National Affairs: Unwilling to Be Counted

Just as the income tax laws had once been used to jail gangsters, when no other charge could be made to stick, Congress has found an oblique way to get at Communists. By asking witnesses at congressional investigations one question: “Are you a Communist?” Congress could cite them for contempt if they refused to answer. Last week House and Senate committees broke all records by citing a total of 43 for refusing to answer questions on Communism.

Defying Congress. The House Un-American Activities Committee launched the lion’s share of the charges. It voted to cite one whole batch of 39 witnesses, many of them members of Harry Bridges’ Hawaiian labor organizations, for defying a subcommittee investigating Communism in Hawaii. It ran the list to an even 40 with Steve Nelson, Communist organizer for western Pennsylvania, who refused to answer questions about atomic espionage at the University of California’s radiation laboratory at Berkeley.

The Senate’s Tydings investigation committee started contempt proceedings against Philip J. Jaffe, onetime editor of the magazine Amerasia, battered old Earl Browder, ex-chieftain of U.S. Communists, and Frederick Vanderbilt Field, wealthy New York angel of Communist enterprises.

Meanwhile, three members of the Hollywood Ten—Ring Lardner Jr., Lester Cole and Adrian Scott, screen writers and producers—were on trial in a Washington federal court on contempt charges based on their defiance of Congress back in 1947. And two freshly subpoenaed witnesses, a New York Daily Worker executive, Philip Bart, and a onetime labor organizer, Marcel Scherer, shouted new defiance of Congress, thus adding themselves to a list of 30 irascible witnesses being considered for prosecution by the Un-American Activities Committee.

One Little Word. Was this justice? There was no doubt that it was highly popular, at least, and also legal. Congress summons witnesses to get information on which to pass wise legislation. From this process comes its implied power to punish for contempt those who refuse to answer. It has been citing people, though sparingly, since 1795. And though witnesses have pleaded, at one time or another, the protection of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 9th, 10th and 14th Amendments, the Supreme Court—always a zealous guardian of civil liberties—has usually upheld Congress.

But an uneasy voice against what it called the “Star Chamber” methods of congressional committees was raised in this month’s issue of the conservative Journal of the American Bar Association:

“This is censorship of unpopular ideas by the majority through the use of intimidation and the threat of public castigation. It is even more disturbing to see contempt charges predicated upon a refusal by a witness, under subpoena, to answer a question on the ground that it may incriminate him. This raises the shadow of an inquisition . . .”

Nobody, including the bar association, wasted any love on the witnesses involved—mostly men with little respect for the Constitution they sought to hide behind. Some Congressmen were concerned, however, lest the contempt process be made ridiculous by being overdone.

Actually, Congressmen pointed out, if a witness were not a Communist, he had only to say one word, “No.” And if a Communist, the word yes would save him, since it is not against the law to be a party member. Certainly the use of the troublesome contempt weapon had increased, but then so had the danger it sought to prevent. Never before had the U.S. been faced with a group of men dedicated to lie or evade at all costs, and unlike the zealots and rebels of past times, unwilling to stand up and be counted.