The rabbit hole of commie fixation
“I am not a communist,” pleaded an obscure coal miner by the name of John Cassol, who went on to ask a high-up union official to please try to save his livelihood. “I was always a good union man…. My job means a lot to me. I have a large family.”
Another miner, caught in the same dragnet, declared, “I am in no way connected with the Communist Party or any other party that is against the Constitution of the United States. I am a true American.”
The United States was then on the cusp of entering World War II. People were fearful. Truth be told, there were matters of commerce and political advantage involved in exposing Cassol and his fellow unionist, Ignatz Olin, to the terrors of being publicly identified as communists or fellow-travelers.
I ran across their story, and others’ stories, while researching the complexities and entanglements between the government, the United Mine Workers, and the United States Steel Corporation, the parent outfit of the H.C. Frick Coal and Coke Company, in the tense prewar months of 1940-41.
I’ve read a lot about the buildup to World War II. But until the other day, I had never even imagined this particular saga.
I was well aware of the divisions engendered by Hitler and the war in Europe among Americans torn between wanting to stay out of the conflict and the necessity of preparing to do battle. In its simplest terms, it was the American First movement vs. President. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In addition, FDR was running for an unprecedented third term in 1940, which among a cohort of Americans, mostly Republicans, actually, created its own anxieties.
Overlaying all of this was the war, and its screaming, bloody curdling headlines, such as the one atop front pages on June 14, 1940, ” Nazi Army Enters Paris.” Or this one a few days earlier, “Roosevelt Flays Action of [Italian dictator] Mussolini.”
Or this, referencing Uniontown-native Gen. George C. Marshall, “Marshall’s Asks for 400,000-Man Army” (the U.S. Army of World War II would eventually enroll 16 million into its ranks).
No wonder people were uptight. I would have been jittery, too. Maybe those who blew the whistle on the two coal miners and thousands of others can’t be blamed so much. On the other hand, what to the whistle blowers may have seemed wise looks these many years like gross violations of civil and political liberties.
Here, in short, is what transpired: Cassol, Olin, and thousands of other Pennsylvanians signed petitions to have the Communist Party candidates for president and other federal offices placed on the November 1940 state general election ballot.
Now, it’s never been a good idea to voice the communist line in the United States, to vote the communist ticket, or to be associated with communism in any way. That was especially true in 1940. The communist chieftains in Moscow were still nominally aligned with Hitler (this would change abruptly with the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union), and Hitler was evil incarnate.
Word got out about the petitions and the signatures, thanks largely to Rep. Martin Dies of Texas, the Red-obsessed chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, who sent staffers to Harrisburg to copy all 27,000 names (a state Communist Party record and twice the number of signatures needed to secure places on the ballot).
That’s when the now defunct Pittsburgh Press weighed in. Beginning on June 11, 1940, the newspaper proceeded with the intention to print the names of everybody in western Pennsylvania who signed the communist election petitions. It explained that it believed publication “will help determine whether or not the Communist Party has resorted to forgery or fraud to establish itself as a legal party in Pennsylvania.”
Party officials, in denying the charges, counter-charged that the Press was whipping up “hysteria against all who object to American entry into the war.”
Meanwhile, innocents like Cassol and Olin, who pleaded ignorance as to what they were signing, suffered. In addition to the unwarranted publicity, the two miners and 16 other like-acting members of their UMW local were expelled from the local for violations of the union constitution, which, in turn, cost them their jobs.
The 18 appealed their expulsions. UMW president John L. Lewis came to their rescue. In June 1941, the expulsions were vacated. Frequently portrayed as a miscreant, Lewis was more often the very opposite. Always wily, he was sometimes wise. Having recently flirted with leftist radicals, Lewis may have sympathized with the men.
The Press was not so much wise as wicked. The paper lived off the story for weeks. Each day, it printed hundreds of names and addresses. Commerce, not communism, is suspected.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.