December 14, 1951 — U.S. Editorial
The Mossadegh Project | December 22, 2019 |

Tilford E. Dudley (1907-1990), government worker, lawyer and union official who served in five different positions during the FDR administration, is shamed for his “cowardly and contemptible” remarks about members of the U.S. Congress in this saucy newspaper editorial.
Put Up or Shut Up
Speaking at a meeting in Asbury Park, N.J., Tilford Dudley, national assistant director of the Political Action Committee of the CIO, is reported in a news dispatch to have declared that “one-third of the United States Congress are evil, corrupt men.”
Congress should summon Mr. Dudley to Washington forthwith and make him produce book, chapter and verse to justify his vicious attack on the legislative branch of government.
That is the sort of statement about Congress which might be expected to come out of Moscow and to be repeated by Communists in the United States. Made publicly by an official of a large labor organization, and made without any attempt to produce sustaining evidence, it is a cowardly and contemptible effort to wreck the faith of the people in their government and in the men they elect to represent them.
Mr. Dudley should be forced to put up or shut up.
Newspapers who ran this editorial under their masthead included:
The Lebanon Daily News (Lebanon, Pennsylvania) — December 14, 1951
The La Grande Observer (La Grande, Oregon) — December 15, 1951
The Daily Chronicle (Centralia, Washington) — December 15, 1951
The Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) — December 17, 1951
The San Mateo Times (San Mateo, California) — December 22, 1951
Related links:
Deserves Special Award | Dec. 15, 1951 anti-Truman editorial
Congress Is Over the President | May 29, 1952 Letter to the Editor
The Unpardonable Sin | The Town Journal, Jan. 1954 editorial
MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”




