Wichita Eagle, June 30, 1936:Earl W. Browder, native Wichitan who was nominated to the presidency of the United States Sunday on the Communist ticket

[Charles Brown]

http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/earl-browder-newspaper-articles/11697

Earl Browder - Newspaper articles

This material was taken from the Vertical File microfilm reel MF 251.
It consists of newspaper articles that have been collected regarding
Earl Browder. The articles have been reproduced as closely to the
original as possible, no corrections have been made. Not all the
photographs have been reproduced. The microfilm is available through
interlibrary loan.
Wichita Eagle, June 30, 1936

Politics Got Browder in Bad On Jobs

Wichita Friends of Communist Leader
Recall Life Here
Once Tried Banking

Earl W. Browder, native Wichitan who was nominated to the presidency
of the United States Sunday on the Communist ticket, had a leaning
toward Socialist politics in his early youth, Wichita friends recalled
today.

Earl had a grade school education and before he attended business
college worked as a cash boy for the Wallenstein & Cohen Dry Goods
company. He was a mannerly boy, hard working, and a favorite with the
store's employees. Other members of the Browder family were also in
the employ of this company for a number of years, former friends here
recalled today.

After attending business college Earl secured a position as a
bookkeeper for the Potts Drug company. He was efficient and was the
average young man in a business office. He had a fair personality, his
associates recall, but his political ideas which then began to take
shape, gave him a different slant on life and after a time he left the
drug company in search for something better.

He secured a position in the bookkeeping department of the bank headed
by the late L.S. Naftzger and John Moore. Earl was then dividing his
time between his job and the activities in the Socialist party until
at length his political ambitions became too much for his employers
and he lost his job, so it was said by a former neighbor.

Earl married Gladys Grove, daughter of a prominent early-day broomcorn
family here and shortly after they moved to Kansas City. Two sons were
born and one boy was named "Jay" as a namesake for a friend of Earl's
in the Potts company. Mr. and Mrs. Browder have since separated,it is
understood.

Earl received his first teachings in Socialism from his father,
William Browder, it was said. Browder was a school teacher and for
several years taught a country school south of the city. Conveyances
were scarce in those days and Browder walked to his school each
morning and trudged home late every afternoon with his lunch pail and
text books under his arm.

Browder's leisure time was spent in reading literature of the
Socialist party and this influence succeeded in turning not only Earl
but two other children of the family into Socialist leaders.

William Browder is now associated with a Communistic news paper in
Chicago and Marguerite Browder accompanied her brother Earl on a two
years' tripe to Russia to study Communism in 1929. It is understood
she is also a leader in the Communistic party in a eastern city.

During the early days when the Browder family lived at 628 South Fern
and other Wichita addresses, they were known as a highly respectable
family. Their financial condition was about the same as the majority
of families living in that neighborhood at that time. There were seven
children. All were reared in the home but circumstances forced them
into the business world with less education than the majority of young
people are equipped with in later years.

The oldest daughter was Bessie, who is now dead; Minnie, who is now
married and residing in Kansas City; Nina, who is Mrs. Bert Turner of
Phoenix, Ariz.; and Marguerite. Waldo, Earl and William were the boys.

The home on South Fern in which Earl Browder was born in 1891, is
still standing and with minor changes is the same as it was when
occupied by the Browder family. It was owned at that time by the late
J. Binford and is now the property of Miss Myra Binford.

Wichita Eagle, June 30, 1936

Browder Shies from Friendly Reception Here
Communist Presidential Nominee
Distrusts Those Who Would
Treat Him as an American Citizen.

Does Not Expect Success

Over Station WIBW Says
Americans Economically Ready for
Socialism but Not Politically.


by Clif Stratton

Earl Browder, another Kansas nominee for president of the United
States, was a Topeka visitor yesterday. Browder, native of Wichita,
Communist candidate for president, broadcast over WIBW last night.

This Browder is an interesting person. He has a keen sense of social
injustice, tho probably he would claim it is a sense of social
justice. In school at Wichita he was always insisting upon the rights
of students who were discriminated against by their teachers. He led
fights for student rights expression. He was the vocal friend of all
underdogs in school--and is such now in a much larger field.

So far as this election goes, Browder talks more like a New Deal
orator, than a dyed in the wool Communist--if dyed in the wool is the
proper adjective.

Has No High Hopes

Very frankly, Mr. Browder does not expect to win this election.

"The United States," he says, "is economically ready for Socialism,
but it is not politically ready for Socialism. The division which is
coming later is not yet clear to many Americans. But the trend is such
that it is only a matter of time until we have honest division in the
United States."

What will that division be?

"It will be an alignment of groups into two divisions," said Browder.
"On the one hand will be the conservative group, including the Liberty
League forces that now are predominant in the Republican leadership;
on the other all the more liberal forces, from La Follette
Progressives on thru to Socialists and Communists. With the liberals
will be labor, and, I hope, the farm groups.

"But we have not yet reached that clear division in American politics.
That is why I say in my speeches that the immediate choice is not
between Fascism and Socialism.

Lines Not Drawn.

"That choice will be made in the future, after the lines are more
clearly drawn. Today the choice is more like this: Shall all the
progressive forces in the country join hands together to keep the
Fascist-minded men of Wall Street out of power, protect our democratic
rights and improve our living standards, or shall we surrender to
Landon, Hearst and the Liberty League?"

It seems, Earl Browder and Harold Ickes, secretary of interior, are
cousins under the skin. Both see Hearst over Topeka. Browder sees the
"Fascist-minded men of Wall Street" digging their own graves.

"They denounce as socialism or even Communism ever measure or person
slightly tinged with progressivism," he explained.

"That is why they even denounce President Roosevelt and the New Deal
as Socialistic, Communistic and "made in Moscow," and similar
nonsense. There isn't an ounce of Socialism in the Roosevelt
administration. Roosevelt stands for capitalism but he tries to remedy
this capitalism of some of its worst abuses, hoping thereby to give it
longer life. He tries to follow a middle course. He thereby wavers
between the pressure from the reactionaries and the pressure from the
progressives. For the past year he retreated slowly before the
reactionaries, and gave them many of their demands; but in the
election platform and his acceptance speech he struck a progressive
note.

"That is why the reactionaries are so enraged at Roosevelt and fight
him so bitterly, because he blows both hot and cold, and tries to make
concessions to both sides. But this same indecision furnishes the
answer to those who ask all progressives to unite around Roosevelt as
the sole means to defeat reaction. The progressive side needs bold and
decisive leadership which will not retreat and make compromises with
the Wall Street gang."

Distrusts Lemke.

It seems that personally Roosevelt and Landon look pretty much alike
to Browder, Communist--but as a Communist leader he prefers Roosevelt
to Landon's supporters. And among these he includes Rep. William Lemke
and his Union party.

"The self-styled Union party, sired by Father Coughlin and putting
forth the candidacy of Lemke," said Browder, "is not that new party
for which the people are looking. It is a creature of a conspiracy
between Hearst, the radio priest, and the Liberty League, designed to
help elect Landon. Lemke's economic platform all revolves about
currency inflation, which would make the workers' and farmers' dollar
worth even less than the present 60 cents, and finally wipe it out
altogether, enriching only the monopolists and speculators. Lemke is
only a stooge for Landon, and repeats Landon's main platform."

And, finally, Browder is just a little bit suspicious of what is going on.

"It doesn't feel right," he said. "In a number of places this year I
find myself, a Communist, greeted as a respectable American by
political leaders. Then I find that the Democrats expect me to lambast
Landon and help Roosevelt, while the Republicans seem to believe what
I say about Roosevelt will help Landon. It doesn't exactly worry me,
but it does make me suspicious."

Topeka Capital, September 1936


A Browder Jolt
Jury Convicts Communist Leader
After Deliberating Only
Forty-five Minutes.

Sentenced to Four Years

Red Party Secretary is Found
Guilty On Two Counts of
Passport Fraud.

The Terms of Two Years Each
Are Made Consecutive
Fine of $2,000

In Prison Once Before

Defendant Was Sent to Leavenworth
For Refusing to Register
For War Draft.

(By the Associated Press.)

New York, Jan. 22.--Earl Russell Browder, Kansas born Communist
leader, was convicted of passport fraud in federal court today and was
sentenced to four years in prison and fined $2,000.

The jury of eleven men and a young woman deliberated only forty-five
minutes after hearing Browder himself plead for his freedom for more
than an hour.

The sentence was pronounced immediately after the jury was polled and
a defense motion for delay was denied. It specified that 2-year
sentences on each of two counts must be served consecutively. The
maximum prison sentence would have been ten years.
Candidate for Congress.

Browder,a perennial candidate for political office, was the Communist
candidate for President in 1936 and now is a candidate for the seat in
Congress vacated by the recent death of Representative Sirovich of New
York, Democrat.

Browder presented a defenseless case after acknowledging at the outset
that he had traveled incognito to and from conferences with Soviet
leaders in Moscow.

He was accused specifically of borrowing the names of three other men
and affixing them to passport visas.

This was done, his attorney explained, because as a widely-known agent
of the Soviet Union Browder's travels through Europe would be beset by
danger if his true identity became known.
Still Can Vote for Him.

The Communist leader anticipated his conviction in an authorized
statement last week in which the Communist party said he might receive
the votes of his followers while languishing in prison, as did the
late Eugene V. Debs, Socialist leader, who ran for President from an
Atlanta prison cell.

Browder served a sentence in Leavenworth federal prison after refusing
to register for the World war army draft on the ground that he was a
conscientious objector.

At the sentencing today, Browder, whose official position is that of
general secretary of the Communist party, United States of America,
stood mute before the bench, his hands clasped behind his back.

His bail of $7,000 was continued until Wednesday when he must appear
for approval of a new bond which would allow him continued freedom
pending appeal.

He left the courtroom replying "no comment" when asked whether he had
anything to say.
Minimum of Three Years.

When the jury filed in to give its verdict--guilty on both counts of
the indictment--he sat rocking stolidly in his swivel chair and gazing
vacantly at the jurors' box.

John T. Cahill, United States attorney, asked a sentence of five years
and the $5,000 maximum fine.

"It does seem to me," he told the court, "that in addition to the
passport charge, the accompanying offenses of perjury and tampering
with this country's vital statistics should be taken into
consideration."

The 4-year sentence could be reduced to three for good behavior.

Pleading his own case, Browder pictured himself as the victim of a
federal campaign against "civil rights."

The case went to the jury after a charge from Judge Alfred Coxe that
"matters of public policy or interest" were not to be considered. This
was a reference to the defendant's ideology.

In the momentary quiet that followed the verdict, Judge Coxe turned in
his chair and told the jury:

"I am not in the habit of thanking juries, but I must say that the
verdict was the only possible one that could have been returned."

The Kansas City Times, January 23, 1940

Browder to Trial In Contempt Case

Washington.--(UP)--Earl Browder, one-time leader of the American
Communist Party, went on trial Thursday for contempt of Congress.

He is charged with refusing to answer questions last April 27 before
the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee investigating the
Communists-in-Government charges leveled by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy,
(R., Wis.)

Browder, taking over his own defense in U.S. District Court, pictured
himself as a "co-operative witness" who refused to answer only
questions he considered "improper."

In an opening statement to the jury, he admitted he declined to answer
16 questions put to him by Sen. Bourke B. Hickenloper, (R. Iowa).
These questions are the basis of the contempt indictment. Browder said
he also declined answers to another 10, but did respond readily to 66
queries put by Hickenloper.

Most of the questions in the indictment dealt with a New York meeting
in 1945 between Browder and Tung Pi Wu, a Chinese Communist then a
member of the Chinese delegation to the conference that established
the United Nations.

Hickenloper wanted to know if others present included John Service,
State Department envoy; Owen Lattimore, Far Eastern expert, and Philip
Jaffe, editor of the now defunct Amerasia Magazine. Browder would not
reply.

U.S. Prosecutor William Hitz told the jury that Browder refused to
answer "without cause."

The Topeka Capital. March 9, 1951

Earl Browder Wins Acquittal On Contempt

Washington, March 14 (AP)--Federal Judge F. Dickinson Letts Wednesday
acquitted Earl Browder of a contempt of Congress charge.

Browder is the former No.1 Communist in this country. He was accused
of refusing to answer questions at a Senate foreign relations
subcommittee hearing on communism-in-government.

Judge Letts held that the committee failed to direct Browder to answer
questions over his objections and explanations.

The judge's ruling ended Browder's trial and he walked out of the
courtroom a free man. Thus, he had escaped going to jail for a fourth
time.

Topeka Journal, March 14, 1951

Earl Browder Tells at Last of His 'Purge' By Stalin Fifteen Years Ago

The breaking of a 15 year silence by Earl Browder, former leader of
the American Communist party, in an article written for the March
number of Harper's magazine comprises and interesting disclosure of
how Browder and his party were "purged" by Stalin in 1945.

The purging followed Browder's adoption of the principle of a stable
peace at the close of World War II based on the Tehran pact signed by
Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill--Stalin "with tongue in cheek." The
pact, in Browder;s view, implied the doctrine of co-existence and, in
principle, a repudiation of the cold war which "Stalin adopted to take
the place of the hot war then coming to a close."

Browder, now 68, a native of Wichita with three sons teaching
mathematics in American universities relates how his "apostasy" was
disclosed and his purge announced in the famous "Duclos letter,"
allegedly penned by Jacques Duclos in a French Communist journal in
1945, but actually Kremlin-dictated. This letter, widely circulated,
denounced Browder for interpreting the Tehran pact as a "political
platform for class peace in the United States--and sowing dangerous
opportunistic illusions."

An "American" Trend

He declares that the American Communist party "need not have died such
a shameful death as William Z. Foster (ultra-left sectarian who
succeeded him), under the inspiration of Stalin and the cold war,
inflicted upon it." He states that he had personally led an
Americanization trend in the party based on Jeffersonian principles
and representing a denial of Marxist dogmas.

"The Duclos letter," Browder writes, "halted and reversed the process
of Americanization. The party quickly turned anti-American. Foster
published a 'new history' of America, which was highly praised in
Moscow, translated in many languages and made a handbook of
anti-American propaganda all over the world.

"This extraordinary book interpreted the history of America from its
discovery to the present, as an orgy of 'bloody banditry' and
imperialism, enriching itself by 'drinking the rich red blood' of
other peoples. Foster even joined in the Thorez declaration (by
Maurice Thorez, French Communist leader: that if the Soviet armies
found it necessary to occupy all Western Europe the working people
would greet them as liberators; the only thing missing was a direct
welcome to Soviet armies in America itself.

Red Following Melts

"It was this that killed the Communist party. Its former mass
following melted away. Its membership shrank to a hard core of
fanatics....The American Communists had thrived as champions of
domestic reforms....But when the Communists abandoned reforms and
championed a Soviet Union openly contemptuous of America while
predicting its quick collapse, the same party lost all its hard-won
influence. It became merely a bad word in the American language."

Americans should realize, Browder believes, that "the only solid
representatives of Stalin among the American Communists were a little
band of 'old timers,' occupying strategic posts in the party
apparatus. For them communism was a religion, Stalin was Mohammed and
Moscow was Mecca.

"They had played a minor role for 15 years, during which they
supported my 'revisionist' leadership for two reasons: first, because
the party as a whole was content with it, as it made the party
'prosperous' for the first time in history; second, because so long as
Moscow did not speak out against me, I was presumed to be Stalin's
deputy in America in the hierarch of authority.

"I knew I could not maintain that leadership in open struggle against
Moscow influence. Only two Communist leaders in history ever succeeded
in doing this--Tito and Mao Tse-tung....I confined my resistance to
the Duclos Letter to declaring publicly that it was a disastrous
mistake which I would never approve. But I made no efforts to organize
my supporters to hold on to the apparatus. Consequently I was soon
expelled and my followers, who did not change coats overnight, quietly
left or were expelled from the party.
Opposes Cold War Line.

"I have opposed the Communist cold war line ever since, both by public
utterance and by private help to trade unionists breaking free from
the Communist influence. I abandoned the party apparatus to Stalin's
adherents in order to prevent them from capturing the party's former
mass influence almost a decade I have not considered myself a
Communist, nor even a Marxist in the dogmatic sense."

Browder goes on to relate the circumstances of an unfortunate visit to
Moscow in 1946, his professed object to urge abandonment of the cold
war. His first contact there was with an old friend, A. Lozovsky, at
the government information bureau, not foreseeing that, within a few
years, Stalin would have Lozovsky shot as part of the "Jewish
conspiracy." Through Lozovsky, a conference with Molotov was arranged
for Browder.

The latter missed his first appointment as the result of a birthday
party given him by his over-enthusiastic host and, in consequence,
eventually made the contact with the handicap of a bad hangover. At
any rate, Molotov turned a deaf ear to all of Browder' arguments
against the cold war and in support of coexistence, although his
manner was deceptively courteous. The visit did Browder no good,
although Molotov tendered him the post of American representative of
Soviet publishing houses, which he accepted.

A Personal "Revolution"

Browder concludes his article:
" By the 1950s, my break with the Russians had led me into a basic
re-examination of Marxist theory, and I followed in Marx's footsteps
with the declaration: 'I am not a Marxist.' My personal revolution in
thinking is, of course, of importance only as an example of how the
shattering years of the cold war have broken up the old patterns of
thought--behind the iron curtain as profoundly as in the West,
although there it is revealed mainly in the lightning flashes of mass
discontent and revolts.

"What remains constant for me, during the last 15 years, has been the
conviction that the cold war was a calamity for the entire world, and
that it can be justified by no consideration of theory, nor by any
supposed national interest. I can only hope that Khrushchev's new line
of talk portends a new line of action to which America can respond in
kind. Such hopes are, however, tempered by years of disillusioning
memories, which remind us all that it takes two sides to make a
peace."

Kansas City Star, March 15, 1960

Earl Browder,
Red Leader,
Dies at Age 82

Princeton, N.J. (AP)--Earl Russell Browder, Communist Party candidate
for president in 1936 and 1940, is dead at age 82.

Browder, who was general secretary of the Communist Party in the
United States from 1930 to 1945, died in his sleep Wednesday at his
home here.

The Communist Party became the Communist Political Association in
1944. In 1946 Browder was expelled from the association as a
"revisionist" for supporting President Roosevelt's policies.

He served prison terms from 1917 through 1920 and in 1941 and 1942 for
opposing American war policy.

From 1926 to 1929 he served as director of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union
Secretariat in Shanghai, helping to organize the Communist drive in
China. He was a member of the executive committee of the Communist
International Movement from 1935 to 1940.

Browder, who was born in Wichita, Kan., leaves sons Felix of Chicago,
William of Princeton and Andrew of Providence, R.I.

A memorial service is scheduled Saturday at the Woodrow Wilson School
for Public and International Affairs at Princeton. The funeral will be
private.

Lawrence Daily Journal World, June 28, 1973