46

MICHAEL J. QUILL

Michael J. Quill is the president of the Transport Workers Union, one of the strongest affiliates of the C. I. O. He was a delegate to the 1943 convention of the C. I. O. which was held in Philadelphia in November. He is now one of the outstanding leaders of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. The greater New York Industrial Union Council (C. I. O.) set up the Non-Partisan Political Activities Committee with Michael J. Quill as its chairman. This is something of an indication of Quill's prominence in the leadership of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee in the New York area.

It is hardly possible that Sidney Hillman does not know Quill as a Communist. Within the definition of a Communist which has been suggested by the United States Civil Service Commission, namely, that "a Communist is a person who has followed the party line through one or more changes," Michael J. Quill is a Communist several times over. He has followed the line of the Communist Party through all of its changes during the past decade, never swerving so much as an ideological jot or tittle.

There is, of course, much testimony to the effect that Quill is an actual card-holding member of the Communist Party. Even if he does not hold a party card, however, he could not have been more loyal to the party than he has been for these many years. Quill was elected president of the Transport Workers Union in December 1935, after Thomas H. O'Shea (according to the latter's sworn testimony) had been instructed by the Communist Party leaders to withdraw in order that Quill might be chosen head of the union without opposition. Quill has remained in the presidency of the union until the present time.

John J. Murphy testified under oath before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, as follows:

I sat in unit 19-S meetings of the Communist Party with Mr. Michael Quill, and knew him for years before as station agent on the lines of the Interborough Rapid Transit Co. (see hearings, p. 1044).

Michael Kelly also testified under oath that Quill had asked him to join the Communist Party and to attend the Communist Party's Workers School (see hearings, p. 1077).

Edward Maguire's testimony before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities included the following reference to Michael Quill:

Mr. STARNES. Have you collected dues from all those you have called here? Mr. MAGUIRE. Yes, sir.

Mr. STARNES. Were they members of your unit?

Mr. MAGUIRE. Yes, sir; of the unit known as 19-S.

Mr. STARNES. Then do I understand that you collected dues from Michael J. Quill?

Mr. MAGUIRE. Yes, sir.

Mr. STARNES. You say you were secretary-treasurer of that unit?

Mr. MAGUIRE. The unit known as 19-S (hearings, p. 1069).

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Michael J. McCarthy also testified that Quill had solicited him for membership in the Communist Party (see hearings, p. 1079).

Quill's connections with Communist-front organizations have been numerous. From among them, we cite the following:

1. He contributed an article to the December 1937 issue of Champion. This magazine was a publication of the Young Communist League and of the International Workers Order.

2. At a mass meeting under the sponsorship of the Greater New York Committee for Employment, in May 1938, Quill was one of the speakers (Daily Worker, May 18, 1938, p. 4). According to the Daily Workers' account of this meeting, the following Communist organizations were represented: American League for Peace and Democracy, Workers Alliance, National Negro Congress, and Harlem Division of the Communist Party.

3. In June 1939, an organization with tell-tale sponsors held its annual dance in the hall of the Transport Workers Union. The Daily Worker listed Quill among the sponsors of the event, together with such well-known Communists and fellow travelers as Max Bedacht, Granville Hicks, Donald Ogden Stewart, Jerome Davis, and Vito Marcantonio.

4. In April 1939, Quill was a speaker at a mass meeting of the Manhattan Citizens Committee (Sunday Worker, April 9, 1939). A. Philip Randolph, then president of the communist National Negro Congress, and Ben Gold, avowed Communist head of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union, Vito Marcantonio, and A. Clayton Powell (the latter two notoriously pro-Communist) were also among the speakers. The American League for Peace and Democracy, the National Negro Congress, and the Jewish People's Committee were listed in the Daily Worker as organizations supporting the meeting.

5. In December 1938, Quill wrote the International Labor Defense, notoriously subversive Communist organization, the following hearty endorsement:

Aware of the very necessary and able work done by the International Labor Defense in behalf of organized labor throughout the past and preceding years, I am happy to join with you in your annual Christmas drive for labor's neediest cases. I am urging all in our union and our affiliate organizations in the labor movement, and I am asking all my friends personally to support the Christmas drive. I feel confident that whatever goal you have set for yourselves will be achieved and that funds collected will go as has always been the case in the I. L. D. to very worthy fighters for the workers of America (Daily Worker, December 14, 1938).

6. In December 1938, Quill served as a sponsor for the NonSectarian Committee for Political Refugees (Daily Worker, December 21, 1938). Associated with him the sponsorship of this Communist front were the following persons whose names appear again and again in connection with the projects of the Communist Party: Vito Marcantonio, Mrs. J. C. Guggenheimer, Stanley Isaacs, Marc Blitzstein, Millen Brand, Malcolm Cowley, Wanda Gag, Lillian Hellman, Granville Hicks, Leo Huberman, Paul J. Kern, Donald Ogden Stewart, Richard Wright, and Leane Zugsmith.

7. In November 1938, Quill was a speaker at a mass meeting held in Pittsburgh under the joint auspices of the League for the Protection of Minority Rights and the American League for Peace and Democracy (Daily Worker, November 18, 1938). Also listed as speakers for the

occasion were two other Communist heads of C. I. O. unions who are now in the top leadership of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, namely, Ben Gold of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union, and Lewis Merrill of the United Office and Professional Workers of America.

8. In June 1938, Quill was a speaker at a meeting held under the auspices of the American Friends of the Mexican People. According to the Daily Worker's announcement of the meeting, Vincent Lombardo Toledano, the Communist leader of organized labor in Latin America, was the principal speaker of the occasion (Daily Worker, June 23, 1938).

9. The leaflet of the Consumer-Farmer Milk Cooperative, Inc., lists Michael Quill as one of the organization's sponsors. The overwhelming majority of those connected with the Consumer-Farmer Milk Cooperative, Inc., are well-known Communists or Communist fellow travelers. For example, Max Bedacht, high Communist Party functionary for the past 20 years, is also a sponsor, and Rose Nelson, one-time section organizer of the Communist Party, is one of the directors of the organization.

10. The Daily Worker for December 20, 1938, announced that Quill would be a speaker at a meeting under the auspices of the Progressive Women's Council and the American League for Peace and Democracy. The Progressive Women's Council was an outright affiliate of the Communist Party, headed by Rose Nelson. The Attorney General has branded the American League for Peace and Democracy as a subversive organization.

11. Quill has been a member of the labor advisory committee of Consumers Union of the United States, Inc., headed by the Communist Arthur Kallet (whose party name is Edward Adams). Ben Gold and Louis Weinstock, both well-known Communists, were also members of the labor advisory committee of Consumers Union.

12. Quill has been an active leader of the Communist wing of the American Labor Party. For a period of years, this wing of the party called itself the Progressive Committee to Rebuild the American Labor Party. Among the other leaders who are active in the C. I. O. Political Action Committee and who also belong to this Communist wing of the American Labor Party are the following: Eugene Connolly, Joseph Curran, Bella V. Dodd, and Ferdinand C. Smith.

13. According to the Daily Worker of March 1, 1938, page 2, Michael Quill gave a public endorsement of the Jewish Peoples Committee, an organization which has been nothing more nor less than an adjunct of the Communist Party.

14. The Public Use of Arts Committee was a typical Communist Party front of which Quill was a sponsor. Other well-known Communists and fellow travelers who were also sponsors of the organization included the following: Vito Marcantonio, Abram Flaxer, Rockwell Kent, and Lewis Merrill.

15. According to the Daily Worker of April 27, 1938, page 8, Quill was a speaker for the Progressive Women's Council, which has already been cited as an affiliate of the Communist Party which was headed by Rose Nelson.

16. In the days when the Communist Party's line was in advocacy of so-called collective security (prior to the Stalin pact), Michael Quill went along obediently. He was, for example, affiliated with one

of the party's fronts known as the Union of Concerted Peace Efforts. Clarence Hathaway, then editor of the Daily Worker, was a leader of the organization (Daily Worker, January 11, 1938, p. 2).

17. Some years ago, Stanley Isaacs, then president of the Borough of Manhattan, appointed as his assistant one Simon Gerson, a wellknown and publicly-avowed member of the Communist Party. When a public outcry arose against the appointment of a member of a subversive organization to such a position of public trust, the Communists and Communist sympathizers flocked to the defense of Isaacs and Gerson. Michael Quill was among the supporters of the Gerson appointment, together with such well-known Communists and fellow travelers as the following: A. Clayton Powell, Carl Randau, Vito Marcantonio, Louis Weinstock, Eugene P. Connolly, Irving Potash, Margaret Schlauch, Malcolm Cowley, Charles J. Hendley, and Julia Church Kolar.

18. According to an undated letterhead, Quill was a sponsor of the New York Tom Mooney Committee. For many years, the Communist Party organized widespread agitation around the Mooney case, and drew its members and followers into the agitation. Co-sponsors with Quill on the New York Tom Mooney Committee were the following: Elmer Brown, Jerome Davis, Dashiell Hammett, Charles J. Hendley, Stanley Isaacs, Paul J. Kern, Vito Marcantonio, Dorothy Parker, and Carl Randau-all of whose names may be found with great frequency on the lists of supporters of Communist Party projects.

19. The Trade Union Committee on Industrial Espionage was one of the ad hoc Communist fronts with which Quill was affiliated as a speaker (Daily Workers, March 30, 1938, p. 5).

20. The American Federation of Teachers, Local 5, was expelled from the American Federation of Labor on account of its blatant Communist character. Quill was a speaker for the local in 1938 (Daily Worker, March 31, 1938, p. 3).

21. Another ad hoc front of the Communists which was set up to defend the Communist leaders of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union was known as the Joint Committee for Trade Union Rights. Quill joined this group along with such prominent Communist trade-union leaders as the following: Elmer Brown, Ann Berenholz, Lewis Alan Berne, Charles Blank, Sam Bogorod, Joseph Boruchowitz, George E. Brown, Eugene P. Connolly, Barnett Cooper, Joseph Curran, Bella V. Dodd, Abram Flaxer, Donald Henderson, Charles J. Hendley, Austin Hogan, Lewis Merrill, Frederick Myers, Saul Mills, Arthur Osman, O. M. Orton, Max Perlow, Mervyn Rathborne, Reid Robinson, John Santo, Joseph Selly, Ferdinand C. Smith, Robert K. Speer, Josephine Timms, Louis Weinstock, and Doxey Wilkerson (Daily Worker, November 11, 1940, pp. 1, 5). Most of the foregoing individuals are now active in the C. I. O. Political Action Committee.

22. The Committee for Defense of Public Education was one of the Communist fronts with a name that suggested a laudable purpose. It was in reality a party agency whose aim was to prevent the RappCoudert committee of the New York State Legislature from exposing the Communists who had infiltrated the public school system of that State. Together with a large number of well-known Communists,

Michael J. Quill was a sponsor of this committee which held a large meeting at Manhattan Center, New York, on December 18, 1940.

23. The Consumers National Federation was a Communist Party front which included a large number of party members and fellow travelers as its sponsors. Quill was one of these sponsors according to one of the organization's leaflets entitled The People vs. H. C. L., December 11-12, 1937.

24. On numerous occasions, Quill spoke for the American League for Peace and Democracy, the Communist front organization which advocated the party line prior to the Stalin-Hitler Pact (Daily Worker, February 4, 1938, page 2).

25. Probably the most influential of the Communist Party's front organizations in recent years has been the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, an organization branded as subversive by the Attorney General. Michael Quill is a member of the executive committee of this federation (letterhead, dated November 6, 1940). 26. Quill was a sponsor of the Conference on Constitutional Liberties in America, which was held in Washington, D. C., on June 7, 1940. Among the prominent speakers of the occasion was Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, notorious and publicly-avowed leader of the Communist Party (program leaflet, p. 4).

27. One of the oldest auxiliaries of the Communist Party in the United States is the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born. Quill is a sponsor of this Communist front (letterhead, dated September 11, 1941), and was a speaker at its national conference held in Atlantic City, March 29-30, 1941.

28. The United Youth Committee Against Lynching was one of the innumerable Communist fronts for which Quill has served as a speaker (Daily Worker, February 11, 1938, page 5). Organizations which officially participated in this United Youth Committee included the Communist Party, the Young Communist League, the International Workers Order, the Workers Alliance, and the Federated Youth Clubs. 29. In the days when the American Youth Congress was going all out against the military preparedness of the United States and was taking the lead in organizing the American Peace Mobilization, Michael Quill was one of its chief supporters and principal speakers (leaflet "Hear Ye! Open Hearing on H. R. 1776"). On February 7, 1941, Quill spoke for the American Youth Congress in Washington, D. C., when the organization sent its forces to the Capitol to denounce lend-lease.

30. Quill was a sponsor of the Schappes Defense Committee. This committee was set up by the Communists to defend one Morris U. Schappes, ousted New York Communist teacher, who is now serving a penitentiary sentence for perjury.

31. Just prior to the formation of the American Peace Mobilization, the Communists set up numberless local organizations for the purpose of obstructing America's military preparedness. Quill was a speaker for one of these, the Columbus Peace Association, which featured on its announcement of his speech the slogans "No A. E. F., No Convoys!" 32. The Trade Union Women's Committee for Peace, another Communist front which was integrated with the American Peace Mobilization in the Communist Party's drive against America's military preparedness, claimed Quill's services as a speaker (Daily Worker, September 18, 1940, p. 5).

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