Seeing Reds : federal surveillance of radicals in the Pittsburgh mill district, 1917-1921 / Charles H. McCormick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCormick, Charles H. (Charles Howard), 1932- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anti-communist movements--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh--History--20th century.

Communism--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh--History--20th century.

Internal security--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh--History--20th century.

United States--Politics and government--1913-1921.

Pittsburgh (Pa.)--Politics and government.

Genre:

History

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (257 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania : University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

During World War I, fear that a network of German spies was operating on American soil justified the rapid growth of federal intelligence agencies. When that threat proved illusory, these agencies, staffed heavily by corporate managers and anti-union private detectives, targeted antiwar and radical labor groups, particularly the Socialist party and the Industrial Workers of the World. Seeing Reds, based largely on case files from the Bureau of Investigation, Military Intelligence Division, and Office of Naval Intelligence, describes this formative period of federal domestic spying in the Pittsburgh region. McCormick traces the activities of L. M. Wendell, a Bureau of Investigation "special employee" who infiltrated the IWW's Pittsburgh recruiting branch and the inner circle of anarchist agitator and lawyer Jacob Margolis. Wendell and other Pittsbugh based agents spied on radical organizations from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Camp Lee, Virginia, intervened in the steel and coal strikes of 1919, and carried out the Palmer raids aimed at mass deportation of members of the Union of Russian Workers and the New Communist Party.McCormick's detailed history uses extensive research to add to our understanding of the security state, cold war ideology, labor and immigration history, and the rise of the authoritarian American Left, as well as the career paths of figures as diverse as J. Edgar Hoover and William Z. Foster.

Contents:

The G-men : virtue made visible (and invisible)

The World War I-era Pittsburgh Left

Taming the Steel City wobblies, 1917-1918

Excursions, alarms, and slackers abroad : extending the range of surveillance, 1918

Bombs, a new mission, and the usual suspects, 1919

The great strikes of 1919 : steel and coal

The Palmer Raids I : the union of Russian workers, 1919

The Palmer Raids II : the Communists and the end of the Red Scare, 1920-1921

"Deporting" Margolis, 1919-1921.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

"A John D.S. and Aida C. Truxall book."

ISBN:

9780822972457

082297245X

9780585099118

0585099111

OCLC:

891385631