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. I soon found that I was running into a stone wall. Everything I proposed by way of reorganization or by way of organizational activities--I, for instance, felt that a fundamental policy of the party was to concentrate in the mass production industries, to concentrate in basic industries. I had always been taught that that was one of the party’s chief concerns. But, lo and behold, when I approached the district leaders asking for assistance to concentrate on making a strong party in the steelworkers, they said, “Oh, we’re not interested in them. We have got other problems that are more important to us than just a bunch of steelworkers.” Which was an attitude expressing to me a certain contempt for the workers, which didn’t go very well because I have the greatest respect for men who have the audacity to try to work for a living. And I didn’t like this business of people who were sitting up on top sneering, speaking about the membership in such a cursory way.