Wellington Roe
Wellington Roe (May 27, 1898 - February 3, 1952) was an American author and political activist with the American Labor Party.
Biography[edit]
Roe was born in Danbury, Connecticut and attended Wesleyan University.[1] He moved to Florida in the 1920s, where he was involved in the advertising business and was accused of check forgery in 1921.[2] In 1924, Roe was involved in a real estate partnership in Fort Lauderdale, where he gained a reputation as the "gaudiest local character of the boom".[3] Following a hurricane in September 1926, the firm's properties were destroyed and Roe abandoned his business partners.[4] In 1937, he published The Tree Falls South, a novel about Kansas farmers during the Dust Bowl.[5] The following year he published Begin No Day, a novel about labor relations in the hatting industry in Connecticut.[6] Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that "the difficulties of labor and management are truthfully pictured" in the novel.[7] Roe was a member of the League of American Writers.[8] Roe attempted to discredit Jan Valtin, writing an expose of him for the newspaper PM that was never published.[9]
Roe was a founding member of the American Labor Party in New York.[10] Bella Dodd wrote that she had "not known him as a [Communist] Party member but as a liberal...one who did not mind being used for their campaigns."[11] He ran for election as an American Labor Party candidate for Congress in 1940.[12] He received 5.5% of the vote, losing the election to James A. O'Leary.[13] Roe became a member of Lodge 598 of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen in 1944 but was expelled in 1946.[14] During his time in the union he was the special assistant to Alexander F. Whitney.[15] Despite his early support of railroad unions, he later became critical of labor unions, believing they were "often dictatorships in which labor bosses are the autocratic rulers of the dues-paying members".[16] His 1948 book Juggernaut expressed these views on unions through profiles of labor leaders like David Dubinsky and Samuel Gompers[17]. He resigned from the American Labor Party in 1948, stating that he could not support the candidacy of Henry Wallace.[18] Roe died in February 1952.[19]
Bibliography[edit]
- The Tree Falls South (1937)
- Begin No Day (1938)
- Juggernaut: American Labor in Action (1948)
References[edit]
- ^ Supreme Court of the State of New York, In the Matter of Bernice Young...against J. Wellington Roe. 1942. p. 242.
- ^ "J. Wellington Roe Released at Jax as Checks are Made Good". The Miami News. June 18, 1921. p. 3.
- ^ Stout, Wesley W. (December 12, 1952). "J. Wellington Roe". Fort Lauderdale News. p. 6.
- ^ Kemper, Marlyn (March 18, 1979). "Katz: '26 Hurricane, Prohibition Fizzled City's Early Boom Years". Fort Lauderdale News. p. 73.
- ^ Squire, Tom (May 30, 1937). "American Tragedy: 'The Tree Falls South' by Wellington Roe". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. p. 48.
- ^ Mabry, Verne (July 2, 1938). "A Novelist's Solution of the Labor Problem". St. Louis Globe-Democrat. p. 9.
- ^ "My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 19, 1938". Retrieved 2024-06-24 – via The George Washington University.
- ^ Folsom, Franklin (1994). Days of Anger, Days of Hope. University Press of Colorado. p. 122. ISBN 9780870813320.
- ^ Fleming, John V. (2009). The anti-communist manifestos : four books that shaped the Cold War. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 133. ISBN 9780393069259.
- ^ "Wellington Roe Dies; Wrote UE-IUE Series". The Berkshire Eagle. February 5, 1952. p. 1. Retrieved June 27, 2024.
- ^ Dodd, Bella (1954). School of Darkness. The Devin-Adair Company. p. 224.
- ^ "Primary Candidates of ALP Progressives". The Daily Worker. August 9, 1940.
- ^ Guide to U.S. Elections. Vol. 2 (5th ed.). CQ Press. 2005. p. 1119. ISBN 9781568029818.
- ^ United States Congress Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare (1947). Hearings, March 5-13, 1947 and appendix. U.S. Government Printing Office.
- ^ "Many Labor Unions Become Dictatorships Under Which Members are Deprived of Rights of Free Citizens, Says Labor Editor". The Knoxville News-Sentinel. January 12, 1947. p. 35.
- ^ Richards, Lawrence (2008). Union-free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture. University of Illinois Press. p. 50. ISBN 9780252032714.
- ^ Rosenfarb, Joseph (January 22, 1949). "Labor - From IWW to Taft-Hartley". Saturday Review. 32 (4).
- ^ "ROE, AUTHOR, QUITS ALP; Says He Cannot Back Wallace, Attacks Communists in Party". The New York Times. 1948-09-03. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-05-23.
- ^ "Noted Deaths in the News". The Independent. February 5, 1952. p. 16.