Wellington Roe
American author and political activist
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Wellington Roe (May 27, 1898 – February 3, 1952) was an American author and political activist with the American Labor Party.
Biography
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
- The Tree Falls South (1937)
- Begin No Day (1938)
- Juggernaut: American Labor in Action (1948)