LABOUR MAN’S FATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1938, Page 7

LABOUR MAN’S FATE

MURDERED IN MINNEAPOLIS THREATS OF LAST NOVEMBER RECALLED. UNION ORGANISER’S ALLEGED CONFESSION. By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. (Recd This Day, 10.10 a.m.) MINNEAPOLIS, May 26. William Brown, the labour leader who was threatened with assassination in November, was found shot dead in an automobile. Arnold Johnson, a union organiser, has been arrested. He allegedly confessed to the slaying, which coincided with an abandonment of the investigation into the assassination of Patrick Corcoran.

A cablegram from Minneapolis in November last year stated that Patrick Corcoran, a well-known American Federation of Labour member, of the Middle West, had been found shot dead in a street near his home. The gossip column of a local newspaper had said in the previous week, the message added: “A prominent Labour leader may be assassinated fortnightly.” Corcoran’s son disclosed that his father had been beaten and fired at in the previous week, but did not recognise his assailant. A later cablegram stated that Labour leaders were stricken with terror owing to a mysterious telephone call received by the wife of a laundry union leader shortly before the finding of Corcoran’s body. The caller said: “Two more will go. There is going to be a cleaning up of some of these dictators.”