The "Reconversion" of Gerald L. K. Smith
Kellman, George
The "Reconversion" of Gerald L. K. Smith By George Kellman AS long; as America can produce too much, no Americans should have too little." Don't look now, folks, but it's that stalwart liberal,...
...Smith likes some, •hing else about the Communists, for he told me that his P.R.C...
...This is not the first time thalt Gerald Smith has rummaged around in the ideological junk-pile...
...Next step is affiliation to the CIO, possibly within the UOPWA ranks...
...As only one instance, when the America First Committee disbanded, he promptly formed the American First Party, so as to capitalize on a publicized name...
...So, It should be no surprise to learn that a convention was held of "money groups" last August 17 In Detroit at the big house of Blsnche Winters, anti-Semitic "Mothers" leader...
...Just the old . cell game again...
...iet this straight," said this gimlet-eyed l.fiiilei of Men, "I am not u reactionary, and I am not a Communist-Pm a middle-of-the-roader, and opposed to both...
...Yes, there's sverything for everybody—just let C.erald get it for you I I asked Smith whether he was veering toward the Left in his policies...
...We need not here discuss Smith's conception of true Americanism...
...Slopping off at New York, where, ha toM me, he was conferring with "religious leaders, Protestant and Catholic," Gerald Smith irjvited the ladies and gentlemen of the press to view this new demagogic omnibus of his...
...doesn't know which way tint wind blows, and which form his "reconversion" must take...
...program is a combination •f "the best features" of the plans of Huey I»ng, Father Coughlin, and Towns-end, not to mention such cogent schemes as the "Ham-and-Eggs" plan, which aiso kas been scrambled into the P.R.C...
...Elizabeth gurley flynn, the Daily Worker's Elsie Robinson, took a lilast at Jonah Goldstein claiming that her vote would be cast against the Republican candidate for Mayor because he Im...
...What does P.R.C...
...I do not know whether ex-Tovarish Goff ever got into Youth for Christ, hut I do know that Goff la the head of Christian Youth for America, which was organized as a sounding-board by Smith, Goff, and the Reverend "Cowboy Preacher" Harvey H. Springer, no mean hand at writing an anti-Semitic screed himself...
...The gentleman last named is a Buffalo Coughlinite leader, and an active organiser of what has come to be called the "money groups," of which more anon...
...There'll be "at least" $200 a month for every wounded veteran, and $50 weekly for everyone unemployed...
...Gerald has indeed gone a long way from the times when he was addressing confidential groups of financiers and industrialists in New York, on Long Island, and in the Detroit-Cleveland •rea...
...But, off with the old, and on with the "•w...
...C. F. Dexter, a former member of the notorious Black Legion...
...The "money angle" is a spendid come-on for the unwary...
...However, Dizzy-Lizzy is a-votin' for O'Dwyer—even if he has "yielded to the red-baiters," as the 1>W says...
...Why this stressing of Money Reform ? The answer to thst ia that within the past year, every bigot and his brother have jumped Into the hitherto comparatively innocuous "money" movement...
...Why should our dollar represent anything except the actual commodities that constitute the wealth of America...
...The dollar should not represent gold or any metal, it should represent goods...
...Smith told the press that he represented and spoke for 58 organizations...
...for short...
...then we're going to issue enough dollars to raise the living standard of America to a point it has never reached before...
...Instead of plowing under crops and pigs, we're going to plow under the International Bankers—we're going to do it by monetary reform...
...But," added Comrade Smith, "there's S lot I admire about the Communists...
...Smith modestly ading can comfortably hold...
...And here followed Gerald's historic dictum which begins this article...
...Torrey Johnson, president of this organization, had taken the trouble to issue a statement that his organizaion "does not now have and will not have anything to do with any organization headed by Gerald L. K. Smith, or any figure who uses religion to help grind his political axe," to which Smith lamely explained that his lieutenant Kenr.eth Goff (a professional "ex-Communist") was a member of that organization, and therefore he was speaking for them...
...So you see, it cannot be ssld that c.l.k.8...
...Of course, we may indulge in some speculation over Gerald Smith's number of 16,000, since Presi-dentia Clandidate Smith of the America First Party polled only 1,780 votes in the 1944 campaign...
...Not so surprisingly, Smith revealed that his "Commission" consists of only three— ¦Miss R. E. LeGant, who is his secretary, Donald Lohbeck, his current factotum, and Joseph Stoeffel, who has attached himself to the Smith entourage...
...will have "15,000 key men, who are my friends that have stsyed with me through thick und thin...
...Pikerizing the postwar proposals of the Administration and out-dealing the New Deal, Onerous Gerald will get you a weekly government check of from $30 to $00 when you hit the age of three score...
...1 asked him for the list, and he advised me that I would find a list of 21 major organizations in testimony setting forth his views before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the United Nations Charter...
...Apparently, Mr...
...At one point, the convention wss adjourned early for the announced purpose of having all delegates attend a Gerald Smith meeting...
...Don't look now, folks, but it's that stalwart liberal, Gerald L. ? Smith, talking...
...What Lizzy Flynn neglects ?» inform her comrades ie that J. G. I...
...I like the way they are able to formulai» a party line and make their influence felt...
...Smith, if you please, conducts a strictly one-man show, and prefers to have his organisational "vehicles" officered by his own lieutenants...
...Smith is nothing if not shrewd, and since the changing times call for "reconversion," lie is now gadding about the country sanctimoniously .mouthing hi* new slogan and displaying his new fall line of goods—The Postwar Recovery Commission—P.R.C...
...I then pointed out that the Rev...
...Molloy, now William O'Dwyer's campaign manager, was a member of the Happ-Coudert Committee which obtained the goods on Hhappe« and presented evidence for the perjury indictment...
...Catherine Brown of Philadelphia, distributor of anti-Semitic literature, and leader of the National Blue Star Mothers...
...Gerald never forgets the press...
...Answering my query aa to their function 1« the scheme of things, he told me that •art one of the "key men" will form a "unit numbering from three to as many as the house selected for* meet-fied he represented...
...Those were indeed balmy days, *h»n he made rabble-rousing speeches ¦gainst unions, when he encouragingly declaimed to appreciative audiences "The ground-swell of reaction has set in...
...I inquired which reactionaries our new-found liberal was opposed to, and he laboriously enumerated: "The National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, and the International Bankers...
...I asked him whether or not this plan flies in the face of Father Coughlin's silver-money plsn, inasmuch as the Reverend Coughln'a plan was an announced part of the R.P.C...
...Later witnesses named more than thirty Stalinists in Schappes' fraction...
...Lyrl Van Hyning, former speaker for the German-American Bund and head of "We, the Mothers...
...offer...
...let's gel back to the P.R.C...
...Charles Q. Smith, rabble-rousing friend of some of the alleged seditionists...
...Known as the "Eastern Monetary Congress," the following were some of the economists who attended: Colonel Eugene Sanctuary and Krneat F.lmhurst, the latter a rabid pro-Nazi, defendants in the recent Washington Sedition Conspiracy Trial...
...been the judge in the Morris U. •Schappes trial...
...The Stalinist United Office and Professional Workers are said to have a hand In the recent resignation from the A FL of the Amalgamated Lithographers Union, an old-line group with 16,000 members...
...He proudly announced that his P.R.C...
...program...
...I then asked him whether he had appeared at the hearing, and Smith then had to tell us that he was "represented by ly substitute, Carl Mote...
...Comrade Schappes was the (l' whip in the City College Stalinist unit who stated he was the only Communist at the school before hearings of the Rapp-Coudert Legislative Committee investigating subversive activities in New York's public schools...
...I wish we could be as effective in establishing true Americanism...
...Indicted for perjury, Schappes — now head of the Commy's education commission and using the name Alan Horton—was convicted and sentenced before Judge Goldstein...
...But Gerald Smith brushed that one off as an irrelevancy...
...We're going to nationalize the Federal Reserve Bank and tuke it out of the hands of Wall Street...
...Who are the deep social thinkers that constitute the "Commission...
...That gentleman actually is his stooge, besides being the owner of a telephone company in Indiana and a prolific writer of anti-Semitic venom on his own...
...Kenneth Weber, one of the leaders of the Klanlike United Sons of America, and Homer Maertz, who introduced a resolution calling for the sterilization of all Jews in America, st Smith's America First Psrty convention in 1944...
...And now, the old master, in one deft stroke, presents this melange of Coughlinism, Longism, Town-senilism, and anything else that will appeal to the remnants of those and similar movements, and potential new customers...
...Who, Indeed, wouldn't like more money...
...Smith is going to get all the money for these munificent public handouts in a very simple way...
...I then put the question to him whether he spoke for The Y'outh for Christ, a fundamentalist movement, numbering a half million adherents which Mote testi - mitted that he did...
Vol. 28 • October 1945 • No. 42
