The founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1936, at the height of the New Deal, signaled a new militancy and strength for American labor. The CIO swelled the ranks of labor by organizing the unorganized in steel, auto, rubber, electrical, maritime, and meat-packing industries, among others— workers long shunned by the exclusionary craft unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). By 1945, union labor had reached a previously unknown strength, representing 35 percent of the total work force.
The CIO played a major role in Roosevelt’s fourth-term election. Labor leaders encouraged cultural programs in union locals, promoted attendance at labor schools,1 established libraries on union ships, and nurtured ties with dozens of progressive organizations seeking to move the country forward.
At the center of this flowering was the Communist Party. Far from “infiltrating” the CIO, as their foes would have it, the Communists were a major force2 in building it. The CP had cut its teeth on the labor struggles of the twenties and early thirties; its organizers were the most experienced and dedicated. The dozen unions they led or were close to3operated as models of rank-and-file control and honesty. And the rank and file rewarded their efforts by returning Communists and progressives to leadership in election after election.
To the reactionaries in Congress and their business allies, the growth of the CIO was a Red nightmare. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), representing some seventeen thousand companies, spent several million dollars annually decrying the New Deal’s labor protections as a conspiracy directed from the Kremlin. The like-minded U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent vast treasure and energy warning of “the menace of socialism.” In 1946 and 1947, the Chamber of Commerce distributed nearly one million companies of two pamphlets, Communist Infiltration of the United States and Communists Within the Labor Movement. The following year its Permanent Committee on Socialism and Communism published a Program for Community Anti-Communist Action, which instructed the loyal on how to keep watch on the suspected disloyal.
This collective paranoia was aimed less at oncoming totalitarianism than fears of restrictions on freewheeling capitalism. Those fears were revived with the resurgence of labor militancy in 1945. During the war, labor had held to a no-strike pledge. But while wages were stabilized, prices rose, despite controls. Business profits soared to their highest point in history. After Truman dismantled price controls in 1946, consumer prices rose at a rate seven times higher than in the preceding three years. American workers, many of whom had forgone a raise for the duration, were now in dire straits. Corporate America dug in its collective heels.
In 1945 and 1946, eight million workers walked out for higher wages, the largest strikes in American history. What they wanted was an additional twenty-five cents an hour; they settled for eighteen and a half cents, but not before Truman asked Congress for the power to draft striking workers into the military. When Charles Wilson, president of General Electric, joined the Truman administration in 1946, he summarized the prevailing corporate attitude: “The problems of the U.S. can be summed up in two words: Russia abroad, labor at home.” Although his arithmetic was poor, his message was clear. The massive strikes must not be repeated.
The purge that followed was carried out by various arms of the government and, ironically, by the trade unions themselves. Sensing the changing tide, conservative elements in labor abandoned union solidarity for divisive Red-baiting. The pretext was the support of the leftist unions for Henry Wallace’s 1948 run on the Progressive ticket and their opposition to Truman’s foreign policy. Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers, Joe Curran of the National Maritime Union, and Mike Quill of the Transport Workers wrested control of their unions from elements friendly to the CP. Failing to overcome rank-and-file loyalties to the Left, James Carey of the United Electrical Workers set up a rival union, with CIO support. At the same time, the CIO, under the leadership of anti-Communist Philip Murray, imposed a strict political orthodoxy on its member unions—all must now support the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Maurice Travis of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers objected justly, “I’d like to know where in the CIO constitution it says we have to support the foreign policy of the Democratic administration.”
In 1946, the CIO executive board empowered Murray to confiscate the funds and property of any labor council that refused to conform. The pro-Communist unions resisted, pledging their support for Henry Wallace and maintaining their opposition to Truman’s foreign policy. The bitterness deepened. Murray removed left-winger Harry Bridges as regional director of the Northern California CIO and removed the charters of several local CIO councils. A number of pro-Communists within CIO national headquarters were also forced out by Murray, including general counsel Lee Pressman and CIO-News editor Len De Caux. The overwhelming defeat suffered by Wallace strengthened the resolve of the anti-Communists. In March 1949, the CIO board banned Communists from holding office in CIO unions and demanded the resignation of officers who did not agree with its decisions. At the eleventh CIO convention that same year, Murray fumed against the “skulking [Red] cowards . . . lying out of the pits of their dirty bellies.” The convention resolved that it would “longer tolerate within the family of CIO the Communist Party masquerading as a labor union.” In 1949 and 1950, ten unions representing nearly one million workers were expelled.4 The CIO set up rival unions to raid their membership. Pockets of progressive influence were also purged from the AFL unions.
By 1954, fifty-nine out of one hundred unions banned Communists from holding office. Forty-one also discriminated against Party sympathizers. Forty banned Reds not only from office but from membership. Across the country, dedicated trade unionists were expelled from the very unions they had sweated to create. Without a union, they were also without a job.
Additional pressure came from government legislation and investigating committees. During the first two months of 1947, the 80th Congress introduced more than sixty bills and amendments to curb the powers of organized labor. Out of these emerged the Taft-Hartley Act. Written largely to the specifications of the National Association of Manufacturers, which spent more than $3 million to ensure its passing, Taft-Hartley supplanted many New Deal labor protections and emasculated American labor. Among other restrictions, the Act placed exacting constraints on union organizing, plant elections, strikes, and political action. With the support of both the AFL and CIO, President Truman vetoed the bill,5 as it would “reverse the basic direction of our national labor policy . . . and conflict with important principles of our democratic society.” Congress promptly overrode his veto.
The harshest mandate of Taft-Hartley was Section 9(h), which required every union officer to annually file a sworn affidavit disclaiming Communist membership or affiliation. Any union whose officials did not file would be decertified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and cease to function as a union. Awaiting those accused of filing false affidavits were perjury charges punishable by a $10,000 fine and ten years imprisonment.
Within the first three months of Taft-Hartley, employees filed 224 petitions with the NLRB to remove union bargaining rights. With Truman safely in the White House after the 1948 elections, the Justice Department began a rash of perjury trials aimed at the renegades who had supported Henry Wallace. Radical, non-Communist officials who had complied with Section 9(h) were confronted by FBI informers who swore they were secret Communists. Communist labor leaders who complied by publicly breaking with the Party and cutting all left-wing ties encountered the same. Scores of radical unionists pitted their word against that of a paid informer. And in the midst of Cold War hysteria, there was little question whose word would be trusted in the federal courts.
Corporate security officers kept a watchful eye on the plant floor, alert to employees active in plant organizations. Workers were encouraged to report the “suspicious activity” of fellow workers. Working closely with the security officer was HUAC, among other committees. The investigators leapfrogged across the nation, scouring industry for “secret Reds.” Their arrival usually coincided with an impending strike, or a stalemate in negotiations. Traveling with them was a stable of professional informers whose job was to testify that the offending union officials were in violation of Section 9(h). With perjury charges laid against their leaders, the turn fell to progressive elements of the rank and file. “Are you now or have you ever been . . . ” was the usual question, directed at membership in hundreds of progressive organizations. Once past or present membership was admitted, the next demand was for names.
Workers who resisted by taking the Fifth could count on losing their jobs; so could workers merely mentioned unfavorably. These were considered “security risks,” no matter how long their tenure or how innocuous the job. Republic Aviation reported in 1954 that it had fired 250 workers as “security risks.” Two Westinghouse workers with sixty-five years of service between them were fired after taking the Fifth. Both were admitted to be excellent workers. A teenage pot washer in a Seattle hospital was fired because her husband and father were mentioned.
Shop-floor tensions, particularly in the auto industry, grew to a violent pitch. Patriotic workers physically ejected colleagues named by HUAC. In one Chrysler plant a posse of veterans systematically hunted down their left-wing coworkers. Fortune magazine captured the events with a photo of a blood-soaked autoworker on the verge of collapse as he attempted to escape the plant. The press had been notified in advance by the vigilantes; the police were also there, but did not interfere. When Congressman Kit Clardy took his HUAC subcommittee on a spree through Michigan, the subsequent violence at the Flint auto plants included stonings. Clardy commented, “This is the best kind of reaction there could have been to our hearings.”
In 1954, Congress replaced Section 9(h) with the Communist Control Act, which simply made it illegal to be a Communist and an elected union official at the same time.6 It also imposed drastic liabilities on any union found to be “Communist-infiltrated”—denial of access to the NLRB elections and, inability to complain of unfair labor practices or to sue in federal court to enforce collective bargaining agreements. With commendable tidiness, the act also created the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB), the sole body to determine “Communist infiltration.”
The impact of this widespread purge was aimed not just at the Left, nor was it intended to be. Workers quickly took note and with few exceptions withdrew to political orthodoxy or disinterest. By 1955, when the newly purified CIO merged with the American Federation of Labor, the American labor movement had become the weakest and most compliant among the Western democracies.
Approximately 1.5 million union members were subjected to security checks as a requirement of employment, union membership, or both. Of these, 232,000 were obligated under Taft-Hartley Section 9(h) to file yearly non-Communist affidavits. At least twenty-four were indicted for perjury and convicted. While the majority of these convictions were eventually overturned by the Supreme Court, seven union leaders were imprisoned after conviction. At least one union member was murdered for his radical beliefs, and more than seventeen hundred others were blacklisted.
A representative of the International Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, Jencks was sentenced in 1952 to five years in prison under Section 9(h) of the Taft-Hartley Act. After his conviction was overturned, he was hounded by the FBI for ten years, forced from job after job.
The basic crime of Mine, Mill was that we really believed in rank-and-file democracy. You couldn’t buy off a Mine, Mill leader and get him to see it your way. Mine, Mill always had a referendum on key issues, on any changes in the union constitution, direct election of union officers. This was the kind of democracy that grew out of the West when there wasn’t a government out here.1
Of course, miners all over the world are an independent lot. They have to be or else they can’t survive underground. A lot of people wondered, “Why are they so collective?” And I always answered, “Their survival depended on it.” They also had a clear concept of their own worth, because they could see the wealth they brought out of the earth, the gold, the silver, the coal. They weren’t just turning a bolt on an assembly line, they knew how many millions of dollars they were producing and how few of those dollars they got. [Laughs.] You didn’t have to have big political theories, because you saw it every day! You knew you were being ripped off, but doing something about it is another story.
Right after the war, I was a shop steward for Local 557, working at Globe Smelter in Denver, Colorado. I was there a year or so when the local union president called me off the job to meet a fellow from the international. They were looking for someone to move down to the Silver City mining district in New Mexico. They had five local unions down there that were under attack from the mining companies. These locals had formed secretly in the mountains, because the companies would fire anybody immediately if they learned they had joined the union. The locals had said they were willing to chip in to hire their own representative as a go-between for the union and the companies, because the international couldn’t afford it.
I didn’t know how big a job I was taking on, but I said, “Sure, I’ll go.” It was kind of a natural for me, because my grandparents were farmers in northern New Mexico, right across from the Colorado line. Around Easter 1947, I bought a used cattle trailer, loaded up all my worldly possessions, and headed down to New Mexico. By that time I had a wife and two children. We were a sight right out of The Grapes of Wrath.
When I got down there, I found the work force was ninety-nine percent Mexican-American. Meetings were conducted totally in Spanish. I knew a little street Spanish, mostly how to cuss. I didn’t know how to communicate, but I learned fast. We had a little log cabin for a union hall—it would hold all of a dozen people. When we wanted to have a big union meeting, we’d have to hire out one of the dance halls.
Down there, discrimination against Spanish-speaking workers was at least as bad as in the Deep South for the black workers. Which is even stranger in a way, because the Spanish-speaking people were the original inhabitants, going clear back to the Indian roots. Nevertheless, the companies’ attitude was this belongs to us and even those people who had been there for generations were regarded as foreigners.
The towns were generally company towns.2 There was strict segregation on the job and in housing. There was the Anglo town and the Mexican town—usually a railroad divided them. There was a dual payroll; the Anglo payroll, of course, was much higher than the Mexican payroll. There were different churches. Kids were punished for speaking Spanish on the playground even though that was the language they spoke in the home. Unbelievable stuff. Spanish-speaking workers could only rise to about the level of helper, even if they’d been working there thirty, forty years. They would bring in Anglos, whom these guys would have to train, and then the Anglos would go on up the scale and become journeymen. They even tried to bring in the craft system.3 They couldn’t do it underground, but in the mills and smelters they’d have the boilermakers and the painters and the ironworkers. Then they would segregate those according to race.
I saw we had a big job—the discrimination and the prejudice was so strong that the people had lost confidence in themselves. They thought they had to have an Anglo speak for them. I had a hard time convincing them otherwise. I said the companies would listen to them. I knew the only strength a union had was the strength of the rank and file. So I set about trying to build that confidence, trying to get people involved in doing something about their own conditions.4
I was knocking my guts out, working every day, every night. But I’m fighting two, three hundred years of prejudice and exploitation. I remember one guy who was working one of the mines, he’d gotten drunk and he was feeling sorry for himself. We had a grievance involving him, and I was trying to talk to him, but he was too drunk. Something he said just roared through me, right in my heart. He looked at me, and you could tell there was a real hurt there, and he said, “I hate you—all of you with blue eyes.”
It was like I was all of the people who had kicked his ass for I don’t know how long. Something was telling him that this was different, but he didn’t dare believe it. God, I cried over that one. He came around, but it took a long time. He was a strong guy, but he’d had his whole human-being-hood kicked around, let alone his manhood. So he had to see this white-skinned, blue-eyed privileged guy do a little test of fire. He wasn’t wrong. He was right.
One of the things I’m proudest about—it’s funny, what’s it got to do with anything?—the people gave me a nickname. If you know the Chicano heritage and the Mexican people, you know that when they give you a nickname they love you. People handed me the nickname of El Palomino because I was white with blond hair. In the Indian-Mexican culture, there’s nothing more beautiful than a wild palomino horse.
I signed my first Taft-Hartley affidavit in 1949, and it was a truthful affidavit. It was so ridiculous—of all the representatives in the country, here I’m isolated out in this place—there’s no Communist Party, Socialist Party, or any other.5 There’s the old Democrat and Republican Party, that’s it. But that didn’t matter. The companies weren’t convinced just by McCarthy. They were convinced our rank-and-file brand of unionism leads to revolution. And I was partly responsible. I would go into negotiations, and the companies would push us so hard. I knew a little bit of the history, because I was born and raised there. So I’d tell the company, “Look, we were here before you ever saw this country. Our grandparents were here—they owned this land before you bought it.” And I said, “We’re producing the wealth that you send back East. You’d better share a little bit of it or we might not let you stay here.”
Well, of course, that’s provocative. It was done laughingly, but these guys take it very seriously. They said, “This guy, he’s talking communism, right?” That’s the way they saw it. They were scared.
The local paper was strictly on the mine owner’s side, the Silver City Daily Press. I was the tow-haired Communist polecat in the woodpile. It was easier than dealing with the issues, you could just pass it off that way. I was named a troublemaker, a double traitor, a traitor to the whole English-speaking community. Here I was aligning myself with the Mexicans, giving them ideas. I was getting the ideas from the people, not them from me!
Well, less than a year after I signed the affidavit I started having problems. There were a couple of attempts to get me. I was summoned to appear before a grand jury in Albuquerque, a secret grand jury. They asked me a whole bunch of questions as to whether I was a Communist, what my associations were. I answered the questions, and nothing happened. The FBI was running around like crazy—I don’t know how many agents they had assigned to that one little district.
They would knock on the doors of union members and intimidate them, they would say, “We’re from the FBI, and don’t tell anybody we came. We’re just trying to get some information.” Mainly it would be directed against me. At first a lot of people got very scared, because these were agents from Washington—the big power.
Clearly it was part of a coordinated effort to get the union. This union historically had been known as a socialist-minded union—it’s a natural target. They were going to weed out that kind of influence, ’cause it’s dangerous, it’s un-American. The truth is, it was rooted deep in the conditions of the people there. Nobody had to come in and tell those workers what to do.
Oh, it became such a laughing matter, even the FBI that formerly scared everybody. They’d come in and say, “Don’t tell anybody.” So the guys would say, “Ah, we tell everybody!”
They didn’t succeed in their first attempt in Albuquerque with the grand jury, and they gave that up. But in the meantime the Cold War has heated up and the whole McCarthy period has been going full blast. Then this little company, Empire Zinc, fully owned by New Jersey Zinc, took us on—it was their turn to take us on.6 They refused to make a contract, they refused to meet the district-wide standards, and had all sorts of reasons. We had this strike that went on for eighteen months, really bitter, with full use of injunctions and evictions and Red-baiting and the whole bit, all stops.7
Salt of the Earth8 made it a national issue. They could have bottled this up, kept it secret down in New Mexico, that’s what they’d rather do. But when we made a film about the Empire Zinc strike that not only lefties would want to see but that was so dramatically powerful that it was going to be in every movie house in the country, they pulled all the stops. Jackson went on the floor of Congress and accused it of being a propaganda film for Russia!9 [Laughs.] I didn’t know nothin’ about Russia, nothin’ about any of that, it was just about ordinary working people and a family. We started getting threatening phone calls. “Get out or you’ll be carried out in black boxes.” Vigilantes shot up my car, filled it full of holes. I got plenty of direct messages.10 But that’s what these guys were all about. They take something that is constructive and good and people will understand, and they make it something conspiratorial.
In 1953, Empire Zinc sent their big Eastern head of personnel relations all the way to Congress. He appeared before the House Committee on Education and Labor. He used the Red Scare, said that it isn’t possible for us to have this kind of a dispute just over wages, there’s got to be something deeper. He demanded that they do something about it. Nobody can say that there’s not a direct connection between his appearing before the House Committee on Education and Labor and the fact that thirty days later Harvey Matusow11 showed up. This guy Matusow, according to his story, had been in the Party and he’d gotten out. At the time he was working for McCarthy as one of his professional witnesses. By the way, give the man credit, he’s a wonderful storyteller—makes it out of whole cloth, but he’s wonderful.
Thirty days after this personnel guy appears before the House Committee on Education and Labor, Matusow tells the story that he was idly walking through the Department of Justice and he stops in to see this guy he knew and this guy’s tearing his hair out. He says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do—I’ve only got a few weeks before the statute of limitations runs out on Jencks and I haven’t got a thing.” And Matusow says, “Hell, I can take care of that. Give me a plane ticket.” They put him on a plane down to El Paso. He tells a story to the grand jury, secretly. They didn’t call me to the El Paso grand jury, I never knew the grand jury was even meeting. They just had Matusow, that was all they needed.
He made up a story that he had met me at San Cristobal Ranch and I had told him I was a member of the Party and was planning to use strikes to stop production of copper in order to sabotage the Korean War effort.
I had friends who ran this ranch. I’d take a vacation sometimes and go there with my family. I didn’t know Matusow, but my friends said that he was there at the time that I was there. See, that’s where the guy was smart. I met him briefly, but I never really talked to him. I certainly wouldn’t have talked to him about the kind of things he claimed. I thought he was an absolute nut. Everybody there did, because he was crazy, it seemed to us. He wasn’t a natural person.
They sent FBI officers up to Silver City, arrested me, threw me in jail. I was living in a little government housing project and was playing with my son in front of the house. They wouldn’t even let me go in the house to put on my shoes. They said, “We can’t let you out of our sight.” I called my wife, she brought me my shoes, and they took me and put me in jail. The union put up the bond, so I was in overnight, that’s all. That started the whole thing.
I was charged with two counts of filing a false anti-Communist affidavit—membership in, and affiliation with, the Party. Matusow was the main witness against me.12 It took about twenty minutes for the jury to return, convicted me on both counts. A jury, by the way, devoid of blacks, Chicanos, women, or union members. They got very clear instructions from the judge. He was the justice west of the Pecos. No bullshit with him. He gave me five years and ten thousand dollars on each count, to run concurrently, so effectively it was five years and ten thousand dollars.
Immediately, the judge is trying to get me the hell in jail. My lawyer’s saying, “But he’s under bond and we’re appealing. What is this?” He’s got ahold of me with one arm, the marshal’s got me with the other. When my lawyer would be talking the marshal would relax, then as soon as the judge would say “Take him away,” the marshal would start pulling, and my lawyer would hold me.
The judge ended up giving us something like twelve hours to perfect our appeal or else I’m going to be in jail. Regardless of the fact we’re filing a brief in one of the really important cases to both the government and the union. So then the appeal process started and went on for five years.
First, it went up to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. They rejected our appeal the first time around. Then Matusow recanted, he got so disillusioned with all this stuff that he’d been doing, he sincerely wanted to right some of the wrongs. And of course the Red Scare tried to make a whole conspiracy out of that, that he was paid before and he was paid now.13 Eventually it went to the Supreme Court, and they ruled seven to one in my favor.
Matusow’s recantation was key. He was the only witness. Of course, it was an ancient principle of common law, against the Star Chamber and the fact that the government’s got to come with clean hands, that they’re supposed to search for justice, not to conceal information that would aid the defendant.14 So it was very clear, and it was wonderful at this period of time when there were very few victories. It just was a celebration, it was very, very important.
In the meantime the union was fighting a battle on a dozen fronts at once. Fighting off some of the unions that for greed wanted to get a piece of the membership for the dues, fighting the Subversive Activities Control Board, which is one of the witch-hunting agencies the government set up, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, the House Un-American Activities, and charges of conspiracy under the Smith Act. They used all of these things to try to label the union as a Communist-front organization.
At the time, the executive board was carrying on national bargaining, and these guys would have to rush back to be in court to defend themselves against all these attacks. It was a transparent effort to make the union’s job impossible. The effect was that the union was spending enormous amounts of time and energy that should have been devoted to bargaining and protecting workers’ rights to defending the union in the courtroom. It was a very difficult struggle.
I wasn’t aware of it, but what was happening in the leadership of the various progressive unions was they were reluctantly coming to the conclusion that they weren’t going to be able to make it. They just had to make the best deal they could, merge with one of the mainstream unions in order to maintain the rights of the people they represented. The international union executive board of Mine, Mill reached that conclusion and called me in, together with the secretary-treasurer, Maurice Travis, also charged under Taft-Hartley.15
They said, “Clint, for the good and welfare of the union we want you to resign your post as international representative.” Travis was also asked to resign. For me at this time there’s a lot of history under the bridge. I had stopped being local union president, because we finally achieved what we’d been working for so long and elected a guy right out of the local area as president and I became international representative to aid in the transitional period. I said, “Well, what the hell has got into you guys? Since when do you think that’s going to satisfy anybody? The only thing they’re going to do is say, ‘See, we told you there was a fire there, now let’s get ’em.’”
But they had made up their minds that they had to make the best deal they could. So I had a choice—I could go back to New Mexico and conduct a fight within the union. Well, the union’s already facing so much stuff that trying to win that kind of a battle was more disruptive than it was constructive. My second option was pushed very hard by the people in New Mexico—they were ready to hire me back as local union representative. The local was a big local, but it’s only fifteen hundred or two thousand members; it couldn’t support two full-time representatives, and it was only a couple of years that we had actually gotten a Mexican-American in the job. I was not willing to reverse the tide and have that be another victory of the Red Scare, so I resigned.
Then I began hunting for a job. To make a long story short, I found I was thoroughly blacklisted everywhere in the Southwest. I was just too well known. I ended up working in a horrible open-shop steelyard, working out in the open sun in Tucson and handling I-beams that were bent into making underground supports. They all knew who I was, too, they had ways of making it hard on you.
There wasn’t enough union strength in the Southwest for me to survive. The only place I knew where there was that kind of union strength was in California, so I picked up my family and moved out to San Francisco. Why San Francisco? Because of the 1934 General Strike.16 That was such a high point of inter-union cooperation that it was known throughout the labor movement. There was something deep in the rank and file that that period of cooperation has still left an imprint sixty years later. Guys that were targeted and marked could go into San Francisco and they could get a job and be protected by their union. Which isn’t to say the protection was perfect.
I began to hunt jobs wherever I could. Got a job in a roofing plant as a machinist. Hard, dirty work, but it was a job, and I had a family, was doing a very good job and joined the Machinists Union. Six, eight months go by. One day the shop steward came to me half scared out of his wits, said, “What the hell did you do?” I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “Well, a couple of guys came in here and threatened to close this place down if we don’t have you out of here.” I said, “Who’s that?” “I don’t know,” he says, “but there’s an awful lot of steam behind this. The best thing you could do is pack up your tools and find a job somewhere else.”
And that’s exactly what I did. As soon as I satisfied myself that they didn’t feel like they could make a battle out of it, I packed up my tools.
That became the pattern. I’d go in and get another job as a machinist, mechanic, a millwright, and I’d work a period of time and I’d be doing a very good job, then a short time later I’d be out. I was just trying to feed my family, but they wouldn’t let me. There’s no question in my mind that it was the FBI. For five years I went job to job. They did it wherever they could. It’s still hard for me to understand why.
The unemployment representative down at the state office put it beautifully, finally, after I was in there for the umpteenth time. “I’ve just become aware of the fact that there’s a new classification,” he said. “You’re politically unemployable!”
When the Supreme Court decision came down in 1957 I was working for American Can Company, installing about forty million dollars of new high-speed can-cutting lines. So when my picture came out with the whole story in Time magazine, I got a call. Into the office I go. He sits me down and says, “What’s this we have here? I see you made Time magazine.” I hadn’t even seen it. Turned out the guy was fairly decent. I told him a little bit about it. He says, “You’re doing a damn good job here, I don’t want to lose you. You’re safe as long as we’re putting in this line.” But he said, “I checked around, and I just have to tell you, as one human being to another, that I wouldn’t count too much on continuing here after this job’s finished, because the management’s going to have to let you go.”
Actually where the engineer was wrong is that as soon as that job was done, I took a big cut in pay. If I wanted to stay on I had to go work on the production line. By that time, I could see I was just not going to be able to make a living. I was just going to be running from one job to another.
They were getting all computer-linked anyway. A student at the University of California came to me and said that he was working for one of the big credit firms and they had a huge file on me. You see, the companies were using the credit firm as a front for screening employees. They just had me cross-referenced till hell wouldn’t have it. I figured that my chances of surviving in the ordinary marketplace are not very good. And I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.17
In 1947, Sachs was sent to the Panama Canal Zone as an organizer for the left-wing United Public Workers of America (UPWA-CIO), a union of federal, state, county, and municipal workers.
Starting in 1904, when the canal was built,1 employees were paid either in silver or gold. U.S. employees were paid in gold; the native employees were paid in silver. So the canal developed two classes of employees: U.S. citizens, the Gold employees; and West Indians and Panamanians, the Silver employees. And this hung on. All facilities were completely segregated— living communities, schools, health care, transportation, recreation, shopping centers— all segregated. All drinking fountains and rest rooms were designated either Gold employees or Silver employees—so God help the Silver employee that drank at a Gold employee fountain.
The United States built all the housing on the Canal Zone, and the difference in housing between the U.S. citizens and the Panamanians and West Indians who lived in housing for the Silver employees was incredible. They really built slum housing, these great structures where each family was given two little rooms and a porch. The toilets and bathrooms and water supplies were all in the middle of the building, and they had to carry it down. Now it may have been very similar to the slum housing in Panama City, but this is what the United States built!
Generally the less-skilled jobs were relegated to the native employees, the Silver, and the higher-paid positions to the Gold. However, in some cases they both did very similar or closely related work, but the Silver were paid according to a Caribbean wage scale, which was generally one-third of the American level. If an American got three dollars per hour for the job back in those days, he got one dollar.2
Looking back now, it seems incredible. But it was an accepted pattern of life at the time. The U.S. government was firmly committed to a policy which they said would not upset Caribbean wage standards, which fit of course conveniently in with the situation. The Gold employees were represented by the American Federation of Labor in their craft unions, and they were firmly hostile to the Silver employees.
The Silver employees finally called on the CIO for help—“Come down and organize us, we’re ready. We’d like to have a union.” So the United Public Workers did that. Sent an organizer down in 1946, and with the help of some local people, organized them into a very large union, about eighteen thousand in one local.
I went down as an international representative the following year, to teach trade unionism, so the local people could develop their own local leadership, and to negotiate with the Canal Zone on wage scales and working conditions, to help with handling grievances, and all the other things connected with trade unionism. Of course, the AFL was immediately hostile, because they saw us as a threat. They literally had a paradise down there. They not only got good pay scales but they got a differential based upon employment in the tropical zone. They were free of income taxes. They were able to shop in government commissaries which are subsidized, the same way that military personnel did. They got extra-long vacations to give them surcease from the tropical heat, although the climate down there is delightful. They got low travel fares on government-subsidized steamers to travel back and forth to the States; subsidized housing; schooling was good. They truly lived in a tropical paradise, and they saw this as being threatened by the new organizing efforts.
There were numerous grievances on the job, because the white employees, the foremen and supervisors and so forth, just lorded it over the native employees as if they were in some sort of a colony. But the union produced a tremendous amount of improvements—in pay scales, working conditions, and equalizing conditions in general.3 The union got rid of the hated Gold and Silver signs, all Gold and Silver nomenclature—that disappeared completely. But there was still a great amount to do.4
The AFL used all of the weapons at their command to destroy this union. So they got the AFL in the United States active on the job too. And they found that the best way to get rid of it was the point of greatest vulnerability—the Red Scare. They got a number of writers in the United States to write scare stories in the press. One of the most well-known was Victor Riesel, a columnist and a so-called labor writer for the McCormick press in Chicago, the Tribune. He was syndicated all over the country, a so-called anti-Red writer. He wrote a famous series called “Stalin’s Hand in Panama,” which was an “exposé” of the union. He claimed this was the most serious strategic threat to the canal that was on the scene—a Communist-dominated union with its American agents in the Canal Zone, indoctrinating the native employees of the canal with their pro-Russian philosophy. And when the Soviet Union chose to strike—only a question of time, of course—they would find one of the most strategic arteries of the United States firmly undermined.
So the next thing we know, the House Un-American Activities Committee decides to schedule hearings on the Canal Zone. During this period, our union leaders, union functionaries, and staff people were being harassed by the local U.S. district attorney. His name was McGrath, a close friend, we later found out, of J. Edgar Hoover. And the reason I know this is that I was able to get my FBI record under the Freedom of Information Act. I’ve got all of these letters from McGrath to J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover back to McGrath, and so forth. This guy’s screaming to J. Edgar Hoover, “We’ve got these Reds in the Canal Zone and you’re not doing anything about it!”
So McGrath’s putting people in jail locally. He arrested several of our people and convicted one of larceny—a very important organizer—a local former employee of the union, Panamanian, and a very able guy. They were able to convict him of larceny, which I’m still convinced was trumped-up charges. But the thing is that the juries on the Canal Zone were made up of white male U.S. citizens—the Gold employees. So anybody arrested from our union found themselves prosecuted by a district attorney who was a vicious enemy of the union in front of a jury of AFL employees—foremen, supervisors, straw bosses— who were their sworn enemies. There wasn’t a chance that they could get an acquittal, let alone a divided jury.
Meanwhile, when our regional representative down there was sent back to the States for a conference, the government lifted his passport. He wasn’t able to travel anymore. So I’m there by myself, I’m the only one. Usually we had a staff of two people from the States, plus a number of local organizers. The union tried to replace him with others, but the State Department, who was in on this too, wouldn’t issue any passports. At this point, McGrath issued a statement to the press that I was embezzling the local union’s funds. Can you imagine that? A U.S. district attorney issuing a statement like that to the press—huge headlines.
So he prints this big story. Well, even though the union knew that the newspapers were lying, it’s still going to create a certain amount of unrest and consternation. I had to answer these charges. So on the Panamanian radio a day later, I made a speech in which I challenged the district attorney to put up or shut up. “What kind of evidence did you have to make these charges? And if you don’t have any evidence, shut up.” And I accused him of harassing the Union.
Two weeks later I was arrested for criminal libel. Criminal libel, yeah. Only in Panama! The libel was “I challenge you to put up or shut up about the embezzling charges,” and the accusation of harassing the union. The jurisdictional grounds were that even though the speech was delivered in Panama, I had given my speech to a secretary of the union to type in the union office, which was in the Canal Zone, so the actual giving of the speech to the secretary to type constituted the grounds for libel in the U.S. jurisdiction.
I was arraigned and put on fifteen or twenty thousand dollars bail, then let out. The trial came up about a year later. The union sent two attorneys down from New York from Pressman, Whit, and Kammer. Lee Pressman was at one time the general counsel for the CIO. A well-known labor lawyer. And Whit and Kammer were his law partners.
They defended me at the trial, but they’d never seen anything like this. They knew that coming in front of this Canal Zone jury was hopeless. Well, in the first place—they brought the jury back in fifteen minutes! Yeah! You thought they would at least have the decency to give the semblance of weighing this thing, or having a cup of coffee or something. But they brought it back in fifteen minutes—guilty. They had a sentencing procedure in which they brought up all kinds of FBI information about us, about supposed Red-tinged organizations we were involved with back in the States. The penalties were either a fine or jail term. The jail term was up to a year, maximum, and up to ten thousand dollars fine. So they settled for a jail term of nine months. First conviction on record for criminal libel—nine months.
We appealed it, but the Supreme Court refused to hear it. So I began serving sentence in the Canal Zone in the fall of ’49. We had to go out with machetes in the jungle and cut underbrush. But they were supposed to only make you do it the first month; then they put you on some other kind of detail, because it’s terrible work. You can’t imagine what it was like. But they made me do it much longer, and the district attorney used to come out and watch in the afternoon while I was there. He would stand in front of me, so I would be sure and see him. [Laughs.] Then I got ill, and after I was in the hospital for a while they decided to put me in the library.
I was due to come out, and word got around in Panama. A big demonstration was planned for that day. Of course, the Canal Zone authorities got wind of it. So a couple weeks before I was due, they woke me up about four A.M. and said, “Come on, you’re leaving.” Drove me out to the airport and put me on a plane for Washington. They didn’t want any demonstrations.
By this time the atmosphere had become so hysterical, it’s almost impossible to realize unless you were there. The union in the Canal Zone fell apart. The United Public Workers were expelled from the CIO under Phil Murray’s campaign to purge all left-wing unionism. It became impossible for the United Public Workers to function—they disintegrated. People were so afraid for their jobs, they wouldn’t come near a UPW organizer with a hundred-foot pole.
Coming out of the UPW with a prison background—I came under surveillance by FBI agents. They came around to my place of work, asked me if I was ready to cooperate. And there were sly attempts at intimidation and warnings. This was the period at which the McCarran Act was being considered in Congress—it authorized the establishment of concentration camps in this country to incarcerate pro-Red sympathizers. The FBI would mention that steps were being taken and so forth— “Are you ready to talk yet?”
We meet over coffee in the kitchen of her friend’s house in Berkeley. She speaks hesitantly of the past, troubled by the memories. She was once the Midwest regional director of the American Communications Association, CIO.
I came from a very wealthy Jewish family who lost all their money in the Depression. We had an eighteen-room house, a chauffeur, a maid, everything. It was all lost in ’29, and it was tough. My father couldn’t handle it and abandoned the family. We moved into a tenement slum.
What the Communists were saying made sense to me. The capitalist system spawned depressions, didn’t care about people. There were evictions and breadlines and no help from the government. How could this system be good? And there was the Soviet Union, this wonderful new country where workers allegedly ran things, owned everything, and everyone had a job. It was very easy to become Communist. You would think that any intelligent person would find it a viable option. That’s what we thought. Of course, we were very disillusioned.
I couldn’t afford to go to college and got a job working in a doctor’s office. I began to identify with the working class and joined the Office Workers Union, where I was assigned to organize the telegraph messengers. Eventually, I got a job organizing for the American Radio-Telegraphers Association, later called the ACA, the American Communications Association, a CIO union. I was sent from New York to Chicago to organize there.
Because the FBI knew that there were some Communists in the union, they kept tàbs on us all the time. But of course, we didn’t know that. Actually, we weren’t at all concerned with revolution. All we were interested in was bona fide union organizing. The Communist leaders were most devoted in doing that. They made sacrifices. Union leaders today wouldn’t even understand the kind of idealistic, honest unions that we were. No official could earn more than the highest-paid worker. There were none of these hundred-thousand-dollar salaries. Half of the salary we got was turned back to the union to pay the rent for the local office. When I think of the way we worked and lived, we were really idealists. [Laughs.]
So I worked in Chicago and my husband, Ken, also worked for the union. He was a real mountain type from Kentucky, never finished high school. We met at a union convention in New York. He was a very bright man, self-educated. Somehow or other, he found books on Karl Marx in Kentucky, and decided that socialism had merit. He came to believe in communism on his own.
The union sent him to organize the telegraph workers in the South, where he used to travel around in a homemade trailer. He had a loudspeaker system and would play Paul Robeson’s records in the trailer parks! I thought it was a good invitation to get lynched. But since he was one of the old boys himself, they accepted him—he wasn’t a Red agitator, wasn’t one of those Jews from New York! [Laughs.] He was a great asset to the union.
So he was in the South and I was in Chicago. Then I became pregnant and Ken was brought back up to take my place as the regional director of the Midwest.
Right after the war, the union sent Ken to California to organize telephone workers. So we moved west. When our baby was old enough for day care, I got a job as an organizer for the ILGWU, Dubinsky’s outfit,1 to organize the unorganized needle-trades workers in the dress shops of L.A. Because the leadership was real progressive, they hired me, knowing that I came from the ACA, which was regarded as a Red union. I worked for the ILGWU until the Taft-Hartley Law was passed. That was the beginning of the repression. Elected union officials had to sign an affidavit saying that they were not nor had ever been a Communist. It was a serious encroachment on personal liberties and on unions.
Since Taft-Hartley only applied to elected union officials and I was a hired organizer, the law didn’t require me to sign. However, Mr. Dubinsky insisted that I sign, because he knew that I was from the ACA and therefore assumed I was a Communist. He was determined to oust the leadership of the ILGWU of Los Angeles, which he thought was too left-wing. So even though Dubinsky had loudly opposed Taft-Hartley, he used it for his own purposes. The L.A. union people tried to reclassify me as a janitor, but Dubinsky said if I wasn’t fired he would take over the local. So I was fired.
By this time, the Red Scare had kicked in. But it developed so gradually that we weren’t that alarmed at first. I don’t think anybody was aware as to how it would snowball. You went to meetings; you protested what was going on in the country. But you carried on as usual. Although Ken and I were at that time no longer union organizers, we were still Party members.
The Un-American Committee was interrogating lots of people, and things were beginning to get heated. Pretty soon, the FBI was coming around and questioning neighbors about people they had on their list. Two of them came to the house one day. They looked like the cartoon figures of FBI agents— they really wore fedora hats and belted trench coats. Of course, I wouldn’t talk to them.
My son Bruce was about four years old at the time and very friendly with the neighbor’s little girl. One day she was playing at our house and her mother came and said, “I want to take Sylvia home. I would rather she didn’t play with Bruce anymore.” I said, “Why?” “Well, some people from the government came and said that you and Ken were Communists. I can’t let my little girl play with your son anymore.”
Not too long after, a bill was passed in L.A. County, where we lived at the time. It said that if parents were considered dangerous subversives, then they were unfit to be parents and the children could be taken away from them. The ordinance scared the hell out of us. We didn’t have any relatives in L.A., so we depended on our progressive friends and other Communists. “If you’re arrested, I’ll take your kids. If I’m taken, you’ll take mine.” We tried to protect the children, to have a visible sign of support. We were absolutely petrified. As a result, we sold our house and moved into the city itself, as not to be in the county where the ordinance was in effect. We had to sell quickly, and we lost money. During that time, we also got rid of all of our books: Lenin, Marx, and all the radical ones. We were afraid that they might raid the house and use them as evidence against us. It was very painful. I know we didn’t burn them, but we got them out of the house.
By this time the Un-American Committee was after people who’d worked in unions. Of course, our names were mentioned. But we weren’t called directly by the committee, because we were no longer working for the union. Ken was working as the director of a community medical center. It had been started by the Furniture Workers Union as an interracial prepaid medical plan offering low-cost health care for union members. Ken was suddenly subpoenaed by the California State Un-American Committee, which was attacking the medical center as a Communist health organization! [Laughs.]
The hearings were held, and he took the Fifth. They wanted the names of the doctors, wanted him to point out the Communists, to say the center was run by Communists. He refused to answer the questions. In his Kentucky mountain talk, Ken said to Senator Burns, the one in charge of the committee, “I feel like Alice in Wonderland.” Burns answered, “You don’t look like Alice in Wonderland.” So Ken said in his drawl, “You don’t look like the Queen either, but you act like her: “Off with their heads!’” [Laughs.] Everybody was howling with laughter, and it was in the newspapers, but it was damned serious. Many of the doctors were scared off, there was a lot of publicity, and the center folded. Ken was out of a job. We suffered a hell of a lot economically.
I got a job at a health-food store. I did the bookkeeping. The owner thought I was wonderful and one of his best workers. My office was on the balcony and I could see who was coming into the store. One day, I saw two men with their trench coats. I knew exactly who they were, our “caseworkers,” as Ken called them. They spoke to my boss, and within a half hour, he was upstairs in my office. “Claire, I have to cut my staff, and since you’re such a good worker, you can find a job anyplace. So you have to leave right now. I’ll give you two weeks’ pay.” He was red in the face and fidgeting, because he’d liked me so much and I had liked him. I said, “I guess you were told to fire me.” He hemmed and hawed and finally said, “I guess so.” That was it.
I was active with the PTA. Once, I was supposed to speak at one of their meetings. The day before, I got a call from the program chair, who was very embarrassed. She said, “Claire, it won’t be necessary for you to address us.” I said, “Why? I have my talk all ready.” “Well,” she said, “I don’t think it would be politic, you know, your names have been in the papers.”
It was all the little things. People who you thought respected you and that you respected, people you called friends, became aloof and cold. You knew what was behind it. That’s the way the Red Scare developed, by ripples, widening and widening, until it was everywhere.
After Ken was subpoenaed, several of the doctors from the center stayed at our house. They felt it was safe because the process service had already been there. I remember the kids being so puzzled as to why doctors were sleeping over. They were avoiding the subpoena.
I was very active in fighting what was happening and circulating petitions for the Hollywood Ten, especially since John Howard Lawson2 was a very close friend. I was also active in the Progressive Party. But we weren’t that effective, because the American people literally were scared to death. The government had frightened them into imagining that the Communist Revolution was at their doorstep. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Ken and I were hardly active in the Communist Party. We were simply trade unionists who happened to be Party members. And by this time, I was very critical of a lot of things in the Party. I really hated the dictatorial inflexibility of the leadership. When we were union leaders, the Party always wanted us to take positions on issues, usually political ones, that we felt had no place in the union. We were always running into trouble with the Party for being independent.
My first disillusionment was when Russia signed the Nonaggression Pact with Germany. We were hard put to understand that, because it negated everything we believed in. But we were finally convinced that they had to do it, to give them time to prepare to fight the war. That left a bitter taste, as a Jew particularly. But we were prepared to defend it nevertheless.
We became disillusioned and unhappy with being Communists. But we didn’t feel like deserting either. We had a sense of loyalty, a belief in the ultimate goal, even though we didn’t like the way it was being done. We didn’t want to abandon the Communist Party, especially when they were being persecuted. And we were being persecuted along with them. It would be like leaving your family; you couldn’t do it, or didn’t want to.
But my loyalties were wearing thin. Bruce was having difficulties at school, partially because of the publicity in the newspapers. He was being taunted. I felt that he was suffering emotionally because of our involvement. I decided I should talk to a child psychologist, to try to help him. This was ’56 or ’57. I went to a Party psychologist, but the Party had passed a rule that no member should go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist because they might say things that might later get to the FBI. So you weren’t supposed to go. I was called in and told, “We understand you are seeing a psychologist.”
“Yes, my oldest child is having some problems.”
“Well, you can’t do it.”
I said, “I’m going to a Party person.”
“That’s besides the point, it’s a rule.”
“Well,” I said, “the hell with you—I resign.” That’s how I got out. I’ll be damned if they’re going to tell me what to do about my child. So I can’t say that I left the Party because of a blazing idealistic disagreement. [Laughs.]
Ken left at the same time and for the same reasons. Still, we continued to sign petitions and we went to public meetings, but we were no longer members. If there was an issue that we believed in, we went and fought for it.
One day at work—I had just started a new job—in walks the two men, my “caseworkers”! [Laughs.] They went to speak to my boss. A half hour later I was called in and he said, “Two gentlemen were here who say you are a Communist and I should fire you.” I said, “That’s nothing new—I’ve lost other jobs for the same reason. Have I been dangerous in your organization?” “No,” he said, “you’ve been wonderful. I don’t like what’s going on. I’m not going to do a damned thing about it.”
So I stayed on the job. A couple of months later, the two men came back, and this time they wanted to speak to me. They said that the former president of our union had told them that I might give them information about Harry Bridges,3 who was on trial at that time for his citizenship. This guy had turned stool pigeon and gave the FBI the names of all the organizers. Frankly, I didn’t know Harry Bridges from a hole in the wall.
I told the FBI, “I wouldn’t tell you anything even if I knew something. I’m not even going to talk to you.” They said, “You know, your job is at stake.” I said, “Go fly a kite.” Then they left me alone. I never saw them after that.
I think if we didn’t have the children, we would’ve been less fearful. If you starve it’s one thing, but if you have kids, you constantly feel that responsibility. But it didn’t stop us from doing what we believed in. We lost jobs, we were hounded from pillar to post. We watched friends of ours in the most awful situations—a lot of them went to jail. I think we survived pretty well emotionally. But we felt this terrible rage at what was happening, that we couldn’t stop it, that it was going to be a long time before people woke up. It was sickening, it destroyed you in so many ways. But you had to live. You picked yourself up and went looking for jobs again.
I don’t think that history can ever document the personal suffering that went on: marriages were destroyed; people became really ill, some committed suicide; careers ended; neighbor mistrusted neighbor. Somehow the fabric of the society was torn, and torn in such a way that I don’t know whether it could ever be the same again.
I know that my trust in the government vanished. I always feel that it can happen again, and that we’re never very far from it. I don’t think [sighs] that our elected officials really believe in the democracy that we’re supposed to be. I feel that corruption has taken over, that morals and principles can be abandoned. A demagogue like McCarthy could come into power again; we’re not immune to a Hider. It’s being proved every day. Violence is rising; hatreds and ethnic divisiveness are escalating.
The kind of country we are known to be is in jeopardy. It has always been true; even more so today. But then there are a lot of people who’d fight. The same way we fought it then, we’d fight it now.
1For more on labor schools, see “Red-ucators.”
2The main impetus to form the CIO and to pass much of FDR’s New Deal labor protections came from the Unemployment Councils, which were formed in nearly every major city during the early years of the Depression. Organized by Communists as self-help and mutual-support groups, the councils opposed FDR’s original option of “official company unionism,” modeled after labor relations in Mussolini’s Italy. Challenged by the councils at every turn, FDR soon realized that the conservative AFL was not in command of the situation. By 1935, the Wagner Act was passed, allowing the enormous growth of organized labor.
3While many Communists and sympathizers were among union leadership, there was only one union boss who was an admitted Party member, Ben Gold of the Fur and Leather Workers Union. Gold joined the Party in 1919 and publicly resigned in 1950 to comply with the Taft-Hartley Act (see below). Four years later, he was indicted and convicted on perjury charges for filing a false non-Communist affidavit. His conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1957.
4The list of expelled unions included the American Communications Association, the Farm Equipment Workers, the Food, Tobacco, and Agricultural Workers, the International Fishermen and Allied Workers, the International Fur and Leather Workers, the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, Marine Cooks and Stewards, International Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, and the United Public Workers.
5Truman had proposed more drastic anti-union measures himself, but with the 1948 elections in view he needed to retain labor’s support. The flood of nearly 450,000 letters calling for a veto was certainly a reminder of this.
6It was also illegal to have been a member of the Party within five years of running for office.
1Mine, Mill grew out of the Western Federation of Miners, a legendary radical labor movement founded in 1893, influenced by the socialism of Eugene Debs, and affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The WFM’s militant resolve was forged by Army bayonets, prison camps, and violent repression. In 1916, the WFM formally became the International Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union.
2Before union-led reforms ended the practice, the company town worked to keep American industrial workers in a state of peonage, particularly in mining. There, as a condition of employment, the worker and his family rented company-owned housing, much of it substandard, and bought their goods in the company-owned store, usually on credit or with company-issued scrip. Union troublemakers could quickly be evicted, while low wages and high prices maintained a continual cycle of debt. Many towns were armed camps, ringed with barbed wire and guarded by company thugs on the alert for a midnight departure by a debt-laden miner, or the nighttime visit of a union organizer.
3Through the last decades of the nineteenth century and up to the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, attempts to organize the mass of unskilled labor were usually met with violent repression. Samuel Gompers and the AFL relied on craft unionism, the organization of skilled workers vital to production. Craft unionism became a vested interest with the AFL, which the companies exploited to their benefit by pitting the crafts against unskilled labor. Throughout much of its history, the AFL was openly hostile toward the mass organization of labor.
4During the seven years of Jencks’s leadership, the five local unions amalgamated into one, Local 890, with a new union hall, a bilingual union newspaper, a radio show, and a highly effective shop steward program. Jencks brought Mexican-Americans into leadership and pushed the daily wage up from $3 to $12 to $18.
5New Mexico was hardly a hotbed of Red activity, even by the typically inflated reports of the FBI. In 1951, J. Edgar Hoover reported a grand total of twenty-two Communists in the Sunshine State.
6Every year one of the companies would take Local 890 on by forcing a protracted strike, probing for weaknesses that could be used for the benefit of all the companies. Jencks suspected a concerted effort by the mine owners’ association, with guaranteed profits for the striking company.
7Including tear-gassings, beatings, and the mass arrests of women and children.
8For the story behind Salt of the Earth, see Paul Jarrico under “The Hollywood Blacklist.”
9Donald Jackson (R-Calif.), a HUAC regular, took the floor of the House on February 24, 1953, to denounce the yet unfinished film as a “new weapon for Russia. . . . It will do incalculable harm, not only to the United States, but to free people everywhere.” Over the next two weeks, Jackson’s charges were frequently replayed over Silver City’s local radio station, and the regional press made a habit of reprinting his speech.
10In general, the messages included more beatings, gunplay, and the firebombing of the union hall and the home of Floyd Bostick, the only other Anglo officer of the union besides Jencks.
11For more on this story, see Harvey Matusow under “Hounds.”
12The prosecution had no documentary evidence that Jencks had ever been a Communist, before or after he signed the affidavit, but they did have Matusow. Out of the handful of witnesses that claimed Jencks had Communist connections, it was Matusow who swore Jencks—after the date of his affidavit—had revealed his continued membership to him.
13In 1955, fourteen Mine, Mill officers, representatives, and employees were subpoenaed before a secret federal grand jury in Denver. The issue: whether Mine, Mill had bribed Matusow to recant his testimony. Also see Angus Cameron under “Arts and Entertainment” on publishing Matusow’s False Witness.
14During the trial the defense asked the judge to subpoena the original reports made to the FBI by Matusow and one other informer in order to test their credibility if the reports varied from their testimony. The judge refused. The appeals court refused the same request after Matusow’s recantation, in which he testified that his original reports would reveal that the FBI knew he was lying. The Supreme Cort ordered a new trial at which these reports were to be made available to the defense. The government thereupon dropped the case.
15Travis was indicted in 1954 for filing a false Taft-Hartley oath, convicted, and sentenced to eight years in prison. After his conviction was overturned on appeal, he was retried and reconvicted. The Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1961.
16The General Strike grew out of a long and bitter fight to win union recognition for the longshoremen. The actual event was sparked by “Bloody Thursday,” a long morning of running battles between strikers and police, capped by a military-style assault by police on union headquarters. In the hail of gunfire, two strikers were killed and more than one hundred other persons were wounded, including numerous bystanders. To this day, an annual wreath-laying ceremony commemorates the date.
17Jencks eventually escaped the blacklist in the groves of academe. In 1959, he applied for a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship—and was called before HUAC for accepting it. In 1964, despite subsequent Red-baiting, he joined the department of economics at San Diego State University, where he retired in 1988 as professor emeritus.
1Construction on the canal began in 1904; it was opened to traffic on August 15, 1914.
2According to a report issued by the UPWA in 1952, the Silver pay scale was 25 percent of what a Gold worker would be paid for the same work.
3Before unionization, the minimum hourly wage for Silver workers was twelve cents; after unionization, thirty-one cents.
4When the Gold and Silver signs went down, company foremen maintained the color line by painting water fountains and rest rooms either white or brown.
1International Ladies Garment Workers Union, headed by David Dubinsky.
2John Howard Lawson was a Party leader in the film industry. See Ring Lardner, Jr., and Edward Dmytryk under “The Hollywood Blacklist.”
3The much-persecuted leader of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU). Australian-born, Bridges was the only person in American history to be specifically named in a deportation bill passed by Congress. Never a member of the Party, he was tried four times, over a twenty-year period, for being a secret Communist.