Hold That Line!

You could have knocked Frank Hague over with a split ballot. In his 26 years as Mayor of Jersey City, he had done more than his bit to establish himself as the U. S.'s prime suppressor of civil liberties. His hired thugs made an almost ceremonial fox hunt out of chasing labor organizers and, especially, Communists out of town. Now the Communists swore they loved him. The U. S. press laughed itself silly.

This stunning turnabout was official. William Norman, executive secretary of the New Jersey Communist Party, made the statement in the Daily Worker, Manhattan's mouthpiece for the U. S. Communist Party. Cooed he: ". . . Outworn conceptions, if carried over to other historical periods, can prove of incalculable harm to the cause of progress and the chief issue today, the nation's war. Such a misconception continues to exist with regard to Frank Hague and so-called Hagueism. . . ."

The reasoning behind the Worker's sudden affection for Boss Hague is that he is a stanch supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, who is winning the war. New Jersey will choose a new governor next fall and he must be a Democrat, to silence the "copperheads" and "labor defeatists" who are angry with the President. And Boss Hague is still the boss of New Jersey in 1943, as he was in 1940.

Hague was so flabbergasted that he could only mutter through his jowls: "I don't know anything about it." Grumbled bat-eared Michael J. Quill, head of the Transportation Workers Union, himself often tagged with a Red label: "Hague is a bum and always was a bum, and I don't think you can whitewash him just because he says he supports the war."

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