December 1944

Good news!  Cordell Hull resigned as Secretary of State due to health issues.  I don’t mean that it is good news Mr. Hull is in poor health, I wish him a long and healthy life.  I just don’t want him as head of the Department of State.  Hull and H.A. never saw eye-to-eye on issues.  Hull is a supporter of the status quo with colonialism and is opposed to working with the Soviet Union.    My boss opposes colonialism and imperialism, and he supports continuing our peaceful and productive relationship with the Soviet Union.

Hull’s replacement is Edward Stettinius, Jr., a former chairman of U.S. Steel.

Stettinius is supportive of the idea of a United Nations to help maintain the peace following the end of the war, and he is willing to continue to work with the Soviet Union.  As the war is coming to a close, the former murmurings against the Soviet Union are becoming louder.  Some even suggest that our efforts will not be done in Europe if our troops fail to continue to move through the east to Japan.  A war with the Soviet Union would be insane – surely the American people are tired of war.  


Do not get me wrong, I do not trust the Soviet Union.  From my experience in Spain I know how they operate.  But we cannot treat them like enemies.  The Soviet Union is already paranoid, and perhaps rightfully, that the rest of the world wants to destroy them.  We must stay engaged with the Soviet Union to allay this paranoia.  If we treat them as an enemy, they will act as an enemy.  Without constructive engagement international problems will grow and fester.  Pointless conflicts with the loss of human life and resources will be the result.  


I know the big business war machine fears the end of conflict because they do not want to see their war profits disappear, but we can use those resources to build our society rather than destroy others.  I am proud that H.A. is a leader in this mission.


©  2011 Ron Millar

November 1944

We won the election!  I’m glad but not surprised.  I mean, who, in their right mind, would vote against F.D.R. as we are successfully fighting fascism overseas and poverty at home.   Okay, people did vote against us.  We won by a comfortable margin, but by the smallest margin of F.D.R.’s four elections.  I don’t know who these anti-New Deal voters were because we didn’t meet them on the campaign trail. But even with a smaller margin it was still a win for F.D.R., H.A., and the New Deal.   Socialist Party candidate Norman Thomas, who I supported years ago, gained less than 80,000 votes of nearly 50 million cast.   I still respect Norman Thomas, but H.A. and the New Deal are implementing many of the programs that the Socialists have been preaching about years.  I’ll go with implementation of real policies over dreams of a better someday everytime.

Except for a few meetings, H.A. had little contact with F.D.R. during the campaign.  The campaign’s design was to have F.D.R. visibly running the war effort with H.A. traveling the country by train and car campaigning on behalf of the ticket.  The pace of the campaign was hectic and the crowds enthusiastic and adoring.  Even with H.A. being the active campaigner, this was a contest between F.D.R. and the Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York. 

Dewey had an energetic campaign.  His campaign was against the New Deal and a return to a small federal government that did not interfere in business.  To some Republicans regulation of business is seen as the first steps of a communist takeover.  Dewey even accused F.D.R. as being “indispensable” to corrupt government officials and American Communists.  But the vast majority of Americans either ignored or laughed off this extreme rhetoric.

At the end of the campaign, F.D.R. jumped back into the race with a speech in Chicago’s Soldiers Field.  He promoted his progressive vision of postwar America with an economy of sixty million jobs, new programs on conservation and crop insurance, healthcare and housing, and promoting unionization by removing barriers on collective bargaining.  H.A. was thrilled by the speech, it showed that F.D.R. was back in fighting form and wanted to advance the New Deal.

This year we go right back to work in the Administration.  When H.A. first won the Vice Presidency in 1940, he, and I, were jobless.  H.A. had to resign as Secretary of the Agriculture to run for office and once the campaign was over we had nothing to do until the Inaugural in January.  However, H.A. is not good at being idle. 

H.A. had been studying Spanish for several years and thought this would be a good opportunity to immerse himself in the language by taking a trip to one or more of our southern neighbors.

He discussed his idea with F.D.R. and was put on the State Department payroll as an ambassador extraordinary.  The plan was to drive to Mexico – I was hired as the driver – to attend the presidential inauguration of the newly elected president, Manuel Avilo Camacho.  We drove from Washington D.C. to Mexico City.  Naturally, H.A. made me stop frequently along the way to examine corn fields.  We started with just a two car caravan.  My car carried H.A. and his wife Ilo and the second car contained Jim LeCron and his wife Helen [LeCron was Wallace’s assistant at Agriculture –A.S.].  By the time we reached Mexico City the caravan numbered more than fifteen vehicles.  The Mexican people were very enthusiastic about the visit.  From the cities and the villages people would line the streets to welcome the Vice President-elect.  I’m told over 150,000 came out to cheer on H.A. in Monterrey, throwing confetti and flowers at the car.  H.A. said with a grin that “I never flew the Atlantic or had a triumphal march down Wall Street, so this was my first paper rain.”

In addition to attending the inaugural, H.A. was asked to speak before the Mexican Congress.  H.A. gave his speech in Spanish and was enthusiastically received.   We spent a month in Mexico attending meetings, receptions, and of course inspecting corn fields and farm markets.  H.A. was appalled at the low yield of even the best farms we visited in Mexico.  Once we were back in the States, H.A. met with leaders of The Rockefeller Foundation and convinced them to invest in Mexico to create agricultural experiment stations to help farmers increase their production.   If successful the project will help Mexico feed itself. 

No foreign trip this year.  We just went back to work in our suite of rooms in the Senate Office Building  and our formal office in the Capitol Building.  As Vice President his only official role is to preside over the Senate and cast a vote in the case of a tie.  H.A. told me that, “One of the most futile occupations I know is presiding over the Senate” because of its long-winded debates and gentlemen’s club atmosphere. 

Fortunately, H.A. convinced F.D.R. to expand the role of the Vice President and through executive orders established the Economic Defense Board (the E.D.B.) and Supply Priorities and Allocations Board (the S.P.A.B.) with H.A. as their chairman. 

The S.P.A.B. coordinated the government’s efforts in preparing for war.    At the time, H.A. said that, “Every available man and machine must be employed either on direct defense requirements or at work essential to the civilian economy.  Along this road lies protection of our freedom and of the basic economy necessary to the maintenance of that freedom.”  Helping to allocate resources to build our industrial infrastructure and procure defense supplies, H.A.’s efforts were amazing, and his work helped America immediately and effectively jump into the war effort following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The E.D.B., after Pearl Harbor it was renamed Board of Economic Warfare (the B.E.W.), was a policy and advisory agency focused on international economic issues  such as exports, imports, foreign exchange, patents, and other items.  This position helped H.A. plan out what the international economic world order should be following the successful conclusion of the war.   As H.A. said in a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in 1941, “After the victory, what of the peace?  The battle of the peace will be more difficult to win than the battle of the war.  All Europe will be a mad swirl of chaotic forces.  Unless we are prepared to help in the reorganization of a shattered world, these forces will leap from continent to continent and destroy even the United States.”

These executive positions make H.A. the most powerful Vice President in the history of our nation, and this work helped focus H.A.’s vision of how the world should work.

In an article for the Atlantic Monthly, H.A. wrote,  “The overthrow of Hitler is only half the battle; we must build a world in which our human and material resources are used to the utmost if we are to win complete victory.  This principle should be fundamental as the world moves to reorganize its affairs.  Ways must be found by which the potential abundance of the world can be translated into real wealth and a higher standard of living.  Certain minimum standards of food, clothing and shelter ought to be established, and arrangements ought to be made to guarantee that no one should fall below those standards.”

I am so proud to be working for a man with this great vision and, more importantly, the ability to make it happen.

©  2011 Ron Millar

October 1944

The war is going well for us [Subject describes battles in the European and Pacific theaters - A.S.].

The war in Spain went well for a while too.  A short while, but not for the first wave of volunteers.  I was a chofer, a driver, for the American Medical Bureau.  I met up with the Major [Dr. Edward K. Barsky, Chief of the American Medical Bureau – A.S.] outside of Madrid.   Sometimes I drove the Major's car, sometimes an ambulance (one was donated by the students and faculty Harvard University), and sometimes I drove the autochir.  This was the mobile hospital.  It had an operating table, surgical instruments, x-ray machine, a gas-powered generator for electricity and everything you needed to treat the wounded.  I was told it held about fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of equipment.  

In Madrid, we were treated like heroes – even though I had not yet done anything.  I was a little embarrassed by the attention; however, I welcomed their gratitude and love.


 Most of the action at Madrid had taken place before I arrived.  My colleagues did not talk about it, because about 600 International Brigade volunteers were killed.  Many blamed the deaths on inept decision-making. 

We soon moved out of Madrid and relocate to Villa Paz.  This is the Aragon region.  I can still feel the cold – I could never get warm there.  When we were not using our vehicles we drained the radiators to make sure that they would not freeze.  Among the drivers and mechanics, I was very popular because I brought my tool set.  However, I had to watch it constantly because tools were so rare – they would quickly disappear.  Even though I am an anarchist, I became obsessively possessive of my tools.  With the environment both weather and militarily so hostile a breakdown could cost you your life.  I did many runs transporting wounded, but I was far from the front.  I occasionally heard fascist planes, but they were always far away.

The population of the Aragon was mostly anarchristic.  Seeing anarchist ideals put into reality was mind-bloggling.  The towns, villages, and farms operated in a communal manner without hierarchy.   I learned as much as I could with my limited Spanish and pantomime.  Although we were in the middle of a war and there was scarcity of life’s basic needs, the people of the region were incredibly optimistic for the future of the society they were building.  And the pride in that it was something they were building themselves was awe inspiring.  The pride, vigor, resourcefulness, and happiness of the people was infectious.  I felt honored to be there to help with their revolution. 

Naturally, not everything operated perfectly,  The various villages and towns started to print their own currency.  Even the various anarchist syndicates such as bakers, barbers, etc. issued their own money. Unfortunately, the money was rarely accepted outside of the issuing agency.  The leadership in Barcelona ordered that these currencies be withdrawn, the locals cried out that the central authorities were "betraying the revolution."  

Little did they know then what "betraying the revolution" would really look like.


©  2011 Ron Millar

September 1944

The campaign is going well.  Large and enthusiastic crowds at each stop who are eager to support the New Deal ticket to win the war and win the peace. 

More information is filtering out about near debacle at the convention.   The forces against H.A. were well organized and diverse.  They included conservatives who want to halt any additional New Deal programs, big businessmen who want to be free of any government regulations, imperialists who want to expand U.S. hegemony around the world, isolationists who following the war want the U.S. to ignore the world, and southern segregationist who fear federal interference with their Jim Crow culture.  On our side was labor, the progressives, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Because we beat the bosses, H.A. felt even more free to take on issues that the bosses wanted to ignore.  He campaigned in neighborhoods absent from our 1940 tour.  In New York, we appeared with New York City councilman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in Harlem to speak about Civil Rights and we did the same in Chicago with Congressman William L. Dawson.  H.A. proudly attended integrated cocktail parties, even though he does not drink,  in segregated Washington.  H.A. is determined that all Americans will have an equal share of a prosperous postwar economy.  I like to think that I have been a good influence on H.A., but I think I had little to do with it.  It is just H.A. being H.A.  H.A. has had a lot of good influences.  For example, George Washington Carver, an associate of H.A.’s father while at Iowa State College, taught a young H.A. (he would have been around 6 years old), how to identify different parts and species of plants.  George Washington Carver as a teacher!  In Iowa!  There is hope for this country – and its leading light is H.A.

H.A. campaigned on a lot of issues:  full employment, responsible health and old-age insurance, low freight rates and improved roads, free enterprise and opportunity for small business, racial and gender equality, good schools, cultural resources, and a new international order to create economic opportunity and world peace.  However, full employment was his main domestic issue, he said, “The greatest economic sin is the waste of human labor.”   For some reason this scared some people (including people within our administration and campaign); however, among regular citizens H.A. is very popular.  


©  2011 Ron Millar

August 1944

This is just an aside to the unfortunate person who may one day transcribe these rolls.  I don’t want you to think that I have an amazing memory for the quotes I’m rattling off.  I have extensive scrapbooks of speeches and press clips that I am often reviewing and even putting together while using the Dictaphone.  My memory is good, but not that good.

Shortly after the convention, I resigned my job as Personal Aide to Vice President Henry A. Wallace.  I am now the Personal Aide for Vice Presidential Candidate Henry A. Wallace.  

I am reprising my role from the 1940 campaign.  In fact, it was the 1940 campaign that earned me the position in the Vice President’s Office.   Because of my logistics skills, from moving the field hospital in Spain to organizing farmers in Iowa, I was hired for the 1940 campaign.  F.D.R. wanted H.A. to be the primary campaigner while he, F.D.R., remained aloof from the fray.  The campaign was a driving and train tour all over the nation.  H.A. would deliver a half-dozen speeches each day to enthusiastic crowds.  

The goal of the 1944 campaign is to replicate this successful model.

However, I remember that the 1940 campaign had barely even started when we were almost torpedoed.   Embarrassing letters that H.A. wrote to a bizarre guru, Nicholas Roerich, and his staff members were given to the Republicans.

Roerich is a Russian émigré, a painter, a peace activist, and a mystic.   H.A. became friends with Roerich and corresponded about his religious beliefs. 

H.A. does not hold the traditional religious beliefs of his Iowa neighbors.   

Religion is the one of three areas, the others are his vegetarianism and tea totaling, where I don’t understand H.A.   H.A. is a very evidence based man, he looks to science for the answers to earthly problems, but with religion he trusts his intuition.  However, he does approach his search for the metaphysical world as he does for the physical world.  Openness and experimentation.  He is open to learning about and experiencing a variety of religious expressions, regardless of how odd the person presenting the idea, enter Roerich, is seen by the general public or how the general public might respond to the religious idea itself.

H.A.’s family were members of the United Presbyterian Church.  But following his grandfather’s death – remember he was a minister and patriarch of the family – H.A. began his religious explorations.   He read Ralph Waldo Emerson and his followers and H.A. embraced the idea that a divine spiritual force flowed through all living things.  He also attended Roman Catholic services and enjoyed the mass for its traditional performance (I too enjoy the vestments and the incense – but their politics, especially in Spain, where the Church sided with the fascists – are completely unacceptable).  H.A. studied séances, religious symbols and rituals, astrology, native and Asian religions, secret societies, and mysticism – items that the average Protestant Iowa farmer, and American, would find odd and even scary.

H.A. is formally a member of the Episcopal church; however, “Real religion” H.A. told me, had nothing to do with  “church-going, or charity, or any other outward manifestation of what is popularly called religion.”  Religion is a far more all encompassing power, “whereby man reaches out toward God in an effort to find the spiritual power to express here on earth in a practical way the divine potentialities in himself and his fellow beings.”

H.A. became so friendly with Roerich that he sent him on an expedition to Manchuria to collect seeds and plants for the Department of Agriculture.  It was during this expedition that H.A. and Roerich parted as friends.  Apparently, Roerich used the trip to promote himself rather than collecting specimens for the government.

H.A.’s publicity men prepared materials to counter the release of the Roerich letters, but if released, the letters would be very damaging.

Fortunately, F.D.R. and his skilled political fixers threatened to retaliate against the Republicans if the letters were released.  Apparently, Wendell Willkie [1940 Republican nominee for president -A.S.] had a mistress [Irita Van Doren, the literary editor of the New York Herald Tribune -A.S.].   However, everyone thought that H.A.’s religious peculiarities would be more damaging than exposing Willkie’s infidelities.  A campaign staffer claimed that when hearing of the scandal, F.D.R. said, “We can handle sex, but we can’t handle religion.”  Fortunately, a truce between the camps was established and the letters were withheld from the public.  

F.D.R.’s fixers assure us that we have nothing to worry about for this election.

I personally have no use for religion.  I just don’t buy it.  Having seen first-hand the cruelty of man both here in the States and in Spain, if the divine runs through all living things, or is sitting up in heaven looking down at us, then it is doing a really crappy job of inspiring or encouraging tolerable behavior.  There is no divinity in life, there is just life.   There is no divine plan for life, we just follow our instincts for self-preservation and the continuation of our species.  Sadly, many people, most of whom have strong religious convictions, follow their baser instincts and make life difficult and sometimes impossible for others. 

I also have no use for the secular religions of the Market and History.  Those adherents of laissez-faire capitalism, with its mystical and magical invisible hand that directs sellers and buyers, are no more rational than fundamentalist Bible-thumpers.  These religionists think that if the Market is left undisturbed it will take us to an economic promised land.  The same can be said of the adherents of Marx’s dialectial materialism where the inevitable forces of History will produce a communist classless society.   The only inevitable thing is that all religions, even the secular ones, have authoritative priesthoods whose job it is to direct our lives.  Since they are all false, I oppose all priesthoods.  I want to direct my own life – but thank you very much for offering.

Okay, that was preachy.  But just to end my sermon – No Gods, No Masters!  Remember I’m still an anarchist.  Just a closeted one.


©  2011 Ron Millar

July 1944

I just got back from the Chicago Convention [Democratic National Convention July 19-21 -A.S.] and what a fight!  And, F.D.R. was up to his old tricks – just like in 1940.  A bit of history is important to understand F.D.R.

The 1940 Convention [Democratic National Convention, July 15-18 at Chicago Stadium -A.S.] was crazy.  F.D.R. didn’t announce that he was seeking reelection and in fact gave Kentucky Senator Alban Barkley a note to read to the convention what he [President Roosevelt] didn’t want the job.  This was just a ruse and the convention delegates, as expected, demanded F.D.R. run for an unprecedented third term.   The clamor by the delegates for F.D.R. to accept a third-term was helped by a Chicago political operative [Thomas Garry Chicago Superintendent of Sewers -A.S.] who was in the basement of the stadium shouting through the speakers “We want Roosevelt!  The world wants Roosevelt!” and by many others among the delegates who were clued into the ruse.  Naturally, all the delegates quickly joined the chant.  F.D.R. is a master at political theater.

F.D.R.’s Vice President at the time, John Nance Garner, had earlier expressed he did not want the V.P. job again (probably because he wanted to run for president as did others in the F.D.R. administration and other supporters of the New Deal).  With Garner out, F.D.R. picked H.A. as his choice for Vice President.  I believe one reason F.D.R. selected H.A. as Vice President – in addition to the fact that he did an amazing job as Secretary of Agriculture – is because he did not express an interest in the presidency; however, I hesitate to explain F.D.R.’s political motivations because they are often mysterious and baffling to me.  With F.D.R.'s backing the convention delegates put H.A. on the ticket.

This year [1944] F.D.R. was playing more tricks than in 1940.  Robert Hannegan [National Chairman of the Democratic Party -A.S.] had a note from F.D.R. saying that he would be happy to run with Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman or Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas as his Vice President.  The big business interests ran with this and mounted a strong campaign to oust H.A.  We had a letter to Senator [Samuel D.] Jackson [of Indiana -A.S.] from F.D.R. saying that if he was a delegate he would vote for Wallace.  What is really odd about the whole affair is that Truman went to the convention with the intention of supporting James F. Byrnes for Vice President [Byrnes a former South Carolina Senator and Supreme Court Associate Justice and at the time Director of the Office of War Mobilization -A.S.].  Byrnes, was known as “assistant president” for the home front, and he too apparently got the okay from F.D.R. to run for V.P.!  We almost lost it at one point when Pauley [Treasurer of the Democratic Party -A.S.], who supported Byrnes, and Hillman [of the Congress of Industrial Organizations -A.S.], who opposed Byrnes, were near reaching a compromise to support Truman -- who said he didn’t want the job.   And this is a democratic process?!

What were you thinking Mr. President?! 

What made this even more infuriating was that on three separate occasions H.A. had offered to step aside if F.D.R. was interested in having someone else be Vice President.  F.D.R. rejected his offer each time.  Why would F.D.R. want to deceive H.A. and play such an elaborate game at the convention?  He knew H.A. was loyal and would graciously accept F.D.R.’s decision either way.  I really hate the games that F.D.R. plays.

Fortunately, on the night of F.D.R.’s nomination our supporters packed the Chicago convention galleries.

H.A. followed Barkley in speaking before the convention in support of F.D.R.’s nomination, and H.A. gave a great speech.  He opened with “The strength of the Democratic Party has always been the people – plain people like so many of those here in this convention – ordinary folks, farmers, workers, and business men along Main Street.”  Then he presented his progressive vision for America, “The future belongs to those who go down the line unswervingly for the liberal principles of both political and economic democracy regardless of race, color or religion.  In a political, educational and economic sense there must be no inferior races.  The poll tax must go.  Equal educational opportunities must come.  The future must bring equal wages for equal work regardless of sex or race.” 

The delegates roared back their approval.  A Time magazine reporter said, “Whether conservatives squirmed or Southerners saw red or New Dealers cheered, Henry Wallace’s speech was the first that riveted the delegates’ attention.  It was blunt, grave, tactless.  It easily explained why Henry Wallace was the best loved and the best hated man in the stadium.”

F.D.R. was easily, but not unanimously, nominated, and he gave his acceptance speech by radio from the west coast.  F.D.R. expressed that he would have liked to retire, but would accept the nomination out of duty; however, he would not campaign because it was not fitting and he did not have the time.  He said, “What is the job before us in 1944?  First, to win the war – to win the war fast, to win it overpoweringly.  Second, to form worldwide international organizations, and to arrange to use the armed forces of the sovereign nations of the world to make another war impossible within the foreseeable future.  And third, to build an economy for our returning veterans and for all Americans – which will provide employment and decent standards of living.”

Following his speech, as expected and scripted, there was a long, loud demonstration for F.D.R.  As the demonstration wound down something happened that the bosses had not scripted or expected.  Shouts of “We want Wallace!  We want Wallace!” arose in the stadium.  Soon the stadium rocked with the deafening chant, “WE WANT WALLACE!  WE WANT WALLACE!”  The convention organist began playing our song, “Iowa, Iowa, That’s Where the Tall Corn Grows” and the call for Wallace became a demand.  At one point, our opposition attempted to rush the organist with an ax to cut the organ’s electrical cable, but our supporters blocked the attackers approach.  

Realizing that H.A. would keep his job if the vote for Vice President was held now, Claude Pepper shouted to be recognized by the Convention Chairman [Senator Samuel D. Jackson of Indiana -A.S.] but the Florida microphone was dead.   Pepper then raced through the crowd to reach the podium, as did Robert Hannegan [National Chairman of the Democratic Party -A.S.], but Hannegan’s mission was to prevent the vote by adjourning the convention for the day.  Fortunately, for H.A., the gate to the podium was guarded by a railroad union man [identify unknown -A.S.] and Pepper won the foot race against Hannegan and the gate closed firmly behind Pepper to prevent Hannegan’s access.  Pepper called for H.A.’s nomination and the crowd roared in acclimation drowning out any opposition. 

Democracy beat the bosses.

Although H.A. got to keep his position, the Byzantine politics left me bitter.  Our near ousting demonstrates the power of big business in the backroom dealings – and how F.D.R. plays a very bizarre game of politics.

As best as I can piece together from whispers and third-parties, F.D.R. was willing to drop H.A. because Tommy Corcoran [part of Roosevelt's "brain trust" -A.S.] expressed to F.D.R. the Tory British, particularly [Winston] Churchill, hatred of H.A. because of H.A.’s  anti-imperialist speeches, which they felt threatened the continuation of their colonial empire.  Ed Pauley [an oil man who was the director of the 1944 Convention -A.S.] told F.D.R. that big businessmen feared H.A. and would not support the ticket.  Ed Flynn [a New York lawyer and former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee -A.S.] told F.D.R. that the Democratic Party could raise all the money it needed and more if H.A. was dropped.   Bernard Baruch [a stock market financier who was Director of the Office of War Mobilization -A.S.] offered F.D.R. a million dollars if he would drop H.A. 

Regardless, we won and I have another four years of steady employment.  Assuming we will win the election in November, which of course we will!


©  2011 Ron Millar

June 1944

Okay, onto Spain.

While H.A. was leaving the party of his family – the Republicans and embracing the Democratic Party, I was working with the party of my father and my namesake – the Socialist Party.  I never mentioned my political activities to my Aunt or the Wallaces.  I didn’t think they would approve and I didn’t want to do anything that would affect the comfortable life in which I found myself. 

After my namesake Eugene V. Debs died in 1926, Norman Thomas became the standard bearer of the Party.  Although I could not vote – too young – I was very interested in the 1932 election.   I was fortunate to hear Mr. Thomas speak in Iowa promoting his campaign for president.  I was even more fortunate to meet A. Philip Randolph, union organizer and civil rights leader also stumping for the Thomas campaign.   I read many of Randolph’s articles in back issues of the Messenger, a radical monthly newsletter that advocated against the chains of segregation and for the freedom of democratic socialism.   When possible I would attend Socialist Party rallies and meetings, and when I got my car I had many more opportunities.  My candidate, Norman Thomas lost the election, but Mr. Wallace’s candidate, F.D.R., won.

But wait, I have been very rude.  I have to take some time and thank my Great Aunt for taking care of me when no one else would.  She left Texas at a young age to get away from the “hard south” as she called it.  She is a strong, intelligent women who following the death of her husband, worked tirelessly to raised her family, and then found me at her door and raised me too.   She earned enough money to send her two daughters to school to become a teacher and a nurse.  Strong, proud, resourceful women, and they douted on me.  They helped me catch up on my missed school years.  Their careful attention, along with our extended family, also prevented me from missing school and getting into mischief.  I knew my Aunt would find out immediately and I did not want to disappoint her.  Our community was very tight-knit in Des Moines and very proud.  Education and hard work were stressed to better both the individual and the community.  

Now, I’m not using the names of my living relatives and friends because I don’t trust J. Edgar Hoover.  I might be paranoid, but the F.B.I. has spies and informants everywhere.  If you are reading this Mr. Hoover please be advised that you are the antithesis of everything that makes America great.  You hate anyone who varies from your narrow vision of what makes an American.  You are [this section was not transcribed due to the use of crude and obscene language -A.S.].

Unfortunately, Mr. Hoover has the power to turn his hate into action.  Just ask the passengers of the Buford, like Emma Goldman, Ethel Bernstein, Peter Bianki, Dora Lipkin, Alexander Berkman and over 200 others, who were exiled to Russia.  With unequal justice under his law, anyone who does not fit Mr. Hoover’s narrow definition of an American are harassed, imprisoned, and exiled.  Just in case the FBI, steals these cylinders, or the transcripts that might be made one day, and wants to harass my friends and relatives – who did not already have a high public profile, I’m not going to help them by giving out names. 

If H.A. ever becomes president, I’m going to lobby him to fire Mr. J. Edgar Hoover.  That’s a promise.

Okay back to Spain, or at least how I got there in the first place.

When H.A. went to Washington to become the Secretary of Agriculture, he convinced Congress to give him extra-ordinary powers to control the production and price of agricultural products.  Meanwhile, I was helping farmers in Iowa by assisting with rallies and other protests.  My favorite actions were the penny auctions.  At farm foreclosure auctions, the farmers and their allies would attend in mass.  Possible bidders would be escorted from the property.  Without bidders the intimidated auctioneer would sell the property back to the farmer for a penny.  Sadly, the populist farm organizers frequently did not want to associate with people of my skin tone; however, the communist organizers eagerly accepted my help.  Soon I was helping to organize farmers and driving them in borrowed trucks to the auctions and other events.  The power of an organized citizenry amazed me and scared me a little too – I saw that with different leadership the mob’s anger might easily be turned against me.

The penny auctions were successful.  Iowa issued a moratorium on foreclosures.  However, the moratorium was challenged in court by the financial interest who held the mortgages.   In protest, a group of farmers in La Mars, Iowa kidnapped, abused, and nearly lynched Judge Charles E. Bradley who was hearing the case.  Governor Clyde Herring declared martial law and dispatched troops to put down the “Corn Belt Rebellion.”  The authorities raided the Communist Party headquarters in Sioux City and arrest over eighty farmers and organizers.   Following this “Rebellion,” Wallace and F.D.R. had no problem getting their ground-breaking agricultural legislation through Congress. 

Soon half of the nation’s farmers, three million, signed on to the various federal programs to limit production in order raise prices on produce.  In one program Wallace called for the slaughter of six million baby pigs, which would naturally reduce hog production.   The resulting one hundred million pounds of pork and pork by-products (lard and soap) were given to the poor.  H.A. said, “Not many people realized how radical it was, - this idea of having the Government buy from those who had too much, in order to give to those who had too little.  So direct a method of resolving the paradox of want in the midst of plenty doubtless could never have got beyond the discussion stage before 1933.”  Through these and other agricultural programs hunger was abated and the income of farmers rose by over thirty percent in the New Deal's first year.

The poor showing of Norman Thomas in the election soured me to electoral politics, but through the penny auctions I learned first hand the power of direct action.  I picked up information and books by Mikhail Bakunin [Russian Anarchist 1814-1876 - A.S.], Peter Kropotin [another Russian Anarchist 1842-1921 - A.S.] and Emma Goldman [yet another Russian Anarchist - this one lived in the United States and was appropriately deported - A.S.].  I became fascinated with the ideals of anarchism [Subject goes on diatribe of how all power structures and authority - from laws to traditions - must be questioned - A.S.]. 

Okay, okay, back to Spain.

Through the communist organizers, who thought my anarchist interests were naïve and unscientific, I learned about the opportunity to go to Spain and fight against the fascists, who were trying to overthrow the democratically elected government.   Sadly, the democratic nations of the world would not come to the aid of the Spanish Republic and established a “non-intervention.”  Fortunately, anti-fascists from around the world organized and joined the struggling democracy’s fight against fascism.   It was an amazing effort.  32,000 volunteers, from 53 nations, formed The International Brigades in Spain [The International Brigades were under the control the Soviet Union’s Comintern - A.S.]

I was well aware of the fascists, Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in German,  and their murderous rampages against Anarchists, Socialists and Communists in their countries.   Regrettably, many in the United States supported the fascist regimes thinking it was a quick way to restore order and prosperity, in addition to solving the problem of “undesirables.”  In addition to the lure of Spain itself, the ability to fight the spread of fascism made my participation inevitable.  Best of all, the Communist Party would arrange and pay for transportation there and back.   The first volunteers left for Spain right after Christmas in 1936.  I wanted to go with them, but my Aunt begged me not to go.  Negotiations with my Aunt continued through the Winter, Spring, and Summer of 1937.  Eventually, we compromised.   She said I could go to Spain if I did so legally.   The U.S. had initiated passport restrictions for volunteers going to fight, so most Americans had to go to France and secretly cross over the Pyrenees to get to Spain.   Fortunately, it was still legal to go to Spain to provide humanitarian and medical assistance.  Without my knowledge my Great Aunt had her daughter make contacts with colleagues who had connections with the American Medical Bureau in Spain.  With a new passport and a job with the American Medical Bureau I left for Spain in October 1937.  I arrived in Spain in mid-November and served until the following April.  [A deep sigh is audible followed by a long silence before the Dictaphone is turned off –A.S.]

[Dictaphone turned back on - A.S.]  I was fortunate and did make it back.  About a third of the nearly 3,000 American volunteers were killed in Spain and many of the survivors were wounded.  I made it back physically intact. 

I did not want to leave Spain.  We were told to leave Spain.  We had to come back to the States, even though the war was not won.  We had to leave because the Spanish Prime Minister, Juan Negrin, in a deal with the League of Nations, ordered all of the International Brigades out of Spain in exchange that the foreign fascists would also leave.  We left, but naturally the dishonorable fascist Germans and Italians stayed.

When I did get back, I had a hard time making the transition to civilian life.  I initially stayed with my grandmother in New York, my grandfather died when I was in Spain.   I couldn’t find steady work.  The nation slid back into a recession when the conservatives convinced F.D.R. to pull back on his spending on federal programs.   I don’t know if my employment problems were the result of the recession, my activities in Spain, or because I left my self-confidence and youthful exuberance in Spain as well.  In addition, I gave my tools to the Republic as a parting gift.

I also left behind most of my Communist friends because of the Communist repression of the other leftists in Spain.  In 1937 the Communists attacked the anarchists and members of POUM [Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification – Trotskyites - A.S.] in Barcelona and around the Republic.   I heard rumors but I was too busy at the front – and you heard lots of rumors at the front.  Back in New York, I could not bear to hear my former communist allies tell me that it was necessary to unify the opposition to Franco – “one revolution at a time.”  I knew this was the Party line from Moscow and it was dead wrong.  Emma Goldman when she escaped from the Soviet Union wrote about how Lenin and Trotsky betrayed the revolution and attacked the anarchists and other leftists who did not turn their minds and bodies completely over to the Bolsheviks.  Stalin was just continuing this brutal tradition. 

I attempted to find support in the bohemian and leftist communities that supported Emma Goldman and countless other radicals in New York, but none provided the solace I needed.  Unable to find satisfaction in New York, I decided to move to Philadelphia to try to rediscover my parents.  This too was futile.  Naturally, nothing was familiar and I had no family or friends there.  I missed Spain. 

My depression hit bottom on April 1, 1939 when the last defenders of the Republic surrendered.

Again my Great Aunt came to my rescue.  Still in Des Moines, and still in contact with the Wallaces, my Great Aunt asked Mr. Wallace, now Secretary Wallace, to get a job for me.  Fortunately, Mr. Wallace agreed. 

At first I was a driver and messenger and did odd jobs at the Department of Agriculture.  Since I always enjoyed playing with mechanical things, I quickly learned how to repair typewriters.  This made me very popular among the secretaries and my social life improved tremendously, as did my self-confidence and mood.   However, unlike in Spain, the fairer skinned of the fairer sex, would only meet me surreptitiously.   Discussions to bring these relationships into the open light of day would immediately be met with shocked expressions of  “What would people say” and “I have to think of my reputation.”

When Mr. Wallace, now H.A., became the Vice President, H.A. promoted me to become his scheduler and personal aide.  My key responsibilities are making sure that meetings are with people actually working to get things done (no frivolous socializers or self-promoters are allowed to get through the doorway), making sure that H.A. keeps to his calendar and his visitors don’t overstay their allotted time, and that all the materials, briefing notes, reports, presentation aides, etc., needed for the meetings are prepared and distributed.   This is a very important position and has let me become an active participant in the New Deal – happy days did indeed return. 

An Anarchist working for the Vice President of the United States – I don’t think Emma Goldman would be very proud of me; however, the work is meaningful and I really enjoy the company.

Yes, I skipped over Spain.  I guess I’m still not ready to talk about it.

©  2011 Ron Millar