Communist infiltration of Hollywood motion-picture industry : hearing before the Committee on Un-American activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-second Congress, first session (1951)

1448 COMMUNISM IN MOl ION-PICTURE INDUSTRY Mr. Doyle. Mr. Ashe, what sort of pay scale do the folks who were employed in the Communist Party receive as compared with other hired people; for instance, clerks? Are they paid a standard scale, or a standard wage ? Mr. Ashe. I wouldn't call it standard. It was a scab wage, non- union wage. I believe when I was in it the going wage, when you collected it, was something like $10 a week, but you didn't always get it. Mr. Doyle. Doesn't the Communist Party always have sufficient money to pay its employees well ? Mr. Ashe. Yes. But it has never been its policy to pay them well. Mr. Doyle. You mean, then Mr. Ashe. I am not too clear as to why this is, unless it is for the purpose of testing the leadership to see how much abuse they can take. But some of them have great capacity for that. Mr. Doyle. In your testimony you barely mentioned the subject of Communist fronts. Do you have anything to add to that ? How were they organized, what is the purpose of forming Communist fronts and how do you designate their value, if any, to the Communist program ? Mr. Ashe. Communist front, or united front, was first formulated, I believe, in 1933 at the Communist International. It was brought down to the sister parties, including the Communist Party in this country, in late 1933 or 1934. I believe a man by the name of Dimitrov wrote on it, at considerable length, in a great many pamphlets on the subject which were distributed. The united front—-— Mr. Doyle. Let me interrupt you. I wasn't referring to that so much as I was the ordinary Communist front that is organized in different communities. Mr. Ashe. That is what I am getting to. This was an established policy of the party, differentiating from an earlier period when they were very sectarian. This was a new policy to penetrate broader or- ganizations than they had in the past been able to infiltrate. The united front was a weapon by which they could draw to them, surround themselves with, noncommunist elements—elements that would act as protective coloration for them in certain basic united front activities. In other words, in the unemployment field the Communists would set up a united front committee to attain certain minimum objectives in the field of unemployment. Then they would have people come as delegates from as broad a representative group of organizations as they could, including noncommunist labor unions, churches, fraternal organizations, youth groups of every conceivable kind. Sometimes these delegates would themselves be-the Communists that were planted in these organizations and sometimes they would be innocents who had no conception whatever as to who was pulling the strings. Mr. Doyle. During your time of leadership in the Communist Party did the Communist Party, to your knowledge, employ and pay peo- ple to develop these Communist fronts in California? I mean, did they have paid workers assigned to that particular duty ? Mr. Ashe. Generally not. Most of them were voluntary workers. There were very few paid functionaries in the party in California at that time. Mr. Doyle. When you say volunteer workers, would you say a large percentage of the Communist Party in California were really volun- teer workers, giving a good deal of their time?