OTHER EDITORS

SEN. JOSEPH McCARTHY
(A Labor Union Paper)

Sen. "Joe" McCarthy, Wisconsin's junior Senator, hasn't much influence in the Senate. His colleagues regard him as "a windy fellow" who will do anything or say anything which will get his name in the papers. As this is being written, McCarthy is putting on one of his "shows" in the upper chamber.

Recently he has been chasing around the country making speeches. In a talk at Wheeling, W. Va., McCarthy declared he had "a list of 205 persons working in the state department who were known by the secretary of state to be members of the Communist party."

By the time he got to Reno, Nev., he had whittled his list down to "57 card-carrying Communists," and he named four of them. Investigation revealed that one of the four had never worked for the state department, that two had resigned four years ago and that one, after an exhaustive inquiry, had been restored to his work with a "clean bill of health."

Reporters asked McCarthy to give out the names of the state department "Commies." He replied he couldn't do that because he would be "deluged with libel suits."

Then the state department issued a sweeping denial of the entire yarn, and suggested that if the Senator had any information showing "reds" on the state department payroll, it would be thankfully received.

McCarthy's reply to that was to break loose on the floor of the Senate, where he enjoys "congressional immunity"- that is, he may say what he likes without becoming subject to court action!

Finally, he has entered into a "deal" with some Byrd-Democrats in the Senate to start a "probe" of his charges. Apparently Sen. Hoey of North Carolina is a party to this performance.

After surveying the situation, the Washington "Post" announced in a leading editorial that "Joe" was "playing sewer politics."

This is the same McCarthy who, according to the Supreme Court of that state of Wisconsin, broke his oath of office. The bar association declared he violated the ethics of his profession.

Probably one reason why "Joe" talks so much about "Commies" in the state department" is that he hopes his constituents and his associates in the Senate will not scrutinize the rest of his record.
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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This editorial, reprinted from a newspaper connected to a labor union, refers to a speech made by Senator Joseph McCarthy on February 9, 1950 to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. In the years directly following the end of World War II, people in the United States worried that communists might try to subvert schools, labor unions, and other institutions. McCarthy's allegations were never backed up, but for the next four years, he managed to keep at the forefront of the anti-communist movement. In 1954, he held hearings about communists in the army. Television coverage of these hearings began to turn the public against him. In December, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22.

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