N.H. Passes Oath, Creates Body to Probe Disloyalty

New Hampshire's grotesque State House in Conord has produced a pair of bills designed to curb "subversives": an oath requiring teachers to swear allegiance to the state and federal constitutions, and a "little Dies Committee" to investigate disloyalty in the stae.

Both measures were introduced on the floor of the State House on January 20, 1949, by representative Harold H. Hart of Wolfeboro. The bills promptly ran into opposition, especially on the campus of the University of New Hampshire at Durham, but both finally passed--the committee measure on May 12, and the oath bill on June 28.

According to New Hampshire's Assistant Attorney General William S. Green, there have so far been no refusals to sign the oath.

Hart's nine-man Committee on Subversives, which has had its powers broadened to include all subversive activities--educational or not--is active but will not release its findings until the legislature reconvenes in January 1951.

In the hearings preceding the passing of the bills, New Hampshire's President Arthur S. Adams testified that he saw no need for the investigation. At the same time, he said that there were no Communists on his campus, although two professors were Progressive Party members. On May 4, 1949, one of these professors, John G. Rideout, resigned to take a job at Idaho State College. He had been chairman of the State Progressive Party; he refused comment on his resignation.

Promotion Recommendation Ignored

Ae few days later Professor G. Harris Daggett said his department head had recommended him for promotion two years running but that these recommendations had been ignored because of "political, not professional reasons."

Nearly 1,500 students petitioned Adams and the U.N.H. Board of Trustees to reconsider Daggett's status, but the Trustees decided that Daggett's position would "remain unchanged." Subsequently, the Trustees reversed their stand, and Dagget's promotion to the job of associate professor will become effective September 1, 1950.