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Alger Hiss: The Carnegie Endowman's Trial

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Alger Hiss is not a very well known figure by today’s standards; however, espionage and perjury accusations against him became both infamous and controversial in his era. In the 40s and 50s, the height of Communist Hysteria, Alger Hiss would be accused to have been a spy or agent for the Soviet Union. Unlike similar trials involving accusations of treason and espionage, Hiss’s trial would become controversial as he continuously pleaded his innocence and only received a punishment for perjury. While he did deny the allegations, Hiss was definitely a treasonous spy for Soviet intelligence and deserved a much heavier sentence for all his crimes. Before being accused of treason and espionage, Alger Hiss was born in Baltimore in 1904, and lived there for a majority of his young life, and later becoming a lawyer. He began working in the federal government in 1933 under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration in the Agricultural Adjustment Agencies (AAA) in the Department of Justice and State (Shaffer). He was in the Roosevelt administration and was helped Roosevelt during the Yalta Conference (Everett 1) Hiss continued to work as a politician as well as a representative for organizations such as the Carnegie …show more content…

This breach of trust should also have been into account. Since he was a rather powerful figure, a heavier conviction would have set an important precedent that espionage is a dangerous offense in any occasion. Similar cases involving espionage, especially the Rosenbergs, ended with even greater sentences. The Rosenbergs got the death penalty for espionage, proving that espionage truly is a big issue and crime. If very similar cases could receive sentences such heavy sentences as life in prison or the death penalty, Hiss definitely got a light sentence and deserved harsher consequences for leaking sensitive material to Soviet

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Andrew Carnegie is a steel plant owner who claims to support unions and the working man. His charge is that he ignored the legitimate grievances of his employees at his plant in Homestead Pennsylvania and that his neglect contributed to the death of several of his employees during a strike at Homestead in June of 1892 and that he should be held accountable. Andrew Carnegie has dealt with strikes at his plants before. One strike was at his plant in Braddock Pennsylvania where he settled with the workers by agreeing to higher pay but without input from the Union, essentially ruining it. The union at Homestead was one of the last unions in any of his plants.

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Occasion’s Effect The Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism are very similar even though they took place such a long time from each other. If someone was accused of witchcraft in 1692 they had to confess and lose all social standing or be executed, in the 1950’s if a person was accused of being a communist they would be fired and put on trial, if they would not confess they were blacklisted until they admitted to their “crime”. Arthur Miller used the Salem Witch trials to protest McCarthyism in a somewhat discreet way that proved to be a timeless comfort to the citizens experiencing oppression from their government (“Why I Wrote The Crucible”, 911).

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Can the fear of people control the way certain things and events are looked at? In 1950 a nationwide historical campaign called McCarthyism took place. The campaign was against alleged communist in the U.S government and other institutions and accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence which was carried out by Joseph McCarthy. The primary targets were usually union activist, government employees, educators, and entertainment industry. Many people people lost their trust in others, causing a new outlook on life while relationships were destroyed. McCarthyism was caused by the fear of the people due to past events.

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Alger Hiss was a United States government official and government official Whittaker Chambers eventually threw Hiss under the bus leading Hiss to be “the central symbol in America’s struggle over domestic communism” (17). Hiss tried denying multiple times that the accusations were lies and he was innocent of anything Chambers implied but “on January 21 1950, a jury found Hiss, and attorney with a once-promising career in the State Department, guilty on two counts of perjury - for having lied about his Communist connections in the 1930’s” (17). This eventually sent Hiss to be in a federal penitentiary for four years and also his testimony exposed many politicians such as Richard Nixon and the New Deal. I found this event interesting as Alger Hiss was actually never found guilty of having Communist ties and everything known as of that time were just speculations. I also found this interesting as the Hiss case also exposed many other politicians and associations but those people were never mentioned to be questioned or tried

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