1

OBSERVATIONS AND FINDINGS

(1)

This report deals with the leadership of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee which is the authorized agency through which the Congress of Industrial Organizations itself is participating in the election campaigns of 1944. Our investigations of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee began in July 1943, when it was first constituted by action of the C. I. O. executive board. Our findings, for the most part, are based upon the public records of the men who are active in the leadership of the Political Action Committee.

(2)

Sidney Hillman, national chairman of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, announced in the press and also stated in a letter to every member of the House of Representatives that he would not comply with any subpenas of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, and that he would refuse "to submit the books or records of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee to Mr. Martin Dies for investigation."

(3)

We have not, in any sense of the word, conducted an investigation of organized labor as such. A reading of this report will show that the legitimate activities of organized labor are not a subject of discussion herein. Our investigations have been concerned solely with the Communist penetration of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. It should be noted that the American Federation of Labor has instructed all of its units to refrain from any cooperation with the Political Action Committee, and also that the A. F. of L. has publicly endorsed the principle of our investigation of Hillman's committee.

(4)

The Special Committee on Un-American Activities does not challenge for one moment the right of organized labor to engage in political campaigns within the limits of the statutes which govern such activity. The irresponsible and untruthful charge that we would deny to organized labor any of its lawful rights does not deter us from exposing the subversive activities of the Communists who have, in line with their current strategy, decided to work through the C. I. O. Political Action Committee.

(5)

We assert at the outset, and have tried to make clear elsewhere in this report, that we do not impeach the Americanism of the overwhelming majority of the rank and file members of the unions which are

affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Whether they belong to these unions by choice or coercion, there are millions of these rank and file C. I. O. members who are wholly guiltless of any sympathy with communism. The same cannot be said of thousands of the leaders, high and low, of the C. I. O. who are most energetically carrying on the activities of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee.

(6)

Communists, like all totalitarians, have always looked with contempt upon the legislative (or parliamentary, as they are accustomed to style it) branch of our Government. For many years the official program of the Communist Party of the United States contained the following statement:

Communism repudiates parliamentarism as the form of the future; its aim is to destroy parliamentarism.

The same official party program went on to assert the following: Therefore the deep hatred against all parliaments in the revolutionary proletariat is perfectly justified.

It is true that Communists engage in political campaigns for the ostensible purpose of electing their members and friends to legislative bodies, but the official view of the Communist Party on this matter was set forth in the following language:

The Communist Party enters such institutions not for the purpose of organization work, but in order to blow up the whole bourgeois machinery and the parliament itself from within.

In a previous report, our committee made the following observation: The essence of totalitarianism is the destruction of the parliamentary or legislative branch of government. The counterpart of this destruction of the parliamentary institutions of democracy is the concentration of all power, irresponsible power, in the hands of the totalitarian dictator. In some countries, as in Hitler's Reich, the old forms of parliamentary government have been retained while the reality has been utterly effaced. The Reichstag has been degraded to an assembly of puppets who are called together at irregular intervals to scream "Ja" at the Fuehrer's bidding. No greater fallacy could obsess the mind of man than to assume that such a procedure with its outward show of absolute unity represents ultimate strength. In the totalitarian-ruled lands where democracy is dead, the undying issue confronting men is the restoration of freedom. In America, the issue confronting us is not the restoration but the preservation of the political institutions of free men. This issue compels us to take cognizance of a widespread movement to discredit the legislative branch of our Government. The issue simply stated is whether the Congress of the United States shall be the reality or the relic of American democracy.

The foregoing observation, submitted by our committee to the House on June 25, 1942, is as relevant today as it was almost 2 years ago, and more so. It is, in fact, made vastly more relevant by the appearance on our political scene of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee whose major objective is to discredit the Congress of the United States.

We cite two typical cases of Communist contempt for the Congress of the United States. In the first case, we have the notorious Harry Bridges, speaking as a leader of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee during a recent Nation-wide tour. "Why," said Bridges, "there are more Hitler agents to the square inch in Congress than there are to the square mile in Detroit." That is not a criticism of

individual Members of Congress. It is, on the contrary, a temptible slur upon the Congress of the United States as an institution. It is in a class with Walter Winchell's reference to this body as "the House of Reprehensibles."

In the second case, we have one Martin L. Fried speaking officially as the "Political Action Representative" of Local 669 of the United Automobile, Aircraft, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. In a letter dated March 14, 1944, and addressed to a Member of the House of Representatives, Martin L. Fried wrote as follows:

Hundreds and hundreds of men and women have come into our office, here, and have demanded that you be instructed to OPPOSE THE CONFERENCE REPORT and support the original Green-Lucas Soldier Vote Bill, whether or not you favor it. We favor it-You vote for it!

In this contemptible manner, the C. I. O. Political Action Committee reveals itself in action, a manner not to be wondered at when the Communist ideology which underlies it is borne in mind. A letter written by Martin L. Fried to Soviet Russia Today establishes the fact that he is a Communist, as any reader of the letter may see at a glance (Soviet Russia Today, July 1940, page 34).

(7)

We find that immediately prior to the setting up of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, the leaders of the Communist Party were agitating for the establishment of just such an agency as was created by the C. I. O. executive board in July 1943. (See sec. 2 of this report entitled "Patterned by the Communist Party.")

(8)

Sidney Hillman, chairman of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, has announced that the organization expects to raise and spend at least $2,000,000 during the election campaign of 1944. In some instances, units of the C. I. O. have made compulsory assessments against their members for the support of the Political Action Committee. Inasmuch as many members of the C. I. O. who do not share Hillman's political views are compelled by government coercion to belong to its affiliated unions, such members are subjected to a form of tyrannical taxation without representation.

Another form of coercion is described in one of the official booklets of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee (U. E. Guide to Political Action published by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America). Under the heading "Voluntary 'Compulsory' Registration," this booklet says:

Some unions have voted compulsory registration requirements. The membership of Local 6 of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, C. I. O., in San Francisco has adopted a rule requiring all probationary members, who are eligible, to register before they can receive their union books. Inasmuch as union membership is, in many instances, the price of a livelihood, this type of coercion represents an intolerable invasion of the individual's political privacy and freedom. It smacks of the totalitarian state where the individual dare not exercise his prerogative to register or not to register lest he be deprived of his livelihood.

The Political Action Committee is simply the C. I. O. functioning as a political agency and using its coercive powers over its members to compel them to follow its political dictates. (See sec. 3 of this report entitled "The Set-Up of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee.")

(9)

The C. I. O. executive board which established the Political Action Committee is composed of 49 members among whom there are at least 18 whose records indicate that they follow the "line" of the Communist Party with undeviating loyalty. These are the men who not so long ago supported the wave of sabotage strikes which gravely interfered with the production of defense materials. These same men now seek to discredit the Congress of the United States by malicious and slanderous charges of pro-Hitlerism when they themselves, prior to Hitler's invasion of Russia, were deliberately aiding Hitler and declaring, while they did so, that there was no difference between a Nazi victory and a British victory. (See sec. 4 of this report entitled "C. I. O. Executive Board.")

(10)

The Industrial Union Council is, perhaps, the most strategic unit in the work of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. This is also the unit of the C. I. O. which is most universally controlled by communists. We cite 33 instances in which industrial union councils were represented by communists in the recent annual convention of the C. I. O. which was held in Philadelphia in November, 1943. (See sec. 5 of this report entitled "The Industrial Union Council.")

(11)

A majority (21) of the international unions affiliated with the C. I. O. have an entrenched Communist leadership. This fully justifies the recent, even if belated, observation of John L. Lewis, in speaking of Philip Murray and Sidney Hillman, that "both of them have got to play ball with the Communists now, or die." (See sec. 6 of this report entitled "Communism in the C. I. O.")

(12)

It is no accident that Communists have achieved such prominence in the C. I. O. It is the result of the most carefully planned program to capture unions for political purposes. The official program of the Communist Party, temporarily relegated to the background, said:

* *

It is particularly important for the purpose of winning over the majority of the proletariat, to gain control of the trade-unions * (See sec. 7 of this report entitled "Communists in Trade Unions.")

(13)

The announced intention of the Communist Party to dissolve as a political party and to take some such name as the American Communist Political Association is not, in any sense of the word, a renunciation of communism. The Communists themselves have declared so emphatically. The immediate significance of the Party's

dissolution is that during the 1944 elections Communists will throw their entire weight into the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. Their political leader will be, in effect, Sidney Hillman instead of Earl Browder. They will attempt by stealth and subterfuge to do through the Political Action Committee what they have failed to do when functioning as a political party under their own name, i. e., to gain political leadership over millions of voters. (See sec. 8 of this report entitled "Dissolution of the Communist Party and the C. I. O. Political Action Committee.")

(14)

A part of the Political Action Committee's program involves the sending of top C. I. O. leaders over the country on speaking tours. Banquets and mass meetings are being held in all of the large cities of the United States. One of the principal speakers who is making such a tour is Communist Harry Bridges. (See sec. 9 of this report entitled "C. I. O. Political Action Committee's Campaign Has Begun.")

(15)

Typical of the Communist predominance in the C. I. O. Political Action Committee was the roster of speakers at one of its meetings held in New York City, January 14-15, 1944. Among the speakers at this gathering of the Political Action Committee were Donald Henderson (see sec. 32), Reid Robinson (see sec. 48), Julius Emspak (see sec. 28), Grant W. Oakes (see sec. 43), Michael J. Quill (see sec. 46), Joseph Curran (see sec. 27), Lewis Merrill (see sec. 36), Ruth Young (see sec. 55), and Ferdinand C. Smith (see sec. 53). (See sec. 10 of this report entitled "New York Conference of January 14-15, 1944.")

(16)

According to a voting chart which shows how the Members of the House of Representatives voted on 20 measures, the overwhelming majority of the Members of this body come under the attacks of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. However, the most significant thing about this chart which the Political Action Committee is disseminating throughout the country is that it is absolutely identical with one which the Communist Party is circulating in material which bears the party's own imprint. In other words, the political views and philosophy of the Communist Party and of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee coincide in every detail. The Communist Party's judgment for or against a Member of Congress is based upon grounds which are absolutely identical with those which the Political Action Committee uses for the same purpose. (See sec. 11 of this report entitled "Voting Charts of the Communist Party and the C. I. O. Political Action Committee.")

(17)

One of the most seditious organizations which ever operated in the United States was the American Peace Mobilization, instrument of the Communist Party line prior to Hitler's attack on Russia. We