at Michener's home which included Bill Lyons, Sam Miller, Nick Ripan, and "Slim" Connelly, all party members.

According to the testimony of Rena Vale, a former Communist Party member of Los Angeles and a former employee of the Federal Writers Project, Lew Michener attended a closed fraction meeting restricted to party members at 751 South Figueroa Street, some time in May 1938 (hearings, ex. vol. 4, p. 1931). He offered the "comrades" the use of his office in the Currier Building and addressed the meeting there. Michener was at that time secretary of the Los Angeles Industrial Union Council.

During the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, from September 1939 to June 22, 1941, when the line of the Communist Party was to oppose conscription, lend-lease, and our entry into the war, Michener was regional director and executive board member of the U. A. W. A. representing California and neighboring States. He was closely associated with Wyndham Mortimer in organizing the aircraft industry and was one of the leaders in the disastrous strikes at North American Aviation plant at Inglewood, California, and at the Vultee plant.

Richard K. Franklin declared before the Special Committee on Un-American activities in his comment on the North American strikes that Michener and his associates were not interested in the wage issue. His statement follows:

Mr. Michener and other people like him back there do not care if they get their wage increases. In fact, they would rather not. They bait the employer into an unreasonable attitude if everything else fails, or they try to make some demand which they don't think will be met (hearings, vol. 14, pp. 8564, 8565).

In 1939, Michener was affiliated with the International Labor Defense, "legal arm of the Communist Party."

38

SAUL MILLS

Saul Mills is secretary-treasurer of the Communist-dominated Greater New York Industrial Union Council. His position in the C. I. O. Political Action Committee is, therefore, a strategic one. According to the Worker, Communist organ, this 34-year-old former newspaperman, is the moving spirit of the largest central body in the C. I. O. "that today gives leadership to an important section of New York's labor movement and through New York to the rest of the country" (February 7, 1943, p. 5, magazine section). The council claims to represent 500,000 workers and 250 local unions. Together with him on the council have been such well-known Communist wheel horses as Joseph Curran, Ferdinand Smith, Marcel Scherer, Abram Flaxer, and John Santo.

Mills was a charter member of the New York local of the American Newspaper Guild, a Communist-controlled local.

In the early days of the Transport Workers Union, which has been unanimously found as Communist-led by the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Mills was selected by Michael Quill, union president and Communist-supported councilman of New York City, for the job of handling public relations. The union was at that time conducting a sit-down strike in the power house of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company. Mills worked in this capacity until the Greater New York Industrial Union Council was established.

The Worker of February 7, 1943, described in detail how Mills won the confidence of Joseph Curran during the Communist-led East Coast seamen's strike in 1936 and was later chosen as secretary of the Greater New York Industrial Union Council where he is serving today.

In 1942, Saul Mills issued the following statement endorsing the National Free Browder Congress arranged for March 28-29, 1942:

*

You cannot divorce the Browder case from the political party which he heads. There is no question that Browder and those who are associated with him are a part of the united fighting front of freedom-loving peoples against the Axis. * * The National Free Browder Congress should be fully supported. The principles upon which our government was founded are at stake (Daily Worker,

March 9, 1942, p. 3).

* * *

Mills thus chose to ignore the record of treasonable activity carried on by the Communist Party and its creature, the American Peace Mobilization, during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact. In fact, Mills was a delegate to the meeting of the seditious American Peace Mobilization held in Chicago in September 1940, as a representative of the Greater New York Industrial Union Council.

Following a report submitted by Mills, the Greater New York Industrial Union voted to condemn a pending bill to fine persons found guilty of sabotage on defense work, $10,000 plus three years' imprisonment. The body opposed legislation for recruiting home guard units to defend local war plants and public utilities against

saboteurs. It condemned a pending measure to bar Communist radio operators and members of foreign-controlled organizations from American ships and gave "full backing to workers of the Ford Instrument Co., Queens manufacturers of bomb sights for the Navy who voted to strike" (Daily Worker, September 28, 1940, p. 3).

In the March 17, 1942, issue of the New Masses, Communist weekly, the publication was highly praised by Saul Mills for its work.

He signed an appeal in behalf of Morris U. Schappes, a Communist teacher ousted from the City College of New York and now serving a term for perjury in Sing Sing Prison (Daily Worker, February 4, 1942, p. 5). In 1940, he signed a letter to the President in behalf of leading Communist prisoners, members of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union (Daily Worker, November 11, 1940, pp. 1 and 5).

Other Communist fronts supported by Saul Mills included the following: National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, United American Spanish Aid Committee, American Committee to Save Refugees, and the New York State Conference on National Unity.

So-called right-wing leaders of the American Labor Party in New York have pointed out that Saul Mills is one of the Communists with whom Sidney Hillman is attempting to carry out his C. I. O. Political Action Committee conspiracy.

39

WYNDHAM MORTIMER

Wyndham Mortimer, once an important Communist figure in the organization of automobile workers for the C. I. O., is now with the State, County and Municipal Workers of America in Los Angeles. He is an important figure today in the C. I. O. Political Action Committee of California.

Testimony before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities showed that Mortimer has been a member of the Communist Party under the alias of Baker since 1933.

Joseph Zack, former member of the central committee of the Communist Party and former party secretary in the Ohio district, testified that Mortimer had joined the party in 1933 and that he (Zack) had approved Mortimer's application (hearings, vol. 9, p. 5456).

Mortimer's close contact with the leaders of the Communist Party is indicated by the following answer of Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party, to a direct question as to Mortimer's membership:

I am not sure. He is a very close friend, at least * and talked with him (hearings, vol. 7, p. 4514).

I have met him

Hugh Ben Inzer, former president of Local 216, U. A. W. A., of the General Motors plant in South Gate, California, testified as follows regarding the behavior of Wyndham Mortimer:

Immediately I took the floor and told Lew Michener and Wyndham Mortimer that they had been accused of belonging to the Communist Party, and that I believed they were members, and I would like to have a statement from them at that time so that I could go back and tell these workers that had told me they were Communists or members of the party. They refused to make a statement.

* * *

He (Mortimer) used to come out to our meetings and we would have an issue on the floor that was pertaining to the rank and file of the local only, and he would, if he saw that it was some issue that was important to the Communist Party, he would get in and argue for it. * * * He was barred from the meetings because he would come out and try to confuse the issue and put over the Communist policy (hearings, vol. 14, pp. 8547 and 8549).

Ashby C. McGraw, inspector at the North American Aviation. plant and former president of U. A. W. A. Local 228 (C. I. O.), testified that Mortimer had solicited his aid in behalf of the Communist Party. His statement follows:

On his trip out here, through to Los Angeles, he made it a point to solicit my aid in supporting the party program and attempted to show the fact that the program of the labor movement and of the Communist Party were identical and deserved support * * * he made a very definite request that I throw in and assist the party (hearings, vol. 14, pp. 1936, 1937).

Others who have identified Mortimer as a member of the Communist Party were the following: Charles F. West, Jr., organizer of the California State Federation of Labor (A. F. of L.); Melvin Kells,

former member of the Trade Union Unity League in Detroit; Felix McCartney, member of Plymouth Local 51, U. A. W. A.; Sam Baron, who was introduced to Wyndham Mortimer, as a party member, by Jack Stachel, a leading Communist Party official; John P. Frey, head of the Metal Trades Department of the A. F. of L.; William Nowell, former Communist Party member of Detroit; and Oscar Crozier, U. A. W. A. member.

Mortimer has headed various groups in the auto and aircraft industry, directly controlled and supported by the Communist Party. He was president of a so-called rank-and-file conference held on January 26, 1935, at Danish Brotherhood Temple, 1775 West Forest Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. He was president of the Communistcontrolled Progressive Caucus at the first convention of the United Automobile Workers of America held in South Bend, Ind., in March 1936. He was one of the top men on the Communist-supported "unity slate" at the second convention in Milwaukee in 1937.

Mortimer has been repeatedly written up and eulogized by the Communist press. In the Daily Worker of January 21, 1937, page 5, he is called by James Steele of the League of American Writers, the "Auto Baron's Nightmare." In the Daily Worker of August 20, 1937, page 1, he is interviewed at length by Lawrence Emery, a man with a criminal record in the State of California. He is praised in the Daily Worker of January 3, 1941, page 3, and of August 1, 1940, page 3, and also in the Sunday Worker of December 1, 1940, page 2.

In 1937, Mortimer attacked Fred Durrance, former president of the Motor Products local of the U. A. W. A. for "red-baiting" (Daily Worker, June 2, 1937, p. 3). Durrance had criticized the Communists in the union.

In 1936, the leading Communist-front organization in this country was the American League Against War and Fascism, which advocated a treasonable program which called upon labor to obstruct the "imperialist" war machine. Wyndham Mortimer was a featured speaker at the Third Congress Against War and Fascism held in Cleveland on January 3, 4, 5, 1936, together with the following well-known Communist leaders: Ella Reeve Bloor, Angelo Herndon, Max Bedacht, and Clarence Hathaway. Mortimer was elected as a member of the executive board of the American League Against War and Fascism along with Israel Amter, Max Bedacht, Ella Reeve Bloor, Earl Browder, Clarence Hathaway, and other leading Communists.

Following the signing of the Stalin-Hitler pact, it will be remembered that the Communist Party entered upon a campaign of opposition to the present war as "imperialist," denouncing conscription, lend-lease, and the defense program in general. Its chief instrument in this campaign was the American Peace Mobilization. It was during this critical period that Mortimer was assigned to the task of organizing the aircraft industry on the Pacific coast. Together with Lew Michener, another Communist, he organized strikes in such important aviation plants as Vultee and North American.

The Aircraft Organizer of April 16, 1941, published under Mortimer's direction, carried a cartoon depicting the slogan of "No more strikes" as a halter devised by big business to strangle labor. The Daily Worker of December 1, 1940, greeted the Vultee strikers as "heroes." Morris Watson in behalf of the American Peace Mobilization hailed the North American strikers.