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How Coughlin Talks Influenced Young “frontists” Related

February 11, 1940
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How the radio talks of Charles E. Coughlin “inflamed” Michael J. Bierne, one of the 17 indicted “Frontists.” is related in the New York Post today by columnist Dorothy Dunbar Bromley.

Miss Bromley quotes as her sourced a relative of Biene’s who said that before he began listening to the radio priest” and reading his organ Social Justice the 32-year-old New York Telephone Company employee “had every reason to be content with his status.” She reveals that Bierne has been employed by the telephone company for 16 years, had been untouched by the depression, was making $60 a week when arrested and was “a happy family man.”

Since listening to Coughlin, the relative told Miss Brownley, a change came over Bierne. “He talk incessantly of a Communist plot to take over the United States, ” the writer states. “He was sur of his facts because he had heard Father Coughlin say these things over the radio.”

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