Nat Ganley

Nat Ganley, or Nat Kaplan (born Nathan Kaplan; 1903–1969), was a socialist and later communist journalist who became a union organizer in the 1930s, particularly for the United Auto Workers of America. He was tried and convicted in 1954 for violating the Smith Act, but his conviction was later overturned.

Background Nat Ganley was born Nathan Kaplan on November 26, 1903, in New York City. He finished eighth grade in public school. Around 1917, he joined the Socialist Party of America and then the Young Peoples Socialist League (YPSL).

In the early 1930s (or late 1920s On February 3, 1930, Kaplan spoke for the Daily Worker at a rally in New York City to protest war preparations by the government of Mexico against the USSR. On October 22, 1932, Kaplan was the main speaker at a torch parade for the Italian branch of the International Workers Order.

By June 1934, Nat Kaplan moved to Detroit, where he published articles in the Daily Worker. He organized for the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL) and American Federation of Labor (AFL) locals including the Poultry Workers Union, Packing House Workers, and Riggers Union. In Detroit, "Ganley helped organize one of the first UAW locals: the East Side Tool and Die Local 155 in Detroit in 1936." With Stanley Nowak and John Anderson, he helped organize Detroit's first sit-down strikes at Alcoa and Midland Steel Products. In March 1939, Ganley negotiated a 7-cent raise (to $1.03 an hour) for the UAW-CIO's Saginaw Local 537 with US Graphite Co. In mid-March 1939, Ganley was elected to the Resolutions Committee of the national UAW-CIO. By May 1939, Ganley was signing labor contracts no longer for UAW Local 155 but for the UAW-CIO. By August 1, 1940, political differences with the Reuther brothers received notice in the United Automobile Worker newspaper, with Victor Reuther asserting that the USSR had linked itself to Nazi Germany through the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact, while Ganley asserted that he had "first-hand" knowledge that the USSR was "not a totalitarian nation." On August 15, 1940, during the national UAW-CIO convention, Walter Reuther attacked "Brother Ganley" for reversing his "beautiful resolution" the year before that praised President Franklin Delano Roosevelt." In March 1941, Ganley found himself among a dozen UAW-CIO officials subpoenaed by I.A. Capizzi, attorney for the Ford Motor Co., to prove his allegation that the UAW-CIO and the local office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had fallen under Communist control. Among the others were CPUSA executives Earl Browder, Robert Minor, and William Z. Foster, Michigan Communist Party chief William Weinstone, and Boleslaw Gebert as well as CIO leaders Philip Murray, John Brophy, Len De Caux, Lee Pressman, and the NLRB's Nathan Witt. (In 1948, Whittaker Chambers named Pressman and Witt as member of the Ware Group he ran in Washington; in 1950, Pressman confirmed Witt and himself as members.) In June 1944, as both UAW-CIO and Communist figure, Ganley endorsed incumbent Polish-American US Representative John Lesinski Sr. for Congress. In December 1944, the Clayton & Lambert Co. fired 183 Afro-American employees for staging a one-night strike. Ganley announced that the CIO would not contest the firings because the United States was at war. In August 1945, a Washington Evening Star editorial cited Ganley as one of several powerful Communist leaders who also remained in control of local, powerful unions (along with Frederick Myers of the National Maritime Union and David Davis of the United Electrical Workers). In March 1948, "Stalinist" Ganley found himself voted out of his role as business agent after the Local 155 election, when Walter Reuther won over John Anderson as president, as reported by the Third-Camp Trotskyist publication Labor Action.

In addition to union work in Michigan, Ganley remained active in the national CPUSA. In the 1940s, he helped form and served on the national committee of the (then) Communist Political Association (CPA) and in the 1930s and 1940s on the Michigan state committee. From 1947 to 1950, he published the Michigan Herald and state edition of the Daily Worker. In 1937, anti-communist crusader Joseph P. Kamp of the Constitutional Educational League gave him a separate biographical entry in another anti-CIO pamphlet. On August 6, 1937, the anti-communist group "Real Friends of the Worker" published a third-page ad whose contents included the question "Why are Nat Ganley, Walter and Vic Reuther and Israel Berestein, all known to be leading Communists, officially connected with the C.I.O.?"

On October 13, 1938, Kaplan's name appeared in the Dies Committee testimony of Detroit resident Walter S. Reynolds of the American Legion. A few days later, on October 19, 1938, Ford Motor Company employee Clyde Morrow described Nat Ganley as "a Communist and member several unions at one time under different names" during the 1936 sit-down at Midland Steel.

In 1947, Kamp called him "one of Reuther's top leaders in the UAW-CIO in Detroit." In 1947–8, Plain Talk anti-communist magazine noted Ganley as a casualty in the war internal to the UAW between communists like Ganley and the Reuther brothers.

Smith Act trial In September 1952, the FBI arrested Ganley among 18 (15 men, 3 women) long-time CPUSA leaders. In 1953, African-American former communist William O'Dell Nowell testified that Ganley had been one of his trainers at the International Lenin School in Moscow.

By 1954, Ganley and five others had been tried and convicted under the Smith Act, later ordered for rehearing by the United States Supreme Court and overturned at the United States Court of Appeals.

Ganley helped organize first United CIO and AFL Labor Day parade in Detroit.

Works

Articles for the Daily Worker "The Daily Worker, Always the Champion of Working Youth" (1929) "Rank and File Auto Workers Battle A.F.L. Leaders" (1934)