Let’s look at Larry, a communist in a Midwestern state. Ever since youth, he had felt a “persecution complex.” Everywhere he looked he seemed to see despair and strife. The whole of society, he concluded, was strictly a dog-eat-dog affair, with life being divided between the have’s and the have-not’s. Such an attitude was intensified by an “artistic” and “sensitive” temperament. Seeing these “injustices,” he felt compelled to help the “persecuted.” At first he became just a “reformer”; then, after reading Marxist literature, he joined the Party. Twisted, distorted, and maladjusted, he is today even more confused. He found that the Party only exploited his neurotic condition to make use of his services. The techniques of actual recruitment vary. In most instances indoctrination comes slowly. A fellow union member, worker, or associate who is a Party member will “work” on the prospect. First come conversations about mutual interests such as union activities. Deftly the communist slant will be emphasized. Perhaps then will come communist literature or an invitation to a “study group.” Step by step the recruit becomes enmeshed in the Party’s efficient recruitment apparatus. A former member told how she first became acquainted with communism, which she was later to reject. She was living a lonely life in a boardinghouse. She noticed that some of her neighbors had many friends who laughed and chattered gaily. Apparently they had common interests that drew them together. One night she heard the muffled overtones of what sounded like a meeting next door: “Overcome by my growing curiosity about them, I snooped as no lady should. I sat on the bed and pressed my ear against the plaster wall. As their subdued voices rose and fell, I caught words and snatches. I don’t know now what I heard, or what could have convinced me in my great ignorance of that time. But before the meeting adjourned, I believed my jolly neighbors were Communists, and that I was listening to a secret meeting of a Communist cell of Government workers! They did not look as Communists were pictured, and they were not plotting bomb-throwing or assassination, but some much duller discussion with long words.” In her loneliness this woman joined the Communist Party but found neither “happiness” nor a “sense of direction”—only bitter disappointments. Party fronts offer excellent means of recruitment. Be assured that every noncommunist who actively participates in a front is under the Party’s close scrutiny. Sometimes, of course, as we have seen, an individual is more useful to the Party by remaining a nonmember, a sympathizer, or a fellow traveler. At other times, if the prospect seems to offer a fertile field of recruitment, pressure is applied. Thousands of Party members were recruited through the many fronts operating in the 1930’s and 1940’s.