Biography
George Maurer was named among those indicted for criminal syndicalism after the November 1931 Dreiser committee investigation of hunger and repression in the Harlan and Bell County coalfields of Kentucky. The November 17 Daily Worker says prosecutor W. A. Brock planned to seek extradition. It lists Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Charles Rumford Walker, Adelaide Walker, Marie Pergain, Samuel Ornitz, Celia Kuhn, George Maurer, M. P. Levy and Harry Gannes; the introductory counts do not agree neatly with that ten-name roster. The first six are described as committee visitors to the mines; Gannes is identified with the Daily Worker. The indictment and extradition plan do not establish an actual arrest, jail admission, conviction or term served. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n276-NY-nov-17-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The report says the ILD district secretary was jailed at Pineville on Christmas Day, December 25, 1931, accused of slandering deputy sheriff Sizemore. An appeal for freedom is not evidence of physical release. Daily Worker, December 28, 1931, original PDF page 3. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n311-NY-dec-28-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
Contemporary labor and defense account, August 1925
The caption to the photograph accompanying Thurber Lewis’s report identifies George Maurer as secretary of the Labor Defense Council, which merged into the newly formed International Labor Defense. The report concerns the June 28, 1925 founding conference in Chicago. The two-person caption names Cannon and Maurer without explicit positions; no individual portrait is assigned from that frame.
Portrait: George Maurer speaking, identified by numbered caption 7 in The Labor Defender, July 1927, printed page 103.
