Master of the Senate (56 page)

“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 speech 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.”

A
T 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.”

O
LDS 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….”

“I want you to know what my mind was at that time,” Olds tried to
explain. “The reason I did not answer the question as far as utilities was concerned, perfectly direct, was because I do not consider the statement as it was read in the record, cooperative ownership, as representing what we today mean by public ownership.”

But Johnson did not lose sight of the point. “Have you ever advocated public ownership of utilities?” he demanded again. And he finally did obtain a one-word answer. When Olds, after several further exchanges, said, “Do you want me to tell you what I advocate today?” Johnson said, “I want you to answer that question ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” “No, I do not,” Leland Olds said.

A few minutes later, Johnson said, in a statement somewhat at variance with the fact that he had organized the hearings around those twenty-year-old articles, “The important thing for this committee to determine—and I hope we will this week—is not what is represented in those articles twenty years ago. They are here and speak for themselves. It is the views of the nominee as represented before this committee today, and I regret that you find it necessary to somewhat generalize, hedge on what happened twenty-five years ago…. What those reports contain, what happened back in 1920, 1921, we can accept those. Let us get down to the question of what you think now.”

And Johnson’s efforts left the senators with the impression he wanted them to have. A comment by Senator Reed showed how clever Wirtz’s trap had been—and how Olds did not really have the option of saying he had once advocated public ownership but no longer held that view. “Let me make a little comment there, Mr. Chairman,” Senator Reed said. “Mr. Olds is a very able and very clever man who wrote a lot and talked a lot; probably assumed a lot of different positions throughout his career.” (Later that day, Reed would make another comment. He made this one to a reporter for the United Press. “Here is a man who is a full-fledged, first-class Communist,” he said.)

E
VERY TIME
O
LDS TRIED TO EXPLAIN
, the senators sitting above him on the dais would interrupt—almost in alternation: Capehart, then Reed, then Johnson, then Capehart again, two senators known as conservatives, one senator known as a liberal, refusing to let Olds explain. Two senators shouting—Capehart’s round face red in his rage—one senator speaking in a soft, emotionless voice, all three tarring him over and over with the same brush.

And the interruptions had an effect on Olds. A reporter wrote that “as committee members frequently interrupted” him, he “rocked back and forth in the witness chair.” Busby, who had only seen Olds once before and briefly, was to tell the author that Olds had “a nervous tic—his head would jerk.” But Olds did not have a nervous tic, and Van Scoyoc understood. “He kept trying to explain, trying to explain,” Van Scoyoc says. “And they wouldn’t let him. Every time he started, they would interrupt him: Didn’t you appear with Browder? Didn’t you write for the
Daily Worker?
Didn’t you say Russia had
a better system for educating children? It was like they were punching him over and over. He’d keep trying to start, and every time they’d shout him down. And after a while, every time they’d start to shout, his head would jerk back.”

R
ETURNING TO HIS OFFICE
after the luncheon recess, Johnson found on his desk two Washington newspapers that had appeared that morning with columns about the renomination fight, both apparently based in part on what the columnists had heard about the “whispers” being circulated on Capitol Hill.