And among the points which were emphasized in this literature was the necessity of teaching the democratic process of government. But it has always been my experience that when you try to carry out the teaching of the democratic process of government and you come in contact with the military, sometimes they don’t quite agree with you. And in this particular instance my efforts to carry out the literature and carry out the educational program which came from John W. Studebaker’s office, the United States Office of Education, met with considerable resistance on the part of the company commander. He just didn’t like the idea. It sounded to him as though it was communistic for people to be talking about democracy and talking about having some way of resolving grievances and difficulties and that sort of thing through the democratic legislative method. And we came into sharp conflict over that.
Of course, I finally gave him the excuse which he was looking for. Some of these workers in the camp were from the soup line with me—most of them were. They knew me around Seattle and they knew that I had been an agitator on the waterfront and on the skidroad. I had held many meetings on the skidroad. So I was well known to these men. And they asked me to conduct a course in sociology. I had some knowledge on the subject, and I had some textbooks of my own which I had used, which I had studied when I was going to the university. One of those was a book entitled “Contemporary Social Movements” by Jerome Davis. I had that book. And, of course, that book attempts to survey all the then current social, political, and economic philosophies that were occupying the attention of various people throughout the world, including the Communists and the Fascists, the Soviet Union and what was going on in Italy, and that sort of thing, and also in Germany. So I proceeded to answer the request of these workers to have a class in contemporary social movements.
The company commander attended two sessions of the class. And he attended those two sessions where I was using this text to describe the Communist system in the Soviet Union and the Fascist system in Italy. And he decided that that was subversive propaganda and should not be conducted, and he accused me of spreading subversive propaganda in the camp.
Mr. Moulder. Then were you expelled?
Mr. Dennett. Yes.
Mr. Tavenner. Wasn’t his accusation correct?
Mr. Dennett. I think that his accusation was misplaced. I was making as honest an effort as I knew how to make an objective study. And there seems to be a great deal of difficulty in these days, as there was then, to determine the difference between an objective presentation of a factual situation with respect to a controversial subject without being accused of propagandizing for it. It is a difficult point.
Mr. Tavenner. In what work after your removal from the Civilian Conservation Corps did you engage?
Mr. Dennett. That is when I was shanghaied on to a boat here on the waterfront in Seattle.
Mr. Tavenner. Now I think, Mr. Chairman, that is a subject that we will reserve discussion for until later. But I would like to ask at this time, if the chairman will issue a subpena duces tecum requiring the witness to present to the staff all of the documents which he now has in his possession. By that I do not mean the committee is going to remove them in such a way that the witness will not have access to them, but in order that we may keep those documents intact until the committee staff has been able to fully examine them.