Constitutional Education League

Source: Vote CIO and Get a Soviet America, Hoover E812 K36 1944

Vote CIO and get a Soviet America

Staff Person: Ralph Scott

Description:
The Constitutional Education League was founded shortly after World War I to combat “Communism in the United States and world wide.” In a 1942 Washington Post article entitled “28 Organized Groups Linked to Fascist Plot,” it was noted that the League had been named as being an instrument of the Axis Powers.

The pamphlet shown here Vote CIO and Get a Soviet America, published during the 1944 U.S. presidential campaign, attempted to show the ties between the Roosevelt administration, American labor unions and various communists cells operating in the United States. The U.S. Congress attempted to discover through an investigation, the financial backers of the League. The Vice-President of the League, Joseph P. Kamp refused to reveal this information to Congress and in 1950 was convicted and served four months in prison. Again in 1952 the House Lobby Investigation Committee tried to get Kamp to produce financial records of the League, but he again refused. This time he was acquitted of any wrongdoing with regard to his failure to reveal the League’s financial backers.

Hoover Collection, purchase from Argosy Book Store, NYC, 1996, state funds. Hoover E812 K36 1944