than a score of years in Europe." The convention sent word to the President that conscription "involves a very definite departure from the basic principles of the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence" (Daily Worker, September 4, 1940, p. 1; September 5, 1940, p. 1).

Emspak and his associates proceeded to put this program into concrete form in the U. E. R. M. W. A. A case in point is the April 1940 membership activities committee bulletin of Local 475 of Brooklyn which displayed on its cover the notorious "Yanks Are Not Coming" cartoon widely reprinted in the Communist press.

Simon Gerson, reporter for the Daily Worker, estimated that 100 locals of the U. E. R. M. W. A. were represented at the American Peoples Meeting on April 5, 6, 1941, in New York City (Sunday Worker, April 13, 1941, p. 1, sec. 2). The American Peoples Meeting was the name chosen for its national convention by the seditious American Peace Mobilization.

While it is not the purpose or the province of our committee to enter into the question of wage demands, the question comes within the jurisdiction of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities when such demands are merely a cover for subversive designs calculated to interfere with national security and war production. It was avowedly this consideration which moved the President to send Federal troops to intervene in the strike of the Vultee Aircraft workers, a step denounced by the U. E. News of April 10, 1941, pages 23 and 24, edited by Julius Emspak. It was no accident therefore that the U. E. R. M. W. A. set in motion a general strike campaign throughout the industry in October 1940, a month after the meeting of the American Peace Mobilization.

Members of the American Peace Mobilization joined in supporting two strikes of the U. E. R. M. W. A. and aided in picketing the Pennsylvania Manufacturing Co. and the Emerson Radio Co. of Brooklyn, N. Y. (A. P. M. Volunteer, May 3, 1941, p. 4). Virgil Mason, U. E. R. M. W. A. leader at the Dohler Die Casting Co., was a member of the national council of the American Peace Mobilization. Albert Stonkus, business representative of Local 475, James Garry, organizer of Local 1227, and Edward Matthews, president of Local 1207, were members of the national labor committee of the American Peace Mobilization.

Immediately after Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, the line of Julius Emspak and the U. E. R. M. W. A. made a remarkable turn toward all-out support of the war effort. The officers' report signed by Julius Emspak to the seventh annual convention of the U. E. R. M. W. A. held in Camden, N. J., in September 1941, demanded that the union take "every step necessary to crush Hitlerism," and announced that all disagreements in the union on foreign policy had been removed since the Nazis invaded Russia (New York Times, September 2, 1941, p. 1).

At the ninth convention of the U. E. R. M. W. A., held in September 1943, at the Hotel New Yorker in New York City, a 30-page report was submitted by the national officers, including Julius Emspak, calling for the "opening of a western front" and insisted that "we are fighting to establish the kind of a world in which working men and women all over the world will be able to find just and peaceful solutions for the problems common to us all" (Daily Worker, September 14, 1943, p. 1).

Julius Emspak became an enthusiastic member of the President's Labor Victory Committee and is a frequent visitor at the White House.

Demonstrating conclusively that former wage demands were incident to the Communist Party line, Emspak and his fellow national officers of the U. E. R. M. W. A. now declare that their "members are willing to abstain from their just demand for a general cost-of-living wage rise at this time" (Washington Post, February 25, 1943, p. 16). As editor of the U. E. News, Emspak gives clear expression of his Communist sympathies. Almost every issue carries some laudatory article dealing with the Soviet Union. The paper has advocated the lifting of deportation proceedings against Harry Bridges (March 6, 1943, p. 7). It has defended Stanley Nowak of Detroit, charged by the Department of Justice with being a Communist and with falsification of his naturalization papers (February 20, 1943, p. 12). The paper has defended the Oklahoma Communist cases (May 29, 1943, p. 8). A member of its staff is none other than James Lerner, formerly on the staff of Fight, official organ of the American League Against War and Fascism, and later the American League for Peace and Democracy.

It is significant to note Emspak's attitude toward the Congress of the United States, an attitude typical of the Communist Party and the Daily Worker. In his issue of the U. E. News of February 20, 1943, page 6, he denounced this body as "presently dominated by a bloc of Hooverites, poll-taxers, defeatists, and open defenders of treason and sedition."

Emspak is one of the outstanding leaders of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee: and the host of Communist functionaries in his union, the U. E. R. M. W. A., is energetically backing Sidney Hillman's movement to relegate the Congress of the United States to the role of a subservient tool of a minority Communist pressure group.

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29

ABRAM FLAXER

Abram Flaxer, president of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America, C. I. O., has been active in the affairs of the Communist Party as far back as 1936. Although he has never publicly avowed membership in the Communist Party, his allegiance is indisputably established by his presence at closed meetings of the party, by the statements of those who have been closely associated with him in the labor movement, by his complete loyalty to the party line throughout its various changes, by his defense of Communists and Communist fronts, and by the standing established by his union as a Communist-controlled organization. In view of the Communist Party's enthusiasm for the Č. I. O. Political Action Committee, it is not surprising that Abram Flaxer has thrown the resources of his Communist-controlled union into this conspiracy to destroy the Congress of the United States.

Formerly active as general manager of the New York local of the American Federation of Government Employees (A. F. of L.), Flaxer was known as a Communist by American Federation of Labor leaders, according to the testimony of John P. Frey, head of the Metal Trades Department of the A. F. of L. (hearings, p. 130).

As head of the Association of Workers in Public Relief Agencies in New York City, Flaxer joined with the Communist-controlled Workers Alliance in a request to the police commissioner for a permit for a parade of 25,000 unemployed. The project had the full support of the Young Communist League (Daily Worker, February 14, 1936, p. 1).

Abram Flaxer has been the president of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America since its foundation in 1937. This organization has won for itself both inside and outside the American labor movement, the reputation of being securely controlled by the Communists. The Civil Service Forum, a New York publication, of long and recognized standing, devoted to matters concerning civilservice workers, referred to the State, County, and Municipal Workers as "the FIFTH COLUMN in civil service" (May 14, 1940). The Honorable Samuel Yorty, head of the California Legislative Committee to Investigate Relief, who delved deeply into the activities of this union's California affiliates, declared:

The so-called S. C. M. W. A. is not really a union, just a racket, a Communistcontrolled racket (San Francisco Press, April 25, 1940).

It is not without significance that the Teachers Union of New York City, which was expelled as Communist-controlled from the American Federation of Teachers (A. F. of L.), is now affiliated with the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America. Nor is it accidental that Nancy Reed (daughter of Ferdinanda Reed, "owner" of the Daily Worker), a Communist discharged by the New York State Labor

Department as a result of her activities, was the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America delegate to the National Congress of Workers held in Havana in January 1939 (hearings, vol. 14, p. 8818). During the proceedings against her by the New York State Labor Department, the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America not only defended her but called for the ouster of Godfrey P. Schmidt who conducted the investigation (Civil Service Standard, December 1, 1941, p. 10).

In the Civil Service Standard of January 12, 1942, page 11, official organ of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America, we find an article which is typical of this union's general attitude, in defense of the Communist Party. The article voices opposition to H. R. 6269 requiring members of the German-American Bund, the Kyffhauser Bund, and the Communist Party to register as foreign agents.

Despite the municipal ban on political activity among New York civil-service employees, the following six active members of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America of that city supported the election of Communist Councilmen Peter V. Cacchione and Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., in 1943; Charlotte Rosswaag, welfare investigator, and S. C. M. W. A. chairman of Lower Manhattan, and wife of Abram Flaxer; Sid Socholitsky of the Mid-Manhattan council of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America, and investigator in the Nonsettlement Division of the Welfare Department; Renee Berg, member of the Mid-Queens State, County, and Municipal Workers of America council, investigator in welfare office 11; Clara Leon, member of the West Bronx council, investigator in office 23; Bernard Brown, East Bronx council, investigator in office 17; and Monroe Stein, Upper Flatbush-Crown Heights council, investigator, office 73. The move was obviously made with the knowledge and approval of Abram Flaxer.

The State, County, and Municipal Workers of America, headed by Abram Flaxer, claims a membership of 53,000 Government employees organized in 173 locals in 23 States (Daily Worker, September 25, 1941, p. 3). The attitude of this organization toward our Government is one of distinct hostility reflecting the Marxist-Leninist dictum that "the State is the organ of class domination, the organ of oppression of one class by another," that "the democratic republic is the best possible form for capitalism," and finally that "only a revolution can 'destroy' the capitalist state" (N. Lenin, The State and the Revolution, pp., 11, 18, 22). Only this type of philosophy can explain or justify the attitude of Abram Flaxer and his organization in their dealings with Government agencies. It is only in the light of such conduct that we can explain the uniform hostility of loyal government officials toward the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America.

A case in point is an article by Abram Flaxer which appeared in the Survey Magazine in April 1942, page 111, in which he candidly declares:

*

Most Governors, mayors, and county commissioners * have employed stool pigeons and sponsored witch hunts to weed out union members, dismissed union leaders * They have resorted to intimidation and discrimination to discourage and destroy trade unionism among government employees. * * In many communities, Government employees have been

persecuted by local "Little Dies Committees." In California, the Yorty Committee succeeded in destroying a union of 3,500 members in the State Relief Association. In New York City, the department of investigation under Commissioner Herlands, employed a staff of 30 investigators, used stool pigeons, disrupted the work of the Department of Welfare by "grilling" hundreds of workers. * * * Efforts to organize the employees of the New York City Department of Sanitation resulted in the dismissal of the president of the local, and the suspension and fining of scores of the most active union members. * * * At this writing 46 trade unionists, loyal members of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Assistance, are fighting to regain the jobs they lost on charges that were concocted after a 2-year secret spying investigation. * * * The press, traditionally hostile to organized labor, never misses an opportunity to spread the fog. * * *

Government agencies, especially in wartime, have insisted that their employees, being public servants, have no right to strike. But Abram Flaxer holds that the members of his organization owe a higher allegiance which gives them the right to strike and shut down the public services. In his April 1942, article in the Survey Magazine he wrote:

The government employer asserts that a strike against the government is akin to insurrection. Therefore, if the government employee strikes he is subject to penalties. But if the government employee refrains from striking, he is barred from the collective-bargaining rights to which other citizens are entitled. Can a more effective trap be devised for trade-union men and women?

At the Second Biennial Convention of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America he supported the constitutional clause which declared that "there is no law or any legal precedent denying us the right to strike and we will fight against any abridgment of this right" (Daily Worker, September 27, 1941, p. 4).

This "public be damned" attitude went so far that the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America even called strikes in hospitals. Sixty maintenance employees affiliated with the Association of Hospital and Medical Employees, Local 129 of the State, County and Municipal Workers of America, started a hunger strike at the Beth David Hospital in New York City (Civil Service Standard, March 29, 1939, p. 1). The Pittsburgh local 255 of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America conducted a strike against the West Pennsylvania hospital, and the local union leader, David Kanes, speaking to the members of Local 601 on April 27, 1941, threatened to tie up the other 25 hospitals in the county. Lewis G. Hines, secretary of the Department of Labor and Industry of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in a news release issued on January 30, 1941, stated that Abram Flaxer had "been singled out on a number of occasions as one of the leading members of the Communist Party in this country" (Congressional Record, May 2, 1941, pp. 3610 to 3616). If we accept as correct the United States Civil Service Commission's definition of a Communist as "one who has followed the Communist Party line through one or more changes," it must be said that Flaxer meets this test with flying red colors. In 1939, when the party line was opposed to Hitler, his New York district executive board called upon all members of the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America to participate in a "Stop Hitler" parade held on Saturday, March 25, 1939, starting from Madison Square (Civil Service Standard, March 29, 1939, p. 1).

In March 1938, Flaxer signed a statement issued by the American League for Peace and Democracy, a Communist-front cited as such by the Attorney General, which said in part: