Fiorello  was  still  fighting  Tammany  methods  wherever  they
appeared,  but  he  was  beginning  to  win  a  hearing  at  last.  He
failed  to  block  the  sale  of  the  Hoboken  Piers  by  the  Shipping
Board  to  private  interests  —  the  Old  Guard  were  scrambling
for  pennies  now  —  but  he  secured  attention  when  he  exposed
as  forgeries  the  "Communist  Documents"  which  Walker's
Police  Commissioner,  Grover  Whalen,  claimed  to  have  seized
in  the  offices  of  the  Soviet  State  trading  agency  —  the  Amtorg
—  at  New  York,  and  produced  proof  that  Whalen  knew  the
documents  were  spurious  before  he  announced  them  to  the
press.  LaGuardia  also  voted  vainly  against  the  "Red  Inquiry"
under  Congressman  Hamilton  Fish,  Jr.,  voted  by  the  House,
which  he  predicted  would  turn  to  "open  shop  propaganda".
The  truth  was  that  the  Soviet  Union  had  started  economic
planning  under  the  first  "Five- Year  Plan"  and  world- wide
attention  was  focussed  on  the  experiment,  while  economic
conditions  in  the  Planless  Republic  of  the  Great  Engineer
went  from  bad  to  worse.  It  was  desirable  to  raise  the  Commu-
nist bugaboo  once  more,  with  an  eye  on  1932.  LaGuardia
argued  that  the  House  ought  to  investigate  unemployment,


92  LA  GUARDIA

rather  than  Communism,  the  cause  rather  than  the  effect.
Not  even  Hamilton  Fish,  Jr.  could  check  the  march  of
destiny.  The  1930  elections  were  a  terrible  blow  to  the  Re-
publicans, who  lost  control  of  the  House  of  Representatives
for  the  first  time  since  1916.  Garner  of  Texas  replaced  Nick
Longworth  of  Ohio  as  Speaker  of  the  House.  LaGuardia  came
back  into  Congress  by  a  margin  of  nearly  2,000  votes.  To-
gether with  the  "Allied  Progressives",  he  held  the  balance  of
power  and  proceeded  to  make  political  history  in  the  closing
two-year  struggle  against  Hooverism.  He  had  his  troubles.
