Sidney Hillman
Sidney Hillman was born in Zargare, Lithuania in 1887. He arrived in the United States in 1907. Hillman never worked as a laborer of any kind and was referred to as the only outstanding labor leader who never was a worker. He began his career as one of the organizers of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and at 27 became its first president. He held that post to the day of his death and during that time was the unquestioned czar of this union.
Hillman, while not a known Communist Party member, understood the Communist Party and its methods and would not permit his union to harbor groups that take orders from other sources. The membership of his union was overwhelmingly Socialist who lived within the capitalist system. Hillman was at all times sympathetic to the Communist philosophy, and was a revolutionist.
Contract with Lenin
After the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1922 Hillman organized the Russian-American Industrial Corporation with himself as president to operate the "textile and clothing industry of Russia." Hillman's corporation sold to labor organizations at $10 a share a quarter of a million dollars of stock. Hillman went to Russia to sell the idea to CPSU General Secretary Vladimir Lenin. He cabled back from Moscow: "Signed contract guarantees investment and minimum 8 per cent dividend. Also banking contract permitting to take charge of delivery of money at lowest rate. Make immediate arrangements for transmission of money. Had long conference with Lenin who guaranteed Soviet support."
When the Amalgamated Clothing Workers met in Chicago on May 8, 1922, a message was sent from Moscow by William Z. Foster, then national chairman of the Communist Party. It read: "The defeat of the employers is the natural result of the splendid spirit of the Amalgamated. Many times in my present tour speaking to your unions I marveled at this growing spirit but since coming to this country I marvel no longer. It is the spirit of the Russian revolution, the spirit that will lead the workers to emancipation."
When the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was formed all the leaders were aware that certain Communist unions were moving in. Hillman knew Michael Quill, Joseph Curran, Harry Bridges, Ben Gold, Abram Flasner and numerous others who had moved into the CIO were Communists. And Hillman understood Communists in labor unions are not interested in the welfare of the members but in the use of the labor union apparatus for revolutionary activities.
Hillman was deeply sympathetic to the Communist cause in Russia and to the extreme leftwing ideal in America, and he was a bitter man. When John L. Lewis and David Dubinsky later left the CIO, Hillman would be supreme.
Lepke
Hillman was one of the first labor leaders to use the goon as part of his enforcement machinery. In 1931 a garment manufacturer in Brooklyn named Guido Fererri got into a bitter quarrel with Hillman's Amalgamated and was threatened by one of its officials. A few days later Fererri was found shot to death on the street. A notorious character named Louis Buckhalter, known as Lepke, was a goon for a labor union and Lepke was suspected of this crime. Some time later a Brooklyn jury found this same Lepke guilty of murder in the first degree for killing Joseph Rosen in a Brooklyn candy store on November 30, 1936. He was sentenced to be electrocuted but Lepke was in Federal custody at the Leavenworth Penitentiary serving a term of 14 years as the mastermind behind a $10 million narcotics ring and another term of 30 years for labor racketeering, both of which would keep him in Leavenworth until 1980. Governor Thomas Dewey of New York requested extradition of Lepke in order to execute him for the Rosen murder. He requested extradition four times, but each time Franklin Roosevelt’s Attorney General Francis Biddle refused.
On the night Fererri was killed, Lepke was seen by a policeman on the streets in that neighborhood in Brooklyn. He told Lepke: "You're too close to where a murder has been committed, so you better come with me." The officer took Lepke to the police station. Lepke telephoned from the station to Sidney Hillman, who shortly after arrived at the station house with Fiorello LaGuardia, his lawyer. Nothing more was ever heard of this nor was anyone indicted for the Fererri murder.
In December, 1941 while Lepke was in Leavenworth and Governor Dewey was trying to get hold of him. William O'Dwyer was the district attorney of Brooklyn investigating the murder ring of which Lepke was the head. His chief investigator was a captain of the Police Department and stories were leaking out that he was making progress. Hillman's counsel, Fiorello LaGuardia, was now Mayor of New York. At LaGuardia's order the Police Captain was told to give to his superiors a complete report on the activities of every member of his staff for every hour of the day for the preceding eight months and thereafter was to continue to report hourly on their activities. LaGuardia was trying to find out what O'Dwyer was investigating. O'Dwyer ordered his chief investigator to refuse to comply with the order, which he did. It was a big scandal in New York.