RADICALS: Undesirable Bridges

To prove a man a Communist is often as difficult as to prove him a Christian.

Last year Dean James McCawley Landis of Harvard Law School put alien, unnaturalized C. I. O. Longshoreman Harry Bridges to the legal rack, found that he could not legally be considered a member of the Communist Party. Radical Alien Bridges was therefore not subject to de portation by Madam Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (TIME, Jan. 8, 1940).

Dean Landis decided, after an eleven-week hearing, that Bridges’ aims were “;energetically radical” but that his methods were essentially democratic.

Last week Organizer Bridges was again arrested in San Francisco, slated for a second deportation hearing next month.

This time he was up against a tougher case. After him this time was not Madam Perkins but Attorney General Robert Houghwout Jackson. And up Mr. Jackson’s sleeve were a couple of snickersnees: 1) a new, detailed FBI report on Bridges; 2) a new law (Alien Registration Act of 1940) making any alien deportable who ever belonged to a party preaching violent overthrow of the U. S. Government. (Dean Landis had to rule only on whether Bridges was a Communist Party member at the time 1938 deportation proceedings against him were begun.)

Out on bail quicker than you could say “Stalin,” Stevedore Bridges complained: “How many times must a man be cleared of the same charge before they leave him alone?”—thus appealing to an ancient doctrine of British common law.

Up for debate in the House last week was the question of extending the life of the radical-busting Dies Committee. Resenting some remarks by New York’s Congressman Dickstein, Congressman

Dies leaped up with a roar, took the floor in his committee’s defense. Afterwards he collapsed, was carried off to the hospital. The cause: strain from overwork. For rewinding his burglar-alarm committee, Congress coughed up $150,000, the largest Dies Committee appropriation yet.