The Devil in the Book

Dalton Trumbo

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839745447
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

This is Trumbo's essay protesting the conviction of 14 California socialists and union activists under the Smith Act, which charged them with advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.

The Devil in the Book

THE SMITH ACT

THE ALIEN REGISTRATION ACT of 1940, as passed by the Congress in that year, aroused only nominal opposition. War against the Axis powers was imminent and the new law was generally accepted as a regrettable but necessary device for curbing the activities of enemy aliens and fascist spies during the perilous years to come. As administered, however, the law had a somewhat different effect. Zechariah Chafee, Jr., of the Harvard Law School later wrote of it: “Hundreds of Communist workmen have been rounded up by immigration officials and deported. So far as I can ascertain, not one Nazi and not one Fascist has been arrested and shipped overseas.”

Attached to the 1940 registration law was an obscure amendment called the Smith Amendment—later to become known as the Smith Act—which enacted into legal statute provisions for regulating, suppressing, and punishing any speech which was deemed a conspiracy to teach or advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. Its author was Howard W. Smith, whose intellect and devotion to constitutional principles may be judged by his recent presentation before the House of Representatives of the “Southern Manifesto” against desegregation.

Like the Alien Registration Law of which it was a part, the Smith Amendment was never really intended for use against fascists even in time of war. It was aimed not against the right but against the left and has consistently been so used. Just as legislation against fascists is almost always used against Communists, the prosecution of Communists inevitably imposes sanctions upon the activities and speech of millions of persons who, inimical though they may be to Communism, nonetheless struggle in specific areas for social objectives which both liberals and Communists desire.

The Smith Act has thus become the hallmark of a decade of repression and restriction not only of Communists but of the entire national community. The means by which Communists are imprisoned therefore becomes the concern of the whole people, since it is their liberty which is diminished by each conviction under the act.

For the purposes of these notes, the conviction of the fourteen California Smith Act defendants has been taken as a typical case. The quality of the defendants in all trials is approximately the same; the theory of the prosecution is the same; and above all else those dozens and dozens of books stacked on the table of the U.S. District Attorney—books which the government asserts to be the habitation of all manner of heretical devils—are invariably the same books.

In addition to its typicality, a further reason for selecting the California Smith Act trial lies in its untypicality: it is the first such case since the original Dennis decision which the United States Supreme Court has deemed to involve such substantial questions of law as to be worthy of the Court’s review.

THE DEFENDANTS

There are fourteen convicted defendants in the California case. All of them are or have in the past been public officials of the Communist Party, in which capacity they have openly and vigorously professed their political views through every medium of communication open to them. They are not private and secret persons: they are public and voluble.

They are persons in the lower economic brackets, earning an average income of perhaps fifty dollars per week. Whatever crimes they are alleged to have committed were not done for money. Three of them are veterans of World War II, and one is a veteran of World War I. Four of them are women, and three of the women are mothers. They are the fathers and mothers of twenty children.

No violence of any kind has been charged against them. No illegal thing was found in their possession. No property was stolen by them, no door was forced, no purse was rifled. They cheated no one by the sale of worthless securities, stole no funds, collected no usury, evaded no taxes. No man was lynched at their hands, nor was any racial or national or religious minority humiliated or degraded by their words. No woman’s body was sold by them or to them in prostitution, they instructed no youth in the use of drugs, and no child lay maimed or dead in the street for their carelessness.

What they actually have done and said may be found in the public press, in their political speeches and campaigns, in hundreds of leaflets they have distributed in thousand of copies, in the record of their political conventions, in the constitution of their party, and in their theoretical organ which is called Political Affairs.

They are vigorous proponents of active trade unionism, in which they view racial and sexual equality and united political action as essential to the successful struggle of American workers to better their economic condition. They advocate a comprehensive federal health program, increased social security coverage and benefits, a broad program of federal housing, and a federal fine arts department such as most civilized countries have had for decades. Many of the social reforms first advocated by the Communist Party have since been enacted into the legal structure of our government. In this sense, at least, the majority of Americans may be said to have approved and supported certain parts of the Communist program.

From the very inception of their party they have participated in the continuing struggle of the Negro people. While the main force in the drive for equality has always sprung from the Negro people themselves, Communists and these fourteen defendants have either initiated or participated in widespread campaigns for fair employment laws, desegregation of the public schools, outlawing of restrictive covenants, abolition of the poll tax, federal intervention in the murder and lynching of Negro citizens.

They have likewise organized massive protest against legal lynching as epitomized in the cases of the Scottsboro Boys, Willie McGee, the Martinsville Seven, the Trenton Six. Whether their insistence upon the rights of the Negro people is sincere or opportunistic may be determined by perusal of their press, which is full of admonitions to their own membership to rid themselves of racist concepts in their work and in their private lives. In similar fashion they have entered the lists on behalf of practically every national minority within the country, and in defense of the rights of those who are foreign born.

In foreign affairs they stand committed to peaceful coexistence between the two world systems of socialism and capitalism. They demand the abolition of colonialism and imperialism and the prohibition by all nations of atomic weapons. They propose negotiations as a solution to international tension, the expansion of east-west trade, and increased cultural exchange between all countries. They antedated Eisenhower by nine years in urging the American people to abandon the term “cold war.”

They openly express keen interest in and sympathy with the aspirations of the peoples of the Soviet Union, which was the first country to embrace socialism. In this feeling they differ very little from republicans throughout the world who hailed the American Revolution of 1776 as the beginning of a new era in human affairs, and actively organized and propagandized against all attempts of kings and empires to throttle the infant state before it gained strength to defend itself.

All fourteen California defendants are vigorous advocates of socialism as the form of government best suited to the needs of the American people. Mrs. Oleta O’Connor Yates, California State Organizational Secretary of the Communist Party, herself a defendant, testified at great length in the trial concerning her understanding of Communist objectives.

She defined socialism as a system in which the means of production are owned by the whole people and produce for the whole people, rather than for the profit of an owning class. She testified that the change from capitalism to socialism is revolutionary in character; that the word revolution, indicating the fundamental nature of the change, carries no connotation of violence. She asserted the legal right of the American people to achieve such revolutionary change through democratic means. She stated her conviction that socialism can achieve power in the United States through the ballot box and without violence, and that so long as the democratic process remains unimpaired “there is no need for fearing strife or violence in the effecting of social change.”

She declared that a revolutionary change to socialism in the United States is impossible “until the majority are convinced of its necessity”;{1} that the majority are not presently so convinced; hence that socialism now or in the immediate future is not a demand of the Communist Party. Its purpose rather is to persuade people of “the ultimate need for socialism,” and to lead them in achieving that revolutionary objective through peaceful means whenever they are convinced of its desirability or necessity. The constitution of the party enjoins its members to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and penalizes by expulsion those who advocate or employ violence. Until the majority of Americans support the objective of a socialist state, the Communist Party, while advocating socialism as the ultimate solution, struggle for the immediate needs and aspirations of the people within the framework of the present capitalist system.

However deeply one may disagree with the foregoing summary of the defendants’ sworn political beliefs, it cannot be said of these f...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• The Devil in the Book