Martin
Dies was
born in Mitchell County, Texas, on 5th November, 1900. He graduated
from the University of Texas at Austin in 1919. Dies then went on
to study law at the National University in Washington before being
admitted to the bar in 1920. He worked as a lawyer in Marshall and
Orange before becoming a member of the faculty of East Texas Law School.
A member of the Democratic Party,
Dies was first elected to the Senate in 1931. A passionate anti-communist,
Dies was the first chairman of the Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) that was established in 1937. The
main objective of the HUAC was the investigation of un-American and
subversive activities. This included looking at the possibility that
the American Communist Party had infiltrated
the Federal Writers Project and other New
Deal projects.
Dies served in Congress between 1931-45 and 1953-59. Martin Dies died
in Lufkin, Texas, on 14th
November, 1972.
(1)
Martin Dies on the Un-American
Activities Committee, New
York Times (10th August, 1938)
This Committee will not permit any "character assassination"
or any "smearing" of innocent people. It is easy to smear
someone's name or reputation by unsupported charges or an unjustified
attack, but it is difficult to repair the damage that has been done.
When any individual or organization is involved in any charge or attack
made in the course of the hearings, that individual or organization
will be accorded an opportunity to refute such charge or attack.
(2)
Dorothy
Parker made
an attack on Martin Dies and his Un-American
Activities Committee
in the magazine Directions (April, 1940)
The people want democracy - real democracy, Mr. Dies, and they look
toward Hollywood to give it to them because they don't get it any
more in their newspapers. And that's why you're out here, Mr. Dies
- that's why you want to destroy the Hollywood progressive organizations
- because you've got to control this medium if you want to bring fascism
to this country.
(3)
Emanuel
Celler, speech (23rd January, 1945)
The Committee to Investigate Un-American
Activities is now
a standing investigatory committee with power to initiate legislation.
I mean this to be a direct talk. The vaudevillian antics, the brass
band tactics, the star chamber proceedings of the Dies Committee have
put all of us on notice. Bluntly then, the present committee can make
its choice. It can either adopt the Dies course of unfounded character
assassinations, lynch-law, prosecutor-jury and executioner all in
one - or it can proceed in a manner consonant with the American tradition
of the right to be heard, the right of counsel and the right of confrontation
of witnesses, placing emphasis on investigation of all foreignisms
with honest judicious objectivity. If we are to have again an extravaganza
of persecution - a deep-seated mania of embracing some I individually
conceived notion of alienism, we face again a betrayal of our basic
constitutionally guarded frights. The power to investigate is a great
public trust. And we ask the newly constituted committee not for one
instant to forget that.
In the final count, it
remains with the American people whether it will countenance the continuation
of the former practices of the Dies Committee. Illegality will never
solve the problem of political lawlessness. As we have seen so clearly
demonstrated in Europe, hate breeds hate and the vicious circle revolves
with all its attending
madness.
Let the overzealous be
reminded of Hawthorne's description of those "who go all wrong
by too strenuous a resolution to go right."
(4)
Emanuel
Celler,
You Never Leave Brooklyn (1945)
From a study made of the Dies Committee
and signed by over one hundred distinguished attorneys, I quote the
following: "That the Dies Committee, while giving lip service
to impartiality and fair play and proclaiming its devotion to Americanism
and American institutions, used its hearings, the forum provided by
Congress, for the dissemination of irresponsible slanders against
honest public servants and private individuals and against public-spirited
organizations, on testimony consisting of surmise, conjecture, unfounded
opinion, unsupported conclusions and unwarranted deductions, without
any attempt at verification or confirmation, which no self-respecting,
fact-finding agency anywhere would consider - a proceeding wholly
unworthy of the committee of the legislative body of a great and free
Republic."
Thus $625,000 dollars
of the taxpayer's money has been spent mainly for looking for ghosts
under the bed, to chasing only those tidbits that make lurid headline
reading, to, indeed, establishing precedents! Congressional investigations
that must necessarily destroy that which the committee professed to
protect - namely, the democratic processes in the United States.
It has been charged that
600,000 individuals engaged in subversive activities are abroad in
this land. If this is actually so, then the Dies Committee has been
woefully derelict in its duty. How many convictions have been obtained
because of the work of the Dies Committee? How many of those alleged
600,000 are now lodged
in jail? I fear me that the Dies Committee has labored like the mountain
and has not even brought forth the mouse.
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