Harold or "Hal" Ware (August 19, 1889 – August 14, 1935) was an American
Marxist
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...
, regarded as one of the
Communist Party's top experts on agriculture.
[
] He was employed by a federal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Con ...
agency in the 1930s. He is alleged to have been a Soviet spy and is understood to have founded the "
Ware Group
The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on Augu ...
," a covert group of operatives within the United States government aiding Soviet
intelligence agent
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...
s.
Background
Harold Maskell Ware, best known by his nickname "Hal," was born on August 19, 1889, in
Woodstown, New Jersey, the fourth child of
Ella Reeve Bloor
Ella Reeve "Mother" Bloor (July 8, 1862 – August 10, 1951) was an American labor organizer and long-time activist in the socialist and communist movements. Bloor is best remembered as one of the top-ranking female functionaries in the Communis ...
and her husband, Lucien Bonaparte Ware. Two of Ware's three older siblings died in early childhood.
[
]
His mother, Ella Bloor, converted to
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...
during 1894-1895, when the family lived in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
.
[ She became a lifelong activist in the ]labor movement
The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other.
* The trade union movement ...
, an early member of the Social Democracy of America
The Social Democracy of America (SDA), later known as the Cooperative Brotherhood, was a short lived political party in the United States that sought to combine the planting of an intentional community with political action in order to create a s ...
(organized by Victor L. Berger
Victor Luitpold Berger (February 28, 1860August 7, 1929) was an Austrian–American socialist politician and journalist who was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America and its successor, the Socialist Party of America. Born i ...
and Eugene V. Debs), and a founder of the Communist Party of America.[ Ware was raised in a politically ]radical
Radical may refer to:
Politics and ideology Politics
* Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change
*Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe an ...
household, as a "Red Diaper Baby
A red diaper baby is a child of parents who were members of the United States Communist Party (CPUSA) or were close to the party or sympathetic to its aims.
History
In their book '' Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left'', Judy Kaplan and ...
."
When he was 15, a case of measles
Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...
left Ware with what doctors believed to be an early case of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...
.[ His divorced mother moved with him and two brothers to the country for a year, while the rest of the family lived with his father in Philadelphia and attended school there.][ While his mother went weekly to Wilmington to speak and organize literature sales (as Delaware state organizer for the ]Socialist Party
Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of ...
), Ware lived a rural life. Although he would return to school in the big city the following year, his orientation towards the countryside was firmly established.
Following his graduation from high school (circa 1907), Ware enrolled in a two-year course in agriculture at Pennsylvania State College, later Penn State University.[Margaret S. Ware Death Certificate, Wilmington, New Castle Co., Delaware; Date of death: October 16, 1916.]
Career
Following graduation, with financial help from his father he bought a grain and dairy farm near Arden, a small town near Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
, where he learned farming firsthand.[ His brief experience as a working farmer made him almost a unique figure among pioneer members of the American Communist Party, a group almost exclusively composed of urban laborers, factory workers, or intellectuals (and mostly foreign-born).
Before WWI began, Ware had proven himself something of an agricultural innovator. Unable to afford equipment for his ]tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...
, he welded together two harrows for horses. He adapted other horse-drawn gear for use in mechanized agriculture.[
After three years, Ware sold the farm and took a job in a ]shipyard
A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance ...
as a draftsman
A drafter (also draughtsman / draughtswoman in British and Commonwealth English, draftsman / draftswoman or drafting technician in American and Canadian English) is an engineering technician who makes detailed technical drawings or plans for ...
, for which he had a natural faculty. This lasted until the end of the First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, whose armistice in November 1918 ended the torrent of government funding directed toward the shipbuilding industry.[
]
Communist Party
Although not a delegate to its founding convention, Ware was a member of the Communist Labor Party of America
The Communist Labor Party of America (CLPA) was one of the organizational predecessors of the Communist Party USA.
The group was established at the end of August 1919 following a three-way split of the Socialist Party of America. Although a legal ...
(CLP) from the year of its origin, 1919, as were his mother and older sister, Helen
Helen may refer to:
People
* Helen of Troy, in Greek mythology, the most beautiful woman in the world
* Helen (actress) (born 1938), Indian actress
* Helen (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name)
Places
* Helen, ...
. Ware and his family stayed with the CLP throughout its permutations, merging into the United Communist Party
The United Communist Party (UCP; russian: Объединённая коммунистическая партия; ОКП; ''Ob'yedinonnaya kommunisticheskaya partiya'', ''OKP'') is a communist party in Russia created at the founding congress in Mo ...
in 1920, into the Communist Party of America in 1921, and into the "aboveground" Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America (WPA) was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929.
Background
As a legal political party, the Workers Party accepted affiliation fro ...
in 1922, and eventually the Communist Party of the USA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
in 1929.
Almost immediately after the Party launched, federal and state authorities moved against the fledgling communist movement, forcing its adherents to make use of pseudonyms and to conduct their activities in secret. During the so-called "underground period" of the party, the agriculturally-oriented Ware used the pseudonym "H.R. Harrow," publishing under that by-line
The byline (or by-line in British English) on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name of the writer of the article. Bylines are commonly placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines (notably ''Reader's ...
in the communist press. (The pseudonym seems to have been a pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
on his real given name, "Harold.")
In 1921, eager to study the plight of migrant farm workers firsthand with a view to organizing them for the Communist Party, Ware took a six-month trip around the United States, working harvests from the South to the Midwest, Northwest and then East again through the Upper Midwest.[ This experience, combined with his previous agricultural experience, cemented Ware's place as the Communist Party's leading agricultural expert.
That fall, in addition to articles he wrote for the "underground" and "aboveground" Communist press, Ware compiled an exhaustive survey of American agriculture, including maps showing distribution of types of farms, farm incomes, and so forth in different sections of the country.][ The research was transmitted to the ]Communist International
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
in Moscow, where it was read and praised by Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
himself.
In late 1921, Ware attended the founding convention in New York of the Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America (WPA) was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929.
Background
As a legal political party, the Workers Party accepted affiliation fro ...
. He was elected an alternate to the governing Central Executive Committee of that organization. Ware was not typically a member of the Communist Party's top committees; he preferred to work in the agricultural sector rather than to engage in factional party politics.
Soviet collective farming
Ware helped come up with the idea of using funds raised by the Friends of Soviet Russia
The Friends of Soviet Russia (FSR) was formally established in the United States on August 9, 1921 as an offshoot of the American Labor Alliance for Trade Relations with Soviet Russia (ALA). It was launched as a "mass organization" dedicated to r ...
organization to construct a model collective farm in Soviet Russia
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
. His farm would serve as a model to help to alleviate the great Russian famine through production of grain plus firsthand demonstration of modern agricultural technique. An appropriation of $75,000 was granted for the project, with Ware's half-brother, Carl Reeve, traveling around the U.S., showing a motion picture depicting horrific conditions in Russia to help raise funds. Funding in hand, Ware went to the J.I. Case Farm Implement Co. and brokered a deal for 24 tractors and related equipment.[
In May 1922, Hal and Cris Ware left his three children in America for Soviet Russia along with their tractors, implements, a complete medical unit, and several tons of food supplies. Also making the voyage was a doctor who spoke Russian and a group of American farmers to operate the machinery. The group had been assigned land in the village of Toikino in Perm guberniia, a substantial distance from any centers of population. They taught local peasants the basics of machine operation and plowed of land. Shortages of fuel, hauled by peasant wagons some from the nearest train station, severely hampered their efforts. At season's end, the American crew left for Moscow, whence they went home to America with thanks.][
The next year, Soviet authorities were eager to expand the Toikino experiment of 1922. The Soviet People's Commissariat of Agriculture offered a large tract of fertile land in the ]Kuban
Kuban ( Russian and Ukrainian: Кубань; ady, Пшызэ) is a historical and geographical region of Southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River, on the Black Sea between the Don Steppe, the Volga Delta and the Caucasus, and separated ...
region, just north of the Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...
for a second model farm. Working again with the Friends of Soviet Russia
The Friends of Soviet Russia (FSR) was formally established in the United States on August 9, 1921 as an offshoot of the American Labor Alliance for Trade Relations with Soviet Russia (ALA). It was launched as a "mass organization" dedicated to r ...
organization, Ware organized a party of 40 to make the trip, including agricultural specialists, a doctor, and a nurse. He arrived in Soviet Russia to inspect the land designated for the project, only to be told by Soviet officials that the deal was off because local peasants had begun to allocate the land among themselves. A hasty search commenced for yet another site, in the North Caucasus
The North Caucasus, ( ady, Темыр Къафкъас, Temır Qafqas; kbd, Ишхъэрэ Къаукъаз, İṩxhərə Qauqaz; ce, Къилбаседа Кавказ, Q̇ilbaseda Kavkaz; , os, Цӕгат Кавказ, Cægat Kavkaz, inh, ...
, but the project was delayed.[
Ware spent most of 1925 raising funds for his Soviet farming venture. This farm was organized as a Russian-American joint venture, with Ware as its American Director and then director of the ]state farm
State Farm Insurance is a large group of mutual insurance companies throughout the United States with corporate headquarters in Bloomington, Illinois.
Overview
State Farm is the largest property and casualty insurance provider, and the lar ...
for three years. The project took over four flour mills and profitably operated them; they began to electrify the countryside.[
During winter 1928-29, Ware returned to the United States, where he attempted to interest American agricultural equipment manufacturers in the Soviet market. He convinced some companies to send test tractors and implements along with mechanics to assemble them.][ He stayed in the Soviet through the ]collectivization
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...
campaign of 1929-30.[
]
Return to America
In Spring 1931, Ware set out to organizing farmers and farm-workers in America. In the company of Lem Harris, another Communist Party agricultural expert, he made a year-long survey of American agriculture, echoing his research of 1921. The pair travelled by car around the United States, visiting nearly every state in the union, studying the sometimes desperate conditions which resulted from the collapse of agricultural prices associated with the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
.[
Shortly after completion of this task, Ware established a research center in Washington, DC called Farm Research, Inc. and recruited personnel to run it.][ The institute, funded by the Communist Party, published a newspaper called ''The Farmers National Weekly'' continuously throughout the Great Depression.][ Fellow Communist Party member Herbert Joseph Putz (Erik Bert) (1904-1981) edited the newspaper (1934-1936) ("Farm Research" received funding from the Robert Marshall Foundation, which also funded the Communist controlled news agency "Federated Press."][
][
])
In 1932, Ware was active in the Farmers Holiday Association on behalf of the Communist Party.[
]
Soviet espionage: Ware Group
Allegations: Whittaker Chambers
In his 1952 memoir, ''Witness,'' former Communist Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Workers Party of America, Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet Union, Soviet spy (1932–1938), defe ...
wrote that from the time of Ware's death to his defection from the Communist Party in April 1938, he had been a member of the "Washington spy apparatus" headed by Colonel Boris Bykov, a Russian military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...
officer.[
] Chambers wrote that in addition to the four members of the group (also identified by Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following hi ...
under oath to Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
in 1950, though Pressman denied that the group engaged in espionage):
There must have been sixty or seventy others, though Pressman did not necessarily know them all; neither did I. All were dues-paying members of the Communist Party. Nearly all were employed in the United States Government, some in rather high positions, notably in the Department of Agriculture
An agriculture ministry (also called an) agriculture department, agriculture board, agriculture council, or agriculture agency, or ministry of rural development) is a ministry charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister ...
, the Department of Justice
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
, the Department of the Interior
The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the ma ...
, the National Labor Relations Board, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part o ...
, the Railroad Retirement Board, the National Research Project — and others.
Chambers further wrote that "by 1938, the Soviet espionage apparatus in Washington had penetrated the US State Department
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...
, the US Treasury Department, the Bureau of Standards
A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary function is developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpr ...
and the Aberdeen Proving Ground
Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work a ...
in Maryland. These individuals "supplied the Soviet espionage apparatus with secret or confidential information, usually in the form of official United States Government documents for microfilming," Chambers stated.
In the 1930s, Hal Ware was employed by the federal government, working for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part o ...
(AAA), a New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Con ...
agency which reported to the Secretary of Agriculture
The United States secretary of agriculture is the head of the United States Department of Agriculture. The position carries similar responsibilities to those of agriculture ministers in other governments.
The department includes several organi ...
but was independent of the Department of Agriculture bureaucracy. According to Chambers, he also "organized that Washington underground" in which he was later to work. Introduced to him in the spring of 1934, Chambers described Ware at length:
He was as American as ham and eggs and as indistinguishable as everybody else. He stood about five feet nine, a trim, middle-aging man in 1934, with a plain face, masked by a quiet earnestness of expression wholly reassuring to people whom quickness of mind makes uncomfortable. Nevertheless, his mind was extremely quick. ...
He might have been a progressive country agent or a professor of ecology at an agricultural college. And yet there was something unprofessorially jaunty about the flip of his hat brim and his springy stride. ... It is true that he liked to drive his car at breakneck speed almost as well as to talk about soils, tenant farmers and underground organization ...
Harold Ware was a frustrated farmer. The soil was in his pores. Unlike most American Communists, who managed to pass from one big city to another without seeing anything in the intervening spaces, Ware was absorbed in the land and its problems. He held that, with the deepening of the agricultural crisis, and with the rapid mechanization of agriculture, the time had come for revolutionary organization among farmers.
According to Chambers' testimony, when he came back from Soviet Russia in 1930, Ware carried with him $25,000 in US currency hidden in a money belt, funds from the Comintern for work among the farmers. It was with these funds that he had established Farm Research Inc. in Washington, DC. But his real mission was espionage, Chambers wrote:
Once the New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Con ...
was in full swing, Hal Ware was like a man who has bought a farm sight unseen only to discover that the crops are all in and ready to harvest. All that he had to do was to hustle them into the barn. The barn in this case was the Communist Party. In the AAA, Hal found a bumper crop of incipient or registered Communists. On its legal staff were Lee Pressman, Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in co ...
and John Abt (later named by Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (January 1, 1908 – December 3, 1963) was an American spy and member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union from 1938 to 1945 until she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intellige ...
as one of her contacts). There was Charles Krivitsky, a former physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
at New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, th ...
, then or shortly after to be known as Charles Kramer (also, later on, one of Elizabeth Bentley's contacts). Abraham George Silverman (another of Elizabeth Bentley's future contacts) was sitting with a little cluster of communists over at the Railroad Retirement Board.
Others named by Chambers included Henry H. Collins, Jr., Laurence Duggan, Nathan Witt
Nathan Witt (February 11, 1903 – February 16, 1982), born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940. He resigned from the NLRB after his commu ...
, Marion Bachrach, and Victor Perlo
Victor Perlo (May 15, 1912December 1, 1999) was an American Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA.
Biography
Early years
Victor Perlo was born May 15, 19 ...
. Others subsequently mentioned in these ranks included John Herrmann
John Theodore Herrmann (November 9, 1900 – April 9, 1959) was a writer in the 1920s and 1930s and is alleged to have introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss.
Biography
Herrmann was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1900. He lived in Paris i ...
, Nathaniel Weyl
Nathaniel Weyl (July 20, 1910 – April 13, 2005) was an American economist and author who wrote on a variety of social issues. A member of the Communist Party of the United States from 1933 until 1939, after leaving the party he became a co ...
, Donald Hiss
Donald Hiss (December 15, 1906 – May 18, 1989), also known as "Donie"
and "Donnie",
was the younger brother of Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss's name was mentioned during the 1948 hearings wherein his more famous and older brother, Alger, was a ...
, and Harry Dexter White. According to Chambers, Ware was in close contact with and directly reported to J. Peters
J. Peters (born Sándor Goldberger; 11 August 1894 – 1990) was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was a journalist, political activist, and accused Soviet spy who was a leadin ...
, "the head of the underground section of the American Communist Party":
... By 1934, the Ware Group had developed into a tightly organized underground, managed by a directory of seven men. In time it included a number of secret sub-cells whose total membership I can only estimate — probably about seventy-five Communists. Sometimes they were visited officially by J. Peters who lectured them on Communist organization and Leninist theory and advised them on general policy and specific problems. For several of them were so placed in the New Deal agencies (notably Alger Hiss, Nathan Witt, John Abt and Lee Pressman) that they were in a position to influence policy at several levels.
Corroboration from Ware Group members
* Lee Pressman: On August 28, 1950, Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following hi ...
gave testimony against his former comrades, though denied that they engaged in espionage.[
][
] He stated he had met Ware and that:
In my desire to see the destruction of Hitlerism and an improvement in economic conditions here at home, I joined a Communist group in Washington, D. C, about 1934. My participation in such group extended for about a year, to the best of my recollection.[
]
Pressman also indicated that in at least one meeting of his group, perhaps two, he had met Soviet intelligence agent J. Peters
J. Peters (born Sándor Goldberger; 11 August 1894 – 1990) was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was a journalist, political activist, and accused Soviet spy who was a leadin ...
. Pressman's 1950 testimony provided the first corroboration of Chambers' allegation that a Washington, D.C., Communist group around Ware existed, with federal officials Nathan Witt
Nathan Witt (February 11, 1903 – February 16, 1982), born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940. He resigned from the NLRB after his commu ...
, John Abt and Charles Kramer named by Pressman as members of this party cell.
* Nathaniel Weyl: In 1952, Nathaniel Weyl
Nathaniel Weyl (July 20, 1910 – April 13, 2005) was an American economist and author who wrote on a variety of social issues. A member of the Communist Party of the United States from 1933 until 1939, after leaving the party he became a co ...
testified before the U.S. Senate Internal Security Committee that he had been a member of the Ware group, and that Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in co ...
had attended meetings as well – the only eyewitness corroboration of Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Workers Party of America, Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet Union, Soviet spy (1932–1938), defe ...
's testimony that Alger Hiss was a Communist and Ware Group member.[ Of his own Ware Group participation, Weyl said: "I was one of its less enthusiastic members."][
] Weyl described what could be interpreted as Ware's efforts to corral him into espionage and his own effort to extract himself from the group:
Ware wanted me to try to get into the Foreign Service and be attached to the staff of William Bullitt, our first Ambassador to the Soviet Union ... I didn't think there was anything illegal about membership in the Ware unit, but nevertheless it was duplicitous ... I told Hal Ware that the Moscow idea was out and that I wanted to leave Washington and resign from government. He said: absolutely not. I forced his hand by committing an appalling breach of security. I showed up at a cell meeting with the girl I was having an affair with, a young lady who was not a Communist Party member and who had known nothing about the group. Ware withdrew his objections and I resigned from AAA.
* John Abt: In his 1993 autobiography, * John Abt, later long-time attorney for the Communist Party, confirmed that the Ware Group had existed, that it was a secret Communist Party unit, and that Ware had recruited him and several of the others named by Chambers for the Party.
* Hope Hale Davis: In her 1994 memoir, Hope Hale Davis
Hope Hale Davis (née Frances Hope Hale; November 2, 1903 – October 2, 2004) was a 20th-century American feminist (or "proto-feminist") and communist, later a writer and writing teacher.
Background
Davis was born Frances Hope Hale on November 2, ...
also admitted to membership in the Ware group: Davis confirmed that it was engaged in illegal activity.
Personal life and death
Ware married Margaret Stephens: in 1916, she died three weeks following birth of their second child, Nancy Stephens Ware.
In August 1917, Ware married his second wife, Clarissa "Cris" Smith. (The couple had two children, Robin and Nancy, before divorcing in the early 1920s.)[ Ware's second marriage seems to have ended upon their return to the States. Cris took a job in the National Office of the Workers Party as head of the Committee for Protection of Foreign-Born Workers. She was reported in the Communist Party press as having died of "acute ]pancreatitis
Pancreatitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the pancreas. The pancreas is a large organ behind the stomach that produces digestive enzymes and a number of hormones. There are two main types: acute pancreatitis, and chronic p ...
, a rare disease of one of the digestive organs of the stomach," rumored to be a cover story for a botched illegal abortion, on September 27, 1923. Benjamin Gitlow luridly wrote of a love triangle between Cris, Party national secretary C. E. Ruthenberg
Charles Emil Ruthenberg (July 9, 1882 – March 1, 1927) was an American Marxist politician and a founder and head of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
Biography
Early years
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882, in Cleveland, Ohio, th ...
, and future secretary Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone (15 December 1897 – 7 March 1990) was an American activist. He was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Centr ...
. Her death was "a tragic end, for the last of Cris Ware's abortions proved fatal for her."[
]
While in Russia, Ware met Jessica Smith, working with the Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
famine relief effort, the American Friends Service Committee. Back in New York City, the pair were married in January 1925 by Rev. Norman Thomas, soon to become a key political leader of the Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of Ameri ...
.[
On August 13, 1935, Ware was critically injured in an automobile accident in the mountains near ]Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the 9th largest city and 15th largest municipality in Pe ...
when his car collided with a coal truck. He died the next morning at the hospital in Harrisburg, never regaining consciousness after the crash.[
]
Legacy
Ware was memorialized with a chapter in the memoir written by his more famous mother, Ella Reeve Bloor, in 1940: As a boy he loved the outdoors, was full of restless, eager vitality and bold curiosity. He had a startlingly vivid imagination, and an urge and talent for organizing that continued and marked his whole life. More than ordinarily shy, he forgot his shyness when engaged in one of his organizing ventures, and a flow of colorful, stirring talk would come from him so persuasive that those who heard him were completely carried away. He grew slim and tall, and when we moved to Arden was captain of the baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...
team and a leader in tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...
and other games. He missed a lot of school because of his siege of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...
, but he read a lot and was always able to make up two or three years of ordinary schooling in a few months of intensive study. His interest in socialism began as early as I can remember.
Hal's interest in agriculture began early. He started raising truck in a small garden in Arden, and sold it around the countryside. His keen sense of beauty showed in the way he fixed up his boxes of vegetables to sell, arranging them artistically in green boxes.
He first planned to study forestry. He used to tell me his dreams of a life in the open, alone on a hillside, a sea of green tree tops below him. While taking the entrance exams for Pennsylvania State College he found that the forestry course would take four years, while there was a fine two-year agricultural course. Beginning to feel, too, that he did not want to live away from people, but among them, he chose agriculture. His interest in economics and politics developed intensely at this time, and while at college he wrote me constantly for the latest news of the socialist movement. We were always very close to one another, and no matter how many months or years we were apart, we could always pick up where we had left off."[ ]
After his death, attorney John Abt married Jessica Smith, Ware's widow.
Hal Ware's half-brother, Carl Reeve, was also a lifelong activist in the Communist Party.
Works
"Our Agrarian Problem."
Signed as "H.R. Harrow." ''The Communist'' ew York: Unified CPA vol. 1, no. 5 (November 1921), pp. 20–21, 23
"American Agricultural Problems,"
''The Toiler,'' vol. 4, whole no. 194 (November 12, 1921), pp. 8–10
"American Farmers in Russia,"
''Soviet Russia Pictorial'' ew York vol. 8, no. 4 (April 1923), pg. 77
* "The Factory Farm — A Discussion Article on the Party and the Farm Problem." Signed as "Harrow." Part 1: ''The Communist,'' vol. 7, no. 12 (December 1928), pp. 761–769. Part 2: ''The Communist,'' vol. 8, no. 3 (March 1929), pp. 142–149
* ''The American Farmer'' (as "George Anstrom") (1932)[
]
"Planning for Permanent Poverty: What Subsistence Farming Really Stands For."
''Harper's Magazine,'' April 1935
See also
* List of American spies
This is a list of spies who engaged in direct espionage. It includes Americans spying against their own country and people spying on behalf of the United States.
American Revolution era spies
Spied for the Patriots
* Hercules Mulligan
* Abra ...
* Ware Group
The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on Augu ...
* John Abt
* Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Workers Party of America, Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet Union, Soviet spy (1932–1938), defe ...
* Noel Field
Noel Haviland Field (January 23, 1904 – September 12, 1970) was an American communist activist, diplomat and spy for the NKVD, whose activities before and after World War II allowed the Eastern Bloc to use his name as a prosecuting rationale du ...
* Harold Glasser
Harold Glasser (November 24, 1905 – November 16, 1992) was an economist in the United States Department of the Treasury and spokesman on the affairs of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) 'throughout its whole ...
* John Herrmann
John Theodore Herrmann (November 9, 1900 – April 9, 1959) was a writer in the 1920s and 1930s and is alleged to have introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss.
Biography
Herrmann was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1900. He lived in Paris i ...
* Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in co ...
* Donald Hiss
Donald Hiss (December 15, 1906 – May 18, 1989), also known as "Donie"
and "Donnie",
was the younger brother of Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss's name was mentioned during the 1948 hearings wherein his more famous and older brother, Alger, was a ...
* Victor Perlo
Victor Perlo (May 15, 1912December 1, 1999) was an American Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA.
Biography
Early years
Victor Perlo was born May 15, 19 ...
* J. Peters
J. Peters (born Sándor Goldberger; 11 August 1894 – 1990) was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was a journalist, political activist, and accused Soviet spy who was a leadin ...
* Ward Pigman
William Ward Pigman (March 5, 1910 – September 30, 1977) was a chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at New York Medical College, and a suspected Soviet Union spy as part of the "Karl group" for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).
Biograp ...
* Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following hi ...
* Vincent Reno Franklin Vincent Reno was a mathematician and civilian employee at the United States Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in the 1930s. Reno was a member of the "Karl group" of Soviet spies which was being handled by Whittaker Chambers until 19 ...
* Julian Wadleigh
* Harold Ware
* Nathaniel Weyl
Nathaniel Weyl (July 20, 1910 – April 13, 2005) was an American economist and author who wrote on a variety of social issues. A member of the Communist Party of the United States from 1933 until 1939, after leaving the party he became a co ...
* Harry Dexter White
* Nathan Witt
Nathan Witt (February 11, 1903 – February 16, 1982), born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940. He resigned from the NLRB after his commu ...
References
Further reading
*
* Whittaker Chambers
Testmony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, House Committee on Un-American Activities
August 3, 1948,
* John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes (born 1944) is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti- ...
and Harvey Klehr
Harvey Elliott Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly wit ...
, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America.'' New Haven: Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
, 1999.
* Joseph Lash, ''Dealers and Dreamers.'' New York: Doubleday, 1988.
* Earl Latham, ''The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy.'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966
*
* Nathaniel Weyl
Nathaniel Weyl (July 20, 1910 – April 13, 2005) was an American economist and author who wrote on a variety of social issues. A member of the Communist Party of the United States from 1933 until 1939, after leaving the party he became a co ...
, ''The Battle Against Disloyalty.'' New York: Crowell, 1951.
* Nathaniel Weyl, ''Treason: The Story of Disloyalty and Betrayal in American History.'' Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1950
External links
Overview of the Farmers' National Weekly newspaper issues
''Cold War Intelligence''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ware, Harold
1889 births
1935 deaths
American communists
American Marxists
Espionage in the United States
Members of the Communist Party USA
Road incident deaths in Pennsylvania