Record
Hearing
1941-11-10
Congressional Record (Bound Edition), vol. 87, pt. 8, House, pp. 8741-8742, via govinfo
Congressional Record, House, 10 November 1941: Representative Bennett lists Browne and Bioff as "convicted this month"
A House floor speech for a union-reporting bill, used here for one point only: on 10 November 1941 a member of Congress stated that George E. Browne and Bioff "were convicted this month." No court record of the 1941 verdict was opened.
- Date
- 1941-11-10
- Kind
- hearing
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Rights
- The Congressional Record, printed by the Government Printing Office. A work of the United States Congress, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105.
The bound Congressional Record for 10 November 1941, House section, read from the text layer of the govinfo PDF. Representative Bennett of Missouri spoke for H. R. 4392, a bill requiring public reports of union receipts and expenditures, and listed union officials recently convicted. The page numbers are inferred from the page markers in the text layer: the speech begins after the 8741 marker, and the next marker is 8743.
Among them he named “George E. Browne, for many years a vice president of the American Federation of Labor,” and Bioff, who he said “were convicted this month for using their powerful labor-union positions to ‘shake down’ four motion-picture companies for $550,000.”
This is a partisan floor speech, and it is used with caution. It calls the two men “New York thugs,” although the court records place Browne in the Chicago local, and it makes a personal allegation against one of them that this archive does not repeat. Its value here is narrow: a federal record dated 10 November 1941 stating that the two were convicted that month. The figure of $550,000 is the speaker’s. The verdict date, the sentences and the court are not stated in any court record opened for this archive.