GENERAL REPORT OF THE CONGRESS OF AMERICAN WOMEN INCLUDING PEACE AND DEMOCRACY
TO BE PRESENTED AT THE COUNCIL MEETING OF THE W.I.D.F. AT PRAGUE, February 20, 1947.

The members and officers of the Congress of American Women send greetings
through their delegates, Mrs. Helen Philips and Mrs. Elinor S. Cimbel, to the members
of the Women's International Democratic Federation, assembled in Prague for the
first meeting of the Council, February 20, 1947.

Since the last report of the Congress of American Women, made to the Women's
International Democratic Federation through its President and Executive Vice-
President, Dr. Gene Welfish and Muriel Draper, at the meeting of the Executive
Committee in Moscow, October 10, 1946, the Congress of American Women has expanded
its membership to 192,200, including affiliate organizations. This increase of
membership is composed of individual members and organizations from many different
parts of the United States and includes home makers, industrial workers, professional
women, members and organizations of trade unions, who have responded with enthusiasm
to the program of the Congress of American Women.

The elections in November 1946 clearly showed that certain reactionary forces
in the United States are making every effort to gain control of the sources of
our national life and well being at the expense of the working men and women
who produce the goods and services necessary to our daily living. These forces
are operating through monopoly capital and international cartels, and by means
of those members of the United States Congress whose interests are identified
with those groups and who are thereby largely responsible for the formulation,
of legislation, and passing of laws aimed against the general welfare of the
majority of the American people.

These reactionary forces are aided in their action by the United States
Chamber of Commerce, its subsidiary city chambers of commerce, and the National
Association of Manufacturers whose "lobby" in Congress is the most powerful in

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the country. Through these agencies the action branches out into business organizations and groups formed by men and women of similar interests.

Propaganda in support of these interests is insideously spread throughout the country by the tyranny of the press and the syndicated columnists, as well as by the widely-heard radio commentators they indirectly control. The main objective of all these united forces within the United States is an attack on organized labor and the legitimate gains of trade unions. The purpose of this attack is to weaken the organized resistance of millions of American citizens to the threats of disintegrative trade practices, lowered wage scales, and preparation for war. These dangerous activities are carried beyond the boundaries of the United States through the medium of international cartels maintaining their invisible empire throughout the world, and deriving their greatest strength and leadership from the coalition of monopoly business interests in this country.

By such means are certain anti-democratic elements of the United States attempting to destroy the unity of the American people formed so firmly during the war years under the leadership of Franklin Delane Roosevelt, and to alienate them from the valiant peoples with whom we fought to a united victory over fascism in World War II, whose will is to build a democratic and peaceful way of life through self-government in their own countries, adequate to the great tasks that must be accomplished in the field of health and education of children, and political, legal and social justice for women.

In this critical period of our history, our main task is to make the women of the United States, through the members of the Congress of American Women, realize the danger threatening their daily life in this situation and urge them to act. The Congress of American Women is using every possible means to reach all our members and their friends and point out to them the connection

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between this general situation and such common problems as high prices, increase in rents, the lowering of wages and the standard of living, the housing shortage, as well as discrimination of race, religion and sex. Above all, we must bring home to them the importance of the prevention of future wars.

Through the directives issued from the Congress of American Women national headquarters in New York City, the local chapters and community groups throughout the country have carried out programs based on the work done by the Commissions on Child Care and Education, the Status of Women, and Peace and Democracy.

The Commissions on Peace and Democracy held rallies and circulated petitions demanding the introduction of federal legislation to prevent the crime of lynching, and the prosecution of the criminals responsible; this action will be continued throughout the sessions of the 80th United States Congress.

The Commissions on Peace and Democracy participated with other organizations in a vigorous campaign to retain control of prices, in spite of which most controls have been removed from food and clothing, causing the wide spread inflation we are now experiencing and bringing increasing hardship to home makers and workers in the United States.

The Commissions secured thousands of petitions to retain rent ceilings, and these petitions were presented by a delegation to President Truman in Washington in behalf of the Congress of American Women. Millions of American citizens were likewise active in this effort that, to date, there has been no removal of rent control by our Government.

The Commissions are now organizing the activities of our membership in support of labor in order to strengthen effective resistance throughout the country to the vicious anti-labor legislation which the leading reactionary members of Congress are now formulating.

REPORT FROM CONGRESS OF AMERICAN WOMEN
TO EXECUTIVE BOARD, WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION
MEETING IN ROME, MAY 15, 1948

The outstanding developments in the United States since the summer
of 1947 have been:

1) the speed, intensity and violence with which Wall Street
has taken over the policies of the Truman Administration, in the interests
of war and reaction, and

2) the emerging people's movement for peace which is crystallizing
around the "new Party" campaign for a progressive Congress and for the President-
tial candidacy of Henry Wallace.

The administration of F. D. Roosevelt, Truman's consistently surrendered to Wall Street and to the military, Bankers and generals predominate in all levels of the Administration: Secretary of State Marshall was our former Army Chief-of-Staff; President Truman's personal aide is Admiral William D. Leshy, wartime anti-Soviet Ambassador to the Soviet Union; generals administer the American Military Zone in Germany and Japan; a top general, Walter Bedell-Smith, is now US Ambassador to the USSR; Secretary of Defense Forrestal is a banker who, xxx as former head of Dillon Read & Co., was deeply involved in Middle Eastern oil financing; Marshall's top subordinate, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Lovell, comes from the banking firm of Brown Bros. Harriman; so does former Commerce Secretary and present Economic Recovery Program "ambassador-at-large" Averell Harriman. And so it goes in one department, one key post at home and overseas, after another.

The American people are getting a much heavier dose of anti-Soviet propaganda than the联合国 can release against Nazi Germany during the war. American imperialism is waging a desperate "cold war" against the Soviet Union: outright falsification, distortion and misrepresentation of facts by the commercial press and radio, and by our government itself, all aiming to arouse the fears and strengthen the prejudices

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of uninformed persons. Witness the publication and further over the so-called Nazi documents relating to diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union during the early war years - the slanderous attacks against the Soviet Union during the thwarting of the reactionary plot in Czechoslovakia, and preceding the Italian elections, the Navy Department's invention of Russian submarines off Japan, etc. etc.

The United States is moving swiftly towards militarization. Truman has demanded Universal Military Training of the youth, and the peacetime draft; the only division in administration circles is whether we should rely on such an increase in military forces or put additional billions of dollars into a colossal expansion of the US Air Force. A Special Air Policy Commission appointed by President Truman has asked for $24 billion, over and above $11 billion asked for "national defense." Regarding this request Walter Lippman, conservative "Herald Tribune" columnist, wrote: "The main recommendation is ..., that we start at once to make the Air Force capable of delivering a sustained assault at long range upon the industrial centers of the Soviet Union." It is estimated that already our Army, Navy and Air Force cost the average American family $375 a year. And the requested budget for 1949 for manufacturing bombs is $600million, as compared to $450 million in 1948.

American foreign policy is bent on advancing American imperialist interests abroad at any and all costs. This means suppression of any democratic people struggling for independence; hence the continued American intervention on behalf of the neo-fascist regimes in Turkey and Iran; Administration pressure for additional billions of dollars worth of aid to Chiang Kai-shek ($463 million in ERP); the open direction and support of the royalist forces attacking the heroic guerrilla resistance army in Greece (with $275 million in ERP aid to Greece and Turkey); the support of Dutch colonial power against the people of Indonesia; the flagrant attempts of the United States within the United Nations to sabotage Palestine partition, and its imposition of an arms embargo against the Jews, while pressing for trusteeship and a military foothold at any costs in this strategic oil and military area; open US opposition to any UN action against Franco Spain and the beginnings of overt dealings with Franco (for air bases, the recent

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Myron Taylor visit, etc.); repeated by-passing of the UN, as in the Greek situation, the Marshall Plan, and plans to strip the UN of power by curbing its veto provisions, etc; flagrant interference in the Italian elections with money, relief, parading naval units in the Mediterranean, and the proposal to the USSR that Trieste be returned to Italy, just previous to the Italian elections; and the opening of a full-scale attempt, at the recent Bogota conference, to mobilize the South American nations "against communism," in collective security and mutual defense pacts. The conference approved an anti-Communist resolution (so described by the NY "Herald Tribune") which stated that "international communism is diametrically opposed to liberty" and "deliberately foments civil xtrik strife and economic instability." The resolution called on the South American republics to "raise the living standards of their peoples" in the fight against communism and to take "all necessary measures to impede and uproot activities directed, assisted or instigated by foreign governments, groups or individuals." Out of this conference will come a consultative inter-American committee of top military men, and an economic conference is planned in Buenos Aires or Santiago late this summer or early autumn.

The keystone of American imperialism today is the Marshall Plan, based on the central aim of rebuilding the industrial war potential of Western Germany, and the economic and political subjection of all countries receiving its "aid" to the imperialist aims inherent in the Plan. (It should be noted here that the "relief" aspects of the Marshall Plan as a successor to UNRRA were heavily emphasized in presenting it to the American people. But by the end of April the President openly asked Congress for military "short-term" shipments to the 16 nations involved in ERP as "insurance.") Any analysis of the true significance of the Plan, clarification of its political discrimination, or opposition to it, is condemned as Communistic and un-American!

The domestic policy of the Truman Administration centers around a terrific drive against the people's civil liberties aimed at crushing any opposition to its foreign policies or any attempt by the people to fight for their own living standards and security. A "loyalty oath" procedure instituted by the Government, and backed by a

‡-

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Gestapo-like drive among government employees by the infamous Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has spread beyond the government into commercial and industrial concerns and into the trade union movement! For the first time in American history the concept of "guilt by association" is being introduced into our legal practice.

A witch-hunt is underway against non-citizens, who are being arrested on deportation charges with the obvious aim of intimidating and splitting the progressive movement. As of May 6, there were 53 cases of deportation on political grounds, some of them in trade unions, in the International Workers Order or in the Communist Party, many of them rank and file members of these and other organizations. Six of them are women. Of particular interest to the W.I.B.F. is the case of Claudia Jones, a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party, who came to the US from the British West Indies when she was eight years old and has been unsuccessfully trying to take out her first papers for eight years.

Others are Mrs. Theresa Horvath, West Virginia mother of a son who fought in World War II, active in the IWO; Esther Sazer, Pacific Coast mother of three American-born children, who was naturalized, lost her citizenship under an old law no longer on the books because she married a non-citizen, and now faces deportation on this flimsy technicality; Beatrice Siskind Johnson, Communist leader with a six-year-old child whose sole support she is; Mrs. Hazel Wolf of Seattle, 50 years old with a dependent child; and Annie Hobson, also from the Pacific Coast (no details). Hilde Eisler, wife of Gerhart Eisler, while held for deportation on so-called purely technical grounds, is clearly a victim also of political persecution.

Another withhunt has been unleashed by the notorious Un-American Activities Committee, a weapon of reactionary forces since 1936, and now overriding all constitutional rights to build up even greater hysteria against the Soviet Union and all forms of progress. In a move to paralyze intellectually and artistically the American motion picture industry, the Committee has cited 10 leading film writers and directors as "un-American," including such outstanding creative artists as John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz and Dalton Trumbo, who have written some of the few Hollywood films which

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are really of first rank, and Edward Dmytryk and Adrian Scott, director and producer of the first American film on anti-Semitism, "Crossfire." Some of these men have already lost their jobs. All face prison sentences for denying the Committee's right to inquire into their political beliefs. So do such outstanding progressives in the field of American-Soviet relations, as Richard Morford, Executive Director of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, and the 12 members of the Executive Board of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee who refused to surrender to the Committee the names of donors who had aided the Spanish Republican exiles, and the refugees who had received such aid. (They themselves include four women: Charlotte Stern and Ruth Leider, members of the Congress of American Women, Marjorie Chodorov, and Helen Bryan, Executive Secretary of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee.)

The Un-American Committee has fathered a bill now before Congress, the Mundt Bill (known as the Subversive Activity Control Act of 1948) which, if passed by both Houses and signed by President Truman, will illegalize democracy in the United States. Based on the concept that there exists a worldwide conspiracy of Communists directed from Moscow to overthrow the US Government, any action taken by any individual opposing present US foreign policy would be proof of membership in this alleged conspiracy and make the "criminal" liable to prosecution and sentences running to 10 years in prison. This strikes not only at the Communist Party but obviously at the New Party and Wallace's own candidacy for the Presidency, and would make support for Wallace a high political crime and treason against the American state!

The bill would outlaw strikes or any kind of effective action by the people to fight for better conditions, either wage increases or lower prices or better schools! It would require any progressive organization, whether it be the Communist Party, a militant union, or the Congress of American Women, to register its entire membership and list of financial contributors, on the say-so of Attorney General Clark that it was a subversive organization.

This Mundt Bill would legislate fascism into being in the United States. It has however aroused a tremendously broad organized resistance movement, led in the

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first instance by eight courageous Congressmen who issued an appeal for the Mundt Bill's
defeat; by the Civil Rights Congress, which has active chapters throughout the country;
and by a broad Committee for Democratic Rights which has united liberals such as Arthur
Garfield Hays, trade union leaders, churchmen and many others on this issue. The "New York
Post", a newspaper which reflects the confusions and vacillations of the liberals in the
present period, came out strongly against the bill; hundreds of intellectual leaders signed
a statement pointing out its dangerous implications and calling for the immediate abolition
of the Un-American Activities Committee.

* * *

Reaction is today actively attacking America's schools and universities; budgets
for teaching and for peacetime (as opposed to military) research have been drastically cut;
education costs are climbing far beyond the reach of veterans and working and middle class
students; and - indicative of the times - our top military figure, General Eisenhower, is
appointed President of one of our largest universities, Columbia, in New York City. A
professor at Northwestern University is compelled to withdraw from a candidacy for election
on the New Party ticket; another Mid-Western professor loses his job for supporting
Wallace.

In the midst of the reactionary upsurge, President Truman pays only lip service
to maintaining civil liberties. He appointed a special commission to study the question of
civil rights and the commission brought in an elaborate report which called specifically
for Federal anti-lynching legislation; abolition of the poll tax which annually disfran-
chises some 10 million voters in the South; abolition of discrimination in the armed
forces of the US; enactment of Fair Employment Practices legislation; no discrimination
in educational institutions; and urging state laws outlawing so-called restrictive coven-
ants which prevent Negroes, Jews or Asians from finding homes in such "restricted"
neighborhoods. Yet Mr. Truman has made no effort to exercise his considerable power
and influence to fix fight for or carry out any of these recommendations; his Secretary
of the Army declares that Jim Crow will continue in the Armed Forces, and is notапрémande
des le chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Senator Howard McGrath, assures the

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southern bourbons of his party that no effort will be made to put the Civil Rights
program into effect! The President does not raise a finger, meanwhile, to stop the
lynching of Negroes in the Southern states, to curb anti-Semitism, to stop Jim Crow
in the Armed Forces, to halt <u>FBI raids on progressives in their homes,</u>
or the purge of government employees who may have contributed to the cause of Republican
Spain or merely known someone who did!

In the shocking case of Mrs. Rose Lee Ingram and her three teen-age sons,
we have nother Scottsboro case which will be the center of a nation-wide effort to
free them. Mrs. Ingram, Negro mother of 12 children, was forced to defend her life against
the attack of a Southern white farmer, and called two of her sons to her aid. The farmer
was accidentally killed. Mrs. Ingram and the boys were sentenced to die in the electric
chair, and a third son, not even present at the time of the attack, was "framed" on a
charge of picking the white man's pockets after his death, and is on a chain gang!
Tremendous protests have already forced commutation of the death sentences to life impris-
onment; but the case, which already resembles the famous Scottsboro case in its implica-
tions and in the wide protests it has evoked, will not be closed until all the Ingrams
are free once more.

* * * *

On the economic scene, Truman has not lifted a finger to stop the inflation-
ary spiral, which has pushed the cost of living up more than 100% over what it was
in 1939, for the average worker. Food alone increased 99%, and this in a country which
is unravaged by war, where production continues without interruption, where there has
been neither famine nor drought!

The explanation lies in the fabulous profits of the corporations, which are
at their highest in American history. For the year 1947 total corporation profits are
estimated to have been $17½ billion (after taxes), compared with $12½ billion in 1946,
a wartime profit peak of $10.3 billion in 1943, and $8 billion in 1939! Well in the
forefront are the steel trusts, food,air building, electric and textile interests.

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These profits originate in inflated prices whose levels have little to do with wage increases. US Government gt figures show that food prices rose over 50%. But on the basis of the census ratio of wages to total value of products, a three percent rise in food prices would have covered the wage increases for that period!

In the face of still rising living costs, there is tremendous pressure from xh the workers for wage increases; but the big trusts such as steel, electric, auto, meat, etc. have flatly refused to give any raises. The militantly led unions are fighting the issue out on the picket line: the meat packers have been on strike for two months against a trust which has raised its profits 300% over last year and the year before! But in steel and auto and in the AFL Unions, an increasingly opportunist leadership is bowing to the trusts and to pressure from the Truman Administration to avoid open struggles. Meanwhile, steel prices have been raised, and this will shortly raise the cost of other basic products, and eventually food and rents, still higher in the coming months.

The burden of the new r<sub>g</sub>-armament program will fall on the poor, already taxed out of all proportion to their incomes. A demagogic vote-catching tax "relief" bill passed this winter by the Republicans would tax different income groups as follows:

<table><thead><tr><th>Annual Income</th><th>Old Rate</th><th>New Rate</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>$1,000</td><td>$95.00</td><td>$66.40</td></tr><tr><td>2,500</td><td>380.00</td><td>315.40</td></tr><tr><td>$ 500,000.00</td><td>407,896.00</td><td>385,000.00</td></tr><tr><td>1,000,000.00</td><td>840,146.00</td><td>777,000.00</td></tr></tbody></table>

While rents still remain under some degree of control, the building trust has almost entirely abandoned low-cost housing and effectively blocked government construction of such housing. The result is a housing famine, which bears most heavily on veterans and minority groups such as Negroes, which is unprecedented in our history, with an estimated 10 million homes and apartment units needed to solve the crisis. Meanwhile building goes on of high-priced homes and apartments, hotels, xv resorts, shops, gambling resorts, cinema theaters, etc. !

Today, in the richest country in the world, some 20% of all American families receive income (before taxes) of $16 a week. The income of the average family is $835 a year (figures from the Economic Report of the President, submitted to the Congress.

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January 14, 1948). Personal savings are shrinking dangerously except in the top income bracket; 10% of the American people hold 60% of all savings, and 30% of the American people 87% of all savings! The average American family faces the future with its savings exhausted by three years of high prices, while a completely inadequate system of social security excludes 17 million workers from any social insurance benefits; specifically, many working in farm and domestic employment, all those self-employed, professionals, and employees of non-profit educational and religious institutions. Unemployment insurance payments vary in amounts and duration from state to state, but an indication of their inadequacy is to be found in the N.Y. State scale, which the highest in the country, which provides an unemployed worker with only $26 a week for 26 weeks; in some states the amount is only a few dollars a week for a much shorter period of time.

There have been numerous warnings that all was not well with our so-called "booming economy." In the past 15 months there have been several serious "breaks" on the stock market. But in early February of this year, the grain and meat markets led off a series of sharp declines which spread to all the trading exchanges. Since then there have been increasing signs of "soft spots" in the economic picture. Even government figures admit 2½ million unemployed. However, the initiation of an elaborate re-armament program and the exports involved in the Marshall Plan may be expected to bolster up production and defer at least temporarily the outbreak of a sharp economic crisis. This is certainly a major aim of the Wall Street monopolists in putting over the Marshall Plan.

The current anti-Communist hysteria, and complete failure to recognize Truman's policies at home and abroad for what they really are, has swung over a considerable proportion of the outstanding liberals of the Roosevelt era into the camp of war-mongering and anti-Sovietism, whether as followers of Truman or as backers of Eisenhower's candidacy (despite the general's continued denials) or with whatever varied reservations they produce to dress up their renegacy. The list is long and includes such intellectuals as Max Lerner, Maxwell Anderson, John Steinbeck, Walter Lippman, Negro leaders such as Mary McLeod Bethune and Lester Granger, labor leaders such as Philip Murray, James Carey and Jacob Potofsky of

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Hillman's Clothing Workers Union; and politicians such as Chester Bowles and Roosevelt's own sons Elliot and James.

A shocking and outstanding example is Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the late President, who recently responded to one of our Opinion Polls for Peace as follows: she stated that reviving war industries in Germany was "not the policy of the United States"; that it was "misleading and untrue" to describe US policy as intervening in the people's movements for independence, as in Greece; that the $10 million military budget - which has placed heavy burden on the American family, and lowered its standard of living - is necessary "until Russia comes to her senses"; that the solution of the international problems through the UN is necessary to peace"*where possible*; and she unqualifiedly supported Universal Military Training for the youth, and stockpiling the atomic bomb, as leading to peace!

Mrs. Roosevelt believes furthermore that women can only be effective as a force for peace when they live in a "free democracy." By her support of the Truman Doctrine one must conclude that she believes that Greek women are living in a "free democracy" there, under the supervision of the American Military Mission to Greece!

Of even greater significance and seriousness is the situation within the American labor movement at this time. Not only does the division between the AFL and CIO continue to exist; the CIO is now sharply divided, with its national leadership and the leaders of a large number of its affiliated unions aligned with the AFL in support of the Marshall Plan, and the Administration's anti-Soviet policies. Support of the Marshall Plan has become the obsessing sole concern of Murray and of leaders of the great CIO clothing, auto, textile and shipyard unions, and has led them into a position of meekly accepting the refusal of the largest corporations, such as US Steel, to grant wage increases. They shrinking shrink from a militant strike policy because it would hold up production for the Marshall Plan, and urge on their members a policy of speed-up and acceptance of longer hours, again for the sake of the Marshall Plan !

Although CIO continues in principle to oppose the infamous Taft-Hartley Law

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and Universal Military Training, its position of support of the Administration's foreign policy and its bitter opposition to Wallace's New Party, prevent it from taking effective action. Philip Murray is not only trampling on the constitutional democratic rights of lower CIO bodies by ordering them to support the Marshall Plan and to oppose the New Party; at the recent convention of the CIO Textile Workers Union he even stooped to the statement that "the Communist Party is directly responsible for the organization of the Third Party," and attacked the New Party as Moscow interference in American political life in much the same idiom as that used by the authors of the Mundt Bill!

While neither Murray nor the other CIO leaders who share his thinking speak for the rank and file of their unions on these questions, they will undoubtedly place additional obstacles in the path of the people's movement for peace and economic security. In 1944 the CIO's Political Action Committee, backed by the full weight of all CIO unions - leadership, treasuries, educational programs, etc. - was a tremendous aid to Roosevelt in winning the election. This year, the rank and file in these unions will not only have to organize without the aid of their unions, but in direct opposition to tremendous pressure from above. Already shop stewards and shop committeemen are being displaced if their thinking runs counter to that of the leadership, executive boards are being purged, local union charters lifted, as Murray and his aides swing into action on behalf of the bi-partisan foreign policy line.

The preponderantly reactionary role being played by the Catholic hierarchy in the United States should be recognized as an extremely serious factor in organizing violent opposition to the gathering people's movement. In Columbus, Ohio, a Communist official's home was wrecked; in Rochester, N.Y., a Communist meeting was broken up; in Detroit the newsstands were searched for "Communist literature"; in Newark, Red Hook (Brooklyn), and Evansville, Ind., Indianapolis, and Columbia, Mo., there were six Storm Trooper efforts to break up Wallace meetings. In many instances these outbreaks were directly traceable to the intervention of parochial authorities, or to the active leadership of the Catholic War Veterans or the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists.

* * *

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The onslaught of reaction and the drive to war is only one side of the American scene today. Its violence is due to the fact that the people are rallying to take the offensive for peace and prosperity. This movement is crystallizing around the developing New Party, which will run candidates for Congress in November, and around the leadership and candidacy of Henry Wallace for the Presidency.

Wallace's candidacy came in response to strong popular pressure expressed by the organization of a state-wide independent party in California, by endorsement from existing independent parties in New York State and in Chicago, where a newborn Progressive Party swept a slate of judicial candidates into office. In November, to the consternation of the Democratic and Republican machines. Further support and initiative for the Wallace candidacy came from the Progressive Citizens of America, a national organization whose origins date back to the Roosevelt election campaign; from unions in electric, fur and leather, office and professional, mine-mill and smelter, food and tobacco, and the West Coast longshoremen, as well as from rapidly growing rank and file union committees in railroad, steel, maritime, auto, shoe, garment, furniture and coal mining; from Negro and small farm groups, and from professionals and small business people. Today Wallace supporters are already organized into state-wide political organizations in 45 states, and conservative analysts estimate that he now holds some 10 million votes.

The program for which the people have called, and which Wallace and his running mate Senator Glen Taylor are pushing with great vigor, is a clear-cut one for the return to Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies in the field of foreign affairs: cooperation with the USSR, wholehearted support of the UN, friendship for all democratic people's governments, food and aid for the needy of the world through a United Nations agency, and without political interference; support for the Jewish State in Palestine; restriction of the use of atomic energy to peacetime uses; trade relations based on a real policy of reciprocity. At home the New Party stands for reduced armaments budgets, price control, repeal of the Taft-Hartley anti-union law, vastly increased government expenditures for health, education and social services, equal pay for women, aid to small farmers, complete civil liberty.

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an end to the infamous Jim Crow of the Negro people and to anti-Semitism, and many
other progressive planks.

The New Party is educating millions of Americans and is giving back hope
and courage to those who had lost both since the death of Roosevelt and the surrender
of the Democratic Party. Far from splitting the progressive vote, XXX as some critics
of Wallace's candidacy fear, the New Party is the only means of drawing to the polls
enough voters to insure election of progressive Congressmen and change the political
samples complexion of Congress. It is giving a clear direction for the first time in
two years to all those who saw no difference between Truman on the one hand, and whoever
the Republicans nominate on the other - be it Taft, Dewey, Stassen, Vandenburg, or
MacArthur - and who recognize that by now Wall Street is pulling the behind-the-scenes
strings for both parties!

The New Party program appeals to millions of Americans among the Negro
groups, and Jewish peoples and the nationality/xxxyx who have witnessed Wallace's keen under-
standing and sympathy for the democratic struggles in Italy, in Palestine, in France,
and who respect his courage and integrity for insisting on meetings free from any seg-
regation keep in the heart of the Jim Crow South. (Senator Taylor has just been arrested
for going to a meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, through a door marked "Negroes Only.")

The youth, white collar workers, professionals, women and labor, are all
attracted to the New Party, not on the basis of program alone, but through the many
growing struggles which are involving all progressives in America today.

~~Nationalists~~ WILL NOT COST US $2 BILLIONS

The cause for this lies not alone in the emergence of the New Party itself,
but in many developing activities and forces from which this party can draw supports.
There is a tremendous resistance among the youth to the proposal fxxxyxiversity for
Universal Military Training. Two hundred delegates attended a nationwide National
Youth Assembly against UMT on Feb. 15-16 right in Washington itself, and visited Congress-
men and Senators on Capitol Hill.

U.M.T. is also opposed by American Veterans Committee (comprising the veterans
of the last war, in distinction to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion,

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whose membership fought in World War I and which support UNE); the Catholic War Veterans Association; the CIO (although its leaders have been passive on the issue, because of their support of the Marshall Plan and Truman's anti-Soviet policies); the American Farm Bureau; the United Christian Youth Movement; the National Farm Farmers Union, the most progressive farm organization; the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People (leading Negro organization); and the United Council of Church Women(the over-all church women's organization, Protestant); the Associated Women of the American Farm Bureau,the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, and the National Education Association, which are the leading parent and education organizations in the country.

The struggle to implement the UN decision for the partition of Palestine and to lift the embargo on arms to the Jewish State, has stirred the Jewish masses in the United States as nothing has ever done except the horrors of Nazi persecution. A delegation to Washington on March 24 from Brooklyn alone drew 800 delegates; 3000 supported a nationwide March on Washington on April15, with delegates from innumerable organizations gathered in the United Committee to Save the Jewish State and the United Nations. Wallace's visit to Palestine last autumn and his lone championship, among political leaders and presidential candidates, of the cause of the Jewish State, is a strong bond between him and the American-Jewish community.

The Negro people will form one of the strongest links in the progressive coalition now developing. The great strides taken by the Negro people during World War II in throwing off the shackles of Jim Crow in the factories, in the armed services and throughout our national life, have left an indelible imprint on them even now, when many of them have once more been forced out of the factories, when lynchings and racism in many forms have revived, and when the Negro people have been the first victims in the current anti-civil liberties drive. They are fighting back with rising unity and consciousness, and are drawing increasing support from wide sections of public opinion. The bid of a young woman from the state of Oklahoma for a legal education at the State University's Law School was taken to the Supreme Court, and when a weak decision permitted the University

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authorities to find aloophold and still deny her admission, while providing her with
a fly-by-night law school for Negroes only, while students on the campus met in mass
meeting, burned a copy of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (which guarantees equal
rights to all Americans!), and sent the ashed to President Truman! The continued insis-
tence of the Truman Administration on Jim Crow in the Armed Forces has given rise to
a "civil disobedience" trend among even those sections of the Negro people who up to
now have not opposed Wall Street imperialism abroad.

The Congress of American Women faces a tremendous task: the winning of the
women in our country for the people's peace movement. There are two trends present:
one, embodied in the older, conservative and solidly established organizations and
expressed by their leadership, is approval and support for present American policy, for-
eign and domestic - approval which does not always extend to the most extreme forms of
existing hysteria such as that fostered by the Un-American Activities Committee; but
their leadership is often middle or upper-class, with a comfortable income, and cannot
speak for nor control the votes of millions of women who face in their daily lives the
problems of high prices, the threat of rising rents or - worse - of evictions, who
fear and dread the possibility of a Third World War and who are deeply opposed to
U.M.T. for their husbands and sons. The other trend is among ~~женщины~~ women who
have a deep-seated sentiment for peace. Our problem here is to organize and channel
this sentiment into constructive activity.

Indicative is a Peace Commitment circulated by the United Council of Church
Women, the over-all Protestant church women's Organization, which pledges support to
the United Nations, for the "extension of human rights and economic justice around
the world" and for "civil rights and brotherhood in my own community."

Another indication of the need felt in conservative circles to capitalize on
and channelize this sentiment for peace is the organization of W.O.M.A.N. - World Organizati

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of Mothers of All Nations. Its keynote has been set in "A Woman's Manifesto," written by the journalist Dorothy Thompson, who has distinguished herself in the past couple of years for her rabid anti-Soviet and anti-Communist distri butes as well as her virulent criticisms of the late President Roosevelt's policies, and who is active in this new organization. The Manifesto carefully avoids overt attacks against progressives; it is couched in mystical iuxununtik terms with overtones of passive resistance, and a bow towards the need for strengthening the United Nations. But its tie with Miss Thompson, its vagueness, and its religious and sentimental appeal to women, only augur its reactionary potentialities.

It was noted previously that a number of women's organizations had purged
participated actively in the fight against UMT; and women are among the most active
sections of the Wallace movement in states and communities across the country. Many
state organizations for Wallace have women in their top leadership and their activity
is to be found in every sphere: organizational, financial, educational. Wallace
himself wrote in the "New Republic" (May 3, 1948); in connection with the growth of
the New Party:

"I have been tremendously impressed by the leadership and activity of the women in our movement. This participation of women from all over the country was reflected at the Chicago conference by the presence of some 80 delegates from about 30 states. Women from 22 states founded our women's division. In California, two-thirds of the work on all levels is being done by women, and eight of them are running for Congress on our ticket.

"Women are particularly active in the South. In Oklahoma, two women collected 2,000 of the 8,000 signatures on the state petition. The state directors in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and Missouri are women. Women hold leading positions in every other state in which our organizations are functioning, and in many of these states, too, our party is nominating and strongly supporting women as candidates for office."

"I believe that the active participation of women in the New Party stems from their great stake in the fight for peace. Women don't raise their sons to be killed in war. They are angered by the bi-partisan conspiracy to promote inflation. Therefore, they are an integral part of our leadership and rank and file. And in our party, the women are true citizens, not merely members of a bloc of voters to be wooed in an election year."

It is these women who must be reached by the Congress of American Women
in the coming period. This task, and the policies required to fulfil it, were formulated
by the Executive Board of the Congress in two resolutions, attached hereto.

Some of CAW's chapters are already actively working with Women for Wallace, the
women's arm of the National Wallace Committee. With constantly broadening contacts and

- 16 -

fm of Mothers of All Nations. Its keynote has been set in "A Woman's Manifesto," written by the journalist Dorothy Thompson, who has distinguished herself in the past couple of years for her rabid anti-Soviet and anti-Communist diatribes as well as her virulent criticisms of the late President Roosevelt's policies, and who is active in this new organization. The Manifesto carefully avoids overt attacks against progressives; it is couched in mystical terms with overtones of passive resistance, and a bow towards the need for strengthening the United Nations. But its tie with Miss Thompson, its vagueness, and its religious and sentimental appeal to women, only augur its reactionary potentialities.

It was noted previously that a number of women's organizations had participated actively in the fight against UMT; and women are among the most active sections of the Wallace movement in states and communities across the country. Many state organizations for Wallace have women in their top leadership and their activity is to be found in every sphere: organizational, financial, educational. Wallace himself wrote in the "New Republic" (May 3, 1948): in connection with the growth of the New Party:

"Women are particularly active in the South. In Oklahoma, two women collected 2,000 of the 8,000 signatures on the state petition. The state directors in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and Missouri are women. Women hold leading positions in every other state in which our organizations are functioning, and in many of these states, too, our party is nominating and strongly supporting women's candidates for office."

It is these women who must be reached by the Congress of American Women during the coming period. This task, and the policies required to fulfil it, were formulated by the Executive Board of the Congress in two resolutions, attached hereto.

Some of CAW's chapters are already actively working with Women for Wallace, the arm of the National Wallace Committee. With constantly broadening contacts and

- 17 -

## Founded

a rounded progressive program, the Congress expects to reap a rich harvest of growth among those women who are beginning to move during the course of the campaign. We have already launched new chapters in two important industrial areas: Cleveland, Ohio, and Seattle, on the Pacific Coast.

In addition to those activities reported on by our three Commissions, the Congress has taken part in the following activities:

1) Led a large delegation of women to Washington last December as part of our Price Control and Roll-Back Campaign, linking this issue with the need for sending food abroad without any political intervention in the affairs of other nations.

2) Protested the fascist terror in Greece and Spain, and American direct intervention in Greece, Turkey and China.

3) Took part in delegations and demonstrations for the carrying through of the partition of Palestine, and raising the embargo against the Jewish State.

4) Took part in actions for the freeing of the Ingram family (delegation to Washington, Mother's Day Parade, mass meeting in Harlem).

5) Issued educational material on the Marshall Plan, UMT, the Ingram case.

In connection with International Woman's Day, the CAW held a number of meetings. The National Office, assisted by our affiliates in the New York Region and by our three chapters in the area, held a rally attended by approximately 600 persons at the Hotel Capitol in New York. Speakers included our National officers, Madame Francoise LeClercq, and outstanding Jewish and Negro women leaders. The N.Y. Premiere of a cantata "Women are Dangerous" was held on this occasion. The history of International Woman's Day and of the women's movement in our country was linked up with the fight for peace and security today.

Meetings and affairs on this day or during the month of March, with special reference to International Woman's Day, were also held by our chapters in Detroit, Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles.

In January the Congress launched a monthly bulletin, "Around the World," dealing

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with women's news from abroad and also with activities of interest to progressive women in our own country. An Action Letter has gone out to our Chapters, leadership, and affiliated organizations on an average of twice a month.

In addition to their regular activities, most of our Chapters have held larger meetings during the winter. In particular, Detroit involved eight other organizations, including the American Veterans Committee and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, in a Peace Rally on March 30, from which has grown a permanent committee to carry on the work for peace in Detroit. Our Los Angeles chapter held several meetings and receptions for the Soviet delegates to the UN Women's Commission, when they visited the West Coast in March. Our Chicago Chapter has grown to the point where it was able to open its own headquarters last month.

At the same time each group has been working on involving the women on such issues as better day-care centers for children (Chicago), cheaper milk (Pittsburgh), support to striking film studio workers (Los Angeles), improved playground and recreational facilities (Manhattan, N.Y.), lower cost meat (Detroit). It is planned to devote greater attention to directing and stimulating these activities from the National Office in the coming months.

In closing, we wish to say that while the wave of reaction has frightened or alienated some women, we are gaining new strength as the issues become clearer and sharper. We feel confident that women will play a fitting role in the crucial struggle to preserve peace and build a better future world for ourselves and our children, and that the Congress of American Women will continue to grow, whatever obstacles and attacks it faces, because our aims are those of the vast masses of the American people: Peace, Democracy, and Security. And in this struggle we warmly clasp the hands of the millions of our sisters all over the world!

*)*)*)

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