"He's a Duck"

Albert Fitzgerald is a jolly fat man who is president of the C.I.O.'s United Electrical Radio & Machine Workers and the stooge for the union's Communist-line bosses. Last week he gave a good demonstration of a now familiar dodge of proCommunists who are called on to explain their stand. Summoned before a subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee, Fitzgerald tilted back in his chair and became blandly uninformed.

Did he think the Communist Party was just a political party? Said Fitzgerald: "I don't know what to believe about it. There are too many conflicting statements. I am not too familiar with the Communist Party."

Chairman Charles Kersten of Wisconsin tried to familiarize him with the general idea by reading from Stalin's Problems of Leninism. "I'm afraid you're trying to indoctrinate me," Fitzgerald broke in.

"This is Stalin talking," barked Kersten.

"Joe?" said Fitzgerald with a grin. He added: "I don't know the first thing about Communism, I don't care what Stalin or Lenin said. I know nothing of the policies of the Soviet Union . . . I'm just a poor guy in the United States."

James B. Carey, secretary-treasurer of the C.I.O. and onetime U.E. president, was much better informed. Carey had been ousted from the U.E. presidency by the men behind Fitzgerald--Secretary-Treasurer Julius Emspak and Organizing Director James Matles. He named them, along with Fitzgerald and the whole U.E. executive board, as men who "sacrifice the interests of the U.E. to promote the foreign policy of the Soviet Union."

Did Carey think that the U.E. was a front for the Communist Party? "On many questions, yes sir," he answered.

Did he believe that any of the U.E. bosses he named were members of the C.P.?

"I don't think that makes any difference," said Carey. "When someone walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, he's a duck."

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