has been on the public payroll since five years after he began legal practice, has just pontificated to the effect that picketing is illegal as soon as an employer has filled the places of strikers...
...in a body, there is serious danger that the old machine will crumble...
...After all, he asserted, only a small minority el the big fellows play with marked cards and loaded dice, and unless they behave, "the capitalistic system will destroy itself through its own abuses...
...John Dewey's committee recently, the Kremlin thus has on hand two seemingly bona-fide spies, who have won American attention but forfeited American sympathy...
...paper name-puzzle contests have a perfect foil for their talents in the weird Robinson-Rubens mystery out of Moscow...
...After a detailed consideration of the Times' criticism and of the denials of these eight firms, the Senators summarize their answer in the following paragraph: "Out of the eight firms either denying the accuracy of the committee's list, or requesting further information, six were found in the committee's records either to have used industrial espionage or to have contributed to an association making espionage services available to its members...
...Did she have a legal passport...
...A reference to the fight between the A. F. of L. and the C.I.O...
...against orders of the High Command ef the Stat* Federation of Labor) la an Anti-Injunction League...
...Then, apparently, she returned to New York, to disappear soon thereafter...
...Oh, can they...
...Recent anti-Trotskyist trials have shown that it is'not squeamish about using the methods of frame-up...
...2) the Dilling -Red Network," and (3) Senator Clayton R. Lusk's report en Revolutionary Radicalism in the United States...
...Al" Lee may tell me that this new influx into the craft unions can change the policy of the organization into which the members are parceled...
...is still in a position to announce that it has failed to appre-credited in America before admitting, by implication, that it had them in custody...
...It reveals capitalism at its worst...
...have inside information that in the meantime the State Department would discover that it...
...is ready to have them "confess," their "confessions" presumably will have a ready-made credulous audience here...
...9. Does the disappearance of Julia Stuart Poynti have anything to do with the mysterious goings-on...
...Was it the same Julius Rosenthal reported killed in the Communist battalion in Spain, and was he net a Communist functionary here...
...If and when the G.P.U...
...and Mrs...
...The problem is to assert them to maze some tenable pattern...
...that the A. F. of L. could never organize, or did not care to organize...
...To try to secure a closed union shop by peaceful means is, in the Berry mind, contempt of court...
...is to be determined later and, knowing the attitude of those in command of the A. F. of L. machinery, there can be no question, not even in the mind of the scholarly Algernon Lee, what the outcome will be...
...If the list of contributors Includes naaoes also known to readers of the New Masses, may it not help ascertain the ideological circles in which that "Rubens" moved...
...And so if an employer violates the Federal law and imports strikebreakers into the Garden State, and if they take the places of workers on strike, it is contempt of Maja Leon Berry, and hence contempt of court, for the workers to continue striking and picketing...
...Incidentally, the only paper in New York which has practically ignored the whole story in recent weeks, publishing less than any other paper, although it should interest its reader most closely, is the "Daily Worker...
...Among the people turned up in investigating those addresses were Martin Deutsch...
...In spite of the A. F. of L. and all the opposition and obstacles it could place in the way, they succeeded in forming an effective international industrial union...
...The ease with which the A. F. of L. Executive Council, contrary to all law, suspended the original C.I.O...
...Dozens ef ¦aeatatsil facts have teen published in the press m dispatches from the Soviet capita), statements by Federal agents here, and stau turned up by reporters...
...It was at that time that the anti-injunction bill sponsored by the (then) united labor movement was being regularly mowed down in the legislature upon direct and definite orders of Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City, who sent letters to •"his" Senators and Assemblymen in Trenton to vote against it...
Vol. 21 • February 1938 • No. 2
