Three Little Men

The big boys in Minnesota labor are three little men, the Dunne brothers. Last week they had grown too big for their boots.

The Dunnes--Miles, Grant and Vincent --moved in on Minneapolis industry in 1934. Of the three, Vincent is the blazingest ball of fire. Born in Minnesota's agricultural country, he streaked into the woods at an early age to be a lumberjack, joined the I.W.W. and became an ardent Wobbly revolutionist. In Minneapolis he signed up with the Communist Party.

When the party split into two main factions, Trotskyist and Stalinist, Vincent Dunne became a Trotskyist, joined other Minnesota Trotskyists under the banner of the Socialist Workers Party.

*Minneapolis was an open-shop city with a settled dislike for union labor. Against that contempt Vincent Dunne hurled himself, with Brothers Grant and Miles by his side. They organized the truck drivers of the city, got a charter from Dan Tobin's A.F. of L. teamsters, and in 1934 staged two historic strikes. Heads were split, blood spilled, men killed; the employers' hard-boiled Citizens' Alliance was badly beaten. Trade unionism under the Dunne Brothers flourished in Minneapolis from then on.

Real tough guys, the Dunne brothers were quiet, softspoken, wiry men. They joined in the fight of hosiery workers, iron workers, cemetery workers, put their mark on the whole city. But Dan Tobin began to have his doubts. Any conservative head of a big business would have had his doubts about the Dunne brothers, and Labor Leader Dan Tobin has a big business (500,000 members, more than $6,000,000 in the bank). Uncle Dan decided that the Dunne brothers were too radical. He expelled them, set up a rival union and tried to siphon off their followers. The scheme fizzled. Uncle Dan gulped, took the Dunne brothers' Local 544 back in again.

The tough, soft-spoken Dunnes went on their wiry way. They fought against a proposal to increase Dan Tobin's power. They fought against raising Dan Tobin's salary from $20,000 to $30,000 a year. Mr. Tobin, who had stood all he could, charged after the Dunnes again, expulsion in his eye. But before they could be kicked out of the union, they quit, went over to C.I.O. (TIME, June 23). Alma Denny Lewis, brother of John and head of the C.I.O. construction workers, took them in. With the possibility of other defections among his locals all through the Northwest, Dan Tobin faced a crisis.

Into that crisis last week went agents of FBI, under instructions from Acting Attorney General Francis Biddle, who suddenly swooped down on Minneapolis, raided headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party, seized records and materials.

Mr. Biddle announced that he would place before a grand jury charges of seditious conspiracy among Trotskyist leaders. That meant, among others, Vincent Dunne.

The ostensible basis for the Biddle charge was a declaration of the Party's 1938 stand on war, which anybody could have read any time during the past three years. The Party had declared then that it would oppose any war, continue the class struggle, use a war crisis for the overthrow of U.S.

capitalism and the victory of socialism.*Mr. Biddle solemnly denied that his action had anything to do with a fight between labor factions. But Franklin Roosevelt's good friend Uncle Dan Tobin had good reason to rejoice.

* Between Stalinist and Trotskyist now burns a high red hate.

* Last week the Socialist Workers Party changed its tune, like the Communist Party (see p. 13) began to squeak for aid to the Soviet and the defeat of Hitlerism.

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