by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Several prior posts here have featured, from the Homestead’s holdings, issues of The Open Forum, the newsletter of the Southern California Branch of The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU,) which was formed in 1920 during the Red Scare period involving government crackdowns of left-wing groups, including Communists and Socialists. The ACLU in those formative years was clearly in the Socialist camp, though vehemently opposed to Communists, and it, as it has done in the century and more since, emphasized free speech rights as embodied in the 1st Amendment of the Constitution.
Given that the political realm in most of the country, including greater Los Angeles, during the Twenties was controlled by the Republican Party during a long wave of conservatism, reading the pages of The Open Forum is interesting for seeing how a minority of activists presented its views in opposition. The highlighted edition for this two-part post is from 6 April 1929.
The main front-page feature concerned a statement by Libertas, a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to countering fascism in Italy, which was under the iron-fisted rule of dictator Benito Mussolini. Specifically, the group’s press committee for a lecture tour in California spoke up regarding attacks in the Angel City newspaper Italio-Americano against Gaetano Salvemini, a history professor in Italy who was a leading figure in that nation’s Socialist Party.
In “Libertas Answers Black-Shirts,” the piece lauded the exiled Salvemini for “having given his youth and great intelligence to his people” and for “refusing to lend his genius to an upstart and ignorant tyrant.” It bemoaned the “scurrilous attack” on Slavemini adding that it “is indicative of your intelligence and defender and apologist of your king and your Duce Mussolini.” It reminded the Italo-Americano that it was “living in a civilized country among civilized men and women,” but, if it was in the homeland, free speech would not be allowed.
Moreover, Libertas continued that the fascist “black shirts” who controlled Italy would not allow Italians in America to renounce the dictatorship in order to become American citizens and it went on to a lengthy condemnation of Il Duce and his regime, noting,
Whether you like it or not, Professor Salvemini, exile from his fellow scholar, his students and his country, comes here at the invitation of Americans and naturalized Americans of Italian birth, living in a civilized country, with no fear of your king, whom we either abjured or never owed any fealty.
We are eager to know the truth and enslavement and suffering of forty millions of fellow humans, many of whom are near and dear to us . . .
It is high time that the manganello, the black-shirts and the cross bones of your caps, instruments and symbols of Fascism, be relegated to the junk pile to make way for the teacher, the book and the evangel of learning.
Barbarians: The future belongs to science and liberty.
The cause to free labor figures Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings, held in San Quentin and Folsom state prisons, was a major one for left-wing figures during the period after both men were convicted, sentenced to die and then subjected to life imprisonment for their purported involvement in a 1916 bombing in San Francisco. With it being obvious that false testimony and perjury was relied upon by prosecutors, work went on for more than two decades to get the two men released.
A front page piece by Harvey O’Connor alleged that “the powerful California branch of America’s insolent public utilities,” which, he continued, was found by the Federal Trade Commission, to be “debauching 100,000 schools with a flood of poisonous propaganda,” were “the interests responsible for the continued imprisonment” of the two men. A pamphlet by a committee working on their behalf made the determination and it was said to be “backed by Federal investigators and committee head Henry T. Hunt stated “in the past twelve months the wave of indignation has been growing again” and it would “be impossible to quiet this public agitation” until the prisoners were released.
The reason for utilities, including railroad, telephone and telegraph, electric and gas companies, to be pressing for the continued imprisonment, especially of Mooney, was because he was deemed to be “an able and aggressive Labor leader.” These entities were also decried for trying to scale back or eliminate Progressive reforms, including unionization efforts and it was added that “the framed-up evidence which convicted” the two men “was manufactured by a private detective employed by these companies” due to Mooney’s effectiveness among streetcar and utility workers for unionization. Specifically mentioned was “the open shop,” a term used heavily in Los Angeles as well for a non-union business environment.
A page two piece by “G.H.S.” discussed the question of the “guardianship” of the vast majority of the American people, who, evidently, were deemed of not sufficient intelligence and talent for their financial well-being and “a more general extension and adoption of the principles of democracy.” A recent Los Angeles gathering included comment by an educator who said a teacher pension program was an imperative because teachers were prey to sharks and swindlers in real estate and business promotion, while an example was cited of a woman stenographer whose investment in fig farms did not pan out.
Also cited was the “present squeezing process in which the independent oil and gasoline dealers are being eliminated” and that this was a reminder that too many people were “foolishly initiated on the theory that this is a free country and that opportunities are open to all.” Criticized was “the tommyrot handed out by the publicity agents of the two old parties” in the 1924 election season who “made war upon each other at the polls, while their economic masters sat back and enjoyed the contest.
G.H.S. added, however, that there were “some radicals, of whom this writer is one, [who] are deluded with the notion that the time is coming when the plain people of ever land and clime are going to possess the earth and administer the fullness thereof for the common good.” This was because the prevailing view was predicated on:
Ignorance of economics by vast masses of the people, their wholesale acquiescence in the face of evangelical religious assault . . . their submission to economic and political exploitation, their cocksure arrogance of racial and cultural superiority—these and many other reasons which might be advanced tend to lend color to the suspicion that what the philosopher said relative to the need of a guardianship for half the American people might contains a large element of truth.
The writer concluded with questions about who these guardians would be—”the present owners of the nation’s wealth” or “the orators and writers of the radical movement?”
With regard to race, a Washington, D.C. news item ran under the headline of “Hoover Drives Negroes From Party Councils” and which concerned the report that the newly inaugurated president sought consolidate G.O.P. gains in the South through “the rejection of Negro leadership, state or local, and the acceptance of the Klan demand for an all-white Republican organization.
Examples were given in many states of such a tendency as part of party reform, under the guise of cleaning up the “corrupt handling of patronage jobs” for federal positions, but it was asserted that “at last the white business men have begun to take control of Republican machinery” as “Klan sentiment has been capitalized to establish a ‘lily white’ Republican party throughout the South.”
The conclusion was,
That the Negro voters in the North will take this action as a discrimination against their race, and will try to get together to oppose Hoover is expected in the Republican party headquarters. But enough Negro newspapers will be given financial support, and enough Negro leaders will be persuaded that the Republicans are still their friends, to confuse the movement for racial solidarity. So the administration feels that its decision to exclude Negroes from party leadership in the South is perfectly safe.
The onset of the Great Depression later in the year and the massive shift of voters to the Democratic Party changed the political calculus considerably in the 1932 presidential campaign. While many African-Americans remained with the “Party of Lincoln” because of the Republican policies of the Civil War and early Reconstruction eras, there would continue to be an exodus and the civil rights initiatives of the 1960s led to the conversion of Southern Democrats to Republicans in large numbers in subsequent years. The evolution of these movements are very much with us today.
In his “News and Views” column, contributing editor Primm D. Noel, addressed several topics, including civil rights as pushed for by the ACLU and its efforts towards “the conservation of the alleged rights guaranteed to each citizen by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” Adding that this was the organization’s scope, Noel continued that it “cannot afford to take up other issues which many of its members advocate.”
In addressing the fact that “convicted felons lose these rights and are not in the same category as ordinary citizens,” the editor referred to “many sob sisters, male and female, [who] are using much valuable energy which might better be spent along more valuable lines.” An example was the attack on Deputy Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt, whose quixotic work was to enforce Prohibition and who had local ties with her parents residing in Temple City, because she defended the use of spies in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Sounding very much unlike a modern-day left-leaning figure, Noel espoused the idea that “with few exceptions, the inmates are not normal human beings, and society must protect itself from them,” which meant that “sometimes the devil must be fought with his own weapons.”
Under the heading of “Practical,” Noel credited Stalinist Russia for converting 100,000 churches, shuttered with the Soviet’s policy of enforced atheism, into movie theaters, ostensibly because it was “to combat the ever-increasing vodka evil” and “amusing and educational films” to fight “the drink menace” was a good thing, “whatever may be thought of the new regime in Russia.” What that last part entailed, at the time this publication was issued, were mass detentions, executions, imprisonments and other measures by Josef Stalin to consolidate absolute power and through which purges millions of Russians died then and in subsequent years.
With “Give the Devil His Due,” Noel offered that, while not many readers of The Open Forum would have voted for Hoover, “we should refuse to give him credit when it is deserved.” In this case, the new president was praised for “his stringent orders that no more oil drilling permits be issued, and that most of those outstanding be cancelled.” This, the columnist observed, “indicate that he may turn out to be as good a conservationist as was [Theodore] Roosevelt” and this was considered “quite a contrast to the lavish giving away of the people’s natural resources” that took place under predecessors Warren G. Harding (think of the Teapot Dome Scandal) and Calvin Coolidge. This question of oil permits and leases is certainly one to compare with our era.
“A Loose-Thinking Philosopher” finds Noel addressing a critic who wrote to him and said that the columnist’s statements about the primacy of law and order were really about his wanting “the laws of which you approve enforced against the folks you think they should be enforced against.” Noel demurred, stating that “we are a people believing in majority rule” and that this was done in a traditional utilitarian fashion, for “the greatest good to the greatest number.” While averring that no one believed the majority is always correct, it was understood that the majority “has the power to enforce its edicts, and will do so.” After opining that “the minority . . . is composed of a thousand-and-one groups, each of which has a different panacea to offer,” he concluded by asking “which of them is the ‘minority.’?”
Lastly, in dealing with another matter that is still hotly debated today, capital punishment, Noel wrote that fourteen states abolished it, but eight returned to it and “the tendency seems to be against its abolition.” He cited Massachusetts, which, in 1916, had a legislative tally of 37 for abolition and 81 against, but, four years later, that moved to 20 and 170. Moreover, the writer commented that there were 12,000 murders annually in the United States with 2% of those committing these executed. He added that for each 100,000 persons, America had 7.2 murders, with Scotland, Canada and England having just .4, .53. and .76, respectively. He concluded,
Though differences in racial characteristics and economic and sociological conditions have much to do with the prevalence in homicides in different countries, those who claim that swift and sure punishment has a deterrent effect on those contemplating crime point to these figures.
The tendency has, of course, moved in the other direction for most of the United States, principally excepting the South, where executions continue to take place, including just this past week in Oklahoma, which, arguably, is both Southern and Midwestern.
We will continue with the concluding part two tomorrow, so be sure to check back then!