Jurisdictional disputes in the motion-picture Industry : hearings before a special subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first-session, pursuant to H. Res. 111 (1948)

MOTION-PICTURE JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES 1413 by the Honorable Fred A. Hartley, which consisted of Mr. Kearns, was definitely given power to look into problems causing the strife in Hollywood, and the policy was established by the chairman at the beginning of that hearing and has been adhered to for approximately 40 days of hearings, that we would not go into the issue of Brown and Bioff on the lATSE side, and that we would not go into the issue of communism on the other side. Now, ISIr. Chairman, I just work for the committee. I have nothing to do with the making of its policies. We have cleaved to that line up to this time and as your staff representative I want simply to say that during all of the experiences to date, I have never heard, either directly or indirectly, the carpenters' union charged with being infested with connnunism, and we are hearing from the president of the carpenters' union. It is my understanding—and if I am wrong I hope I may be cor- rected—that the carpenters require that every member of their union shall be a citizen of the United States or at least that they shall have made application for citizenship. Mr. HuTCHESON. That is correct. JSIr. McCanx. I believe it is undesirable to open the doors and be faced with the problem of receiving the documentary evidence which has been offered by the lATSE and which the chairman has refused to put in the record, in which name after name has been called and person after person has been charged with communism, because it was our thought—whether right or wrong—that the Committee on Un-American Activities had jurisdiction over the investigation of communism in the country and that we should not get mixed up in that problem. Mr. Landis. I want to say that in our hearings on the Taft-Hartley bill we investigated the Allis-Chalmers case. One of the most im- portant parts of that case was where it was alleged to be a com- munistic strike. They cleared up that case out there. They have taken over, changed officers, and thrown out the Communist officers. I do not accuse the carpenters of having any Communists among them, but if we have clear cases in our labor hearings as in the Allis- Chalmers case and help to boot out the Communists there, I think this committee will have done a service. If we can do that in this case, boot out any Communists, if there are any, in any labor organi- zation out there, I think it would be a service to the country to get rid of them. Mr. OwEXS. Mr. Chairman, as one who handled the Allis-Chalmers case, I know Mr. Landis has spoken correctly, but Mr. McCann's statement is not pertinent to the issue of the question. Communism was not raised by my question, Mr. Chairman. The reason I asked the question was because in the directive of December 26, 1945, it specifically referred, giving the carpenters jurisdiction over certain work, to the agreement of February 5, 1925, which was called the 1926 agi^eement. T^Hien Mr. Hutcheson, in explaining the situation went back to show that the A. F. of L. counsel rejected that agreement of Februaiy 5, 1925—I will go into that later by other questions—and then made an agreement in 1926 which had been carried up at least to the point where it was extended for a number of years, from March 14, 1936,