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freshman class not to use it anymore. I don't know if you
remember that or not.
P: I remember that.
L: All right. They didn't use it. I don't know why. I never did
find out who selected that book. But in the summer of 1931, when
I went to Chicago, I stopped in Evansville to visit Bill on my
way out. I believe that was the time it may have been in '36 when
I visited Bill in Evansville, Indiana. I'm going to tell you
like it is, or like it was. The subject of Manning came up,
and Bill told me that Manning had decided to devote his life
to the Communist party--no, not to the party, but to the cause.
I didn't ask any questions about it, it was a sort of an embarrassing
thing. I thought to myself, "Well, now why should Bill make a
statement like that?" I didn't know the basis for that statement.
I thought about that many times in the years since then, and I
felt that Bill may have been feeling me out and wanted me to
express my opinions about Marxism. I stored it away. When
this textbook came up, I never did associate Bill or Manning
or any of the teachers with that book. I think they had a smart
salesman from a book publishing firm who sold either Dean
Matherly or "Rally" Attwood on the book, and they didn't read it
and might not have recognized the literature if they read it.
P: You don't think Bill had anything to do with it?
L: I never did suspect him, but I wondered, though, I've wondered.
P: People wondered if Bill wasn't himself flirting with at least
socialism during the 1930s.
L: Oh, I'm sure he was. But then a lot of people were doing it.
My neighbor up here who was teaching psychology down there
at that time--he thought Bill was a Communist.
P: A lot of people thought Bill was a Communist or a Socialist,
but that's only because he was so outspoken.
L: I know it. Bill was a liberal. I'll tell you exactly what
Bill was: Bill was a Bill Carleton. He had his own ideas and
he wasn't afraid to discuss them. He was a nonconformist, always
has been. I've never suspected him of being a Communist party
member.