Perkins: Railway union paper blasts Hillman’s PAC
Attack on McCarran called ‘brazen lies’
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington – (Sept. 9)
Denunciations of CIO political activities continued today with a blast from Labor, organ of 115 railway brotherhoods and unions, against Sidney Hillman and the CIO Political Action Committee for unsuccessful efforts to unseat Senator Pat McCarran (D-NV).
The white-haired chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who recently severely condemned administration procedure in the Montgomery Ward seizure of last spring, won renomination this week, defeating Lieutenant Governor Vail Pittman, brother of the late Senator Kay Pittman.
Labor charged the Hillman committee with “lies,” with having “united with reactionaries,” and with using Communistic tactics in an effort which the publication asserted was thwarted by the railway unions and the American Federation of Labor.
Other AFL attacks
That was one of a series of attacks on the CIO politicos from labor sources. In a recent one, Philip Pearl, publicist for the AFL, characterized the CIO-PAC as “the strongest anti-labor force in America today” and predicted it would prove not only to be “a fearful boomerang for the CIO but that it will do a lasting harm to the cause of the entire labor movement of America.”
To this Len de Caux, publicist for the CIO, replied in print that the AFL had been deceived into repeating slanders which had been originated by “anti-labor sources,” including some newspapers that were charged with being anti-union.
‘Brazen lies’ circulated
Today’s Labor article said:
Reactionary Democrats in Nevada have always been against McCarran because of his outspoken support of labor and other progressive measures. They thought they could “get him” this time.
Hillman’s outfit, which apparently had money to “throw at the bords,” was not interested in McCarran’s labor record. It opposed him because he refused to embrace its peculiar “ideologies” and circulated the most brazen lies concerning his work in the Senate.
Some workers were deceived. They were not familiar with Communist tactics and imagined Hillman’s propagandists must be telling the truth.
Chiefs of the standard railroad labor organizations and the AFL put on a staff campaign for McCarran and succeeded in neutralizing the vicious work of the CIO crowd.
‘Menace’ to labor program
Labor also gave some observations on the overall effect of the CIO’s political efforts.
It said:
More and more, as the campaign develops, it becomes evident that Hillman and his Communist colleagues are a serious menace to organized labor’s political program. The CIO never had many supporters in Congress and now it is so discredited that the foes of labor have discovered the most effective argument they can use against a measure favored by the workers is to brand it a “CIO bill.”
That’s bad enough, but now the CIO under Hillman’s leadership is invading states and Congressional districts, assailing candidates who have sturdily championed the cause of the workers and bringing the entire labor movement into disrepute among voters who do not appreciate that the noisy Reds who are on Hillman’s payroll do not speak for the American labor movement.