Biography
Marie Pergain 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
Page 1 names Pergain as Dreiser's fellow investigator and the woman in the prosecutor's adultery allegation, which Dreiser denied. The account frames the charge as retaliation for exposing Kentucky coalfield misery. It does not establish Pergain actually arrested or add a new penal-custody interval. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n271-NY-nov-11-1931-DW-LOC.pdf
