Ghost Story

John Santo, back-of-the-throne boss of the C.I.O.'s powerful Transport Workers Union, sat last week like Gilbert & Sullivan's Baronet of Ruddigore watching the ghostly march of his dead ancestors. In a drive against alien Reds, the Government was trying to prove that alien-born John Santo was a Communist and subject to deportation. As witnesses against him the Government had rounded up a batch of repentant Communists.

In a cavernous Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Manhattan, the ghosts of Santo's past pointed their fingers at him. They also lifted a corner of the curtain which shrouds the operations of the Communist Party in the U.S.

Lessons for Revolutionists. Negro Manning Johnson, once a party member and now a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy, came to testify. Before he deserted the Reds, because "they were trying to exploit the Negroes," Johnson was a member of the party's Trade Union Unity League, whose job it was to fight the A.F.L. He had spent three months in a Manhattan training school for revolutionists.

To fascinated Government officials he explained: "We were taught that it is essential for the Communist Party to entrench itself in the basic and key industries to foment strikes, the paralyzing of the economy, the arming of the workers and the winning over of the armed forces to become allies of the workers for the purpose of overthrowing the Government." He had often conferred with Santo, he said, explaining that "Santo's job was to organize the subway system in the City of New York."

Over the yelling of defense counsel, Johnson also identified as Communists sitting in the room: Michael Quill, president of T.W.U.; Austin Hogan, T.W.U. local leader.

Old Grad. Another ghost from the past was Joseph Zack Kornfedder, salesman for a Detroit manufacturer. In other days he was known as Joseph Zack. Old, bald ex-Bolshevik Zack described how he had climbed steadily from organizer to big shot in the party.

In 1927 the party had sent him to Moscow. There he went to the official Lenin School for revolutionists. The necessity of overthrowing capitalism by armed insurrection was part of the school's philosophic teaching. "Part of the practical courses," he said, "was instruction of three months by Red Army officers in uniform, who were specialists in civil warfare, in how to take cities and the countryside." Conditions essential to revolution, as he learned them: chaos among the masses; an organization ready to exploit them.

He was sent to South America and then to New York to pass along what he had learned to "combat units, groups of seven, eight or ten."

Old Cats. The defense, quite naturally, did not take kindly to the ghosts. Accusations and name-calling turned the hearing into bedlam. Under the bullfrog blustering of Santo's lawyer, swart, strutting, pint-sized Harry Sacher, some witnesses wilted. Others roared back. Into the record went such words as "bum," "parasite," "derelict," "stool pigeon," "police spy," "informer," "bigamist," "white slaver," "Muttel the Goniff" (Yiddish for Max the Thief).*

When Zack refused to show Sacher his subpoena, the following polite colloquy took place:

Zack: "I wouldn't trust you with my home address--you and your goons would destroy my neighborhood."

Sacher: "Hey, you Zack, shut your mouth, you dirty stool pigeon."

Zack: "Look in the mirror, you goddam leech. You work for Stalin. You stoolpigeon for him."

Amidst the verbal fireworks, John Santo, who came to the U.S. from Rumania 20 years ago on a four-year student's visa, was almost forgotten. Unlike the Baronet of Ruddigore, who "writhed in agony," handsome, curly-haired Santo mockingly rested his head on one arm and pretended to sleep. Before the prosecution is through, however, his case might become as celebrated as the Government's unsuccessful attempt, two years ago, to deport Harry Bridges.

* The ghosts of Ruddigore had shouted: "Coward, poltroon, shaker, squeamer, blockhead, sluggard, dullard, dreamer, shirker, shuffler, crawler, creeper, sniffler, snuffler, waller, weeper, earthworm, maggot, tadpole, weevil."

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