1 / THE WAR WITHIN
Battling for the Soul of the Union

Communist control of the Teachers Union had its origins in the battles of the American left, especially the early schism between the American Communist Party and those associated with the American Communist Opposition (ACO) in 1929. The conflict between Jay Lovestone, the leader of the ACO, and the American Communist Party would lead to the formation of the two major caucuses in the Teachers Union: the Rank and File, affiliated with the Communist Party, and the Progressive Group, made up of followers of Lovestone and the ACO. Just as important, the battle that began in the 1920s between the Communists and the union leadership, then made up of social democrats, would result in a split in 1935 and the formation of a rival union. The central objective of the factions was to determine which direction teacher unionism would take in New York City.

Although the Rank and File in the TU advocated policies of the Communist Party and the Progressive Group promoted policies of the ACO, the caucuses were more than just conduits for spreading party doctrine. Issues such as working conditions, wages, union democracy, and the fate of the unemployed were at the forefront of these two caucuses’ agenda. Those opposing the union leadership advocated building a strong union by organizing a large segment of the teaching body of the city. This included substitutes, the unemployed, private school teachers, and, later, teachers hired under the New Deal’s Work Projects Administration. The leadership, or what was called the administration, on the other hand, advocated professionalism and cooperation between employees and management, stressing ways to improve the craft of teaching. The leadership also wanted to limit membership in the union to full-time teachers, arguing that such teachers had more at stake in the profession than substitutes and the unemployed. Part-time teachers and the unemployed, the administration contended, took away from the professional identity of teachers.

At the root of the confrontation in the Teachers Union was the attempt by Communist teachers to forge a unionism that was inclusive of all categories of teachers, no matter their status in the profession. Modeling themselves after industrial unionists, the Communists wanted the TU to fight for higher salaries, health care, pensions, and better working conditions. But these items were not going to come by emphasizing professionalism. Rather, improvements for teachers would take place when greater pressure was placed on management to act. The Communists identified with industrial workers, arguing that the relationship between management and worker was adversarial. The advocates of a more militant unionism ridiculed those who pushed for white-collar unionism, which supported higher salaries, benefits, and improved working conditions; they wanted professional integrity and autonomy. But, instead of stressing an adversarial relationship with management, advocates of professional unionism argued for a more collaborative relationship with management. This divide within the teachers union would lead to a major crisis by the middle 1930s.

THE CAUCUSES

When the league was granted a charter in 1916 by the American Federation of Teachers, it became Local 5 of the AFT. Communist influence in Local 5 dates to 1923, when a number of its members established the Research Study Group. Headed by the union’s membership secretary, Benjamin Mandel, the Research Study Group advocated affiliation with the Educational Workers International, a group created by the Red International of Labor Unions in 1923, a labor group affiliated with the Comintern. The Comintern was organized at the Third International in 1919 as a body to promote world revolution on the Russian Communist model. The Educational Workers International argued that teachers were not professionals but members of an exploited class who had the support of other exploited workers. It called on all teachers to join the struggle against capitalism and capitalist exploitation.¹ This argument led to a confrontation, with the majority of Local 5 members rejecting affiliation with the Communist organization. The number of Communists in the union, prior to 1929, remained small. Testifying in January 1941 before New York’s Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate the Educational System of the State of New York, popularly known as the Rapp-Coudert Committee, Mandel, who had been expelled from the Communist Party and became a “research worker” for the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1939, listed among the few Communists in Local 5 Ben Davidson, Bertram Wolfe, Jacob Lind, Rae Ragozin, Jack Hardy (Dale Zysman), Sarah Golden, Clara Reiber, Abraham Zitron, and Isidore Begun.²

Despite their small numbers, the Teachers Union members affiliated with the Communist Party formed a caucus challenging the administration. As early as 1925, TU executive board members complained about Communists on the board using disruptive tactics and interfering with the work of the union and the “American Labor Movement.” TU leaders objected to Communists issuing resolutions criticizing other labor organizations that were supportive of the union and publicly attacking the leadership.³ In 1935 Henry Linville testified before a special AFT committee that factionalism in the TU had been a concern for over a decade. On May 16, 1925, a group of “loyal” union members issued a letter that, according to Linville, accused a few executive board members of forming a group, using “disruptive and vituperative tactics to hinder the work” of the TU. The Communist opposition demanded “contributions to Communist and outlaw locals and acceptance of resolutions sent from the Workers [Communist] Party headquarters.” The opposition also condemned the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Central Trade and Labor Council, and supported a vote on the “lack of confidence” in the union leadership.⁴ But, because the Communist numbers were small, they posed little threat to the leadership. In fact, TU members, regardless of political affiliation, were assured freedom of speech and academic freedom as long as the leadership’s power was not threatened. But all this would change by the early 1930s.

By 1931 the major opposition group had split into two main factions, the Rank and File and the Progressive Group. The split in the left was attributed to the schism in the American Communist Party. Jay Lovestone, who had become head of the American Communist Party in 1928, opposed the International determining the policy of the American Communist Party. Specifically, Lovestone rejected the view that the Comintern should decide the best tactics for achieving socialism; instead, each country’s labor movement should make its own decisions. Allowing workers to work out the methods used to transform their country into a socialist state would plant the seed for democracy by involving the working class at an early stage. This view became known as the doctrine of “exceptionalism.”⁵ Lovestone was a follower of Nikolai Bukharin, who had become president of the Comintern in 1926 and argued for a more conservative economic path for the Soviet Union, which meant introducing market capitalism into certain sections of the Soviet economy. Lovestone’s main opponent in the American Communist Party was William Z. Foster, who followed Moscow’s line that Communist parties must submit to the will of the Comintern. The conflict between Lovestone and Foster was heard before the Comintern in 1929. Stalin, who by then had consolidated his power and removed Bukharin from leadership, later having him arrested and killed, demanded that Lovestone give up his fight with Foster. When Lovestone refused, he was expelled from the party.⁶ Lovestone, joined by Bertram Wolfe, who also had been expelled from the Communist party because of his defense of the theory of exceptionalism, Benjamin Mandel, and Ben Davidson, established the Communist Party (Opposition). Wolfe and Davidson, who were both New York City teachers, also broke away from the Communist-dominated opposition in the TU and created the Progressive Group.⁷

Despite the formation of the Progressive Group, the Communist-dominated Rank and File became the largest and strongest caucus in the Teachers Union. As early as 1932, the Communist Party noted that it had attracted new converts among New York City teachers, although it had fallen short of its recruitment goal. The leadership of the Rank and File included dedicated radical labor activists, such as Isidore Begun, considered to be the leader of the Rank and File and the most outspoken critic of the leadership of Henry Linville and Abraham Lefkowitz.⁸ Begun began serving on the TU executive board in September 1932, becoming the first Rank and File member in a union leadership position. Although he claimed that he did not join the Communist Party until the mid 1930s, some in the union declared that he was openly a Communist before 1934. By 1935 he was on the payroll of the New York State Committee of the Communist Party. Attracted to left ideology at an early age, he graduated from City College in 1924 and began working on his doctorate, completing his course work in 1927. Months after graduating, he became a teacher and joined the union.⁹

Questioned by the Rapp-Coudert Committee in October 1941, Begun asserted that Communists supported anyone working to build a strong union, including the Rank and File, who struggled to “broaden out the union, not to keep it a little bunch of people that thought themselves intellectual aristocrats, I mean, school teachers and all that kind of stuff, but really wanted a union to include the profession, which is what a union is [suppose] to be, and that would mean people of every kind and shape.” Although Begun evaded answering questions about Communist affiliations, the industrial program of the Rank and File was essentially the same as that of the Communist Party, which included organizing the unemployed.¹⁰

Begun claimed that the major bone of contention between the Rank and File and the administration regarded how to build the union, “how to broaden it out, how to strengthen it. And that is where the differences ran.” He denied that the Rank and File had political designs. Its major concern was to organize teachers into a trade union. Teachers were too divided, with “76 teacher organizations” functioning in the city. When asked if he knew teachers who were party members, Begun mentioned only Morris Schappees, an open Communist who had joined the Department of English at City College in 1928, was fired in 1936 for his political affiliation, and would serve thirteen months in prison for not cooperating with the Rapp-Coudert Committee. Begun maintained that the union did not ask people’s political affiliations and was organizing teachers to participate in the class struggle. When specifically asked about the political affiliation of Williana Burroughs, Alice Citron, Ben Davidson, Bella Dodd, and other TU members who were also members of the Communist Party, Begun simply denied knowing. The leader of the Rank and File caucus was not the only person who was not forthcoming with the Rapp-Coudert Committee. Others, including historians Philip and Jack Foner and Richard Hofstadter, denied their membership or denied having knowledge of the membership of others. Their strategy was political. They knew that having knowledge of their affiliation with the Party would only be used to persecute them.¹¹

Another important leader of the Rank and File was Alice Citron, a graduate of Hunter College (1928) who began teaching at P.S. 84 in Harlem in 1931. Conditions in the Harlem community and at P.S. 84 helped motivate Citron to become an activist. Although she had experienced poverty as a child, she was unprepared for the dire conditions in Harlem, including abandoned buildings and hungry children. P.S. 84 was housed in an old and neglected building. Like other schools in predominantly black and Hispanic areas, it was understaffed and overcrowded. As a new teacher, Citron had over forty students in her class, and her assigned classroom had a broken blackboard. Citron was determined to improve conditions. By the mid 1930s she had helped form the TU’s Harlem Committee, which led the drive to remove racist textbooks from the public schools and convince the Board of Education to recognize Negro History Week, and called for the construction of new schools in the area to relieve overcrowding.¹²

Citron, like her common-law husband, Isidore Begun, was a member of the American Communist Party. However, while Begun did not hide his political affiliation, Citron was not open about her membership in the Party. Nevertheless, Benjamin Mandel, acting as an “expert witness” for the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), claimed that he knew Citron from Communist Party meetings.¹³

Celia Lewis (who would later marry and become Celia Lewis Zitron) was another important leader of the Rank and File. Born in Slutsk, Russia in 1899, she came to the United States with her family in 1907 and became a naturalized citizen in 1914. Zitron, a high school teacher of Latin who became a member of the TU executive board and head of its Academic Freedom Committee, was identified as a member of the Communist Party by Louis Budnez. Budnez, a former Communist Party member who became an “expert witness” for HUAC after he joined the Catholic Church and renounced Communism, contended that Zitron was a member of the Communist Party in the early 1930s.¹⁴ Other early key members of the Rank and File included Abraham Feingold, Williana Burroughs, Matthew Besdine, Clara Rieber, Max Diamond, Israel Wallach, Meyer Case, and Abraham Zitron.

Although the left factions in the TU were often at odds, the major battle in the Teachers Union was between the Rank and File and the leadership. The leadership emphasized professionalism, collaboration with management, and legislation as ways of improving the working conditions for teachers. The more left-leaning teachers, critical of the leadership, advocated a more militant program. They did not view teachers as professionals but as members of the industrial working class whose major objective was to take part in the struggle against capital. The Board of Education was not seen as a neutral body but as pro-capital, taking part in the exploitation of workers.

The divide between the opposition and the leadership was partly generational. Linville, who became Local 5’s first president, and Lefkowitz, who remained a close associate of Linville, had been with the union since its founding in 1916 and had become entrenched as union leaders. They resented any challenge to their authority, especially from those who were much younger and who had far less experience. The younger opposition wanted the union to take stronger action against what they saw as deteriorating working conditions.¹⁵

The issue of organizing substitutes reflected the divide between the Rank and File caucus’s industrial union organizing approach and the professionalism advocated by the leadership. The left wing of the union endorsed organizing substitute teachers, many of whom had regular appointments but lost their positions or were victims of the decision of the board not to issue regular licenses due to budget considerations. Broadening the definition of a teacher by including those who were not regularly licensed would, the Rank and File believed, protect the most vulnerable and exploited workers in the school system. Advocates argued that a major function of the union was to expand the rights of all teachers. One important way of protecting these teachers, the opposition insisted, was for the Board of Education to grant substitutes regular licenses.

Linville and many others in the union leadership were dead set against granting union rights to substitutes, part-time workers who would be given the opportunity to hold office and decide policy. Linville relied heavily on older teachers for support, teachers who had regular licenses and shared his view on professionalism. He also feared that giving substitute teachers the vote would increase the power of the Rank and File. Undoubtedly, the substitutes were loyal to the left and, if allowed, would vote it into power. Besides opposing full union rights for substitutes, Linville also strengthened his control over the union by a number of measures: limiting the number of general membership meetings in a year, which denied the opposition groups a platform to voice their grievances, ending recall of executive board members, allowing the executive board the power to fill vacant board positions, and limiting discussion at membership meetings.¹⁶

THIRD PERIOD POLITICS

The Rank and File came of age during the Communist Party’s third period, 1928–1934, which represented an attempt to inject life into the movement after the Party’s second period retreat from revolution, highlighted by Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) from 1924 to 1928. Under the NEP, in order to bolster a sluggish economy private ownership was reintroduced (on a temporary basis) to segments of the Soviet Union, including the farming sector. The third period allowed Communists to take off the gloves and reject alliances with social democrats, whom they labeled social fascists. The language of third period revolution was evident at the Sixth Comintern Congress held in July 1928: “When the revolutionary tide is rising, when the ruling classes and the disorganized and the masses [are] in a state of revolutionary ferment, when the middle strata are inclined to turn toward the proletariat and the masses display their readiness for battle … it is the task of proletarian party to lead the masses to a frontal assault on the bourgeois state.” There were several ways of achieving these objectives, including “organizing mass action” and carrying out general strikes. According to the Congress, an “essential preliminary to actions of this kind is the organization of the broad masses in militant bodies which by their very form must embrace and set in motion the largest number of working people.” It was assumed that capitalism was in a crisis and that “social fascists” would bond with fascist states to overthrow the Soviet Union, the true representative of the working class.¹⁷

To encourage working-class unity, delegates at a Party convention in August 1929 voted to create the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL). The TUUL was the American Communist Party’s response to the Sixth World Congress’s order that Communist parties create revolutionary unions to compete against the conservative AFL, which had failed to address what the Party deemed to be the revolutionary crisis.¹⁸

Adhering to third period politics, the Rank and File leaders embraced an industrial model for the Teachers Union, rejecting the professional model advocated by the leadership. Clinging to a policy of noncompromise with social democrats, Rank and File leaders argued that the union leadership was far too passive when confronting the Board of Education. Rank and File members who were affiliated with the American Communist Party saw organizing workers, conducting mass demonstrations, and taking other militant actions as the best way of improving conditions for teachers. The Rank and File’s uncompromising position was illustrated by its response to the issue of payless furloughs. In an attempt to address the city’s fiscal crisis during the Depression, Mayor LaGuardia endorsed the 1933 Bankers Agreement, acquiescing to a negotiated agreement hammered out by banking interests that changed some of the city’s fiscal practices. Banks agreed to refund $130 million in revenue bonds, to establish a revolving fund to assist the city during the crisis, and to buy millions of dollars of serial notes to help pay for unemployment and home relief programs. The city, in return, agreed to several concessions, including dropping new taxes on stocks, savings banks, and life insurance companies, thus giving up millions of dollars in city revenue. In 1934 LaGuardia also signed a bill that created payless furloughs for city workers, an average 4 percent annual pay cut.¹⁹

In January 1934 Abraham Lefkowitz negotiated with Mayor LaGuardia at City Hall over the payless furlough, while members of the TU waited outside. Taking an “uncompromising” stand against the furlough, Rank and File leaders spoke out against the meeting. “The union leadership,” Rank and File leaders told the crowd, “did not prepare the teachers to meet the present attacks.” Speakers representing the radical caucus lambasted Lefkowitz and Linville for claiming that LaGuardia’s plan was “like a bolt from the clear sky” and for demonstrating an “unwillingness or inability” to fight the cuts. According to the Rank and File, Lefkowitz had caved in by expressing sympathy for the mayor and urging union members to leave and allow the “left wingers” to stand alone.²⁰

By attacking the leadership, the Rank and File hoped to portray itself as more militant than the leadership. True to the third period politics of refusing to compromise with capitalists or social democrats, the Rank and File declared that the administration was engaged in class collaboration. Isidore Begun mounted the steps of City Hall while the administration of the union was negotiating with the mayor and announced that the union should oppose the furlough plan. He attacked Lefkowitz for stating that he would meet the mayor halfway if the telephone, gas, and electric companies would lower their rates. Under no circumstances should teachers be willing to meet bankers and other financiers “halfway” by reducing their salaries. Instead, the caucus demanded a repudiation of the bankers’ four-year agreement because it meant “pay-less-paydays.”²¹ Bugun’s actions indicated that third period politics did not just mean subordination to the dictates of Moscow. His uncompromising position demonstrated a fierce defense of working-class people. He was trying to stop what amounted to a pay cut for teachers.

In one attempt to bolster its own image while tarnishing the union’s leadership, the Rank and File issued a leaflet charging that the administration had “shown distrust and contempt for the mass of classroom teachers in the schools” and had not taken advantage of opportunities to make the union an agency for real change. Instead, Linville and Lefkowitz were more concerned with holding on to power by creating a “dictatorship of the Executive Board.” This rhetoric proved appealing, especially at a time when many teachers were joining the ranks of the unemployed. The Rank and File’s militant tone was paying off. TU election results indicated that more members of the militant caucus were winning positions on the executive board. By 1934, Rank and File members Meyer Case, Williana Burroughs, and Matthew Besdine had won seats on the board, joining Benjamin Davidson of the Progressive Group, who was elected in 1932.²² More important, the Rank and File’s emphasis on organizing teachers had paid off. For example, the January 4, 1930, executive board minutes, reflect that twenty-three people had applied for membership. A month later there were fifty names. In early April 1932 the executive board reported that seventy-six people applied, and on February 2, 1933, ninety-one teachers were reported as wanting to join. In February 1934 ninety-five teachers submitted applications.²³

In its critique of the leadership the Rank and File explained that the job of a labor union was to “activize and organize every co-worker, unionized or not, with the view of achieving mutual protection and betterment of working” and improving living standards. The administration was blamed for fostering an attitude of indifference and accused of showing distrust of and even “contempt” for the ordinary classroom teacher by stepping on the rights of members. The membership had been “unconstitutionally deprived of power,” as reflected in the fact that it spent membership and delegate assembly meetings focusing on legislative reports and making no important decisions. Moreover, the leadership was dictatorial and worked hard to crush the will of the ordinary member.²⁴ Calling on the union to initiate and “lead mass actions, mass delegations, mass meetings” in defense of teachers, the Rank and File maintained that members should be an “agent for stimulating the classroom teachers and parents in each school into active participation in the defense of the school.” Every member should become an organizer of teachers, parents, and students. The union should lower dues, making it affordable for the unemployed and those at the lower end of the pay scale, and conduct a “mass defense” of all teachers victimized because they organized teachers and parents. The union, the Rank and File claimed, must become democratic. A united front of all classroom teachers would defend the interests of children as well as teachers. Replacing the leadership of the union because it failed to “lead a mass struggle” was crucial to this agenda.²⁵

The best example of the Rank and File’s mass organizing strategy was its Classroom Teacher Group (CTG), the formation of which prompted accusations by the Rank and File’s opponents that they were obeying the dictates of the International’s call for dual unionism—i.e., a union operating within an existing union. The CTG organized chapters in various public schools to address the needs of teachers, thus distinguishing itself from the administration, which seemed remote from the everyday classroom. Although they were not present in every school in the system, these groups, of course, alarmed the leadership. Members of the opposition were taking on school administrators in order to fight for classroom teachers and were winning teachers’ loyalty. Bella Dodd, who became legislative representative of the TU in the mid 1930s and would later become an informer for HUAC, contended that the Classroom Teachers Group (she called it the Classroom Teachers Association), allegedly a grass-roots movement, was recruiting teachers for “mass action” and was “carefully organized on the basis of the class struggle philosophy.” She claimed that the CTG was a disciplined organization, secretly associated with William Foster’s Trade Union Unity League and having two objectives: to convert a considerable number of teachers to a revolutionary approach to problems and to recruit for the Communist Party as many members as possible. Some CTG teachers were also members of Teachers Union Local 5 and, therein, they formed an organized minority opposition to the prevailing noncommunist leadership.²⁶

According to Dodd, the Classroom Teacher Groups, “like all Red unions of the early thirties,” emphasized “bread and butter problems acute at the time,” such as unemployment among teachers and the high number of substitute teachers working for low wages. The CTG helped the Communists gain support in part because it used a variety of methods, including sending delegations to the Board of Education and leveling public attacks against city officials and the leadership of the Teachers Union. Identifying “Celia Lewis, Clara Richer [perhaps she meant Clara Rieber], and Max Diamond” as the leaders of the “Red minority” within the TU, Dodd suggested that the Communist tactic of organizing unemployed teachers could result in them gaining control of the TU.²⁷

The CTG also disturbed TU members who identified with the Communist Party Opposition and worried about dual unionism, a position rejected by those who were loyal to Jay Lovestone. In his testimony before the Rapp-Coudert Committee, Ben Davidson claimed that the CTG was used to criticize the “teachers union movement at public meetings. I think the group is responsible for that policy.” Although he had no evidence and admitted he had never attended a meeting of the CTG or knew of its size, Davidson maintained that members of the Rank and File “tended to praise, to endorse the work of the classroom teacher group” and “held it up as an example of good work.” He continued: “I drew my conclusions that they believed that policy and in so far as they had influence they were pushing that policy.” Despite his criticism, Davidson more than hinted that the CTG was tackling the concerns of classroom teachers, many of them teachers dissatisfied with the TU leadership’s unwillingness to address their problems. The CTG seemed to be the only organization addressing those grievances.²⁸

The Rank and File followed other Communist Party positions. The Party during the third period was pushing an antiwar agenda. The Comintern introduced the theory of “social fascism,” arguing that capitalist powers, in times of economic crisis, were willing to make alliances with fascists and Nazis in order to save capitalism. “Social fascists” were no different from fascists and Nazis. Indeed, Communists should prevent all preparations for war in capitalist nations by, for example, portraying social democrats as enemies of Communism. In fact, Stalin declared during the third period that fascism and social democracy were “twin brothers.” In 1933 the American Communist Party helped organize the American League Against War and Fascism, which targeted religious and labor groups in defense of the “masses” against fascism and Nazism.²⁹

The TU’s Rank and File caucus also pushed the antiwar objective. At the February 3, 1934, executive board meeting, Rank and Filers introduced a motion that the union petition FDR, urging him not to spend $475 million on armaments. Instead the president should use the money to deal with the education crisis and provide funds to assure the continuation of the projects under the New Deal Civil Works Administration, which created work for millions of workers. Another motion, approved at the same meeting, put the union on record opposing a bill to make Armistice Day a school holiday because a day off would interrupt the work for “peace propaganda” in the schools.³⁰ In its program for immediate action in the schools, the Rank and File called for establishing an antiwar committee as well as sending a delegate to an antiwar event sponsored by the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, scheduled for September 28–30, 1934 in Chicago. In its efforts to undermine “social fascism,” the TU claimed that its agenda—which fought salary cuts, the attack on tenure, and the firing of militant teachers—was the best. Moreover, reducing the U.S. military budget would provide funds for education. The Rank and File even linked military spending to repression of teachers: “In line with the greater expenditures on armaments, loyalty oaths have been demanded of teachers, and prospective teachers are to be eliminated if they have subversive and ‘un-American’ attitudes.”³¹

THE ADMINISTRATION FIGHTS BACK

As early as 1932 the administration of Local 5 attempted to put a halt to the opposition. The fact that more teachers than ever before in the union’s history were union members, especially those who were unemployed, demonstrated the success of the Rank and File action and posed a serious threat to leadership control. In reaction to Isidore Begun’s public complaint that union money was being used to bribe state legislators, Abraham Lefkowitz demanded an investigation. Tension between the opposition and the administration was high. In June of that year, Lefkowitz introduced a resolution before the executive board calling for a host of charges to be brought against the Communist members of the TU.³²

In September the executive board appointed a Special Committee to prepare charges against opposition members who had been disruptive at TU meetings, essentially leading members of the Rank and File and Progressive Group, including all their candidates in the 1932 union election of officers. Apparently, the leadership had second thoughts about ousting the entire opposition. The list of expulsions would be too long; if the leadership attempted to kick out so many on the left, it might create a crisis in the union. Instead, the Special Committee was enlarged after October 7 to include all officers of the executive board. This body was given the task of preparing charges against teachers who disrupted union meetings. In addition, it had to prepare a report to the general membership.³³

The October 27, 1932, Special Report of the Joint Committee claimed that it was not attempting to bring legal charges against any member of the union. In fact, before issuing its report, the committee tried to reconcile the differences between the leadership and the two main factions.³⁴ But, despite its claim, the committee accused Rank and File members of carrying on “propaganda in union meetings,” attempting to tie the TU to “extreme political radicalism,” trying to get the union to endorse aspects of their left program, and attacking the leadership and accusing it of being “undemocratic.” Despite concessions to the left, there was no peace within the TU: “Apparently left-wing groups are unwilling to accept a practicable basis of harmony.”

Charges were specifically brought against five Rank and File members—Joseph Leboit, Clara Rieber, Alice Citron, Abraham Zitron, Isidore Begun—and one Progressive Group member, Bertram Wolfe. Leboit was charged with sabotage against the TU and the AFT because in June, Ruth Hardy, membership chairperson and a supporter of Linville claimed, Leboit was at a meeting in Newark “attacking the N.Y. Union and attempting to discredit it to the Newark teachers.” Rieber was accused of distributing Rank and File circulars at TU meetings without permission from the leadership. The committee also claimed that Rieber “failed to give proper regard to courtesies” to guest speakers, handing out circulars while they were speaking. The circulars contained untrue accusations: that the executive board proposed to eliminate members’ participation, that only six members of the executive board possessed the power to overrule a majority of the board and that the union did not rally to protest the Board of Education’s attempt to cut teachers salaries. In addition, Rieber was charged with sabotage, using disruptive tactics, and antagonizing members and nonmembers “by bitter and ungoverned speech, and for destroying spirit of friendly cooperation.”

Like Rieber, Citron was accused of making false charges against the TU, distributing Rank and File literature at union meetings, “making insolent and ill-mannered attacks on those responsible for the conduct of the meetings and activities,” and attacking the work of the Joint Committee on Teacher Unemployment. Apparently, Citron had organized a competing committee on unemployment called the Unemployed Teachers Association and became its secretary, despite the fact that she was a regular appointed teacher. According to the committee’s report, Abraham Zitron was so disruptive that even the Rank and File had to discipline him at meetings and so uncooperative that members of his school had become bitter toward the union. He was also charged with promoting the dual union movement. The Special Joint Committee report branded Progressive Group member Bertram Wolfe the “recognized intellectual leader of the left-wing movement of the Teachers Union,” first starting to serve on the TU’s executive board in early 1930, and accused him of supporting attacks on the leadership. The committee claimed that Wolfe circulated harmful statements denouncing the administration for its “reactionary revision of the Constitution,” threatened the existence of the TU, refused to obey the time rule when debating at meetings, and created disorder.

The most extensive charges, including that of advocating dual unionism, were brought against Isidore Begun. Begun, who helped found the Rank and File caucus, was implicated for “having guilty knowledge of the existence of the dual union and the publication of its anonymous periodical” and charged with circulating false statements to hinder and discredit the work of the union. The committee singled out Begun’s responsibility for printing the anonymous dual-union Education Worker, whose January, March, and July 1932 issues contained slurs and bogus charges against union officers and members of the executive board. One serious allegation was that Lefkowitz was accused of stating at an executive board meeting that money collected from the membership was used to “grease the palms” of legislators. Many of the charges against the six followed a familiar formula—“insolent and offensive behavior” at meetings, sabotaging the work of the TU by accusing the administration of reactionary and undemocratic acts. In reaction to the charges, the union elected a grievance committee that included John Dewey, who served as chair, and Charles Hendley. While its job was ostensibly to recommend a means of handling the union’s problem with the left, in reality, the leadership hoped it would come up with a way to purge the caucuses.³⁵

The Joint Committee’s report concluded that it had not found a solution to “securing cooperation” with members of the left-wing groups. Therefore, it was leaving the matter in the hands of the members. A Grievance Committee was created to hear the complaints against the left-wing caucus members. The committee decided not to appoint any person as a “prosecuting counsel.” Instead, the purpose was to gain an understanding of the wider state of affairs within the TU as well as to hear evidence against the six teachers.³⁶

Despite its claims of impartiality, the Grievance Committee blamed the factional problem in the TU on the Rank and File and the Progressive Group. The left portrayed the administration, according to the committee, as a clique concerned with holding on to power. The committee contended that the two left groups also distrusted one another: the Rank and File accused the Progressive Group of being a “pseudo-opposition,” in reality an “ally of the Administration”; the Progressive Group accused the Rank and File of trying to split the union. Despite their differences and animosity toward one another, both groups were working to undermine the leadership of the TU. As proof that they were hostile factions, the Grievance Committee pointed out that each group had its own executive board, or members who could attend executive sessions, secretary and other officers. With the existence of two permanent organized factions and growing antagonism toward the administration, the union’s effectiveness was being hindered. According to the Grievance Committee, the factionalism was so grave that, if not addressed, it threatened the very existence of the union.³⁷

The Grievance Committee had no evidence that most members of the Rank and File and the Progressive Group were Communists. “Moreover, the testimony is far from showing that it is the conscious intention of the bulk of those affiliated with these opposition groups to use the Union as a tool of any particular economic political creed.” Still, the committee maintained that the leaders of both factions were clearly connected to the Communists. The political views of union members became problematic only when groups tried to use the union as an instrument to carry out the policies of outside organizations. It was no accident that the Rank and File and Progressive Group advocated the same programs as Communist factions in other unions or that the Teachers Union’s Rank and File and Progressive Group criticized one another in ways similar to how the Communist Party and Communist Opposition criticized one another. The opposition groups, the committee asserted, were using the union as an instrument in the war to overthrow capitalism.

The Grievance Committee offered two important recommendations: the creation of a delegates’ assembly, made up of elected representatives from each school, to replace the cumbersome membership meetings and a chairperson with the power to suspend from a meeting any person culpable of disruptive “improper conduct at a meeting.” Moreover, a person or group making false charges against any member or other group in the TU or using disruptive tactics at meetings or demonstrating insubordination to a chairperson could be suspended, after receiving a hearing from the executive board, for up to six months.³⁸

MINORITY RESPONSE

In response to the charges and attempts to expel their executive board members, the Rank and File and the Progressive Group issued an Executive Board Minority Report. The executive board refused to allow them to present their report at the October 27 meeting, even though Ben Davidson, a member of the opposition, had served notice at the board’s June and September meetings that he was going to file such a report; no member of the board had challenged the group’s right to do so. The authors of the minority report, Florence Gitlin, Ben Davidson, David M. Wittes, and Isidore Begun, protested the refusal as a violation of regular parliamentary procedure. Eventually, the minority report was issued to the Grievance Committee and general membership.³⁹ The minority report accused the administration of being undemocratic because, in the fall of 1931, it had proposed changing the union’s constitution to allow only one-third of the membership to confirm expulsions recommended by the executive board. Fortunately, the 250 members in attendance defeated the motion. The administration, determined to rid the union of dissenters, proposed revising the constitution to allow expulsion to be based on a vote by a majority of executive board members. The membership could not hear the opposition’s point of view. The minority group even accused the administration of trying to take decision-making powers out of the hands of the membership.⁴⁰

While the administration claimed it did not care about a person’s political affiliation, the opposition countered that affiliation was at the heart of the conflict: “Leading members of the administration have indulged in open Red-baiting, well knowing that the accusation of Communism in the New York City school system means almost certain loss of jobs.” To back up its assertion, the signers of the report pointed out that, at a meeting of the Joint Salary Committee, Lefkowitz said that certain teachers were Communists and that they would be expelled from the TU. He even complained about Begun’s behavior toward the superintendent. Begun was eventually called before the superintendent. Linville, Lefkowitz, and the vice president of the union, Mrs. Lindlof, testified against the leader of the Rank and File. The leadership’s actions placed the union in a position of working with management against a union member instead of defending his rights. The minority group accused Lindlof of intimidating the opposition by “threatening to expose” them. The minority group claimed that the administration asserted that Begun was not only hurting the members of the TU but was jeopardizing the “purpose and life of the union.” Linville and Lefkowitz’s turning to management to sabotage the opposition was symptomatic of the collaborative model for labor and management that they advocated.⁴¹

The charge that the Rank and File and the Progressive Group were trying to gain control of the union was also bogus, according to the executive board’s left members. The minority groups claimed they were merely trying to present suggestions and constructive criticism to shape policy. The left was indeed trying to influence membership, but denials about trying to take over the union were more debatable. Labeling union leaders class collaborators was designed to discredit them. The two left groups also refuted the charges of disruptive tactics, accusing Lefkowitz and Lindville of walking out of a union meeting, in December of 1931, to protest granting substitute teachers the right to vote at union meetings. Lefkowitz’s describing the Progressive Group as part of the lunatic fringe, “Red-baiting,” attempting to prevent meetings by raising the quorum, and numerous other actions all indicated that the administration itself was using disruptive tactics.

While Linville and Lefkowitz wanted to expel the six opposition members, under the union’s constitution expulsions required a two-thirds vote of the membership, which was difficult to attain. In the first vote, on the expulsion of Begun, 451 were in favor and 316 were opposed, short of the two-thirds needed. Seeing that it was probably impossible to win a two-thirds vote on the other five, Lefkowitz proposed a motion to drop the other cases, which was approved. Although a majority had voted in favor of disciplining Begun, the opposition had clearly gained enough support to make it a formidable force in the union. Although the administration’s proposal for the creation of a delegates assembly was passed by the membership, the larger objective of purging the left failed, a major disappointment for Linville, Lefkowitz, and members of the administration.⁴²

SCHISM

The animosity between the leadership and the left did not dissipate. In 1934 Begun and Williana Burroughs were dismissed from their teaching positions by the Board of Education on the grounds of conduct unbecoming a teacher. They had accused the board of unfairly disciplining Rank and File member Isidore Blumberg for taking part in a Rank and File–led teachers demonstration to protest the school agency’s refusal to provide adequate salaries for teachers.⁴³ This kind of persecution enhanced the stature of the Rank and File. In the union election, Begun ran for president, and, although Linville won handily, Begun received a quarter of the vote, confirming the Rank and File as the major caucus in the union. Fearing the growing strength of the left, the leadership suspended Begun from the union in January 1934 for urging union members at a City Hall rally to join the Rank and File. Burroughs was suspended when she charged the administration with contributing to the board’s decision to dismiss her and Begun.⁴⁴

In September 1934 William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, entered into the fray, writing a letter to the AFT leadership demanding the expulsion of Communists in the New York City chapter. However, members of the administration and delegates assembly objected strongly to the interference. Linville and Lefkowitz attempted to pass a compromise resolution at the January 1935 meeting of the delegates assembly calling for the expulsion of members, not for their political affiliation but for advocating dual unionism. However, the delegates defeated the Linville-Lefkowitz proposal and instead passed a resolution opposing “any discrimination against or disciplinary action against any worker because of his political opinions or activity.” The resolution opposed Green’s “red-baiting letter” which was counter to “Union democracy.”⁴⁵

In 1935 the Rank and File received over four hundred votes in the union election. Although Linville had won the presidency, the writing was on the wall. The momentum was on the side of the Rank and File, and the administration could not stop the growing support for the left-leaning caucus. Unable to expel the left, Linville and Lefkowitz tried another strategy. They turned to the AFT, requesting an investigation of factionalism within Local 5. Lefkowitz wanted to have the charter of the TU revoked and to organize a new local that could receive recognition from the national organization. Lefkowitz, Linville, and other members of the administration accused the left of “antagonistic and destructive activities,” including publishing material that attacked and discredited the administration in the eyes of nonteachers and accusing the Rank and File of being affiliated with “outside political groups” wanting to capture the union. It once again called on the AFT to appoint an investigating committee to come to New York and “make recommendations.” The vote of the executive board was fourteen to nine in favor of the resolution. The executive board did not bother taking its resolution to the delegate assembly or to a membership meeting. Instead, it sent its request directly to the AFT. The national union appointed a committee of three, including the president and the secretary-treasurer of the AFT, to examine the nature of the factionalism in Local 5.⁴⁶

Wasting little time, the Rank and File joined with the Progressive Group and other “independent forces in the Union” to form the United Committee to Save the Union (UCSU). One flyer distributed at a mass rally on June 7 warned that investigations by the AFT could actually lead to the revocation of Local 5’s charter or to splits and expulsions. Speakers at the protest meeting included Charles Hendley, leader of a small socialist faction of the TU, who had first opposed the factionalism of the Rank and File but now said he was appalled by the administration’s tactics and lack of democratic procedures. He was joined by Isidore Begun, Louis Fein, and Ben Davidson.⁴⁷ The UCSU called on members to “resist any abridgment” of the union constitution. The larger issues involved were members’ right to formulate union policies ensuring the TU would not be expelled from the AFT.⁴⁸

The UCSU protest was to no avail. The AFT went ahead with its investigation, holding a hearing on June 7, 1935. Raymond F. Lowery, president of the AFT, described the goal of the meeting as not to go after any individual or group but to help bring about harmony: “I would ask that everyone here this morning, irrespective of personal feelings, [or] preconceived ideas or constructions placed upon publicity granted to this interview this morning, would cast all of that into the background and get together in the spirit of cooperation upon which the American Federation of Teachers is founded.”⁴⁹

Presenting the case for the administration, Linville used the occasion to portray the opposition factions as irresponsible and unscrupulous and accused them of publicly taking credit for the work of the union leadership. “They followed the policy of crediting their own leaders with the work of their Union Leaders”; even though they were a minority they monopolized debate and “consume[d] more time than [the] majority.” One of the most damning of the opposition’s charges was that the leadership “has shown distrust and contempt for the mass of the classroom teachers.” Linville wondered how the leadership could persuade teachers to join the union when such an accusation had been made: “It is in my opinion the most outrageous sabotaging statement that has ever emanated from the Progressive group. When such misstatements are made, how can … typical teachers … be expected to join the Teachers’ Union if its leaders having nothing but contempt?”⁵⁰

Linville dragged up the old charge that the Rank and File and the Progressive Group were Communists using Communist tactics such as “mass action” as a “panacea” for the working class. But, when the leadership of the union sought to use mass action, it was condemned by the Progressives. “The Union is damned if it does and if it doesn’t.” Linville listed several “Communist controlled” organizations that the left had tried to force the Union to affiliate with: the Committee on Unemployment Insurance, outlawed by the AFL; the Classroom Teachers Group, organized by the Rank and File; the Unemployed Teachers Association, a “Rank and File Communist group”; the Teachers Committee to Protect Salaries; the League Against War and Fascism; the International Labor Defense; and the Teachers League for Academic Freedom.⁵¹ According to Linville, the left tried to divert attention away from its Communist nature and make the administration “impotent” by consistently accusing the leadership of red-baiting. Linville also charged the left with being hypocritical: “At a meeting of [the] Delegate Assembly on January 3, Progressive and Rank and File united to attack President Green [and] like leaders of [the] Union as ‘red baiter[s]’ but do not so refer to Communist Party which freely uses expulsion upon all dissidents. How sincere is the Rank and File cry for democracy? Democracy for whom?”

Although Linville’s testimony was a stinging indictment of the left, the AFT handed the leaders of the TU a decisive defeat when, at the AFT’s 1935 convention, it voted 100 to 79 against revoking the charter of Local 5. Not willing to submit to democratic procedures, the Local 5 delegation walked out of the convention and was joined by seven other delegations, including Chicago Women Local 3 and New Bedford, Massachusetts.⁵²

In their assessment of the crisis, two anonymous delegates, writing for the Cleveland Teacher, remarked that Lefkowitz and Linville, who had dominated Local 5 for sixteen years, were clearly losing control of the union. Lefkowitz and Linville were fearful of the steady increase in minority opposition because it meant that they would no longer be in charge. The delegates were right. With 750 teachers voting in the last TU election, the left received 42 percent. The call for an investigation, according to the anonymous delegates, was sparked by the fact that the administration had learned by May that support for the opposition had increased. The Executive Council received a report from the Investigation Committee and decided that instead of revoking the charter of Local 5 compromise was the best solution, a position rejected by the administration, which threatened to resign.⁵³

The two Cleveland delegates saw the administration walkout as undemocratic, revealing an “unwillingness to follow the majority rule.” The AFT had nothing to fear, despite the administration’s claim of a Communist takeover: “The work in New York will unquestionably go forward with better results and more sureness than it has before. These minority groups have pledged themselves to see to it that this is done. We haven’t gone ‘Red.’”⁵⁴ As the article in the Cleveland Teacher suggests, the war within Local 5 had become a national fight. The walkout, the very close vote by AFT delegates, and the tone of the article demonstrated a serious rift within the national teachers union movement.

The UCSU appealed to the members of the administration who had submitted their resignations to reconsider: “The United Committee to Save the Union, in keeping with the policy of conciliation and compromise which it has presented in concrete proposals several times this summer, urges them to give serious thought to this grave step. It trusts they would withdraw their resignations in the interest of the whole union.” The executive board designated George Davis, secretary-treasurer of the AFT, and Charles Hendley, vice president of the AFT, as a Liaison Committee. A meeting was scheduled for September 30 or a later date; if the administration went ahead with its September 30 resignation, the scheduled meeting would be used to nominate people to replace the officers as well as members of the executive board who had resigned.

The UCSU argued that the union should gear up for a battle against the foes of free public education who were proposing furloughs, suspensions of salary increments, assaults on pension rights. Setting a militant course, the committee called for a united front of organized labor and the public at the upcoming city budgetary hearings. Teachers would have to “put aside differences, personal grievances and personal attachments which may obstruct our united fight against the common enemy of public education.”

After the administration failed to get the support of the American Federation of Teachers, Linville, Lefkowitz, Selma Borchardt, who was the legislative representative and vice president of the AFT, and seven hundred members resigned from Local 5 and formed the Teachers Guild.⁵⁵ By the time of the split, Local 5 was in the hands of its left flank, a group that would help shape teacher unionism for the next decade.