The Pittsburgh Press (September 26, 1944)
‘Cleared through Sidney’ –
PAC ‘a company union in politics,’ Thomas writes to Hillman
Tie-up of CIO group with ‘city bosses’ put it in wrong boat, he asserts
By Fred Woltman, Scripps-Howard staff writer
New York –
In an open letter to Sidney Hillman, chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee, Norman Thomas, Socialist candidate for President, today charged that PAC “is, in effect, a company union in politics,” and that the tactics “have delayed rather than advanced intelligent labor action in the political field.”
Mr. Thomas called many of the charges against the PAC “unfair and frivolous,” but, he declared:
The net result of PAC activity has been to make you one of the motley crew of bosses who control that extraordinary conglomeration of Northern city political machines and Southern bourbons, known as the Democratic Party.
Truman assailed
You, Hague, Kelly, Hannegan and the Southern bosses managed to blackmail your pet hates until by elimination you got as a possible future President of the United States that mediocrity, convict-boss Pendergast’s protégé, Harry Truman.
You got personal power, but not power enough to renominate Henry Wallace, whom Mr. Roosevelt dismissed with a character reference, and not power enough to write planks in behalf of the rights of Negroes or of labor itself, as good as even the Republicans produced.
The Socialist candidate wrote:
I emphatically oppose attacks on PAC on the irrelevant issue of the land of your birth. I applaud the idea of workers’ participation in politics.
I think it unfortunate that your present playmates, the Communists, are so influential in your organization because they have no principles except a desire for power.
‘Company union’
His main objection, however, said Mr. Thomas, “is your company unionism politics.”
You had a rare opportunity to start effective organization of the workers on behalf of some new political realignment based on principle. Instead, you chose to play along with the bosses…
In one respect, the PAC is less advanced than the American Federation of Labor. You have been very hesitant about endorsing any candidates, however well qualified, except Democrats, because, as some of your subordinates have explained, “the workers are too dumb to split their ticket.” The AFL is far less hesitant in crossing party lines in “rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies.”
What of coercion?
Mr. Thomas criticized PAC as “undemocratic in that its meetings or conventions have never been allowed to share policy but only to execute your policy.”
He went on:
You have challenged anyone to prove coercion of CIO members to support the PAC. I am not a detective and I shall not press individual cases, but I can testify that in state after state which I have visited there is among CIO workers a definite feeling that it would be very unhealthy not to support the PAC, especially if they happen to be on the CIO payroll.
Your cynicism infects your subordinates so that they can print a picture of the Chicago massacre of 1937 where workers were victims of Mayor Kelly’s police, as if it had happened under a Republican administration. That’s company unionism with a vengeance!
Future wars?
On none of “the great issues of future peace or war, of abundance or depression,” he told Mr. Hillman, “did you get any worthwhile declaration from the Democratic Party. The President, with your approval, is preparing the way for future war by underwriting with American blood the indefinite ‘Balkanization of Europe’ and by supporting the French, Dutch and British empires in the Far East.”
Pointing out that he “was not indicting PAC” for its failure to support the Socialist ticket, Mr. Thomas concluded:
…My indictment of your manipulation of the potentially useful PAC goes far deeper. It is that you have delayed the awakening of American workers by your application of the principles of company unionism to support the party of Kelly, Hague, Crump and Bilbo.