Biography
Ben Gold was born in Bessarabia and was the longtime Communist president of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union. Resigned publicly from CPUSA on August 24, 1950 to be able to sign the Taft-Hartley non-Communist affidavit. Indicted in August 1953, one day before the statute of limitations ran, charging the resignation was a sham. Convicted of perjury in 1954; sentenced 1-3 years; conviction reversed by SCOTUS 1957.
The Daily Worker of December 30, 1932 reports Gold, William Powell and Jennie Cooper out on bail on assault and battery charges after Wilmington police arrested and beat them during an attack on Hunger Marchers. Trial was scheduled for January 4, 1933. A January 17 dispatch in the January 18, 1933 issue, page 3, separately reports convictions of Gold, Leon Saginov and Carl Carlson following police attack on a Wilmington Hunger March meeting. These reports do not establish individual sentencing, admission, release or actual time served, or prove that all named defendants faced one identical proceeding.
The March 25, 1932 issue reports dismissal of a separate case after witnesses Miller and Weinstein accused Gold of threats during union organizing. The newspaper describes the accusation as a frame-up and says the judge threw it out the previous day. It supplies no individual arrest, physical custody or discharge, so this legal outcome is not a new imprisonment case and is separate from the later Wilmington and federal proceedings. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n072-NY-mar-25-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
The January 23, 1934 Daily Worker reports Gold then serving a forty-day sentence in Wilmington, Delaware, and reproduces Assistant Secretary of Labor Edward F. McGrady urging Judge Rodney to have him serve the term rather than suspend it. Michael Golds column on page 5 connects the prosecution to the police attack on the 1932 Hunger March meeting. Forty days is the judicial term, not a measured interval with established endpoints. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n020-jan-23-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
Pages 1–2 report his defense of the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union unemployment fund and demand for a chance to rebut employers and AFL officials at those hearings. This is contemporary political-defense context, with no new personal arrest or jail sentence established by this account. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n302-Nat-dec-19-DW-LOC.pdf
The June 22 labor report identifies Gold as chairman of the 12,000 fur strikers and discusses the forty-hour-week victory. This documents union activity and does not establish another arrest or prison term. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n137-NY-jun-22-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=6
Earlier Mineola acquittal distinguished from later prosecution
The November 9, 1929 Daily Worker’s retrospective Mineola account says Ben Gold and I. Shapiro were declared innocent, while nine other fur workers were found guilty and the appeals led to a new trial for seven of them. This is an earlier labor-prosecution disposition, not a claim that Gold was among the nine convicted workers or evidence of his imprisonment under those sentences. The source does not independently establish Gold’s physical jail admission or release in that matter. His separately recorded later federal perjury prosecution and all its custody fields remain unchanged.
Daily Worker, November 9, 1929, original pages 3. Contemporary allegations are attributed to the newspaper.
The Daily Worker of December 30, 1932 reports Gold, William Powell and Jennie Cooper out on bail on assault and battery charges after Wilmington police arrested and beat them during an attack on Hunger Marchers. Trial was scheduled for January 4, 1933. A January 17 dispatch in the January 18, 1933 issue, page 3, separately reports convictions of Gold, Leon Saginov and Carl Carlson following police attack on a Wilmington Hunger March meeting. These reports do not establish individual sentencing, admission, release or actual time served, or prove that all named defendants faced one identical proceeding.
Contemporary labor and defense account, August 1925
The issue discusses Gold’s leadership in the fur workers’ left wing and his election to Joint Board leadership. Browder corrects the preceding issue’s misprint: eighteen months, rather than eighteen minutes, elapsed between Gold’s beating and expulsion at Kauffman’s instigation and the left-wing election victory. The expulsion was a union action; it is not treated as a criminal conviction or new imprisonment.
The Workers Monthly, August 1925, printed pages 440–443, 469.
The report states that Gold began his forty-day Wilmington jail sentence the preceding Friday, January 19, 1934, for his leadership during the police attack on the 1932 National Hunger March. It attributes political pressure for imprisonment to a letter from Labor Department official Edward McGrady and announces a Cooper Union protest. Forty days is the sentence, not a complete independently measured period served; the campaign for freedom does not prove release.
Daily Worker, December 19, 1934; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
