TESTIMONY OF CHARLES DAVID BLODGETT Mr. TAVENNER. What is your name, please, sir? Mr. TAVENNER. Are you accompanied by counsel, Mr. Blodgett? Mr. TAVENNER. Are you familiar with the rule and practice of the committee which permits every witness, if he desires, to be accompanied by counsel? Mr. BLODGETT. I am. Mr. TAVENNER. And even though not accompanied by counsel, having a right to consult counsel at any time if he so desires? Mr. BLODGETT. I am familiar with those rules. Mr. TAVENNER. Do you desire counsel? Mr. BLODGETT. I do not. Mr. TAVENNER. When and where were you born, Mr. Blodgett? Mr. BLODGETT. I was born on February 19, 1921, in Northfield, Minnesota. Mr. TAVENNER. Where do you now reside? Mr. BLODGETT. I now reside in Chicago. Mr. TAVENNER. Have you ever lived in San Francisco? Mr. BLODGETT. Not in San Francisco; no, sir. Mr. TAVENNER. Have you lived in the bay area? Mr. BLODGETT. I have. Mr. TAVENNER. In what sections of the bay area have you lived? Mr. BLODGETT. I have lived in Alameda and in Oakland. Mr. TAVENNER. What is your business or profession? Mr. BLODGETT. At present I am employed as a salesman. Mr. TAVENNER. Will you tell the committee, please, what your formal educational training has been? Mr. BLODGETT. I attended grammar school in my home, Northfield, Minn.; high school, graduate of Northfield High School, 1939. I then went to Carleton College. Mr. TAVENNER. Where is Carleton College located? Mr. BLODGETT. In Northfield, Minn.; and I was graduated from Carleton in May of 1943 with a bachelor of arts degree. Mr. TAVENNER. During the period when you were in college and subsequent to that time were you in any branch of the military service? Mr. BLODGETT. Yes, sir; I was commissioned as a probationary officer of the Navy in about August of 1942. I completed my college course in 1943 and went on active duty with the Navy July 1, 1943, so I was not on active duty while I was in college. Mr. TAVENNER. How long did you remain in the Navy? Mr. BLODGETT. I was in the Navy from July 1, 1943, until February 9. 1946. Mr. TAVENNER. Have you at any time been identified or affiliated in any manner with the Young Communist League? Mr. BLODGETT. Yes, sir; I was. Mr. TAVENNER. Over what period of time were you connected or affiliated with the Young Communist League? Mr. BLODGETT. From approximately August of 1941 until I was graduated from college and went on active duty in the Navy. Mr. TAVENNER. Then you became a member of the Young Communist League while at college? Mr. BLODGETT. While at college. Mr. TAVENNER. Did you have any part in organizing the Young Communist League in your college? Mr. BLODGETT. Yes; I actually took the lead with the assistance of a Young Communist League organizer in establishing a branch of the YCL on the campus at Carleton College. Mr. TAVENNER. Then a paid functionary of the Communist Party assisted you in the organization of the Young Communist League in your college? Mr. BLODGETT. That is true, sir. Mr. TAVENNER. The committee would be interested to know what led up to your decision to attempt to organize the Young Communist League in your college. Would you go back and state to the committee what interested you in that course of action? Mr. BLODGETT. One wonders how far to go. Those things I presume, start in childhood. It relates to the training, various influences, and factors in a young person's life. I suppose most people have a conception, somewhat stereotyped, of the kind of background that makes young people join an organization like the Young Commmunist League, but I think an examination, for instance, of my own life and background will show that the Communists are able to reach people from all walks of life, from all types of background, good homes and poor homes, from workingclass families, middle-class families. I was born and raised in a town of 4,500 people. My father was a municipal court judge for many years in Northfield. My grandfather was a very eminent businessman in Northfield. My grandfather on my mother's side was an Episcopalian minister who was chaplain for some time at the Stillwater Penitentiary, chaplain of the senate in Minnesota for a number of years. There is nothing particularly unusual about the way I was raised. It was a good home, 6 children; all these things may seem quite irrelevant, but I think in the record it should show somewhere that be cause Mr. VELDE. Mr. Blodgett, let me assure you-and I am sure the members of the committee agree-we personally feel this is very relevant, and we are very much interested in your story. Proceed. Mr. BLODGETT. I can remember from high school being very interested in social problems confronting the Nation and the world, and it is from that sort of background and that sort of inclination, serious minded young people, that the Communists can move in and make recruiting material. At the age of 17 I wanted to make over the whole world into a more perfect sphere of beauty and goodness and found, at least thought I had found, the answer when I met Communists, listened to their persuasion, and although it may seem difficult to understand how this could be, let me assure you that their resources or arsenal of indoctrinating techniques have been highly refined over a period of a hundred years, and they know how to take those genuine desires of young people to make a better place for the world, make the world a better 41002-54-pt. 3 place to live in, and take those natural inclinations and use them to reach that person and to indoctrinate them. Now, in my own experience the first Communist I met was in approximately December of 1939, which was my freshman year at Carleton College, a small liberal arts school of about 850 enrolment. This Communist was from Minneapolis. I met him through mutual acquaintance. He got to talking with me and found out that I did. have certain interests in social problems and gave me material, literature to read, books like Howard Selsam's What Is Philosophy? when he discovered that I was taking philosophy at Carleton College. On the campus at Carleton there was a considerable Marxist movement among the students, which was led by a member of the faculty at Carleton. Mr. TAVENNER. Now, I noticed you said "Marxist"; you did not say "Communist." Was that deliberate on your part? Mr. BLODGETT. Yes, sir; because I think you will find this is quite typical on the campuses. A professor will be a Marxist and espouse Marxist theory while not being an organized member of the Communist Party. In this case the professor who led the movement was a refugee from Germany who said he fled from the Hitler regime and came to Carleton College as a professor of economics, very outspoken Marxist, a very erudite man, a man with tremendous intellectual agility and capacity; someone who in some other phase of endeavors, scholastic endeavor, would be considered an outstanding scholar; very glamorous figure, very dynamic figure, and he did a great deal to influence a large section of the student body, to the extent that when his contract was not renewed at the end of the year of 1939-40, the student body rose up in protest and held meetings in the college auditorium and sent a delegation to the president of the school demanding to know why this great scholar had been fired-just an indication of what kind of following he was able to achieve and he was, of course, able to influence other members of the faculty of the college. I became acquainted with this man-this is all prior to my joining the Young Communist League-he made his very extensive Marxist library available to me, encouraged me to do reading. I spent most of the summer of 1940 reading from his library, and there were not only Marxist works, but official Communist Party literature, History of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, for example, Stalin's Principles of Leninism." The coincidence of meeting an avowed Communist in December of 1939 juxtaposed with the type of work that I was actually doing in the classrooms of the college. It was like an electric shock to me because here in the Communist books and philosophy I was getting practically the same basic view of history and the dynamics of history and the organization of society and the laws of society as the Marxists propounded; the Communist books and the classroom discussion met. And this had a great influence actually on convincing me of the validity of these Marxist theories. Somehow or another the Communist Party in the Twin Cities Mr. TAVENNER. What do you mean by "Twin Cities"? Mr. BLODGETT. That is Minneapolis and St. Paul-found out that there was a foment on the campus at Carleton College, and certain spadework had been done, and a great deal of indoctrination had been done in the Marxist theory in the classroom and on the campus, and at that time they had imported from Brooklyn a Young Communist League organizer by the name of Harold Schachter. Mr. TAVENNER. Will you spell the name? Mr. BLODGETT. That is S-c-h-a-c-h-t-e-r. Mr. Schachter was a very capable, extremely capable, organizer. He found out about the sitation there, and through a Mrs. Meridel LeSeuer Mr. TAVENNER. Will you please spell that name? Mr. BLODGETT. M-e-r-i-d-e-l L-e-S-e-u-e-r. Mrs. LeSeuer was the wartime chairman of the Communist Party in Minnesota. Mr. VELDE. That is for the State of Minnesota? Mr. BLODGETT. For the State of Minnesota; yes. Mr. TAVENNER. Can you identify her further? Mr. BLODGETT. Mrs. LeSeuer is a profesisonal writer and a very successful writer of short stories, children's historical novels, and is still making what I understand is a very good living from her writing. She had been in attendance at Carleton by invitation of the administration of the school to conduct a panel on vocational guidance in the field of writing. I had met her for the first time in that connection, and later on, because I considered myself something of an embryonic poet, I contacted her in Minneapolis and attended a session of her short story class. I went to her home afterwards, and Mr. Schachter, who is the YCL organizer, was present at her home. That evening I was recruited into the Young Communist League. That was in the late summer of 1941. Mr. Schachter, getting the picture of what the situation was on the Carleton campus, worked with me in organizing the chapter of the Young Communist League at Carleton College shortly thereafter. Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Chairman, I suggest that I not ask the witness questions about the membership of those in the Young Communist League at the college at this time. I think we can do that later, or even in executive session, if necessary, but the membership there would have little to do with our situation of the investigation we are making here. Mr. VELDE. The suggestion of counsel is well taken, and in the interests of saving time and revealing the information that we must have in the bay area, proceed with the information that you have regarding activities of the Communist Party or any other subversive group in the bay area. Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Blodgett, I will not ask you questions now about the identity of those who took part in this work along with you at your college. But we are interested in knowing at this time just how the Young Communist League functioned at the college and what his activities were. Will you describe those briefly for us? Mr. BLODGETT. I think first of all it should be kept in mind that this was 1942, 1943, the early part of World War II. Mr. Schachter's organizational genius went to work immediately that we had this chapter formed. He proposed that a student conference be convened to represent as many student bodies in the Middle West as possibly could be gathered together at Carleton College. This was a very convincing example to me of the effectiveness of the Young Com munist League when it set out to establish a front organization to get across its program and do it still in a sub rosa manner so that very few people were actually aware that the resultant conference that was held at Carleton College in January 1943, at which there were approximately 135 student delegates from 28 Midwest colleges and universities from 6 states-Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois-very few people were aware that the YCL had any hand in this. It worked something like this: Mr. Schachter laid out a completely detailed organizing plan to me. The first step was to establish a sponsoring committee. I went to the student body president of the Carleton College, convinced him that such a conference would be a good thing, got authorization from him to place his name upon the sponsoring committee list. I went across the river to St. Olaf College and did the same thing with the student body president at St. Olaf. Then I had a start; I had two names of student body presidents. I went from there to the University of Minnesota, McAllister College, and that was enough. That was all that was required so we could print a letterhead, sponsoring committee, student body presidents of these four colleges. That later was printed Mr. TAVENNER. The purpose of that would be to show the efficacy of those people of the general plan and thereby obtain additional assistance in carrying out your original Communist Party plan? Mr. BLODGETT. Yes, that is right. Well, naturally it would have been impossible for the Young Communist League to have called the conference themselves, and this made it possible. It lent it more respectability, made it possible to send out an invitation to the student bodies that would have some force and effect. It certainly proved to be true because they came from these 28 schools. The next step was to convince the president of Carleton College that such a conference should be held on the campus. This we were able to do again because we had this committee, sponsoring committee, set up. The administrative assistant at Carleton College was invited to be the welcoming speaker. We tried to get prominent people to speak. We failed to get the caliber of speakers that we wanted, but we were able to get greetings, very warm congratulatory greetings from people like Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Stassen, Governor of Minnesota at that time. Mr. TAVENNER. Of course none of those people knew that this was a Communist Party plan or a Communist Party-run assembly? Mr. BLODGETT. No, sir; they would have no way of knowing, and from the objectives that were set up for the conference-and apparently it was simply a conference to rally students around behind the war effort. What we wanted to achieve by it, of course, was to get across the then slogan of the Communist Party, open the second front in Europe. In any event, we set the thing up; Schachter wrote a ream of resolutions; we had the panels organized in such a way that we had YCL members at this panel responsible for seeing that those resolutions were taken back to the general body of the convention; passed all the resolutions that we wanted, put out material, sent it around to the different schools, got publicity in the newspapers, so we achieved our purpose in any event. |