Chastened by the UE District 8 delegates, the anticommunists sought and received support from outside the UE to continue their campaign.

James Click relied on Father Leo Brown, who by then "was a friend of mine," to arrange a meeting for him in New York with around six others.

Click, who described himself as someone "without a religion," recognized the value of the anticommunist stance of the Catholic Church for his caucus.

"The Catholic Church was pretty much involved. In all fairness, that's one of the reasons I went to Brown, other than being a friend. I also knew he had to have connections in other places who were probably interested in doing it, and he did."

Brown wrote on Click's behalf to Father Charles Owen Rice of Pittsburgh , the leading anticommunist Catholic in the country, whose own crusade against Communist influence in Pittsburgh and the labor movement nationally had been under way since the 1930s. He cautioned Rice, however, that "if you talk to people about this, please don't mention my name. It would be disastrous here to have suspicion develop that I am interested and active."

Father Brown realized that in St. Louis any help from the Catholic Church hierarchy had to be at least low-key if not clandestine, despite (or perhaps because of) the large percentage of Catholics among St. Louis's working class. "Too many working people in this area are skeptical about the church taking an active part in trade union politics. We have our Labor School and that serves to bring in a much wider segment of the trade unionists than any partisan organization could get at this time." In other areas the ACTU was active, but in St. Louis, the Labor School served the same function. Logsdon derisively called Twomey's St. Louis University office "red-baiting headquarters."

John Burns confirmed, "You had to be careful because the Communists were using that against us--said we were bringing outsiders into the union, the Catholics."

Burns found it difficult to get priests in some working-class areas to condemn the UE. In particular he remembered one priest in the Soulard area of St. Louis who suggested that the UE was an ally of working people, a contention that he believed was proof of the influence of "Communist thinking even in the Church" but in fact was evidence of the remnants of an alliance forged over various community issues, from unemployment issues to MVA.

The influence of Catholic lay societies, such as the Knights of Columbus or Catholic Veterans was much more of a factor than many priests who declined or refused to get involved. Sentner claimed that at Emerson, Century, and Wagner, the leading anticommunists worked through "small groups of Veterans, most of whom are Catholic," to gain their strongest adherents. 91 Through these associations, Click's faction linked up with explicitly antilabor business forces. They connected through networks built in an earlier era and but now reinforced by ties to the FBI.

Brown with ISO group; From Gladys Gruenberg, Labor Peacemaker

Insert photo of Fr. Charles Owen Rice

insert photo of Labor School

Harold Gibbons of the CIO's United Distribution Workers Union in St. Louis was influential in the internal politics of the UE.

Gibbons came to St. Louis in 1941 to reorganize the fledgling group of St. Louis warehouse workers. He was strongly influenced by Trotskyist Socialists who had long been at odds with the CP, and this influenced his unwillingness to build a coalitional CIO politics.

He opposed the no-strike pledge during the war but had little success in organizing enough workers to gain power in the CIO.

According to Logsdon, Gibbons "deeply resented" the fact that the UE was the "predominant union" in the area and that Sentner was the leading labor spokesman, and this even led him to support Republican Party candidates in order to harm the CIO-endorsed candidates favored by the Left.

The UE built "good relations" with most of the other CIO union delegates during the war, especially in the context of the MVA and other political work that was given much credit as the basis for the election of progressive Democrats by local CIO officials. In 1943, the St. Louis council rescinded its 1939 prohibition against Communist participation.

As the war wound down and the warehouse and textile workers unions reaffiliated with the Industrial Union Council (IUC), Logsdon warned that the "line-ups of 1939 and 1940 here are being repeated more and more" with Gibbons "becoming a large center of red-baiters."

UE success in organizing would preface control of the CIO local body in the postwar, and already there were efforts to contest or just ignore CIO jurisdictional boundaries and to intervene to contest elections to spoil UE success.

In September 1945, Gibbons sought to unseat Logsdon from his position as secretary-organizer of the IUC. Logsdon charged that the campaign, was "not based on the issues but mainly on red-baiting and considerable anti-Negro sentiment. . . . Of course they put out no printed matter on these things so that they could be nailed down." Since Gibbons was later associated as a strong advocate of racial justice, this highlights the way that the anticommunist issue produced "strange bedfellows." Logsdon won, despite what he called the "slanderous" reports about him.

The UE was the major force behind the mobilization of St. Louis working class against rising prices and demanding a strong Office of Price Administration. Above, a newspaper article shows a portion of the tens of thousands that rallied on July 23, 1946 around the issue. Robert Logsdon, left corner inset photo, raises his fist during a vigorous attack on the Congress' handling of the issue. Below, one of the many mini-rallies organized with the CIO to mobilize workers around the issue.

But already, factionalism was undermining Logsdon's position, and the CIO officialdom sought to prevent the UE from gaining more members and Harold Gibbons main aim was to prevent Logsdon from another term.

In June 1946, a few months after Winston Churchill's "iron curtain" speech in Fulton Missouri, Gibbons's forces brought the anticommunist issue before the St. Louis body. Accusing Communists of tarnishing labor's image and contributing to the growing reactionary antiunion sentiment, the resolution "urged local unions to ferret out proponents of Communism and Fascism within their ranks."

Logsdon responded that unions should "emphasize union loyalty, not an individual's political beliefs." Using the roll-call vote method as a strategy (thereby leaving any delegate who voted against it vulnerable to attack as a Communist), the resolution passed.

More momentum came in September when Logsdon was defeated in his bid for the IUC presidency, in what the press declared a "major victory for anti-communist forces."

Gibbons and Click fielded candidates not only against Logsdon but also against Oscar Ehrhardt, secretary-treasurer of the CIO, from the Gas Workers Union, and a quiet closet Socialist who was charged with being "soft on left-wingers" for refusing to engage in the attack on Communists. Ehrhardt's narrow victory signaled that those who accepted CP members as legitimate trade unionists would be treated as the enemy.

“I had to watch my back from that time on, and I couldn't give any support. It was the beginning of McCarthyism, right there,” said Ehrhardt.

The key alliances for the Click faction were veterans groups, and these groups were tied to reactionary forces. John Griffin, a banker from St. Louis, was national leader of the American War Dads group, whose stated purpose was to organize veterans against communism in American life, and which sought to bridge class differences through the military affiliations and sympathies of many workers.

Griffin bankrolled Forum Press, which published Today's World, a paper that sought to galvanize Catholic workers to oppose communism in unions and other institutions.

Griffin placed Fred Bender, the anti-union operative who intervened in Maytag and the 1938-39 Servel strike, to run the press. It is likely that connections with Bender and Griffin had caused Ruthenberg to mobilize the War Dads group against the union drive at Servel in 1946. Though the union had prevailed, veteran and fraternal or civic and Catholic groups remained a key avenue of tapping a populist patriotic anticommunism to contest Left unionism.

By 1947, Click's faction was also working with the American Legion to “expose the subversives who would wreck America.” Through Ernie Stuebinger, an "America Firster" who had opposed Sentner for district presidency in 1941, the Click forces linked up to Today's World.

Today's World concentrated its venom against what they purported was the Communist intentions of the entire CIO movement. Editorials there took the technique of McCarthy (accusing many workers and CIO leaders of being Communists without evidence). Stuebinger worried that the paper "did us some harm with some of their statements they made in the past," apparently referring to its negative stories about labor, and was relieved that his contact had "suggested that we assign a man to go over such items that affect Labor."

But the paper remained overtly suspicious of worker demands, continuing to suggest that Communist subversives fomented labor strife.

By late 1947 it was the mouthpiece of reactionary Congressman Hamilton Fish.

The mainstream press was not far behind Today's World. The St. Louis and Evansville newspapers, particularly the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Evansville Courier were essential allies of the anticommunist faction.

Bender and Griffin were also closely allied to the publishers and some of the reporters of these papers.

After 1947, there was nary a word in the articles published by these papers suggesting any level of democracy in the UE.

Bold headlines such as "Communists Rule CIO Electrical Union" found their way into print with ease. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat assigned two reporters to cover the factionalism, and these reporters worked in close contact with the FBI, which was targeting Left unions.

As the 1946 election campaign neared, the Click camp was portrayed as a defender of democracy and a crusader against "evil" forces intent on control of the labor movement.

The Globe-Democrat uncritically adopted Click's clever line about an "iron curtain" having fallen over the UE, with lurid depictions of the UE policy that claimed that Logsdon "helps his boss [Sentner] control U.E. members" in the district and that the district."

While the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was slightly less enthusiastic for red-hunting in its coverage, it nevertheless coined the expression "avowed Communist" as Sentner's "official designation" in every story about the UE. Sympathetic reporters revealed to the UE that the labor reporter was replaced by an FBI agent “turned reporter” to cover a UE story.

The Post-Dispatch editorials, Sentner bitterly charged, "stunk to high heaven" by uncritically repeating the charge that Communists controlled the union. The Evansville newspapers, Sentner drolly noted, "rated UE Communism fables on a par with news from the White House. And the little town criers of Tell City , Washington , Newton , Moline, chirped a merry little chorus echoing their big city brother liars."

Post-Dispatch Headlines

Globe-Democrat Headline

Evansville Courier Headline

Roberts used his contacts in the FBI and federal government in service to the company, in an effort that was relentless to use the Communist issue against the union.

In the earlier 1939 struggle (see chapter 4) Logsdon had referred to Roberts as Servel's handyman. He had used his police and city-based powers to support the corporations. Now it is clear that he was working with the FBI to get information against the union of use to the corporation.

Servel worked closely with anticommunist laborites in Evansville, and continued to use spies for their own purposes, as is explained in Chapter 6 of the book. It is clear that NMTA employers saw their opportunity to roll back the union movement as the Cold War became a major political issue. Roberts later became Republican Mayor of Evansville.

Yet the UEMDA was in decline in 1947, despite their networks.

In Moline UE representative Rex Wheelock wrote that members of the Click faction were staying in Moline trying to develop allies in the area, saying he had teased one of them that “it was rather humiliating to learn that apparently they feel Moline is about the only fertile field left to them.”

Though he recognized they would find allies among Catholic members, Wheelock felt workers in general saw the UE as the base of community activities and would reject the UEMDA's charges.

International events in 1948, especially the "war scare" with the Soviet Union , intensified domestic anticommunism throughout the nation, bringing frenzied pressure against the UE and placing Sentner at the center of charges of a Communist conspiracy to betray the nation. When local newspaper headlines replaced "UE" with "Sentner's Union ," Local 1102's leadership grasped the opportunity to expel him from the local for "anti-union activity." The Right's influence in Local 1102 was evident when a well-attended membership meeting voted to expel Sentner on a voice vote, without allowing him to speak to the membership. Sentner was accused of "anti-union activity" for charging that Local 1102 leaders had orchestrated the expulsion of founding member Lou Kimmel.

Workers were told that they would get their names and photos in the morning edition of the Globe-Democrat if they voted against expulsion. Even loyal Sentner supporters such as Lloyd Austin recalled that he did not object to the vote for "fear of repercussions."