So I was pressing that point, and I defied the leadership of the district in the party to show me anything anywhere which justified their change of attitude.
For my militant determination on it I was falling into bad graces so rapidly that they removed me from the district bureau.
Before I went into the service I also quarreled with them over some of the literature published under the name of Earl Browder, under the title of “Victory and After,” in which I challenged some of the contentions of Browder that it was possible to get along with some of the big capitalists of the United States in the interest of the war effort and forget the interest of the workers who were employed by those capitalists, because in too many instances the capitalists were making enormous profits in the war but the workers were not increasing their wages.
This was an issue which was of extreme importance to me. I was working in a steel mill and I felt that the steelworkers’ wages at that time were altogether too inadequate. I think that history since has borne out the justification of my attitude in it, and I think the Communist Party policy which flip-flopped all over the place at that time has proven how unstable it was, and has proven that it was not genuinely trying to improve the condition of the workers.
Mr. Velde. When were you removed from the district bureau of the Communist Party?
Mr. Dennett. Some time in 1941 or 1942, I believe it was. Then, of course, I went into the service.
Upon return from the service I tried to become as active as possible in the party work, tried to restore organization of the party apparatus. I was first advised by Mr. Andrew Remes when he came—he had just returned from the service ahead of me. He advised me that when he was in the service, evidently, Mr. Huff, who had been left in charge of the district, had permitted the entire district to collapse, because when he came back from the service—I am speaking of Mr. Remes—he told me there was not a single functioning branch of the Communist Party in the entire district, that it took him several weeks to get together the membership of any one branch. And he could only do it by legwork, walking from house to house, to the old addresses of the people he knew before he went into the service. And he was dumfounded to find that condition existing.
When he had gone in the service the party numbered in the neighborhood of 5,000 in this district.
In other words, it was baffling to us as to why that thing had happened.
Later on I came to the conclusion that Mr. Huff was either representing the Federal Bureau of Investigation or somebody else who was as opposed to the party as anybody could be because I couldn’t account for any explanation for that development.