3rd party aim is disavowed by Hillman
The Congress of Industrial Organizations has no intention of using its Political Action Committee to create a third party, but intends to work within the major parties solely for the support of “liberal, win-the-war candidates” and the reelection of President Roosevelt, according to Sidney Hillman, chairman of the committee.
Hillman said today that the committee has a fund of about $700,000. He declared the 5,500,000 CIO members would not be under any compulsion to vote the committee’s choices, but described the CIO as the largest voting bloc outside either of the two major parties.
Hillman said:
All we are conducting is an educational campaign. We give our members the records of Congressmen so that they may vote intelligently.
Immediate aim of the committee, he said, is to “get our members to register – we don’t ask that they register Democratic: we are interested in getting them to qualify to vote.”
Hillman credited the committee with having purged Martin Dies from Congress and with the capture of the American Labor Party in New York State. Hillman is the state chairman of the party.
He declared the committee’s books are open to inspection and ridiculed Governor Bricker’s charges that the committee has $5,000,000 allocated for a fourth-term drive.
Because only 28,000,000 votes were cast in the last Congressional election, Hillman said, his committee would attempt to mobilize war workers who have migrated from their homes. He estimated New York State had lost 1,000,000 workers and indicated this aided the Republicans.
He declared that the CIO had no further “purge list” but other CIO leaders placed Senator Taft high on such a list.