Page 27 - Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party

THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 21
$700 from the now-defunct Sound View Foundation, according to the
report.
In 1949, the Communist-dominated International Fur and Leather
Workers Union contributed $3,000 to the National Lawyers Guild. In 1947 and again in 1948, the Communist-dominated United Electri- cal, Radio and Machine Workers Union contributed $750 to the National Lawyers Guild.
Another contributor to the National Lawyers Guild was the Robert Marshall Foundation of New York City, which in 1947 contributed $2,000. This foundation was described in the March 29, 1944, report of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities as "one of the principal sources for the money with which to finance the Communist Party's fronts generally in recent years."
Frederick Vanderbilt Field, whose adherence to Communist causes is well known, has also contributed money to the National Lawyers Guild.
Over 40 employees of the Federal Government who are currently carried on the rolls of the National Lawyers Guild as members were contacted by the staff of the committee. The majority of those contacted have, in their opinions, ceased their membership through the nonpayment of dues, although only three had submitted formal letters of resignation. However, the National Lawyers Guild still considers these persons to be members. Two individuals carried as members of the board of directors of the Washington chapter of the National Lawyers Guild are still carried as such even though they refused the nomination to the board of directors and had stopped paying dues. One person carried as a member of the board had neither paid dues since April of 1949 nor attended a meeting in over
3 years.
Many persons interviewed, and these interviews were limited to
present Government emploj^ees, stated that as a result of their mem-
berships in the National Lawyers Guild they had been receiving literature from Communist-front organizations.
CONCLUSION
The Committee on Un-American Activities recommends that the National Lawyers Guild be placed on the Department of Justice subversive list and that it be required to register as an agent of a
foreign principal.
It recommends further that members of the National Lawyers
Guild be barred from Federal employment and that the American Bar Association consider the question of whether or not membership in the National Lawyers Guild, a subversive organization, is com-
with admissibility to the American bar. It calls on decent
f)atible and those interested in the liberal of awyers sincerely principles
American justice to warn the younger members of the bar of the real nature of the guild, as an arm of the international Communist conspiracy.