Mr. Stenhouse. I don’t know, sir. At that time I was very active in the United Auto Workers. I felt that the United Auto Workers was doing a fine job in increasing production for the war. Their no-strike pledge was very loyally kept, and there were people there who always attended meetings, who were always ready to try and get other people to come to the union meetings, who were ready to do jobs for the union in the way of promoting blood-bank drives, and so on, getting people to register to vote, and the sort of things that I was interested in. Some one of these people who I had some knowledge of their actions asked me if I would go to such a meeting, and I said I would.
Mr. Tavenner. Were the other members of this group of Communist Party persons employed in the same business in which you were employed?
Mr. Stenhouse. Well, as far as I remember, there were possibly 2 or 3 of the group who were at the Bendix plant. I am not sure now. It is hard to differentiate.
Mr. Moulder. You say you were interested in the same things that they were interested in, that is, getting people interested in elections and going to the polls to vote.
Mr. Stenhouse. Sure.
Mr. Moulder. Do you recall whether or not at that time the Communist Party had candidates for whom you could cast a ballot?
Mr. Stenhouse. We weren’t interested in it. We were voting Democratic. I was a Democrat.
Mr. Moulder. The point I was trying to make, if you were interested in that party why did you join the Democratic Party? I don’t understand why you affiliated yourself with a party that had no candidates for whom you could vote.
Mr. Stenhouse. I didn’t deliberately go out to affiliate myself with it. Somebody who was interested in it also, as a Democrat—and these things that were part of the war effort—suggested that I go to one of these meetings. And he had become a person I had some respect for because of his apparent adherence to the things that the majority of the American people were doing at that time. I accepted the idea and went to the meetings.
Mr. Moulder. Were they Communist Party organization meetings?