In 1931, Gold was one of the Communist Party's candidates for the New York State Assembly from the Bronx.

In 1933, he was the Communist Party's candidate for aldermanic president of New York.

In 1936, Gold was again one of the Communist Party's candidates for the New York State Assembly from the Bronx.

The foregoing items clearly establish the fact that Ben Gold is one of the high-ranking leaders of the Communist Party, but the wide range of his Communist activity is still more clearly revealed by his frequent leadership in the front organizations of the Communist Party. He has been prominent in the following party fronts: American League Against War and Fascism, American League for Peace and Democracy, American Peace Mobilization, American Friends of Spanish Democracy, American Society for Technical Aid to Spanish Democracy, League of Struggle for Negro Rights, Consumers Union, International Labor Defense, International Workers Order, Jewish People's Committee, National Negro Congress, Workers Alliance, and the National Congress for Unemployment and Social Insurance.

In 1942, he was elected as a member of the New York State Committee of the Communist Party.

In 1936 he publicly supported the candidacy of Israel Amter running for the position of president of the board of aldermen on the Communist ticket in New York City, and again in 1942 when Amter ran as Communist candidate for Governor, Gold was chairman of the labor committee supporting him.

Gold has been exceedingly active in defense of cases where his fellow Communists were involved, both nationally and internationally.

In 1938, he was a speaker in behalf of Ernst Thaelman, jailed German Communist leader. A year before he signed a cable in behalf of Luiz Carlos Prestes, Brazilian Communist leader and a former member of the executive committee of the Communist International. In 1943, he signed a declaration in honor of Georgi Dimitrov, former head of the Communist International.

Gold was a prime mover in several committees to free Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party. He was a sponsor of the Provisional Committee to Free Earl Browder in 1941, and in 1942 he supported the Citizens' Committee to Free Earl Browder, the New York Trade Union Committee to Free Earl Browder, and the New York Community Divisions of the Committee to Free Earl Browder. In 1942 he was a sponsor of the committee formed for the defense of Morris U. Schappes, an avowed Communist teacher, ousted from the City College of New York and serving in Sing Sing Prison for perjury.

In the same year and thereafter he supported the defense of Harry Bridges, now subject to deportation proceedings as a Communist.

Gold was himself convicted on a charge of assault and battery in Wilmington, Del., in 1933 in connection with a Communist-engineered hunger march on Washington. He was jailed in Canada in January 1930 as a leader of the Needle Trades Industrial Union, an affiliate of the Trade Union Unity League, which was in turn affiliated with the Red International of Labor Unions in Moscow. He was jailed again in Boston in February 1930 in connection with a Communistled march of unemployed on the City Hall.

The Daily Worker of November 22, 1930, page 2, carried an account of the conviction of 11 members of the New York Furriers Union, headed by Ben Gold, on charges of felonious assault during the 1926 furriers' strike. Gold and Shapiro were released but the following were convicted: Maurice Malkin, Franklin, Jack Schneider, Martin Rosenberg, Samuel Mencher, Oscar Miles (Mileaf), Otto Lenhardt, Joseph Katz, and George Weiss.

In 1940 Irving Potash, manager of the New York Joint Council of the Furriers' Union, was convicted on a charge of "obstruction of justice," together with Joseph Winogradsky, assistant Joint Council manager, John Vafiades, manager of the Greek local, and Louis Hatchios, a member of the Greek local. The 5,000-page record of the trial was filled with evidence of violence in the industry charged to the defendants (Daily Worker, November 5, 1940, p. 3).

In 1938, Ben Gold received the congratulations of the Communist Party for his conduct of the International Fur Workers' strike, according to the Daily Worker of June 4, 1938, page 4.

In all of the May Day parades of the Communist Party in New York for many years past, the members of the furriers' union have constituted one of the largest contingents of the marchers. The union membership has likewise supplied large contingents for the gatherings and demonstrations of the numerous front organizations of the Community Party, notably the American Peace Mobilization, which achieved its largest national publicity by its picketing of the White House just prior to Hitler's attack on Russia.

32

DONALD HENDERSON

Donald Henderson, general president of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers (C. I. O. affiliate), is prominent in the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. On January 14, 1944, Henderson addressed a national conference of the Political Action Committee which was held at the Park Central Hotel in New York City.

There is no secrecy about Donald Henderson's membership in the Communist Party. He has been a publicly avowed card-holding member for more than 10 years. In that period of time, he has subserviently followed all the ideological zig-zagging of the party line, including the patently seditious activities of the American Peace Mobilization (to which the Department of Justice was totally blind) and the current pretended superpatriotism of all the Muscovite stool pigeons. In some cases, the C. I. O. Political Action Committee might seek the shelter of ignorance concerning the communist connections of its active leaders, but emphatically not in the case of Henderson. No German-American Bundist ever worked more assiduously than Donald Henderson for the destruction of American free institutions. When the C. I. O. Political Action Committee includes among its leaders such men as Henderson, it demonstrates beyond dispute the un-American nature of its objectives. Who is Henderson that he should be welcomed to a place of leadership in an organization which sets out to spend $2,000,000 to influence the 1944 elections to the end that the Congress of the United States should be brought under the complete domination of a sinister minority pressure group? Let his public record answer the question!

In the September 1935 issue of The Communist, Donald Henderson appeared as the author of an article entitled "The Rural Masses and the Work of Our Party." The article opened with the following

statement:

On the basis of the Open Letter, during the past 2 years our party has been successful in developing policies and organization which are rapidly achieving a successful turn to mass revolutionary work and influence in the cities and among the industrial urban proletariat.

* *

Note that Henderson used the phrase "our party." Later, in his article, Henderson wrote of the necessity for the Communist Party to "carry through" its idea of "Soviet power * in the small cities, towns, and villages, and on the farms." Donald Henderson has not only functioned as a leader in the Communist Party and in the top ranks of the C. I. O. He has also been extraordinarily energetic in the leadership of the numberless front organizations of the Communist Party.

In the spring of 1933, Henderson was dropped from the teaching staff of Columbia University. For a number of weeks, the Communists carried on a noisy agitation for his reinstatement, but to no

avail. The clamor of the Communists against Columbia University for its action in the case of Henderson was expressed chiefly through its front organization for students, the National Student League. Henderson was secretary of the National Student League, about which Earl Browder wrote as follows: "From the beginning, it has been clearly revolutionary in its program and activities" (Communism in the United States, by Earl Browder, p. 43). Other Communist leaders of the National Student League included Joseph Starobin (now an editor of the New Masses), Adam Lapin (now Washington correspondent for the Daily Worker), and James Wechsler (now on the staff of the newspaper PM).

In August 1932 the Communist International sponsored an international gathering at Amsterdam which was known as the World Congress Against War. That gathering called upon the proletariat of the world to prepare to "turn imperialist war into civil war." The delegates to the Amsterdam congress were instructed to organize in their respective countries national branches to be affiliated with the world organization. In the United States, in the fall of 1932, the American Committee for Struggle Against War was organized in response to these instructions of the Amsterdam congress. Donald Henderson became executive director of the American branch.

During the Christmas holidays of 1932, the Student Congress Against War was convened at the University of Chicago. This gathering was held at the direct instigation of the (Amsterdam) World Congress Against War. The Chicago Congress was completely controlled by the Communists of the National Student League. Donald Henderson was the principal organizer of the gathering. He was also the floor leader who voiced the Communist Party line on every issue which arose. On the program of the Student Congress Against War, Henderson was listed as a speaker and as a member of its national committee. The gathering ended its sessions by adopting the program of the (Amsterdam) World Congress Against War which, as has been pointed out, called for "the turning of imperialist war into civil war." For many years, the latter slogan represented one of the chief objectives of the Communist movement throughout the world.

In the spring of 1933 the Arrangements Committee for the United States Congress Against War was organized at a meeting held in the New School for Social Research in New York City. Donald Henderson was made secretary of the committee.

The United States Congress Against War convened in St. Nicholas Arena, New York City, on September 29, 1933. Donald Henderson was executive secretary of the gathering, which was completely under the control of the Communist Party. Earl Browder was a leading figure in all its deliberations. In his report to the Communist International, Browder stated:

The Congress from the beginning was led by our Party quite openly (Communism in the United States by Earl Browder, p. 184).

The United States Congress Against War adopted a 10-point program which became the platform of the American League Against War and Fascism. That platform included the following:

To work toward the stopping of the manufacture and transport of munitions and all other materials essential to the conduct of war, through mass demonstrations, picketing, and strikes.

Years later, this was translated into overt acts when the Communistled C. I. O. unions did everything possible, especially through strikes, to stop the manufacture of "munitions and all other materials essential to the conduct of war." Donald Henderson was a leading figure not only in the adoption of this seditious platform at the United States Congress Against War in 1933 but also in its treasonable translation into action under the auspices of the Communist Party and the American Peace Mobilization in 1940-41.

The American League Against War and Fascism was launched at the United States Congress Against War. Donald Henderson was made executive secretary of the American League, a post which he held until the Communist Party transferred him to work in the agricultural field.

When the American League Against War and Fascism changed its name to the American League for Peace and Democracy, Donald Henderson remained a member of the organization's national committee. The American League was eventually disbanded after Hitler and Stalin signed their pact, and a few months later the American Peace Mobilization took its place as the principal Communist Party front dealing with international questions.

The American Peace Mobilization was launched in Chicago in September 1940. Donald Henderson was elected a member of the organization's national council. The treasonable character of the American Peace Mobilization is now generally conceded. The organization aided and abetted strikes in many of the country's most important defense industries. These strikes were political in nature and aimed at leaving the United States in a position of unpreparedness. The organization conducted a picket line in front of the White House in the spring of 1941, withdrawing its pickets within a few hours of Hitler's march against Russia.

Other Communist fronts with which Donald Henderson has been affiliated include the following: National Negro Congress, First Congress of the Mexican and Spanish-American Peoples of the United States, Coordinating Committee to Lift the Embargo, Joint Committee for Trade Union Rights, American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, New Theater League, Schappes Defense Committee, and National Council of American-Soviet Friendship.

The foregoing record of Henderson's Communist positions and activities is clear proof that he is one of the leaders in whom the Communist Party places extraordinary confidence.

Despite the utterly un-American character of Donald Henderson's activities and affiliations over the past twelve years, and despite his publicly acknowledged membership in the Communist Party, Sidney Hillman permits him to take a place of leadership in the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. There is no possibility of disputing the charge which has been levelled at Hillman by the right-wing leaders of the American Labor Party, namely that he has entered into a conspiracy with the Communist Party. That conspiracy has as its main objective the subordination of the Congress of the United States to. an un-American minority pressure group.