42

ELEANOR NELSON

Eleanor Nelson is the secretary-treasurer of the United Federal Workers of America (C. I. O.), which was formed as the result of a Communist-led split from the American Federation of Government Employees (A. F. of L.) in 1937, and was hailed by the Daily Worker of June 22, 1937, page 4. She is the only woman member of the C. I. O. executive board. Prior to her acceptance of the U. F. W. A. secretary-treasurership, she was with the Women's Bureau of the U. S. Labor Department where she wrote a monograph entitled "Women at Work," which has been highly praised by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, member of the national committee of the Communist Party. In the effort to split the Labor Department local of the American Federation of Government Employees away from the A. F. of L., Miss. Nelson cooperated with Helen Miller, who was secretary of the local and who has since been dismissed from the Labor Department as a result of her Communist activities.

Eleanor Nelson has been eulogized by the Worker, official Communist organ, of August 9, 1942, page 4, section 2, a mark of distinction. reserved for those who possess the confidence of the Communist Party. The union headed by Miss Nelson claims a membership of over 15,000 in the War Department, navy yards, Army bases, Federal arsenals, and numerous other agencies of the Government, and followed the Communist Party line cautiously but faithfully.

As proof that the U. F. W. A. has faithfully followed the line of the Communist Party in all its variations, let us look at the record. The Federal Record of December 26, 1938, official organ of the U. F. W. A., called for direct aid to the victims of Hitlerism, and in its September 17, 1938, issue, when the line of the Communist Party was for collective security against the Fascist aggressors, for a world-wide fight against fascism.

During this period Eleanor Nelson was a member of the Washington branch of the American League for Peace and Democracy, standing for "collective security against the Fascist aggressors." Together with Anna Louise Strong, editor of the Moscow Daily News, she spoke at a meeting in Washington on March 29, 1938, which advocated the following drastic measures against the Axis powers: Repeal of the Neutrality Act, boycott of Japanese goods, aid to Loyalist Spain, and an embargo against Germany and Italy. The meeting was sponsored by the Communist Party, the Washington Peace League, the Washington Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, and the United Federal Workers.

After the signing of the Stalin-Hitler pact on August 23, 1939, the line of the U. F. W. A. changed accordingly:

First. The Library of Congress News-letter, a U. F. W. A. local union organ, in its issue of April 1940, opposed guns and bullets or loans to foreign governments and denounced all warlike expenditures.

Second. The Federal Worker of September 3, 1940, U. F. W. A. convention issue, published an article headed "Your Government job won't save you from the draft."

Third. Under the column of National News the mimeographed bulletin Revenues, organ of U. F. W. A. Revenue Local 147, declared:

Maritime unions protested bitterly as United States-subsidized shipowners planned to evade the neutrality-law program ** * Labor and war: American labor wants no part in the European war, supports the neutrality program.

And criticized the attack on Earl Browder, which charged him with the falsification of passports.

Fourth. Union Newsletter, organ of W. P. A., Local 1, May 29, 1940, stated:

Labor wants no war or any part of it, and while countries in Europe are engaged in their barbaric orgies of conquest and aggression as they have been doing for centuries, it must ever be the purpose of the United States to remain out of these wars.

This publication recommended affiliation with the American Peace Mobilization which conducted the picket line around the White House.

At the next C. I. O. convention in November 1941, following Hitler's invasion of Russia, Eleanor Nelson declared in her speech:

Our organization was very well pleased when the convention took the action it did supporting the foreign policy of the President. * * * We feel Hitler must

be defeated and we are doing all we can to see he is. * *

The Worker of August 9, 1942, stated that—

the United Federal Workers under her leadership has started blood donor, war bond, salvage, and production campaigns in the Government service.

After June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, the line of the U. F. W. A. changed accordingly. Heretofore the Ú. F. W. A. had supported Communist-led strikes in important defense industries during the Stalin-Hitler Pact. The last convention of the U. F. W. A., held in Philadelphia at the end of October 1942, went on record for: immediate opening of a second front; passage of the teen-age draft bill without restrictions; a break in diplomatic relations with Vichy, France, and Franco, Spain; and declaration of war on Finland.

Both John L. Lewis and his successor, Philip Murray, expressed their distrust of Eleanor Nelson and her associates by placing the United Federal Workers under a non-Communist receivership. The first one to hold this position was Jacob Baker. He was followed by Allan Haywood, both serving as president. Despite the fact that Allan Haywood specifically prohibited the U. R. W. A. locals from sending delegates to the American Peace Mobilization, the Communists in actual control paid scant attention to his orders. Helen Miller, of the Labor Department local, was the organizer of a substantial U. F. W. A. delegation from Washington to a rally of the American Peace Mobilization.

During the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact the Federal Government clamped down on a number of subversive employees and in some cases they were ousted. The United Federal Workers during this period was visibly more concerned with the defense of these individual members of the union than with the welfare of Federal employees in general. In this effort, the union cooperated with the Washington

Committee for Democratic Action, affiliate of the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, both cited as subversive by Attorney General Biddle. Eleanor Nelson was an active member of the Washington Committee for Democratic Action. On December 18, 1940, she spoke before a meeting of this organization at the Hotel Burlington in Washington, D. C., specifically called to defend civil service employees under investigation and charges for subversive activities. In the Federal Record of July 18, 1941, official organ of the U. F. W. A., Miss Nelson was shown in a photograph together with Helen Miller, later fired from the Labor Department, and Nathan Witt, counsel for the U. F. W. A. and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. The group is shown mapping out Mrs. Miller's defense.

Under Miss Nelson's leadership the U. F. W. A. has fought tenacious y against all efforts to investigate and penalize civil-service employees for subversive activities. The Federal Record of May 2, 1941, declared: "U. F. W. A. Scores Abuses In Character Investigations.' "Stop That Snoop" was the slogan of U. F. W. A. Local 10, referring to the investigations.

In 1943, Eleanor Nelson called upon the Civil Service Commission to "stop all questioning concerning membership in so-called front organizations." She demanded that "such membership be neither a cause for investigation or a subject of questioning" (Cong. Rec., December 2, 1943, p. 10359).

In the light of the activities of the U. F. W. A., it is interesting to note how it is regarded in the eyes of a Washington columnist. We cite, for example, John F. Cramer of the Washington Daily News who refers to the organization as one "which enthusiastically abhorred the war until Russia got in" (February 28, 1943, p. 5).

Miss Nelson was a speaker at the Second National Negro Congress in 1937. This organization has been cited as subversive by Attorney General Biddle. She was a sponsor of the Congress of American Soviet Friendship in 1942.

She was a speaker at a meeting held in Washington, supported by the Washington Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy and the Communist Party (Daily Worker, March 30, 1938, p. 4).

The U. F. W. A. has cooperated with the following Communistcontrolled organizations: Workers' Alliance, Consumers' Union, Federated Press, Labor Research Association, the Washington Bookshop, Washington Friends of Spanish Democracy, Friday Magazine, the Washington Committee for Aid to China, and Washington Peace Mobilization, which participated in the White House picket line (Washington Peace Council leaflet, meeting, December 4, 1940).

Miss Nelson is actively engaged in supporting the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, although her union has declared its intention of keeping within the bounds of the Hatch Act.

43

GRANT OAKES

Sidney Hillman has enlisted the aid of Grant Oakes, president of the United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers of America, in support of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. Oakes was among those who addressed the national conference of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee on January 14, 1944, at the Park Central Hotel in New York City, which was organized by Hillman and at which he was the keynote speaker.

From his experience as Associate Director General in the Office of Production Management, when Grant Oakes led the disastrous strike in the International Harvester Co., handling millions of dollars worth of war contracts, and from his experience as one of the founders and leaders of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Hillman must be fully aware that Grant Oakes has consistently carried out the biddings of the Communist Party.

Grant Oakes was elected to the national council of the American Peace Mobilization in Chicago in September 1940 on a program which called for "repeal of the Conscription Act," "repeal of the Alien Registation Act," defeat of legislation to outlaw strikes, "keeping the U. S. out of war," and withdrawal of all aid to Great Britain. The Communist Party of the United States launched this organization in accordance with the pact of 1939 between Stalin and Hitler. Oakes and his associates incited the strike at the International Harvester Corporation plant which produced tractors for the U. S. Army in order to cripple the national defense program which was in keeping with the policies of the American Peace Mobilization and the Communist Party during that period.

Describing the strike at the huge tractor plant at 2600 West Thirtyfirst Street, employing 6,500 men, the Chicago Daily News of January 29, 1941, page 1, declared:

The walk-out began when the Farm Equipment Workers Organizing Committee (C. I. O.) broke off negotiations * * * No formal strike call accompanied the walk-out, but pickets with placards and flags began a march in front of the plant's gates as the men walked out.

Grant Oakes, the leader of the International Harvester strike, was following a carefully prepared plan to stop production in the plant. When the company sought to continue negotiations, Oakes scornfully rejected "endless conferences." He issued the following warning to Government officials who sought to end the strike:

It should be clearly understood that the strikers will strongly resent any repetition of the one-sided mediation such as occurred in the Vultee strike (Daily Worker, February 7, 1941, p. 1).

He even went to far as to warn President Roosevelt of violent consequences if the plant was opened, holding out the possibility that these workers will "line the morgue tomorrow, with their blood on

Chicago streets," and held out the gruesome prospect of "mass murder" (Daily Worker, March 22, 1941, p. 5).

The Daily Worker spoke in glowing terms of the strike led by Grant Oakes. In an editorial on February 1, 1941, page 6, the Communist organ declared:

In the snowy winter morning pickets parade before the strike-bound Chicago Tractor Works of the International Harvester Co. * * * This pageant of the militant labor movement is a reply to the prevalent war economy.

Grant Oakes and his fellow strikers who formed a delegation to the meeting of the American Peace Mobilization, which took place on April 5, 1941, in New York City, were hailed as veritable heroes by the thousands of Communists there assembled (Daily Worker, March 29, 1941, p. 2).

Almost simultaneously with the German-American Bund, the McCormick local of the Farm Equipment Workers Organizing Com

mittee

adopted a scorching resolution against the Roosevelt war-dictatorship bill (H. R. 1776), which declared that the measure would give the President "more power than Benito Mussolini" (Daily Worker, February 7, 1941, p. 3).

The Daily Worker of March 9, 1941, page 3, reported an interview with Oakes in which he "hinted that strikes may be called in other Harvester plants," with the added explanation that "leaders of the Farm Equipment Workers Organizing Committee were inclined to think that the strike will be won on the picket line and called for mass mobilizations * * *

The American Youth Congress was outstandingly active in the American Peace Mobilization against conscription and the national defense program. The executive board and the shop stewards of Local 101 of the Farm Equipment Workers Organizing Committee expressed "both sympathy and support for the program of the American Youth Congress" (Daily Worker, January 25, 1941, p. 5).

The Communist Party has organized a number of May Day parades in Chicago during which it mobilizes its full support behind its current program and slogans. Grant Oakes was a member of the Provisional May Day Committee in 1939 and a speaker during the parade and the demonstration which followed (Daily Record, April 15, 1939, p. 3; April 29, 1938, p. 1).

Grant Oakes endorsed the Daily Worker in its most recent drive. for readers (Worker, January 9, 1944, p. 6). From the exceptionally large number of Hillman's Č. I. O. Political Action Committee associates who have recently joined the drive to spread the Daily Worker, it is apparent that they look upon this Communist newspaper as one of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee's house organs.

Oakes was a delegate to the 1943 C. I. O. convention in Philadelphia.