The Pittsburgh Press (May 22, 1941)
COMMUNIST SABOTAGE PLOT CHARGED TO ‘PEACE’ GROUP
Washington, May 22 (UP) –
Miss Mary Spargo, a Dies Committee investigator, charged today that the American Peace Mobilization sought to sabotage production of the Glenn L. Martin aircraft factory by infiltration of Negro Communist workers.
She reported to the Committee in public session that the whole tenor of APM meetings was to exploit racial and social prejudices, foment strikes and hamper defense efforts. These meetings, she said, followed the Communist Party line “completely.”
In her attempt to “track down the family tree” of the APM, which is picketing the White House with banners calling for “Peace,” Miss Spargo told of an APM meeting here where the plan was proposed for hampering work at the Baltimore airplane factory.
The plan was to have 30 to 100 Negroes with Communist sympathies apply at the Martin plant each day, Miss Spargo testified. By that method, the APM hoped to get 7,000 Negro workers into the plant.
Miss Spargo said that Henry Thomas, whom she identified as a Negro Communist leader, protested that if the peace movement were sincere, the group ought not further defense efforts by sending persons into war factories. The investigator said:
There was a general laugh.
She said another APM policy was to “undermine the morale” of Army draftees.
Julia Marcus, whom Miss Spargo identified as a Farm Security Administration employee, told her, she said, that the APM had made:
…suitable progress in organizing the Washington Navy Yard.
Miss Spargo said that Charles T. Gift, a Navy Yard employee, is active in the APM. Gift once testified before the Committee under subpoena regarding Communist activities in the Navy Yard, Acting Chairman Joe Starnes (D-AL) recalled.
Miss Spargo and another woman agent told the group yesterday that Communists, many of them government workers, have inspired “peace” organizations and reportedly have loaded the Federal Bituminous Coal Division “from top to bottom.”
The nature of the testimony was so startling that the Committee closed the hearing to the public soon after the narration of alleged Communistic infiltration into government posts had begun.
The other investigator who testified was Miss Hazel Huffman of New York.
Committee startled
It was Miss Spargo’s story that startled the Committee. She told of being welcomed by an unidentified official of the Bituminous Coal Division with these words:
I’m glad to see a Dies investigator. This place is loaded from top to bottom with Communists. I thought of going to see Representative Starnes [D-AL, a member of the Committee] but I was afraid I might lose my job. The Communist influence here is heavy and comes from the very top.
She withheld the name of the official but agreed to give it in closed session.
There were 150 government employees in the delegation of 500 Washington people who attended an APM rally in New York on April 6-7. Miss Spargo told of attending a party at the home of Muriel Draper, New York dancer, at which a man named Ted Ozmun allegedly told her she was “about ripe to join the Communist Party.”
Plan to seize U.S.
She said Ozmun was a government employee but that she did not know in what department he worked. She said he advised her that the Communists were going to take over the United States in about five years and “party members would fare better” than those outside the movement.
Miss Huffman testified that Communist Party officials in New York, whom she identified as Israel Amter and Charles Krumbein, issued order in June 1940 to all section organizers to set up peace groups. These orders, she said emphasized the importance of keeping the Communist Party in the background and instructed the party not to take part as a political unit in the peace demonstrations.