Within the Law

With might & main, the House committee investigating campaign expenditures pried into Sidney Hillman's P.A.C. last week, searching for some legal misstep which would give the committee a chance to crack down hard. But after diligent search through the woodpile, all they found was Sidney Hillman. And in him, they discovered, they had caught a Tartar. His political footwork made most of them look like stumblebums.

Caparisoned in a neat, double-breasted suit and alert amiability, Sidney Hillman acted as if he were just sitting down with the investigators to talk things over. It was more in sorrow than in anger that he reminded the Congressmen that his P.A.C. had already been officially investigated three times (twice by the FBI, once by a Senate campaign expenditures committee). He deeply resented the Communist label: "You're trying to prejudice the public against us. You're hitting below the belt!" But he welcomed this opportunity to help scotch the "fantastic stories" about P.A.C.'s huge slush funds and lavish spending on behalf of the New Deal. In a five-page financial report and a twelve-page statement, Mr. Hillman told the Congressmen that P.A.C. had spent, thus far, a mere $408,070.06.

He made it quite clear that P.A.C. had never taken a step without the advice of counsel. On Mr. Hillman's testimony,

P.A.C. lawyers had certainly hewed to the letter of the law. Since labor organizations may not legally contribute to political "elections," P.A.C. had been careful to spend its money only on political conventions and primaries.

When the date of the 1944 Presidential election began to draw too close for such legal hairsplitting, Mr. Hillman had organized the non-labor National Citizens P.A.C. partially as a sort of holding company for campaign funds. This move satisfied the Hillman lawyers that the N.C.P.A.C. could boom the Roosevelt-Truman ticket as much as it liked and remain within: 1) the Hatch Act; 2) the Smith-Connally amendment to the Corrupt Practices Act.

Any Questions? G.O.P. Congressmen who attempted airy political banter with suave Sidney Hillman, a veteran of 35 years of left-wing dialectics, found him one too many for them. Representative Clarence J. Brown, of Blanchester, Ohio (pop. 1,785), tried to poke fun at the P.A.C. claims to nonpartisanship. Said he: was it not true that Hillman's own New York local had supported Tom Dewey for district attorney in 1937?

Mr. Hillman (smoothly) : "I still believe that he would serve very advantageously as district attorney. He might even do as Governor when everybody's employed."

Mr. Brown (politely) : "We missed you [at the G.O.P. National Convention]."

Mr. Hillman (even more politely) : "You must have missed Mr. Willkie, too."

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