House Votes, 345 to 21, to Prolong Dies Probe; Pelley, Coughlin Figure in Debate

By a vote of 345 to 21, the House today voted to continue the Dies Committee investigating un-American activities for another year. A motion by representative Clare Hoffman of Michigan that Representative Frank Hook’s speech in which he linked Dies to the Christian Front, be expunged from the record was referred to the Rules Committee, in other words pigeon-holed.

The House voted after three members of the Committee, Representatives Casey, Voorhis and Dempsey, had expressed regret that the regulations governing conduct of the Dies committee had been lax in the past. They promised that hereafter the committee would adhere more closely to the rules of evidence.

“We have been unanimous in everything except procedure,” Dempsey said, defending the resolution to continue the committee.

Dempsey said that the committee did everything in its power to apprehend William D. Pelley, notorious Jew-baiting publisher. Of Pelley, he said: “He’s a cheap, gutter slimy racketeer of the worst type.”

Pelley’s letters in which he hinted that Dies would go easy on him should not be believed, Dempsey told the House in reply to Hook’s charges printed in the Congressional Record.

Dies himself was not in Washington as the House debated continuance of his committee. He was reported still ill in Orange, Texas, Many congressmen who voted for the resolution publicly deplored what they termed the personal publicity Dies received from the committee.

Once, Emanuel Cellar rose to demand whether the committee had investigated the Christian Front and Coughlin. He was told the committee had done so. But Representative Jerry Voorhis, committee member from California, admitted that the committee had been negligent in some phases of its investigation and had falsely accused several organizations of having communist leadership.

“I blame myself,” Voorhis said, “for not having insisted upon stricter rules of procedure.”

Representative Havenner, who voted against passage of the resolution, charged that the committee failed in its mission and misused its authority. “Respectable citizens were subjected to false accusations of un-American activities by witnesses of doubtful reputation,” he said.

Kent Keller of Illinois, who led the fight against continuance of the committee along with Representative Adolf Sabath, chairman of the Rules Committee, said that the committee presented its evidence against the Communist Party and the German American Bund before it gave it to the Department of Justice and as a result the accused organizations were able to burn their records.