Hearst papers promptly informed their readers that: REDS SABOTAGE GLOBE! The New York Times, with eminent fairness, editorialized: "It would seem that there is a great deal of justification for the new theory that the world is flat, while on the other hand, it seems equally dubious that there is sufficient evidence for discarding the globular theory which has had, we cannot afford to overlook, the distinguished test of time."
Readers of the Daily Worker turned for the facts, as usual, to the Herald Tribune. The Communist Party suffered its usual crisis. One group contended that accepting the new theory would split the unity of the working class, diverting attention from the class struggle. The other group bitterly maintained that to adhere to the discredited globular theory would be a betrayal of Marx.
The latter lost. The result was a new splinter party called the True Marxists, which called a world rally to form the new popular front, the Flat World Workers Party. On the other side of the barricades, the N.A.M. and American Legion denounced flat-worldism as an attack on the very principles on which our great nation of free enterprise is founded.
Gabriel Heatter cried, "Ah, my friends, let's not be deceived! Let's not be duped by this subtle attack on all that we hold dear, all that we have learned in the little red schoolhouse, in cherished days gone by!"
"This," Henry J. Taylor declared scathingly, "is the sort of thing we might have expected in the worst days of the New Deal. What actually lies behind this subversive campaign to convince Americans that the world is actually flat? Just this. Certain interests want you to believe that Columbus was wrong, that he made a mistake, when he said the world was round. If you swallow this, then you must believe his discovery of America was also a fantastic mistake. Is any decent American willing to concede that the founding of our great nation was nothing but a blunder?"
The Un-American Activities Committee immediately held hearings in Washington. Witnesses on all sides of the question were summoned. Among those who testified were Herbert Hoover, Gabriel Heatter, Henry J. Taylor, Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft, John Foster Dulles, Henry Luce, Gerald K. Smith, Representative Rankin, Louis Budenz, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Dilling and Westbrook Pegler, who revealed that the whole thing was a plot by Mrs. Roosevelt. Henry Wallace was also called, cited for contempt in the first five minutes, and thereafter the proceedings went smoothly.
The C.I.O. and the A.F. of L. held special conventions to consider what stand labor should take on the issue. Since they felt it had little bearing on wages, hours or the Taft-Hartley Act, they passed a resolution to remain neutral. Or, as one delegate put it, to live in a world without shape.
A wave of unrest swept over the country. Teachers went on record in favor of a flat world, out of sheer boredom with trying to cram the opposite concept into the thick skulls of small fry. Shipping companies and airlines spent millions in paid advertising to fight the flat world idea. They feared that business would fall off if people got scared about doing the same.
Those who accepted the theory were stigmatized as "flatheads," and were exhorted in black ad headlines: "DON'T BE A FLATHEAD!" This led to the coining of the counter-epithet, "globephobe."