quality of most black belt housing, overcrowding was not yet a major problem during the migration period” (p. 149). 38 Hearings, pp. 818-820, 833-834, RG 252, NAGL. 39 Ibid., pp. 867-881 (quotes on pp. 868 and 871). * Ibid., p. 324. "Ibid., p. 651. See also the testimony concerning African Americans: 521 members of the Congress of American Women (pp. 858-859), United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers (pp. 623-624), and the Communist Party (pp. 171-173). 42 Ibid., pp. 861-862, 863 (overall testimony, pp. 856-866). 43 Ibid., pp. 571-628, 882-907. (The issue of the recession was raised by others as well-see pp. 831-832.) Unions whose representatives testified included the United Automobile Workers; the United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers; United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers; the International Fur and Leather Workers Union; the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural & Allied Workers Union; the Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers; and the Social Service Employees Union of the United Office and Professional Workers. The support for rent control by unions both accepted and expelled by the CIO, along with Michael Mann's anti-communist stance, indicates that the opposition to a rent increase among the unions was not just a communist stratagem. Of the labor unions that testified, the following were eventually investigated or expelled from the Congress of Industrial Unions on the charge of excessive communist influence: the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, the United Office and Professional Workers, and the United Public Workers. See Harvey A. Levenstein, Communism, Anticommunism and the CIO (1981), pp. 302–304. "Ibid., pp. 166-173, 371-372, 375-378, 381-383. Edward Starr, the Communist Party representative, left the party in the mid-1950s over disagreements with their policies and practices. He worked as a linotype operator for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers and served as vice president of the Chicago Typographical Union. After retiring from the Chicago Tribune in 1976, he served as a consumer health advocate, becoming executive director of the Labor Health Care Council. He died in Chicago at the age of 85 in May 1997. Kenan Heise, “Edward Starr, 85, exec in Chicago printers union" [obituary], Chicago Tribune, May 17, 1997, Section 1, 24. "Hearings, pp. 632-633, 635-636 (quote), 640, 642-643, 646-648, RG 252, NAGL. * Minutes of a Closed Meeting of the Cook County Rent Advisory Board, June 28, 1949, p. 107, RG 252, NAGL. "Ibid., pp. 4, 15-20. The ASA committee was appointed by George Morgan, president of its Chicago Chapter and also the head of the Statistical and Market Research Department of the People's Gas, Light and Coke Company. The committee consisted of Lucille Derrick, treasurer of the Chicago ASA chapter and a statistics teacher at the University of Illinois, and Joseph White and Charles Newcomb, heads of "private statistical research organizations." p. 47. 48 Ibid., "Ibid., pp. 50-52. 50 Ibid., pp. 63-64. SI Ibid., pp. 67-68. 52 Ibid., pp. 53-55, 68-70. "Ibid., pp. 98-99. "Ibid., pp. 10-14. As is the case several times in the minutes, the confusing prose and the board's or recording secretary's lack of familiarity with Robert's Rules of Order makes it difficult to discern the outcome of a vote, requiring the reader to extrapolate from other evidence such as followup actions taken. 55 177 Fed 2d 516 and Minutes, Executive Session of the Cook County Rent Advisory Board, Chicago, Ill., Nov. 10, 1949, pp. 22-23, 47-49, RG 252, NAGL. The minutes show that the Housing Expediter approved the board's recommendation on the basis of the “inadequacy of the evidence to support an increase” (p. 48). The Cook County Fair Rent Committee then appealed the Housing Expediter's decision to the U.S.Appellate Court on the grounds that the board made only one finding of fact to the effect that rents in Cook County are "'adequate';. ..[and] that the evidence in the record does not support this affirmative finding of adequacy”” (p. 47). 56 Ibid., p. 107. 5 From 1971 through early 1973, however, the city was again subject to federally mandated rent controls under the Nixon wage-price program. For the Chicago City Council and Cook County local advisory board recommendation to continue rent control through April 1953 with a 10% across-the-board increase in rents and a request for submittal of evidence for decontrol of luxury units, see John M. Ducey to Richard Evans, Aug. 28, 1952; Ferd Kramer to Kudlich (sic), Sept. 5, 1952; and Maida Steinberg to James McInnes Henderson, Sept. 18, 1952, in “Cook County RAB Minutes 6/52-6/53,"” RG 252, NAGL. For the decontrol of luxury units that went into effect on Nov. 13, 1952, see Shogren to Ducey, Oct. 11, 1952, and Henderson to Cook County Rent Advisory Board, Nov. 14, 1952; for the decontrol of rooming houses, see George S. Remley to Senator Paul Douglas, Jan. 9, 1953, all in "Cook County RAB Minutes 6/52-6/53,” RG 252, NAGL. The Office of Housing Expediter's office was abolished on July 31, 1951, and its rent control functions transferred to the Economic Stabilization Agency, authorized by the Defense Production Act of 1950 (64 Stat. L. 798), Sept. 8, 1950. The ESA was abolished on April 30, 1953, when the price control provisions of the Defense Production Act expired. 58 See Cary Lowe and Richard Blumberg, “Moderate Regulations Protect Landlords, As Well As Tenants,” p. 72, and John I. Gilderbloom,"Rent Controls Impact on the Quality and Quantity of the Housing Stock,” p. 137, in Gilderbloom et al., Rent Control: A Source Book (1981) for their differentiation of World War II and more recent experiences with rent control. See Leo Grebler, “Implications of Rent Control Experience in the United States," International Labor Review, 65 (April 1952): 462-485, for a critique specifically of the World War II and post-World War II experience with rent control in the United States. " An alternative argument has been made that rent control hurt African American housing opportunities in the 1940s by taking away their one weapon in improving their housing: their willingness to pay higher rents than whites for housing of the same quality as a means of dealing with the racism that would otherwise withdraw housing from the African American market. With rent control, white owners would no longer have this incentive to rent to African Americans. See Martin Meyerson and Edward C. Banfield, Politics, Planning and the Public Interest (1955), p. 31. 6 In the 1970s, Chicago again found itself subject to federally mandated rent controls, this time from August 1971 through January 1973 under the Nixon administration wage and price guidelines. Angel Island "Guardian of the Western Gate" By Valerie Natale OPPOSITE: Immigration officials question a new Chinese arrival at Angel Island to determine his eligibility to enter into the United States. RIGHT: Formerly used as a meeting place for smugglers and pirates, Angel Island became a military reserve in 1850. Angel ngel Island, with an area of 640 acres, is the largest island in the San Francisco Bay. It is a hilly and tree-covered place that has been used by Bay Area residents for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The earliest known visitors to Angel Island were Miwok Indians, who traveled there in reed boats in search of plants and animals. The island first entered recorded history in 1769, when it was sighted by members of a Spanish exploring expedition. It received its name in 1775 from Don Juan Manuel Ayala, who explored and mapped the bay and the area around it. Until 1839 the island was used for many purposes, most notoriously as a meeting place for smugglers and pirates and as a dueling range. That year, in an attempt to banish the pirates and duelists, the Spanish gov ernor of California granted Antonio Maria Osio a title to establish a cattle farm on the island. The plan worked, and Angel Island once again became a respect able place.' The island officially became a 1850 President Millard Fillmore declared Angel Island to be a United States military re serve. This declaration marked the beginning of the island's association with the federal government and ended its other uses. Military and Quarantine Station Although military engineers recommended that batteries be built on Angel Island as part of the fortification of the entrance to San Francisco Bay, the batteries were not built until the Civil War. Gen. George Wright, the commander of the Department of the Pacific, obtained $100,000 from the War Department for the purpose of defending San Francisco against possible attack by the Confederacy.' Camp Reynolds, named in honor of Maj. Gen. John Reynolds, who had been killed in action in the Battle of Gettysburg, was established on Angel Island. Three artillery batteries were quickly built, but they were never required to defend the bay from the Confederates. Camp Reynolds, however, soon assumed an important role for the army. In 1866 it was designated the army's general depot for receiving and distributing new recruits bound for duty in the West.' The outbreak of the Spanish-American War led to the establishment of Angel Island's first use as a detention camp. Captured soldiers from this war were held on the island, as were American Indians taken prisoner during campaigns fought in Arizona.' Years later, during both world wars, Angel Island would again house prisoners of war. Furthermore, for a period preceding the completion of Alcatraz prison, a number of federal prisoners were also housed on the island. Camp Reynolds and the prisoner-of-war camp were the only federal installations on Angel Island until the early 1890s, when the government built a quarantine station there. Yellow fever, cholera, and plague were rampant throughout the world. Increased shipping traffic across the Pacificand the construction of ever faster ships to make the crossings-threatened to spread these diseases, and American public health officials resolved to stop them at the border. The quarantine station's mission was to keep infectious diseases out of the United States by inspecting and, if necessary, disinfecting ships arriving from contaminated foreign ports. In this overview of the Angel Island military post, quarters for the enlisted men are in the foreground, and Alcatraz can be seen in the distance in San Francisco Bay. Construction of the quarantine station began in 1890, and it was officially opened in 1892. The staff included a surgeon, who was in charge of the establishment, a group of medical officers and inspectors, fumigators, and various support personnel. The station fulfilled its mission in three general ways: the inspection of the ships' passengers and crews; the fumigation of ships arriving from ports where epidemics persisted; and the quarantine or deportation of individuals afflicted with diseases designated by federal officials as "loathsome or dangerously contagious." "Loathsome diseases" included venereal diseases such as gonorrhea and syphilis, certain parasitic diseases, and trachoma. Trachoma is a highly infectious eye condition caused by Chlamydia bacteria and spread by dirty water and eye-seeking flies. Its telltale sign is the |