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101-461: Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers ; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from

202-760: A 1929 ILGWU meeting in Harlem focused on enrolling black women. In 1923, Benjamin Schlesinger , the International's President, resigned. The convention elected Morris Sigman , who had previously been Secretary-Treasurer of the International before resigning in a dispute with Schlesinger, as its new President. Sigman, a former IWW member and anti-communist, began to remove Communist Party (CP) members from leadership of locals in New York, Chicago , Philadelphia and Boston . Sigman could not regain control of

303-451: A brilliant group of writers, including James Agee , Robert Fitzgerald , Whittaker Chambers, Robert Cantwell , Louis Kronenberger , and Calvin Fixx . ... They were dazzling. Time 's style was still very hokey—"backward ran sentences till reeled the mind"—but I could tell, even as a neophyte, who had written each of the pieces in the magazine, because each of these writers had such

404-754: A cover story within a month on James Joyce 's latest book, Finnegans Wake . He started at the back of the magazine, reviewing books and film with James Agee and then Calvin Fixx . When Fixx suffered a heart attack in October 1942, Wilder Hobson succeeded him as Chambers's assistant editor in Arts & Entertainment. Other writers working for Chambers in that section included novelist Nigel Dennis , future New York Times Book Review editor Harvey Breit , and poets Howard Moss and Weldon Kees . A struggle had arisen between those, like Theodore H. White and Richard Lauterbach , who raised criticism of what they saw as

505-481: A day student at Columbia College of Columbia University . At Columbia, his undergraduate peers included Meyer Schapiro , Frank S. Hogan , Herbert Solow , Louis Zukofsky , Arthur F. Burns , Clifton Fadiman , Elliott V. Bell , John Gassner , Lionel Trilling (who later fictionalized him as a main character in his novel The Middle of the Journey ), Guy Endore , and City College student poet Henry Zolinsky . In

606-456: A democratic union – but they know who's boss." Under his leadership the union, more than three fourths of whose members were women, continued to be led almost exclusively by men. Rose Pesotta , a longtime ILGWU activist and organizer, complained to Dubinsky that she had the same uncomfortable feeling of being the token woman on the ILGWU's executive board that Dubinsky had complained about when he

707-575: A distinctive voice. By early 1948, Chambers had become one of the best known writer-editors at Time . First had come his scathing commentary "The Ghosts on the Roof" (March 5, 1945) on the Yalta Conference in which Hiss partook. Subsequent cover-story essays profiled Marian Anderson , Arnold J. Toynbee , Rebecca West and Reinhold Niebuhr . The cover story on Marian Anderson ("Religion: In Egypt Land", December 30, 1946) proved so popular that

808-461: A gambler with widespread influence in the New York underworld. Rothstein was able to get the hired gangsters on both sides to withdraw. The local leadership was then able to negotiate a modified version of the agreement they had rejected before the strike began. While they had reservations about the concessions they were accepting, the left wing recommended it. Factional divisions within the CPUSA led

909-653: A government by the working class—a Workers’ Republic in America. 2. Political Action: To participate in all political activities, including electoral campaigns, in order to utilize them for the purpose of carrying our message to the masses. The elected representatives of the Workers Party will unmask the fraudulent capitalist democracy and help mobilize the workers for the final struggle against their common enemy. 3. The Labor Unions: To develop labor organizations into organs of militant struggle against capitalism, expose

1010-688: A key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. The union, generally referred to as the "ILGWU" or the "ILG", merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in the 1990s to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees ( UNITE ). UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE . The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented 250,000 workers between them, down from

1111-461: A member of Time 's "Senior Group", which determined editorial policy, in December 1943. Chambers, close colleagues, and many staff members in the 1930s helped elevate Time and have been called "interstitial intellectuals" by the historian Robert Vanderlan. His colleague John Hersey described them as follows: Time was in an interesting phase; an editor named Tom Matthews had gathered

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1212-532: A number of items under its own imprint, or in association with the Daily Worker . International Ladies%27 Garment Workers%27 Union The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union ( ILGWU ), whose members were employed in the women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States , one of the first US unions to have a primarily female membership, and

1313-494: A reason for living, but after his defection, he saw his actions as being part of an "absolute evil". The August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact drove Chambers to take action against the Soviet Union. In September 1939, at the urging of the anticommunist Russian-born journalist Isaac Don Levine , Chambers and Levine met with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle . Levine had introduced Chambers to Walter Krivitsky , who

1414-422: Is allowed to press down heavily upon us. Public officials have only words of warning to us – warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable. I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it

1515-401: Is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death. We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law

1616-517: Is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement. Others in the union drew a different lesson from events: working with local Tammany Hall officials, such as Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner , and progressive reformers, such as Frances Perkins , they pushed for comprehensive safety and workers' compensation laws. The ILG leadership formed bonds with those reformers and politicians that would continue for another forty years, through

1717-458: The Forward , the highly influential Yiddish newspaper in New York, as Executive Vice-President of the union. Sigman did not like the proposal, but acceded to it. Five months later he resigned in a dispute with the union's executive board and Schlesinger replaced him, with Dubinsky named as Secretary-Treasurer. Schlesinger died in 1932 and Dubinsky, still Secretary-Treasurer, became President of

1818-540: The 1948 presidential election , while the ILGWU campaigned energetically for Harry S. Truman , nearly bringing New York State into his column. Dubinsky had hopes of launching a national liberal party, headed by Wendell Willkie , the Republican candidate for President in 1940 who had soured on the Republican Party after his defeat in the primaries in 1944. In Dubinsky's eyes this new party would attract

1919-583: The Congress of Industrial Organizations as a rival to, rather than a part of, the AFL. Dubinsky also had personality differences with Lewis, whom he resented as high-handed. Dubinsky was alarmed by the presence of Communist Party members on the payroll of the CIO and the fledgling unions it had sponsored. Dubinsky was opposed to any form of collaboration with communists and had offered financial support to Homer Martin ,

2020-802: The Decorative Designers ; his mother was last a social worker. Chambers's brother, Richard Godfrey Chambers committed suicide shortly after he had withdrawn from college at age 22. Chambers cited his brother's fate as one of many reasons that he was then drawn to communism. As he wrote, it "offered me what nothing else in the dying world had power to offer at the same intensity, faith and a vision, something for which to live and something for which to die." After graduating from South Side High School in neighboring Rockville Centre in 1919, Chambers worked itinerantly in Washington and New Orleans, briefly attended Williams College and then enrolled as

2121-629: The Democratic Party itself. The new party was subject to many of the same fissures that divided the left in the late 1930s. For a while after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , CPUSA members within the ALP condemned FDR as a warmonger because of his support for Britain. At one particularly stormy meeting Dubinsky and the other leaders were only able to hold their vote endorsing Roosevelt after moving from room to room and calling

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2222-740: The Federal Bureau of Investigation of Chambers's information in March 1940. In February 1941, Krivitsky was found dead in his hotel room. Police ruled the death a suicide, but it was widely speculated that Krivitsky had been killed by Soviet intelligence. Worried that the Soviets might try to kill Chambers too, Berle again told the FBI about his interview with Chambers. The FBI interviewed Chambers in May 1942 and June 1945 but took no immediate action in line with

2323-705: The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he gave the names of individuals he said were part of the underground " Ware group " in the late 1930s, including Alger Hiss . He once again named Hiss as a member of the Communist Party but did not yet make any accusations of espionage. In subsequent sessions, Hiss testified and initially denied that he knew anyone by the name of Chambers, but on seeing him in person and after it became clear that Chambers knew details about Hiss's life, Hiss said that he had known Chambers under

2424-765: The Jewish Socialist Federation and the Workers' Council of the United States . In the meantime, the underground Communist Party, with overlapping membership, conducted political agitation. By 1923, the aboveground party sought to engage the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in united front actions, but it was rebuffed. Both the WPA and the SPA engaged in separate labor party efforts, prior to

2525-726: The New Deal and beyond. The ILGWU was able to turn the partial victory of the Great Revolt into a lasting victory; within two years it had organized roughly ninety percent of the cloakmakers in the industry in New York City. It improved benefits in later contracts and obtained an unemployment insurance fund for its members in 1919. At the same time political splits within the union were beginning to grow larger. The Socialist Party split in 1919, with its left wing leaving to form various communist parties that ultimately united under

2626-588: The Rand School of Social Science , the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union , and The World Tomorrow . In 1924, Chambers read Vladimir Lenin 's Soviets at Work and was deeply affected by it. He now saw the dysfunctional nature of his family, he would write, as "in miniature the whole crisis of the middle class", a malaise from which communism promised liberation. Chambers's biographer Sam Tanenhaus wrote that Lenin's authoritarianism

2727-568: The presidential election of 1924 . The SPA participated in the Conference for Progressive Political Action , which dissolved itself into the Progressive Party . The WPA succeeded in dominating the national Farmer–Labor Party , but that organization quickly returned to its constituent parts. At its 1925 convention, the group renamed itself the Workers (Communist) Party and in 1929 the Communist Party, USA. The party's youth affiliate

2828-471: The shop stewards movement that had swept through British labor in the preceding decade, started building up their strength at the shop floor level. The Communist Party did not intervene in ILGWU politics in any concerted fashion for the first few years of its existence, when it was focused first on its belief that revolution in the advanced capitalist countries was imminent, followed by a period of underground activity. That changed, however, around 1921, as

2929-585: The "pumpkin papers" were thought until late 1974 to be locked in HUAC files. The independent researcher Stephen W. Salant , an economist at the University of Michigan, sued the U.S. Justice Department in 1975 when his request for access to them under the Freedom of Information Act was denied. On July 31, 1975, as a result of this lawsuit and follow-on suits filed by Peter Irons and by Alger Hiss and William Reuben,

3030-735: The Amalgamated Clothing Workers, helped found the American Labor Party in 1936. At the time Dubinsky and Hillman were both nominal members of the Socialist Party, although Dubinsky had, by his own admission, allowed his membership to lapse during the factional fighting of the 1920s. The Labor Party served as a halfway house for socialists and other leftists who were willing to vote for liberal Democratic politicians such as Roosevelt or Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, but who were not prepared to join

3131-678: The HUAC after it had subpoenaed them. It contained four notes in Hiss's handwriting, 65 typewritten copies of State Department documents and five strips of microfilm, some of which contained photographs of State Department documents. The press came to call these the " Pumpkin Papers " since Chambers had briefly hidden the microfilm in a hollowed-out pumpkin. The documents indicated that Hiss knew Chambers long after mid-1936, when Hiss said he had last seen "Crosley", and also that Hiss had engaged in espionage with Chambers. Chambers explained his delay in producing

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3232-493: The ILG. The failed 1926 strike nearly bankrupted the ILGWU. The International also lost, for a time, some of the locals that chose to follow their expelled leaders out of the ILGWU rather than remain within it. Sigman also proved nearly as abrasive, although not as fierce, toward the right wing within the ILGWU, leading Dubinsky to suggest in 1928 that the union should bring back Schlesinger, who had gone on to become General Manager of

3333-428: The ILGWU as well. Dubinsky proved to be far more durable than his predecessors. He did not tolerate dissent within the union, and insisted that every employee of the International first submit an undated letter of resignation, to be used should Dubinsky choose to fire him later. He also acquired the power to appoint key officers throughout the union. As he explained his position at one of the union's conventions: "We have

3434-536: The ILGWU chased down and organized manufacturers' "runaway shops" and established a strong foothold in the hinterlands of the Midwest and East Coast. Rose Pesotta played a key role in early organizing drives in the rubber and steel industries. Dubinsky was unwilling to split the AFL into two competing federations and did not follow Lewis and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers when they formed

3535-658: The ILGWU led an even larger strike, later named "The Great Revolt", of 60,000 cloakmakers . After months of picketing, prominent members of the Jewish community, led by Louis Brandeis , mediated between the ILGWU and the Manufacturer's Association. The employers won a promise that workers would settle their grievances through arbitration rather than strikes during the term of the Agreement (a common clause in Union contracts today). It did also manage to include provisions for

3636-501: The ILGWU's peak membership of 450,000 in 1969. The union published its official newspaper, Justice , in Jersey City, New Jersey. The ILGWU was founded on June 3, 1900, in New York City by seven local unions, with a few thousand members between them. The union grew rapidly in the next few years but began to stagnate as the conservative leadership favored the interests of skilled workers, such as cutters. This did not sit well with

3737-468: The ILGWU, particularly in New York City, in the early years of the decade and hoped to expand their influence. In the late 1920s, the ILGWU began focusing on recruiting African-American women, specifically. Floria Pinkney , a dressmaker from Connecticut who lived in Brooklyn , was instrumental in this focus. Pinkney spoke alongside Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters president A. Philip Randolph at

3838-540: The Justice Department released copies of the "pumpkin papers" that had been used to implicate Hiss. One roll of film turned out to be totally blank because of overexposure, two others are faintly-legible copies of nonclassified Navy Department documents relating to such subjects as life rafts and fire extinguishers, and the remaining two are photographs of the State Department documents introduced by

3939-640: The Latina community, to create a union and demand better pay and working conditions. After a strike and resistance from the Merchand and Manufacturers Association, workers received some improved pay, but not all of their conditions were met. As one of the few industrial unions within the AFL, the ILGWU was eager to advance the cause of organizing employees in the steel, automobile and other mass production industries that employed millions of low-wage workers, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants. The ILGWU

4040-448: The New York locals, including Dressmakers' Local 22, headed by Charles S. Zimmerman , where the CP leadership and their left-wing allies, some anarchists and some socialists, enjoyed strong support of the membership. Local 22 rallied to prevent the International from physically retaking their union hall. Those unions led the campaign to reject a proposed agreement that Sigman had negotiated with

4141-685: The Soviet underground (1938), worked for Time magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware Group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century , all described in his 1952 memoir Witness . Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at National Review (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984. Chambers

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4242-762: The State Department, and Lauchlin Currie , a special assistant to Franklin Roosevelt . Another person named Vincent Reno had worked on a top secret bombsight project at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds . Berle found Chambers's information tentative, unclear, and uncorroborated. He took the information to the White House, but President Franklin Roosevelt dismissed it. Berle made little if any objection. He kept his notes, however, which were later used as evidence during Hiss's perjury trials. Berle notified

4343-481: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, refused to sign the agreement. But even so, the strike won a number of important gains. It encouraged workers in the industry to take action to improve their conditions, brought public attention to the sweatshop conditions. With some 20,000 shirtwaist workers as new members, Local 25 became the largest local affiliate of the ILGWU. Several months later, in 1910,

4444-432: The U.S. government. His espionage contacts were his friends, and he had no desire to inform on them. In his examination of Chambers's conversion from the left to the right, author Daniel Oppenheimer noted that Chambers substituted his passion for communism with a passion for God and saw the world in black-and-white terms both before and after his defection. In his autobiography, Chambers presented his devotion to communism as

4545-503: The United Nations Charter Conference was a communist, dismissed the case as a " red herring ". In the atmosphere of increasing anticommunism that would later be termed McCarthyism , many conservatives viewed the Hiss case as emblematic of what they saw as Democrats' laxity towards the danger of communist infiltration and influence in the State Department. Many liberals, in turn, saw the Hiss case as part of

4646-692: The Woods . Chambers was recruited to join the "communist underground" and began his career as a spy, working for a GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) spy ring headed by Alexander Ulanovsky , also known as Ulrich. Later, his main handler was Josef Peters , who was replaced by CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder with Rudy Baker . Chambers claimed that Peters introduced him to Harold Ware (although he later denied Peters had ever been introduced to Ware, and also testified to HUAC that he, Chambers, never knew Ware). Chambers claimed that Ware

4747-424: The arm I now raise," voted for a general strike. Approximately 20,000 out of the 32,000 workers in the shirtwaist trade walked out in the next two days. Those workers – who were primarily women and immigrant workers – defied the preconceptions of many conservative labor leaders, who thought that immigrants and women in general could not be organized. Their slogan "We'd rather starve quick than starve slow" summed up

4848-424: The best show in words of any writer we've ever had ... a superb technician, particularly skilled in the mosaic art of putting a Time section together." Chambers was at the height of his career when the Hiss case broke later that year. Meanwhile, Chambers and his family became Quakers , attending Pipe Creek Friends Meetinghouse near his Maryland farm. On August 3, 1948, Chambers was called to testify before

4949-577: The bird? The hunter or the dog?" The ILGWU began reducing its support for the CIO and, after a few years in which it attempted to be allies with both sides, reaffiliated with the AFL in 1940. Dubinsky regained his former positions as a vice president and member of the executive council of the AFL in 1945. He was the most visible supporter within the AFL of demands to clean house by ousting corrupt union leaders. The AFL–CIO ultimately adopted many of his demands when it established codes of conduct for its affiliates in 1957. Dubinsky and Sidney Hillman , leader of

5050-528: The codename "Karl" or "Carl", Chambers served during the mid-1930s as a courier between various covert sources and Soviet intelligence. In addition to the Ware group mentioned above, other sources that Chambers alleged to have dealt with included the following: Chambers carried on his espionage activities from 1932 until 1937 or 1938 even while his faith in communism was waning. He became increasingly disturbed by Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge , which began in 1936. He

5151-569: The controversial president of the United Auto Workers , who was being advised by Jay Lovestone , a former leader of the Communist Party turned anti-communist, in his campaign to drive his opponents out of the union. Lewis was unconcerned with the number of communists working for the CIO. He told Dubinsky, when asked about the communists on the staff of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee , "Who gets

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5252-399: The controversy spread to New York City newspapers. Later, the play would be used against Chambers during his testimony against Hiss. Disheartened over the controversy, Chambers left Columbia in 1925. From Columbia, Chambers also knew Isaiah Oggins , who went into the Soviet underground a few years earlier; Chambers's wife, Esther Shemitz Chambers, knew Oggins's wife, Nerma Berman Oggins, from

5353-591: The depth of their bitterness regarding the sweatshops in which they labored. The strike was a violent one. Police routinely arrested picketers for trivial or imaginary offenses, while employers hired local thugs to beat them as police looked the other way. A group of wealthy women, among them Frances Perkins , Anne Morgan , and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont , supported the struggles of working class women with money and intervention with officials and often picketed with them. Newspapers dubbed them "the mink brigade " because they used their wealth and privilege to try to protect

5454-416: The desperation of the Republican Party to regain the office of president since it had been out of power for 16 years. Truman also issued Executive Order 9835 , which initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. Hiss filed a $ 75,000 libel suit against Chambers on October 8, 1948. Under pressure from Hiss's lawyers, Chambers finally retrieved his envelope of evidence and presented it to

5555-476: The documents he collected from his sources. He planned to use them, along with several rolls of microfilm photographs of documents, as a "life preserver" to prevent the Soviets from killing him and his family. In 1938, Chambers broke with communism and took his family into hiding. He stored the "life preserver" at the home of his wife's sister, whose son Nathan Levine was Chambers's lawyer. Initially, he had no plans to give information on his espionage activities to

5656-506: The doors on their floors had been locked to prevent them from stealing or taking unauthorized breaks. More than 100,000 people participated in the funeral march for the victims. The fire had differing effects on the community. For some it radicalized them still further; as Rose Schneiderman said in her speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, to an audience largely made up of

5757-618: The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act , which promised to protect workers' right to organize. As in the case in other industries with a history of organizing, that promise alone was enough to bring thousands of workers who had never been union members in the past to the union. When the union called a strike of dressmakers in New York on August 16, 1933, more than 70,000 workers joined in it – twice

5858-507: The elitism, corruption and ineptitude of Chiang Kai-shek 's regime in China and advocated greater co-operation with Mao's Red Army in the struggle against Japanese imperialism, and Chambers and others like Willi Schlamm who adhered to a perspective that was staunchly pro-Chiang, anticommunist, and both later joined the founding editorial board of William F. Buckley, Jr. 's National Review . Time founder Henry Luce , who grew up in China and

5959-617: The establishment of the Joint Board of Sanitary Control, Committee on Grievances, and a Board of Arbitration. The union also became more involved in electoral politics, in part as a result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25, 1911, in which 146 shirtwaist makers (most of them young immigrant women) either died in the fire that broke out on the eighth floor of the factory, or jumped to their deaths. Many of these workers were unable to escape because

6060-412: The evidence as an effort to spare an old friend from more trouble than necessary. Until October 1948, Chambers had repeatedly stated that Hiss had not engaged in espionage, even when Chambers testified under oath. Chambers was forced to testify at the Hiss trials that he had committed perjury several times, which reduced his credibility in the eyes of his critics. The five rolls of 35 mm film known as

6161-438: The industry in 1925, bringing more than 30,000 members to a rally at Yankee Stadium to call for a one-day stoppage on August 10, 1925. After Sigman called a truce in the internecine war with the left-led locals, followed up by a reform of the ILGWU's internal governance system that gave proportional weight to locals based on the size of their membership, the left wing of the union was even stronger than before. Sigman depended on

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6262-490: The industry with which our workers' earnings are intimately bound ... 2. To serve as a central information agency: (a) To determine the level of 'fair piece rates.' (b) To record the production system and manufacturing techniques, under which these rates are paid. (c) To assist in training shop members and committees in distinguishing bad time study practices and good time study practices in the determination of rates." This emphasis on cooperation between labor and management using

6363-496: The intellectual environment of Columbia, he gained friends and respect. His professors and fellow students found him a talented writer and believed he might become a major poet or novelist. In his sophomore year, Chambers joined the Boar's Head Society and wrote a play called A Play for Puppets for Columbia's literary magazine The Morningside , which he edited. The work was deemed blasphemous by many students and administrators, and

6464-658: The internationalists in the Republican Party and the bulk of the Democratic Party, without the white Southern conservative bloc that commanded so much power in Congress. He proposed that Willkie begin by running for Mayor of New York City in 1945; Willkie, however, died before the plan could get off the ground. Dubinsky and the ILGWU played an active role in the Liberal Party for most of the 1950s and up until his retirement in 1966. The ILGWU ended its support for

6565-542: The late 1920s into the Communist Party USA. The convention for the establishment of the party took place on December 23–26, 1921 at the Labor Temple on East 84th Street, New York with 150 delegates. Accompanying the convention call was a statement of principles which read: 1. The Workers’ Republic: To lead the working masses in the struggle for the abolition of capitalism through the establishment of

6666-419: The leadership, unwilling to appear less militant, joined in urging rejection of the deal. That ended negotiations with the employers and kept the strike going another four months, at the end of which the union was nearly bankrupt and the left leadership almost wholly discredited. Sigman took over negotiations, settled the strike and then proceeded to drive the Communist Party from any positions of influence within

6767-442: The leading figures of the American labor movement spoke in general terms about the need for solidarity and preparedness, Clara Lemlich rose to speak about the conditions she and other women worked under and demanded an end to talk and the calling of a strike of the entire industry. The crowd responded enthusiastically and, after taking a biblical oath in Yiddish, "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from

6868-483: The magazine broke its rule of non-attribution in response to readers' letters: Most Time cover stories are written and edited by the regular staffs of the section in which they appear. Certain cover stories, that present special difficulties or call for a special literary skill, are written by Senior Editor Whittaker Chambers. In a 1945 letter to Time colleague Charles Wertenbaker , Time-Life deputy editorial director John Shaw Billings said of Chambers, "Whit puts on

6969-434: The majority of immigrant workers, particularly Jewish workers with a background in Bundist activities in Tsarist Russia, or with Polish and Italian workers, many of whom had strong socialist and anarchist leanings. The ILGWU had a sudden upsurge in membership that came as the result of two successful mass strikes in New York City. The first, in 1909, was known as " the Uprising of 20,000 " and lasted for thirteen weeks. It

7070-457: The name "George Crosley". Hiss denied that he had ever been a communist, however. Since Chambers still presented no evidence, the committee had initially been inclined to take the word of Hiss on the matter. However, a committee member, Richard Nixon , received secret information from the FBI that had led him to pursue the issue. When it issued its report, HUAC described Hiss's testimony as "vague and evasive". Biographer Timothy Naftali describes

7171-434: The name of the Communist Party USA . Those left wing socialists, joined by others with an IWW or anarchist background, challenged the undemocratic structure of the ILGWU, which gave every local an equal vote in electing its leaders, regardless of the number of workers that local represented, and the accommodations that the ILGWU leadership had made in bargaining with the employers. Left wing activists, drawing inspiration from

7272-644: The number that the union had hoped for. It did not hurt that the local leader of the National Recovery Administration was quoted as saying – without any basis in fact – that President Roosevelt had authorized the strike. The union rebounded to more than 200,000 members by 1934, increasing to roughly 300,000 by the end of the Depression. At the same time in Los Angeles, Rose Pesotta was organizing women dressmakers, primarily from

7373-534: The party after Dubinsky left office. The ILGWU established its own industrial engineering office, called the Management Engineering Department, in 1941. This followed two unsuccessful attempts to begin such a program in 1916 and 1919. The 1916 attempt had been suggested by future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Morris Hillquit, who invited Taylor Society co-founder R. G. Valentine to set up an experiment to demonstrate

7474-449: The party attempted to create a base for itself in the working class and, in particular, in the unions within the AFL . The party had its greatest success and failure in that effort in the 1920s in the garment trades, where workers had experience with mass strikes and socialist politics were part of the common discourse. Party members had won elections in some of the most important locals within

7575-460: The party leadership to reject the offer. As one member of the CPUSA and a leader in Local 22 recalled the scene, one of the members of the committee said, when presenting the agreement to a meeting of the shop floor leaders, "Maybe we could have gotten more, but ...", at which point a party leader interjected, "They didn't get more. If there is a possibility of getting more, go and get more." The rest of

7676-504: The police to arrest those who had disrupted the meeting. Dubinsky ultimately left the Labor Party in 1944 after a dispute with Hillman over whether labor leaders in New York, such as Mike Quill , who either were members of the Communist Party or were seen as sympathetic to it, should be given any role in the ALP. When Hillman prevailed, Dubinsky and his allies left to form the Liberal Party. The ALP went on to endorse Henry Wallace in

7777-534: The political orientation of the United States, which viewed the potential threat from the Soviet Union as minor compared to that of Nazi Germany . Only in November 1945, when Elizabeth Bentley defected and corroborated much of Chambers's story, would the FBI begin to take Chambers seriously. During the Berle meeting, Chambers had come out of hiding after a year and joined the staff of Time (April 1939). He landed

7878-610: The prosecution at the two Hiss trials, relating to US-German relations in the late 1930s. That story, however, as reported by The New York Times in the 1970s, contains only a partial truth. The blank roll had been mentioned by Chambers in his autobiography, Witness . However, in addition to innocuous farm reports, the documents on the other pumpkin patch microfilms also included "confidential memos sent from overseas embassies to diplomatic staff in Washington, D.C." Worse, those memos had originally been transmitted in code, which, thanks to their presumable possession of both coded originals and

7979-594: The reactionary labor bureaucrats, and educate the workers to militant unionism. 4. A Fighting Party: It shall be a party of militant, class conscious workers, bound by discipline and organized on the basis of democratic centralism, with full power in the hands of the Central Executive Committee between conventions. The Central Executive Committee of the Party shall have control over all activities of public officials. It shall also co-ordinate and direct

8080-508: The strikers. The strikers did not always welcome their help; Emma Goldman told the press that "If the strike is won, it will be on its merits, not because it was assisted by wealthy ladies." The strike was only partially successful. The ILGWU accepted an arbitrated settlement in February 1910 that improved the workers' wages, working conditions, and hours, but the settlement did not provide union recognition. A number of companies, including

8181-481: The support of David Dubinsky 's cutters union, many of the Italian locals, and the "out-of-town locals", many of which were mere paper organizations, to retain his presidency at the 1925 convention. The showdown came the next year. The International supported the recommendations of an advisory board appointed by Governor Al Smith that supported the union's demands that wholesale jobbers be financially responsible for

8282-452: The support of the right-wing locals loyal to Sigman, would be a quick success; it was not. Employers hired "Legs" Diamond and other gangsters to beat up strikers. The union hired their own protection, led by "Little Augie" Orgen , to retaliate. When the strike entered its third month, the left wing leadership went to A.E. Rothstein, a retired manufacturer, to ask him to intercede. He suggested they talk to his estranged son, Arnold Rothstein ,

8383-494: The techniques of scientific management . However, Valentine died before the experiment could be carried out. This was followed by a demonstration program carried out in Cleveland from 1919 to 1931 under Morris L. Cooke and Francis P. Goodell. The ILGWU listed its objectives in setting up the management engineering department as: "1. To assist in improving the manufacturing techniques and operating methods of all branches of

8484-421: The thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire. This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property

8585-507: The translations (claimed by Chambers, to be forwarded by Hiss), the Soviets now could easily understand. In taped recordings of President Nixon on July 1, 1971, he admitted that he had not checked the Pumpkin Papers prior to their use and he felt that the Justice Department was out to exonerate Hiss and a federal grand jury would indict Nixon's ally Chambers for perjury. The FBI continued investigating Hiss's innocence into 1953. Hiss

8686-407: The trial as "a battle between two queers,” an allusion to the fact that both parties were supposedly homosexual. Additionally, Hiss's stepson, Timothy Hobson, alleged that Chambers's accusation was borne out of unrequited romantic feelings for Hiss. The country quickly became divided over Hiss and Chambers. President Harry S. Truman , not pleased with the allegation that the man who had presided over

8787-472: The wages owed by their contractors and that workers be guaranteed a set number of hours per year, while allowing employers to reduce their workforces by up to 10% in any given year. While Sigman and Dubinsky supported the proposal, the CP-led and CP-influenced locals denounced it. The New York Joint Board called a general strike on July 1, 1926. The left-wing locals may have hoped that a general strike, which had

8888-458: The well-heeled members of the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL): I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities,

8989-400: The work of the Party members in the trade unions. 5. Party Press: The Party’s press shall be owned by the Party, and all its activities shall be under the control of the Central Executive Committee. Before the party established its own publishing house for books (International Publishers) and pamphlets (Workers Library Publishers), the Workers Party and Workers (Communist) Party published

9090-701: Was "precisely what attracts Chambers. ... He had at last found his church." Chambers became a Marxist and, in 1925, joined the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), then known as the Workers Party of America . Chambers wrote and edited for the magazine New Masses and was an editor for the Daily Worker newspaper from 1927 to 1929. Combining his literary talents with his devotion to communism, Chambers wrote four short stories for New Masses in 1931 about proletarian hardship and revolt, including Can You Make Out Their Voices? , which

9191-556: Was a personal friend of Chiang and his wife, Soong Mei-ling , came down squarely on the side of Chambers to the point that White complained that his stories were being censored and even suppressed in their entirety, and he left Time shortly after the war as a result. In 1940, William Saroyan lists Fixx among "contributing editors" at Time in Saroyan's play, Love's Old Sweet Song . Luce promoted him senior editor in either summer 1942 (Weinstein) or September 1943 (Tanenhaus) and became

9292-687: Was already informing American and British authorities about Soviet agents who held posts in both governments. Krivitsky told Chambers that it was their duty to inform. Chambers agreed to reveal what he knew on the condition of immunity from prosecution. During the meeting, which took place at Berle's home, Woodley Mansion , in Washington, Chambers named several current and former government employees as spies or communist sympathizers. Many names mentioned held relatively minor posts or were already under suspicion. Some names, however, were more significant and surprising: Alger Hiss, his brother Donald Hiss, and Laurence Duggan, who were all respected, mid-level officials in

9393-670: Was also fearful for his own life since he had noted the murder in Switzerland of Ignace Reiss , a high-ranking Soviet spy who had broken with Stalin, and the disappearance of Chambers's friend and fellow spy Juliet Stuart Poyntz in the United States. Poyntz had vanished in 1937, shortly after she had visited Moscow and returned disillusioned with the communist cause because of the Stalinist Purges. Chambers ignored several orders that he travel to Moscow since he worried that he might be "purged". He also started concealing some of

9494-474: Was born in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , and spent his infancy in Brooklyn . His family moved to Lynbrook , Long Island , New York State , in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were Jay Chambers and Laha Whittaker. He described his childhood as troubled because of his parents' separation and their need to care for their mentally-ill grandmother. His father was an artist and member of

9595-458: Was considered by critics as one of the best pieces of fiction of American communism. Hallie Flanagan co-adapted and produced it as a play entitled Can You Hear Their Voices? (see Bibliography of Whittaker Chambers ), staged across America and in many other countries. Chambers also worked as a translator, his works including the English version of Felix Salten 's 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in

9696-477: Was head of a communist underground cell in Washington that reportedly included the following: Apart from Marion Bachrach, these individuals were all members of Franklin Roosevelt 's New Deal administration. Chambers worked in Washington as an organizer in communists in the city and as a courier between New York and Washington for stolen documents, which were delivered to Boris Bykov , the GRU station chief . Using

9797-494: Was indicted for two counts of perjury relating to testimony he had given before a federal grand jury the previous December. He had denied giving any documents to Chambers and testified that he had not seen Chambers after mid-1936. Workers Party of America As a legal political party , the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood ,

9898-407: Was largely spontaneous, sparked by a short walkout of workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, involving only about 20% of the workforce. That, however, only prompted the rest of the workers to seek help from the union. The firm locked out its employees when it learned what was happening. The news of the strike spread quickly to all the New York garment workers. At a series of mass meetings, after

9999-631: Was named the Young Workers League , Young Workers (Communist) League and Young Communist League in tandem with the parent organization. As the Communist International entered the Third Period , the principle of a leftist united front was abandoned in favor of a single above-ground Communist Party. The above-ground Workers Party and underground party were thus gradually merged in a series of party conferences in

10100-641: Was one of the original members of the Committee for Industrial Organization, the group that John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers formed within the AFL in 1935 to organize industrial workers, and provided key financial support and assistance. The organizing momentum gained over the Depression would carry over into the new decade. By the end of the 1940s, the ILGWU had added roughly 70,000 new members and expanded out of its traditional enclaves of New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. During this drive

10201-506: Was the only Jew on the AFL's board. The union did not make any significant efforts to allow women into leadership positions during Dubinsky's tenure. As weak as the ILGWU was in the aftermath of the 1926 strike, it was nearly destroyed by the Great Depression . Its dues-paying membership slipped to 25,000 in 1932 as unionized garment shops shut or went nonunion or stopped abiding by their union contracts. The union recovered after

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