Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR BLACKLISTING I have not made it a practice to comment on the misleading statements about Report on Blacklisting which have been published since the report was released. But Harry...
...Mr...
...He makes this as a flat statement...
...But the impression left by Nixon's statements was quite clear...
...But again the report was quoting Harry Gersh, again the quotation was from the article he and Paul Milton wrote for The New Leader...
...He is wrong...
...Shuster's book was published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy at $4.50...
...It may very well be true...
...I wish Mr...
...I would like to express a word of thanks to Mr...
...I must say I don't know what Mr...
...as an "anti-Communist newsletter...
...I quoted him, to be sure...
...He had the grace to state frankly that he could not trust himself to be objective about the report since he was personally involved in matters discussed in it...
...He states, for instance, that I accept "the anonymous statements of a writer or actor that he was blacklisted for alleged pro-Communist activity" but find it "difficult to accept similar claims of Communist blacklisting of anti-Communists...
...I cannot repeat it all here, but it is summed up in the book this way: "The 'center'—anti-Communist and anti-blacklisting ?never succeeded in making itself heard...
...The first "implication" is that, according to the report, the anti-Communist caucus in the Radio Writers Guild was (1) anti-trade union and (2) made up entirely of people who later joined AWARE...
...The author of Report on Blacklisting also seems to take issue with my statement that he blames WTU for the dissolution of the Guild...
...Gersh has made it again...
...No comments are made about The New Leader itself...
...I don't think I am unreasonable in wishing that Mr...
...It says: "Some [italics added] of its members were undeniably vociferous partisans of Senator McCarthy...
...Gersh...
...For example, on page 153, Volume II, he says: "Among the members of We the Undersigned were many McCarthy supporters...
...But Harry Gersh's review in the September 3 issue of The New Leader is a temptation I cannot resist...
...So, too, with Report...
...As former chairman of WTU, I say his statement is wrong...
...I congratulate him on the obfuscation of that paragraph...
...Gersh states that the report implies the Radio Writers Guild "broke up because of the activities of 'We the Undersigned' and AWARE, Inc...
...In the next sentence these "factual errors" become "implications"—but let that pass...
...I don't know what Mr...
...I stated that his diagnosis of a situation he once described in the pages of The New Leader was "accurate though partisan...
...Ruth Adams Knight's testimony was quoted to illustrate that from the beginning some guildsmen held out for a professional association rather than a trade union for radio writers...
...Gersh "corrects" two "factual errors" in the report...
...Gersh says the same thing but substitutes "hard-shelled McCarthyites" for "vociferous partisans...
...He points out that this required naming names and the immediate cry went up that the names listed would be blacklisted...
...The well-known Jean Muir case is handled briefly...
...Again, Mr...
...Again, this was a direct quotation from The New Leader—authors, Milton and Gersh...
...Gersh had read more carefully...
...NOTE In my column on George N. Shuster's book...
...The operative word here is "many...
...Now Mr...
...In those days the Communists were associated with 'militant unionism,' and their reputation remained an asset to them later...
...I did not hold it up as an example, horrible or otherwise...
...Gersh states that in Report on Blacklisting "The New Leader is mentioned in several places . . . and always to give the impression that it is the voice of the far Right and supports blacklisting per se...
...The report does say that "some honest liberals were scandalized" by the action and that the result was "the worst defeat yet for the anti-Communist group...
...Nothing provably incorrect, mind you, but just a little one-sided...
...Cogley attempts to prove, by pointing to certain commas, quotation marks and other punctuation, that he didn't really say what I insist he did say—just as Nixon attempts to prove he didn't actually say Truman was guilty of treason...
...My last illustration: Mr...
...Cogley is an intelligent editor and a perceptive writer...
...That's what I meant...
...He only gives the impression of disagreeing: a careful reading of the paragraph shows that he doesn't disagree at all...
...He adds that this is not so...
...Cogley had answered some of the basic questions I raised instead of using his space for a legal brief...
...It was supposed to be the record of a research study, not a legal brief...
...The New Leader is quoted twice...
...And, since Report claims to be a scientific study, how does Mr...
...Significantly, the first issue raised in the new organization was a referendum on the Communist problem...
...That was all I had to say about his writing...
...But, he adds, no mention is made of The New Leader's support of Jean Muir...
...The anti-Communist caucus, Gersh points out, included Socialists, New Dealers, liberal Republicans and "hard-shelled McCarthyites...
...Cogley know...
...Many of them had served as officers, councilmen, committeemen, but not recently...
...Gersh means by "indict...
...He doesn't fulfil his responsibility by mentioning that she was speaking of 1942 or '43 (she might have become avidly pro-union by 1952...
...Yet, Mr...
...The first is in reference to an article by Merlyn Pitzele, who is described as a director of the ACLU at the time the article was written...
...Gersh really should have mentioned that it stated the facts in the words of none other than Harry Gersh himself, quoting from his article in The New Leader...
...Gersh states that the report "indicts" the anti-Communist caucus in the Radio Writers Guild because it cited proof that proCommunists were active in the union...
...New York City John Cogley Mr...
...He does not mention that several of these quarters are named in Report on Blacklisting...
...First of all...
...In Silence I Speak, I neglected to mention the publisher or price...
...Yet, on page 33, Volume I he says: "Other actors who actually were not right for the part, or who had lost their special appeal, often tended to salve their feelings by claiming that they were discriminated against because of their patriotic outspokenness...
...But the impression left with the reader when "many" is used, rather than "a few" or even "a minority," is better for Mr...
...He passes over the report's conclusion that "a study of casting lists . . . bears out the oft-repeatcd charge that anti-Communists had difficulties in certain quarters...
...How does Mr...
...Gersh warns that he should not be trusted as objective for another reason: In the report I "dissected" his writing and held it up as a "horrible example...
...The other is in reference to the Milton-Gersh article...
...Earlier in the report, this disagreement about the nature of the Guild was discussed at length...
...The fact remains that he says WTU was responsible for the Guild's death...
...1 am sorry that The New Leader's treatment of the two-volume report (which included three separate studies other than my own work, a long statement by Godfrey P. Schmidt of AWARE, Inc., a shorter one by Vincent Hartnett and a series of statements from industry leaders) was focused on such a small segment of it...
...Milton pointed out that there is no Red Channels in the case of the blacklisting of anti-Communists, i. e., no fixed point of reference which can be used as a dividing line when considering the pattern of employment for anti-Communists...
...He is too aware of the uses of context, positioning and the modifying adjective to disclaim responsibility for the sense they give his statements...
...The report does not say that the "We the Undersigned" group was "made up entirely of people who later joined AWARE and heiled McCarthy...
...It's the feel of the book, the omissions rather than the commissions, the innuendoes, the connotations...
...Mr...
...Cogley proves We the Undersigned's anti-unionism by citing a statement by Ruth Adams Knight, who was speaking as an individual, not for WTU...
...Gersh replies: Mr...
...No mention is made of the publications which supported her, except Fortune and the Daily Worker, and that to indicate the "strange bedfellows" who came to her support...
...Morton Wishengrad has made the same point...
...I do not quarrel with the statement...
...New York City William E. Bohn...
...Cogley know how many members were McCarthyites...
...And watch out for the word "often...
...Cogley makes this indictment only of anti-Communists...
...But he ignores the fact that, for the blacklisting report, lists were studied to ascertain if on certain programs there was a constant use of people who voted with the left wing in the unions and if these same programs used few if any active anti-Communists...
...Nor does he mention that she was in Europe or California during much of the period of WTU's activity, or that her sentiments were not representative of WTU...
...This is what the report actually had to say about the trade-union record of the caucus: It "had a poor group record of union activity in the past two years...
...But might it not also be true of some cases involving pro-Communists...
...I added: "This analysis was recently corroborated by Paul Milton, a radio writer and board member of AWARE, Inc...
...The "union struggle" is discussed at some length...
...The report added: "The anti-Communists were suspected of anti-unionism because of the role played by some of its members in the early days of the Guild...
...Would that other writers were as conscientious...
...Gersh is talking about...
...I stated in the report that I agreed with Ruth Adams Knight, an anti-Communist radio writer, who testified before the McCarran Committee that "there is no way of being able to say that a certain director refused to buy shows from certain people who were rightwing because they were right-wing, and he can say that he didn't buy them because they weren't good scripts, and there is no possible proof...
...Gersh makes some other baffling statements in his comments about the two books I wrote (I am not speaking of such things as describing AWARE, Inc...
...Miss Knight had testified that she went to a Guild meeting and it "was entirely a labor meeting . . . and the Author's League . . . had always been a dignified body of writers...
...Cogley, once more by careful implication rather than by direct statement, denies that he made light of charges of blacklisting of anti-Communists, while giving full credence to every claim of blacklisting on the other side...
...Cogley's thesis...
...But Mr...
...Here is what the book does say: "The union struggle finally culminated in the dissolution of the Radio Writers Guild and the formation of the Writers Guild of America...
...It is true that the report stated that this happened...
...Cogley's answer to my comments anent Report on Blacklisting and this counter-answer remind me of the Nixon-Truman debate...
Vol. 39 • October 1956 • No. 40
