Pegler: Communist-CIO
By Westbrook Pegler
Chicago, Illinois –
Although Sidney Hillman and the Communist-CIO coalition have been momentarily rebuked by the reactionary, or American Democrats, in their nomination of Harry Truman instead of Henry Wallace for the Vice Presidency, they will discover on their arrival home when they have had time to unpack and put on something loose, that their hero, President Roosevelt, has neither repudiated this faction nor suffered any impairment of its devotion to him.
The Communist-CIO, or popular front, is still in action with its vast power to levy on the pay of millions of workers for its campaign funds and Mr. Roosevelt still welcomes its support.
It is still a Communist organization, infested with many men who not only oppose the American system of government with propaganda and systematic organization but, in times past, have gone into the streets in violent, lawless rebellion against the authority of government in many American communities at the cost of many American lives.
It still represents the will and purposes of many men who showed their hatred of the United States as a nation by impeding the early preparations of the Americans for war while the first classes of the draft were training with broom-handles and stove pipes.
‘Communist’ used too carelessly
These are general accusations which I shall develop in detail in a few days, realizing that the term “Communists” has lost some of its evil meaning through careless use and the New Deal’s propaganda to the effect that anyone who is a “liberal” or a “progressive” is likely to be called a Communist these days.
Incidentally, Mrs. Roosevelt, who did not come to this convention but made a speech at the last one, is one of those who have tried to persuade the country that “certain groups,” meaning those who consort with Communists, if not the Communists themselves, are misunderstood martyrs to their harmless convictions.
This convention did for the Democratic Party something that Mr. Roosevelt was unwilling to do either for the party or for himself. By spreading his approval over number of aspirants for the Vice Presidency, the President made it possible for the reactionaries to get rid of Mr. Wallace and nominate a protégé of one of the most degraded politicians in American urban history, Tom Pendergast of Kansas City.
That was as far as he would go, however, toward repudiation of Sidney Hillman’s group. So, he left himself still in a position to cooperate with them in the campaign and, if elected, to collaborate throughout a fourth term or as long as he might hold office in that term.
President’s own creation
The fact remains hugely apparent that the Hillman front is a creature of President Roosevelt’s own. He is fond of personal comparisons to divinity, so it might be said that he fashioned the clay and breathed life into it with definite intent. The CIO is the mother of the Hillman front, known both as the Political Action Committee and Citizens’ Committee for Political Action.
Mr. Roosevelt humored his creation through its violent attacks on government in many helpless cities and towns, condoned its brutalities and, far from rebuking Frank Murphy, the Governor of Michigan, for flinching in the presence of mobs, endorsed Mr. Murphy’s betrayal of the Americans of Michigan by sending him to the Supreme Court.
At this convention, sensing the revolt of the Americans and their indigent abhorrence of the conspiracy, Mr. Roosevelt permitted his party to sacrifice Mr. Wallace. But Mr. Wallace was not running for the Presidency. He was running for the Vice Presidency. Mr. Roosevelt was already the presidential nominee, even before the opening gavel, and Mr. Hillman’s front was even more enthusiastic for him than for Mr. Wallace.
Thus Mr. Hillman got his first choice and there is nothing in past performances to justify the slightest hope among the American Democrats that Mr. Roosevelt will turn against the Communists, if reelected.
He has already shown his regard for the Communists in the parcel of Earl Browder, the titular leader of the conspiracy, in the interests of “unity,” in his connivance at the cancellation of a deportation order against Browder’s wife (an active, alien-born Communist), and in the grant of draft deferments to a number of CIO unioneers who, by violent action, led strikes against American war plants during the life of Stalin’s alliance with Adolf Hitler. The Hillman front is still Mr. Roosevelt’s own Communist wing.