CONVERSATION WITH BELLA DODD
Schaeffer, Louis
Conversation With Bella Dodd By LOUIS SCHASFPER BELLA DODD was Just what American Communism needed. One of the Communist party's few important woman leaders, she was a power in the CIO Teachers...
...k Our conversation was not a great success...
...I didn't think she'd see me...
...ON HER OWN AGAIN...
...Well...
...Though we had many quarrels then, I had always been polite, and*perhaps it was this correct amiability that she now recalled...
...The facts, briefly, are these...
...bl felt uncomfortable, and I imagine she did also.^We chatted, but somehow it just didn't "take...
...WE THEN PASSED to the biggest charge against her — the case oi the Puerto Rican tenants...
...But the tenants were Puerto Ricans...
...In all the other charges...
...The shadow of a frown crossed her face...
...Louis Schaeffer is a labor publicist now on the staff of the Jewish Daily Forward...
...Mrs Dodd worked out an agreement with Rent Commissioner Saul M. Fink, stipulating that the landlad*/* sentence be suspended until all the money was paid back...
...Although some of her law firm's clients will quit her by Party order, she is not too worried about it...
...Unless it's because the witnesses at my wedding were two of my best Jewish friends...
...To re-establish herself in the community will require hard work, but she is not afraid...
...I asked, made anti-Semitic remarks, as the Daily Worker said...
...Mrs, Dzerlin appealed to Bella Dodd...
...If she were put In jail, she declared, her tenants wouldn't get back a cent, and her crippled husband would be left homeless and helpless...
...formerly a janitress at 1600 Lexington Avenue, had paid $200 down and taken over the house as landlady...
...Dzerlln borrowed money from friends and relatives, borrowed some money orr her husband's life insurance policy...
...I tried to ease the tension...
...But her manner was friendly when I called her, and she agreed to meet me for lunctf...
...Had she supported the renegade Earl Browder...
...Bella Dodd will have a tough time...
...she continued, "like a newly divorced woman who has just lost her husband because he is-a scoundrel but nevertheless doesn't want anyone else to berate him...
...First, as a fellow-traveler, her name graced many frost orgarrlration lists...
...When anyone criticises the line of the leadership, he is charged with Browderism...
...I feel...
...Imagine how we Jewish socialists fait whan Soviet Russia justified its murder of the two principal leaders of the Jewish Bund in Poland, Erlich and Altar, on the grounds that they were Hitter's agents...
...One of the Communist party's few important woman leaders, she was a power in the CIO Teachers Union, and bore by marriage the name of one of America's ontsrandfng families...
...she replied, "that is the usual subterfuge...
...The real cause of my break was the leadership's determination to maintain the Communist opposition in the CIO at all costs...
...Like most of the neighborhood landlords (including the house's former owners), she ducked the rent law...
...Bella," I said, "you musn'i feel too badly about this communistic accusation...
...Finally she was able to assure Bella Dodd that the tenants would eventually be paid in full...
...But the party leaders answered that if this happened, the expelled unions would form their own central body...
...Had she...
...she said, "I can find some shred of explanation for the attitude oi the State Committee...
...I went to Bella Dodd's office at 100 West 42nd Street and saw all the records...
...And with a sigh she added: "Maybe 111 get used to it with time...
...She explained that she and others had argued that such tactics might lead to the CIO's expelling its Communist unions...
...As a result, she was hauled into court, charged with violation, "and ordered to refund the overcharges to her tenants...
...I LAST SAW BELLA DODD in 1938, when I was Manhattan campaign manager for the American Labor party, and she was working in it for the CP...
...Later, as a professed party member, she was elected to the New York State party executive, and then to the national committee...
...Looking at Bella Dodd, I thought to myself: How many intelligent people must become Communist victims so that other well-meaning young people don't fall into the net of these Red Jesuits...
...Thank you," she said...
...Unable to pay back the $2,000 she owed...
...Suddenly, a few weeks ago, she was expelled from the party, accused of "discrimination against Negroes," "Brow dertsm," "white chauvinism," When I decided to ask Bella Dodd for an interview...
...Bella Dodd made the landlady promise to make every possible effort to repay the $2,000...
...I am sure you mean well, but at the same time you don't forget to rub if In...
...Although her negotiations enabled them to get their money heck, the State Board of the Communist party ruled Bella Dodd's efforts "discrimination against Negroes...
...Frances Dzerlln...
...But no maiter^how hard I think about that accusation, I cannot recall the slightest occasion which would give them the right fa make It...
...She was genial, energetic, an effective speaker...
Vol. 32 • August 1949 • No. 34
