In September 1936, senators Robert M. La Follette Jr. and Elbert D. Thomas presented an apparently simple exhibit before their colleagues, a map of the United States with dots concentrated in the nation's industrial centers. Yet the map told a complicated and troubling story: for the dots represented tear gas sold to corporations, meant as a tool to subdue their striking workers.1 That June, La Follette and Thomas had become the heads of a special Senate subcommittee investigating the mistreatment of workers. The La Follette Civil Liberties Committee, as it was informally known, continued until 1940 and gathered much attention along the way as it delved into the use by some businesses of spies, munitions, private security forces, and much else to disrupt legal efforts to unionize. This was not least because of La Follette and Thomas themselves but also because of two blockbuster episodes in 1937: hearings into the oppression of coal workers in Harlan County, Kentucky, and the Memorial Day Massacre in Illinois.2 The professorial Thomas, a Democrat who had represented Utah in the Senate since 1932, played a major part in the committee's work, which would ultimately last for four years.After Franklin Roosevelt became the president on March 4, 1933, he swiftly began implementing programs to alleviate the immediate suffering caused by the Depression. Toward that end, in June Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which among other things gave workers the right to organize into unions. The Supreme Court declared NIRA unconstitutional in 1935, but its successor, the National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act, again worked to eliminate obstructions to collective bargaining and to prevent other unfair practices designed to interfere with union membership or policy. The Wagner Act became law in July 1935 and was constitutionally upheld in April 1937. Nevertheless, some employers resorted to well-financed, far-reaching, and illegal acts of industrial espionage and aggression that violated the rights of workers guaranteed in the Wagner legislation. It was in response to this illegal activity that the Senate created the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee on June 6, 1936, which was presided over by La Follette and co-chaired by Thomas.A Progressive from Wisconsin, La Follette was the son of the towering Robert M. La Follette Sr. and was himself deeply committed to labor organization and collective bargaining. For his part, Thomas had come face-to-face with labor troubles in 1922, when he was serving as a major in the Utah National Guard. That year, coal workers in Carbon County, Utah, joined a nationwide strike when they learned they were facing a 30 percent wage cut. During the strike, both strikers and company guards were killed, the Utah National Guard was called to the coal fields, and Thomas received perhaps his first unadulterated glimpse into the often grim and impoverished world of American labor. Both senators, then, had a predisposition toward workers, as did their staffs—a tendency that business interests were quick to point out during the hearings.3The initial phase of the committee's hearings, in 1936 and early 1937, focused on the use of spies, strikebreakers, private security, and even weapons to discourage unionizing. Thomas learned of his responsibilities on the committee in a letter from “Young Bob,” dated June 22, 1936. Although Thomas said he had been unaware of his appointment, “you can count on me to be as helpful as I know how to be.”4In August La Follette wrote again to Thomas, this time informing him that some of the “detective agencies and companies whom we plan to subpoena next week may not give our investigators access to their files . . . but will appear . . . and refuse to produce the required documents or to testify on the grounds that the Committee is without constitutional power to conduct its inquiry.” It was a resistance that would characterize the battle for economic justice between private business and the government committee through all its days. In order to preclude witness circumvention of the law, La Follette asked for the passage of a resolution giving him standing to hold hearings in Thomas's absence should he be unable to attend.5 Thus began the most extensive hearings on employer violations of employee rights in American history. Ultimately the committee produced ninety-five volumes of hearings and reports that are one of the most reliable sources of information on labor–management relations in the 1930s.6Witnesses began appearing before the committee the following month, some more reluctantly than others, and their recollections often concerned the inhumane tactics used by business leaders to prevent union organization. On September 23, 1936, the cover story in the Washington Daily News relayed the testimony of Sam “Chowderhead” Cohen, a 266-pound strikebreaker with a record of fourteen arrests who had attacked workers walking out of a Remington Rand Plant in Middletown, Connecticut. E. K. McDade, another veteran strikebreaker, described the use of live steam and electric voltage on strikers. Two days later the Washington Post reported that A. S. Ailes of Lake Erie Chemical Company revealed that more than $500,000 had been spent on tear gas for use against strikers. The same article recounted bribed (or “greased”) police and plans by Pennsylvania coal companies to plant “sickening” gas in abandoned shafts to drive off “coal bootleggers.”7Preparatory work on the hearings had not gone unnoticed by the editorial writers at the Post. On September 23, 1936, the day on which Cohen and McDade had testified, the newspaper published “Afraid of the Light?” The writer encouraged the subcommittee in its investigation, particularly senators La Follette and Thomas, and lauded the Senate for its work in searching out “undue interferences with the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively and to recommend remedial legislation if necessary.” Condemning the refusal of “recalcitrant” company officers “to submit their files and themselves for examination,” the editorial noted the District grand jury's indictment of six officers for failure to obey the committee's order. It was also pointed out that “certain of the agencies undertook to destroy some part of their records on learning the committee's plan to inspect them.”8 The editorial writer concluded that this “obstinacy appears to indicate only a fear—fear to stand out in the open light for examination.”“Operating with the precision of a pair of surgeons, Senators Robert M. La Follette (Progressive), Wisconsin, and Elbert D. Thomas (Democrat), Utah, teamed up in alternate questioning of the witnesses,” the article continued. “Figurative scalpel in hand, La Follette cut and probed through the secrecy-shrouded business.” Dummy committees, called “Citizens’ Committees,” operating on behalf of Remington Rand, General Motors Corporation, Standard Oil, Alcoa, du Pont de Nemours, and Ford Motor Company, had purchased gas and gas-throwing equipment. Senator Thomas devoted himself to “the more philosophical side of the inquiry, questioning the witnesses on their ‘moral obligations’ to society.” Ailes defended the manufacture and sale of tear gas, the Post reported, but added that “We don't want anyone to get hurt.” The crowd erupted in laughter. “As Ailes left the stand, newsmen nearby were still laughing. He turned to them and snapped, ‘You're nothing but a bunch of ___ ______ Communists!’”9The charge that union organizers were “Reds” was certainly not a new one, dating back to the early days of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), but the companies accused of illegal activities took up the cry with gusto. Yet none of the witnesses could admit ever having seen a communist, much less define what communism was. “Throughout the testimony Senator Thomas endeavored to secure from the witnesses a definition,” since they consistently used the term to label the subjects of their labor espionage. None could give Thomas a satisfactory answer. La Follette was typically more blunt (throughout the proceedings the senators used something of a good cop, bad cop technique) and asked, “Frankly, don't you regard any attempt by men to organize in labor unions as Communistic?” Pinkerton official Joseph Littlejohn of Atlanta replied, “It's Communistic until we find out different.” At the session's close, La Follette made it clear that the hearings up to this point were only preliminary, especially pertaining to the Pinkertons. He was right. The best—or worst—was yet to come.10By the end of January 1937, as the disclosures became more sensational, both senators believed the committee had begun to make progress; and revelation followed upon revelation. On January 14, 1937, the New York City Sun had reported that counsel for the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company testified that the company was forced to provide special protection for its properties because of the failure of Alabama law enforcement in its duties, according to Borden Burr. Senator Thomas pressed Burr for full explanations of the hiring of deputies and explained that only once in 1934 had strikebreakers been used. “A great deal of violence occurred. The State law does not provide protection for life and property during these periods of emergency due to the limited police facilities.” One “slight, dark-haired communist” told the committee he had been beaten by local authorities and sentenced to 180 days at hard labor for possessing “literature advocating overthrow of the government.” In reality, the “communist,” one Jack Barton, carried the Nation, the New Republic, and the Labor Advocate, an American Federation of Labor publication. Likewise, Joseph Gelders stated under oath that Walter J. Hanna, National Guard Captain and reputed head of the secret service of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, had kidnapped and beaten him during the same episode.11The committee was beginning to attract national attention, the majority of which was positive. In February 1937, however, Thomas did feel compelled to respond to a New York Times editorial in which he had read the following: “The La Follette committee is running down cases of espionage by large employers, but does it ever think of exposing the tactics of labor union organizers? Would it be at all interested in charges or affidavits setting forth acts of tyranny and even brutality by labor union officials or agents?” Thomas's response was stern and to the point: May I, for your information, tell you I have asked witnesses of all types whether labor uses espionage methods. We have not learned of any labor unions that have been clients of any of the detective agencies we have investigated so far. . . . We have learned that one labor group attempted to buy some tear gas but failed. . . . I send you this information not because I am in any sense out of harmony with the spirit of your editorial, but I think you should know that as far as our committee is concerned, we are out to cure evils no matter by whom they are used.Further, Thomas stated, the editorial implied that the committee thought it good politics to be on the side of the employees. “In my particular case I think that politically my position on this Civil Liberties Committee is a very, very bad one for me. It may be of interest for you to know that not a single word concerning any of our hearings has appeared in the newspapers of my home town, Salt Lake City.”12Increasingly the committee became concerned with industrial espionage, which in this context referred to the use of spies to disrupt union activities. On January 25, 1937, the New York Times reported that the so-called Corporations Auxiliary Company (CAC) had employed 200 labor spies to prevent strikes and paid its president an annual salary of $75,000. When La Follette and Thomas questioned James H. Smith, the CAC's handsomely paid president, he explained that their clients liked their services and paid for them—and their best customer was the Chrysler Corporation. Thomas was particularly interested in how, as the witness claimed, the use of union-breaking spies improved production, increased efficiency, and reduced costs.13When Smith responded that “we deal entirely with the human element and eliminate all reasons for discord, [we] achieve the desired result,” Thomas was insistent: you are in reality selling something you cannot deliver. “It is nothing but industrial espionage to get at this ‘human element’ and so if a spy takes advantage of a weak-minded neighbor, that would be worthwhile information on reaching the human element,” he caustically remarked. “Have you ever made your operatives go to church to see what was being preached, or to a college to see what was being taught?” “All sides would be informed,” the witness rejoined. “The President . . . said nations fell because they did not know what was going on in the realm. I wrote a letter around it and sent it to our clients.” One can only speculate on how a mind such as Thomas's interpreted this circuitous logic. In one sharp exchange three days later concerning what the witness maintained as the fundamental honesty of the operatives, Thomas commented, “And you say they are honest. Misleading fraternity brothers and violating the oath they take not to reveal lodge secrets? . . . Can a spy be honest?”14“Testimony Amazes Senators at La Follette Civil Liberties Committee's Hearing Today” the Washington Daily News announced on February 9, 1937. According to the United Press, William H. Martin, a former operative for Pinkerton, admitted that he had been assigned to shadow Assistant Secretary of Labor Edward L. McGrady while he was attempting to arbitrate a Chevrolet plant strike in Toledo, Ohio, in 1935. (He had not been, he said, “very successful.”) When Thomas asked Martin how many Pinkertons were in Toledo at the time, he answered, “Oh, there must have been 40 or 50.” When he asked R. L. Burnside, assistant superintendent of the Detroit office, if he had asked Martin to follow McGrady, Burnside replied no, “But if he says I told him to, I guess I did.” He also indicated that he could not remember why the assignment was made. “It couldn't have been because you were interested in seeing the strike continue so you could sell more of your services and were afraid he might settle it?” Thomas asked. Burnside denied this.15After Burnside admitted that he believed a Pinkerton agent would have been justified in shadowing Governor Frank Murphy should he meet with the president at the White House, Thomas's questions took a distinctly more ethical direction. Asking the witness if he considered following government officials “proper practice,” the respondent replied that government officials should have no expectation of exemption. Calling Robert Pinkerton to the stand, Thomas flatly asked about the ethical implications of such activity. Government officials, no, he responded. Committee members were fair game. When informed that he had been watched without his knowledge, Assistant Secretary McGrady replied, “I think it is a terrible thing for private detectives to spy on Federal officials on Government business. But we expect it. We know or suspect that we are being watched. We have been told our wires have been tapped.” Clearly the clandestine activity was reaching into the offices of the federal government itself. On that same day La Follette and Thomas examined loaded rubber hose “persuaders” said to have been used by guards at an automotive plant. Two thousand such weapons had allegedly been manufactured in Flint, Michigan.16On March 22, 1937, Thomas delivered a speech on the National Broadcasting Network that discussed labor problems and illegal activities such as spying, which had damaged the credibility of industry. “One directing officer of one of these labor-busting coercing, public opinion-controlling, and spy-employing organizations testified under oath that he had never talked with a laboring man in his 25 odd years of experience, yet he was respected by the great industrialists as a directing force in labor relations.” Asked what government could do, he answered by saying that “it can lay down broad definitions of what shall constitute fair and unfair labor and industrial practices. It can also define by law what a union is and thus outlaw the racketeer and the dishonest labor leader, bring into existence courts or boards to enforce fair labor practices and thus give the third party with public interest necessary to successful participation.” But Thomas reiterated, “strikes are like war, are outmoded. For this great nation to assume that it cannot solve its labor problems is to admit a failure our history will not deny. The key to the solution is trust, confidence, and mutuality.” Again he repeated his firm belief in reasonable discussion and the exchange of ideas as the viable (and successful) alternative to violence and illegal activity.17As the days of the hearings stretched into weeks and more serious criminal behavior was uncovered, the press became increasingly fascinated by the “impresarios of this senate drama . . . unlike as Mutt and Jeff.” La Follette was described as impulsive, incisive, relentless—impassively staring down witnesses while pummeling them with “trip-hammer questioning.” Elbert Thomas, on the other hand, was compared to a kindly country doctor, his academic background evident in his grave tone, “as if he were saying, ‘How long have you had this fever, Mr. Pinkerton?’” La Follette was not shy about “barking” at reluctant witnesses, but Thomas (“no less persistent”) concentrated on the “ethics of industry” and seemed to be genuinely offended by the moral ambiguity of the confessions. “You say you had a duplicate key made without Mr. Jones’ knowledge? . . . Do you think that was right?” And he was a stickler for accuracy: Is any man who joins a union a communist? he asked. What is a communist? Thomas also repeatedly pointed out to industrialists that instead of spending thousands of dollars on violent and illegal activity, they might be better served by spending a little money “trying to bring about a knowledge of industrial relations.”18Even as the hearings continued and testimony accumulated regarding beatings, violence, espionage, weaponry, subterfuge, and destruction of company records, worse was to come. In the spring of 1937, an already volatile situation exploded in “Bloody Harlan” Kentucky; and on Memorial Day, a lethal confrontation took place in Chicago, when police shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators during the “Little Steel Strike.” It was at this point that the La Follette-Thomas subcommittee could turn a spotlight on the oppressive practices used by some corporations against working people and spur the growth and legitimacy of organized labor in the Depression years.The events that led up to the Harlan Coal Mine Strike of 1939 began in 1931 when 18,000 nonunion miners, faced with a 10 percent wage cut, went on strike. The next six years were characterized by protests, riots, confrontations with the Kentucky National Guard, interference with the workers’ mail, censorship of reading material, the forced use of scrip, and blacklisting: all of this amidst dangerous working conditions and desperate living conditions. Strikes were sporadic, as were periods of uneasy peace. However, with the opening of the La Follette hearings, Harlan miners saw an opportunity to show their exploitation to the rest of the country.19Then on April 24, 1937, Lloyd Clouse, a Harlan miner who was slated to testify before the La Follette Committee, was shot and killed. The community was convinced the crime had been committed to prevent his testimony. This act of alleged murder elevated the hearings to a new level. Harassment, beatings, intimidation, coercion, and evasion of the law were one thing. A cold-blooding killing was quite something else. The hearings into the Harlan troubles ran through the spring of 1937 and included extensive—at times jarring—testimony about conditions in the county. A number of young boys from Lloyd Clouse's family, for instance, provided eyewitness accounts of shootings at union men and told of how their elders warned them to keep quiet lest they stir up more trouble.20The federal government rapidly obtained indictments against a number of Harlan County citizens, inspiring the Pulitzer Prize–winning Herbert Agar to see some cause for hope amidst tragedy. With perhaps too much optimism, Agar wrote: “More than anything that has happened in months, that announcement gives me the feeling we are moving in to a new period in America and that the worst elements in our system are gone forever.”21 Likewise, an editorialist writing in the Birmingham Post in May 1937 deplored the conditions in the “feudal principality as Harlan County, Ky., where private gang-law is supreme over all statutes,” but exulted in the thought that “Senators La Follette and Thomas are giving the people light, and the people will somehow find a way.”22Without doubt the most dramatic episode came out of the national union campaign to organize steel mills, which led to a strike that spread across seven states and twelve cities and involved over 80,000 workers. Tom M. Girdler, president of Republic Steel, issued a letter to his employees in which he asked, “Must Republic and its men submit to the communist dictates and terrorism of the CIO? If America is to remain a free country, the answer is no.”23 On Memorial Day the situation came to a tragic climax. Strikers and their families, demonstrating in front of the Republic Steel Plant in Chicago, were attacked by police, who fired indiscriminately into the crowd of approximately one thousand workers and their families. The incident was not widely reported until an amateur photographer's film footage, at first suppressed by police, was released to the public. The La Follette committee, having already viewed the short piece, moved to clear the path for a federal investigation and to determine what the scope of its study would be. The discovery of the existence of what came to be called “newsreel” film changed the tenor of the investigation and infused the episode with a heightened sense of urgency.24Thomas told the Washington Daily News on June 17 that he had viewed the film in three secret showings with other members of the committee and that it indicated “extreme brutality” by Chicago police in their “unprovoked attack on a peaceful group of strike demonstrators.” The film, Thomas said, showed “with great clarity” an attack by about 200 policemen on a crowd of strike sympathizers, including women and children. Ultimately ten men were killed and scores injured when the police charged with pistols and clubs. “I am surprised the number of casualties was not far larger. It is very much to the credit of the group that it showed so much control under great provocation by the police. The strikers offered absolutely no resistance and showed no belligerence. It was a one-sided fight—if you can call it a fight at all.” A line of policemen charged with swinging clubs, Thomas said, beating the running strikers until “windrows” of fallen bodies covered the ground, adding that there was no evidence that any police were injured. “If this film shows the whole story of what happened,” he said, “the Chicago police stand condemned not only of extreme brutality, but of being bad policemen.” He described having seen men shot in the back and one woman clubbed until blood streamed down her face. Thomas did qualify his statement, however, by adding that the film had been taken at close range and did not show whether anything had occurred at a greater distance to provoke law enforcement.25Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins moved immediately to create a strike board to settle the steel situation, calling the episode in Chicago an “emergency” that would adversely affect steel production and commerce.26 By July 1 the committee was questioning Chicago policemen, who were on the defensive; La Follette, for his part, was impatient and skeptical of evasive and inconsistent responses. He claimed discrepancies existed between affidavits taken after the fact and testimony being immediately offered. When one officer, who had signed a document stating that a bullet struck the patrol-wagon door, was asked by Thomas if he had read the affidavit before he signed it. “Sure,” he replied. “Then you can't pass the buck to the stenographer,” La Follette snapped.27Before the hearings concluded on July 3, 1937, a massive amount of testimony was presented, the majority of it related to police conduct and their responsibility as catalysts in an unstable situation. The committee's report, in turn, carefully reconstructed information from newsreels, photographs, material evidence, and testimony. The analysis of all this evidence found that some of the police testimony must have been mistaken or perjured, and that the police evidently fired the first shots. The report noted, quite powerfully, that “The dominant impression left by the testimony of these witnesses is that the police attack came without warning, and that the sequence of events, the shooting, gassing, and clubbing, was so telescoped that everything appeared to happen at once. . . . [T]he motion-picture film bears out their testimony.”28 The hearings and report, then, brought at least a measure of clarity to the Memorial Day incident.On July 3, 1937, La Follette and Thomas announced that their investigation into the Memorial Day incident was concluded. Action now had to come from Chicago's leaders, Thomas told the New York Times. But on July 6, he made a curious statement to the press: “Strikes are out of date and I often wonder how any intelligent group can participate in them.” Alluding to the loss of revenue to both employers and workers, he stated, “Even the Reds who are reputed to have a hand in present day labor unrest know they can't win a strike. History shows that every strike ends up ultimately at the conference table.”29 Then, when addressing the American Osteopathic Association, Thomas disclosed that pending legislative measures would take “steps in the direction of permanent industrial peace.” One measure would provide federal protection to witnesses giving testimony before a Senate committee, a gesture toward Lloyd Clouse; the second would make crossing of state lines by strikebreakers a federal offense.30 In one sense, it could be argued that given all that Thomas had learned about the injustices that had been inflicted on working people, he would have perceived the strike as a hazardous and not necessarily successful last resort. On the other hand, one must also take into account his abhorrence of violence and his intellectual dedication to the belief that reasonable people could reach satisfactory solutions.Throughout the summer of 1937, Thomas received a remarkable variety of correspondence on the work of the Civil Liberties subcommittee. Some were polite letters requesting the committee report, to which Thomas promptly responded. In every case, he answered the letters with tact and personal attention to individual concerns. A professor of agriculture at Iowa State College commended the committee on its efforts, chastised the Chicago Tribune for falsely reporting that the senators had “hissed” at one of the police officers, and asked for a copy of the hearings on the conditions in Harlan County, Kentucky. As far as the Tribune was concerned, Thomas responded, it would be fine “if they were interested in printing the truth.”31 Lewis J. Valentine, the police commissioner of New York City, thanked Thomas for a copy of the report on the Memorial Day Massacre.32John Rosenfeld, vice president of the Eskimo Knitting Mills in Philadelphia, was not so sympathetic; complaining of the “destructive activities” of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), he accused the union of closing up Eskimo's shops “by violence,” “notwithstanding the fact that the girls insisted on coming into work.” Eskimo, he continued, had closed shops, cancelled orders, lost a significant amount of business, and, ultimately, liquidated. Rosenfeld maintained that he believed in a “good living” wage and working conditions, and the selfish motives of the CIO (to his mind) had destroyed a good company. Thomas replied that he appreciated “having the benefit of your thoughts on this subject.”33Other pieces of correspondence Thomas received that summer conveyed how the committee's work fit into the broader political and cultural debates of the 1930s. One James H. Beatty, who was writing from a Veterans Administration Facility in Wisconsin, voiced his anger at the “abuse and one-sided-ness” of both Thomas and La Follette concerning “Chicago Police and Communist (Known) C.I.O. Dynamiters and Tyrants, Destroyers and Over-Throwers of American Institutions.” The police, he wrote, were scapegoats, when the real culprits were the “international hijackers” being used by the CIO's John L. Lewis, whom Beatty described as a “Field Marshall for President Roosevelt.” Beatty went on to accuse the CIO of plotting “collectivism for exploitation purposes . . . [to] overthrow our Democracy and enslave us all,” and closed by “advis[ing] you men and the Benedict Arnold Governors of some states to return to your people.” Thomas responded: “I wish to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of July first relative to the work of the Senate Civil Liberties Committee. Sincerely yours, Elbert D. Thomas.”34 Beatty's letter is a reminder that the pro-labor stance of New Dealers did not sit well with those Americans who believed Roosevelt's administration portended a slide toward communism.On the other hand, Thomas received significant and enthusiastic responses, understandably, from organized labor, whose support he had enjoyed. His visibility and quie
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