Mr. Tavenner. Who was he?
Mr. Dennett. A man by the name of N. P. Atkinson. And Atkinson was expelled from the party. And when he was expelled from the party he was also pushed out of the pension union.
Mr. Tavenner. After Communist Party overtures to the leadership of the union was any effort made to capture the rank and file?
Mr. Dennett. Yes. There was a considerable effort made. A person by the name of William J. Pennock, whom I have mentioned before, who is now deceased—Pennock was a very successful figure in this work because he was such a tireless worker.
(Representative Harold H. Velde left the hearing room at this point.)
Mr. Dennett. He worked day after day, every day, and had a very pleasing personality and was a very successful man in convincing the ordinary person that the program and policies they were pursuing were the best for the organization. And I think it should be recognized that certainly those efforts of the organization to maintain a standard of decency and comfort for public assistance for the elderly people is something which should be recognized as proper. It is something which should not be condemned because the Communists were trying to use that as a basis for successfully planting its other ideas in the ranks of the organization. And I hope no one will condemn the elderly people for trying to improve their own economic position, which they were trying to do in the pension union.
Mr. Tavenner. How can organizations of this type, which have a very fine purpose in view, be able to accomplish their ends without permitting the Communist Party to take them over and subvert them to the purposes of the Communist Party?
What is the best defense? What defense can they have to the Communist Party which is trying to manipulate them in the manner you have described?
Mr. Dennett. My own experience leads me to the conclusion that the soundest defense and the soundest practice which can be pursued is that wherein we all insist upon the complete observance of the fundamental principles in the Constitution of the United States and the legal procedure of the court system in the United States, in which we first insist that all persons shall be considered to be innocent until proven guilty when charged with anything which appears to be a violation of either the Constitution of the United States or the principles of the organization that they belong to.
I say that advisedly because I have had a number of experiences, personal ones, where I have been treated as a guilty person until proven so—not in connection with Communist material either. And I observed with a great deal of interest last night’s television report of Mr. Harry Cain’s remarks on that very point.