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Was there in the community any strain of anti-communism that would be resistant to the development of this? And more specifically, did you have any feelings of anti-communism? You were, after all, a product of the American school system.

Yes. Well, I guess very, very early I think I did, but by this time too many things were happening, and you forgot about the other thing. Remember, this is also the period when the Communists developed the People's Front, and they are becoming twentieth- century Americansism and becoming more American than the Americans. So there was no difficulty in that score, and also, your friends who were involved were very decent, law-abiding, you know, very nice people, the best, we always felt.

Why did you feel that they were the best?

Well, they were very bright students, they were capable in all areas, they read, they had a tremendous amount of information, they went to films, concerts, etc., and so they were culturally advanced. I was also involved at school with friends who were active in organizations. I was at the same time, I'm playing basketball after school for the first two years. Starting with the second year, I leave school at 1:00 o'clock and go to a job that my brother Jack has gotten for me in the City College Registrar's Office evening session, where I work from 2:00 to 6:00 five days and very often at night, and then you go home. So there really isn't a lot of time for political activity. Speaking of political activity, you're running into '36, '37, '38, Spain and its aftermath, '38 and the period. From '36 until the Pact is a period of great growth in the radical movement, great growth and probably its greatest influence. It's always questionable how influential, how big it was. Just last Saturday night, a number of us, friends for over forty years, all from similar backgrounds and similar activities, were discussing the communist movement and whether it was a positive factor in our lives. People were then evaluating, and there were people there, like ten different people there, five couples. In one case, a person said it was not a positive factor. He was always critical of it. In virtually all the others cases, they said that while one could look back and be critical and say we made horrible mistakes, that it was a positive factor in his or her life. They marked it down as positive. I felt that it was positive. Another person there who was an active person in the American Student Union and then went and got his master's in Iowa in English literature and then went to work in a factory concentration ended up as a skilled tool and die maker, and for maybe twelve of fifteen years was a shop steward and local union