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    Tares in the Wheat

    LOUIS STARK

    An exploration of subversive activities by Nazi and communist sympathizers behind the union front:—by the ranking labor reporter at the nation's capital


  1. The picture of national defense and subversive activities is like a mirror with two sides. One side reflects the Nazi-Fascist aspect; the other side, the communist.

  2. The Nazi-Fascist penetration of our defense program has been, in the main, confined to managerial and industrial circles, to attempts to nurture appeasement in the breasts of isolation-minded businessmen, and to espionage—industrial, economic, and military.

  3. Nazi espionage activities range from seeking the secret of the Norden bombsight to spying on vessels leaving American ports and assembling data on shipbuilding and naval construction. Such activities call for a vast network of agents. Factory espionage requires skilled workmen in key plants, sufficiently trusted to be able to pass on their information without being suspected.

  4. The recent espionage trials in New York City indicate how extensive the Nazi-Fascist attack on the American defense program has been. Apparently the method pursued was to inveigle isolated men and women to serve for pay, for reasons of national prestige or of fanatical devotion to the Fatherland.

  5. Such organized activities as those carried on under the direction of Fritz Wiedemann, former German Consul at San Francisco, enlisted individuals rather than organizations. To what extent the Hitler-Stalin pact was utilized by German agents in the United States to bring pressure to bear on American communists to engage in espionage work for them is a secret of the State Department. That it was considerable is admitted. Agents of the "new order" seem to have been more successful, at least in the United States, in managerial circles than in the ranks of organized labor. The communists rather than the Nazis have been responsible in large measure for subversive activities behind the union "front" which are the major theme of this article. We must go back twenty years to get them in perspective.

  6. Communism as a political force in American life is slight as judged by the votes cast in elections. A major part of the activities of the Communist Party in the United States has been devoted to the trade unions which are directly connected with the vital channels of industrial production and distribution.

  7. Founded to spread the ideas of communism in all lands, the Communist International (Comintern) established a section known as the Profitern or Red Trade Union International. This section formed affiliates in many countries. As the foreign policy of the Soviet government changed, so the Comintern and the Profitern changed and new slogans were handed down to the various communist parties and their followers in the ranks of labor. The trade unions were reserved for a special role—to be the advance guard of the revolutionary proletariat who would "activate" the masses and lead them toward the goal set by the Comintern. Thus, here in the United States, the communist attitude towards trade unions fluctuated from "boring from within," to setting up separate or dual unions, and then back again to the "boring from within" policy which was in effect in 1935 when the CIO was formed.

  8. In 1920 W. Z. Foster, twice Communist Party candidate for President, who had once been a Bryan Democrat, later a syndicalist, and then an active organizer in the American Federation of Labor, formed the Trades Union Educational League. The League's policy was to "bore from within" existing unions and to capture them for "progressive" purposes. Which, as it later appeared, included affiliation with the Red Trade Union International.

  9. The TUEL placed communists in strategic sections, but sought to give the impression that the organization was non-communist by also including non-party members in the set-up. So-called progressive trade union committees were formed to fight within the existing unions. Foster's idea was that they could eventually win control of the national unions by first taking over the voices of the locals and then moving up to the top.

  10. This program failed and the TUEL found that it was really organizing only Communist Party members. Two years later it became a subsidiary of the party and began to plant "cells" in existing AFL unions. The AFL, however, fought such efforts and its unions expelled members of the League.

     

  11. The communists were active in the twenties among the textile workers, ladies' garment workers, men's clothing workers, miners, steel workers, and maritime workers. Where rank and file union members were disheartened by venal or corrupt leadership, communists stepped into the lead. They took the clubbings on picket lines as part of their duty. Unfortunately, these positive tactics were negated by the need to follow the Communist Party line. This permitted little leeway to the rank and file left wing leaders.

  12. In Passaic in 1925 they led a revolt of textile workers which shut down some mills, but they were unable to capitalize on the legitimate unrest of the strikers. Employers would not sign contracts with unions that made no concealment of their communist leadership. Defeated and sullen, the strikers returned to work.

  13. One of the most disastrous strikes of the period, led by communists and their associates, was that of the New York cloakmaker members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1926. The strike had no raison d'etre except the communist slogan of "no class collaboration."

  14. Governor Alfred E. Smith's commission had made a thorough study of the cloak and suit industry and had been instrumental in obtaining for the union important concessions by the time the agreement had expired. It was apparent that another year would mean additional progress for the union.

  15. As a result of their closely integrated policy of working through small groups of activists, the communists were in possession of a majority of the votes of the joint board of local unions which decided on the strike.

  16. From the beginning, the communist-dominated strike committee made major blunders. Late in the strike, in order to form contacts with the police, they engaged Arnold Rothstein, a notorious gambler and go-between. Rothstein, furnished with large sums of money, was relied upon to "keep the police in line" when strikers got into trouble. At the same time he hired gangsters who would protect strikers from the strong arm agents of the employers and, if need be, invade employers' shops to spread the strike.

  17. It was soon apparent that the unsavory elements were corrupting the entire situation. The walkout lasted twenty weeks and the settlement set the union back for years. The financial cost of the strike was estimated at $3,000,000 but the intangible costs in morale and defeatism were incalculable.

  18. David Dubinsky, head of the cutters' union, a shrewd observer of this strike, learned the lessons which, when he became president of the Ladies Garment Workers Union, he applied so effectively that communists have not been able to repeat the performance of 1926.

  19. It was in 1926 that the executive committee of the Comintern chided the TUEL for its failures on the labor front. The American Labor Year Book of 1930 published the Comintern's decree ordering the TUEL to become an independent labor organization. This had been accomplished in Cleveland in August 1929, when the name was changed to the Trade Union Unity League. At that time the league formally set out as a rival to the American Federation of Labor with a program "to abolish capitalism and to establish a workers' and farmers' government." Thereafter the new organization instituted eleven independent unions and engaged in many strike activities, but by 1934 these unions had either been completely wiped out or had trickled to nominal membership.

     

  20. The depression years if 1929-33 found the communist unions in a woefully depleted state. They were apparently swinging toward oblivion when events pushed the pendulum the other way. First, communists were able to capitalize the discontent of employees in the mass production industries during the short-lived NRA experiment. Then came the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. And when, late that year, John L. Lewis organized the Committee for Industrial Organization and swept the field in seeking organizers, the communists hustled for places on the staff of the new organization.

  21. In those days, the CIO partook of the aspect of a crusade. The mass-production industries were almost wholly unorganized and Lewis's appeals to the unskilled and semi-skilled brought an immediate response from all sections of the country and from men working in a multitude of plants.

  22. It was probably a normal thing for communists to infiltrate into the CIO for there was a dearth of trained, seasoned trade union leaders ready and willing to follow the Lewis banner. In 1924 Lewis had denounced the revolutionary tactics they used in seeking to get control of the United Mine Workers of America. When a "Save the Union" committee was formed in 1928 during the mine union's parlous days, Lewis "cleaned out" his opponents because of the communist leadership that was associated with them and also because they represented a dual movement within his own union.

  23. Contrast this with the ease with which communists and "fellow travelers" penetrated the CIO in 1935 and after, during the early drives when millions of dollars were flung into the campaign to organize the basic industries. CIO unions in which, as a result, communists, fellow travelers, and their associates have been conspicuous include the National Maritime Union, the American Communications Association, the Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union, United Federal Workers, the International Woodworkers Association, the United Office and Professional Workers, the United Cannery and Packing House Workers, the Farm Equipment Workers Organizing Committee, the American Newspaper Guild, the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, the United Furniture Workers, the Transport Workers Union, and the State, County and Municipal Workers Union. A tool and die local of the United Automobile Workers of America (CIO) is under party line domination, and party line followers are in strategic posts in the United Radio, Electric and Machine Workers, whose president, James H. Carey, has been at odds with the left wing for some time. This opposition lost Carey his reelection at the UREMW convention in early September, but he still retains his post as secretary of the CIO.

  24. Today communists are barred by a constitutional provision from the United Mine Workers of America, presided over by John L. Lewis, founding chief of the CIO. Communism is not a factor in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, of which Sidney Hillman is president. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union, led by David Dubinsky, has been freed from the polemics and maneuvers of the left wing elements. Although communist organizers filtered into posts under the CIO's Steel Workers Organizing Committee, they have been quietly dropped in the last few years under orders from Philip Murray, CIO president.

     

  25. Except for three locals of teachers, recently purged, and some building trades unions, the AFL has been quite free of communist control.

  26. Communists in trade unions are exceedingly fortunate. They are protected by the more conservative leaders, who, torn between what they consider trade union duty and what they fear would be interpreted as going back on their own, defend men who, they know reasonably well, follow the party line. Particularly was this true during the "United Front" period of 1935-1939. Hitherto, the communists had been so far to the left that men like Norman Thomas, leader of the Socialist Party, were regarded by them as "social fascists" and the party's policy was ultra-revolutionary. Two years after Hitler came to power, and showed no desire to stop his propaganda against Bolshevism, Moscow decreed the United Front. Revolutionary slogans were dropped, communism became "Twentieth Century Americanism" and the communists were willing to cooperate with almost any group, except Trotskyists. This period came to an end with the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939. The United Front collapsed immediately. The war that followed became one between "imperialists" so far as the communists were concerned, revolutionary slogans began to crop up, while strikes in defense industries were encouraged. This phase ended abruptly when Hitler attacked on the east last June. Cooperation "in aid of Britain and the Soviet Union" is now the order of the day.

    The Party Line

  27. Communist leadership and party line followers tend to identify themselves by a simple pattern—namely, their swings back and forth with the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. Thus when the USSR was for collective security against fascist aggression, resolutions along these lines appeared like magic at all meetings dominated by communists and their fellow travelers. The Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939 turned a new page in Soviet policy and the party line swung in another direction. American communist literature then omitted the previous anti-fascist slogans and denounced "the war between two imperialisms," with special attacks on the role of the British in India, Africa, and other colonies. Anti-war propaganda was circulated in the United States, support of the American defense effort was ignored and emphasis was placed on the grievances of employee in defense industries. The disparate wage scales and pay classifications in some plants, notably in the aircraft industry, played directly into the hands of left wing elements. The employee in these plants had just grievances which should have been redressed. The workers themselves, many just out of highschool and entirely lacking in trade union experience, were easily led. There was no reason for them to suspect ulterior motives, particularly when their grievances were being agitated by union officials. What the young employees did not know at first was that many of these officials were also party line followers.

  28. The activity of communists in trade unions affected by the defense program was not clearly indicated until several months after President Roosevelt, by Executive Order, created the National Defense Mediation Board to adjust disputes in the defense industries. Board members at first did not suspect that any cases referred to them were other than normal labor-management disputes.

  29. The Communist Party line, however, became unmistakably visible in a series of strikes in the spring of 1941, notably the strike at the North American Aviation Company in Inglewood, Calif., the Allis-Chalmers strike near Milwaukee, the strike of die casters at Cleveland plants of the Aluminum Company of America and in the defiance of the Defense Mediation Board by several unions, notably the CIO's International Woodworkers Association.

  30. The grievance leading to the dispute in the North American Aviation plant had a bona fide basis, low minimum wage scales. When a stoppage appeared imminent, the Defense Mediation Board arranged a truce according to a formula that had already met with considerable success: deferment of the strike with the understanding, agreed upon by the company, that the terms finally worked out would be retroactive to the day negotiations began.

  31. Under this truce, union and company officials flew to Washington. Conferences with the board had been under way for two days when a strike was called without warning at the Inglewood plant. The excuse given by local leaders was that the defense board was "stalling," a charge that lacked any merit since the defense board's panel had been assiduously digging into the case.

    Communists and Defense Strikes

  32. That the local union leader of the strike had registered as a communist in California in 1938 might have remained hidden had it not been for an incident in connection with hearing of the Dies committee. Hugh Ben Inzer, former president of a CIO local in a General Motors plant on the west coast, had told that committee that there was a revolt among union members against the leading part being taken by communists. In the audience was Emil J. Freitag, president of the aircraft division local of the CIO's United Automobile Workers at the North American Aviation plant. He was in Washington with other union officials to appear before the Defense Mediation Board in connection with the Inglewood dispute.

  33. As the committee session concluded for lunch, Freitag and two of his associates descended on the committee able and denounced Inzer's testimony to Representative Jerry Voorhis, a member of the committee from California. Freitag declared that he had never had anything to do with communism and he and his associates insisted that they were "100 percent American."

  34. At this moment a committee attache handed Mr. Voorhis a telegram from the committee's west coast representative saying that Freitag had registered as a Communist Party voter in 1938.

  35. "You are a registered communist, aren't you?" asked Voorhis.

  36. "Not that I know of," Freitag replied, unaware of the contents of the telegram.

  37. Freitag was asked if he would be willing to appear on the stand before the committee and testify under oath that had not registered as a communist.

  38. "You've got me," said Freitag, as he turned away and left for lunch but not before he had been served with a subpoena to appear at the afternoon session.

  39. After lunch, Freitag was asked by Representative Joe Starnes of Alabama, who presided at the session, whether he had registered as a Communist Party member on January 8, 1938.

  40. "I would say that I am not a member of the Communist Party," replied Freitag.

  41. "Did you register as a communist voter on January 8, 1938?" persisted Starnes.

  42. "Yes," Freitag answered, "but after about two months changed my affiliation to the Progressive Party."

  43. An important figure in the North American Aviation strike was Wyndham Mortimer, middle-aged organizer for the United Automobile Workers, formerly a vice-president of that organization. In his youth a member of the United Mine Workers, Mortimer, veteran of the auto workers' union campaign in General Motors, was transferred to the west coast in 1939. He was, in his union, called a follower of the Communist Party line. While attached to the Detroit office of the UAW in 1938, Mortimer was closely identified with William Weinstone, district organizer of the Communist Party in Detroit, and B. K. Gebert, a Communist Party functionary assigned to the steel and automobile industries. He met them frequently, and together they sought to persuade Richard T. Frankensteen, then on the union executive board, to join with them in their opposition to the then president, Homer Martin, an opponent of communism. Joseph Zack, a former Communist Party functionary, testified before the Dies committee that Mortimer joined the party in 1933, and that he had endorsed Mortimer's application. Mortimer has repeatedly denied that he is a communist.

  44. Although he had been assigned to work in Seattle, the North American strike found Mortimer in the vicinity of that factory, where he took an active part with other left wing leaders. His activities in connection with the North American strike resulted in his dismissal by R. J. Thomas, president of the auto union.

  45. By their action in forcing the North American strike despite the standstill agreement for mediation, the local union leaders not only challenged their national leadership but threw down the gauge to the government itself. When the strike was called locally the Defense Mediation Board panel dropped its conferences at Washington with the principals to await further developments. These were not long in coming. Efforts by Philip Murray, president of the CIO, and Richard T. Frankensteen, aircraft division chief of the UAW-CID, to effect a return to work of the strikers were unavailing. A few days later federal troops took over the plant, moved the pickets several blocks away and soon all the employees were back at work with government assurance that their rights would be amply protected. Several weeks later, a contract was negotiated which was eminently satisfactory to the union.

    The Strike Pattern

  46. Had the North American Aviation strike stood by itself it might have been a lone example of communist activity and possibly an exceptional one. However, it was apparent that left wing forces, through their own "underground" had fixed a pattern for such cases. Soon afterwards the National Die Casters Union, affiliated with the CIO, was involved in a strike at the Aluminum Company of America's plant in Cleveland. In this instance the same procedure as that followed in the North American strike took place. That is, the local leaders of the die casters' union in Cleveland called the strike, while the national leaders of the union were conferring with the Defense Mediation Board in Washington. In this case there could hardly have been an excuse that the board was "stalling" as the walkout was ordered just a few hours after a Defense Mediation Board panel had sat down to talk the situation over with the national leaders. Yet "stalling" was the word used in Cleveland by local leaders in attempting to justify their breach of the agreement not to strike pending mediation by the board.

  47. The chief negotiators in the die casters' strike were Edward T. Cheyfitz, a national officer of the union, who is a former member of the Young Communists' League, and Alex Balint. Balint, an organizer for the die casters' union, was summoned before the Dies committee while he was in Washington on the strike parleys. Several witnesses testified to his communist activity and affiliations. According to this testimony, he was known by his party name of "Al Barry," and under this name had contributed an article on "Winning Youth Through the Young Communist League" to the Young Communist League Builder in September 1933. Charles Dirba, for fifteen years head of the Communist Party Control Commission and one of the most important communist officials in the United States, wrote to Herbert Goldfrank, secretary of the Ohio Communist Party, asking that he request Balint (the letter gives this name) to check up the application of an Ohio resident for party membership. The original is in the possession of the Dies committee.

  48. The seventy-one day strike at the Allis-Chalmers plant, UAW local, at West Allis, Wis., held up the construction of dams, power plants, naval vessels, and defense projects of all kinds. The strike was led by Harold Christoffel, a fiery young man, twenty-nine years old, who had been recommended for expulsion from the Socialist Party for alleged communistic tendencies.

  49. The atmosphere in which the strike was called was unfortunate, to say the least. Wisconsin law requires that a strike must be authorized by a majority of those involved. As head of Local 248, UAW-CID, Christoffel supervised the strike balloting. The requisite majority was not obtained when the first strike vote was taken on January 19, 1941. Two days later a second strike vote was taken. This time the vote was announced as 5,958 for a strike and 758 against it.

  50. A mechanical counter maintained by the personnel officer of the company, however, indicated that 4,547 employees had entered the polling place. This discrepancy led to an examination of the ballots and handwriting experts testified that approximately 2,200 ballots had been fraudulently cast. This was admitted by the union attorney.

  51. The Wisconsin Labor Board ordered another election and Christoffel went into court to prevent it on the ground that the board lacked jurisdiction. Circuit Judge Charles L. Aarons denied the union's request. He pointed out that the very officers who were found to have been responsible for the fraud were seeking to stop a free election.

  52. "It is scarcely understandable that anyone should stand up in this court and assert so abhorrent a proposition," he declared. The holding of the election became moot when a strike settlement was arranged.

    Communism in the CIO Convention

  53. The issue of communism in the CIO, although in the background from the inception of that organization, did not break out on the floor of the convention until the 1940 meeting in Atlantic City. At the 1939 convention in San Francisco, Lewis, yielding to the importunities of Murray and Hillman, warned young men in the CIO that membership in the Communist Party was not necessary to a career as a labor leader. This was a private rebuke, but it leaked out subsequently. Lewis has refrained from any public criticism of communism in trade union affairs and although he is not a communist, his opponents hold that the Lewis "line" and the Communist Party line were quite indistinguishable prior to the Nazi invasion of Russia. The communists are now for all-out aid to Britain and the Soviet Union, while Lewis is still as strongly isolationist as ever. For this position he is being vigorously attacked in the communist press.

  54. As a result of the severe condemnation of subversive activities in defense strikes, notably the North American and die casters' tie-ups, stories were afloat that President Murray of the CIO was about to begin a purge of communist elements the CIO. The left wing adherents were on the defensive. Murray's public appeal to the North American strikers as well as his private castigation of left wing CIO leaders had lifted him into an extraordinarily strong position.

  55. Feeling perhaps that he had gone too far to the right, Murray in a statement sent broadcast to all CIO affiliates, charged "labor's enemies" with seeking to "create factional dissensions." He denied, as "highly fantastic," stories in the public press about "splits, purges, Red-hunts . . . taking place in the CIO." Friends of the CIO chief, knowing his private distrust of communists in trade unions, were surprised at this turn of affairs. They had been waiting since the successor to Lewis was installed at the CIO election in November 1940 for the departure, resignation or ousting of several of the outstanding reputed fellow travelers of the communists from key positions in the CIO.

  56. In some areas the communist program in the trade unions has been exceedingly successful, notably in getting hold of key positions in communications and the maritime industries.

    Successes Behind the Union Front

  57. Under Mervyn Rathborne, associate of Harry Bridges, the left wing forces obtained strategic places as radio operators on many American ships and on shore. As members of the American Communications Associations (CIO) these operators have access to land and sea radio and telegraph correspondence. Rathborne, a quiet, shy-appearing man in his late thirties, engineered the maneuvers that placed this union in a vital artery of government and commerce. Then he resigned because of illness and accepted a minor post, his place being filled by Joseph Selley, another left wing adherent.

  58. The National Maritime Union (CIO) of which Joseph Curran is president, dominates seamen on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast and on the Great Lakes. For years one of the chief figures in this organization has been Tommy Ray, a young man almost legendary in communist circles. Ray and his associates built a "courier" service among seamen which kept alive a network of communication among the United States, South America, Europe, and Soviet Russia.

  59. Curran is a vice-president of the CIO, owing this place to Murray and Lewis. From time to time he denies communist affiliations. In the spring of 1941, however, he was one of the leaders of the communist-front anti-war organization known as the American Peace Mobilization whose picketing of the White House ceased with the Nazi attack on Soviet Russia, and the resulting change in the party line.

  60. Seamen, once cruelly exploited by steamship owners and shipmasters, have, since the formation of their new union and as a result of their revolt, tended to go towards the other extreme. On the east coast, where the NMU is strong, the captain of a vessel may, in theory, reject any man sent to him by the union, but in practice, he must take the men supplied or find himself without a crew. At sea, union meetings are held at all hours on shipboard and the decisions are served on the masters. If they refuse to comply, there are complaints to the union which will refuse them crews for their next voyage. A captain who cannot ship a crew is worthless to the owner and he will lose his berth. Not wanting to get into that position, the master "cooperates" with the union committee aboard ship and does the best he can. When an official of the U. S. Maritime Commission proposed recently that authority to supply crews remain in the hands of the union but that the captains be permitted to select the individuals, this mild proposal was denounced as "fascism" by Curran. On the west coast the seamen are members of the International Seafarers Union, an AFL affiliate headed by Harry Lundeberg, an opponent of the communists.

  61. Run-of-the-mine trade unionists suffer many handicaps in seeking to limit their organization to trade union activities and to keep political resolutions off the agenda. They are seldom organized as tightly as the left wing members. They do not follow a strict, disciplined party policy. Nor do they remain up night after night spinning programs for adoption by their own caucuses, to be presented at the union meeting.

  62. Probably no obstacle would be put in the way of sincere communists in the trade unions if it were felt that they placed union principles ahead of their political aims. Their subordination of union objectives to party policy makes it impossible for the trade unionists to depend on them.

  63. Since Hitler turned on Stalin, there have been no strikes comparable to the North American Aviation, the strike of die casters at the Aluminum Company of America, the seventy-one-day strike at Allis-Chalmers, and the left wing woodworkers' strike in the northwest. From opposition to the defense program, including Lend-Lease, the communists have swung towards direct intervention by the United States in the war. The unions in which the communists and their fellow travelers have influence echo these changed sentiments.

  64. If the Communist Party were merely a political organization, it would be treated like any other political party. It is distinguished from an ordinary political party in various ways. For one thing, political parties do not seek to capture and control trade unions though they may not be averse to angling for the votes of the union members; for another, political parties are made up of voters while the Communist Party admits aliens to membership.

  65. At the State Department in Washington, information as to the espionage proclivities of Communist Party agents exists in convincing form. Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Assistant Secretary of State, a liberal and not a "Red baiter," told the Institute of Human Relations recently that American communists have been Hitler's most useful espionage agents.

  66. Although aid to Russia is necessary, now that Russia fights our common enemy, he said, the aid is to the country, not the system.

  67. "I am not sure that the American communists are of any help to Russia now," said Mr. Berle. "The State Department has evidence that German espionage was turned over to them. Some were so entangled with the Nazis that they did not know whether their orders were coming from Russian or German sources.

  68. "Now the burden of proof is on them to show that they are not still part of the Fifth Column. Certainly they are of no use to Russia and no use to us. They are a nuisance, not a menace."

  69. Mr. Berle was speaking of the present time when the Soviet Union is making a stubborn stand against Hitler. What may happen if that situation changes is problematical.

  70. We need to ponder the implications of some American trade unions torn two ways, first by domestic crises and second by strings pulled from outside the country.
  71. American wage earners have a sufficiently difficult task to build up strong, disciplined organizations in face of the obstacles and inertia with which they must cope. To seek to do so against the additional handicap of foreign influences as pervasive as those of communist groups makes their task all the more onerous.

  72. For some time there have been hints that the Comintern would be disbanded and leave the way open for indigenous communist parties to grow up under their own direction. If this should come to pass the stigma of Moscow would be removed from the domestic communist movement whose appeals would be more likely to be taken at their face value. Until that time comes, however, communists operating in or close to the trade unionists will be more interested in following the devious course of another nation's foreign policy than they are in setting a course for the American worker to follow.