| | Abstract: | In 1935, the City Council of Cleveland, Ohio, empowered a special committee to investigate the "identity, motives, aims, and methods" of the "Secret Seven," an anonymous committee of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, which, earlier in 1935, distributed a pamphlet concerning the activities of unnamed intellectuals charged with abetting Communists and other subversives in Cleveland. The City Council committee subpoenaed testimony from Munson Havens, executive secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, and from William Frew Long, general manager of the Associated Industries of Cleveland, who lent assistance to the Chamber of Commerce. Long refused to cooperate with the committee and was cited for contempt. Marvin C. Harrison, a Cleveland attorney who offered his counsel to numerous labor-management and intra-union disputes in Cleveland, was counsel for the committee. The activities of the "Secret Seven" were largely discredited, and the council's investigation was soon dropped. The collection consists of testimony before, and transcripts of, meetings of the committee of the Cleveland City Council investigating the "Secret Seven," including correspondence, counsel opinions, and related pamphlets and reports. Opinions of counsel pertain to the legal power of the committee to subpoena William Frew Long and cite him for contempt. Included is the testimony of Long in 1938 before a United States Senate committee investigating the Associated Industries of Cleveland. The testimony pertains to the records of the "Secret Seven," which were destroyed in 1935. The collection relates largely to the authority and internal activities of the Special Committee, with little material on the "Secret Seven" and anti-communists in Cleveland. | |
