ms

PROFILES BY JOHN HUDSON JONES

Progressive candidates
stand on peace platform

Vincent Hallinan

§ THIS is being written, Vin-

cent Hallinan, Progressive
party candidate for president of
the United States in the 1952
campaign is in prison, serving a
six-month sentence, for his cour-
ageous defense of Harry Bridges,
West Coast longshoremen’s
union leader, in the 1949-50
frame-up trial. ;

The man picked by the Pro--
gressives to earry the peace
standard in the United States’
critical hour had retired from
active practice when he agreed
to defend Bridges. And his
spirited defense so enraged ‘Fed-
eral Judge George B. Harris, he
ruled him in eontempt in the
early stages of the trial and
gave him two six-month sen-
tences to run concurrently.

Born in San Francisco in 1896,
of Irish immigrants, Patrick and
Elizabeth Sheean Hallinan, Vin-
cent, one of eight children, went
to work at 10. His father was
a conductor on one of the old
eable cars. worked 14 hours a
day and was in sevetal strikes
for better wages and hours.

Young Hallinan worked his
way through University of San
Francisco college and law school
with brilliant records. He was
eaptain of the football team,
played pasketball and was pox-
ing champion. He enlisted in
the U.S. Navy during the First
World War and in 1919 was the
youngest lawyer admitted to the
California bar.

Always a hard-fighting law-
yer, Hallinan started a campaign
that ended in the reform of the
corrupt trial jury system of San
Francisco when he exposed the
jury commissioner as a grafter.
He was on the defense side of
such famous murder cases as the
Frank-Egan, Hanford-Windmill,
and Irene Manfelt cases from
1925 to 1949.

The trial of Bridges, Hallinan
told the enraged Judge Harris,
was “a political campaign em-
ploying the courts to get rid of

a man because his economic and
political convictions were differ-
ent from those of the man who
represents the government.”
“You anticipated the entire
case,” he told the judge, ‘‘when
the evidence came in you didn’t
change your attitude.” Surely,
he told Judge Harris, the dignity
of the court could not be main-

tained ,by ‘“‘a subservient and
truckling bar.”
Previously Hallinan charged

that Judge Harris had sentenced

him to contempt at the sugges->

tion of government prosecutor
William Paisley, who at one ses-
sion shouted after being stung
by Hallinan, “if that is not con-
tempt of court I have never seem
$t.* i
“J have never yet seen a coun-
se] get up in court and ask a
judge to find his opponent in
contempt. This is the most in-
eredible thing I have ever seen
happen in a court—reminds me
of the English courts in the 18th

‘eentury,” Hallinan declared.

Hallinan’s defense of Bridges
along with Attorney James Mc-
Innis, who was also found guilty
of contempt and sentenced to six
months, was marked by the ‘ex-
posure of government stoolies as
liars. This Judge Marris ignor-
ed.

Hence the man who came out
of retirement to defend a framed
unionist will carry on to defend
the people who are being
swindled in the gigantic hoax of
the cold war and the hot one in
Korea,

Along with Mrs. Charlotta A.
Bass, chosen as his running
mate, the Progressive Party
Candidates Committee declared
“we offer these candidates as
peace candidates. We offer them
as new hope to an America sick
and tired of the corruption and
militarism, the segregation of
and discrimination against the
Negro. people and—the growing
unemployment that has been
brought about by both Demo-
erats and Republicans.”

Charlotta

7

| A. Bass

i Nagios ss for the next vice-
president of the United
States!” said one of the letters
Mrs. Charlotta A. Bass was smil-
ing over as we sat down to inter-
view the first Negro woman can-
didate for this high office. Along
with Vincent Hallinan, promin-
ent West Coast attorney, nomin-
ated for president by the Pro-
gressive party, Mrs. Bass will
carry the 1952 eampaign “into
the churches and the homes of
the people who ache and pain
for peace and prosperity.” -

A former newspaper publish-
er, Mrs, Bass knows just what to
get at. “If I am elected dog
eatcher,” she said with a laugh,
“J will render the same services
to the people of all the country
that I did for over 40 years in
California.”

Among the. big stack of mail
she was going over were letters
of congratulation and support,
such as from a St. Louis woman
who wrote “I am glad the Pro-
gressive party nominated you for
peace.” The writer noted that

the California Eagle, (formerly
published by Mrs. Bass) had ig-
nored her nomination. “They
should be made to say something
and take a stand.” she declared.

A Hartford, Conn., writer told
her, “You are a wonderful fight-
er and a magnificent fighter.”

And he was right.

“I fought the Klan when it
sued me for libel,” Mrs. Bass re-
lated, giving a ‘‘wee bit of my
record” and “I’m entering this
race with the same feeling to
fight the subversive forces that
are destroying my people and
my country. I have always and
always will support those people
who are fighting for Negro
rights,” she added.

“J propose to make my fight
in the Negro churches,”’ she said,
noting she is a regular member
of the Second Baptist Church of
Los Angeles. And for another
“pit? of record she was the first
Negro woman in the Republican
Electoral College of California,
and was the first Negro woman
to serve on the Los Angeles
County Grand Jury.

Vincent Hallinan

A charter member of the
Negro Elks, Mrs. Bass recalled
with great pride her association
with the late J. Finlay Wilson,
Grand Exalted Ruler. She is
also a regular member of the
Bastern Star, Negro women’s
fraternal] organization, and “for
40 years I was a working mem-
ber of the NAACP.”

The first Negro woman vice-
presidential candidate is a wo-
man of many honors such as be-
ing made an honorary member

of Hadassah in 1946 for ‘‘out-
standing community service.”
“But the thing I cherish
most,’ she said, ‘‘was being
singled out by the Negro and
white prisoners of San Quentin
Prison as the California citizen
that had done most for them.”
“J will campaign among my
fellow Negro women because we
have reached the limit of our
patience and endurance. We are
not only giving our sons in Ko-
rea in a war of hate against
other colored people, but we are

. Charlotta A. Bass

losing them throughout the
South,” declared Mrs. Bass.
That this campaign is going

-to be a “good and hot one” Mrs.

Bass had no doubts. She is a2
old campaigner, and in 1950
polled 16,000 votes as Progres
sive candidate for Congress from
tha Los Angeles 14 District.

“Now we can’t put everythin8
in one little interview,” Mrs.
Bass said with an editor’s vision.
“And besides everyone will bé@
hearing more from me from here
on in.”

‘Bound in with shame’

EDWARD LOWIS, Palo Alto,
California: “This royal throne
of. kings. this scepter’d isle—
This blessed plot, this earth, this
realm, this England—’” is now
upon the rocks by Winston
Churchill’s own admission on
June 11; and this, moreover, as
the direct result not of the wars,
but of this suicidal ‘‘cold war”
which he himself initiated at
Fulton six years ago.

Englishmen Just love to quote
the above Shakespeare and why
not? But some more lines fol-
low which Churchill has brought
up to date after about 350 years
of incubation, and they are well
worth studying now, as follows:

“Dear for sher reputation
through the world :

Is now leas’d out—I die pro-
nouncing it—

Like to a tenement or pelting
farm; .

England, bound in with tri
umphant sea,

Whose rocky shore beats back
the envious siege

Of Neptune, is now bound in
with shame,

‘With inky blots and rotten
parchment bonds;

That England, which was wont
to conquer others,

Hath made a shameful con-
quest of itself—”
ct Richard Il, Act I

Truly the soil of old England
“ig now leas’d out’ in plots to
foreigners for bomber bases,
and truly she “is now bound in
with shame,” with the inky blots
on rotten parchment bonds of
the North Atlantic pact!

Her soldiers in Asia, her sol-

-‘diers in Europe, her foreign poli-

cy, her rearmament policy are all
dictated to her; and as if that
wasn’t. quite enough to pawn
every Britisher’s soul, her once
proud navy must take its sailing
orders from America too—Finis
Britannia! :

All this makes painful reading
for Britishers after their long
triumphant history, but in pass-

ing, let us remember that the

Englishman who wrote that

prophetic dirge was the crown-

ing glory of the human race.
Finally:

“Are all thy conquests, glor-
ies, triumphs, spoils
Shrunk to this small measure?

Julius Caesar, Act Til
Churchill has answered that
one.

Faith indeed !

PULP WORKER, Powell River,
B.C.: For year we haye been
sold the idea of an increased
standard of living through an
ever expanding economy. Here
are a few facts: Carloadings of

reyenue-bearing freight in Can-_

ada in April this year dropped
to 325,700 cars as against 337,-
100 cars last April. ‘The index
of industrial production for
March was 211.7, a drop of 5.4
points from March of last year.

But what interests me most,
when, as a pulp worker, I am
enjoying the luxurious idleness
of unemployment insurance, is
the condition of the industry in
which I work. With the excep-
tion of newsprint, which showed
a 4.3 percent increase in the
first four months of this year
over last year, every branch of
the industry shows a decline in
production.

The figures for the building
board mills are not published
but the mills have been on short
time since last fall. Sulphite
pulp declined 9,000 tons in April
as compared with the previous
month; Kraft pulp output drop-
ped 13,000 tong in the same com-
parative period and mechanical
pulp dropped 4,000 in the same
period. Paperboard showed a
first quarter decline this year
of 2.9 percent below the same
period last year and boxboard
dropped from 96,212 tons to
84,734 tons in the same com-
parative periods. :

In B.C., Harmac has closed
down for a week to ten days
after producing for storage for

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 4, 1952 —

some little time. Woodfibre has
been shut down tight for some
five weeks and will open up the
first part of July operating on 4
schedule which gives its eM
ployees a 36-hour week (the mill
will shut down for four day®
every four weeks.)

How does this affect the work
ers? In April this year the Na
tional Unemployment Insuranéé
Commission paid out $13.253.°
5&7 to the unemployed_as com-
pared to $7,679,160 in 1951.

We are told to have faith i?
our country and its future. well,
what do the people who tell u&
this do? In the pulp and paper
industry Crown Zellerbach, one
of the biggest in its line
North America, has cancelled #
its expansion plans. I guess
that tells us plainer than théi
words what they think of futur
prospects!

Mulling over these facts dU
ing my enforced leisure, I could
not help but realize the truth ©
the words Marx spoke some
years ago:

“Wwe know that to work well
the new-fangled forces of societ¥s
they only want to be master
by new-fangled men—and such
are the working men. . - + ss
the signs that bewilder the m4
dle class, the aristocracy and
the poor prophets of regressio™
we. recognize our brave griend
Robin Goodfellow (i.e. the wor
ing class) the old mole that
work so fast in the earth, that
worthy pioneer — the revolt”
tion.” —

Received with thanks -

N.C., Port Moody, $2.004
W.D., North Bend, $2.50:
Friend, Vancouver, $19;
E.AP., Victoria, $2.50; 42”
Vancouver, $3; J.J., North Bue
aby, 50c, J.S.. Ozerna, 50¢5 Sa
EM.D., Esquimalt, $2. P72
Wells, $7.50; Strathcona ag
club, Vancouver, $2.50; ay
Vancouver, $2.50; D.S. N
Westminster, $2; H.D., Nevad™
$2.
pace *