Would you like to make further comment on that?
Mr. Dennett. I didn’t expect that that would come up, and I was quite surprised at the furor it has created. I had no idea at the time that I mentioned this that it was of such importance or that such importance would be made of it.
I think perhaps it requires that I give you a little bit more detail of how I had such knowledge so that you may judge for yourselves as to the accuracy or validity of what I had to say.
Mr. Velde. Actually, of course, back in those days about which you were testifying there was nothing seriously wrong in the minds of most American people with attending fraction meetings of the Communist Party. So I agree with you. I don’t see any reason for all the furor. But I thought possibly you would like to clear it up.
Mr. Dennett. I certainly would, sir. Thank you for asking me.
The first I heard of the furor, a friend of mine called me on the phone last night and asked me if I had read the morning paper which carried the story of Mr. Lundeberg’s denial. I said I had not. So he read it to me, and he asked me what I had to say about it then. Some of my personal friends did. And I had to remind him, just as I just stated to you, that I had no idea it was going to have that much importance attached to it.
But let me give you the facts as it occurred.
You will recall in my testimony I mentioned going into the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific, what was then the Ferry Boatmen’s Union. It was in 1936—Well, it was in 1935, the end of 1935 when the first strike occurred against an arbitration award.
At that time the Maritime Federation of the Pacific had been already organized. Mr. Lundeberg was the president of it. Their headquarters were here in Seattle. He had an office here in a building close to the Pioneer Square. I believe it is properly called Pioneer Place. Mr. Lundeberg held an office there as the president of the federation, and his first and able assistant was Mr. Ernest Fox whom I have mentioned before.
When I was elected a delegate to represent the crew of the ship that I was working on, to attend our first strike meeting, on my way to that meeting I stopped at the office of the president of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific, Mr. Harry Lundeberg, and asked him what he thought of the situation that I found myself in; namely, elected as a delegate, representing an organization which I knew practically nothing about. And I asked him further what advice he would give me.