"Clear Everything with Sidney": Hillman's Conservative Critics Say It with Limericks

Abstract: Labor leader Sidney Hillman emerged as a powerful national figure during the Great Depression, in part because of his role as a leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), but even more because of his ties to President Franklin Roosevelt and other New Dealers. In 1944 Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey charged that the CIO and Hillman's Political Action Committee (PAC) dominated Roosevelt. Part of the evidence for this (unfounded) charge was the rumor--given some credibility by its publication in the New York Times --that Roosevelt had told party leaders to "Clear it with Sidney" before selecting a vice-presidential candidate in 1944. Particularly rabid on the subject were the newspapers owned by the anti-New Dealer William Randolph Hearst. Hearst's New York Journal-American even sponsored a "Sidney Limerick Contest." These winning entries gave a flavor of the sharp antagonism and prejudices that the nation's most politically influential labor leader aroused.

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