United Automobile Worker

DEAN LANDIS

Harry Bridges Cleared by U.S.

Final action by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins on the deportation warrant sworn out against Harry Bridges, California CIO director, was awaited after James M. Landis, dean of the Harvard law school, reported he could find no evidence that Bridges was a member of the Communist Party or affiliated to that organization.

Landis, in a 152-page printed report covering in detail the 11 weeks of hearings over which he presided, made caustic comments concerning the witnesses produced against Bridges by the government. His findings were based on the contradictory and obviously false evidence given by these witnesses.

Of Bridges, who was the chief witness for his own case, Landis said, "Bridges' own statement of his political belief and disbeliefs is important. It was an avowal of sympathy with many of the objectives that the Communist Party at times has embraced, an extension of disbelief that the methods they wished to employ were as revolutionary as they generally seem, but it was unequivocal in its distrust of tactics other than those that are generally included within the concept of democratic methods.

"That Bridges' aims are energetically radical may be admitted but the proof fails to establish that the methods he seeks to employ to realize them are other than those that the framework of democratic and constitutional government permits."