Against Labor by Rosemary Feurer

Author:Rosemary Feurer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2017-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

Margaret A. Kerr, spokesman for the Los Angeles Better American Federation, on 18 August 1938, just before the Dies Committee went into secret session to hear her testimony on the communistic connections of the CIO labor leader. Harris and Ewing Collection, Prints and Photographs, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-hec-24963.

Rivalry in Public and Private

Observant journalists noted the mutual antipathy between the investigative committees. Dies told the press he had rejected an offer of a staff member from the La Follette Committee fearing sabotage. Staff investigators conducted mutual reconnaissance, criticized the conduct of the rival committee, and, in one sensational incident, an ex-La Follette investigator reputedly tried to smear Dies using forged letters. Describing the rivalry as one of the “bitterest, behind-the-scenes controversies in Washington today,” a journalist credited La Follette with giving those accused by witnesses a fair hearing in contrast to the Dies Committee’s irresponsible methods. The House committee gave those stigmatized as communists or “alleged sympathizers” no opportunity to defend themselves as any denials became “swamped by the newer, hotter testimony” garnering “more attention, more headlines and more newspaper space” than its conscientious rival. The Dies committee served up a plentiful diet of anti-CIO red herrings to a receptive press whose owners faced a challenge from the CIO-affiliated Newspaper Guild. Dies and his media supporters blamed criticisms on un-American propagandists and New Deal hostility. The rancor grew as each committee selected targets based upon the other committee’s choice of witnesses. Both committees announced impending investigations in California in 1938, making it clear that they planned to take their rivalry to the West Coast. Bridges was the prize scalp eagerly sought by the Dies Committee while the La Follette Committee intended to protect the CIO and its leadership.17

The La Follette Committee’s greater attention to process cost it vital media attention in the competition with its more reckless competitor, but the two senators and their staff had reason for caution. Abt’s status as a closet communist made it particularly important to prevent attacks like those causing the NLRB’s fight for survival. He stressed “procedural safeguards,” which a reporter also attributed to La Follette’s being “almost pedantically careful to protect the civil liberties of his witnesses” and to collect “great masses of documentary and endlessly confirmed oral proof.” La Follette’s willingness to allow witnesses to bring counsel prevented the kind of headline-grabbing accusations that the Dies Committee actively promoted. Debates between witnesses enabled the truth to emerge, in La Follette’s view, in contrast with the Dies Committee’s receptivity to poorly substantiated character assassination.18 The plentiful volumes of hearings and reports published by the La Follette Committee showed painstaking attention to amassing credible evidence, but many were unwilling to wait for their slow appearance in print or to absorb their extensive detail.

Despite its punctilious approach, the La Follette Committee found itself accused of engaging in what Joseph P. Kamp, a reluctant witness, referred to as a “Russianized invasion of American liberties.” Indignant after the exposure of his NAM connections, Sokolsky accused the committee of smearing and the NLRB of Star Chamber proceedings for its criticisms of U.

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