THE BRIDGES VERDICT

...it wb.4 from the funds of these Councils that the Party could always get a donation in one form or another and perhaps most important of all, it was with the prestige of the Council's names that the Party was able successfully to suck in many of California's liberals and intellectuals plus their organizations, and later disgorge them as Stalinist robots...

...Just a few hours before, the papers had hit the street with the big...

...Some of them got burned by their mid-trial 10-to-6 odds favoring a hung jury...

...He had taken the floor on a motion he had made that the Council ask the indictment of Paul Crouch, Manning Johnson and Lawrence Seaton Ross, government witnesses against Bridges...

...He said he didn't join the party himself, became he didn't And the answers to his immediate union problems in its theories...

...Jones called Schomaker a "damn liar," and said anyone else saying he (Jones) signed Bridges up in the party also was a "damn liar...

...CP Control of West Coast Labor Ends By PAUL JACOBS International Representative, Oil Workers Union, CIO QUIET RATHER SUDDENLY came over the hall and the delegates started to return from -the back of the room and the corridor outside...

...The charges carry maximum penalties of seven years in prison, and/or $15,000 in fines for each defendant...

...The defense, which bitterly assailed each witness in his turn, surprisingly had no cross-examination questions for Wilson...

...She, too spoke quietly, and pointed out that Kaplan had not talked on his motion...

...Revolts broke out in their own unions...

...THE FANTASTIC PICTURE of two sets of councils came to an end first in Los Angeles where national CIO forced the L. A. CIO Council to agree to hold a convention at which all CIO unions in the area would be represented...

...It carried overwhelmingly with a chorus of ayes, and Stinson, with a wry grin, said, "The motion to table carried by three votes...

...And I don't think Hallinan broke down Schomaker's testimony...

...Schmidt and Robertson two years each...

...He refused to deny he was a Communist, but readily admitted associating with Communists in union affairs and of resisting attempts to bar them from membership in his union...

...In late December 1949, an investigation was held of the State Council and early in 1950 national CIO removed its charter...

...After Kaplan concluded, a few hands went up as speakers asked to be recognized...

...These unions set up councils of their own and called them "Councils for National CIO-PAC...

...Judge Harris put an end to the legal wrangling...

...and the U.S.S.R...

...It argued that the statute is inapplicable and that revocation is improper in view of the pending appeal...

...on the world scale and was reflected within the CIO itself, more and more unions began to detach themeslves from the CP dominated state aad city councils...

...FOR ELEVEN DAYB Bridges was on the stand...

...But Judge Harris withheld the fines because, he said, it would save "the rank-and-file of these men's union from being assessed...

...Also that of George Wilson, who made a distinct impression because having to admit being a Communist is quite u blow to his family...

...Will Bridges...

...instead, he talked about the history of Bridges and the ILWU on the West Coast...

...About everyone knew what Kaplan was going to say...

...Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S...

...without a base to operate from, the Party can look forward to very little on the West Coast...

...A motion was made to table the question...

...he discussed the prior attempts made by the government to convict Bridges...

...With that Bridges, president of the CIO International Longshoremen's, and Warehousemen's Union, reverted to the alien status he held when the Government started the first two deportation proceedings...

...Only the never-tobe-convinced hard core remains...

...As the case appeared headed for the U.S...

...Spokesmen for some of these same employers, testifying for Bridges, said that his word was good m carrying out agreements...

...He said ho wanted to study the matter further, and instructed the attorneys to submit briefs for Mm to review...

...A few more hands were raised to speak...

...Through the years a small group always managed to resist the blandishments of the Party and spoke their minds, always meeting with abuse and slander...

...citizenship in 1945 by denying falsely he was a Communist...

...Following the war, as the struggle grew between the U.S...

...Bridges alone filled the record with 175,000 words...

...The CIO Council building in Los Angeles, now the subject of involved and costly litigation between the Commies and pro-CIO had long been known as "The Kremlin" and is still characterized In the same fashion by even the non-Communist unions which presently use it for a headquarters...

...Further, she said, the ILWU spokesman had asked not for the indictment of all perjurers, whichi might have included Bridges, but just the indictment of three alleged liars...

...They entered lawsuits of every kind...

...The Government accused Australianborn Bridges of securing U.S...

...His long-winded answers and his attorneys' tactics, which netted them jail terms for contempt of court, did not help the defense any...

...Schomaker was raked over the coals when he testified that he and a fellowCommunist, Bruce B. Jones, signed Bridges into communism in 1933...

...Bolstered by the high court edict...

...Bridges then applied for citizenshipsomething he had never bothered to do before during the 25 years he had been in the country...

...They were among the ten ex-Communists to take the stand for the Government, which repeatedly stated that the present case—Bridges' first criminal trial—was entirely new and different from his past hearings...

...The pro-CIO delegates had learned well from their years of domination by the hacks- -they came early to the convention, they stayed late and they caucused before and during the convention itself And they talked CIO's program with an enthusiasm that rivaled any meeting of the Freiheit Mandplin ¦ Verein with its members orgiastically strumming Red Star on their instruments...

...We paid quite a lot of attention to Schomaker, whose testimony never was refuted in the jury's mind...

...serve his prison term, or will he be banished from the United States, where he is now regarded a convicted felon and consequently has lost his suffrage rights...

...TRIAL POST-MORTEM has it that the outcome might have been a hung jury had it not been for prosecution witnesses John Schomaker, the hodcarrier, and George Wilson, the Los Angeles newspaperman, both former intimate associates of Bridges...

...From the back of the hall someone shouted, "Let's end it or we'll be here all night...

...and finally he pleaded for the Council's support of the ILWU...

...Prior to the investigation, attempts haa been made to get the State Council to agree to hold a convention of all groups but the Party boys had learned/the lesson of Los Angeles and refused the offer...

...An American jury of eight men and four women upheld this and also found his co-defendantsHenry Schmidt and J. R. (Bob) Robertson—guilty of conspiracy and of aiding and abetting the fraud...

...Supreme Court reversed the order in a 5 to 3 decision on June 18, 1945...

...their prestige dropped lower and lower...

...Wilson and Schomaker placed Bridges in the Communist party just as the others did...

...they tried to steal, by a legal maneuver, the Council building in L.A...

...When Kaplan spoke, the audience was completely hushed...

...It was a picture of | Phil "Slim" Connelly, former secretary of the L. A. Council, former president of the State Council, officeholder for years, and husband of Dorothy Healy, Party secretary in LA., standing behind a wire screen erected to separate delegates from visitors and looking wistfully in at the delegates...

...The issue of the California edition of i the CIO News which carried the story i of the convention, ran a photo which f characterized what had happened to * the Party machine...

...Bridges, their outstanding spokesman and their emotional drawing card, stands convicted of perjury, with his own union split up and down the Coast...

...But he did not talk on his motion...

...The end of the Party as a fores in the West Coast CIO did not come suddenly...

...This convention, then, was the real beginning of the end for the Party...

...So did Hallinan...

...The front organizations have either disappeared, been exposed or rendered impotent...

...Bridges was" an excellent witness for himself, but ho got far off the issues...

...Then she sat down...

...Although the prosecution challenged the defense to produce Communist officials to deny Bridges' alleged membership, defense attorneys brought in, instead, an impressive array of character witnesses, including a Catholic priest and a surprise group of employers who testified to Bridges' honesty and integrity...

...bold headline: "BRIDGES GUILTY...

...And they were .defeated democratcally, with full right to apeak at all timesxand full right to • nominate their own'slate of officers, -not one of whom was elected to any post in the new council...

...Today, with revolts going on in all their unions, including the ILWU...

...The CIO, she continued, was opposed to all perjury, be it from a union president or a paid government witness...

...Attorneys argued that such action was within the jurisdiction of the Federal Court in which a person is found guilty of fraudulently obtaining citizenship...

...one of the southeast centers of LA., almost 1500 delegates gathered to elect a new set of council officers and ratify a hew constitution...

...In Bridges' first deportation hearing, in 1939, Dean James Landis ruled Bridges was an "energetic radical but not a Communist...

...the chairman put the vote...

...Al Kaplan, president of the Longshore and Warehousemen's local in Los Angeles and himself a delegate to the Greater Los Angeles CIO Council, had been recognized by the chairman of the Council, and was about to mount the platform to speak...

...STILL UNCERTAIN is what happens next to Bridges—the man whom waterfront and shipping employers have accused of staging some of the most violent strikes...

...They contended that under the Federal statute that governed Bridges' indictment, such revocation is mandatory...

...Prosecution lawyers also added that none of »he former Communists ever had appeared publicly against Bridges before...

...The stocky ILWU officer talked quietly, in contrast to his usual flaming rhetorics...

...And CIO on the West Coast has removed from its back a burden that threatened to drag it down completely into the Stalinist swamp...

...But those were the happy days of the Party's relationship to Lewis and the letter was presumably filed in the wastepaper basket...

...From that convention on, the disdisciplined frenetics of the Party, with ^Jhair hangers-on and oportunist followers were on the outside looking in...

...it was in these Councils that Party functionaries could always be elected as delegates to conventions...

...For it was in these Councils that the CP fronts could always get an endorsement...

...Council giving Har^F Bridges any kind of support whatsoever, beyond the guarantee of a fair trial, so far as CIO itself could make sure of a fair trial...

...He gave Bridges five years for perjury and two for conspiracy, to run concurrently...

...THE WAR CONTINUED after the convention but the Stalinists lost more and more ground...

...For more than 10 years, the Communists and their fringe assistants had dominated the CIO through their control of the ILWU, UE, and other satellite unions...

...The defense produced Jones, one of only two umong its 38 witnesses who admitted ever halving been a party member...

...In May, 1949, in the Rubber Workers Hail in industrial Southgate...

...Supreme Court, the Government demanded that Judge Harris strip Bridges of his citizenship right now...

...The chairman, Clarence Stinson of the UAW, recognized Zula Ferguson of the Newspaper Guild...

...That means Bridges, now at liberty on $23,000 bail, won't know until next month just what is to become of him...

...Two days later, the Communist party was in complete retreat...

...Unable to even be elected a delegate or alternate to the convention from his own union, the Newspaper Guild, Connelly is today Los Angeles editor for the People's World, West Coast version of the Worker...

...His testimony gave jurors a good short course in waterfront labor history...

...Together with the State CIO Council, the L. A. Council had been the pride and joy of the Party...

...For this convention was held before any of the Party-dominated unions had been eapaUed from the CIO aad the hacks w»fe out in full force...

...SO WITH A SORT OF JOKE, an era came to''an end in the West Coast labor movement...

...When the Bridges indictment was originally announced, they were unable to muster votes enough to pass a motion in the L.A...

...About that, one of the jurors said afterward that the jury was particularly Impressed by the testimony of Schomaker and Wilson...

...But there had been little excited discussion and none of the violent arguments that had characterized past Council meetings, for these delegates were tired—tired of listening.to and hearing about Communists, the ILWU, Bridges, attacks on redbaiting, and all the hysterical screaming that had been a mark of Council meetings until May, 1949, when the CPers had I'ost control of the CIO in Los Angeles...

...Judge George B. Harris, charged by the defense with "bias and prejudice," decla-ed the verdicts "fair and just...

...He described the Government evidence as "convincing and direct," and said Bridges' guilt was established "to u moral certainty and beyond reasonable doubt...

...The defense thought differently...

...And neither does anyone else, for that matter, including the so-called "smart money boys" who want no more of Bridges and his trials...

...We wondered why Hallinan [Vincent Hallinan, chief defense counsel] didn't question Wilson further...

...The second deportation hearing found Judge Charles B. Sears recommending deportation but the U.S...

...destitute of funds and prestige...

...Back in 1988, a group of antiStalinist stalwarts organized the Los Angeles Trade Union Committee and wrote John L. Lewis, then CIO president, of the work being done by Bridges, et al, to infiltrate the CIO unions...

...All evening long, as the ordinary business of a regular council meeting was being transacted, there had been a buzzing back and forth as the delegates talked about the jury's decision...

...But they were defeated by more than five to ene on every issue that came before the convention, from the opening "minutes when the rules committee made its report to the final roll call on election of officers...