CIO-PAC-A Survey
CIO-PAC-A Survey Record Shows the Communists Have Not Captured PAC By Stephen Hill BlFOgS the CansmnnUta' political machine ran capture the Democratic Part/ by uae of th* ClO'a Political Action...
...WhAT is the real story of PAC...
...Sidney Hillmaft got the job...
...Only the other day the Dm Committee charged that "the New Deal'* Political Action Committee plans a revolutionary roup on election day to place the American piople under a Communist dictatorship...
...To line up with this sort of irresponsible preelection nonsense not only discredit* the writers w ho fall for thrsr "reports" but also discredits and wesken* the steady rompaign against the American Communists which is so needed to return decency to our political life...
...At least 22.OO0.U0O less persons voted in 1942 than did in 1940...
...And they remember that it was thejRoosevelt Administration which gave them the right to sit across we table from Ben Fairless of Big Steel and bargain *lth him for their wages instead of scrambling before Ǥ charging "Cossacks," the Pennsylvania state mounted police...
...So do we throw out the CIO, or its Political Action machine, because the Communists control PAC in New York City and California...
...This they did in 1943...
...They are well informed...
...Phil Murray, Van Bittner, David McDonald...
...7 year mey nameu Money niliman its chairman...
...Thia is the story in a score of other cities as well...
...Other sources say that certain Whit'.- House advisers urged Hillrnan get the job...
...and his own days as a glass blower...
...I believe that the formation of the Liberal Party will tarn eat to b* an event of crucial importance in the political life of America...
...He set up the PAC's national headquarters in New York...
...In December of 1942 the CIO became alarmed over the failure of the middle-class liberals and the progressive working people to participate in elections...
...A trip threat** the nation's industrial areas wilt prove that the Communist* are operating on the outskirts of PAC and are not running it...
...Kvcn in these two states the Communists have little real political power because the (irst time they really step out of line the national CIO headquarters will swat them down...
...Surely, the intellectuals will not be so patronizing as to say that all these labor leaders and clerical spokesmen are naive chumps who can't see a Communist even it he is rolled out from under the bed...
...history, might go to Cleveland...
...And they would find that the old Democratic Party has virtually disappeared in Michigan...
...Theie intellectuals would toon learn that he is anti-Communist and that his one con earn is the re-election of President Roosevelt So that th* CIO could, in postwar years, salvage much from the CIO now swollen with war workers...
...In th* fall of that year they named Sidney Hill...
...The others have little influence...
...Well, the Dies Committee turned up some 80 Communists in PAC...
...The Most Rev.-Bernard J- Sbeif, auxiliary Bishop of the Chicago Archdiocese, praised labor's .lolitiral activity...
...the workers of western Pennsylvania PAC meant wet Rontevch will com* back and the Coal and Iron PdicewiUnot...
...He went to Chicago during the Democratic national convention...
...To prove this the Hearst newspapers quote Sen...
...A* » . • ND there are others who think that PAC is important to the labor movement...
...These are important Cateholic periodicals, published by competent men...
...They remember he shootings in the nearby mining towns...
...They would find there labor's political machine In the hands of a rough and tumble AFI...
...They Would And that the Michigan state PAC office, th* local headquarters and the CIO itself are and Communist with a sophistication wl irh will match thst af the front page experts...
...Furthermore, they will find that these men, who were able to unionize the mammoth Ford and General Motor empires despite the corporations' use of gun-men, tear gas and the press, are not interested in any social revolution regardless of the brand...
...They might go into Detroit where PAC rolled up a registration of 800,000—fully 96 percent of the eligible voters...
...CIO-PAC-A Survey Record Shows the Communists Have Not Captured PAC By Stephen Hill BlFOgS the CansmnnUta' political machine ran capture the Democratic Part/ by uae of th* ClO'a Political Action Committee—as so many intellectuals he**ibeen predicting in recant editions of the pro-Pcwey Uanp pa-Howard newspapers—the Stalinists ajsjat irst esptar* PAC...
...I do not dispute that...
...They want to re-elect Roosevelt because it was bis Administration which gave them the chance to organise tha unorganized and because Ford and the CM people are heavy contributors to Governor Dewey's campaign fund...
...And II want to add that it is an honor to be associated with the men and women who are doing the fine and valiant work in which yoar party is now engaged...
...man called McGroarty...
...The Dies Committee records...
...That was a basic strategic error...
...He permitted himself to develop into the most effective issue the GOP could raise against the President...
...From a telegram to John L. Childt, Liberal Parly State Chairman, read at the Liberal Party rally...
...Most of these are In New York and California...
...So did three Catholic magazines: Commonweal, America, the Jesuit weekly, and The Liguorian, official publication of the Re demptorist F'athers...
...He would point ant that the AFL, the railway brotherhoods and many CIO unions in Cleveland would pull out of the Joint Labor Committee before they would permit the Commies to move in...
...But their gratuitous donation of PAC to the Stalinists put th, sc intellectuals in a position of opposing not only PAC but the CIO as well...
...Both statements are true...
...They will find that labor is in politics in a monumental way...
...Such CIO leaders a* Philip Murray and the outspoken anti-Communist James Carey tried to set up a liberal political action organization with the late George Norris as its leader...
...And on what basis...
...When Norri*' illness prevented him from working at it, the CIO leaders de-cidtd to create a political action committee as an out-and-out CIO affair...
...There, in a little office in a cheap loft building they will find handsome Cus Scholle, regional director far PAC in Michigan...
...If it were not for the PAC there would have been no registration drive, no efforts to get the thousands of war workers to exercise their voting rights, no campaign for Mi...
...Holland is an ex-Congressman...
...The intellectuals should look up from their files and memos and rediscover America...
...Talks with political ¦¦Titers ia the big cities—men who have grown cynical watching their leeal politicians operate for one or two decades—will prove that the Communists in many areas net only do not control PAC but are sabotaging it...
...Lacking a political apparatus he made deals with the ALP left-wing and won in the March, 1944, primaries...
...Well, they have power in the AFL as well...
...In several international unions, as a matter of fact...
...Surely they were right in their basic analysis of the Communists' activity in the U.S...
...Hut despite this show of poor judgment, there certainly is no evidence that Hillrnan'* appoint on nt was • Communist plot...
...The political error* Hillrnan committed have seriously hurt Roosevelt'* campaign...
...That, in effect, is what was urged by the intellectuals who wrote for Roy Howard in the last two weeks before election...
...Or , the men who wrote those front page pieces for th* Dewey newspapers just a few days before the most Important election in u.s...
...Robert (Tar Heel Fuehrer) Reynolds, who once praised Hitler...
...Because the Stalinists have some power in CIO...
...For immediately after he was appointed he decided to step into New York and take over the American Labor Party...
...The CIO members know that the bitter-end fighters ¦tainst unionisation by either the CIO or the AFL are »a Plants owned by Joe Pew, Ernest Weir and the jjjb*» Who arc subsidizing the Republican Party...
...They would learn that the men who sweat in Pitts-hurgh's steel-mills, under those belching smoke-stacks, and who spend their spare time distributing registration and "get-out-the-vote" leaflets, remember "the days when" it was worth many lives to picket the big plants...
...Roosevelt and his foreign policies...
...And if tha lead doesn't come from tha honest progressive and democratic forces, tha Stalinists will take over by default—as usual...
...R. J. Thomas, Sherman Dalrympl* and the other CIO chieftains to Sovielize America...
...Conversations with PAC state leaders, with veteran , onti-Communiat union men and old timers among the gertalists tirougboat the nation will prove that PA<: ¦ essentially a ?10 operation...
...John Dewey Hails The Liberal Party Congratulations on the superb platform snd the campaign of the Liberal Party...
...Or, the men who ganged up on President Roosevelt under the guiding hand of Roy Howard himself, might go to Pittsburgh and talk to tall, blue-eyed Klmer J. Holland, assistant state director of Pennsylvania's PAC...
...Ami the Csesessmetta era a long way from control ttrAc...
...These people are for labor's political action Yet the writers who rushed into the IVorfd Telegram and other papers of the same chain, were so intent on exposing PAC that they refused to say a word for such independent political action lest it gain a vote for Roosevelt...
...But they certainly are not evidence of conspiracy by Jim Carey...
...By using the Dies records in publiic the intellectual opponents of PAC are placing themselves in the same category with th* lories of the anti-Roosevelt crowd...
...They might listen to stories that Holland tells of the blacklisting of his father, a steel puddler...
...And in at least one powerful railway brotherhood...
...He knows the Republicans of Western Pennsylvania, the men who owned the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron police...
...If this sounds strange to the veteran intellectuals ¦riio have hit the front pages of th* Republican news-papers with their dire predictions that Mr...
...Browder will soon he dictating the peace from the White House —then these intellectuals should go West...
...Carey has said that this wa* dona because Hillrnan wa* the only CIO leader with an old and established union which was not subject to In-ternercine warfare...
...He would knock you down if you insinuated that the Stalinists were in control...
...Hillrnan made other errors...
Vol. 27 • November 1944 • No. 45
