ABSTRACT
The US Chamber of Commerce called for action against Communists in unions, government, and the media, and the American Legion and other veterans' groups entered the fray as a kind of anti-Communist army reserve called up for combat. During Herbert Hoover's presidency, the practiced modes of repression, in response to what was believed to be the red-inspired unrest of the unemployed, included deportations of political "undesirables", the curtailing of alien movement within the country, and the banning of radical papers from the mails. For the first time in the history of such public forums, the LaFollette Committee had allowed labor to speak to a broad audience about violations of its civil liberties. In prewar 1939, a federal relief law barred assistance to all persons advocating or belonging to an organization advocating the overthrow of the government by force, and the Hatch Act passed in that year barred suspected Communists from holding federal jobs of any kind.
