Issued by National Committee Unemployed Councils, Room 436, 80 East
11th Street, New York City. Published by Workers Library Publishers, P.
O. Box 148. Sta. D (50 East 13th St.), New York City, March, 1933.]
Remember, if you please, there were more than a million young people
in their ‘teens who were wandering around this Nation of ours, just
hoboes. They had no homes; they had no food; they had no jobs. So such
a heading has great appeal to them because it holds for the hope that
some other form of existence would provide a better life for them, and
the inference always being the Soviet Union was doing that. The Soviet
Union had solved that problem. Little did the people know how they
solved it. And now, of course, there is a great deal of evidence coming
into public attention which indicates that many of those young people
in the Soviet Union, while some of them certainly did receive education
as a way out, others also wound up in prison camps, vast prison camps,
enormous prison camps. And we must not forget that that did actually
happen.
Here these pamphlets try to present the idea that the children in
the Soviet Union live in a paradise. And at that time there was no
contravening or contradicting evidence to change anyone’s knowledge
about it. Today I think there is.
Mr. TAVENNER. Apparently the Communist Party did not lose any
opportunities it had to promote its own objectives.
Mr. DENNETT. That certainly is true.
Mr. TAVENNER. Will you tell the committee, please, the
circumstances under which you were transferred away from Bellingham.
Mr. DENNETT. Yes.
I referred to Mr. Alex Noral as the district organizer at the time I
came into the district. He was fresh from the Soviet Union, and it was
presumed that he would give the most astute leadership because he had
spent considerable time in the Lenin School in Moscow between 1928
and 1931. However, Mr. Noral’s attitude and methods of work were so
arbitrary that the average person could not stand them, not even the
most devoted Communists here. And he ran into political difficulties
with them.
Reports of these difficulties reached the central committee in New York
City, and they decided that Mr. Noral had to have some help. So they
sent some more people out here to help him.
Mr. TAVENNER. Do you mean Communist Party functionaries were
sent from New York to this area?
Mr. DENNETT. Communist Party functionaries, people who fall
into the category of professional revolutionists, people who devote
their lives and dedicate themselves to the Communist cause and do as
they are told without question.
At that particular time 2 outstanding people came to the Northwest. In
fact, 3 came at one time. One of them was another person who had just
returned from the Soviet Union having spent 2 years’ study at the Lenin
Institute. His name was Hutchin R. Hutchins, a Negro who had done some
outstanding work here before going to the Soviet Union. But when he
returned here he ran into difficulty.
Then there was Mr. Lowell Wakefield, who had achieved national
prominence for having discovered the Scottsboro case in the South,
and had carried a large part of the responsibility of conducting the
organization of the defense of the Scottsboro boys.
It was Lowell Wakefield who got hold of the mothers of these boys and
prevailed upon them to go on national speaking tours in behalf of their
boys under the auspices of the Communist Party.
Mr. Lowell Wakefield was an especially able man because he could raise
finances and organize mass meetings and do almost impossible tasks, at
least tasks which the rest of us seemed to be very inept at. He was
very skillful.
Another person who came at that time was Mr. Alan Max. I noticed from
the masthead of the Daily Worker a couple of years ago that Mr. Alan
Max was the editor of the Daily Worker. Mr. Alan Max spent considerable
time here then.
I became very well acquainted with each of the men. However, they were
unable to solve the problems that were rising here in this district,
and the central committee was not satisfied with even their efforts.
Following a national hunger march some time in 1933 a Mr. Morris
Rappaport,[1] better known to us as Rapp or Rapport.
Mr. TAVENNER. Will you spell his last name, please.
Mr. DENNETT. Our use of it was R-a-p-p-o-r-t, and I believe
the full spelling is R-a-p-p-a-p-o-r-t or something like that.
Mr. Rappaport came into the district with a great deal of suspicion
and alarm on the part of us local people because we thought he was an
easterner who didn’t understand the ways of the West. We were quite
surprised to find that he had originally come from the West. He came
from California. And he, like Mr. Noral, had been a part of the Foster
delegation or a part of the Foster faction. Although he had not been a
delegate to the Sixth World Congress in Moscow, he learned a great deal
more about it than Mr. Noral did because when he came here he had an
unlimited reserve of energy and tremendous flexibility in application
of the party line and party policy. He was not the least bit afraid of
anything. When a veterans’ organization here in town tried to raid a
school and destroy it here, Mr. Rappaport had the courage to be among
those present when it was attacked, and he caused a great deal of
publicity.
That publicity attracted the attention of people who didn’t like
invasion of civil rights. Mr. Rappaport capitalized on that quite
beautifully.
Mr. TAVENNER. What was it about the functioning of the
Communist Party in the Northwest which presented unusual problems to
the national organization in New York, causing it to send these top
functionaries of the party to aid in the solution of its problems in
this area?
Mr. DENNETT. I think it was because our party had already
reached masses of people that were larger proportionately than they
found in other places.
Mr. TAVENNER. Do you mean that the organizational effort had
been so successful in this area that it presented immediate problems to
the Communist Party?
Mr. DENNETT. It certainly did. As a matter of fact, you see,
there is a period, following the national elections in 1932, when the
new administration began to take those steps which caused industry
to resume functioning, in which there was a change taking place in
the composition of our organizations. People were not all unemployed;
some were leaving the unemployed organizations. Our problem was: How
can we continue to exercise influence on them when they cease to be
unemployed. And we were confronted with the necessity of entering the
trade unions. We had to get into the trade unions one way or another or
we were going to lose completely our influence among these people.
So the problem was, and the national office or central committee was
continually asking: What progress are you making entering these unions?
Mr. Foster, of course, was naturally very much concerned because of
his prior experience in trade-union work. And our reports were quite
unsatisfactory. We were not able to make the progress that they
demanded. They thought it was a matter of inadequate leadership here,
and when they sent Mr. Rappaport they certainly picked a good one
because he did lead us in that direction. He did know what to do.
Mr. TAVENNER. How did the arrival of these Communist Party
functionaries influence or affect your activities at Bellingham?
Mr. DENNETT. As soon as Mr. Rappaport got here he used a
very simple technique of determining what had to be done by way of
shake-up. He started changing section organizers in every section
in the area, jarring people loose from their established positions,
making them get a new orientation, making them begin to do new things.
He was quite pleased with the successes I had in Bellingham, and,
feeling that he was in need of a district agitprop director and knowing
that I had once been a district agitprop director, knowing also that
there was beginning to be a little ground swell of opposition to me
in the Bellingham area, he thought it wiser to take me out of there.
So he ordered me back to Seattle as district agitprop director, and I
was replaced by some of the newer elements which I had recruited in
Bellingham.
Mr. TAVENNER. I have found among the documents which you have
made available to the staff a “Statement Issued by the Communist Party
of Bellingham Section on the Immediate Questions Facing the Working
Class.” It is signed by V. Haines, section organizer.
Was that your party name?
Mr. DENNETT. That is true.
Mr. TAVENNER. Examine this document, please, and state
whether or not there is anything in it which has a bearing on the
organizational setup from the standpoint we are now discussing.
(Document handed to the witness.)
Mr. DENNETT. Yes. I have my original copy of that here.
This was an effort on my part to provide orientation to the members, to
take the official party line and apply it to the local conditions. It
was an effort to give the Communists in the Bellingham area something
by way of interpretation so that they would know how to apply the party
line and have confidence that they were following the Communist Party
line.
I don’t know how much detail you want to go into on that. But that was
the general purpose of the statement.
Mr. TAVENNER. I desire to introduce the document in evidence,
Mr. Chairman, and ask that it be marked “Dennett Exhibit No. 8.”