Wellington Roe (May 27, 1898 - February 3, 1952) was an American author and political activist with the American Labor Party.
Wellington Roe (May 27, 1898 - February 3, 1952) was an American author and political activist with the American Labor Party.
Roe was born in Danbury, Connecticut and attended Wesleyan University. [1] He moved to Florida in the 1920s, where he was involved in the advertising business and was accused of check forgery in 1921. [2] In 1924, Roe was involved in a real estate partnership in Fort Lauderdale, where he gained a reputation as the "gaudiest local character of the boom". [3] Following a hurricane in September 1926, the firm's properties were destroyed and Roe abandoned his business partners. [4] In 1937, he published The Tree Falls South, a novel about Kansas farmers during the Dust Bowl. [5] The following year he published Begin No Day, a novel about labor relations in the hatting industry in Connecticut. [6] Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that "the difficulties of labor and management are truthfully pictured" in the novel. [7] Roe was a member of the League of American Writers. [8] Roe attempted to discredit Jan Valtin, writing an expose of him for the newspaper PM that was never published. [9]
Roe was a founding member of the American Labor Party in New York. [10] Bella Dodd wrote that she had "not known him as a [Communist] Party member but as a liberal...one who did not mind being used for their campaigns." [11] He ran for election as an American Labor Party candidate for Congress in 1940. [12] He received 5.5% of the vote, losing the election to James A. O'Leary. [13] Roe became a member of Lodge 598 of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen in 1944 but was expelled in 1946. [14] During his time in the union he was the special assistant to Alexander F. Whitney. [15] Despite his early support of railroad unions, he later became critical of labor unions, believing they were "often dictatorships in which labor bosses are the autocratic rulers of the dues-paying members". [16] His 1948 book Juggernaut expressed these views on unions through profiles of labor leaders like David Dubinsky and Samuel Gompers. [17] He resigned from the American Labor Party in 1948, stating that he could not support the candidacy of Henry Wallace. [18] Roe died in February 1952. [19]
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The American Labor Party (ALP) was a political party in the United States established in 1936 that was active almost exclusively in the state of New York. The organization was founded by labor leaders and former members of the Socialist Party of America who had established themselves as the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). The party was intended to parallel the role of the British Labour Party, serving as an umbrella organization to unite New York social democrats of the SDF with trade unionists who would otherwise support candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties.
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Bella Dodd was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s, and vocal anti-communist after she had a big conversion after meeting Fulton J. Sheen, Bishop of Rochester, New York.
Leo Leous Isacson was a New York attorney and politician. He won the 1948 election to the United States House of Representatives from New York's twenty-fourth district (Bronx) as the candidate of the American Labor Party in what at that time The New York Times called "a test of Truman-[versus]-Wallace strength" with regard to the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and a "test today of the third-party movement headed by Henry A. Wallace".
Jerry Joseph O'Connell was an American attorney and politician. He is most notable for his service as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Montana.
Emil Rieve was an American labor leader. He was president of the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) from 1939 to 1956, a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from 1939 to 1955, and a vice president of the AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1960.
Percy James Clarey was an Australian trade union leader and politician. He served as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) from 1943 to 1949 and represented the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the Victorian Legislative Council (1937−1949) and Australian House of Representatives (1949−1960).
Gil Green was a leading figure in the Communist Party of the United States of America until 1991. He is best remembered as the leader of the party's youth section, the Young Communist League, during the tumultuous decade of the 1930s.
John Owen Critchley was an Australian politician who served as a Labor member of the South Australian House of Assembly from 1930 to 1933 and then the Australian Senate from 1947 to 1959. Born at Callington in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia, and schooled in and around Petersburg, Critchley completed an apprenticeship as a wheelwright, but was then sacked for forming a branch of his union. He was a founding member and also served twelve years on the executive of the Amalgamated Coach Rolling Stock Makers' and Wheelwrights' Society – later the Australian Coachmakers Employees' Federation then the Vehicle Builders Employees' Federation. He briefly served with the 10th Battalion on the Western Front in France and Belgium during World War I, but was repatriated as medically unfit, suffering from a neck condition.
Nick Origlass was an Australian Trotskyist who served as mayor of Leichhardt in Sydney.
Joseph Zack Kornfeder (1898–1963), sometimes surnamed "Kornfedder" in the press, was an Austro-Hungarian-born American who was a founding member and top leader of the Communist Party of America in 1919, Communist Party USA leader, and Comintern representative to South America (1930–1931) before quitting the Party in 1934. After his wife was arrested by the secret police during the Great Terror (1937–1938), Zack became a vehement Anti-Communist and testified before the Dies Committee (1939) and Canwell Committee (1948).
Jack Hardy, born Dale Zysman, was a 20th-Century Communist author labor leader as "Jack Hardy" and a teacher and board member of the New York City Teachers Union under his birth name "Dale Zysman": investigation by the New York Board of Education led to public awareness that the two names belonged to one person and subsequent expulsion from the school system in 1941.
James Patrick Cannon was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.
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Charles James Hendley (1881–1962) was an American teacher, education reformer, and union activist. He served as president of the New York City Teachers Union (TU) from 1935 to 1945.
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