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    Publishing Information

    Issues and Men

    By Oswald Garrison Villard

    The Nation
    August 14, 1937
    Vol. 145, No. 7, P. 172

  1. Word has just come from the Civil Liberties Union that the La Follette subcommittee on violations of civil liberties is in danger of ceasing its investigations and must do so if it does not receive another appropriation before the impending adjournment of Congress. It has done its magnificent work on a budget of only $55,000 and now asks a modest $50,000 to carry on. If I had my way it would get $500,000 tomorrow. The decision rests with the Senate Committee on Audit and Control, headed by Senator James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, and if any of the readers of this page wish to serve the cause they should write to Senator Byrnes at once and urge that the La Follette subcommittee get the money it needs. The American Civil Liberties Union only states the truth when it declares that to the credit of these Senators lies "the most significant job ever done in exposing the violations of civil liberties in industrial disputes." To me that is inadequate praise. Bob La Follette has earned a distinguished-service medal if anyone ever did. He and his associate, Senator Thomas of Utah, have grimly stuck to their exhausting task with a determination that has compelled the admiration of all who have followed it.

  2. If they had done nothing else than force the showing of the film which revealed the murderous attack of the Chicago police upon the strikers at the Republic Steel plant, the money they have so far expended would have been justified. Think what that series of pictures of base police brutality, worthy of Hitler's choicest Brown Shirts, accomplished right here in New York. It made the Times and Herald Tribune actually for once deprecate official police lawlessness instead of minimizing it or ignoring it altogether. It actually led Police Commissioner Valentine to show the film in slow motion to all his chief officers who might have to handle strikes, not once but two or three times, in order that they might learn what not to do in dealing with labor troubles. True, that was followed by direct charges of police brutality during the shipping strike in Brooklyn, but still the films should help. Now, as I have so often written before, the sort of official murdering which Paul Anderson described in last week's Nation has been going on all over this country for years, and yet those of us who have cried out against it either have had no support or have drawn opposition from the highly respectable and from the conservative press. They have invariably said that the police are always right and that it is necessary for them to shoot or to club hard and "show no weakness" in order that disorder may be stopped at the beginning.

  3. Well, if I were dictator of this country I would make the preliminary report of the La Follette subcommittee compulsory reading by every member of every chamber of commerce and university club in this country—and throw in the Republican clubs, the fashionable women's clubs, and all the Union Leagues for good measure. I should especially make them read the story of what has happened in Harlan County, Kentucky, with its utter denial of every fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, the shocking story of murder, torture, abuse, horrible cruelty, and outright dictatorship over workingmen and all who dare to stand up for their rights—all this by the constituted authorities, notably the sheriff of the county, always the miserable, sycophantic servant of the industrial bosses. I would especially have Herbert Hoover, wearing his well-earned dunce's cap, sit upon a stool in a corner and read aloud first some of his own statements about the blessedness of the American standard of living and the "American system" and then follow it up by reading the facts about the deputy-sheriffs of Sheriff Middleton of Harlan County—men indicted for every crime, from murder to mayhem.

  4. But it isn't only in Chicago or Harlan that these things have happened. For months Senator La Follette, the committee's counsel, John J. Abt, and his secretary, Robert Wohlforth, have ranged the country, turning up agents provocateurs, phony detective agencies, strikebreaking thugs used by most of the leading industrial companies. One reason I should like to make their findings compulsory reading is that it would put a stop to the talk that this wrongdoing on the part of industry is merely to be attributed to a few black sheep—"there will always be a few crooks in every walk of life." I defy anybody who has read the La Follette record and has followed the happenings in this country to say that these offenders are few and far between. Then I want to prescribe some of these reports for the men and women I meet who solemnly assure me that all the violence in our labor troubles is on the side of labor; who insist that the President has abdicated and has put John Lewis in his place; that we are really being ruled by a ruthless labor dictator.

  5. A year or so ago some ignorant writer on the staff of the Waterbury Republican solemnly rebuked me for writing on this page that Franklin Roosevelt's worst failure was his refusal to say one word about the wholesale violations of civil liberties going on everywhere. That editor declared that my article proved what an utterly unbalanced man I am. Well, I wonder if that writer—he or another has just praised me for saying labor must not stoop to the level of the employers and use force in labor disputes—could be got to read Paul Anderson's article and this testimony before Bob La Follette. If he did, I bet he would hit the President's silence harder than I did; perhaps even accuse me of understatement.