The county commissioners at that time ordered a cut in the amount of relief which would be allowed. When they did that it placed the anti-Communist leadership in the Unemployed Citizens Leagues in a most embarrassing position because we in the Communist Party and in the Unemployed Councils had been very critical of everything which the Unemployed Citizens Leagues had been doing and which their leaders had been doing.
When this cut occurred we blamed the leaders of the Unemployed Citizens Leagues for permitting it. We didn’t know that these leaders had been opposing the cut. We didn’t know what their actual attitude was. But we very soon found out because these leaders were so desperate that they decided to make a march on the County-City Building where the commissioners were to meet in a room similar to this one. And it was their intention to demand at that time that the cuts not be put into effect.
However, the demonstration proved to be much larger and had much more support than the leaders of the Unemployed Citizens Leagues anticipated, and the Communists—I remember it very well because I was on the district bureau at that time—and we found ourselves not in the leadership of a militant action, and we were embarrassed and fearful that if we didn’t get into the act that we would be blamed by the national leadership.
And we didn’t have any contacts in the Unemployed Citizens League leadership, and we didn’t know what to do. So we debated the question for about 30 hours in 1 continuous bureau meeting. Following that meeting we decided that it was best for us to join the demonstration regardless, whether we had contact or not, and we issued leaflets and called upon our members to join in the demonstration.
(At this point Representative Harold H. Velde entered the hearing room).
Mr. Dennett. In the process of doing so we received a bigger response than we expected. In other words, the need was more acute than even the most closest observers realized. Consequently, there were about 6,000 people down here in this building. They couldn’t all get into the chambers. They crowded the hallways, they crowded several floors of the building. And some of the commissioners got so scared of the demonstration that they tried to run out. They tried to avoid meeting the leaders.
As a result, the demonstrators decided they would stay until they did meet the leaders, until they met the commissioners. And it took over 3 days before the commissioners finally agreed to meet with the committee of this group.
I happened to be the secretary of that committee at that time, and I am sorry that those records that I kept of that demonstration are records which I do not have today. They would be quite valuable to understand all the things that happened, the chronology of why one thing followed another.
But I am quite convinced and I am quite certain that the account I have just given you can be verified by checking the newspaper files of that period.
Mr. Tavenner. Now is it correct to say that the general objectives of the Unemployed Councils, which was organized by the Communist Party, and the general objectives of the Unemployed Citizens Leagues, which were anti-Communist in character, were the same in that their purpose was to alleviate suffering from unemployment? Is that true?