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.
THE 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.
“It was my understanding that the purposes of that organization were to develop the organization of the unskilled and semi-skilled workers in industry through the forming of unions on an industrial basis,” Olds replied. But, he said, even if he had known back then that the League was an affiliate of the Red International Labor Unions, and even if he had known that Browder would be among the other speakers, he would have spoken anyway. “I just want to say I made it a principle, and I made it a principle all through my life, to accept speaking invitations no matter who invited me,” even if he did not agree with the organization’s views, even in fact if his speec
h would be “totally alien to what they thought.” How else, he tried to explain, could people be provided with information that might change their opinions?
With Johnson’s continued questioning, the dam broke. Capehart demanded an answer—“Did you ever speak with Browder?” And McFarland asked, “You surely do not mean that you would speak before any group no matter what their objectives were, do you, Mr. Olds?”
“I would not speak in such a way as to further their objectives,” Olds replied. But, he said, he would speak. “Even though those organizations were communistic or communistically inclined?” McFarland asked. “I think the situation has changed,” Olds said. “I do not think that the point of view of Communist, or communistically inclined, was so prevalent in the days when I spoke before the Trade Union and Educational League, as it has been since the war in this country. I do not think we were thinking in those terms so much as we are today.”
AT LAST, Olds was allowed to resume reading, but he was not to be afforded hat luxury for long. When he reached his experiences with the “brutal suppression” of the Pennsylvania steel strikes, he tried to explain to the subcommittee, “I am telling this so you will know what kind of laissez-faire capitalism I was writing about during my years as industrial editor of the country’s only labor paper during the years 1922 to 1929,” but interruptions became continuous, and when Olds attempted to explain the evolution of his regulatory philosophy, Johnson was ready again.
As he asked his questions, Lyndon Johnson’s demeanor, observed by the few spectators present, was as calmly senatorial as his dark blue suit or the high, massive dais at which he sat. His right hand, holding a pencil, was poised above a stack of papers, to which, putting on his horn-rimmed glasses, he would frequently refer. His face, normally so mobile, was unusually devoid of expression; what remained was grave and judicious. His voice was low and quiet—“very, very controlled,” Busby says—and seemingly all the quieter because of the contrast with the louder voices of his fellow subcommittee members, and with Capehart’s bellowing. But the members of his staff had learned that, terrible as were Lyndon Johnson’s tantrums, it was the things he said in that low, quiet voice that made them flinch, and hurt most deeply. And there was a force in his voice now that made his Texas twang even more penetrating than usual; it seemed to fill the room. Though the tone in which the questions were asked was neutral and judicious, moreover, the questions were not. His line of questioning had been developed for him by the great cross-examiner. Ralph Yarborough, in 1949 a lawyer in Austin, was to recall visiting Wirtz’s office there during the Olds hearings when the phone rang. “Wirtz picked up the receiver and talked for almost a half hour; his talk consisting almost entirely of questions of the type a lawyer might ask in court. ‘First ask him this—,’ he said into the phone. ‘Then ask him if he—’” Hanging up, Wirtz told Yarborough he had been talking to Lyndon Johnson. “He explained that Lyndon called him every day to report on the proceedings and to get more questions to be thrown at Olds….” And they were effective questions. Olds might have been attempting to explain the evolution of his philosophy, but Johnson wanted a somewhat simpler reply.
“Is it correct to state for the record that you have advocated public ownership of railroads and public ownership of utilities and public ownership of coal mines?” he asked.
Johnson wanted, he was to tell Olds a moment later, a “‘yes’ or ‘no’” answer to that question—and either answer, in that simple form, would have served his purpose. If Olds said no, Johnson could simply point to the sentences in the 1920s articles which, read alone, would appear to give the lie to that denial. A yes answer would create the headlines—“olds favored public ownership”—which would further the impression that he was a Communist. And if Olds replied yes, but said that he had changed his mind since he wrote the articles, that reply could be used to support Lyle’s charge that Olds was a “chameleon” who changed positions to remain in power—which, as Lyle had reminded the subcommittee (already, even without the reminder, well aware of the fact), was a typical Communist trick.
Olds felt that the question—“Have you advocated?”—was too broad to be answered accurately, since it seemed to apply to his entire career, and his position on the subject had changed during that career, and had never, even at the beginning, been as simple as the question implied. He didn’t want to answer the question without explaining that while he had at one time advocated public ownership, that advocacy had taken place in a context so different—the context of the 1920s—that what he meant by public ownership could not be understood if it was defined only in the context of 1949. And “public ownership” was in itself a misleadingly simplistic term, he felt; for example, he was later to say, what he had been advocating for utilities was cooperative ownership (such as the Pedernales Electric Co-op that Representative Lyndon Johnson had formed in Texas) and he did not consider that “as representing what we today mean by public ownership.” When Johnson asked, “Is it correct to state for the record that you have advocated public ownership?” Olds replied, “No, sir, I do not think that is a correct generalization.” He said he could “discuss that later at greater length”—evidently meaning in his prepared statement.
But Johnson was having none of that. “Have you advocated public ownership?” he demanded. “The answer then is no; is that right?”
“Not generally speaking,” Olds said. “For the last twenty years—” he started to say.
But Johnson did not allow him to finish the sentence. Leaning forward, he asked in the low, quiet voice: “Will you tell me whether you have advocated it or not? … I would like to know. I am not talking generally. I think you can say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
Well, actually, Olds tried to explain, he couldn’t say yes or no. As “a generalization covering the whole of my active life, it could not be said that I had. I do think that probably during the twenties—”
That sentence was cut off, too. “I do not want to cover any period of time,” Johnson said. “Have you ever advocated to your knowledge the public ownership of railroads, utilities and coal mines?”
Olds replied, “I think I have advocated it to the extent that those articles that were read this morning indicated.” When Johnson read a sentence from one of those articles that he regarded as damaging, Olds said, “I assume that is a correct statement of my position at that time…. According to my writing during the twenties, they were certainly radical writings; there is no question about that.”
Senator Reed chimed in. “Mr. Olds, cannot you make a direct reply to the Chairman’s question?” he asked. Olds said, “No, I cannot, Senator, for this reason. My thinking in this is not so simple as the Chairman’s question would indicate.” Furthermore, he said, it had been twenty years since he had last read the articles that Lyle had put into the record; he didn’t remember them. “I would have to have them before me to analyze it to tell you just exactly what I meant.” He asked for time to read them. “I would be glad to take them and give you the answer.”
But time was not something Olds was going to be given. The other subcommittee members now seemed freed from all restraint. “It was a lynching party,” says Melwood Van Scoyoc, the FPC aide who had accompanied Olds. To Olds’ request for time to read the articles, Reed replied with more attacks, and, dissatisfied with Olds’ replies, shouted, “I am talking about your evasion on these questions…. You have about run the gamut from one extreme certainly from the left-wing extreme, you have been there, according to your own statement.”
Johnson had arranged to have a duplicate stack of Lyle’s photostats, with the incriminating sentences clearly marked, placed before each of the senators. (No photostats had been given to Olds.) They read the sentences to Olds accusatorially, giving him little chance to reply. Capehart, particularly infuriated by Olds’ statement in a 1927 article that Russia was leading the world in attempting to end the exploitation of children in industry, shouted, “You felt that the communistic system in Russia was a
great thing.” Olds tried to explain that he didn’t think the system was a great thing—“I have never thought their method of doing it was right”—yet their efforts on behalf of children were right, but before he could finish that thought, Capehart was on to another sentence, which compared the British trade union movement with labor in Russia. “What you were doing was boosting the Russian system, the communistic system in Russia.” “I had no intention of boosting the Russian system in Russia,” Olds said, but Capehart was already lifting the next photostat off the pile. Reed appeared to have difficulty understanding Olds’ points—referring to a sentence in a 1928 article in which Olds used the phrase “accumulators of wealth,” the Kansas senator said: “I want to ask you what you meant… when you own your own house you have accumulated some wealth. Are you going to take protection away from householders …?” And he appeared to have difficulty understanding the job Olds had held; he referred to the time “while you were on the Daily Worker in charge of the federated department.”
OLDS WENT ON SAYING that he wanted to explain his positions, and that his prepared statement would do so. But the statement remained unread on the table before him. For long minutes, the subcommittee’s chairman made no attempt to allow him to read it. Nor did he intervene to allow Olds to finish his answers to the senators’ questions; indeed, when their attack faltered, the chairman urged it on.
“I am surprised,” Lyndon Johnson said, “that Mr. Olds, who is writing this over a period of many years, does not remember what he advocated and does not say, ‘Yes, I advocated it. I do not share that view now, but I did say it.’ … You advocated taking over the electric industry and operating utilities as cooperatives…. I do not want somebody to drum up some charges here and say you advocate nationalization…. I just want to know what your mind was at that time….”
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Page 44
