Mr. Dennett. Well, I would remind the committee and those who have read the record of a statement I made at the other hearing. I was named after Eugene V. Debs. I am very proud of that. It should be remembered that Eugene V. Debs was the leading Socialist in the United States of America for a great many years.
I was virtually born into the Socialist movement. My parents admired Debs very much, and my father was an active leading Socialist. Therefore, I had a great deal of knowledge of the Socialist movement as a child. In fact, I had the honor of appearing on the same platform with Eugene V. Debs in Old Peoples Hall in Boston. He was making a political speech. I had a great admiration for the man and I felt greatly honored to be named after him.
In the period following the First World War after my mother’s death, my father and I moved to the farm in the West. That was in 1919. Those who may have some knowledge of the history of that period will remember that following the First World War there was a depression in agriculture. Those who farmed suffered a continuing crisis, and we were trying to farm.
So we were confronted daily with the problem of how in the world do you get out of a depression. And, frankly, we did not find any solution to it.
I went on to school being firmly convinced, as a result of what I had seen as a child, having seen workers defeated time after time in strikes and in disputes, I became thoroughly convinced that the most priceless thing that anyone could obtain would be a full and complete education. And I hoped to receive one. I don’t think I ever received as much as I wanted.
Finally, after obtaining my teaching certificate and beginning to teach—you remember the year was 1928. And in 1929 the stock market crashed. And it wasn’t very long before the effects of that economic interruption began to be felt throughout the land. And among the first to feel it were the teachers, at least in the State of Oregon with which I was then familiar.
The teachers were required to accept great discounts in order to cash their warrants—15, 20, and in some cases 25 percent discounts were taken by the banks to cash the teachers’ warrants. And teachers were generally receiving at that time about $100 per month.
I was fortunate. I was teaching in a district which was a rather wealthy district, and they were not on a warrant basis.
But I began to have great apprehension because most of the teachers I knew were suffering this way. And this was in 1931.
Of course, I had been concerned about economic problems over most of my life. And when I was a high school boy I read Marx’s Das Kapital, and I was somewhat acquainted with his theory of economics. And I was quite disturbed at this economic crash which began with the stock market crash of 1929.