the AFL's conservative labor policies. Brookwood proved controversial in 1926 in another way, too. John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, had largely eliminated opposition to his leadership of the union, and was no longer fighting hard against coal mine owners. Union contracts were being broken, membership was in steep decline, and income was falling very sharply. In June, John Brophy, the mineworker and Brookwood director, forged an alliance with communists in and out of the Mine Workers to defeat Lewis in the upcoming union election. Lewis turned the union's allegedly neutral journal against Brophy, used union dues to pay low-level officials to campaign against Brophy, and red-baited Brophy (who was not a communist himself) mercilessly. Lewis easily defeated Brophy by a vote of 195,000 to 85,000 in December 1926. Several Brookwood faculty and students assisted Brophy in his unsuccessful campaign against Lewis. These developments alarmed Green. Throughout 1926, he made a number of inquiries into the political beliefs of the Brookwood faculty and the content of Brookwood courses. He particularly focused on the beliefs and activities of faculty member Arthur Calhoun, an avowed Marxist. Green's inquiries confirmed his suspicion that the college was a hotbed of radicalism. In April 1927, Green made a veiled threat against Brookwood in the pages of the AFL's magazine, The American Federationist, arguing that worker education should be a bulwark against rather than a fomenter of radicalism. Events came to a head the following month when Martin Ryan, president of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, showed Green a letter from a Canadian official in his union. The letter made additional allegations of radicalism against Brookwood. Green wrote to Ryan in June 1927 acknowledging that Brookwood was "surcharged with radical tendencies". Later that year, Green received letters from five students at Brookwood, who claimed that May Day (then closely associated with the Communist Party) and not Labor Day (the working class holiday promoted by the AFL) was celebrated at Brookwood. The students further claimed that Brookwood had formally celebrated the anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union; placed pictures of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky throughout the school; and hung red banners (the symbol of the Communist Party) on holidays. The students claimed Brookwood was anti-American, anti-religious, and pro-communist. Muste unwittingly provided Green with additional anti-Brookwood ammunition in April 1928 when he published an article in the left-wing journal Labor