the American workingclass from the quagmire of a single unionism which tried for years to deny the necessity of labor's political action. * In many

centers of the nation, the urgings of Philip Murray and Sidney Hillman have been taken to heart and already the machinery to carry this crusade forward has been set into motion. The local unions of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers in some areas have taken the call to the crusade to heart.

So strong is the support for the Communist Party among the leading officials of Robinson's union, that on September 23, 1943, Al Skinner, Ishmael P. Flory, and James Pinta, its official representatives, sent a letter to President Roosevelt defending Robert Morss Lovett, Goodwin Watson, and William E. Dodd, Jr., and insisting on the right of Communists to Government employment. This letter reads in part:

American Democracy must be able to accord to Communists or people with so-called "Communist leanings" full dignity and status as human beings, as citizens and as trusted public servants * * * (Daily Worker, September 24, 1943, p. 5).

The Thirty-fourth annual convention of the International Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union, held in Denver in the summer of 1937, defeated a resolution prohibiting Communists from holding office in the union. In describing the meeting, the Daily Worker of August 9, 1937, page 5, declared:

A delegate who threatened to call for a roll call to "put the Communists on the spot" was rebuked sharply by international president Reid Robinson.

The Butte Montana local formerly headed by Reid Robinson, adopted a resolution protesting the imprisonment of Earl Browder on passport fraud charges in 1941. Copies of this resolution were sent to President Roosevelt and to the International Labor Defense, "the legal arm of the Communist Party" (Daily Worker, March 4, 1941, p. 3).

If there were still any doubt about Reid Robinson's complete subservience to the Communist Party, his record of association with numerous front organizations operated by the party, would clinch the point. His record is listed below:

Thus stands the Communist record of one of Sidney Hillman's chief lieutenants in the campaign to subvert free American institutions to the program of the Communist Party.

49

HARRY SACHER

Harry Sacher is general counsel of the Transport Workers Union of America, the powerful communist-dominated affiliate of the C. I. O. which is headed by Michael J. Quill. As such, he is an effective part of the machinery of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, and has been active in its behalf in the New York area.

Sacher has been identified as a member of the Communist Party both by a witness who is a former party member and by the fact that he has consistently followed the line of the Communist Party in support of campaigns and front organizations.

Thomas Humphrey O'Shea, a former member of the Communist Party and first president of the Transport Workers Union, identified Sacher as not only a member of the Communist Party but a highly trusted insider (vol. XIII, p. 7951). A number of witnesses who have been members of the Transport Workers Union have testified to its complete Communist domination (vol. XIII). On the basis of the evidence in its possession the Special Committee on Un-American Activities listed the Transport Workers Union as one in which "we find Communist leadership entrenched" (January 3, 1940, p. 13).

Together with such attorneys as Joseph R. Brodsky, Abraham Unger, Joseph Tauber, and Edward Kuntz, all closely identified with the defense of Communist cases, Harry Sacher has been a lecturer at the Workers School, 35 East Twelfth Street, New York City, the headquarters of the Communist Party (Daily Worker, November 13, 1937, p. 8; March 3, 1938, p. 8). Instructors at the Workers School, an official Communist Party school, were always members of the party.

In the January 1942 Catalogue and Program of the School for Democracy, Sacher was listed as a guest lecturer. This institution was established by Communist teachers ousted from the public school system of New York City.

As far back as 1933, Sacher was prominent in defending Communist cases. Athos Terzani and Michel Palumbo, held on charges of homicide and felonious assault, were defended by the International Labor Defense, the Communist Party, and their attorneys, Harry Sacher, and Joseph R. Brodsky, in a "mass and legal defense" (Daily Worker, July 17, 1933, p. 1). It should be explained to the uninitiated that the Communists insisted upon resort to what they called "mass defense"or mass pressure because they had no faith in the "capitalist courts."

Representing the legal staff of the International Labor Defense, an important Communist organization, Sacher spoke at the Pythian Temple in New York City on April 10, 1937.

When it was the policy of the Communist Party to organize much of its main propaganda around the civil war in Spain, Sacher was a speaker and member of the Lawyers Committee on American

Relations with Spain, a Communist lawyers' front organization supporting this movement.

It is now generally conceded that the Communists organized and controlled the American League for Peace and Democracy. Harry Sacher was a member of the executive committee of the New York Division of this organization (Peace Year Book, p. VIII).

In the April 2, 1940, issue of the New Masses, Harry Sacher signed his name to a letter addressed to the President in defense of that avowedly Communist magazine.

After the Stalin-Hitler Pact was signed the Communists set up various organizations to agitate to keep America out of the "imperialist war." Sacher sent a telegram to the House Military Affairs Committee in which he denounced conscription. The communication was sponsored by two of the Communist front organizations: the Lawyers Committee to Keep the U. S. Out of War and the Emergency Peace Mobilization.

Since the Communist Party was the spearhead of the movement against the national defense program, it was subjected to prosecution in various parts of the United States. Sacher joined with others in the party's defense in a letter to the President (Daily Worker, March 5, 1941, p. 2).

In 1936, the Communists were utilizing a front known as the A. F. of L. Trade Union Committee for Unemployment Insurance and Relief to back legislation drafted by the Communist Party. The American Federation of Labor officially repudiated this organization as a fraud. Action was brought before the Federal Trade Commission and the committee was ordered to cease and desist from using this name which capitalized upon its misappropriation of the initials A. F. of L. (November 18, 1936). The attorney who defended this spurious project was none other than Harry Sacher (hearings, vol. XIII, pp. 7699-7702).

The evidence before us leaves no doubt about Harry Sacher's allegiance to the Communist Party and its ever changing line. His important post in the Transport Workers Union of America and the C. I. O. Political Action Committee provide him with large possibilities for serving the cause of communism.

50

JOSEPH P. SELLY

Joseph P. Selly, international president of the American Communications Association, is one of the foremost leaders of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. He was a delegate to the 1943 convention of the C. I. O. held in Philadelphia. His unreserved allegiance to the Communist Party is attested by the fact that he has consistently followed the line of the Communist Party, by the fact that his union has done the same, by the fact that he is affiliated with varied front organizations having chiefly in common their control by the Communist Party, by the evidence showing his union to be completely controlled by the Communist Party and by the unvarying support given him by the Communist press. This man, whose primary loyalty is to the Communisty Party and to the Soviet Union in preference to the United States, who publicly demonstrated that fact during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, controls strategic sections in an industry which are recognized as the very nerve system of American industry and the war effort. As such he is potentially one of the most dangerous individuals in the country.

According to an interview solicited by John Meldon of the Sunday Worker staff, Joseph P. Selly is now 38 years old and has been in the left-wing labor movement for at least 11 years (Sunday Worker, May 11, 1941, p. 5). His earliest claim to distinction for Communist activities was his founding of the Knickerbocker Village Tenants Association at 40 Monroe Street, New York City. Selly was its first president and led many noisy demonstrations at this housing development. He has never been either a telegraph or radio operator, having previously taken a course in architecture at Cornell University which qualified him for membership as a draftsman in the Communistcontrolled Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and technicians. In 1937, he was appointed as an organizer in the American Radio Telegraphists' Association, which in August became the American Communications Association (C. I. O.) as part of the exodus of Communist unions from the A. F. of L. Having served as vice president of the American Communications Association for a period, he succeeded Mervyn Rathborne as president. The latter has been identified as a member of the Communist Party by witnesses before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities and by witnesses in proceedings of the Department of Justice in the case of Harry Bridges. He resigned his post as a member of the advisory council of the National Youth Administration in protest against the "President's war policies" during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact. In this and succeeding elections, Selly was the only candidate on the ballot for the office, all other candidates having been previously eliminated without a vote of the membership in the usual totalitarian style.

There has been voluminous testimony as to the completeness of the Communist control of the American Communications Association.