Perkins: Murray, Hillman are told at their press conference
CIO president resumes statement about PAC and then tells of the ‘very bad news’
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
WASHINGTON – CIO President Philip Murray and Sidney Hillman, the labor leaders generally credited with mobilizing the margin of votes that won Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth election, were holding a press conference when news of the president’s death came.
They were completing an explanation of expansion and intensification of the CIO Political Action Committee work.
Several men entered Mr. Murray’s office. Among them were youthful “Jim” Carey, CIO secretary-treasurer, and C B. “Beany” Baldwin, former aide to Henry A. Wallace and now CIO-PAC manager. They whispered to Mr. Murray.
Fails to change expression
Nothing in the CIO president’s usually serious face indicated he had just heard of an event which must have affected him deeply.
He resumed his explanation of the CIO-PAC announcement.
Then he said, “Some very bad news has just come to me, some very bad news. It is that the president is dead.”
The press conference quickly broke up. Reporters asked Mr. Hillman for a comment.
Withholds comment
“No, no,” he pleaded. “Not now, please.”
His grief was obvious.
The main item of the CIO-PAC expansion program, as adopted by the CIO Executive Board, provides for establishment of Political Action Committees by each state and city industrial council. Thus, the organization is pointed toward activity in municipal and state, as well as congressional and presidential, contests.