350 Radio Detectives Watch World Airwaves
ROBERTS, BILL
350 Radio Detectives Watch World Airwaves By BILL ROBERTS (This is another in The New Leader's series on the little, known radio, warfare division of oar nation*! defense apparatus. It is based...
...The ?*mda of Arabia are no longer safe...
...boys in a Bronx subway train...
...Inexperienced men, whether young or old, readily accepted the leadership of fellows who were schooled for leadership and all set to go...
...The Communists, obviously, could not get into command in the -United Mine Workers or" in the Machinists Union...
...Mexican oil to the Axis, Mexican Supreme Court Justice Xavier Icaza arrived in the United States to see Davis...
...It is based partly on information supplied, by Chairman Fly of the Federal Communications Commission...
...For this we have the word of the world's supreme authority on esc*Pe from reality...
...John Lewis placed his car at the judge's disposal...
...Minn...
...The mass of the Association supporters refuse to follow the lead of the extremist choice, former Govenor Elmer Benson and his colleasrues on the state committee...
...For our sins we must now call in the United States army to prevent criminals from holding up production of airplanes which are needed for the fight against the master criminals in Europe...
...Davis for legal services at rather generous fees...
...1938, while Mr...
...He is head of the Washington branch of the American Youth Congress, which will meet in July to otfginize a drive against national defense...
...Senator Wheeler had as his house guest for weeks a Polish refugee noblewoman who was pro-Na&i and openly anti-Srmitic...
...God help us if the notion gets abroad that only the aged are fit for such responsibility...
...V Davis attempted to get himself invited as a representative of Negro Peoph...
...Ari undetermined number of workers already have been dismissed from the Philadelphia, Bremerton (Wash...
...At the same meeting a trial board was created to try the press unit of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which in a private letter had criticized the calling of The Day strike...
...Here in New York we have controversy—despite the Mayor's assurance that everything is worked out—that people will be told just where to go, and when, and what to do...
...The daily press, definitely not ondta- the influence of this column, makes a great point of the fact that the leaders of the wildcat Communist strike at the- North American Aviation plant are young men...
...Wheeler...
...The moral of this enlightening piece of information—if it has any.—is that local unions should elect only old men to places of leadership...
...They may even be willing to take Dakar or the Canary Islands to protect Fifth Avenue and Times Square...
...Once they get a picture of their own houses tumbled into piles of splinters and rubble, death in London and Coventry will become more real...
...Pearson and Allen, the Washington Merry-Go-Rounders, report that there is support for Ch.a#fe* Fahy, Biddle's present assistant, to fill his chief's job if things move as is expected...
...However,.one-is within 100 miles of Berlin, the other, somewhere in occupied France, There are three mystery stations on the air working against the "British...
...I refer, of course, to James Hilton, who enriched our imaginations with pictures of Shangri-La, that Mrene height of isolationism...
...This will prdbably mean that Solicitor General Biddle will move up into Jackson's spot...
...Tie Ivory Air-Raid Shelter "pHE ivory tower has now, naturally, gone underground...
...In his latest masterpiece, instead °f adding some wings to his castles in the desert to accommodate senators, authors and fliers who yearn to escape from the wickedness of war, he has his hero construct a perfectly appointed bombproof shelter at a sufficient distance below the street-level...
...The Germans use this technique originate"*}" by Goebbels to influence the British dissident elements...
...Haywood has done nothing: But the Civil tService Commission is on the war path...
...Because it had received frequent complaints from union members that they had been barred from employment or otherwise disciplined because of disagreement with the policies laid down by their union leaders, the ACLU decided to investigate...
...Dinner guests relate that she attached the "Jewish international bankers'' openly and that she found a sympathetic audience in Mrs...
...The United States Government is responsible...
...Heard on the Left By VICTOR RIESEL CINCE we never resist temptation, and seldom love our neighbors, most of whom stew in their own prejudices, gather round for an item or two about some gyps off the old political block...
...Many of these broadcasts are intended to stir trouble here, to keep foreign agents and sympathizers informed of the latest technique and line, and to pass on information inimical to American hemispheric defense...
...The penalty is expuhsion...
...But there is some talk of an outside chance for the appointment of James Lawrence Fly, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission...
...Or perhaps it showed merely their general faith, in life, their care-free attitude toward the universe...
...The Communist ' Party is a criminal, conspiritorial...
...Ten-to-one, the elevators will be put out of commission...
...Who Lot the Communisfs In...
...Great Lakes, IH...
...Unless' something of this nature is done the Association will disintegrate, as the antagonism and division will irretrievably scatter the elements, and the movement will fall back on the official Farmer-Labor Party structure for expression and representation...
...Although stories are circulating that these secret stations are concealed under hay in barns, and that they move secretly at night when special agents »with direction- finding equipment gets too near, the Columbia Broadcasting corporation experts scoff at the idea...
...The UERMU is controlled, not by James Carey, its president, but by Stalinists like James Matles...
...Of the old-timers, only Kyle Crichton wa4 there, in addition to the Dashiel Hammett-Bichard Wright-Donald Ogden Stewart caviar movie crowd...
...The War Department is expected to set precedent for other bureaus by cleaning house...
...This sort of set-up accounts for what we now see going on in Los Angeles...
...The emphasis on pulp nearly put the Congress in a stow...
...350 Radio Detectives Watch World Airwaves By BILL ROBERTS (This is another in The New Leader's series on the little, known radio, warfare division of oar nation...
...Washington is having labor trouble of its own...
...His reasoning seems sound...
...If the Transport Union wins its fight with New York City for a closed shop contract, every one of the 30,000 Subway employees will be subject to Mr...
...The charges will be . . . subversive activity inimical to national defense...
...A.A.F...
...In Jiew York alone the Guild has closed shops on The Post, The Daily News, The Journal-American, The Mirror, PM and others less known nationally...
...The HTA planned motion pictures, a summer circuit and a school...
...The overwhelming repudiation by the voters of the communist element now in control of the Association is a measure of its standing...
...One started to light a cigarette and was astonished to learn that in this country one is not allowed to smoke even on the station platforms...
...Then he went to New York to attend some conferences which Pressman had arranged for him...
...And in judging a man and his fitness for a job, it is character and intelligence plus experience that count...
...These transmission sets can be used by the enemy not only to dispatch information abroad, but to send misinformation into the densely populated sections of the United States...
...Within the next two and' a half years the corporation will get $4,500,000 more to Satisfy claims growing out of the Mexican expropriation dispute...
...Some of the politically ambitious Farmer-Laborites have announced resignation from the movement and their affiliation with the Democratic party/ This does not reflect the attitude of the great Body of Farmer-Labor voters and supporters...
...The British have spotted two secret Nazi transmitters operating under the pretense of being "freedom" stations, run allegedly by groups in England...
...TIE Communists have dug themselves into about half of the GIO unions," which number more than forty...
...The play urged such actions as were exhibited at North American Aircraft last-Week...
...Apparently new to subways, one of them exclaimed: "Imagine...
...But only two weeks ago the Stalinoid leadership of the United States Housing Local 166 of the United Federal Workers brought up on charges Miss Corinne K. Robinson, Dorothy Cline and Anya Smith, prominent m the anti-Communist opposition inside the local...
...But he could find no better way1 to set them to fussing than to say just that...
...To be sure, the Mayor told the people of Baltimore the other day that they need not, right now, think of air-raid shelters...
...The task of" tracing down his station involved the use of highly specialized equipment recently perfected for the Commission's national defense field foes...
...Counter-espionage as well as propaganda analysis is part of the Commission's objective...
...From the day the Association passed1 into their hands, decline began, and now threatens to wipe out the Association and the Farmer-Labor Party as factors in Minnesota politics...
...Throughout the country a picked staff of 350 technicians, trans-\ lator clerks, propaganda analysts and other experts are working J round the clock in shifts listening for subversive and other pertinent radio propaganda originating abroad or in this nation...
...WeTf be sleeping in these things when we are on leave back home...
...If the union had a closed shop, such as Michael Quill's Transport Workers' Union seeks, Mr...
...But he is sent to no West Point and takes ' no pledge to the commonwealth...
...The 1941 session of the state legislature has just ended...
...As things now stand, a trade union official has...
...They stand for the preservation of the party on the basis of progressive principles established by American methods of government...
...Now comes Herman Kobbe, who certainly can qualify as an authority on such matters of architecture and engineering, and he tells us that he wouldn't give a nickel for his life above the first few stories of such a structure...
...T%EPORTS are that the angel behind the Institute for Propa* ganda Analysis will not foot the bills ncA year, because U has become too blatantly biased in projtaganda dunking...
...ACLU board chairman John Haynes Holmes and executive director Roger Baldwin have appointed ad committee for this work, according tto reports...
...It may be six months or more before the findings will be sufficiently analyzed to permit publication...
...O03fi7 weeks ago...
...The Columbia Broadcasting corporation listens in to and records this radio war of -words at a special receiving station at Freeport on Long Island...
...There are reports that the Navy Department plans to fire 400 from the Brooklyn Navy Yard...
...Labor came out of the mill empty-handed...
...The party line State, County and Municipal Workers Union suspended Ullman Rosen-field, a civil service employee, for criticizing: the leadership's Stalinist line...
...labor organizations...
...When governor, he surrounded himself with communist-inspired individuals, which led to the undoing of the, party...
...Labor Bloc in legislature to Call Conference to Save F-L Association By WILL MAHONEY Special to The New Leader ST...
...Now United States soldiers with fixed bayonets are trying in a bungling way to undo the harm which they have wrought...
...Misinformation is sent out at strategic moments from supposedly "secret freedom stations...
...Senor Icaza then conferred with Lee Pressman, chief CIO counsel, and John Lewis...
...As in primitive times, security "« now deep down in the .womb of earth...
...These were at Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Grand Island, Nebr...
...The emphasis was on pulp and fiction...
...Recently they brought Max Yergan, secretary of the National Negro Congress, down to Washington to speak at a defense mass meeting at one of the local Negro churches...
...Three times he flew to Detroit, once he conferred with Governor Van Wagoner, who has just called a meeting of Negro representatives and CIO officials to settle animosities created then...
...Some weeks ago he tried to capitalize on the Ford strike...
...The charges are "attempts to wrteck the unk»t and placement of anti-administration information in the public press...
...MAYOR LaGUARDIA, as head of Civilian Defense, is getting *** the people of his home town ready for what lies ahead...
...Her* they are—being trained for the most dangerous service in the most ruthless war of all time—but their behavior was instinct with the gaiety and gallantry of youth...
...THE League of American Writers Congress last week was a shadow of its former self...
...The local branch of the Association refused to cooperate with labor organizations in sponsoring a slate of candidates...
...All pretend to be operating somewhere within England...
...Gone are the times when his only responsibility was to carry on a vigorous and dangerous fight for better wages and conditions...
...In their olive-drab uniforms, with little to distinguish them except bronze pins on their caps, their joviality was what set them off from the crowd...
...On the basis of this program, it is predicted that tHe SDD will outstrip the ASU, transmission-belt youth' group, in membership and actjVity at BrooHynNCollege by next semester...
...It will no lon^rer tolerate federaT'em-ployees who divert themselves with subversive activities...
...Bat he was rebuffed when president R. J. Thomas of Hit United Anto Workers declared that he would not sit in on a meeting if that "Communist so-and-so" was invited...
...T»his means loss of his job if he is in a closed shop, since the party line administration alsd appoints the trial boaid...
...He began by stating that there was no difference between Nazi Germany and England, and then launched a blistering attack on the Allies...
...If thai is the idea, it is as cockeyed as anything I ever came across...
...Davis was'shipping...
...Then imagine what will happen when all of the inmates try to use the stairs at once...
...The payoff is thai Anya Smith is the wife of Anthony E. Smith, CIO associate general counsel...
...Roosevelt is responsible...
...It was easy to guess Aat they are among the 8,000 young Britishers being trained here for service over there...
...A LTHOUGH the Russia First crowd has been making an all * m out drive to gain wide Negro support—Dan Gilmor is even reported as the angel of the comradely Southern News Almanac which is trying to foment trouble down South—they have made little headway...
...At a recent membership meeting the Communist leaders refused to permit a resolution to pass which would" have prevented administration critics from being brought up on charges for what they were about to say on the floor...
...The story of Lewis' intervention with former Mexican labor chief Lombardo Toledano, for German purchasing agent William Rhodes Davis, is an old one...
...Commission has come to a conclusion which the tovarfschi •just can not understand...
...There is difference of opinion as to the utility of our subways as air-raid shelters...
...At one point, one of these boys and a young Negro happened to make for the same seat...
...The United Electrical, Radio and Machinists Union is expanding rapidly its control of large firms like General Electric, which has 5,000 employees in one plant alone...
...Last week a gentleman called Teppinrg was fired from the Social Security Board...
...Later the" AHiance, which had the backing of Hollywood Commissar Herbert Bifeerman and all the little commissars on Beverly Hills—where the proletarian $l,000-a-week movie workers love to think of themselves as denizens of a little Tobacco Road of their own—toured the play...
...A New Measure of Security •IJ&tfAT- interests''me is that at last we are becoming war-™ conscious...
...Rosenfield, leader of the anti-communist opposition, would automatically lose his job...
...On April 30, Charles W. Johnson, of Peoria, 111., who identified himself as a senior student in electrical engineering at an unnamed mid-western institution, was taken into custody by federal agents...
...In addition to a number of labor organizations withdrawing, or ceasing interest and activity in the affairs of the Association, some prominent members have formally resigned from the state committee of the Association...
...The * Workers Freedom Station" issues straight Communist propaganda calculated for English Communists...
...Their faith in free American transport was indicated by the fact that they planned to hitch-hike to their training field near New Orleans in two days...
...This is the fruit of communist scheming and the cooperation of their fellow travelers within the Association—blasting the work and accomplishments of many earnest progressives during the past 22 years...
...This was my conclusion "the other morning after brief contact wif.h three rangy R.A.F...
...The Consolidated Oil Corporation, a Sinclair company, received $4,000,000 from the Mexican government two weeks ago...
...Frequently he signed himself Fritz and concluded with "Heil, Hitler...
...Smith heard of the charges, he went to town...
...Its new director, Dr...
...One is called the "New British Broadcasting Station" and spouts straight Nazi doctrine aimed at sympathizers inside England...
...He said Toledano sent him, and that it had been agreed that Mr...
...The Farmer-Labor-liberal bloc in the legislature recently arranged to call a state-wide conference to consider the situation and devise means to remedy it...
...A recent arrest proved how efficiently the FCC's detecting apparatus functions...
...It is more likely still that—no matter what the number of their calendar years—they will be young in experience...
...His case went to (Special Sessions 'because be punched a plaln-clothesman wearing glasses...
...It is also reported that if Biddle goes up...
...Lucky far the party he withdrew . . . what the tovarischi didn't know was that Creeaen's hero, in Double Detective Magazine, is the' "Green Lama...
...Despite the accuracy of modern apparatus capable of locating wireless and short-wave transmission sets, the Vastness of the United States would make difficult the seizure of machinery before damaging news could be sent abroad for several consecutive days and the machinery dismantled...
...So the 'Communisms dug in...
...117HEN Wyndham Mortimer and Lou Michencr pulled out the " lads at Vultee, the men were invited to be the guests of the Hollywood Theatre Alliance at a free showing of the anti-defense play, "Zero Hour...
...at least as great a potentiality for good or evil as an army officer...
...UfTTH two Supreme Court vacancies to fill, President Roosevelt " finds himself forced to make decisions he has tried* to avoid for a while...
...The "Civil Service...
...Private stations and radio corporations are cooperating with the government...
...On the air he claimed to be a cryptographer for a signal unit in a German army of occupation...
...But the angel feared to tread . . . for the Hollywood Theatre Alliance went into bankruptcy last week...
...in Mow York RJfEN who are in the war take it with more humor and realism l** than those who ought to be and aren't...
...One of the men characteristic of the new trend was Robert Carse, special feature writer for Argosy magazine, you know, the bang-bang-dpop-the-girl-you-cur-type...
...The personnel experts have worked out standard sets of requirements for-practically every sort of position...
...These delegations sought the discharge of the reporters who wrote the stories...
...Those in foreign tongue are translated for permanent record, to be used by the government if necessary...
...Student Defender Chapter Organized At Brooklyn College A chapter of the Student Defenders of Democracy was formed at Brooklyn College this week, with Sally Schlefer as President and Richard Cantor as Freshman Director...
...Now It is learned that Icaza had been retained by Mr...
...A few have existed for years, but in their present form, with their present size, they are essentially new...
...Once people start to think of German planes over their own town, they may be willing to go into action...
...KrSt we were told that aerial bombardment would have no terrors for those on the middle floors of a thirty-story building...
...ACLU to Probe Democracy in All Unions The effect on internal union demtocracy which the closed shop is having because of the greater voice in industrial management ¦now being won by a rapidly expanding labor movement will be explored by the American Civil Liberties Union, it was learned this week...
...who has been fighting Communists for some tine...
...The state Labor Party officials sanctioned the attitude of the Minneapolis local branch of the Association and issued a vitriolic edition of the Minnesota Leader, the official organ of the Association supporting the F-L slate and villifying prominent members of the Farmer-Labor movement...
...Carse led the May Day parade delegation of the League of American Writers...
...It beat the F-L slate more than five to one and eliminated the latter from the general election ballot...
...The transmitter was finally traced to Johnson's residence on North Sheridan Road in Peoria...
...There, too, opposition may meaa loss of job...
...and Charlestown (Mass.} navy yards...
...The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHH Young kien and Young: Unions rOWE youth an apology—or, at least, an explanation...
...Davis would pay commissions to Mexican and U. IS...
...A. young fool is far more attractive and has, at least, the advantage that he may outlive his folly...
...It is true that young organizations are likely to be made up of men this side of senility...
...We have let it go on...
...Alfred- McCUtMg Lee, who succeeded Clyde Miller, participated in the labor journalism session of the American...
...The survey is still in its early stages, despite other reports, a spokesman of the ACLU told The New Leader this week...
...Quill's policies oq face disciplinary action whicn may cost him his job...
...Benson's readiness to listen* and follow vill-advised counsel is too well known to Minnesota Farmer-Laborites for them to be deceived by promises of loyalty to the Farmer-Labor movement...
...subversive organization...
...They operate on the basis that the verbal grapevine spreads news more rapidly than does any other system of communication, and if several thousand people hear the broadcasts millions will know it shortly...
...Among these is the vice-president of the Association Charles Alunn, former State Railroad and Warehouse commissioner...
...In the American Newspaper Guild, communist control is more ¦dangerous, for it jeopardizes freedom of the press...
...He purported to be in the service of foreign agents...
...All of these are new organizations...
...This technique could be used to cause confusion...
...It announced that some angel was ready to invest $250,000 in their people's" project...
...We have allowed it to get in its work...
...The other day I found that the people of Wilmington, Delaware, the home of the DujJoflts and of Atlas Powder, are sure that they will have the distinction of receiving the first bombs-sent to American soil...
...He has counted heavily in the past on both Senator Byrnes and Attorney General Jackson...
...Johnson had been operating a radio transmitter, trespassing on government frequencies...
...The ancients coined the proverb that "there is no fool like an old foot'—thus giving approbation, to the notion that such fools exist...
...PAUL.—When the communists and other extremists seized control of the Minnesota Farmer - Labor Association, by electing their choice for state chairman at the convention of the Association last January, they reckoned without full consideration of the consequences...
...The SDD's platform cans for all-out aid to the democracies and delivery of that aid by convoys or any other method deemed necessary...
...Brains of the drive for Negroes is the Harvard-educated ex-Republican who rushed from the original meeting of the Negro Congress straight to Moscow to report on his new party-spensored movement among the Negro people...
...Government listeners-in learned that this operator had more than an average knowledge of certain codes and ciphers...
...Further back he spent his spare time picketing the French consulate and was arrested with some 50 others...
...Tommy Corcoran would like his job...
...If any of the men on the Btaffs of closed shop papers were tiied and expelled thpy would automatically be fired...
...Their only chance was in parts of the labor structure where new groups were hastily got together, where all faces were unfamiliar, where jobs could be easily got by delegates sent from Communist headquarters...
...The International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, controlled by Harry Bridges, revised its constitution attempting "to discredit the offi-attempting to discredit the offic-cers before the public" can be expelled...
...Roosevelt says she is sorry that such a thing should happen...
...The Germans have hundreds such sets ready to transmit vital information from nearly every part of the United States, officials believe...
...Its domestic program calls, for the preservation of civil liberties, the rights of tabor, and the abolition of all /discrimination against Americaji minority groups...
...Perhaps the education of the sponsors is a tribute to the education activity of the Institute...
...But we just learn that in December...
...In recent weeks The New Leader has learned of at least two instances where union officials were part of delegations to the publishers of newspaper which carried anti-Communist stories...
...Judge Irving Ben Cooper fined him $100...
...He tried to engage government stations in conversation passing on spurious information, in an effort to "exchange" data with American officials...
...San Pedro, Calif-, and Portland, Ore...
...This is what the United States "radio detectives" are preparing to ferret out and fight...
...Special national defense listening posts, which record, translate^ transcribe and analyze foreign Short-wave broadcasts, are directed by the Federal Communications Commission in cooperation with the Defense Communications Board...
...The most table elements ade discontinuing their moral and financial backing...
...The citizen is puzzled, too, by conflicting testimony, all of it pretending to be expert, on the safety of denizens of the skyscrapers...
...The influence of the State Association is reflected by the results of the recent Minneapolis city primary election...
...He now bears, serious responsibility, recognized in law, as a leader in the army of national production...
...I was talking about young unions, not about young men...
...We are all sorry...
...Ken Crosse* whs scheduled to speak on "New Heroes In the Pulp Field...
...And within the hoar the local comrades began shouting of the civil rights of government employees...
...Many labor unions and other progressive groups have either withdrawn or lapsed into apathy and antagon-• ism to the Benson regime...
...He returned to the United States in the summer of 1H48...
...When Mr...
...But who is responsible...
...Another is the "New Caldeonia Broadcasting Station," which radiocasts Scottish separatist and left-wing propaganda, and is aimed at the Clydeside shipyard workers...
...We are told that plans for a force of unprofessional fire wardens and for civilian air-defense are all blue-printed...
...Meanwhile the growing harassment of Communist leadership of unions important to the defense drive has brought with it an increasing number of violations by this ^leadership of trade union democracy...
...Is Yomr Bomb-Proof Shelter Ready...
...This conference may (be held at a later date...
...Writers Congress under Alex Crosby of the Federated Press...
...along with WaKer White ef the NAACF...
...Many have been operating since late 1939, when there were 26 offices located strategically throughout the United States and its possessions, augmented by seven monitoring stations...
...Yergan was recently suspended from the City College faculty for subversive activities...
...The leaders—Freitag, Wiltanen,' Simpson, Goodman, etc.—are said to be between twenty-five and thirty-five...
...This forced the unions to put an independent ticket in the field...
...But for places ot honor and responsibility in politics and trade unionism, no such standards have been set up...
...its organizer, and Jules -Emspack, editor of its official newspaper...
...Illegal equipment was seized at his home by a United States Marshall...
...He put Alan Haywood, national CIO organizer, on the Spot by calling him long distance and demanding that he use his office to stop the purge of oppositionists in the USHA local Mr...
...It urges a negotiated peace...
...There are hundreds of thousands of persons in this country skilled in the operation of apparatus capable of farthing and almost instantaneous communication...
...Munn accepted the vice-presidency in the hope of preserving harmony but soon found it impossible to wonk with chairman Benson and his associates...
...You and I are responsible...
...The Britisher stopped, bowed, and said: "Go ahead...
...Because it is felt that the President cannot leave two places vacant at this time, it is expected that he will name Robert Jackson shortly...
...Even the experienced trade union leaders, even the great national federations of labor have failed to do their duty in the face of thin danger...
...The bomb, he says, will have a lateral swoop and will be more likely to hit the sides than the roof of a skyscraper...
...PROM members *f the banking combination which handles our Wall Street holdings comes news which involves John Lewis and writes the epilogue to one of the strangest tales yet written about that extinguished-looking labor leader...
...Both are definitely in line for court appointments...
Vol. 24 • June 1941 • No. 24
