Leland Olds hearing
The United States Senate failed to confirm the re-nomination of Leland Olds as the head of the Federal Power Commission in 1949. Olds was an economist who in the 1920s, before he was appointed by Roosevelt as chairman of the commission, had been the Industrial editor for the Federated Press. It was a left wing news agency which served Trade Union newspapers but had an ambiguous relationship with the Communist Party USA. The Olds hearings have been cited as a precursor to McCarthyism.
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