The Pittsburgh Press (October 21, 1944)
The truth about the Commies –
Communists kidnapped American Labor Party with help of Hillman
Dubinsky and others resigned rather than follow Red direction of union political group
By Frederick Woltman, Scripps-Howard staff writer
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fifth in a series of articles describing how American Communists, by utilizing their technique of infiltration, haver burrowed into American unions, kidnapped the American Labor Party in New York, dominated the CIO Political Action Committee and made strong inroads into the New Deal administration.
Washington –
Sidney Hillman, generalissimo of the CIO’s political action venture on behalf of a fourth term, handed the Communists their greatest political weapon in 25 years of unproductive left-wing conniving.
He gave them, lock stock and barrel, a major political party, New York’s American Labor Party, which has been able to swing a balance of power in the state representing the largest bloc of electoral votes in the country.
In kidnapping the American Labor Party in New York State, Mr. Hillman and the Communists learned a lesson and secured a pattern which was easily expanded into a national program by the CIO Political Action Committee.
This Hillman maneuver represented the Political Action Committee’s introduction into power politics. To the Communists, already delighted with the opportunity to hide behind false fronts, it furnished a readymade political machine without the handicap of the Communist label.
Took over party
To Mr. Hillman, it supplied a valuable rehearsal for his current nationwide campaign to reelect President Roosevelt.
“Clear everything with Sidney” was an injunction which paid big dividends to the Communists last March.
Here was a party organized in 1936 by the Empire State’s leading trade unionists and capable of mustering nearly half a million votes. The Communists for years had been trying to capture the American Labor Party. Communist headquarters, unable to rally enough votes to keep the party emblem on the ballot, directed its members to register in the American Labor Party.
Then Mr. Hillman, in his first move as commander-in-chief of the Political Action Committee, made a deal with the Communist clique of the Labor Party. In the March 1944 party primary, the Communists took over the basic units and state committee of the party, allowing Mr. Hillman to accept the state chairmanship.
**Daily Worker’s instructions
Today Browder’s newly-named Communist Political Association works Officially with and through the American Labor Party. Indeed, The Daily Worker, official Communist organ edited by Browder, issues such instructions to the Communist stalwarts as follows:
What You Can Do to Help Reelect President Roosevelt:
Report to your nearest American Labor Party or Communist Political Association headquarters and volunteer your services as a registration candidate.
Mr. Hillman dismisses as “a red herring” any imputation of Communist influence in the Political Action Committee. But he did not come through the American Labor Party scrap untainted. On the contrary, some of the Political Action Committee’s own leaders as well as other trade unionists pinned the Red banner right on him.
Dubinsky accuses Hillman
Said David Dubinsky, founder of the labor party and its principal backer until the Hillman-Communist victory:
I regard the former American Labor Party as a Communist Labor party, and am therefore withdrawing… Mr. Hillman can act as a front for the Communists; I never did and never will…
Himself a supporter of President Roosevelt, Mr. Dubinsky, president of the AFL International Ladies Garment Workers Union, has since taken the non-Communist leadership out of the American Labor Party and organized a Liberal Party. While now working for the Roosevelt-Truman ticket, the new party refuses to co-operate or associate with Mr. Hillman.
A high CIO official, Samuel Wolchok, president of the United Retail and Wholesale Employees and a member of the CIO executive board, scathingly attacked Mr. Hillman’s alliance with the Communists. He declared:
While in sympathy with the CIO Political Action Committee on a nationwide basis, I am unalterably opposed to Mr. Hillman’s use of its machinery to foist a new form or organization on the New York American Labor Party which, far from uniting its membership, will inevitably lead to its utter disruption.
Thirty others revolt
Thirty more CIO officials and Political Action Committee backers revolted against Mr. Hillman and called in vain for him “to abandon the campaign he is waging for the election of Communist candidates” to American Labor Party office. They added that “joining hands with the Communists” is “not only wrong in principle but dangerous politically.”
One CIO official, Sam Baron, manager of the CIO Textile Workers’ New York office, resigned his union position, charging that Mr. Hillman had set up “a political dictatorship” in the textile union “in his desire to attain national political leadership.”
Mr. Hillman, he charged, had “compelled” every textile official to back up the Hillman-Communist coalition although “not one… had any sympathy for it.”
Mr. Baron added:
Any attempt to compel individuals to follow the dictates of a political boss, even though he comes from the ranks of labor, is fraught with danger. Political freedom is one of our most precious possessions. It antedates Mr. Hillman…
Mr. Hillman weathered this opposition. The Communists acquired a new party for themselves in New York State. And both, now, have turned to the greener fields of national politics.