000443, IT IS ' HAPPENING

HERE. SOC1AUSl - lA80R FL A1tAfmc U IVERSfTV . l , BRA p'v c.nu.r.cnn..tL

"The threat to . ... Its greatest oonger comes through gradual invasion of constiuuionai rights with the acquiescence of an inert people; through failure to dis­ cern that constitutional government cannot survive where the rights guaranteed by the COnBtitution are not safeguarded even to those citisen« with whose political .and social views the majority may not agree." GOVERNOR HERBERT H. LEHMAN March .10, 1938

By SIMON W. GERSON

I I FOREWORD In 1920 there occurred in State an event that shocked the people of America-the expulsion from the Legisla­ t ure of five Socialist Assemblymen solely because of Weir political affiliations. -loving Americans of all shades of opinion then united in branding that action as fundamentally hostile to our traditional concepts of . Today a sinister movement is under way to undermine the democratic process, the right of the people to name and elect represen tatives of their own choosing. This time the witch-hunters are not waiting for an election to deny representation to a portion of the community. They propose to disfranchise voters of our State by forbidding t hem from nominating or pl.acing on the ballot minority paTties, in t he first place the Com71lJUnist PaTty. . . Recent European history has shown all too vividly that out­ lawing the is the first step down the steep incline to . The- remorseless pattern is the same; first, the illegalizing of the Communists; then, swiftly in turn, the labor movement, racial and religious minorities. The Dunnigan, Devaney and Coughlin bills, aimed ostensibly a t the Communist Party, would open the gates to repressive laws again st labor and all minority groups. The Communist Party m ight be the first victim but the of all would soon follow . . To prevent another 1920"':-with the far more serious conse­ quen ces for American democratic rights that such implies today­ our memories of that fateful period must be refreshed. To this end we have gone back into the files of that period and review ed the stale arguments then advanced against everything progressive, arguments that are still the common currency of the red-baiters. More important, perhaps, we have reviewed in con­ siderable detail the expressions of resentment against the arro­ gant enemies of democracy in high places. Given the facts of 1920 and shown the dangers of such a course today, labor, the farmers and all other progressive people of New York will not permit the passage of the Dunnigan, Devaney, Coughlin home-grown fascist measures. It is in that confidence that this little pamphlet, based on articles in recent issues of the Daily and Sunday Worker, is penned. S. W. GERSON New York, Feb. 1, 1941

Published by New York State Committee, Communist Party, 35 East 12th Street, New York February, 1941 ~209 IT IS HAPPENING HERE

It was in the wee, small hours of -March 31, 1920. The State Assembly had been in session for more than sixteen hours. Most of the spectators had left the galleries and only a few idlers remained. Legislators dozed in their seats or fortified themselves in the spirit of the Volstead Act in th e locker rooms. One Assemblyman, still under the influence, staggered out on the floor, listened briefly to the interminable flow of oratory, and finally demanded recognition from the speaker. " Misser Speaker," he said, swaying to and fro, "I-I-I'm in favor of"~here the gentleman hesitated, unclear as to exactly what he favored-"throwin' 'em out I" The motion of the gentleman, incredibly enough, was carried. Five Socialist Assemblymen, duly elected by their constituencies, were expelled from the Assembly under circumstances resembling a Southern lynch party. Its atmosphere was well described by newspapers of the period. "Never was there a better irrigated debate," said the New York Globe the next day. "It seemed at times as if every man one met had a bottle of old time whiskey on his hip and was ready to share it. The cloak room of the Assembly and most of the breaths one encountered in the lobby were redolent of the still." HUGHES' COMMENT T hat action, now deemed one of the most shameful pages in the history of the State, stunned even thoughtful con­ servat ives. Commenting on the decision the next day, for- 3 mer Governor (how Chief Justi ce) Charles Evans Hugh es said: "I regard it as a serious blow at the standards of true Americanism and nothing short of a calamity. Those who make patriotism a vehicle for intolerance are very dangerous friends of our institutions." Louis Marshall, the distinguished constitutional lawyer, wa even more vigorous : "T his is the saddest day in the history of the State of New York. If the precedent set by this action is to continue, it will wipe out every vestige of representa­ tive government in this state. The action of the As­ sembly is an action of ... ." On the day after the expulsion the New York 'W orld carried an edito rial entitle d "A Legislative Lynching" and followed it the next day with another leader headed, "Nothing Short of a Calamity" in which it said : " No more lawless act was ever committed by a law­ making body than that which stains the record of the New York Assembly. "... in this case a lawfully constituted political party was brought before the bar of the Assembly and denied representation on the ground that its platform was objectionable to the majority.. .."

BAITERS FORGOTTEN

Like the fra me-up of Tom Mooney, the expulsio n of the Socialist legi sla tors in the post-war period has brought only shame to its instiga tors. The charitable ve il of obscur­ ity dims the mem ory of that lynching of democracy. Speaker T haddeus C. Sweet, who hoped to ride to the Governor 's chair on the crest of the red-bai ting wave; Senator El on R. Brown ; Senator Clayton R. Lu sk, chair­ man of a notorious committee bearing his na me ;- all ar e now footnotes in the mu sty acco unts of the period, their 4 moments of glory brief, their public records passed over in silence even by th eir erstwhile sup porters. But if Thaddeus Sweet and the Lu sk Committee report ha ve passed on, one to his reward and the other to the archives, th eir policies and methods are apparently green as the bay tree in the minds of the 1941 New York legi slature. Gone may be Hie old sure-fire argume nts about destroying the home and fam ily. Messrs. , , et al, then punished for beli eving in a better world, ha ve since repented of their ways and bec om e pillars of capitalist society. But to day the Communist Party has taken their place, th e Coin munists and militant labor. NEW TRIO

Where once Sweet, Lusk and Br own stru tted the st age, there now appear Dunnigan, Coug hlin and De vaney, echo­ ing the cry of "nat ional def en se" as uttered daily in th e White House at Washington and th e Executive Mansion at Albany. All are proud authors of anti-Communist, an ti­ lab or measures. All three bill s ( Dun nigan's legislation is really a set of two companion pieces) are, significantly enough, sponsored by members of the Democratic minority in response to the request of Democr atic Govern or Herber t H. Lehman for "anti-sabotage" legi slation. Senate minority leader John J. Dunnigan from , a kingpin of the county ma chine bossed directly by Demo­ cratic National Chairman Edward J. F lynn, authored two measures. The first would make ineligible for public office an y Communist or signer of a Communist petition.A school teacher wh o had signed a Communist petition could be discharged under the first Dunnigan bill. The second. hinging directly on the first, would not permit on the ball ot any party whose members are ineligible for public office. 5 The trick is apparent at a glance:' first you make Com­ munists ineligible for public office; then you pass a law saying that a party whose members are ineligible for public office has no right on the ballot. It would be comparable to passing two laws, one, that red-headed men have no right to hold public office; the second, that any party which contained red-headed men (who have already been declared ineligible for public office) could not go before the people in any election. NEW LAW Far more sweeping than the Dunnigan bill in its direct application to labor is the measure introduced by Senator Edward J. Coughlin, Brooklyn Democrat, which is iden­ tical with the- Oklahoma criminal syndicalism and 'ant i­ sabotage law. The Coughlin bill would make a ten-year offense of advo­ . eating "syndicalism" or circulating literature to that effect or "injuring property of an employer." What constitutes "syndicalism" in the minds of the powers-that-be is clearly indicated by the ten-year sen­ tences already meted out to two Oklahoma Communist leaders under the terms of the identical law now proposed by Coughlin for the Empire State. Assemblyman John A. Devaney, Bronx Democrat, is co-sponsoring with Republican Senator William I:I. Hamp­ ton of Utica a measure aimed at the Communist Party even more sweeping than the Dunnigan Bill. According to leaders of the American Legion, inspirers of the Hampton­ Devaney measure, Dunnigan's js "not as strong as the Legion's bill." This brace of repressive legislation, proposed even before the country is officially in the imperialist war, brings most forcefully to mind the post-war hysteria of twenty-one years ago that culminated in New York State in the expul­ sion of the five Socialist assemblymen. 6 The events and lessons of that period are of the utmost importance to all workers, to all friends of popular liberty, and are worthwhile reviewing in the light of recent events in Albany. THE 1920 JITTERS America's doughboys 'were coming home In huge boat­ loads to find a new crop of millionaires and "No Help W anted" signs. Organized labor was fighting back bitterly against a drive to slash wages and lengthen hours. Throughout the world the pulse of the toiling millions quickened to the heroic struggle of the Russian beating back its foes on twenty different fronts. The rulers of the world were jittery. Up in Albany the motley crew of landed gentry, small town bankers, lawyers, utility stooges and ward-heeler politicians trembled ·sym­ pathetically with their masters' terror. It seemed that New York City workers in five Assembly districts had elected Socialist representatives. The republic was clearly en- dangered I • Thus it was that on Jan. 7, 1920, when the Legislature opened, before business had hardly begun, Republican Speaker Thaddeus C. Sweet suddenly called upon the five Socialist Assemblymen-August Claessens, Samuel De­ Witt, , Charles Solomon and Louis Waldman­ t o come before the bar of the House. THE LINE-UP A hush descended over the chamber as the men lined up before Sweet. The Speaker was curt and direct. These men -four of whom had served the previous term-were elect': ed, he said, on a platform "absolutely inimical to the best interests of the State of New York and of the ." He went on to say that the Socialists did not constitute " truly a political party" and the assemblymen were bound 7 to act subject to instructions from an executive committee which might have "allegiance to gove rn ments or organiza­ tions whose interests may be diametrically opposed to the best interests of the United States an d of the people of the State of New York." In words that have a familiar' ring today, the Speaker condem ned the Socialists for th e anti-war resolution adopted at the St. Louis party conve ntio n in 1917, and subse quent declaration of support to the Russian Revo­ lution. Thereupon th e Speaker rul ed tha t the five could not be seated until th e Judiciary Comm ittee dete rmined their "right to part icipate in the actions of this body."

DENIED SEATS The Speaker imm ediately ga ve th e floor to the Repu b­ lican majority leader for a pri vileged resolution den ying t he five their §eats pending action by th e Judiciary Com­ mittee as out lined in the Speaker's remarks. The mem orable resolution, now v irtually a bible to latter­ day red -baiting legislators, charged that the in Au gust, 1919 "declared its adherence to and solidarity with the revolutionary forces of Soviet "; that "by such adherence . .. the said Party had endorsed the prin­ ciples of the ; that the St. Louis Socialist convention in 1917 adopted an anti-war position and "did urge its members to refrain from taking- part in any way, shape or manner in th e war" and that such atti­ tude "did thereby stamp the said party and all its members with an inimical attitude to the best interests of the United States and the State of New York." T he resolution was adopted by a vote 140 to 6, one Democrat joining the five Socialists in opposition. The Socialists were thereupon deprived of their seats and t'old to await trial by the Judiciary Committee. S Reaction to the Assembly's re el ution was not what its sponsors had hoped. Under the heading "A Legislative Outrage" th e Pulitzer-owned New York World scored the action in acid words: "Not with impunity are entire political parties thus proscribed and deprived of their rights under repre­ tative government. "What happened at Albany yesterday was a wanton denial of the fundamental principle of representative government." On January 9 the World appeared with an editorial headed, "A Blow at Free Government," again blasting the Assembly majority. A ttacking pa rt icularly that section of Sp eaker Sweet's state me nt ana the Assembly resolution which te rmed th e Socialist platform as "inimical to best interests" of the people the editorial declared : "This is what every political party says about the political platform of every other political party. If the action of the New York Assembly stands as a prece-. dent, representative government has ceased to exist in this state because all the rights of the minority have been destroyed. No minority party can be represented in the legislature except on a platform that is satisfac­ tory to the majority party. "Has the Assembly lost all sense, all reason? The thing that has been done is incomprehensible. The rights and liberties of every citizen of New York, no matter what his politics may be, are put in jeopardy when the majority denies to the minority the constitu­ tional processes of free government. It is the duty of every citizen who respects law and order and the guar­ antees of the constitution to support these five Social­ ists in the fight. • . ." HUGHES DISAGREES On the same day former Governor (now Chief Justice) Charles Ev ans Hughes sent Speaker Sweet a letter, which. coming fro m New York's leading Republican, had th e 9 e ffect of a time bomb 0 11 the ranks of the Socialists' perse­ cutors. He wrote that "the proceeding is virtually an at­ tempt to indict a political party and to deny it represen­ tation in the Legislature. "T hat," he added, "is not, in my judgment, American ,government." Perhaps most ironical of all in the light of the current - Hearst campaign against everything progressive is the -editorial published at the same time by the New York Evening Journal (now merged with Hearst's New York American) . Said a Journal editorial condemning the Sweet p roceeding in terms which deserve to be qu oted at length: "We Americans must take a stand, once and for all, against the daily increasing encroachments upon the rights, and our liberties... . "As a result of the war, there is a powerful and very dangerous conspiracy to overthrow democracy every­ where in the world. "The agents of this conspiracy are at work here in America precisely as they are at work in Europe and 'in our neighboring countries on this continent. "They are in our Congress, in our Legislatures, in ·our newspaper and periodical offices, in our pulpits, in -our schools. AND EVERYWHE:RE THEY ARE MAKING A SIMULTANEOUS ASSAULT UPON FREE SPEECH, FREE PRESS, FREE ASSEM­ BLY, FREE REPRESENTATION. (Emphasis mine - SoW. G.) CHARGES 'TREASON' "E verywhere they advocate repressive legislation to curb the right of opinion and discussion, and every­ w here they incite and applaud mob violence against m en and journals that speak out for the rights and .. interests of the plain people. "The issue at stake is not the rights of these five men. "T he issue at stake is the right of free representation -the right of us all to choose our representatives. "T o deny this right is treason against the Constitu­ 10 tion, treason against the State of New York, treason against the Republic, treason against fundamental, in­ herent liberties of the American people. "T he man who submits to such tyranny and such treason without protest and resistance is not fit to call himself an American. . "W e should hold ourselves no better than mean and cowardly traitors to every obligation of an American journal if we did not denounce and resist this assault upon the common rights and libereies of the land and ~o~~" . On Jan. 13, after one of the most extended discussions in its history, the august Bar Association of New York adopted a resolution introduced by Charles Evans H ug hes and seconded by George Gordon Battle to . assist in the defense of the suspend ed Assemblymen. The" resolution sa id in part :

"... any attempt by a majority to exclude from the Legislature those who have been duly elected to its membership, merely because of their affiliation with a political party .. . is un-American, and, if successful,' must destroy the rights of minorities and the very foundations of representative government." A special committee was thereupon appointed to visi t Albany and take part in the fight. The committee consisted of Hughes, former State Supreme Court Justice Morgan J . O'Brien, Joseph M. Proskauer, Louis Marshall and Ogden Mills, all conservatives and distinguished members of the Bar. Labor and progressive groups and the voters in the dis ­ trict did not, however, leave the fight to the "big names," although these garnered most of the publicity. House-to­ house canvassing of the districts left without representation was carried on . A conference of 300 representatives was held in New York and a State-wide conference of 400 delegates in Alba ny. 1 1 Organized labor gave its support and pledged the defeat of those who had unseated the Socialists. Popular pressure began to be felt in the Assembly, par­ ticularly am ong th e Democrat s coming from indust rial districts. U nder th e deluge of ma il and protest delegation s the mood of hysteri a began to die down. Ever min dful of their political futures many Assemb ly men grew un easy. Democratic floor leader Charles Do nohue moved to re­ scind th e ous ter vote and presented a resolution to rese nt th e Soc ialists , whi ch wa s ruled ant of order by Assembly , Speak er Thaddeus C. Sw eet . However, on a roll call vote only 71 affirmed th e orig inal acti on, 33 voted for reinstate­ ment and 41, mostl y Republicans, found it convenient to 'absent themselves from th e chambet.

THE TRIAL

The trial of th e Socialists began On Jan. 20 and las ted until March 30 when the Judiciary Committee reported its findings to the Assembly. Most of the proceedings were a rehash of stock arguments in the arsenal of every opponent of Socialism. The Socialist Party and its members, accord­ ing to chief prosecutor Martin Littleton, "gave allegiance .wholly and solely to an alien and invisible empire known as the Internationale." The Socialist Party, they said, believed in the overthrow of the government by force and violence, the destruction of the home and the family, opposed the war, helped strikers, was "anti-national and' pr o-international" an d one of the Assemblymen had even spat on the flag . ... One of the lighter moments in an otherwise 'sombre hear­ ing was provided by former State Senator Elon R. Brown for the Judiciary Committee. Attacking a speech by Eugene Victor Debs on March 12, 1919 in which the latter had accepted some red roses from a group of children as repre­ senting "the springtime of revolution ." Brown shouted: t2 "What did he mean by that? He meant blood. It isn't susceptible of any other interpretation! He advocated and incited his hearers to treat the crimson flowers as representing the springtime of revolution! It was no accident that they were crimson." EXPULSION The Judiciary Committee vot ed seven to six for ex pul- ion. The Assembly in a zz-hour debate which began at II a .rn. March 30 voted to concur by votes varying from IIS to 28 against Waldman to 104 to 40 against Orr and DeWitt. It was after the vote that former Governor Charles Ev ans Hughes termed the Assembly action" "not hing short of a calamity" and Louis Marshall "anarchy." What followed is by now common kn owledge. Fathered by State Senator Clayton R. Lusk as a result of his 'com­ mittee's investigation of so-called subversive activities, and prototype of today's Dunnigan, Coughlin an d Devaney bills, a repressive Lusk Bill , designed to outlaw Socialist th inking or organizat ion, was introduced and pa ssed. The mea sure was promptly vetoed by Gov. Alfred E . Smith in a stinging message in which he declared: "... in fundamental principle the bill is vicious. Its avowed purpose is to safeguard the institutions and traditions of the country. In effect, it strikes at the very foundations of one of the most cardinal institu­ tions of our country-the fundamental right of the people to enjoy full liberty in the domain of idea and speech." The Lu sk bills were later repassed and signed by Re­ publican Governor Nathan Miller. Smith campaigned on a platfor m of their re peal and early in 1923 signed the re­ pealer, sayi ng : " In signing these bills I firmly believe that I am vindicating the principle that, within the limits of the 13 penal law, every citizen may speak and teach what he believes." PRESENT DAY ATTACKS The fundamental issues posed by the present Dunnigan, Coughlin and Devaney bills, aimed ostensibly at the Com­ munist Party, were seen by Governor Lehman less than three years ago as actually aimed at a group far wider than the Communists. . Vetoing the McNaboe bill, also directed apparently at Communists, the Governor on March 30, 1938, said: "The threat to democracy lies, in my opinion, not so much in revolutionary change achieved by force and violence. Its greatest danger comes through gradual invasion of constitutional rights with the acquiescence of an inert people; through failure to discern that con­ stitutional government cannot survive where the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are not safe­ guarded even to those citizens with whose political and social views the majority may not agree. "Were we of this great liberal state to approve this bill today we might readily find tomorrow that we had opened the floodgates of oppressive legislation in the nation against religious, racial, labor and other minor­ ity groups." The Governor in that message told the State that "legis­ lation such as this is no new phenomenon," harked back to the expulsion of the Socialists and quoted approvingly the Smith veto of the Lusk Law. . On January 8, 1941, exactly 21 years after Speaker Sweet called the five Socialist Assemblymen before him to begin ouster proceedings Governor Lehman spoke in the same chamber, urging a State "anti-sabotage law" as part of a wide program of "total defense." The seed was not cast on barren soil. Four anti-Com­ munist, anti-labor bills are in the legislative hopper. Each of them would deny persons charged with being Cornmu­ 14 nists the right to be in public service, including, of course, the Legislature. . Far more important, however, the measures in every in­ stance are weapons easily turned against the labor move­ ment. The Coughlin bill, for example, would make it a crime punishahle by a ten-year sentence to commit "injury to or destruction of real or personal property of any' em­ ployer." Thus, for. example, strikers leaving a plant could easily be framed-up on charges of sabotage. Its inherent anti-labor nature has already been spotted by New York labor when the Greater New York Council of the c.I.O. unanimously condemned the measure and asked its defeat. How the current crop of bills directed ostensibly at one minority party can be used against- much wider groups was brilliantly explained in 1920 by Father (now Monsignor) John'A. Ryan in a letter to the Socialist defense. . Warning that the anti-Socialist action would eventually be ~sed as a basis for 'anti-Catholic action, he said: . "Possibly my desire to see your personal cause triumph-meaning this cause before you-is not alto­ gether unselfish. For I see quite clearly that if the five Socialist representatives are expelled from the New York Assembly on the ground that they belong to and avow loyalty to an organization which the auto­ cratic majority regards as inimical to the best interests of the State, a bigoted majority in a State-say in Georgia-may use the action as a precedent to keep out of that body regularly elected members who belong to the Catholic Church, for there have been majorities in the Legislature of more than one Southern State that has looked upon the Catholic Church exactly as Speaker Sweet looks upon the Socialist Party." _ The lessons of the 1920 period are plain. The Socialist expulsion was one of the 'high points in a witch hunt that injured the interests of workers and liberal groups of all shades of opinion. The same arguments used against the Socialist Assemblymen were invoked in various forms . 15 against workers or other fighters battling for improvement in living conditions. The slogans of Speaker Sweet became the slogans of labor-baiters everywhere. ' Today the cries of reaction in the legislative halls are mouthed by union-hating employers throughout the coun­ try. Wherever men and women form picket lines the em­ ployers set up the divisive cry of "Red" and wail -of the subversive character of strikes in a period when everything (except profits) should be subordinated to "national defense." In Germany, Italy, France-s-wherever fascism came to power-the pattern was the same: first, the Communists were attacked and the floodgates of reaction were opened. Then came the crushing of labor unions and labor stand­ ards, persecution of racial and religious minorities and the strangling of culture. The New York State Committee of the Communist Party has issued a warning that the Dunnigan, Coughlin and Devaney bills, if enacted into law, will have dire effects on labor and all popular liberties. The Committee has urged that every worker and lover of the Bill of Rights telegraph his Assemblyman and State Senator to vote against the measure. That this is no narrow partisan plea was tragically proven by the experience of France, the downfall of which began with attacks on the Communists. Throwing the Communists to the wolves is no protection for organized labor and progressives. On the contrary. it only whets the appetite of reaction. Defeat of the Dunnigan, Coughlin and Devaney bills is literally in the interest of virtually the entire fo'urteen million people of New York State. If the Bill of Rights can be de troyed for one, it is mutilated for all .

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