Len De Caux
[1] In 1921, he emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a laborer and merchant seaman; he joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
[1][3] In 1925, Carl Haessler of the Federated Press, a labor news service, hired De Caux and sent him to the United Kingdom and Germany as a foreign correspondent.
In 1926, he came back to the States as assistant editor on the United Mine Workers (UMW) Illinois Miner under Oscar Ameringer.
[1][3] In 1935, De Caux became publicity director of the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations under founder John L. Lewis.
"[4][5] Writers for Labor for Victory included: Peter Lyon, a progressive journalist; Millard Lampell (born Allan Sloane), later an American movie and television screenwriter; and Morton Wishengrad, who worked for the AFL.
[9] Guthrie consented and performed solo two or three times on this among several other WWII radio shows, including Answering You, Labor for Victory, Jazz in America, and We the People.
[5][15][16] NBC's announced the show represented "twelve million organized men and women, united in the high resolve to rid the world of Fascism in 1942."
[17][18][19] In the aftermath of World War II, both the press and business interests expressed hostility toward organized labor (unions).
[2] In late 1947, second president Philip Murray asked De Caux to resign as the CIO began to rid itself of perceived communists and fellow travelers in its ranks (e.g., Lee Pressman in February 1948).
"[20] From 1952 to 1953, De Caux served as managing editor of March of Labor magazine; he left due to financial shortages of the publisher.
[1] In 1954, former Ware Group member Hope Hale Davis identified De Caux as a communist to the FBI (along with his wife, her own husband Robert Gorham Davis, Harold Ware, Charles Kramer and his wife Mildred, John Abt and wife Jessica Smith Ware Abt and sister Marion Abt Bachrach, Nathan Witt, Lee Pressman, Victor Perlo, Abraham George Silverman, Henry Collins, Donald Hiss, Alger Hiss, J. Peters, and Jacob Golos).
Arriving as a child in the States, she worked through her teens and joined the Amalgamated Clothing Workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Young Peoples Socialist League.
She supported Socialist candidates and was against American entry into World War I. Abrams and De Caux met at Brookwood, by which time she was already experienced as a labor activist.
[2]In May 1977, De Caux gave his papers to the Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University.
The Walter Reuther Archives at Wayne State University also have an oral history by Len DeCaux dated March 1961.
