Martin Dies, Jr.

Martin Dies, Jr.
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 2nd district
In office March 4, 1931 – January 3, 1945
Preceded by	John Calvin Box
Succeeded by	Jesse Martin Combs
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's At-large district
In office January 3, 1953 – January 3, 1959
Preceded by	District created
Succeeded by	District abolished
Chairman of the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities
In office 1938–1944
Preceded by	None
Succeeded by	Edward J. Hart (1945)
Personal details
Born	November 5, 1900 Colorado City, Texas
Died	November 14, 1972 (aged 72) Lufkin, Texas
Political party	Democratic

Actor Fredric March, his wife Florence and Martin Dies at House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in Los Angeles, 1940

Martin Dies, Jr. (November 5, 1900 – November 14, 1972) was a Texas politician and a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives. He was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-second and after that to the six succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1931 – January 3, 1945). In 1944, Dies did not seek renomination to the Seventy-ninth Congress, but was elected to the Eighty-third and to the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1953 – January 3, 1959). Again, he did not seek renomination in 1958 to the Eighty-sixth Congress. In 1941 and 1957, he was twice defeated for the nomination to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. Dies served as the first chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (Seventy-fifth through Seventy-eighth Congresses).

Biography

Martin Dies Jr was born in Colorado City, Texas on November 5, 1900 to the family of Martin Dies, who was a member of the United States House of Representatives in 1901–1919. He studied at the University of Texas and obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree at the National University School of Law, Washington, D.C. Dies worked as an attorney in Marshall, Texas and Orange, Texas and eventually became a district judge. In 1931, Dies was elected from Texas 2nd District to the House of Representatives, a constituency that his father represented for a decade, thus becoming a second generation Democratic U.S. congressman.

Due to the support of a fellow Texan John Nance Garner, he became a member of the important House Rules Committee. At the beginning, Dies fully supported the New Deal as it aimed to provide relief for the distressed rural areas, which he represented in Congress. However, being a conservative Southerner, he turned against it after the 1936 election, when labor unions started to play a much bigger role in national politics.

In 1938, he started as a chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities and remained at its helm until 1944. At ease with newsmen, Dies was frequently in the national media spotlight.

House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities

Dies along with Samuel Dickstein created the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities, initially nicknamed the Dies Committee, later becoming HUAC in 1946. Dies was its first chairman, serving for seven years from 1938 to 1944, and declaring a crusade against right-wing and left-wing subversives in the government, and other organizations nationwide. Dies committee mainly targeted communist infiltrators and sympathizers. Unexpectedly, Samuel Dickstein himself was named in the 1990s as a Soviet agent in the Venona project materials.

Dies Committee and The KKK

In pre-war years and during World War II, HUAC was known as the Dies Committee. Its work was supposed to be aimed mostly at German American involvement in Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity, such as the German American Bund. As to investigations into the activities of the "Klan,", the Committee actually did little. When HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced that: "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," committee member John E. Rankin added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."

Shirley Temple and Hollywood

While there had been earlier Congressional hearings on communist and Nazi activity, such as by Hamilton Fish in 1932 and McCormack and Dickstein in 1934, the Dies Committee hearings captured greater public attention and scrutiny. In 1938, the Committee was criticized for including Shirley Temple, who was 10 years old at the time, on a list of Hollywood figures who sent greetings to the leftist Communist-owned French newspaper, Ce Soir. The Roosevelt Administration mentioned the attacks when Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, stated: "They have found dangerous radicals there led by little Shirley Temple." Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins added that Shirley Temple was born an American Citizen and should not have to debate such "preposterous revelations". The Committee responded to these attacks via an NBC broadcast, in which the testimony of Dr. J. B. Matthews, which launched the Shirley Temple outcry was read verbatim. In this testimony, Dr. Matthews stated "The Communist Party relies heavily on the carelessness or indifference of thousands of prominent citizens in lending their names for its propaganda purposes. For example, the French newspaper Ce Soir, which is owned outright by the Communist Party, featured hearty greetings from Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, James Cagney, and even Shirley Temple.... No one, I hope, is going to claim that any one of these persons in particular is a Communist."

Backlash

The Dies Committee was increasingly criticized for employing its resources to further Dies' personal campaign against the New Deal agenda during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Testimony was taken by the Committee against Michigan Governor Frank Murphy during his re-election bid in 1938, by witnesses who proclaimed that Murphy was "a Communist or a Communist dupe". Murphy was defeated, and President Roosevelt denounced the incident at a press conference, saying that "The Dies Committee made no effort to get at the truth,". Other groups subject to Dies's investigations were the U.S. Department of Labor, the WPA Federal Theatre and Writers' Project, and the NLRB. In January 1939, the new Congress voted to quadruple the Dies Committee's budget. The official Report of the Committee was released in January 1940 and was toned down, with the material divided evenly between communists and fascists. Dies wrote his own book, The Trojan Horse in America with a larger focus on communism. In 1940, Congressman Frank Eugene Hook alleged in Congress that Dies had ties to William Dudley Pelley, an American agitator and spirtualist. However, the documents Hook used to make his case turned out to be forgeries.

Emblematic, however, of the type of scurrilous and even ridiculous accusations with which Congressman Dies occupied himself was a letter which he wrote to Vice President Henry Wallace in March, 1942. Dies claimed that 35 members of the Board of Economic Warfare, of which Vice President Wallace was chairman, had been members of Communist organizations. One member in particular, Maurice Parmelee, was, according to Dies, doubly suspect for advocating nudism. Dies based this latter notion on Mr. Parmalee's 1926 book, titled The New Gymnosophy, assuming this form of asceticism to be advocacy of nudism. Maurice Parmelee was indeed the honorary President of the American Gymnosophical Association founded by two German nudist activists, Herman and Katherine Soshinski. These public charges by Dies came at a time in history when the U.S.S.R. was an ally to the United States and Great Britain in resisting the Nazi offensive in Russia. Thus, the fact that the Roosevelt Administration dismissed Dies as a fanciful rumor monger is hardly surprising. Dies, rather than seeking to ferret out Nazi spies, continued his pre-war fixation on Communist spies in the government, a precursor to the phenomenon of McCarthyism in the 1950s. However, Nazi and fascist spy efforts were less active than were those of the Soviet Union.

Later political life

Dies was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate in a special election held in late June, 1941 to fill the seat vacated by the death of Senator Morris Sheppard. Dies finished a distant fourth, losing to the sitting Governor, Pappy O'Daniel who narrowly beat Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson in Johnson's first run for the Senate.

Dies was a critic of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, having found 280 salaried CIO organizers within its ranks funded by the Soviet-backed Communist Party of the USA. Dies retired from the House in 1944 after the CIO began a voter registration drive in his district and found a candidate to oppose him. Dies supported the anti-Roosevelt Texas Regulars in the 1944 presidential election.

Death

Dies was reelected to the House in 1952 in an at-large seat when Texas received another seat through reapportionment. In 1957, he ran for the Senate again in a special election to finish the term of incoming Governor Price Daniel. He finished with 30 percent of the vote, second to Ralph Yarborough, who led with 38 percent. Republican Thad Hutcheson, a Houston lawyer, finished third with 23 percent. No runoff was then required in Texas special elections, though Dies and Hutcheson collectively held 53 percent of the vote. Yarborough hence took the Senate seat, which he held until January 3, 1971.

Dies retired again from the House in January 1959. He died on November 14, 1972.]].

External links

• Martin Dies, Jr. at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Dies, Martin, Jr. History.House.gov
• Martin Dies, Jr. from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Martin Dies, Jr. FBI Electronic reading room

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by John Calvin Box	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 2nd congressional district 1931–1945	Succeeded by Jesse Martin Combs
Preceded by District created	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's at-large congressional seat 1953–1958	Succeeded by District abolished
Texas Senate
Preceded by Ottis E. Lock	Texas Senate, District 3 1959–1967	Succeeded by Charles Wilson

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.