FREE ESSAY ON MCCARTHYISM

MCCARTHYISM

Vivian Gonzalez 
Mr. Martinez-Ramos 
A.P. United States History
May 3, 2000
McCarthyism was one of the saddest events of American history. It destroyed people's
lives and shattered many families. It threw innocent people into a whirlwind of mass
confusion and fictional portrayals of their lives. McCarthyism spawned for the country's
new found terror of Communism known as the red scare. McCarthyism was an extreme version
of the red scare, a scare whose ends did not justify the means. 
The Red Scare happened twice in the history of this great country. When the communist
took over Russia in 1919, the American people were unnerved. They were afraid of a
communist take over in the states. When the First World War ended in 1918, there was
still an ideological war going on in a very divided United States. "The red scare was
another sort of war-one against dissent and nonconformity. It changed the psyche and face
of the United States as surely as did World War Two (Fariello, 24). This was a time in
American History where panic and terror controlled the lives and the laws of this country
(Fariello, 28). 
When in 1919 the newly appointed Attorney General, A. Mitchel Palmer, was abruptly awoken
from his house by a bomb, everyone was seeing red, so to speak. Instantaneously fingers
were being pointed in the immediate direction of the Communist Party. The Communist Party
had reason, good reason to go after Palmer. He had used legislation passed in 1917 to
deport many "communist" that were a threat to the American way of life. As was clearly
seen in the Legislation passed in 1952. The Immigration and Nationality Act tightened
previous restriction on aliens and heavily reduced immigration from nonwhites countries.
It allowed for the denaturalization and deportation of citizens deemed "subversive," as
well as the deportation of residents aliens for political activity. Removed deportation
case from the courts by setting up own board unhampered by due process(Fariello, 18). 
American politicians were under the distorted impression that everyone that was not
Anglo-American or came from Western Europe was a threat to national security. In response
to this they passed a series of laws declining the immigration of people from Eastern and
Southern Europe. They also passed laws deporting many of our own residents because of
fear. In the nineteenth century there were men of Anglo-Saxon stock who came to regard
the American mission as their particular inheritance and who feared the subversive
effects of immigration and the alien political ideas that were thereby introduced.
(Heale, p. 127) 
Fear is the most primal instinct. It causes people to do and act in certain ways in which
they are not accustomed. It can turn brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor,
politician against politician, and country against country. Fear instigates panic. It was
that panic that prompted the Palmer Raids. 
The Palmer Raids were started by A. Mitchel Palmer. He felt that in order to keep the
American values in tact communism had to be out of the picture. Palmer believed that
communism was "eating its way into the American workman". He thought it was the root of
all evils in his society. Palmer felt that communism was "seeking to replace marriage
vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society". 
In December of 1919, in their most famous act, Palmer's agents seized 249 resident
aliens. Those seized were placed on board a ship, the Buford, bound for the Soviet Union.
Deportees included Emma Goldman the feminist, anarchist and writer who later recalled the
deportation in her autobiography.
Another reason for the Red Scare was the strike held by mine workers. They were thought
to be making threatening moves against the Capitalist system through subversive Socialist
organizations. These strikes were part of a series of events taking place in 1919. This
strike, which occurred in February, consisted of 60,000 coal mine workers. In September,
steel workers were on strike. All of the available blame was put upon the American
Communists, although many communists tried to oppose this strike. It really did not
matter if they had nothing to do with the strikes, in their minds anything that went
wrong in the perfect society of the United States was the work of the Communist. 
Palmer and his associates were bordering on infringing the people's civil rights. Much
like Janet Reno in the recent Elian Gonzalez case. But in the minds of the anti-communist
the end justified the means. The Red Scare reflected the same anxiety about free speech
and obsession with consensus that had characterized the war years. In the case of "The
Most brainiest man", a Connecticut clothing salesman was sentenced to sixth months in
jail simply for saying Lenin was smart. Free Speech in the time of the Red Scare was
almost illegal. 
The first red scare was set-aside in the mist of prosperity, and eventually war. In 1941
World War II started. Although the Americans were allied with Stalin, the communist
dictator of Russia, the old fears of a communist take over resurged. As a result "
everything changed after the Second World War. The ally Russia became an enemy. Anybody
who had sympathy became a suspect". A man spent twenty-five years in prison, because he
was the local chairperson, had studied in Moscow and fought in Spain. It was like he was
"the devil himself". And so it was that in the 1950's a revival of the Red Scare
appeared. 
The American Legislative system reacted much has they had in the past. They worked much
in the same right as Palmer, as far as unconstitutional practices were concerned.
"American Foreign policy was a mirror image of Russian Foreign policy: whatever the
Russians did, we did in reverse. American domestic policies were conducted under a kind
of upside-down Russian veto." 
Before the War no legislation regarding communism was passed by congress. So workers in
Unions were legally allowed to be Communists. A bill in Congress, called the Taft-Hartley
Act, passed the first restriction on people entering the Unions in 1947. One provision
stated that a worker must swear that he is not, and was not a communist, before entering
a Union.
The politicians were going to great lengths to keep this country an anti-communist and
anti Russia society. They also set up a series of laws to keep every politician in
American anti-communist. One could not run for office during the Red Scare, unless one
was on the record a self-professed Russian hater. The paranoia was everywhere. "There are
today many Communists in America. They are everywhere - In factories, offices, butcher
stores, on street corners, in private businesses. And each carries in himself the germ of
death for society (McGrath)." 
In the mist of all the confusion of who was a communist and who was loyal and a young
upstart senator from Wisconsin came to play. His name was Joseph McCarthy. He launched
was would be later referred to as the McCarthy Era. "While convenient, this tribute is
not without cause. McCarthy's villainy was so plain that his name became a malediction in
the very year of his ascendancy." 
Joseph Raymond McCarthy was born in 1908 on a family farm in Outagamie County, Wisconsin.
His parents were devout Catholics and told their nine children that you shall live by the
sweat of your brow. He went to a country school until grade eight, and at the age of
nineteen became the manager of a grocery store in Manawa, a town thirty miles away. He
was a popular person and the store was very profitable. Then it was suggested by some
friends that he go to high school, and in one year he crammed a full high school
education, and he was at the top of the class. He enrolled in Marquette University in
Milwaukee, where he graduated as a lawyer.
McCarthy then set up a law practice in Waupaca, a nearby town, and it is reported that he
took only four cases in nine months. At that time, he went to work in Shawano for Mike
Eberlein. They worked together for three years until McCarty won the judgeship for the
Tenth District of the Wisconsin Circuit Court.
Although he was exempt from the draft because of his public position, in 1942 he entered
the Marine Corps. In his two years as a first lieutenant, he went on a number of flying
missions and broke his leg on a ship during a party and gained a lot of good press along
the way.
In 1944 he unsuccessfully ran against Alexander Wiley for a senatorial seat from
Wisconsin, and began planning to defeat Robert La Follette, Jr., whose seat was up for
re-election in two years. La Follette was a Republican, and so was McCarthy, so the real
race would be for the primary. 
McCarty's campaign used lots of money. He sent letters and postcards to almost everyone
in Wisconsin, made half a dozen speeches a day, and attacked La Follette ruthlessly. The
luck happened to be that his opponent chose to sit on his laurels, and only campaigned
for a few weeks. McCarthy just barely won the GOP nomination, 207,935 to 202,539.
Interestingly enough, he got the labor vote, which was dominated by Communists. He was
very fortunate to sneak by, because La Follette was a popular man. 
His Democratic foe was to be Professor Howard McMurray. McCarty used his ability to put
issues simply, among other things, to beat his opponent by nearly a 2 to 1 ratio. The
Senatorial career of Joseph R. McCarthy was on its way.
In his first three years as senator, McCarthy was an everyday senator. He was guided by
money from lobbyists, and the most interesting of these are stints with Pepsi-Cola and
the real estate-prefab home industry.
At the time, sugar was strictly rationed. According to Richard Rovere in his book Senator
Joe McCarthy, the Allied Molasses Company, sugar supplier for Pepsi, somehow got a hold
of a million and a half gallons of high-grade sugar-cane syrup, which it refined and sold
to Pepsi. For unknown reasons, this sugar slipped past the rations, and the Department of
Agriculture demanded that the rations for Allied Molasses be cut back. By means of a
handy $20,000 being slipped to him by Russell Arundel, Pepsi's Washington lobbyist,
McCarthy was inspired to help end the sugar rationing six months before originally
scheduled, thus nullifying the USDA's demands.
Another early issue for McCarty was housing. A friend of his named Harnischferger owned a
prefabricated-home manufacturing outfit in Milwaukee. He, along with other prefab and
real estate honchos, asked him to go against public housing for veterans, and to support
instead the inexpensive prefabricated home as an alternative. A $10,000 perk from
Lustron, another prefab operation, provided additional incentive. He joined the newly
created Senate Housing Committee, and he took a nationwide road tour to accentuate his
point.
He continued in this way until the end of 1949, when he determined that he needed a new
subject to put his name in the headlines and to use as a base for his reelection in
1952.
He found his next subject at the night of January 7, 1950, at the Colony Restaurant in
Washington, D. C. Among his dinner guests was Father Edmund A. Walsh. McCarthy talked
with his guests for a while before bringing up the subject of the need for an issue. The
group discarded quite a few before choosing Communism, which was suggested by Walsh, who
was an ardent anti-Red. That's it, McCarthy said. The government is full of Communists.
We can hammer away at them.
And so it was that in February of 1950 McCarthy was interviewed by the Wheeling
Intelligencer a newspaper in West Virginia. The next day Senator McCarthy's startling
words were published in the paper. "I have I my hand a list of 205 that were known to the
secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who, nevertheless are
still working and shaping the policy of the State Department
The real number of people of whom any investigation was done was eighty-one The speech
produce one of many controversies over McCarthy, partially because there was not a single
consistent copy of the speech. The argument started because of the indistinct number in
McCarthy's speech. At his next speech, in Salt Lake City, he claimed that he had said 57.
However, there is now considerable evidence that he alleged 205 in Wheeling. 
On February 20, the number came out to be eighty-one in the Senate. "He took six hours,
from the late afternoon to just before midnight, explaining in detail a number of cases
of supposed Communists in the State Department." But, his lengthy speech had countless
defects:
"Cases 15, 27, 37 and 59 simply never showed up; he skipped them entirely.... Cases 1 and
2 and several others worked for the United Nations. Case 3 was the same as Case 4; Case 9
was the same as 77.... Cases 13 and 78 were only applicants for State Department
jobs...in 1948. There was nothing on Case 52 except that he was subordinate to Case
16.... Case 62 was not important insofar as Communistic activities are concerned. Of Case
40, he said, I do not have much information on this except the general statement of the
agency [unidentified] that there is nothing in the files to disprove his Communist
connections. (Friedman) 
But it was with this flawed case that Senator Joseph R. McCarthy started his reign of
terror. Communist beware, Senator McCarthy was looking to make them a thing of the past.
Senator McCarthy's plan was not confined to the Capital Hill. The whole country was
amerced in the anti Communism fight.
At the time of the Communist "inquisition" Hollywood was the place to be. Hollywood was
making six hundred films a year. "Hollywood in its golden age was the focus of the
nation's fantasies. Hollywood was news, and the purge of its Communists captured the
public's attention." The fact that it caught their attention was wonderful, because if
the public was interested, it would be easier to find "the reds". 
Only a very few number of in Hollywood were Communist. Only three hundred of thirty
thousand industry workers were either past or present members of the Communist Party.
About half of that number were screenwriters. A few were actors, but not many, only about
fifty or sixty. Even less were directors, only fifteen were directors. And the rest of
the members or ex-members of the Communist Party were "scattered through the department,
back lots and front offices". 
These figures were of no interest to the HUAC, the house committee of Un American
activities, who tried to purge the existent of the Communist from Americans favorite
place. In 1944, the HUAC helped found the MPAPAI, the Motion Picture Alliance fro the
Preservation of American Ideals. 
The newly formed MPAPAI explicitly invited the HUAC to investigate the possible Communist
activity in Hollywood. In March of 1947, representative of the HUAC called for a
"cleansing of Hollywood". 
Soon such wartime films such as Mission to Moscow, Song of Russia, and Action in the
North Atlantic came under fire. The committee described them, as "flagrant Communist
propaganda films". In September of the same year forty-three people were subpoenaed to
appear for hearing in our nation's capital. Nineteen of these people were consider as
being "unfriendly". All the others were once members of the Anti-American communist
party. The hearings found that only ten of the nineteen were "unfriendly, they were sent
to prison by 1950. 
The film bosses were not very happy with the committee, they resented the presence of the
intrusive politicians in a private business. Nevertheless, they met in New York to
discuss the communist infiltration of Hollywood. They reached a conclusion that not all
members agreed upon, but made just the same. "Nothing subversive or Un-American had ever
appeared on the screen." However, the studios nonetheless intended to discharged without
compensation those five of the ten in their employment. "None of the ten would be allowed
to work until he purged himself of the contempt and declared under oath he was not a
communist." This statement gave birth to the infamous "blacklist". 
This blacklist would ruin the lives of thousands of people throughout its life. One
hundred and ten witnesses were scheduled to appear before the committee. The committee
demanded names, and more names of Communist in Hollywood. "The HUAC had already
identified nearly every Communist and fellow traveler in Hollywood (either through the
FBI, or the MPAPAI) But a ritual of humiliation was required-only by informing on former
colleagues and begging for forgiveness for their past sins could the penitent cleanse
themselves before the inquisition".
Some victims would later write about their ordeals, and about the social reality of the
time. Others such as Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner who themselves were in part to blame
for the crisis would write sorrowfully about their actions, from the book, The Mikado :
"As someday it may happen that a victim must be found, 
I've got a little list-I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed-who never would be missed!
The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you, 
But it really doesn't matter whom you put on the list,
For none of them be missed-
They'd none of 'em be missed!"
This was a burden for some of the people carrying out the missions of the committee, but
to the high-ranking politicians, the fear and injustice was a victory. To them anything
to stop the spread of Communism, for whatever reason or agenda they had, was good. The
end of Communism was a wonderful way to gain both business and votes.
It was not just the high-ranking politicians that praised the committee's actions;
"friendly" movie stars were tripping over one another to commend the committee. Among
these actors were Ronald Regan, George Murphy, Robert Montgomery, and Adolph Menjou. They
"donned the mantle of the anti Communist warriors". Some people went to great lengths to
make the committee happy. There wasn't much that the "friendly" actors would not do, not
to get "blacklisted". Roy Brewer spoke for three hours about the "reds". Walt Disney
revealed a "ploy by the left-wing Screen Cartoonists Guild to subvert Mickey mouse into a
Marxist rat".
The movie