Harold Ware
Encyclopedia
Harold Maskell "Hal" Ware (August 19, 1889-August 13, 1935) was an American
Marxist regarded as one of the Communist Party's
top experts on agriculture.
Whittaker Chambers
alleged that during the early 1930s he was a member of the so-called "Ware Group," a covert group of operatives within the United States
government which aided Soviet
intelligence agents.
, the fourth child of Ella Reeve Bloor
and her husband, Lucien Bonaparte Ware. Two of Hal's three older siblings died in early childhood.
Hal's mother, Ella Bloor, was converted to the ideas of socialism
during 1894 and 1895, when the family lived in Philadelphia. She would become a lifelong activist in the labor movement as well as an early member of the Social Democracy of America
, organized by Victor L. Berger
and Eugene V. Debs
, as well as a founder of the Communist Party of America. Young Hal was thus raised in a politically radical
household, a childhood later colloquially known as that of a "Red Diaper Baby
."
When he was 15, a case of measles
left young Hal with what doctors believed to be an early case of tuberculosis
. His divorced mother moved with Hal 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 raced off to Wilmington
every week to speak and organize literature sales, she being the Delaware state organizer for the Socialist Party
, Hal seems to have taken fondly to 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
, Hal Ware enrolled in a two year course in agriculture at Pennsylvania State College, later Penn State University. He married young, but his first wife, Margaret, died giving birth to their second child, a daughter named Nancy. Following graduation, with the financial help of his father he bought a grain and dairy
farm near Arden, a small town southwest of Pittsburgh, where he learned about the process of 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, mostly foreign-born.
Around this time, Harold Ware married his second wife, Clarissa S. "Cris" Ware, formerly Clarissa Smith. The couple had a daughter named Judy before divorcing in the early 1920s.
In these pre-war years, Hal Ware proved to be something of an agricultural innovator. He was one of the first local farmers to use a tractor
in the fields. As he couldn't afford new agricultural implements for his machine, he was forced to innovate, welding together two harrows designed for use by horses and similarly trying to adapt other horse-drawn gear for use in mechanized agriculture.
After three years, Hal had had enough. He sold out and took a job in a shipyard
as a draftsman, a job for which he had a natural faculty. He continued at this task throughout the war years, until the armistice of November 1918 ended the torrent of government funding of the shipbuilding industry.
Almost immediately after it was 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 this so-called "underground period" of the party, the agriculturally-oriented Hal made use of the party-name "H.R. Harrow," publishing under that by-line in the secret communist press. The pseudonym seems to have been a pun
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 the harvests through the South to the Midwest to the Northwest and then back east again through the Upper Midwestern states. 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, Hal Ware compiled an exhaustive survey of American agriculture, including maps showing the distribution of types of farms, farm incomes, and so forth in different sections of the country. This research was transmitted to the Communist International in Moscow, where it was read and praised by Lenin himself. The distinction between the preparation of such original research material for the international Communist movement and Ware's involvement a decade later in collecting government documents for the same purposes is a fine one indeed.
In the last days of 1921, Hal Ware attended the founding convention in New York of the so-called "Legal Political Party" attached to the underground CPA, the Workers Party of America. He was elected as an alternate to the governing Central Executive Committee of that organization. Ware was not typically a member of the Communist Party's top committees, however, preferring to confine his efforts to the agricultural sector rather than to engage in the rough-and-tumble world of factional
party politics.
organization to construct a model collective farm in Soviet Russia
, thereby helping to alleviate the great Russian famine
through production of grain on the spot while additionally demonstrating the benefits of modern agricultural technique firsthand. An appropriation of $75,000 was granted for the project, with Hal's half-brother, Carl Reeve, traveling around the country showing a motion picture depicting the horrific conditions in Russia as part of the effort 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 the necessary implements.
In May 1922, Hal and Cris Ware left their three children in America and departed 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 eventually gathered their equipment and arrived. Local peasants were taught the basics of machine operation and 4000 acres (16.2 km²) were put under the plow. The project was severely hampered by the difficulty in obtaining fuel, which had to be hauled by peasant wagons some 40 miles (64.4 km) from the nearest train stop.
At season's end, the American crew left for Moscow
, where they were received as heroes and sent home to America with thanks.
Hal and Cris Ware's marriage seems to have ended upon their return. 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
, 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.
The next year, 1923, 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
region, just north of the Black Sea
for another model farm. Working with the Friends of Soviet Russia organization, Hal Ware organized a party of 40 to make the trip, including agricultural specialists, a doctor, and a nurse. Ware arrived in Soviet Russia to inspect the land designated for the project only to be told by Soviet officials that the deal was off — local peasants had begun to allocate the land reserved for the project amongst themselves. An alternative site in the North Caucasus
was hastily located, but the project was delayed.
While in Russia Hal met Jessica Smith
, a young woman who was in the country on behalf of the Quaker famine relief effort, the American Friends Service Committee
. The two fell in love. Back in New York City
, the pair were married by Rev. Norman Thomas
, later a key political leader of the American Socialist Party.
Ware spent the bulk of 1925 raising funds for his Soviet farming venture. This farm was organized as a Russian-American joint venture, with Harold Ware the project's American Director. Ware wound up working as the director of the state farm
for three years, with the project taking over and profitably operating four flour mills as well as the task of rural electrification.
During the winter of 1928-29, Ware returned to the United States, where he attempted to interest American agricultural equipment manufacturers in the Soviet market. He managed to convince a number of companies to send test tractors and implements along with mechanics to assemble the products. He stayed in the USSR through the collectivization campaign of 1929-30.
.
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 years of the Great Depression.
In 1932, Hal Ware was active in the Farmers Holiday Association on behalf of the Communist Party.
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
officer. Chambers wrote that in addition to the four members of this group identified by Lee Pressman
under oath to Congress in 1951:
Chambers further wrote that "by 1938, the Soviet espionage
apparatus in Washington had penetrated the US State Department, the US Treasury Department, the Bureau of Standards and the Aberdeen Proving Ground
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 (AAA), a New Deal
agency which reported to the Secretary of Agriculture 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:
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:
Others named by Chambers included Henry H. Collins, Jr., Laurence Duggan
, Nathan Witt
, Marion Bachrach
, and Victor Perlo
. Others subsequently mentioned in these ranks included John Herrmann
, Nathaniel Weyl
, Donald Hiss
, and Harry Dexter White
. According to Chambers, Ware was in close contact with and directly reported to J. Peters
, "the head of the underground section of the American Communist Party":
Harold Ware is said to have attended the Lenin School, a training institute for prospective party leaders from around the world operated by the Communist International.
on August 13, 1935 when his car collided with a coal truck. He died the next morning at the hospital in Harrisburg, never regaining consciousness after the crash.
Hal was memorialized with a chapter in the memoir written by his more famous mother, Ella Reeve Bloor, in 1940:
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.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Marxist regarded as one of the Communist Party's
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
top experts on agriculture.
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
alleged that during the early 1930s he was a member of the so-called "Ware Group," a covert group of operatives within the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
government which aided Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
intelligence agents.
Early years
Harold Ware, best known by his nickname "Hal," was born on August 19, 1889 in Woodstown, New JerseyWoodstown, New Jersey
Woodstown is a Borough in Salem County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the borough population was 3,136.Woodstown was established on July 26, 1882, from portions of Pilesgrove Township based on the results of a referendum held that same day...
, the fourth child of Ella Reeve Bloor
Ella Reeve Bloor
Ella Reeve "Mother" Bloor was an American labor organizer and long-time activist in the socialist and communist movements.-Early years:...
and her husband, Lucien Bonaparte Ware. Two of Hal's three older siblings died in early childhood.
Hal's mother, Ella Bloor, was converted to the ideas of socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
during 1894 and 1895, when the family lived in Philadelphia. She would become a lifelong activist in the labor movement as well as an early member of the Social Democracy of America
Social Democratic Party (United States)
The Social Democratic Party of America was a short-lived political party in the United States, established in 1898. The group was formed out of elements of the Social Democracy of America , and was a predecessor to the Socialist Party of America, established in 1901.-Forerunners:Following the...
, organized by Victor L. Berger
Victor L. Berger
Victor Luitpold Berger was a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and an important and influential Socialist journalist who helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialist movement. The first Socialist elected to the U.S...
and Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...
, as well as a founder of the Communist Party of America. Young Hal was thus raised in a politically radical
Political radicalism
The term political radicalism denotes political principles focused on altering social structures through revolutionary means and changing value systems in fundamental ways...
household, a childhood later colloquially known as that of a "Red Diaper Baby
Red diaper baby
Red diaper baby describes a child of parents who were members of the United States Communist Party or were close to the party or sympathetic to its aims.-History:...
."
When he was 15, a case of measles
Measles
Measles, also known as rubeola or morbilli, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
left young Hal with what doctors believed to be an early case of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. His divorced mother moved with Hal 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 raced off to Wilmington
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...
every week to speak and organize literature sales, she being the Delaware state organizer for the Socialist Party
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-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 which had split from the main organization...
, Hal seems to have taken fondly to 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
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, Hal Ware enrolled in a two year course in agriculture at Pennsylvania State College, later Penn State University. He married young, but his first wife, Margaret, died giving birth to their second child, a daughter named Nancy. Following graduation, with the financial help of his father he bought a grain and dairy
Dairy
A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting of animal milk—mostly from cows or goats, but also from buffalo, sheep, horses or camels —for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on a dedicated dairy farm or section of a multi-purpose farm that is concerned...
farm near Arden, a small town southwest of Pittsburgh, where he learned about the process of 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, mostly foreign-born.
Around this time, Harold Ware married his second wife, Clarissa S. "Cris" Ware, formerly Clarissa Smith. The couple had a daughter named Judy before divorcing in the early 1920s.
In these pre-war years, Hal Ware proved to be something of an agricultural innovator. He was one of the first local farmers to use a tractor
Tractor
A tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...
in the fields. As he couldn't afford new agricultural implements for his machine, he was forced to innovate, welding together two harrows designed for use by horses and similarly trying to adapt other horse-drawn gear for use in mechanized agriculture.
After three years, Hal had had enough. He sold out and took a job in a shipyard
Shipyard
Shipyards and dockyards are places which repair and build ships. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance and basing activities than shipyards, which are sometimes associated more with initial...
as a draftsman, a job for which he had a natural faculty. He continued at this task throughout the war years, until the armistice of November 1918 ended the torrent of government funding of the shipbuilding industry.
Political career
Although he was not a delegate to its founding convention, Harold Ware was a member of the Communist Labor Party of America (CLP) from the year of its origin, 1919, as were his mother and older sister, Helen. Hal and his family stayed through the CLP organization throughout its permutations — merging into the United Communist Party in 1920, into the Communist Party of America in 1921, and into the "aboveground" Workers Party of America in 1922. This organization would, after one more intermediate name-change, emerge as the Communist Party USA in 1929.Almost immediately after it was 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 this so-called "underground period" of the party, the agriculturally-oriented Hal made use of the party-name "H.R. Harrow," publishing under that by-line in the secret communist press. The pseudonym seems to have been a pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
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 the harvests through the South to the Midwest to the Northwest and then back east again through the Upper Midwestern states. 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, Hal Ware compiled an exhaustive survey of American agriculture, including maps showing the distribution of types of farms, farm incomes, and so forth in different sections of the country. This research was transmitted to the Communist International in Moscow, where it was read and praised by Lenin himself. The distinction between the preparation of such original research material for the international Communist movement and Ware's involvement a decade later in collecting government documents for the same purposes is a fine one indeed.
In the last days of 1921, Hal Ware attended the founding convention in New York of the so-called "Legal Political Party" attached to the underground CPA, the Workers Party of America. He was elected as an alternate to the governing Central Executive Committee of that organization. Ware was not typically a member of the Communist Party's top committees, however, preferring to confine his efforts to the agricultural sector rather than to engage in the rough-and-tumble world of factional
Political faction
A political faction is a grouping of individuals, such as a political party, a trade union, or other group with a political purpose. A faction or political party may include fragmented sub-factions, “parties within a party," which may be referred to as power blocs, or voting blocs. The individuals...
party politics.
Collective farming in Soviet Russia
Hal Ware helped come up with the idea of using funds raised by the Friends of Soviet RussiaFriends of Soviet Russia
The Friends of Soviet Russia 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...
organization to construct a model collective farm in Soviet Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
, thereby helping to alleviate the great Russian famine
Russian famine of 1921
The Russian famine of 1921, also known as Povolzhye famine, which began in the early spring of that year, and lasted through 1922, was a severe famine that occurred in Bolshevik Russia...
through production of grain on the spot while additionally demonstrating the benefits of modern agricultural technique firsthand. An appropriation of $75,000 was granted for the project, with Hal's half-brother, Carl Reeve, traveling around the country showing a motion picture depicting the horrific conditions in Russia as part of the effort to help raise funds. Funding in hand, Ware went to the J.I. Case Farm Implement Co.
Case Corporation
Case Corporation was a manufacturer of construction and agricultural equipment. In 1999 it merged with New Holland to form CNH Global, a Fiat Group division...
and brokered a deal for 24 tractors and the necessary implements.
In May 1922, Hal and Cris Ware left their three children in America and departed 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
Perm
Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....
guberniia, a substantial distance from any centers of population; they eventually gathered their equipment and arrived. Local peasants were taught the basics of machine operation and 4000 acres (16.2 km²) were put under the plow. The project was severely hampered by the difficulty in obtaining fuel, which had to be hauled by peasant wagons some 40 miles (64.4 km) from the nearest train stop.
At season's end, the American crew left for Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where they were received as heroes and sent home to America with thanks.
Hal and Cris Ware's marriage seems to have ended upon their return. 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
Pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas. It occurs when pancreatic enzymes that digest food are activated in the pancreas instead of the small intestine. It may be acute – beginning suddenly and lasting a few days, or chronic – occurring over many years...
, 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.
The next year, 1923, 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
Kuban is a geographic region of Southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River, on the Black Sea between the Don Steppe, Volga Delta and the Caucasus...
region, just north of the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
for another model farm. Working with the Friends of Soviet Russia organization, Hal Ware organized a party of 40 to make the trip, including agricultural specialists, a doctor, and a nurse. Ware arrived in Soviet Russia to inspect the land designated for the project only to be told by Soviet officials that the deal was off — local peasants had begun to allocate the land reserved for the project amongst themselves. An alternative site in the North Caucasus
Caucasus Mountains
The Caucasus Mountains is a mountain system in Eurasia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region .The Caucasus Mountains includes:* the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range and* the Lesser Caucasus Mountains....
was hastily located, but the project was delayed.
While in Russia Hal met Jessica Smith
Jessica Smith (editor)
Jessica Smith was an American editor and activist.Daughter of the painter Walter Granville-Smith of New York, Jessica Granville-Smith, as she was known in her early life, graduated from Swarthmore College and championed women's suffrage...
, a young woman who was in the country on behalf of the Quaker famine relief effort, the American Friends Service Committee
American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee is a Religious Society of Friends affiliated organization which works for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world...
. The two fell in love. Back in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, the pair were married by Rev. Norman Thomas
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...
, later a key political leader of the American Socialist Party.
Ware spent the bulk of 1925 raising funds for his Soviet farming venture. This farm was organized as a Russian-American joint venture, with Harold Ware the project's American Director. Ware wound up working as the director of the state farm
State farm
State farm can refer to:*Sovkhoz, a type of state-owned farm in the Soviet Union*Volkseigenes Gut, a type of state-owned farm in East Germany*Państwowe Gospodarstwo Rolne, a type of state-owned farm in People's Republic of Poland...
for three years, with the project taking over and profitably operating four flour mills as well as the task of rural electrification.
During the winter of 1928-29, Ware returned to the United States, where he attempted to interest American agricultural equipment manufacturers in the Soviet market. He managed to convince a number of companies to send test tractors and implements along with mechanics to assemble the products. He stayed in the USSR through the collectivization campaign of 1929-30.
Return to America
In 1931, Ware set to work in earnest on 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 DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
.
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 years of the Great Depression.
In 1932, Hal Ware was active in the Farmers Holiday Association on behalf of the Communist Party.
Chambers' allegations
In his 1952 exposé, Witness, former Communist Whittaker ChambersWhittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
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
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
officer. Chambers wrote that in addition to the four members of this group identified by Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman was a labor attorney and a US government functionary publicly exposed in 1948 for having been a spy for the Soviet foreign intelligence network during the middle 1930s...
under oath to Congress in 1951:
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 AgricultureUnited States Department of AgricultureThe United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...
, the Department of JusticeUnited States Department of JusticeThe United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
, the Department of the Interior, the National Labor Relations BoardNational Labor Relations BoardThe National Labor Relations Board is an independent agency of the United States government charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating and remedying unfair labor practices. Unfair labor practices may involve union-related situations or instances of...
, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Railroad Retirement BoardRailroad Retirement BoardThe U.S. Railroad Retirement Board is an independent agency in the executive branch of the United States government created in 1935 to administer a social insurance program providing retirement benefits to the country's railroad workers....
, the National Research Project — and others.
Chambers further wrote that "by 1938, the Soviet espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
apparatus in Washington had penetrated the US State Department, the US Treasury Department, the Bureau of Standards and the Aberdeen Proving Ground
Aberdeen Proving Ground
Aberdeen Proving Ground is a United States Army facility located near Aberdeen, Maryland, . Part of the facility is a census-designated place , which had a population of 3,116 at the 2000 census.- History :...
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 (AAA), a New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
agency which reported to the Secretary of Agriculture 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 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.
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 DealNew DealThe New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
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 HissAlger HissAlger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
and John Abt (later named by Elizabeth BentleyElizabeth BentleyElizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American spy for the Soviet Union from 1938 until 1945. In 1945 she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence and became an informer for the U.S. She exposed two networks of spies, ultimately naming over 80 Americans who had engaged in espionage for...
as one of her contacts). There was Charles Krivitsky, a former physicistPhysicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
at New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, then or shortly after to be known as Charles KramerCharles KramerCharles Kramer, originally Charles Krevisky, was an American economist who worked for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his brain trust. Among other contributions, he wrote the original idea for the Point Four Program. He also worked for several congressional committees and hired...
(also, later on, one of Elizabeth Bentley's contacts). Abraham George SilvermanGeorge SilvermanAbraham George Silverman was a mathematician and statistician who graduated from Harvard University.-Biography:...
(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
Laurence Duggan
Laurence Duggan , was head of the South American desk at the United States Department of State during World War II. In 1948, Duggan fell to his death from the window of his office in New York, ten days after being questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about whether he had had contacts...
, Nathan Witt
Nathan Witt
Nathan Witt was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board from 1937 to 1940...
, Marion Bachrach
Marion Bachrach
Marion Bachrach was the sister of John Abt and also a member of the Ware group, a group of government employees in the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who were also members of the secret apparatus of the Communist Party of the United States in the 1930s...
, and Victor Perlo
Victor Perlo
Victor Perlo was a Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA...
. Others subsequently mentioned in these ranks included John Herrmann
John Herrmann
John Theodore Herrmann was the person who introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss.-Biography:He was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1900. He lived in Paris in the 1920s, as part of its famous expatriate American writers' circle, when he met his first wife, Josephine Herbst in 1924...
, Nathaniel Weyl
Nathaniel Weyl
Nathaniel Weyl 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 conservative and avowed anti-communist...
, Donald Hiss
Donald Hiss
-Biography:Donald Hiss was born on December 15, 1906, in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the Harvard Law School....
, and Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White was an American economist, and senior U.S. Treasury department official, participating in the Bretton Woods conference...
. According to Chambers, Ware was in close contact with and directly reported to J. Peters
J. Peters
J. Peters was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was an ethnic Jewish journalist and political activist who was a leading figure of the Hungarian language section of the Communist Party USA in the 1920s and 1930s...
, "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.
Harold Ware is said to have attended the Lenin School, a training institute for prospective party leaders from around the world operated by the Communist International.
Death and legacy
Harold Ware was critically injured in an automobile accident in the mountains near Harrisburg, PennsylvaniaHarrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 49,528, making it the ninth largest city in Pennsylvania...
on August 13, 1935 when his car collided with a coal truck. He died the next morning at the hospital in Harrisburg, never regaining consciousness after the crash.
Hal 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 baseballBaseballBaseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
team and a leader in tennisTennisTennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
and other games. He missed a lot of school because of his siege of tuberculosisTuberculosisTuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, 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
John Abt
John Jacob Abt was an American lawyer and politician. He spent most of his career as chief counsel to the Communist Party USA ....
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 [New York: Unified CPA], vol. 1, no. 5 (November 1921), pp. 20–21, 23. Retrieved September 8, 2009.
- "American Agricultural Problems." The Toiler, vol. 4, whole no. 194 (Nov. 12, 1921), pp. 8–10. Retrieved September 8, 2009.
- "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.
- "Planning for Permanent Poverty: What Subsistence Farming Really Stands For." Harper's Magazine, April 1935. Retrieved July 24, 2008.
Further reading
- Whittaker Chambers, Testmony before the House Committee on Un-American ActivitiesHouse Un-American Activities CommitteeThe House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
, August 3, 1948, http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-3testimony.html - John Earl HaynesJohn Earl HaynesJohn Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress...
and Harvey KlehrHarvey KlehrHarvey E. Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America ....
, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. New Haven: Yale University PressYale University PressYale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
, 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 WeylNathaniel WeylNathaniel Weyl 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 conservative and avowed anti-communist...
, 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.
- Cold War Intelligence