officers. He also spent some time at sea. In other words he owes his present powerful union post in a key war industry solely to the operation of the Communist Party patronage machine and not to any special qualifications in this field of industry.

Although classified as 1-A by his local draft board, he has secured deferment at the request of his union. Moreover, he was selected as a member of the War Labor Board for Region No. 7 (Missouri) on February 17, 1943, until his record caught up with him and he was forced to resign on February 10, 1944.

Sentner's earliest activities as a Communist include his acting as organizer of the Food Workers Industrial Union, affiliated with the Trade Union Unity League, a section of the Red International of Labor Unions with headquarters in Moscow. In this capacity he led a strike of St. Louis nut workers who marched militantly on the City Hall. The Daily Worker reported that

the strikers, one after another, told Mayor Dickinson of St. Louis that it was the Food Workers Industrial Union and the Communist Party who were responsible * * (June 1, 1933, p. 3).

*

Sentner was arrested during this period for violation of the National Recovery Act, in connection with a strike at the Lewin Metal Co., engaged in the manufacture of material designed for the War Department. The Daily Worker's account of what took place is illuminating: The strikers succeeded in keeping the locomotives out of the company's gates * * * Switchmen * * * refused to switch the * cars The party has boldly appeared from the beginning (Daily Worker, August 11, 1933, pp. 1 and 3).

In accordance with the Communist Party's doctrine at the time, Sentner was concentrating on the vital parts of the American war machine. More recently, as organizer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, he organized the U. S. Cartridge Company of St. Louis.

In 1938, Sentner, as district president of the U. E. R. M. W. A., was arrested on charges of criminal syndicalism in connection with the Maytag strike at Newton, Iowa, and found guilty after a jury trial. In 1939 he was sentenced to a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and a $5,000 fine. His case was defended by the International Labor Defense, "legal arm of the Communist Party" (Equal Justice, July 1938, p. 3). The law was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Iowa, and Sentner was accordingly released.

Police records of St. Louis show that he was arrested on October 14, 1933, on charges of suspicion of inciting a riot and that he was fined $25 and costs.

Sentner's record shows that he has used his post as a trade-union official to promote the current line of the Communist Party. In 1937, he was a speaker at a Communist May Day meeting in St. Louis, as national organizer of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, and rallied strikers from the Emerson Electric Co. and the Century Co. to attend (Daily Worker, May 4, 1937, p. 3). In 1938, he was a sponsor of the St. Louis branch of the American League for Peace and Democracy, the largest Communist front of that period.

In 1940, Sentner joined with other officers of District 8 of the U. E. R. M. W. A. to urge participation in the movement for the

repeal of Burke-Wadsworth conscription bill (Daily Worker, September 25, 1940, p. 1).

In line with the Communist Party's most recent position, Sentner today pretends to be a patriot. His offer of cooperation with the war effort has elicited the commendation of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who no doubt was not aware that his correspondent was a man with a long Communist record. Sentner's union-management cooperation activities have brought forth praise from Stuart Symington, head of the Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company of St. Louis (Fortune, November 1943). These gentlemen are certainly unaware that Sentner's patriotism is always conditioned by the line of the Communist Party.

Among the Communist organizations supported by Sentner have been the Scottsboro Defense Committee, the International Labor Defense, Citizens' Committee to Free Earl Browder, Harry Bridges defense, Commonwealth College, New Theatre League, and National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. On February 12, 1938, he was cited on the honor roll of the Midwest Daily Record, official Communist organ of Chicago.

52

SEYMOUR SIPORIN

Seymour Siporin is national legislative director of the United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers of America, a C. I. O. affiliate which is headed by two other Communists, namely, Grant W. Oakes as president and Gerald Fielde as secretary.

Siporin heads the C. I. O. Political Action Committee of his union in Chicago. According to an article by Louis F. Budenz in The Worker (communist Sunday newspaper) of February 27, 1944, Grant Oakes and Seymour Siporin are engaged in a campaign within their union to collect $20,000, half of which is to be turned over to the national organization of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. Offering further evidence of the close tie between the Communist Party and the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, Budenz writes. enthusiastically about the work of Grant Oakes and Seymour Siporin for Sidney Hillman's movement. Budenz also writes, in part, as follows:

In the last week in January, Sidney Hillman of the national C. I. O. political action committee, held a special meeting of his fourteen regional directors in this city.

The C. I. O. has been conspicuously fortunate in obtaining as regional director for this state a man who was familiar with the local Democratic Party organization and yet is also on close and comradely terms with the labor movement. That man is Raymond McKeough, former Congressman from the Chicago region, whose Congressional record was particularly good in its progressivism and stand for victory. There has been a quick pick-up among the unions in this vicinity, therefore, to the measures that were urged by the Hillman Chicago conference. Take the United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers Union, C. I. O. It is up on its toes in pushing this political business in 1944.

Siporin has been arrested in Chicago frequently in connection with riots and demonstrations of the Communist Party.

In 1939, Siporin was chairman of the Communist Party's United May Day Committee in Chicago.

According to The Worker of January 9, 1944, page 6, Seymour Siporin endorsed the Communist Party's Daily Worker on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.

It appears to be no accident that, as Siporin's case so well illustrates, the local activities and leadership of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee regularly fall into the hands of well-known Communists.

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53

FERDINAND C. SMITH

High in the circles of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee and of the Communist Party in the Harlem section of New York, is Ferdinand Smith, national secretary of the Communist-dominated National Maritime Union. He was among those who addressed the national conference of the Political Action Committee on January 14, 1944, at the Park Central Hotel in New York City, a meeting which was prominently featured in the Communist Party's Daily Worker.

Smith makes no bones about his support of the Communist Party. In 1942, he endorsed Israel Amter, Communist candidate for Governor of New York State, and Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., Communist candidate for councilman in New York City (Daily Worker, October 9, 1942, p. 4; October 13, 1942, p. 4). On September 24, 1942, he spoke at a Communist Party-sponsored Second Front meeting in Union Square in New York City. He was one of the leading spirits of the Citizens' Committee to Free Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party, convicted for passport fraud (New Masses, May 19, 1942, p. 31).

The May Day Parade in New York City is an annual mobilization of communist strength. In volume 11 of the hearings of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, page 6752, is a photograph of Ferdinand Smith, in the May Day Parade of 1938, along with other Communist leaders of the National Maritime Union. He was a member of the United May Day Provisional Committee in 1939, vice chairman of the same committee in 1940, and co-chairman in 1941.

From time to time Smith has contributed to the tightly-controlled Communist press. One of his articles appeared in The Worker of December 6, 1942, page 5.

Ferdinand C. Smith was a sponsor of the Schappes Defense Committee, defending Morris U. Schappes, a Communist teacher ousted from the City College of New York and now serving a sentence for perjury.

According to the records of the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Navigation, Ferdinand Smith is shown to have remained in the employ of Luckenbach Steamship Co. as chief steward during the period of the maritime strike of 1934. He was charged with strikebreaking by members of the National Maritime Union. The Seamen's Branch of the Communist Party of New York published a leaflet in his defense reading in part as follows:

Smith's record as a union man stands out as a beaconlight to all seamen * * * All seamen, Negro and white, let the shipowners and enemies of the N. M. U. hear your protest against this vicious frame-up of Ferdinand Smith.

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In reference to this incident we cite the testimony of William C. McCuistion, a former member of the National Maritime Union and a former member of the Communist Party:

He is a member of the Communist Party for at least 5 years. He was a strikebreaker, however, in the 1934 strike while he was a member of the Communist Party and was subsequently expelled from the union by the membership. But they held a packed meeting in New York and reinstated him (hearings, p. 6732), Ferdinand C. Smith is prominent in three Negro-front organizations of the Communist Party, namely, as a leader of the National Negro Congress, as chairman of the Negro Labor Victory Committee (Daily Worker, October 22, 1942, p. 3; November 29, 1942, p. 5), and as secretary of the National Emergency Committee to Stop Lynching. In the bitter struggle between the so-called conservative and the Communist wing of the American Labor Party in New York City, Ferdinand Smith has taken his stand with the latter. He was a member of the executive committee of the Progressive Committee to Rebuild the American Labor Party, a name assumed by the Communist faction in that party.

The Worker of November 8, 1942, carried Ferdinand C. Smith's greetings to the Soviet Union on the occasion of the Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Among the other Communist-front organizations which Smith has supported are the following: Woman Today, a Communist magazine; National Federation for Constitutional Liberties; Joint Committee for Trade Union Rights, defending Communist furriers; United American Spanish Aid Committee; North American Spanish Aid Committee, member of executive board; Negro People's Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy; Emergency Trade Union Conference to Aid Spanish Democracy; and the American Committee to Save Refugees.

Ferdinand Smith was a delegate to the 1943 C. I. O. convention. Like all other Communist leaders in the C. I. O., he is backing to the limit of his powers Sidney Hillman's C. I. O. Political Action Committee.