The Daily Worker

Professional Patriots

The Congressional investigation of the National Security League in 1919 showed among the larger contributors ranging from "$70 to $3,000": H. H. Rogers, of the Standard Oil Co., Henry C. Frick, of the Carnegie Steel Co. Simon and Daniel Guggenheim, of the American Smelting and Refining Co., J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. This is the group which fights radicals; why not?

The material for "Professional Patriots" was gathered by Sidney Howard and John Hearley.

National Security League.

The League functions through its national headquarters with a general secretary, a speakers' bureau secretary, and an educational department under a civic secretary, Miss Etta V. Leighton, a former school teacher. The speakers' bureau furnishes patriotic anti-radical and anti-pacifist speakers to organizations on request, conducts street meetings in New York against radicalism, and sends out debaters especially to colleges where the radicals and pacifists are thought to be active.

Frequent speakers for the League during 1925-26 were Joseph T. Cashman, a New York lawyer, and J. Robert O'Brien, a professional anti-radical soap-boxer now lecturing chiefly before Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, and other business men's clubs in an effort to show the Communist origin of all trade-union strikes. During 1926 he gave valuable assistance in strike-breaking at Passaic, N. J., being well compensated by certain of the mill owners.

The educational department sends out quantities of study material to teachers in schools and colleges. Chief among the pamphlets are a study program of American history, a "Catechism of the Constitution of the United States," and some printed speeches of former Solicitor-General James M. Beck. The object of this work in the schools is to instill a knowledge of the form of government and a reverence for the Constitution in order "to offset ignorance, radical criticism and apathy."

The League's program is specific as to its conception of Americanism and constitutional government. It advocates:

"The enforcement of laws to punish, and in the case of aliens to deport, all who seek by word or deed the overthrow of the American government.

"Laws to control immigration so as to permit the admission only of the right kind of raw material for American industrial progress,

"The promotion of 100 per cent American shops and factories . . . through employees' meetings to explain American ideals and expose radical fallacies.

"The assurance that foreign-language newspapers shall at all times actively and faithfully support the Constitution.

"The prohibition of the use in all public and private schools of any language other than English as the basic medium of instruction."

It also advocates universal military service and a bigger army and navy.

Typical of the League's concerns was its agitation upon the discovery in 1923 of a boy of 11 in New York who was a member of the Young Workers' League, a Communist organization. Leo Granoff had been arrested wandering around late at night, because his mother had gone to a show and had forgotten to give him the key to the house. His membership card in the Young Workers' League, found on him, raised a storm of indignation from the Security League officials, Mr. Solomon Stanwood Menken and Miss Etta V. Leighton.

Said Miss Leighton:

"The pity of it is that Leo doesn't stand alone. All over the country bright boys and girls are victims of the reds, who lose no chance to preach vile doctrines that destroy personal morals and civic probity. How long are these fiends to be allowed to exploit the souls of little children? How long are they to be left free to warp the lives of our little children and teach them hate of the land that offers them freedom and opportunity."

Leo was of course released by the Children's Court. But he was not forgotten. His heresies were made the basis of a very touching appeal for the Boy Scouts signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The educational and propaganda work of the League is indicated by the list of its publications in the bibliography of this volume.