Master of the Senate (55 page)

But now that he himself had read those articles, Lyle said, Olds’ true feelings were all too clear. “Now I can understand Mr. Olds, can understand his manner of doing things, his easy turn-about without reason, his easy advocacy of either side of a question, using the same artful, deceitful and sly tactics so evident from his writings which I have assembled.” These articles, he said, “provide a clear and definite pattern of Leland Olds’ alien economic and political philosophy. They unmistakably show that his objectives are basically hostile to our American way of life.”

He would prove this, Lyle said, with the photostats he was holding, those photostats of Olds’ own articles—with “words from his own pen,” most of them words published in the Communist
Daily Worker.

One by one, Lyle went through the articles that Leland Olds had written during the 1920s—or, to be more precise, through the fifty-four articles that had been selected. With each one, Lyle first summarized the key point: “Mr. Chairman, I have before me here a photostatic copy of the
Daily Worker
, July 16, 1925, wherein Leland Olds claims that educational institutions are subservient to the ‘money princes who govern industry.’… I just briefly call your attention to a few lines: ‘Give till it hurts means nothing to the money princes. They simply can’t give till it hurts. They have too much….’” Or: “I have before me, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, a photostatic copy of the
Federated Press Labor News
, July 20, 1929, wherein Leland Olds hails the ‘decay of the church….’”

Early on, there was an interruption. Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire had been considered too sympathetic to Olds to be placed on the subcommittee. Assured by Johnson that the hearings would be routine, he had given him his proxy for the vote in the full committee. But he had stopped by to watch the hearings, sitting in one of the empty chairs on the dais, and as the thrust of Lyle’s testimony became apparent, he could not restrain himself. As Lyle was calling Olds a “chameleon,” Tobey interrupted. “A man has a right to change his mind; does he not?” he asked Lyle. “Did you not ever change your mind on issues and men?” When Lyle replied, “Yes, sir,” Tobey said, “Does that not qualify what you are talking about now?” But before that line of questioning could continue, Lyndon Johnson intervened, asking that Lyle be allowed to read his prepared statement without interruption. “The Congressman … will be very glad to have any questions asked of him when he concludes, and I should not be surprised if some members of the Senate change their mind if they are willing to indulge him a courteous hearing…. If the members will bear with us, at least for a few minutes until the Congressman completes his prepared statement, the Chair will appreciate it.”

The only further interruptions were occasional brief exclamations of approval from subcommittee members for Lyle’s thoroughness, and a ritual began. Picking up a photostat, Lyle would identify it—“Here is a photostatic copy of the
Daily Worker
, July 5, 1928. There is an article in here entitled ‘Imperialism and the Fourth of July,’ by Leland Olds.” He would read in a voice full of indignation a marked paragraph, sentence, or phrase from the article which he said summed it up. “That, gentlemen, was written by Mr. Leland Olds, who wants your permission to serve in high public office, your consent: ‘The Fourth of July will loom as anything but the birthday of liberty.’” Then, rising, he would extend the incriminating photostat—“with a flourish,” one observer recalls—to a committee clerk. “Without objection, the article appearing on page 5 of the
Daily Worker
of July 5,1928, entitled ‘Imperialism and the Fourth of July,’ will be incorporated in the record at this point,” Lyndon Johnson would say.

Occasionally, Lyle would deliver himself of an editorial comment. “Here is an interesting one, gentlemen,” or “Perhaps I am naive, gentlemen, but this is one that shook me”—or

Occasionally, Lyndon Johnson himself made a brief comment. When Lyle handed up the “administrative details” article, the chairman said, “Without objection we will perform one of those details now and insert this in the record.” Usually, however, Johnson simply repeated, over and over, “Without objection it will be made part of the record.” And that thick stack of photostats, of the very words that Leland Olds had written, that Lyle handed up so methodically, lent an air of authenticity to the Congressman’s testimony. So thoroughly had the articles been deconstructed, in fact, that ideas had been found in them that Olds had not even expressed. At one point Lyle cited five articles to show that Olds had been a propagandist for the “surplus value” theory. “Surplus value,” he reminded the subcommittee, is “the fundamental doctrine, you know, of Karl Marx and his Communist followers.” As it happened, not one of the five articles contained the incriminating phrase, but Lyle explained that that point was of no significance. “Expressions” used in the articles showed that Olds “adhered to the surplus value” doctrine, the Congressman said. Recondite points had been noted, and now were called to the committee’s attention. None of the fifty-four articles contained the word “gravediggers,” but that fact was also of no significance. While Olds had not used the word, it had appeared in a headline above one of his articles—in a headline written by some editor in one of the scores of newspapers that printed the article—and Lyle gravely explained the implications to the subcommittee: “The word ‘gravediggers’ is of interest in view of Karl Marx’s statement in the
Communist Manifesto
, page 42. I am quoting from Karl Marx: ‘Before all, therefore, the bourgeoisie produces its own gravediggers. Its downfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.’” (“Without objection, it will be made part of the record.”)

Lyle testified for ninety minutes, and those sentences extracted from Olds’ articles—“A new age is being born which will succeed capitalist political democracy”; “Lenin knew what would take the place of political parties when he made his bid for power in Russia with the slogan All power to the Soviets’”; “Child labor, and the employment of mothers” are “features of the economic order developed under private capitalism”—read to the accompaniment of Lyndon Johnson’s ritualistic drone, “Without objection the article referred to will be made part of the record,” painted a convincing picture.

The photostats produced the desired effect, in part because Lyle, by omitting the fact that the articles had been published in the
Daily Worker
only
because the Communist newspaper was a subscriber to a press service for which Olds worked, created the impression that Olds had written them specifically for the
Worker
and was employed by it. At the conclusion of Lyle’s testimony, Lyndon Johnson asked for questions from the subcommittee. “Mr. Chairman, I have not any questions to ask,” Senator McFarland said. “I am shocked beyond words at these articles…. I am not a reader of the
Daily Worker
, and frankly I did not know that such articles as these are going out through the United States mail.” He had worked with Olds, McFarland said, and “I have had a rather affectionate attitude toward him,” but “I think that these are most serious charges, the most serious that I have ever heard made in Congress.” Senator Tobey had no questions either. As the recitation of Olds’ articles had unfolded, Tobey, who had said an early word in his defense, had quietly left the hearing room, not to return.

T
HE FIRST ATTACK
on Olds had come from John Lyle. The second came from Lyndon Johnson.

At the completion of Lyle’s testimony, Johnson thanked him and said, “Mr. Olds, will you come forward,” and Olds walked up to the witness table and took his place before the high dais and the senators behind it. Like Lyle, Olds had a prepared statement, a twelve-thousand-word statement he had been writing for several weeks—he had given Johnson a copy the previous day—and he placed it before him on the table. It was, however, to be quite some time before he was allowed to read it.

While Olds’ statement did not address Lyle’s specific charges—Olds, of course, had not even known that Lyle was going to testify—it happened to deal with the substance of those charges. By sheer coincidence, Olds had composed the most effective answer possible to Lyle’s attacks on his philosophy, for his statement was an explanation of his philosophy—an explanation of how it had evolved during his career first as a social worker, minister, teacher, writer, and then as a member of state and federal regulatory commissions; how, for example, it had evolved from a belief that only public ownership could control great corporations into a belief that they could be controlled by government regulation while remaining in private hands. In effect a twelve-thousand-word autobiography, the statement documented, quite thoroughly, the fact that during the twenty years since the last of the Federated Press articles had been written, his thinking had, under the influence of Franklin Roosevelt, changed considerably. It was a closely reasoned, persuasive description of the evolution of his beliefs from the radical liberalism he had espoused during the 1920s to the New Deal liberalism in which he had, during the intervening two decades, come so fervently to believe. And, almost incidentally but quite convincingly, the statement documented the fact that never, not even in the most radical moments of his youth, had Leland Olds believed in Communism. As a young man, the statement said, he
had “rejected the approach of Karl Marx” as “unwholesome,” and, the statement said, “I still believe that.” It noted that throughout his life, as in his determination during the 1920s to “keep Communists from infiltrating” a new political party, he had not merely rejected Communism but had fought Communism. It pointed out that he had never—as Lyle had insinuated—written for the
Daily Worker
but that that newspaper had merely been one of eighty newspapers, almost all of them non-Communist, that subscribed to the press service for which he worked.

Olds’ statement dealt not only with his philosophy, but, quite specifically and in detail, with his record: the record he had compiled during the twenty years since he had written the last of those articles—the twenty years during which he had served as a public official. It documented, in detail, the faithfulness and effectiveness with which he had implemented Roosevelt’s policies (and, later, the similar policies of Lehman and Truman) in both New York and Washington—in Washington as those policies had been modified by Congress. His statement pointed out that Congress must have approved of his record; during his ten years on the Federal Power Commission, the statement noted, his work “has been an open book to Congress”; he had appeared before congressional committees scores of times; “Congress has had an opportunity to know me, my conception of the FPC’s work, and what I was seeking to accomplish”; and, for ten years, again and again, Congress had approved what he was doing. If the statement had been read without interruption, it would have been an effective rebuttal of Lyle’s charges.

So he would not be allowed to read without interruption.

Olds had hardly begun when Senator Capehart began firing questions at him. When Lyle’s testimony had been interrupted—by Tobey—Johnson had quickly intervened, asking the senators to defer their questions until he had finished, and Lyle had thereupon been allowed to read his prepared statement without interruption.

When Olds’ statement was interrupted, the Chairman did not intervene. Intervention finally came from McFarland, who despite his shock at the articles seemed unable to forget completely his onetime “affection” for Olds. Cape-hart’s cross-examination was continuing—with Olds’ statement still lying unread on the table before him—when McFarland said, “Mr. Chairman, may I suggest that the testimony offered here this morning has been of such a serious nature that I personally feel Mr. Olds should be given the opportunity to make his statement in chief without interruptions.”

“Let us put it this way,” Lyndon Johnson replied. “Let us hope Mr. Olds can proceed with his statement with a minimum of interruptions.”

After Olds had been reading again for about six minutes, however, Johnson himself broke in. Olds’ statement focused on his philosophy, on his record. Johnson wanted the focus on Marxism, and Leninism, and the Communist Party. And he knew how to get the focus there—by linking Olds with the name, instantly recognizable in Washington in 1949, of the head of that party.

Had he not, Johnson demanded of Olds, once spoken from the same platform as Earl Browder?

“It may be the case,” Olds replied. “I do not know. I just do not remember. I remember once speaking before the Trade Union and Educational League….”

That gave Johnson an opening. “When you accepted that engagement with the Trade Union and Educational League,” he asked, “you did so with the full knowledge and purposes of that organization?”

A stack of photostats—not Lyle’s photostats but photostats with which
he
had been provided by Wirtz—was lying before Johnson. Holding up the first one, he brandished it in front of Olds. Didn’t you know, he demanded, that the Trade Union and Educational League was “cited by Attorney General [Francis] Biddle as an affiliate of the Red International Labor Unions?” The document in his hands, he said, was a page from an edition of the
Daily Worker
of March 29, 1924, reporting on the meeting at which Olds and Browder had both spoken.