COMMUNISTS: The Little Commissar

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Frankie Waldron, with his wavy brown hair, his snappy clothes and his electric smile, was as handsome as a junior Arrow Collar Man. Frankie's family was far from well-to-do, but Frankie danced and wisecracked his way into Franklin High School's social upper crust. He was manager of the basketball team, manager of the senior play, and a passionate, if reedy-voiced, star of the debating team. Just about everybody who knew him in Seattle back in 1923 predicted that Frankie Waldron would go far.

Last week, a quarter of a century later, Frankie's star had come to rest in the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan's downtown Foley Square. He was on trial for conspiring to teach and advocate the overthrow of the U.S. Government. On the indictment, Frankie was listed under the pseudonym by which he was more widely known: Eugene Dennis. He was general secretary of the Communist Party, U.S.A.

Frankie had gone far, in a curious way. He was boss of one of the noisiest and most pertinacious minority parties in U.S. history, which now, generally discredited, was fighting for its life. Lawyers for the defense argued that fundamental rights of U.S. citizens, such as the right of free political thought, were at stake in the case. The legal battle would certainly go to the Supreme Court. Secretary Dennis was the cynosure among the other ten Communists on trial with him. He was surrounded by an aura of mystery. According to the party's carefully manufactured legend, he had come out of the lumber camps of the Northwest. At first glance he looked the part—big, broad-shouldered, ruddy and impressive. At second glance he turned out to be a puffy, tweedy, middle-aged man with fluffy grey hair, a small, uncertain mouth and plump, pink cheeks.

Behind the legend of the revolutionist was the real story of Frankie Waldron, the middle-class boy who never quite made good.

Rebel's Home. Frankie was the son and namesake of Francis X. Waldron. Around the turn of the century, Waldron Sr. left his home in New Jersey to try his fortunes in the West, tried prospecting in Alaska, drifted back to Seattle and in 1904 married Nora Vieg, daughter of a Minnesota farmer of Norwegian antecedents, at the First Methodist Church. Frankie was born the next year.

Waldron Sr. was a small, grey, wiry man who kept his own counsel, spent most of his time at home hidden behind his newspaper. He was a rebel against steady work, a smalltime promoter of various large-sounding enterprises which never quite seemed to pan out. Father was a rebel in other respects. He disliked such contraptions as the automobile. He suspected such institutions as the telephone company; when he decided the company was cheating him on toll calls he had the telephone taken out, never would have it put back.