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Welcome to the Committee on Un-American Activities. Here a politician may set himself up as God's prophet and high priest, as judge and jury, and proceed to publicly expose, defame, scapegoat, discredit, pillory, besmirch, blackmail and ruin the lives of people he calls un-American, Reds, communists, Jews, socialists, atheists, subversives, terrorists, unpatriotic, traitors, seditious, and so on, on the basis of groundless charges, unsubstantiated reports, fallacious logic, gossip and rumors. And he may do so without allowing the accused to confront the witnesses against him, testify on his own behalf, or refuse to incriminate himself without being cited for contempt or declared guilty for exercising his civil rights. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the foremost targets of the Committee, said, "It is sordid - flagrantly unfair - and un-American."



The Committee on Un-American Activities is now defunct - it's proponents have gone underground, back to their cloakrooms and ranches. A Special Committee to Investigate Communist Activities, headed by Mr. Fish of New York, lasted from 1930 to 1931, at which time investigations were taken up by House Committee on Naturalization and Immigration. A Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, formed to investigate Nazi activities - "Nazi" in the resolution was changed to "foreign" - existed from 1934 to 1935 and was chaired by John W. McCormack. Thereafter investigations of subversive activities reverted to the House Committee on Naturalization and Immigration, until the formation of the notorious Dies Committee, the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities chaired by Martin Dies. The Dies Committee was precursor to the standing House Committee on Un-American Activities.



Martin Dies, who set the stage for what was to come, was nearly forgotten after Joseph McCarthy stole the un-American floodlights. What sort of man was Martin Dies? If we examine his Texas milieu, we shall better understand his undemocratic ways and might even sympathize with him if not with his 'un-American' activities - it seems almost everyone is un-American to one extent or other. His roots were a hillbilly region of parochial Texas, a state that has produced many of our outstanding heroes and villains.



Beginning in 1930 Martin Dies represented the Second Congressional District of Texas. The district consisted of eleven counties in the Pine Belt of East Texas, a hilly region with a lumber industry that had enjoyed a brief spell of prosperity until the industry exploited the land leaving it eroded, scarred, and blackened, a valueless area strewn with stumps behind which poor hill-people of relatively undiluted Anglo-Saxon stock took cover for their feuds - at one point the Texas Rangers had to relocate an entire klan to keep the peace. Timber barons controlled the pine district. Most of the native Texans worked in sawmills and did their best to eke out a living from the barren soil. Descendents of early Texas settlers, they were profoundly religious and suspicious. They deeply resented the outsiders coming in to work the oil wells. The oil workers were being organized by the C.I.O., presenting a political threat to the hillbillies, cutting into their numerical superiority. In 1930, the district's population was around 300,000, of which roughly one percent were foreign-born. Of course the latter were suspected of being union agitators or worse. In 1936, Dies' district had around 166,000 eligible voters, but only 65,000 paid a poll tax and 29,304 of them were residents of Jefferson County, where the C.I.O. was strong among the refinery workers. 70,000 Negroes throughout the district were automatically barred from voting by the whites-only primary and the poll tax. Hence the narrow margin held by the small towns and rural area of the pine country was in danger of soon being wiped out by further influx of oil workers.



Martin Dies' home was Orange, Texas, a town of 8,000 in Orange County. Martin was a believer in "like father like son" hence he followed in the footsteps of his father, Martin, Senior, who had served as U.S. Congressman during Wilson's two administrations. Since son was like father, we should summarize Senior's political career: Senior was born in Louisiana in 1870 and raised in Texas where he went to public schools. He took a job as a printer's devil and eventually became a newspaper editor. He took up the practice of law in 1892 and was elected county judge of Tyler County, Texas in 1894. In 1898 he became district attorney for the First Judicial Circuit of Texas. He served in the U.S. Congress from 1901 to 1919. In 1909 Senior opposed the Payne tariff bill in the grounds that it discriminated against the South, saying it was what the country expected from the Republican Party; if the Republicans wanted the respect of the West and South, they would have to repeal "odious sectional tariff laws", and "make haste to declare for white man's domination of this Government and integrity of the Caucasian race." Senior was a patriot who believed patriotism and intelligence was essential to citizenship in a self-governing nations, therefore he feared illiterate immigrants would undermine the government - they were a danger to "this one remaining Republic on the face of God's earth", therefore a "quarantine" should be imposed to protect the country against their illiteracy as "against the bubonic plague."



Senior plead for "a revival of the old time religions of Democracy." He was opposed to militarism and to planting the flag in foreign countries to "lord it over inferior people." He spoke out against getting involved in the Great War, but when the time came he voted for declaration of war against Germany and for the draft. He called himself a Progressive, and rightly so in respect to his attitude that both the selfish rich and the ignorant poor endangered the Republic. On the other hand, he said, "There have been no new lessons in free government since the Constitution was written." Furthermore,"Human nature is just now what it always has been and probably will remain so until the end of time." In his farewell speech: "That we are departing rapidly from all the spirit and traditions of this republic is apparent to every man with any iota of sense... I only wish, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the Congress, that we might have a return to the spirit of democracy and republicanism."



Senior believed that government should keep its incompetent nose out of business. He said that a written constitution and an independent judiciary were indispensable to sound government and the protection of minorities. As for women, they should not have the vote and should do what nature has assigned to them as homemakers and childbearers. He argued that politics would be too much of a burden on women; besides, women are inclined, as the Socialist Party knew only too well, to socialism, and nothing could be worse for the Republic than socialism. Furthermore, hordes of ignorant Negro women would vote. A staunch anti-conservationist, he believed the natural resources, the parks, preserves and reservations should be turned over to the people for development. Finally, keeping "like father like son" in mind, we should consider that Martin Dies, Senior, did NOT cotton to special investigating committee; he was personally convinced that Congress was "pure" and "incorrupt" and "honest", hence investigating committees were "not worth a penny" and cost the Government millions. As for the rest of government, he said its abuses had become universal and respectable, and that anyone who spoke out honestly about them like he did would wind up "in a bad odor," hence men who wanted publicity would have to pursue a dishonest course.



Martin Dies, Junior, war born in Texas in 1901, and was brought to Washington, where he attended Custer Springs Military Academy and National University. After the family returned from Washington, Martin, following in his father's footsteps, worked as an elocution teacher then took up the practice of law which he had studied back East. His practice grew modestly - Gulf Oil Company's retainers were quite helpful. Already well known because of his father's reputation, he decided to run for Congress in 1930. He stumped the stump-strewn timberland, waving the flag, shouting "America for Americans!", everywhere shaking hands. He discovered an effective ploy or "Mother Love" strategy to win family-oriented people's votes. His parents had recently separated and a newspaper blurb appeared on the subject. Martin proceeded to defend his mother, winning the hearts of many votes. Suddenly a statement criticizing his father mysteriously appeared, and Martin defended him to no end - Martin's seat in Congress was assured.



After Martin Dies took his congressional seat, he indicated he was quite pleased with his $10,000 salary since he was only making $1,200 per annum back home. He demanded a seat on the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, where he immediately sponsored bills for the deportation of aliens and restriction of immigration in order to stymie the alienation not only of his Texas constituency but that of the United States at large. In 1931 he and F.B. Swank submitted a plan to president Hoover for the reduction of unemployment. If only "several million foreigners" would be deported, perhaps sent to a colony in Paraguay, there would be no unemployment. The plan also recommended a program of publics works without the use of labor-saving devices.  In the April 20, 1935 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, Martin Dies recommended that a "relentless war without quarter and without cessation ( be) waged upon them until the last one is driven from our shores."  And in a later radio broadcast:  America must not be a "dumping ground" for foreigners: "If we had refused admission to the 16,500,000 foreign born who are living in this country today, we would have no unemployment problem to distress and harass us." Besides the competition arising from the "alien menace", Martin felt the native Constitution was threatened by subversive European ideas.  



Once in Congress, Martin got into the pork-barrel business right away on behalf of the oil, utility, and construction interests. Yet that did not stop him from investigating lobbying. Although he just like his father expressed doubts about investigating committees, in 1936, after a special investigation, he denounced lobbying by the utilities as "unwholesome and inimical to the public interest." After all, he was elected to represent the small farmers back home, and, by extension, all small farmers and businesses against big business, big labor, and big government. He attributed the growth and tyranny of big corporations to the Fourteenth Amendment designed to protect negroes but which wound up fostering the growth of perpetually existing corporate persons, fictitious persons formed in Delaware and given a license to run roughshod in all the states under equal protection of the federal laws.



Martin was in favor of competition and individualism but he was against cooperation of the few or of the many to gain hegemony over the majority or minority. As far as Martin Dies was concerned, the world  was engaged in an almighty struggle between good, or individualism, and evil, or collectivism - in fact, every "ism" except American individualism smacked of heresy. Thus he, like his father, retained the Progressive Era's view favoring the middle class against the two old extremes - the robber barons and the radical socialists. He opposed decentralization to the centralizing tendency of growing organizations, hence Martin, like his dad, was an isolationist who did not cotton to entangling alliances made necessary by war and its necessarily centralized command structure. Americans should stay at home and mind their own business: "In the name of common sense, have we reached that point in the affairs of this country that we must dictate to foreign nations the character of government that they must set up to administer their affairs? ... If the majority of the German people want Adolf Hitler, it is none of our business."



Martin Dies loved small business and hated big government bureaucracy. Nevertheless, a decentralization of power in order to stimulate competition and restrain "unrestrained individualism" as well as undesirable labor combinations would require a a big centralized government to accomplish the desired objectives. He opposed the wage and hour bill; for one thing, the measure would require a centralized national board to administer the law. His struggle against the bill, sometimes cast as a fight against labor's ungodly materialism, gained him national publicity. And Martin Dies was the first member of the House to denounce the sit-down strikes. Furthermore, he introduced a resolution to investigate the C.I.O., for he knew very well that, if the C.I.O. got a few more votes, he was out his Washington job; but his motion was shot down, 236 to 150. In order to assuage labor's discontent,  a discontent he said was being promoted by communists, he recommended that employers voluntarily give their employees a bigger share of the proceeds of their labor and urged capitalists to use their money for "social betterment." He favored higher inheritance and gift taxes, and graduated taxes with tax breaks to small farmers, owners of modest homes, and small businesses. Finally, despite Martin's spite for government regulation and his opinion that government should keep its nose out of business, he would heavily regulate business: his prescriptions for the nation's ills are filled with the key words, "preserve", "prevent", "regulate", and "prohibit."  



Martin Dies had a powerful patron in the Speaker of the House, Cactus Jack Garner of Texas. It was Cactus Jack who took "boy" Martin under his wing and got him onto the powerful Rules Committee where joined his Southern colleagues there and bottled-up the wage and hour bill . John Nance Garner was born in a log cabin and became the most powerful vice-president in U.S. history. He was an old-line Democrat with a Progressive Era background. He started out as a lawyer in Texas, took a newspaper as a legal fee and became its editor. That led to his appointment to the Uvalde County bench, and on to serve two terms in the Texas House of Representatives, and beyond to the U.S. House from 1903-1932 - he was elected Speaker in '31. Cactus Jack was a master of cloakroom maneuvering and was wont to apply whiskey and persuasion to "strike a blow for liberty." In 1932 Garner was the favorite-son presidential candidate of Texas. He released his Texas and California delegates to Roosevelt, giving the nomination to Franklin Delano Roosevelt; FDR was grateful: Cactus Jack served as his Vice President during the 1932 and 1936 terms. He was Roosevelt's New Deal liaison with Congress; absent Cactus Jack's maneuverings and shots for liberty among his congressional friends, there would have been no New Deal. But Garner thought Roosevelt was getting "too liberal." He took umbrage with the President's favorable position towards labor on the sit-down strikes in 1936, and the last straw was his furious argument with the President in 1937 over his plan to stack the Supreme Court. Cactus Jack then became a "backstabber", "conniver-in-chief", arch-conservative, New Deal hater. When he left Washington, he said he would never return and he was good to his word. His wife destroyed his papers in the late 1940s, otherwise we might have more inside information about Martin Dies.



Already by 1937 Martin Dies he had taken ambiguous and mutually contradictory positions - it was said that during the course of his career he had taken almost every possible position there was to take. He was gradually coming to the conclusion that anyone who disagreed with him should be investigated and put out of business and politics, hence he was well on his way to becoming one of the most undemocratic democrats in American history. In 1938, at the behest of Vice President Cactus Jack Garner, he drew up a resolution for a special committee to investigate un-American activities and managed to get $25,000 appropriated for it. He soon got all the publicity he longed for -  85% of the American press at the time were opposed to the New Deal. And the public was about to get quite a showing against "liberals" and other "subversives" from Martin Dies, the prophet and high priest of liberty, in the name of the one and only god, the ultimate principle of the United States government, to wit: the "Christian" god.



Sources:



Dixie Demagogues by Allan H. Michie and Frank Rhylick, New York: Vanguard, c. 1939



Martin Dies by William Gellermann, New York: John Day, 1944



Confessions of a Congressman by Jerry Voorhis, New York: Doubleday, 1948



The Trojan Horse in America by Martin Dies, New York: Dodd, 1940



The Un-Americans by Frank J. Donner, New York: Ballantine, 1961