J. Parnell Thomas
John Parnell Thomas was born in Jersey City on 16th January, 1895. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and during the First World War served on the Western Front as a second lieutenant. In 1918 he was promoted to the rank of captain and transferred to Regimental Staff Headquarters.
After the war Thomas moved to New York City where he worked in investment securities. A member of the Republican Party, Thomas was elected to Congress in January 1937.
Thomas held right-wing views and claimed that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal policies had "sabotaged the capitalist system". He objected to the idea of the subsidized theatre and led the attack on the Federal Theatre & Writers Project. Thomas claimed that: "Practically every play presented under the auspices of the Project is sheer propaganda for Communism or the New Deal."
In 1947 Thomas was appointed chairman of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Soon afterwards he began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named nineteen people who they accused of holding left-wing views.
One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz,, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions.
Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison.
His activities while working as chairman of the House of Un-American Activities Committee had upset those with left-wing political views and some began investigating Thomas. His secretary, Helen Campbell, leaked information about his illegal activities to the journalist, Drew Pearson. On 4th August, 1948, Pearson published the story that Thomas had been putting friends on his congressional payroll. They did no work but in return shared their salaries with Thomas.
Called before a grand jury, Thomas availed himself to the 5th Amendment, a strategy that he had been unwilling to accept when dealing with the Hollywood Ten. The journalist Drew Pearson commented: "Parnell Thomas's trial started this morning. Looking at him in the courtroom. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. I can't relish helping to send a man to jail. Nevertheless, when I figure all the times Thomas has sent other people to jail and all the instances when he has kept men away from combat duty in return for money in his own pocket, to say nothing of salary kickbacks, perhaps I shouldn't be too sorry."
Indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, Thomas was found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in prison and forced to pay a $10,000 fine. Two of his fellow inmates in Danbury Federal Correctional Institution were Lester Cole and Ring Lardner Jr, who were serving terms as a result of refusing to testify in front of Thomas and the House of Un-American Activities Committee.
Thomas was paroled after serving nine months in Danbury. Attempts to return to Congress ended in failure and so in his final years he worked in publishing and real estate.
John Parnell Thomas died in St. Petersburg, Florida, on 19th November, 1970.
Primary Sources
(1) Jack Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker (1979)
The leader of the committee was J. Parnell Thomas. In appearance, he was improbable either as hero or villain. He was old - I thought sixty-three was old then and fat, with a bald head and a round face that glowed perpetually in a pink flush. But as it turned out, his flat idiom and disarming corpulence concealed an unsuspected capacity to cultivate unreality, or rather, to parody reality. This was to be his passport to power and fame.
Thomas was moved principally by caricatures. Confronting a world that abounded in real Communist threats, he was obsessed with phantom, even ludicrous slapstick ones. One was his notion that the saccharine movies of that day, produced and monitored as they were by the most conformist capitalists, represented a New Deal conspiracy to Communize the free world.
The bipartisan empathy of the Thomas committee was exemplified by its ranking Democrats: Representative John Wood of Georgia advocated legislation to require that every commentator be identifiable to the public as to ethnic background and political affiliation, and whether he was reporting news or opinion. Representative John Rankin of Mississippi saw the Red Menace as merely a workaday illustration of his larger themes - the evil of Jewry and the inferiority of Negroes. In Rankin's portrayal, Communism was just another Jewish conspiracy, which used the guileless Negroes as dupes, pushing them into unwanted intimacies with whites in order to sow discord.
It is scarcely credible today that such figures could wield the power to dominate the news, eclipse careers and cause whole industries and institutions to grovel in fear. But indeed they did.
The motion picture industry was almost totally intimidated by the rising power of J. Parnell Thomas, and to appease him, instituted the blacklist that would spread to broadcasting and degrade the entertainment world for a decade to come. Under the pressure of the Thomas committee's probe into disloyalty among government employees, President Harry Truman issued a far-reaching Loyalty Order designed to circumvent legal forms in rooting out those suspected of disloyalty.
Under it, grounds for dismissal were broadened to'include "sympathetic association" with a "movement" or with a "group or combination of persons" considered subversive by the Attorney General. Truman's order specified the files of HUAC as a source of information on suspect employees. Meanwhile, the courts were affirming HUAC's powers and prerogatives; the Congress was close to unanimous in whooping through mounting appropriations for its probes; auxiliaries were springing up in states and localities across the country; even elements of the press, such as the Hearst chain,' were bawling for federal censorship.
(2) Ring Lardner Jr. was interviewed by John Parnell Thomas, chairman of the House of Un-American Activities Committee, on 30th October, 1947.
J. Parnell Thomas: Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
Ring Larner Jr: I could answer exactly the way you want, Mr. Chairman but I think that is a...
J. Parnell Thomas: It is not a question of our wanted you to answer that. It is a very simple question. Any real American would be proud to answer the question.
Ring Larner Jr: It depends on the circumstances. I could answer it, but if I did I would hate myself in the morning.
J. Parnell Thomas: Leave the witness chair.
Ring Larner Jr: It was a question that would...
J. Parnell Thomas: (pounding gavel) Leave the witness chair.
Ring Larner Jr: I think I am leaving by force.
J. Parnell Thomas: Sergeant, take the witness away.
(3) Ring Lardner Jr., interviewed by Ruth Schultz in 1989.
They were two basic questions they asked: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Screen Writers Guild? And are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? We didn't answer either of them directly. We said that the guild had had a tough fight for recognition and that trouble could still come up again, that membership rolls were actually private. It was not any of the committee's business to inquire into membership of a union.
Then they asked me that "sixty-four-dollar question," but I'd hate myself in that morning." He started to scream: "You've been coached like all the others!" He was a small, heavy man, who was sitting on a couple of telephone books in order to be on the same level as the other members of the committee and look better for the pictures. He got very red in the face and finally said, "Remove the witness."
(4) Drew Pearson, Washington Merry-Go-Round (4th August, 1948)
One Congressman who has sadly ignored the old adage that those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones is bouncing Rep. J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, Chairman of the UnAmerican Activities Committee.
If some of his own personal operations were scrutinized on the witness stand as carefully as he cross-examines witnesses, they would make headlines of a kind the Congressman doesn't like.
It is not, for instance, considered good "Americanism" to hire a stenographer and have her pay a "kickback." This kind of operation is also likely to get an ordinary American in income tax trouble. However, this hasn't seemed to worry the Chairman of the UnAmerican Activities Committee.
On Jan. 1, 1940, Rep. Thomas placed on his payroll Myra Midkiff as a clerk at $1,200 a year with the arrangement that she would then kick back all her salary to the Congressman. This gave Mr. Thomas a neat annual addition to his own $10,000 salary, and presumably he did not have to worry about paying income taxes in this higher bracket, because he paid Miss Midkiff's taxes for her in the much lower bracket.
The arrangement was quite simple and lasted for four years. Miss Midkiff's salary was merely deposited in the First National Bank of Allendale, N.J., to the Congressman's account. Meanwhile she never came anywhere near his office and did not work for him except addressing envelopes at home for which she got paid $2 per hundred.
This kickback plan worked so well that four years later. Miss Midkiff having got married and left his phantom employ, the Congressman decided to extend it. On Nov. 16, 1944, the House Disbursing Officer was notified to place on Thomas's payroll the name of Arnette Minor at $1,800 a year.
Actually Miss Minor was a day worker who made beds and cleaned the room of Thomas's secretary, Miss Helen Campbell. Miss Minor's salary was remitted to the Congressman. She never got it.
This arrangement lasted only a month and a half, for on Jan. 1, 1945, the name of Grace Wilson appeared on the Congressman's payroll for $2,900.
Miss Wilson turned out to be Mrs. Thomas's aged aunt, and during the year 1945 she drew checks totaling $3,467.45, though she did not come near the office, in fact remained quietly in Allendale, N.J., where she was supported by Mrs. Thomas and her sisters, Mrs. Lawrence Wellington and Mrs. William Quaintance.
In the summer of 1946, however, the Congressman decided to let the county support his wife's aunt, since his son had recently married and he wanted to put his daughter-in-law on the payroll. Thereafter, his daughter-in-law, Lillian, drew Miss Wilson's salary, and the Congressman demanded that his wife's aunt be put on relief.
(5) Drew Pearson, diary entry (28th November, 1949)
Parnell Thomas's trial started this morning. Looking at him in the courtroom. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. I can't relish helping to send a man to jail. Nevertheless, when I figure all the times Thomas has sent other people to jail and all the instances when he has kept men away from combat duty in return for money in his own pocket, to say nothing of salary kickbacks, perhaps I shouldn't be too sorry.
